The Morning Dump - 2026-11-13

SS UNITED STATES BECOMES WORLDS LARGEST ARTIFICIAL REEF

The SS United States, 990 feet of 1950s engineering that still holds the transatlantic speed record it set in 1952, spent Veterans Day refusing to die. Okaloosa County started the deployment at 1 p.m. about 22 nautical miles southwest of Destin, hit a valve delay, and then everybody on the spectator boats sat there watching a ship stubbornly not sink. It slipped under around 9 p.m. Officials pointed out she was "designed to be unsinkable," which is great engineering and a hell of a scheduling problem. No explosives. Crews cleaned her out and flooded her on purpose, and it worked. Sonar shows the hull upright in 180 feet of water with the top deck around 60 feet down, shallow enough for any open-water certified diver to paddle over a liner that once carried Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and the Mona Lisa. The county bought the ship for $1 million in 2024 and the full project ran about $13 million, funded by tourist bed tax and partner contributions rather than property taxes. The tourism director told NPR she expects the county to recoup its $10 million in "a couple of years," and she already has five or six more sinkings lined up. The record comes from the USS Oriskany, the 911-foot carrier sunk off Pensacola in 2006. Woods Hole researchers are now lining up to study whatever moves in.

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MMA BRAWL IN ABU DHABI HOTEL LOBBY ENDS WITH MULTIPLE ARRESTS

Merab Dvalishvili was standing in the lobby of the Yas Hilton on Wednesday giving an interview, which is the most harmless thing a fighter does all week. Usman Nurmagomedov walked up behind him with his guys, said something, and slapped him across the face. Both camps went at it until security pulled them apart, and Dvalishvili walked away bloodied and needing treatment for a cut on his face. Abu Dhabi Police were not charmed. They arrested eight people from the fight, then arrested the two people who filmed it, which gets you to 10 and explains why nobody in the UAE posts anything. The case went to prosecutors. Dvalishvili was reportedly released early Friday after RAF co-founder Chad Bronstein spent two days working the local authorities. The beef is not new. Dvalishvili beat Usman's brother Umar by unanimous decision at UFC 311 in January 2025, and the camps have been circling each other since. Daniel Cormier, who is about as Team Khabib as a man can be, said watching the video was sad and that Usman is in real trouble. Islam Makhachev defended the family. Ilia Topuria called everyone involved cowards. RAF banned Usman from Saturday's card in Abu Dhabi, a card he was not even fighting on. He flew in to support Umar against Urijah Faber and got himself thrown out of a wrestling show.

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POPE LEO VISITS PERU, HIS "SECOND HOMELAND"

Pope Leo XIV landed at the Callao air base Wednesday evening and Peru went off. Before the white hat he was Robert Prevost, an Augustinian missionary who showed up in 1985, became a Peruvian citizen in 2015, and spent years running the diocese of Chiclayo. Peruvians call him Padre Robert. A few million of them turned out, and one 85-year-old woman waited for him holding a handmade pope plush doll her niece sewed. The tributes got away from everybody. Callao unveiled a 46-foot statue of him with his arms spread wide, fiberglass finished to look like white marble, the tallest statue of a pope in the country. Lima baristas are foaming his face into cappuccinos. There are pope shirts, pope songs, pope sweets. LATAM built him a custom in-flight menu for his domestic hops, including arroz con pato a la chiclayana and a king kong stuffed with manjar blanco. Then there's the schedule, which is brutal. Six days, five cities, Pacific coast to Andes to Amazon, with Cusco and Pucallpa crammed into one Sunday. He's 71 and roughly a month removed from lung cancer surgery. He also got to stand at the Government Palace next to President Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, and keep a straight face about it.

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A PHYSICIST SCHEDULED THE END OF THE WORLD FOR TODAY

On November 4, 1960, the journal Science published a paper called "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026," by physicist Heinz von Foerster and colleagues Patricia Mora and Lawrence Amiot. They fit roughly 2,000 years of population estimates to a curve, the curve went vertical at 2026.87 give or take 5.5 years, and von Foerster went hunting in the middle of that window for a good date. He found a Friday the 13th. It was also his birthday, November 13, 1911, in Vienna. The man booked the apocalypse on his own party. Here's the annoying part: the formula worked for a while. It tracked real population until around 1993, then reality quietly walked off. Run it to the start of this year and you get about 200 billion people. The actual count is about 8.3 billion. Off by 192 billion, which in physics is called a rounding error and everywhere else is called being wrong. The paper wasn't even promising famine. It said the pessimists had it wrong, that our great-great-grandchildren would not starve to death, they would be squeezed to death. Historian Alan MacEachern told Newsweek he doesn't think the authors genuinely believed humanity would end today. Meanwhile the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna scheduled a two-day Doomsday Conference for the 12th and 13th on the sense and nonsense of end-of-the-world predictions, because scientists throw the worst parties.

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RUSSELL BRAND SENTENCED TO 10.5 YEARS IN JAIL

Russell Brand, 51, got 10 years and six months at Southwark Crown Court on Monday, convicted of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. Judge Joel Bennathan said Brand had "become a sexual predator" as he rose to fame two decades ago, described his "staggering arrogance," and pointed at the entourage that "indulged" his behavior. Press Association reported Brand showed no emotion as the sentence came down. He built an entire career on never shutting up, and on the one day it counted he had nothing. He was acquitted of two other rape charges and a count of attempted indecent assault, and he is expected to serve around seven years before release on licence. Most of the last few years he spent on Rumble as an anti-establishment streamer, warning his audience that the establishment was coming for him. The establishment turned out to be a jury in south London. The worse part is everything around him. Katherine Ryan called him a predator to his face while filming Comedy Central's Roast Battle in 2018, and the remarks were edited out of the episode. This week she said she feels "grief and relief." Brand's own barrister, Ian Winter KC, told Sunday Times journalist Rosamund Urwin "I hope you are pleased with yourself" after the verdict, which is a bold line to take on the day your client becomes a convicted rapist. Police say they are now assessing fresh reports.

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Games

Rewards

SS UNITED STATES BECOMES WORLDS LARGEST ARTIFICIAL REEF

MMA BRAWL IN ABU DHABI HOTEL LOBBY ENDS WITH MULTIPLE ARRESTS

Riddle Me This

POPE LEO VISITS PERU, HIS "SECOND HOMELAND"

A PHYSICIST SCHEDULED THE END OF THE WORLD FOR TODAY

RUSSELL BRAND SENTENCED TO 10.5 YEARS IN JAIL