#1The Monologue
Apple Pay finally launched in India this week, eleven years after launching everywhere else, and it works with exactly one bank's credit cards. Apple describes this as a rollout. Geologists describe it as a layer. Re: tech-ish
Moving on. The President has named Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as the nation's new AI czar, heading up a task force that will not be called artificial intelligence, because the President prefers the term "Super Intelligence." The group's official name is the Super Intelligence Force. They have a hundred and twenty days to produce a report, and apparently zero days to produce a name that doesn't sound like a Saturday morning cartoon. Re: NPR
In other news. Max Verstappen won the Bahrain Grand Prix today. The Bahrain Grand Prix was held in Malaysia. Which is roughly four thousand miles from Bahrain — so congratulations to Formula One for inventing the first sporting event that isn't where it says it is. Re: Formula1.com
A collector arrived late to a Michigan estate sale in July and bought a painting of nine seashells hanging in the hallway to the garage for thirty dollars. It turned out to be a long-lost Gertrude Abercrombie, and it sold at a Manhattan auction on October 1st for one point three five million.
Gergő Borbély of Debrecen, Hungary has been certified by Guinness World Records for the largest collection of energy drink cans — two thousand of them, from more than five hundred brands across forty countries. It started in 2008 when he stopped for a beverage.
A deer spent roughly three weeks wandering Midland Park, New Jersey with a large black pole and red netting tangled in its antlers while residents tracked its movements and called it in. Conservation officers tranquilized the animal on Tuesday and removed the hardware. Nobody knows where the pole came from.
#5Meanwhile, In Satire
'Apple Fires Engineer For Designing Phone Battery That Lasts Longer Than Two Hours' — The Babylon Bee, https://babylonbee.com/news/apple-fires-engineer-for-designing-phone-battery-that-lasts-longer-than-two-hours
'Airlines furious after government closes lucrative pay us or your toddler sits with a stranger business model' — NewsThump, https://newsthump.com/2026/10/02/airlines-furious-after-government-closes-lucrative-pay-us-or-your-toddler-sits-with-a-stranger-business-model/
'Flock CEO Insists Company's Data Only Shared With FBI, DHS, NSA, DOJ, CIA and REO Speedwagon' — The Hard Times, https://thehardtimes.net/culture/flock-ceo-insists-companys-data-only-shared-with-fbi-dhs-nsa-doj-cia-and-reo-speedwagon/
'Report: Other Tailgate Looks More Fun' — The Onion, https://theonion.com/report-other-tailgate-looks-more-fun/
A cow got loose from Cattlemen's Livestock Auction in Polk County, Florida and wound up standing in the westbound lanes of U.S. 92, where dashcam footage captured it making contact with a pickup truck. By the time deputies arrived the cow had been cleared from the road and returned to the auction unharmed.
#7The Groaner
I asked the librarian if the library had any books on paranoia. She whispered, "They're right behind you."
