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More than a few of us have been wishing for a reunion of our favorite Stargate: SG-1 characters. It looks like it’s finally happening, but not the way we thought. Someone fed thousands of hours of Stargate SG-1 episodes into a Google AI bot, and then let it write the script. On November 6, 2021, some of our favorite Stargate stars will do a table reading of that script. Could be good, could be bad, but it’s bound to be fun.

The whole script — every single line, every stage direction — was, according to the teaser, produced by an AI from Google. Some of it is in clear homage to classic Stargate’s sense of humor. But there’s also some of the gravitas that Thor and the Asgard brought to their interactions with SG-C and allies. If what we know about Markov chains is any indication about what is to come, this reading may include word salad, but it’ll be light, and pretty meme-ready. It isn’t the reunion we deserve… it’s the reunion we need right now.

Going into space is no trivial feat. It’s actually so dangerous that 1.4 percent of Russian, Soviet, and American crewed spaceflight missions have resulted in fatalities. Still, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins wants to turn it commercial, and so does Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Richard Branson’s July 2021 maiden voyage out of the atmosphere veered off course early on. Critics say the pilots should have aborted the mission. They didn’t, and Branson still made it safely into orbit and then back home. Nicholas Smidle might be the most knowledgeable journalist on Branson’s Virgin Galactic efforts. The writer shared his knowledge of and insight on the incident. Even though the crew made it home safe and sound, I’m still worried about the safety of space tourism. At least for now.

The craft was about twenty miles in the air above the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, and climbing, travelling more than twice the speed of sound. But it was veering off course, and the light was a warning to the pilots that their flight path was too shallow and the nose of the ship was insufficiently vertical. If they didn’t fix it, they risked a perilous emergency landing in the desert on their descent.

A homegrown app brings around 20 young Afghan tech workers together to track the advance of the Taliban in Kabul. They broadcast real-time reports of gunfire, explosions, and traffic jams across the city to help other Kabul residents stay safe. Ehtesab is the app helping Kabul residents steer clear of dangerous situations. This is definitely great use of crowdsourced information in a dangerous environment.

“We just want to alleviate some of the anxieties that Afghans have in these uncertain and volatile times,” app founder Sara Wahedi said. “We will find different ways of garnering data about the city and security… That’s the beauty of tech, it knows no borders,” she said.