Monday strikes again, $%&* Look forward to a hopefully above average week.
NASA SWEARS WE'RE ON THE MOON BY 2028
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman stood up at Kennedy Space Center on Friday and announced the agency is done holding meetings about the moon. Astronauts on the surface in 2028, a permanent base near the south pole, everything at Apollo speed. He said NASA will not pretend that more time, more money and flying less somehow makes the work safer. He also noted that Apollo went from the Apollo 7 splashdown to Apollo 11 in nine months. Different decade, different budget, same confidence. Then he explained what actually happens next summer. Artemis III sends four astronauts up for two weeks and never leaves Earth orbit. Three rockets launch from Florida back to back. Orion docks with Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander around day three and the crew climbs in to check the life support and run emergency drills. Later it meets SpaceX's Starship for about two hours, and nobody goes inside, because that Starship is a modified upper stage with no crew cabin. Two rocket billionaires, one docking adapter, zero moon. Nobody agrees on what it takes to fuel the real thing either. A NASA safety panel put Starship at roughly 22 tanker launches. Elon Musk says six to eight. Isaacman said six to eight is possible, which is a hell of a way to pick a side with a straight face.
Sources (3)
- washingtontimes.com - NASA adopting Apollo's urgency to build a moon base and land astronauts within two years
- abcnews.com - NASA adopting Apollo's urgency to build a moon base and land astronauts within two years
- slashdot.org - NASA Adopting Apollo's Urgency To Build a Moon Base, Land Astronauts Within Two Years
RAYS BLOW A FOUR RUN GAME 2 LEAD
Tampa Bay needed five batters to go up 4-0 in Game 2, helped along by rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt throwing the ball around on the first play of the game. That was the entire Rays offense. They did not score in the second, or the fifth, or the ninth. Eight scoreless innings while Milwaukee picked them apart and won 5-4 for a 2-0 series lead. The Brewers got two back in the bottom of the first on RBI hits from William Contreras and Garrett Mitchell, then got within one in the fourth when Rays first baseman Jonathan Aranda misplayed a grounder and let Pratt score. Milwaukee fouled off 45 pitches on the night, the most in a postseason game since 2023. Drew Rasmussen got yanked after three and two-thirds, and then the Rays bullpen found out what that kind of at-bat does to a man. Sal Frelick, who hadn't homered in three months, tied it in the sixth off Ian Seymour and circled the bases in 18.72 seconds like he was late for something. It was the first Brewers World Series homer since 1982. Pratt, 22 years old and responsible for the hole, singled home Brice Turang in the seventh. Aaron Ashby got the last five outs and struck out Yandy Díaz with the tying run standing on third.
Riddle Me This
Think it through. Then take a peek.
The more you take away from me, the bigger I get. What am I?
Answer hidden
FLORIDA COP DID A WELFARE CHECK AND COMMITS IDENTITY THEFT
Lauderhill officer Brian Louis Sguros, 35, responded as backup to a welfare check on July 11, 2022, and found 71-year-old Dennis West dead inside of natural causes. Most cops file the report and go get lunch. Prosecutors say Sguros went and filed for permits. Within weeks he took possession of the place, by his own court paperwork, and spent the next two and a half years cleaning and repairing it. Investigators say he paid the taxes and utilities in West's name and forged West's signature to get permits for the work. The affidavit says he used law enforcement databases to pull West's address, date of birth and Social Security number. He also told the medical examiner's office he was West's friend and that West had no living family. Authorities say there's no sign he knew West at all, and West had heirs. Sguros claims he spent at least $214,000 of his own money, and says he was securing a hazardous, abandoned house to keep criminals and squatters out. He protected the neighborhood from squatters by squatting in a two-story house for 30 months. It unraveled in August 2025, when a real estate company legally bought the home from West's actual heirs and ran into him. He handed over the keys, then sued for his renovation money back. He's charged with five felonies on a $25,000 bond, and HuffPost reports he ran from reporters outside the courthouse.
ELON'S FULL-LENGTH AI 'ODYSSEY' IS ACTUALLY SEVEN MINUTES AND TWELVE SECONDS OF SLOP
In July, Musk said Grok Imagine would deliver a full-length, "historically accurate" Odyssey before the end of 2026. On October 23 he delivered seven minutes and twelve seconds of it, in 4K, posted to X as Episode 1 of the Odyssey series, credited as a creative collaboration with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker. Musk quote-posted it with four words: "Odyssey with Grok Imagine." Inside those seven minutes: a long voiceover in a British accent, a rotation of bearded men delivering stilted lines, and one named character. Reviewers called it more polished than Musk's earlier AI posts and empty of anything resembling human interest. The TechCrunch writer sat through Nolan's nearly three-hour Odyssey fine, then started checking how much was left of the Grok version before it hit the halfway mark. The premise is the funny part. Musk had gone after Nolan's Odyssey for casting nonwhite and transgender actors instead of chasing historical accuracy. His corrective is now taking fire for an all-white cast, which is a hell of a way to flunk your own test. Nolan shot across six countries with a cast and crew of thousands, and Crypto Briefing sized that $1.78 billion production up against Grok's seven minutes and a caption asking the comments if they want a breakdown of how it was done. Director Scott Derrickson had already posted on Musk's own platform that Musk "doesn't know shit about cinema & he stopped reading in his 20s."
NETFLIX POSTS A $3.7 BILLION QUARTER, PROCEEDS TO CUT 1,000+ JOBS
Netflix cut roughly 1,000 jobs on October 14, about 6% of its workforce, with product, tech, legal and HR eating most of it. Biggest round since 2022. The memo from co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said delivering the mission "requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources," then landed on the line "Now it's on us to step up and meet the moment." Hard to step up when the badge stops working at lunch. The next day chief content officer Bela Bajaria was out after nearly a decade, and staff reportedly learned about it from the press before anyone told them internally. Then film boss Dan Lin, his lieutenant Doug Belgrad, and original series director Carolina Garcia. NPR counted the chairman of Netflix Film plus six other top executives gone. The new content chief is Peter Rice, who Bob Chapek fired from Disney in 2022, which is one hell of a comeback route. Then the earnings hit and they were fine. Revenue of $12.9 billion, net income of $3.7 billion, a beat on Wall Street estimates, and management trimming its own guidance on advertising and free cash flow. Sarandos told investors the U.S. is "just not growing as fast as it could or as fast as we'd like," and added, "I know that we could do better." Eight executives already knew who he meant.
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