Good News on X: Game 5 Is On, a Tiny Blue Octopus Went Viral and Bishop Point Got Its Reef Balls

Somebody at the Rays stayed up past midnight typing exclamation points, Manatee County put a row of concrete balls in the bay on purpose, and the whole internet fell for an octopus the size of a golf ball. It's Wednesday. It's also National Chocolate Day, so pace yourself.

Here's what people on X were smiling about since yesterday afternoon.

Game 5 is a go

You already know how last night ended if you read this morning's roundup: 12 innings, a walk-off, and a World Series that refused to end at Tropicana Field. At 12:28 a.m. the Rays' account posted, in full, "GAME 5 IS A GO!!!!!!!" Seven exclamation points. After a game that long, that's restraint.

By 8 a.m. they'd moved on to breakfast:

GOOOOOOD morning! #ForTampaBay | #WorldSeries

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

Milwaukee still leads the series 3-1. Game 5 is tonight at 8 p.m. ET on Fox at the Trop, per ESPN, which lists Jacob Misiorowski as the Brewers' starter; the Rays hadn't named theirs when I checked. Also, last night the team brought out former Ray Brett Phillips as "the ultimate hype man," and I would like to formally request he stay in the building until November.

The line, per DraftKings via ESPN (pulled about 9:25 a.m. ET Wednesday): Milwaukee is the road favorite, MIL -157 / TB +130 (it opened MIL -140). Run line MIL -1.5 (+119), TB +1.5 (-144). O/U 6.5.

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

Bishop Point Park got its reef balls

Over in Bradenton, the county is swapping an old seawall at Bishop Point Park for a living shoreline, and last night it posted that the reef balls are in:

The living shoreline is taking shape at Bishop Point Park! 🌱 Construction is underway, and the reef balls are now in place.

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

If you've never seen one, a reef ball is a concrete dome full of holes that looks like a giant wiffle ball someone left in the water. Fish move in, oysters settle on it, and it takes the punch out of the waves before they reach the bank. The county's solicitation for the job called for about 69 of them, replacing roughly 426 feet of aging seawall, and the county's post says native plants come next to hold the soil. More living shoreline projects are on the way, per the county, which has a whole explainer page if you want the details. The people fishing off Bishop Point are about to get a lot more neighbors.

Sarasota introduced one of its utility mechanics

The City of Sarasota has a series called Meet the Makers, and episode 11 went up yesterday: Andy Ramirez, Utility Mechanic III, three years with the city. Nobody thanks the utility mechanic when everything works, because when everything works, nobody notices. That's the job. So here's a thank-you anyway, Andy.

A golf-ball-size blue octopus took over X

Last night a photo of a tiny, glowing-blue octopus went around X to the tune of more than 400,000 views, and honestly, good. Its name is Microeledone galapagensis. Per the Field Museum, it was spotted 5,800 feet down near Darwin Island in the Galápagos during a 2015 expedition aboard the E/V Nautilus, with the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Galápagos National Park Directorate. It's about the size of a golf ball, and it was formally named this year in the journal Zootaxa.

My favorite detail is the scientists' first reaction on the robot camera audio: "He's tiny!" "It's blue!" That's peer review. They only had the one specimen, so instead of cutting it open, the Field Museum team studied it with CT scans. The lead author, curator emerita Janet Voight, has studied octopuses for four decades, and this is the first new species she's led a team in describing. Took a while. Worth it.

A 15,000-page math proof just got checked, every step

I can't finish the terms of service on a parking app. On Tuesday a company called Axiom said it had finished a full formal version of the Classification of Finite Simple Groups, the "periodic table of symmetry," in a proof-checking language called Lean:

The largest math proof in human history is now computer-verified. About 15,000 pages, built by over 100 mathematicians across generations.

— Axiom (@axiommathai) Watch on X

Per the project site, that's 43.1 million lines of Lean drawn from 715 papers and books, with every logical step checked. They also turned up a problem in one published argument along the way and worked out another route around it. The team's own math on reading the original by hand: if a postdoc needs 100 to 1,000 times the pages to really follow it, at a page a day, that's "27-270 centuries." So yes, I'll take their word for it.

A rocket took the scenic route

Rocket Lab shipped the second stage and Thrust Module of its new Neutron rocket out of its Neutron Factory and onto a barge, headed across Chesapeake Bay to Launch Complex 3 on Wallops Island, Virginia. Tuesday evening it posted the trip:

Enjoy the sights and sounds of shipping Neutron's Stage 2 and Thrust Module to Launch Complex 3.

— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) Watch on X

Per Rocket Lab, the Thrust Module goes straight onto the launch mount for testing. There's no strongback tower on that pad by design, so the Thrust Module is the rocket's only physical connection to the ground. Anyway, a rocket riding a barge across a bay is the most Florida thing Virginia has done all year.

It's National Chocolate Day

October 28 is National Chocolate Day, a holiday that traces back to the National Confectioners Association, per National Day Calendar, which is the most believable origin story a holiday has ever had. Three days before Halloween is aggressive scheduling, but nobody asked me. If you'd rather get yours from somebody local, our Sweet Treats map has you covered.

That's Wednesday. A rocket on a boat, a blue octopus, a wall of reef balls and one more night of baseball at the Trop. Go Rays.