Good News on X: Rays Get Another Swing, the Internet Learned to Smell and Van Gogh Painted a Real Sky

It's Saturday, the wind is up, and the Rays get another crack at Milwaukee tonight. Somewhere in Bradenton a guy is already wearing his lucky cap and refusing to wash it until November. I respect him.

Here's what people on X were smiling about since last night.

Rays-Brewers Game 2: Rasmussen gets the ball

Friday's opener went to Milwaukee by one run (the overnight roundup has the details), so tonight is the classic "even it up and fly home happy" game. Drew Rasmussen starts for Tampa Bay against Logan Henderson, 8 p.m. ET on Fox, per ESPN's scoreboard. ESPN lists Rasmussen at 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA.

The line, per DraftKings via ESPN (pulled about 9:20 a.m. ET Saturday): Milwaukee is a slight favorite, MIL -120 / TB +100. Run line TB -1.5 (+179), MIL +1.5 (-220). O/U 6.5. It opened basically a coin flip, which is about how Game 1 felt too.

And because a World Series needs fashion coverage, the Rays shared Yandy Díaz's custom spikes from Friday night:

Yandy's Meat Cleats™️

— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) See it on X

I'm not going to explain them. Click it. You'll understand Yandy a little better as a person.

Bolts in Utah tonight, Bucs in Charlotte tomorrow

The Lightning close out a back-to-back tonight at the Utah Mammoth, 9 p.m. ET on ESPN+. Last night in Denver didn't go their way, but Jake Guentzel scored twice, and the Bolts' post of his second one is worth a replay with your coffee.

The line, per DraftKings via ESPN (pulled about 9:20 a.m. ET): Utah is the favorite, UTAH -142 / TB +120. Puck line UTAH -1.5 (+160), TB +1.5 (-192). O/U 6.5.

The Buccaneers play at Carolina on Sunday at 1 p.m. on Fox.

The line, per DraftKings via ESPN (pulled about 9:20 a.m. ET): Carolina is the favorite by 3, CAR -3 (-105) / TB +3 (-115). Moneyline CAR -155 / TB +130. O/U 44.5.

Odds are information, not advice. 21+ only. If gambling stops being fun, call 1-800-GAMBLER.

The internet can smell now (five things, anyway)

This one made me laugh out loud and then immediately worry about my brother-in-law. A team at Ohio State built a system called Scentronic: an electronic "nose" recognizes a smell, sends that information over the internet, and a wristband, necklace or handheld gadget on the other end puffs out the matching scent from little stored liquids. The smell itself doesn't travel, just the data, per the study in Science Advances and Reuters' write-up.

Right now it knows five smells: beer, cake, coffee, oranges and red wine. In a test with 14 volunteers, people named the transmitted smell correctly 73% of the time, per New Scientist. Lead author Chunyu Yang, an Ohio State doctoral student, says the goal is to make remote conversations more engaging.

Scientists create technology that can send smells over the internet

— Complex (@Complex) See it on X

Honestly, coffee, cake, beer, oranges and red wine is the most Florida starter pack science has ever produced. Add sunscreen and low tide and they've got the whole Gulf Coast.

Van Gogh's Starry Night was a real morning sky

A South Korean research team led by astronomer Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim says The Starry Night shows the actual pre-dawn sky over Saint-Rémy-de-Provence around July 22, 1889, not the June date art historians have long used. They matched the waning crescent moon, Venus and the Hyades star cluster to that morning, checked old weather records and Van Gogh's letters, and published it in Scientific Reports.

The best detail, per Science News: Kim traveled to France in 2019, found the view from Van Gogh's window, laid the artist's sketch over it and it fit. "I was standing where Vincent had stood 130 years earlier," he said.

The actual sky of Van Gogh's Starry Night - a multidisciplinary reconstruction

— Daniel Fischer (@cosmos4u) See it on X

So the next time somebody says you're staring at the sky instead of doing chores, tell them you're working on a masterpiece. It's science now.

NASA laid out the next Moon steps

NASA shared fresh detail on Artemis III, which launches in 2027 and sends four astronauts to low Earth orbit to practice rendezvous and docking with two commercial lunar landers, SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon. That sets up Artemis IV and a crewed landing near the Moon's south pole in 2028.

Artemis III will be one of the most complex test missions in NASA history.

— NASA Artemis (@NASAArtemis) See it on X

Meanwhile, SpaceX sent 27 more Starlink satellites up from California Friday afternoon. We get our launches from the Cape side, but it's nice to see the West Coast keeping busy too.

Manatee County kids planted 5,000 wiregrass plugs

Local good news, and my favorite of the morning. Students from The Classical Academy spent part of their week at Duette Preserve helping Manatee County's Natural Resources team plant 5,000 wiregrass plugs to restore native habitat, per the county's post. Afterward they rotated through learning stations on why native plants matter for wildlife, and finished with a skull-guessing game featuring animals that live right here in the county.

5,000 wiregrass plugs and a whole lot of learning!

— Manatee County Government (@ManateeGov) See it on X

Five thousand plugs is a lot of kneeling. Those kids earned a nap and a juice box, in that order.

Two easy ways to get outside in Manatee this fall

The county also has a couple of things for the calendar. The Run Manatee 5K Series heads to Rye Preserve for Race #3 on Nov. 21, and this time it's teaming up with Healthy Kids Running Series, so little ones can do anything from a 50-yard dash to a mile. There's a pre-race warm-up, post-race yoga and a DJ, per the county's announcement. Sign up at RunSignup.

If running isn't your thing, Friday Night Kickball is back for the winter season. Games start Nov. 6, it's $400 per team, and registration runs through Nov. 23 online or at G.T. Bray Recreation Center. Kickball is the only sport where "I haven't played since fourth grade" counts as experience.

Planning the rest of the weekend? Coming This Week has the list, and Brooke's Out There has the windy-weekend version.

That's Saturday. A second shot at Milwaukee, a smell you can text, a painting that turned out to be a weather report and 5,000 tiny plants in the ground. Go Rays.