#1 The Ebola outbreak in Congo just passed 8,000 cases and it barely made the news cycle for a day. If this were happening in a Western country the entire internet would be on fire.
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#2 The last US troops just left Iraq after 23 years. An entire generation grew up with that war in the background and most of us still couldn't point to a clear reason it started.
#3 Starship finally reached orbit, but the flight was cut short and the ship reportedly tipped over in flames on splashdown. SpaceX is calling it a success. Delivering the payload matters more than the landing.
#4 Bangkok declared a disaster zone from flooding and the photos look apocalyptic. Every year the floods get worse and every year the conversation about climate adaptation starts from scratch.
#5 Rotten Tomatoes did the math and found that the more Tom Cruise runs in a movie, the better it scores. Honestly, that checks out.
#6 Morocco just appointed its first female prime minister. Meanwhile half of Europe is still debating whether women can lead. Progress doesn't wait for permission.
#7 Cyberpunk Edgerunners season 2 drops this week and the trailer already has more emotional weight than most full-length films this year. Studio Trigger doesn't miss.
#8 The director of national intelligence is now also the White House AI czar, and the safety plan so far is a voluntary pledge from the AI companies to review themselves. That is not regulation.
#9 PepsiCo recalled more than 122,000 cases of Gatorade because the bottles contained food dyes that were not listed on the label. If a sports drink cannot list its own ingredients correctly, what are we actually drinking?
#10 Spain's prime minister just called a snap election for November 29 after parliament blocked his emergency housing decrees. Housing is now the issue that decides elections, and not only in Spain.
#11 Apple finally made a foldable phone and somehow convinced everyone it invented the category. Samsung has been doing this for six years. Marketing really is a superpower.
#12 Over half of people say they're uncomfortable with brands posting AI content without saying so. Turns out nobody wants to build a parasocial relationship with a language model pretending to be a person.
#13 Ben Affleck directing AND starring in a political thriller called Animals on Netflix. The man went from tabloid punchline to one of the most consistent filmmakers working. Respect the arc.
#14 Flock's police cameras are catching all the backlash, but experts say other surveillance tools used by police are more worrying. We argue about the camera we can see and ignore the ones we cannot.
#15 Apple is suing OpenAI over alleged trade secret theft just as OpenAI is reportedly getting ready to build hardware that competes with the iPhone. The next big tech fight is not about chatbots, it is about the device in your pocket.
#16 Verity opened at number one with around $32 million while Digger managed about $8 million. Meanwhile a Resident Evil movie and an Avengers re-release are still in the top ten. Hollywood's comfort zone has not changed.
#17 Game 7 of this year's World Series is scheduled for Halloween night, which means no November baseball. Finally someone fixed the calendar.
#18 At least five NFL teams had a different starting quarterback in Week 3 than they did in Week 1. Quarterbacks are going down so often that the backup matters as much as the star.
#19 journalist alleged that Meta’s Muse AI agent had accessed his messages without his permission, true?
#20 Cigarettes should be illegal
#21 3d printed guns are a bigger threat than AI, but not big news
#22 Maricarmen, the pensioner with a disability rent went up and evicted the 87 year old, landlord is within their rights?
#23 It was the right thing to release the uk raf suspects on bail as no charges were made
#24 Campaing should be called tenting
#25 The digger is awesome