Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras has received approval to begin exploratory drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River, raising environmental concerns as the country prepares to host the COP30 climate summit.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has faced criticism from conservationists, who say his oil expansion plans contradict his image as a global climate leader. The drilling, set to start immediately, will last five months and take place in a block off Amapá, around 500 km (311 miles) from the Amazon’s mouth on the Brazilian Equatorial Margin.

Petrobras said it complied with all environmental licensing requirements set by Ibama and aims to assess the potential for economically viable oil and gas in the area. “We hope to obtain excellent results from this research and prove the existence of oil in the Brazilian portion of this new global energy frontier,” said Petrobras president Magda Chambriard.

https://www.firstpost.com/world/brazil-okays-oil-drilling-near-mouth-of-amazon-weeks-before-it-hosts-cop30-summit-draws-flak-13943917.html

https://valor.globo.com/empresas/noticia/2025/10/20/petrobras-informa-ao-ibama-pagamento-via-pix-de-r-13-milhao-para-emissao-de-licenca-da-foz-do-amazonas.ghtml?giftId=357ca8781b8fa77

The "Hidden Is More Immense" investigative journalism program on the Qatari Al Jazeera network published a supposedly "leaked document" on Monday that includes a list of approximately 30 thousand Israeli Air Force pilots and service members who participated in the war in Gaza.

The list also includes photos and the service members' personal information. The episode, which discusses the legal persecution of IDF soldiers abroad by the Brazil-based Hind Rajib Foundation, shows pictures and information taken from social media about IDF soldiers during their time in Gaza.

List of 30 thousand Air Force service members leaked to Al Jazeera

An Al Jazeera news program published a 'leaked document' with the names, photos, and information of 30,000 IAF pilots and service members.

^{Israel National News}

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-025-02149-9.epdf?sharing_token=oR2zXFHvXlHo7nFS0hgf_9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MTW_pp0Lp0H8ZNxBBepnyu-CXihWBauT_rmcYzfoG9RseQV0MaOnnGgOYthD5jxXMb1yLp7BOnGhE-qgc6QmlyxbRPHaVWOfYIpd69_pWfsegrcjDAX36vYmxwkHKr8RE%3D

Greenhouse gas emissions vary so much because of location-specific factors that are not readily apparent to consumers at the grocery store, like regional differences in where animals come from, he says. In Midwestern cities like Chicago, beef is more likely to come from culled dairy cows, making it more environmentally friendly than in Texas cities like Houston and parts of California, which rely more on dedicated beef herds. Beef from dairy cows is assigned a lower carbon footprint because some of the emissions are attributed to the milk the animals spend most of their lives producing.

In other words, we still need to either radically change the gut bacteria in cows, or (with a bigger impact) get rid of most of the cows.

The paper is here

The carbon hoofprint of cities is shaped by geography and production in the livestock supply chain - Nature Climate Change

Meat products represent a large share of the carbon footprints of cities, which are dependent on the characteristics of supply regions.

^Nature

Sensitive content Clicca per aprire/chiudere

The famous Alcubierre warp drive, introduced in 1994, has long been considered unphysical because it requires enormous amounts of theoretical negative mass or energy density to function . The authors of this study, Bobrick and Martire, suggest that this negative energy problem may not be a fundamental rule for all warp drives, but rather a specific flaw in Alcubierre's original design.

The researchers identify key artificial constraints in the Alcubierre model that mathematically force the need for negative energy. The Alcubierre model assumes the warp bubble has no gravitational effect on the spacetime outside of it, effectively "truncating" the gravitational field. The authors show that this assumption is a likely reason it requires negative energy . Furthermore, Alcubierre designed his drive so a passenger's clock ticks at the same rate as a stationary observer far away . This means the passenger's time is actually accelerated compared to an observer moving alongside the drive, another feature that requires negative energy .

By removing these artificial constraints, the authors developed a new, general model for a warp drive that can be constructed using purely positive energy, or regular matter. This new, physical warp drive is, however, strictly subluminal, meaning it can only travel slower than the speed of light. It is essentially a massive, hollow, spherically symmetric shell of ordinary matter. Unlike the Alcubierre drive, it would have a normal gravitational field outside of it, just like a planet. A passenger inside this shell would be in "flat spacetime," experiencing no gravity due to the Shell Theorem, a principle where the gravitational pull from all parts of the shell perfectly cancels out in the interior. The "warp" effect comes from its enormous mass, which causes time to run slower for the passenger compared to an outside observer. The mass requirements are vast; the paper calculates that an Earth-mass shell compressed to a 10-meter radius would only slow time by a tiny 0.04%.

This paper also clarifies a major misconception about how warp drives work. The original Alcubierre paper suggested the drive's velocity could just be changed as a function of time, but the new study points out that this violates the conservation of energy . The authors stress that a warp drive is an object, specifically a "shell of regular or exotic material moving inertially". Because it is a massive object, it is not a propulsion system itself. It cannot magically accelerate. To move or change velocity, it would require an external form of propulsion, such as a "propellant exhaust system" (like rockets) attached to it.

While this new positive-energy solution is limited to subluminal speeds, the paper reinforces that faster-than-light travel still appears to require negative energy. The authors also note that even for the unphysical Alcubierre drive, the most energy-efficient shape would be a flattened disc, not a sphere. This research is significant because it moves the warp drive concept from a purely unphysical fantasy to an extremely difficult but not theoretically impossible engineering challenge, suggesting a path to construct such spacetimes based on the laws of physics as we know them.

Introducing Physical Warp Drives

The Alcubierre warp drive is an exotic solution in general relativity. It allows for superluminal travel at the cost of enormous amounts of matter with negative mass density.

^arXiv.org

The reason that the so-called booming economy feels like a complete lie to most people is because the economy is bifurcated. There’s the economy for the rich, which is absolutely soaring, and the economy for everyone else, which is basically in a recession. The scary part is that the entire illusion of national prosperity is being propped up by one of the biggest financial bubbles we have ever seen.

This all starts with a deep split. The spending of the wealthiest 10% of Americans now makes up one third of the entire country’s GDP. They are responsible for nearly half of all consumer spending. Meanwhile, for the vast majority, things feel stagnant because they are. The national GDP number is a mathematical trick, buoyed by a few powerhouse states, while regions representing nearly a third of the nation’s economic output, like the Rust Belt, are in or near a recession. The reason for this divide is simple. The stock market gains you hear about on the news only benefit a tiny slice of the population. The top one percent own half of all stocks. The top ten percent collectively own nearly ninety percent. The bottom half of the country owns just one percent. So when the market hits a new high, it is overwhelmingly just the rich getting richer.

Now, let’s talk about that bubble. By the classic Buffett Indicator, which compares the total stock market value to the size of the economy, the US is in unprecedented territory. This indicator is now over 219%. To put that in perspective, it was only 138% at the peak of the dotCom bubble and 105% before the 2008 crash. This is the largest stock market bubble in US history.

But the real insanity is what’s inside this bubble. The market is being carried by a handful of tech companies, often called the Ten Titans. These ten firms represent just a tiny fraction of all public companies, yet they make up over 30% of the entire US stock market’s value. In recent months, they alone were responsible for over half of all market growth. The entire system is dangerously concentrated in a few names. The fuel for this run up is the artificial intelligence boom. But now, even the leaders of the AI revolution admit it is a bubble. Furthermore, recent studies show that 95% of corporate AI projects are failing, and the rest are making very little money. It is pure speculation that's driving this frenzy.

The most critical part of this story is that this AI bubble is now masking a severe weakness in the real economy. The overall GDP growth number for 2025 looks okay, but a deeper look paints a different picture. One analysis found that investment in AI and information processing, a sector that is only 4% of the economy, accounted for a staggering 92% of all GDP growth in the first half of the year. Without the sugar rush of AI spending, the rest of the US economy grew at a near flat rate of just 0.1%. The real economy for most Americans is already on life support, and the AI bubble is the ventilator.

This sets up a perfect storm for stagflation, meaning a stagnant economy combined with persistent inflation. Prices remain high due to supply chain issues and trade policies, while the real economy struggles. To make matters worse, the AI boom is actively making inflation worse by consuming enormous amounts of electricity and driving up power costs for everyone. So we are left with a terrifying situation. A historic bubble concentrated in a few tech stocks is creating a mirage of prosperity, hiding a recession that most people are already living through. Everyone will suffer when this bubble inevitably pops.

A pardoned Capitol rioter was arrested last weekend for allegedly threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Court documents obtained by CBS News said Christopher Moynihan was arrested Sunday after saying in text messages that he planned to "eliminate" Jeffries when the top House Democrat spoke at an event in New York City on Monday.

According to a court filing by prosecutors in the New York state criminal case, Moynihan wrote, "Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live."

Pardoned Capitol rioter charged with threatening to kill Hakeem Jeffries at NYC event this week

A pardoned Capitol rioter was arrested last weekend for allegedly threatening to kill the top House Democrat.

^{Scott MacFarlane (CBS News)}

Images of the demolition of parts of the East Wing went viral on Monday, and Treasury’s headquarters next door to the White House has a front-row seat

The Treasury Department instructed employees not to share photos of the demolition of parts of the White House’s East Wing after images of construction equipment dismantling the facade of the building went viral online.

Treasury’s headquarters is located next door to the East Wing, giving employees there a front-row seat to the construction of Trump’s $250 million ballroom. The new project is set to replace parts of the East Wing.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/treasury-tells-employees-not-to-share-photos-of-white-house-ballroom-construction-1d4f2c49

Hi everyone, I am planning to install linux on my friends laptop and I am not sure which distro to install for them.

The options I am considering:

• Fedora: I have it on my PC and since I will be the first person to be asked, I thought it would be best if I know the distro well
• Mint: is a default suggestion, but I am not sure if it is different enough from the Windows look that one does not expect it to behave the same as Windows
• Ubuntu: most widely available in forums, etc. And a good starting point in my opinion
  What do you guys think?

EDIT: Thanks for all the suggestions, I think I'll stick with Fedora and let them try Gnome, KDE and Cinnamon 😀

Fact Briefs Summary Page

In April 2024 we announced the (renewed) collaboration between Gigafact and Skeptical Science to create fact briefs, short but credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. Initially, we published new fact briefs on Saturdays, but switched to Tuesdays earlier this year and while we try to have a new fact brief out each week, we sometimes miss a week due to time constraints and vacations.

50 fact briefs published in collaboration with Gigafact!

^{Skeptical Science}

Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world

Meet the 8 men who are wealthier than half the globe

bloomberg.com/billionaires/

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/spains-power-plants-are-burning-more-gas-since-blackout-sending-gas-demand-up-2025-10-21/

The current US administration wants to protect fossil fuel profits, slow the clean energy transition and curb China’s influence — whatever the cost to allies or the climate.

Trump is pushing allies to buy US gas. It’s bad economics – and a catastrophe for the climate

As China secures its role in clean tech exports, the US is doubling down on fossil fuels – and pushing allies to buy US gas.

^{The Conversation}

https://www.forbes.com/sites/we-dont-have-time/2025/10/19/russias-coal-collapse-marks-the-end-of-fossil-fuels-post-war-illusion/