A Finals trip hangs in the balance. The Liberty Lately panel breaks down what it'll take for Stewart, Ionescu and Jones to get past Atlanta, and wants your series prediction in the comments.

— via NY Post, Tom Hogan

A dating app just built a setting that only lets men text first: and 72% of Gen Z singles say they actually want to get married. Match Group's relaunch of Upward adds that feature alongside a "Marriage Timeline" tool, betting old-school courtship beats app fatigue.

— via NY Post, Kyra Breslin

A student says a Zoom glimpse of his "Trump 2020" flag got him branded a "racist" in front of classmates, then frozen out of the course entirely. Now he's suing a New Jersey community college, claiming officials sided with the professor and offered him no way out but to drop the class.

— via NY Post, Sonya Gugliara

Chip City blamed "macro-economic headwinds" for shutting every store this week, but a lawsuit tells a different story: its ousted co-founder says the chain stiffed him on severance after grilling him over $900,000 in expenses.

— via Gothamist, Catalina Gonella

A Brooklyn artist swapped a broken subway tile for one sprouting live chia plants, and the stunt racked up a million views. Now she's built a site tracking 24 damaged tiles citywide and is in talks with the Mayor's office and MTA to turn it into an official program.

— via NY Post, Aurielle Weiss

A film shot at the author's own high school once felt like a relic of 1950s bigotry. Decades later, rewatching it with her daughter, the slurs and swastikas hit as current events, not history.

— via NY Post, Naomi Schaefer Riley

Godzilla finally cracked the New York Film Festival lineup after 70-plus years, premiering a direct sequel to 2023's acclaimed Godzilla Minus One. Early reactions put it alongside The Dark Knight and The Godfather Part II as a sequel that outdoes its predecessor.

— via NY Post, mliss1578

A legal opioid sold in vape shops and gas stations is landing Missouri teens in the ER, one EMS chief says, and Narcan use in his district is up 47% this year. The drug's biggest manufacturer insists it actually prevents overdoses; the CDC, FDA and DEA all disagree.

— via Hoodline, Liam Westbrook

Versailles has given over the Petit Trianon to a 20th-anniversary shrine for Sofia Coppola's once-booed Marie Antoinette, mixing the queen's real Sèvres china with the film's prop cakes and Dunst-alike mannequins. The movie flopped on its $40m budget in 2006; now it gets a 4K restoration and a documentary from Coppola's mother.

— via The Conversation — History, Fiona Handyside, Associate Professor of Film Studies, University of Exeter

Saturn hits its closest point to Earth on Oct. 4, bright enough to outshine city lights and a full moon. The month also brings two meteor showers, a blinking demon star and a free telescope festival in Inwood Hill Park with views of Saturn's rings.

— via Gothamist, Rosemary Misdary

Cyrille Aimée says touring has become untenable, and she isn't booking new dates. Four Bay Area shows this week could be her last here for a while, as she splits her time with an off-the-grid home she built in the Costa Rican rain forest.

— via Hoodline, Nina Singh-Hudson

In 1932, two physicists built a machine that packed 800,000 volts into a room-sized rig, equivalent to over 500,000 AA batteries, and used it to split lithium atoms. The stunt won a Nobel Prize and birthed the technology behind CERN's 17-mile collider.

— via The Conversation — History, Artemis Spyrou, Professor of Nuclear Physics, Michigan State University

Less than a month into the new contracts, the YMCA is already pulling out of two Upper West Side middle schools after failing to staff up, and their old provider is coming back to relaunch sports and arts programs on Oct. 19. Parents warned this would happen; the city re-bid after-school contracts for the first time in years anyway.

— via The City, Amy Zimmer, Chalkbeat

A San Francisco Assemblymember's own staffer spent weeks in immigration detention before a Las Vegas judge granted him bond Wednesday. His attorney says the government left out a key detail: a Biden-era directive likely shields him from deportation until 2027.

— via Mission Local, Mission Local Staff

Millions may have lived in the Amazon before European contact, upending the "untouched wilderness" myth. The scale of settlement suggests the rainforest itself was shaped by human hands.

— via HistoryExtra (BBC), Kavita Puri

One Washington Heights man quit his law school plans to fix tree beds and underpasses full time, and he figures the whole city will take three to five years. He's already pulled in 230,000 followers and $55,000 in donations, mostly spent on trash bags and power tools.

— via The City, Kaitlyn Schwanemann

A new blaze, the Lake Fire, broke out Friday on U.S. Forest Service land in Tuolumne County, with no containment or cause yet released. It's the county's second fire this year, following July's 223-acre Dove Fire, as dry fuels and fading coastal marine layers raise risk statewide.

— via Hoodline, Amy Boateng

Cardinal Robert Prevost entered the 2025 conclave as a long shot for a job no American was supposed to get. He left it as Pope Leo. Here's what happened behind closed doors.

— via NPR Arts & Life, Scott Detrow

A new bill would let Americans sue the federal government over license plate cameras and cut funding to local police who use them. The target: a camera network tied to more than 50 canceled contracts, wrongful arrests and officers charged with stalking exes using the tech.

— via Hoodline, Priya Choudhury

Foster youth with disabilities describe aging out of a system that too often left them without support, housing or a plan. Their own accounts of what helped them survive it, and what nearly broke them.

— via NPR, Joseph Shapiro

A 65-year lease on 100 acres of fenced-off East Oakland shoreline is about to become a nonprofit hub, tidal wetland and water utility site all at once. EBMUD keeps a weld shop and pipe rack on-site while SupplyBank.org and future tenants get below-market space across the freeway from the Coliseum.

— via Hoodline, Eric Tanaka

No one at the start of the 2025 conclave saw an American pope coming. By the final vote, Cardinal Robert Prevost had become Pope Leo, and this account reconstructs how the room got there.

— via NPR, Scott Detrow

A divorce lawyer's worst case: Dominic West and Sienna Miller play a power couple shredding each other through two rival London firms in HBO's new anthology drama. Season one is just the opening skirmish.

— via NPR Arts & Life, Linda Holmes

A federal judge trimmed Joby's trade-secret suit against Archer Aviation but let the core claim survive: that Archer and a former Joby executive misused proprietary info about an LA airport lease. The court also found a plausible threat of further misappropriation, keeping the case alive while tossing Archer's counterclaims over China ties and contract-chasing.

— via Hoodline, Eileen Vargas

Jitters before a race or job interview don't have to win. A psychologist's strategies aim to flip pre-event anxiety into confidence right when it counts.

— via NPR, Lennon Sherburne