First pope in history to vote in a U.S. election: Leo XIV just mailed his Illinois ballot from the Vatican. His record reads like a swing voter's: Democratic primaries in 2008 and 2010, Republican primaries in 2012, 2014 and 2016. Both parties will claim him by Tuesday.
Sources: Vatican statement via AP apnews.com/article/vatican-p… and Chicago Sun-Times chicago.suntimes.com/pope-le…
Photo: Edgar Beltrán / The Pillar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Intel's last historic crash was Aug 2, 2024: down 26%, its worst day in 50 years, after it suspended its dividend and announced ~15,000 job cuts. Two years later, one weak forecast is doing worse. Wall Street isn't grading Intel's quarters anymore. It's grading its future.
This is unusual.
$INTC is down 30%, wiping out roughly $137 billion in market value.
It's on pace for its worst day ever.
Q4 guide was a disaster: $15–16B vs $17B expected, EPS $0.25 vs $0.43.
Market Tide is bleeding red and is bearish: net calls -$246M, puts +$58M.
The Pentagon's latest UFO report: 319 new cases, 114 solved, and a new 3D tool pinned 238 reports on satellite flaring. Still unsolved: Navy units off Virginia reported about 100 airborne objects at once. AARO says it's actively investigating. (Illustration)
Source: DefenseScoop on AARO's FY2025 annual UAP report (released July 2026): defensescoop.com/2026/07/21/… The image is an AI illustration, not real footage.
Per the NYT, US spy agencies concluded a chip exec with a close relationship to Jensen Huang was a Chinese intelligence asset. Trump was briefed a year ago and chose not to act. Huang never got a warning. Nvidia says she was just a customer. Nobody thought to tell him?
Sources: The New York Times report, via Business Standard: business-standard.com/world-… and The Verge: theverge.com/tech/1022060/je…
Photo: Jensen Huang at Stanford, 2026. Anderseidesvik, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Archaeologists in Turkey found 131 clay tablets from about 1400 BC, written in Hittite and Hurrian. They cover priests, bureaucrats and a fever epidemic nobody knew about. The Hittites were mostly known through Egypt and the Bible. Now they're talking for themselves.
Source: National Geographic on the Kayalipinar (ancient Samuha) tablets: nationalgeographic.com/histo…
Photo: a Hittite tablet from a museum collection, not from the new cache. Mx. Granger, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Google's new AI just took #1 on the top AI leaderboards, and you can't use it.
Gemini 4 Carbon scored 88% on a test of finding real software vulnerabilities, so only vetted cyber defenders get it for now.
The best AI is now the one they won't sell you.
(Illustration)
🤖 Made with AI
Sources: Google's announcement blog.google/innovation-and-a… and Reuters money.usnews.com/investing/n… . Image is an AI-generated illustration.
Anthropic secretly set an AI agent to lean one way on four analysis decisions, then gave it to 50 expert analysts. They sided with the agent 86% of the time. 77% reused its arguments. 15% credited it. "Human in the loop" might just mean "human signs off." (Illustration)
Source: Anthropic's own study, using Claude Code. They boosted the agents' leans on purpose, so real-world deference may be smaller. Analysts using the agent also finished faster with fewer serious errors. anthropic.com/research/agent…
Researchers at Durupinar, the boat-shaped formation near Mount Ararat long claimed as Noah's Ark, found burnt wood and sent it for carbon dating. On Oct 15 they said a French lab's answer was ~15 days out.
Even the project lead says it may just be geology. 🚢
Source: faithworldbrief.com/stories/… | Photo: Wikkiwooki, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A Robinhood co-founder's startup just unveiled Big Iron: a 282-ft rocket whose upper stage never comes back. It stays in orbit as an AI data center. Its skin becomes the radiator, its propellant the coolant.
First flight: 2028. Yes, the team dresses the part. ðŸ¤
Source: payloadspace.com/cowboy-spac… | Image courtesy of Cowboy Space Corp.
The biggest proof in math history got checked by a machine.
Axiom says its AI agents formalized the Classification of Finite Simple Groups in Lean: ~15,000 pages, 100+ mathematicians, 43.1M lines of code, 24 days.
They found a hole in a published step. Peer review, you up?
Image: diagram of the 26 sporadic simple groups by Drschawrz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source: cfsg.axiommath.ai (Axiom is inviting group theorists to independently re-check it).
