🐤 Moving the goalposts

🪐 Interstellar Pollution: The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a variety of interesting sights throughout the universe since it began sending back images earlier this year. One of the most intriguing pieces of recent evidence, according to experts, involves a planet in orbit around a star roughly 700 light years away appearing to be emitting carbon dioxide. It turns out that greenhouse gases aren’t just a terrestrial problem.

📂 FBI Files: Last month’s FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s residence in Florida has sparked widespread speculation regarding what type of documents were removed from the location. The latest update in the developing story came this week when a court filing was released that indicated four dozen folders designated to contain classified information were found to be empty. Now there’s renewed speculation that Trump still has some top-secret info stashed away somewhere.

👑 Royal Casting: Season six of “The Crown” will be premiering soon on Netflix, and showrunners have announced a major casting decision. Prince William will be portrayed by two different actors — Rufus Kampa and Ed McVey — who will be depicting him at different ages. Princess Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, will be portrayed by Meg Bellamy.

💧 Water Worries: While cities around the country are preparing for water shortages amid climate change and increased demand, residents and business owners in Jackson, Mississippi, are already dealing with a full-fledged crisis. There is no running water in much of the city and locals are being ordered to boil the water they do have before consuming it. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba blamed climate trends and insufficient funding, explaining: “We’ve had hotter summers, colder winters, and more precipitation each year and it’s taking a toll on our infrastructure.”

Fans of college football will soon have more to enjoy during the postseason. According to recent reports, the College Football Playoff board of managers agreed to expand the field to include 12 teams before the 2026 season.

What It All Means

The vote to approve this measure was reportedly unanimous and managers are anxious to expand the field as soon as possible.

Earlier this year, a majority of the board voted to implement such a change for the 2024 season, but it didn’t meet the unanimous threshold needed to approve the measure.

A current TV deal between the CFP and ESPN remains in effect throughout the 2025 season, and insiders indicate that the playoffs will stick with just four teams until that contract has expired.

What People Are Saying

In July, Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff expressed support for an expansion after the conference had previously voted against it.

“I’m really confident that we’re going to expand the College Football Playoff,” he said at the time. “It actually wouldn’t surprise me once we agree on the format if it happens before the end of the current term. Once you agree to the format, why wouldn’t you?”

Board Chairman Mark Keenum acknowledged that there are “still quite a few issues that need to be resolved,” but expressed hope that commissioners will “move on this as quickly as it is possible to do so.”

Silicon Valley insiders are already familiar with the influence of Y Combinator. The startup accelerator firm is responsible for launching companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and Reddit into the corporate stratosphere.

Although plenty of other companies have tried to copy its success, Y Combinator remains at the top of the heap for a reason.

Here are some of the reasons that it maintains such a storied reputation:

• It has unrivaled networking capabilities
• It has a knack for finding diamonds in the rough
• Its standard investment is roughly twice that of its nearest rivals

Now, there’s something else that might be tempting to tech startups. Garry Tan is set to take over at the company’s helm. He has already made his way through the accelerator program, ultimately selling his blogging platform — Posterous — to Twitter.

During his time as a partner for Y Combinator, he provided advice to more than 1,000 different startup companies. Now, he’s ready for his latest, and most demanding role with the company.

Author Randall Stross, who documented the impact of Y Combinator in his book “The Launch Pad,” the company remains at its peak after many years in operation.

He concluded: “No other accelerator can match that investment package. And no one else can come close to matching its roster of successful alums.”

When the Taliban controlled Afghanistan more than two decades ago, its militant members made international headlines for smashing artifacts inside the National Museum that the group determined to be offensive to Islam.

Nowadays, the Taliban is in charge once again — but it’s taking a much different approach to the museum.

Visitors can expect to see armed Taliban guards stationed outside of the building. In order to gain entry, individuals must be searched and cleared of any threat to the statues and other items contained therein.

Much of the jewelry, pottery, and other artifacts on display are thousands of years old and demonstrate a rich and beautiful history of the Middle Eastern nation.

As State Department specialist Laura Tedesco explained: “The National Museum of Afghanistan was, once upon a time, the finest museum in Central Asia, and that is not an exaggeration.”

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, however, fighting among the region’s sects led to widespread damage. In the years since then, Tedesco noted, there has been a major effort to renovate the museum and repair its priceless contents.

“The diversity of culture evidenced in those artifacts is unique to Afghanistan because it was this cultural crossroads, and armies and thinkers and religious and influences crisscrossed [it].”