Weekly News Recap: October 17, 2025

Weekly News Recap: October 17, 2025

Richard Sibbald

I’ve gotta go now, I’m due back on the planet Earth -- Geddy Lee

SOME GOOD NEWS

  • The cooler, elder sibling of the selfie turns 100: Celebrating the centenary of the photobooth (It's Nice That) Been there. Done that. Got the pictures. #Nostalgia "If you’ve ever chanced your photographic fate with an analogue photobooth, you’ll know the excitement of putting your coins in the slot, drawing the curtain and bracing for the first – always slightly unexpected – flash photograph, followed by the arrival of three more. Then there’s the eager four minute wait for the development of your photo strip: an unchangeable series of moments frozen in time."

  • University of B.C. launches mushroom-powered toilet, turning waste into fertilizer (CBC) BRITISH COLUMBIA STORY Love this. No, I really do. "A 'beautiful experience' isn't a term often used for a trip to an outhouse, but researchers at the University of British Columbia say the description fits for their mushroom-powered waterless toilet. The toilet turns human waste into compost using mycelia, the root network of mushrooms."

  • Rush Sets Reunion Tour for 2026; Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Discuss the ‘Difficult Decision’ of Finding a New Drummer After Neil Peart’s Death (Variety) CANADIAN STORY #Boom Welcome back! "Back in March, Rush released 'Rush 50,' a career-spanning greatest hits collection that ended with the final songs the band played at their final concert in 2015. Given the January 2020 death of drummer/lyricist Neil Peart from glioblastoma, it’s been assumed that a Rush live reunion wasn’t in the cards. But like Geddy Lee’s beloved Toronto Blue Jays, the Canadian band knows how to throw a good curveball: Lee and Alex Lifeson are returning to the stage as Rush for a summer 2026 headline tour."

  • Monarch butterfly gets a life-saving wing transplant on Long Island: "It was so intricate." (CBS) #Lovely "A broken wing almost ended a monarch butterfly's journey on Long Island, but a caring hand and a clever idea gave it a second chance to fly again. At the Sweetbriar Nature Center in Smithtown, experts know what it takes to keep even the smallest lives in flight, especially those with the toughest odds [She] had a bold idea to transplant a wing from a dead butterfly inside her vivarium to the injured one. 'I scoured the floor for a dead butterfly and I found a monarch. The wing was in perfect shape,' [she] said."

  • Nike and LEGO Team Up For Awesome Playground in Shanghai (Moss & Fog) How fun! "Built on the geometry of a classic 2×3 LEGO brick, the colorful, interlocking structure turns a primary school courtyard into a living, breathing landscape of play."

  • VIDEO: The world’s driest desert blooms into a rare, fleeting flower show (AP News) "A rare bloom in Chile’s Atacama Desert has briefly transformed one of the world’s driest places into a dazzling carpet of fuchsia-colored wildflowers. The arid region — considered the driest nonpolar desert on Earth, averaging around 2 millimeters (0.08 inches) of rainfall a year — was a riot of color this week after unusual downpours throughout the Southern Hemisphere’s winter months soaked the desert foothills and highlands. Experts describe 2025 as among the Atacama’s wettest in recent years, with some high-elevation borderlands receiving up to 60 millimeters of rain (2.3 inches) in July and August."

TOP TEN STORIES OF THE WEEK

  1. Tree donation will make Jasper’s barren temporary housing more ‘homey’ (CBC) JASPER STORY "Interim housing sites in Jasper, Alta., are getting some much-needed landscaping in the form of 100 new trees that will make the temporary situation feel more like home for residents. The four main housing sites are close to the highway and the railroad tracks, so the trees are intended to act both as a visual barrier and noise buffer."

  2. AFP CEO, Art Taylor, Wins Sector-Wide Recognition at Independent Sector’s National Summit (AFP Global) Congratulations Art. "The Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) is proud to announce that its president and CEO, H. Art Taylor, has been named the recipient of the 2025 John W. Gardner Leadership Award by Independent Sector (IS). The award will be presented at Independent Sector’s National Summit on October 29, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia. The John W. Gardner Leadership Award honors visionary and transformative nonprofit leaders who exemplify the ideals of American statesman and Independent Sector co-founder John W. Gardner."

  3. Ronaldo is Bloomberg's first billionaire footballer (BBC) "The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks the world's richest people based on their net worth, has measured the 40-year-old Portugal and Al-Nassr striker's wealth for the first time. The valuation takes into account career earnings, investments and endorsements and says Ronaldo's net worth is $1.4bn (£1.04bn)."

  4. The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books heist (The Guardian) What a loss. "On 16 October 2023, a young man and woman sat down in the back row of the second-floor reading room of the university library of Warsaw, Poland. Their reading cards carried the names Sylvena Hildegard and Marko Oravec. On the desk in front of them were eight books with yellowing pages that they had ordered up from the library’s closed-storage 19th-century collection: rare editions of classic works of poetry, drama and fiction by two greats of the Russian canon, Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. They studied the books closely, taking photographs on their phones and measurements with rulers. When the duo did not return from a cigarette break and the invigilators checked their desk, they found that five of the eight books had gone. One of the missing Pushkin works was a narrative poem about the adventures of two outlaws, The Robber Brothers. It was as if the thieves had wanted to send a message. In the days that followed, a more thorough investigation of the library’s stocks revealed that a further 74 books of Russian literature had been stolen in the weeks, or even months, leading up to the final swoop."

  5. Canada’s Best Medical Doctoral Universities for 2026 (Macleans) CANADIAN STORY "Congrats to all, but especially to the University of Calgary (5th spot), and also to my alma mater, the University of Alberta."

  6. VIDEO: ‘A great Edmontonian’: Businessman, Philanthropist Bruce Saville passes away (City News) EDMONTON STORY I knew Bruce. RIP. We will not see his like again. "A lifelong Edmontonian has passed away. Bruce Saville was a businessman who created Saville Systems — a software company in the 1980s — employing over a thousand people. It was later sold, and Saville became a philanthropist, sitting on numerous non-profit boards and spending his time largely in the local sports community."

  7. Thinkers, dreamers, doers: Here's who made the 2025 MacArthur Fellow list (NPR) Wow, now that is a big award. "A cartographer, a composer, an archaeologist, a neurobiologist and an astrophysicist are among this year's MacArthur Fellows, one of the most prestigious cash awards given to 'extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential,' according to the MacArthur Foundation. Each Fellow will receive a no-strings attached award of $800,000."

  8. VIDEO: Dogs really can be addicted to their toys (Popular Science) Our dog has her favourites to be sure. "If it seems like your dog is as attached to its favorite toy as your kids are to their blankie or stuffed animal, it might not be all in your head. It could even be something akin to addiction. Some dogs show behaviors towards their toys that actually resemble behavioral addictions in humans, including gambling, video games, and our beloved smartphones."

  9. The Power of Human Connection in a Distracted World (Centre for Early Childhood) "After following thousands of people from their teens through their eighties and nineties, examining data from their twenties, thirties, and forties to predict who would stay healthy and live longest, the researchers discovered something remarkable. The best predictor of who would live a happy, healthy life wasn’t blood pressure. It wasn’t cholesterol levels. It was the quality of their connections with other people. The people who were more connected to others stayed healthier and were happier throughout their lives. And it wasn’t simply about seeing more people each week. It was about having warmer, more meaningful connections. Quality trumped quantity in every measure that mattered."

  10. Passed peak social media, maybe (Flowing Data) An early positive sign? "As we descend towards slop-based social media, where the videos are fake and the people are bots, we might be rounding up our time with algorithmically generated feeds. For Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch shows time spent on social media over the past decade. The key signal seems to be in young people’s usage. It looks like usage plateaued for 16- to 24-year-olds and has been inching its way down. Although usage over two and a half hours per day is still a lot. Also when broken out by continent, North American usage still looks like it’s going up."

SEVEN LIFE AND CAREER HACKS

  1. See Which Halloween Costumes Are Trending for 2025 (Mental Floss) It's that time. If you are struggling for ideas, this might help.

  2. Harvard linguistics expert explains perfectly logical reason we say 'Yeah, no' and 'No, yeah' (Upworthy) Language is so interesting.

  3. VIDEO: 13 Levels of Pumpkin Carving: Easy to Complex | WIRED (YouTube) You're welcome.

  4. The Japanese City Known for Making Knives That Are a Cut Above (Smithsonian) We have two of these knives in our kitchen (they are amazing).

  5. 8 Most Breathtaking Towns In The Canadian Prairies (World Atlas) CANADIAN STORY Some of my favourite towns. I have been to 6 of these. Do you have a favourite?

  6. Gossiping Is Smarter Than You Think (Time) We 'weigh social risk' like a chess master' -- gossip is a powerful cognitive exercise.

  7. Our Brains Evolved to Socialize—but Max Out at About 150 Friends (Wall Street Journal) Interesting...not sure if I could list 150 friends without a list to prompt me.

TOP THREE GIFTS OF THE WEEK

  1. PCL Marks World Mental Health Day with $1.5 Million Donation to CAMH (PCL) Edmonton, Alberta (October 10, 2025) TORONTO STORY "To mark World Mental Health Day, Canada’s leading general contractor PCL Construction is pledging a visionary $1.5 million donation to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, advancing a cause that deeply affects millions of Canadians, including those working in the construction industry."

  2. Generous donation made to Sask. Polytechnic's Time to Rise Campaign (SaskAgToday) SASKATCHEWAN STORY "Forty veterinary technology students at Saskatchewan Polytechnic gathered Friday morning to celebrate the latest contribution to the institution’s Time to Rise Campaign. The one-million-dollar gift comes from Heather Ryan and David Dube, a Saskatoon couple with a soft spot for animals and enhancing the care they receive."

  3. U of L, Co-op reach 25-year naming agreement for Sport & Wellness centre (Lethbridge Herald) LETHBRIDGE STORY "A major building on the University of Lethbridge campus will have a new name. The University’s Centre for Sports & Wellness will now be known as the Co-op Centre for Sport & Wellness thanks to a new 25-year, $4.25 million partnership between the University, South Country and Federated Co-op."

LAST WEEK'S MOST POPULAR STORIES

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