Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - September 22, 2026

Howdy Hordelings! The Tuesday ONT has arrived. On time, as always. Open thread, as always. Ready to be whelmed?

Big Penguin was hiding something

Scientists discover first new penguin species in more than 100 years

Antarctica's four-foot-tall Emperor penguin may be the best-known member of the penguin family, but it is far from alone. Seventeen other penguin species live across the Southern Hemisphere, and many inhabit isolated islands that are difficult for scientists to reach and study.

That remoteness may help explain how an entire species of gentoo penguin escaped recognition for so long. The birds live on the Kerguelen Islands, known in French as the Desolation Islands, nearly 2,000 miles from any permanently inhabited landmass. An international team led by researchers in Chile and at the University of California, Berkeley has now identified the population as a distinct species, making it the first new penguin species named in more than 100 years. The findings were published in Communications Biology.

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The newly recognized southeastern gentoo penguin, Pygoscelis kerguelensis, may face an uncertain future. Two of the other newly defined species could also be vulnerable as global warming reshapes the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions where they live. The southern gentoo, now known as Pygoscelis ellsworthi, is the only one of the four that lives in Antarctica. Climate projections suggest it may be affected relatively little and could even expand its range.

"In Antarctica, of course, other species, not the gentoo, are threatened by climate change," said Juliana Vianna, one of the paper's senior authors and a professor of ecosystems and environment at Andrés Bello National University in Santiago, Chile.

Of course - climate doom and gloom threatens them.

But maybe there's a solution!

Record-breaking carbon capture plant to snatch 800K tons of CO2 a year

Norwegian chemical company Yara has inaugurated the largest industrial carbon capture facility in all of Europe this week. Set up at the company's ammonia and fertilizer plant in Sluiskil, the Netherlands, it can capture 800,000 tons of CO2 per year.

That carbon dioxide comes from its ammonia production process. Once it's captured, it's liquified, temporarily stored in those large white tanks you see in the photos, and subsequently transported by ship to Norway. This last bit is handled by Norwegian CO2 transport firm Northern Lights, which stores its cargo in a reservoir 8,530 ft (2,600 m) beneath the seabed.

Burying tanks of CO2 like it's toxic waste. These people are lunatics!

Back to new species...

Meet the Adorable and Tiny Tilcayo, the First Brand-New Cat Species Identified in More Than a Century

For the first time in more than 100 years, scientists have identified a new species of wild cat.

The diminutive feline, dubbed the tilcayo, lives in the Bolivian Yungas, the cloud forest where the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon basin. It’s smaller than a house cat, weighing just three to four pounds, and has large, irregularly shaped rosettes dotting its light brown fur.

How long until these kitties are threatened by the climate boogeyman?

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AI is asshoe. Government is asshoe. Together? Yeah - ASSHOE!!!!!

Hundreds of Flights Grounded Across the Eastern Seaboard as Government Rolls Out AI Air Traffic Control System

Hundreds of flights across New Jersey, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston were delayed Monday afternoon after the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a massive ground stop impacting thousands of travelers — right as the government starts testing an AI air traffic control system, though there’s no current indication that the two incidents are connected.

According to early reporting by Reuters, over 600 flights were delayed across Newark and Philadelphia alone, in addition to hundreds more across four other east coast airports. Dozens of imminent takeoffs were likewise aborted across the busy flight corridor when the ground stops — which appeared to roll northward from Philadelphia — were issued.

Preliminary reports indicate some sort of air traffic control glitch at one of the major airports along the East Coast, with Bloomberg TV reporting a circuit malfunction at an air traffic control facility in Philadelphia, and Reuters noting that a fiber optics cable was accidentally clipped in New Jersey.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that Boston’s Logan International Airport is warning travelers to expect extensive delays due to broad “equipment issues across the north-east.” As one FAA spokesperson told CBS21, the ground stop is due to “issues with some frequencies at Philadelphia TRACON,” also known as Terminal Radar Approach Control, the radar system that guides planes in and out of airports.

At the time of writing, it isn’t exactly clear what’s behind the turmoil. What is clear is that the region’s air traffic control system is a tangled mess — and unfortunately, this could just be a sign of things to come.

Strikingly, the massive air traffic outage comes right as the Trump administration moves ahead with a controversial AI air traffic control system known as “Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories,” or SMART.

"SMART"??? Really???

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Maybe we're not alone

Radio signals detected from a planet beyond our Solar System

Researchers have captured direct radio wave emissions originating from a planet outside our Solar System.

Using South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope array, an international team of astronomers successfully detected variable radio bursts coming directly from Beta Pictoris b, a massive gas giant exoplanet located about 63 lightyears away.

But while many of us may hear of radio signals detected at a distant planet in our Galaxy and instinctively imagine a detection of alien life, in this case the discovery is not a sign that E.T. has been detected.

Or maybe we are!

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These people are exhausting.

>She/her is hired to cater a wedding.

>She/her shows up with a rainbow flag like it’s her own personal pride parade. The couple asks her to kindly put it away.

>She/her then tries to publicly shame them for “homophobia”.

Video at the link. Yeah - it's annoying.

DJ Doof - Tender Edition

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