It’s October, ladies and gentlemen. Anyone out there care to explain to us where the year went? The one silver lining: It’s now just 26 days (plus or minus, depending on the vagaries of time zones) before the second season of Stranger Things drops on 27 October. Netflix’s MENA Instagram account confirmed this weekend we’ll be getting season two at the same time as the rest of the world. Better still, creators the Duffer Brothers now say they’re likely to do a fifth season. For those of you with access (or a Texture account), Entertainment Weekly’s latest print edition has a long feature on the new season in this week’s edition. You can also hit up the magazine’s website here for more.

Congratulations, Misr. We now have 4G. The nation’s incumbent mobile network operators officially launched commercial 4G services on Thursday, after a long, long wait. Honestly, though, we’re not really feeling the difference. If anything, mobile internet was a little slow over the weekend.

Trump to decide on next Fed chairman in two or three weeks: US President Donald Trump has redoubled efforts to find a new chairman for the Federal Reserve Board over the weekend, interviewing former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Fed board governor Jerome Powell, and incumbent chair Janet Yellen, Bloomberg reports. The appointments come as the Fed looks to ease financial crisis-era regulations and shrink its USD 4.5 tn balance sheet. Trump said he will make his decision in the coming two to three weeks.

And you thought our electoral politics in 2011-15 were Byzantine? Look north to Spain, where Barcelona — seemingly every Cairene’s favourite European getaway — is about to be home to a vote on independence from Spain. Separatists (thought to make up about half of the population in the wealthy Catalonia region) are pushing ahead with a vote today despite Madrid sending in security forces to prevent it from going ahead. The Financial Times and Reuters have the latest, while the New York Times has background here and here.

(And speaking of Reuters: There is nothing worse than an autoplay advertisement for a “Beef and Shrimp Magnificent Burger” at 3:40am. Autoplay videos are evil, and we can’t wait for Chrome to block them as the new version of Safari does.)

On a related note, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said this weekend that the US will not recognize the results of Kurdistan’s independence referendum last week, saying the “vote and the results lack legitimacy and we continue to support a united, federal, democratic and prosperous Iraq,” according to CNN.

While we contemplate at least a couple of weeks without deadlifting or squatting after messing up our back, we note that this Reuters piece on how weightlifting can reduce anxiety at least as well as meds or therapy says more about the poor state of scholarship on exercise than it does about the power of Brodin’s favourite pastime. We’ll be contemplating that notion this coming weekend with a carb refeed in the form of An Internet-Famous [Chocolate Chip] Cookie Worthy of Baking in Real Life.

PSA- Giza residences should brace for water outages tonight in at least seven areas. Water service will go out from 8:00pm CLT tonight until 8:00am tomorrow thanks to maintenance, reports Al Mal. The affected neighborhoods include Dokki, Serayat and Cairo University St., Mourad St., Nile St, Giza Square and Agouza.