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The supermodel recalled how close she became with her mom after her little brother Jeffrey died from leukemia at a young age.

A Texas college football player allegedly slammed his pregnant girlfriend onto the ground for refusing to take an abortion pill, according to a report.

Joby Completes First Autonomous Flight Across US

Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times,

Joby Aviation completed the first-ever autonomous flight across the United States using an aircraft equipped with its autonomy technology.

A Joby Aviation electric aircraft takes off from JFK International Airport in New York on April 27, 2026. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Manned with only an onboard safety pilot, the aircraft navigated 3,199 miles with no human control inputs as it finished its eastbound leg of a monthlong tour in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Joby announced on Sept. 18.

The aircraft's first cross-country tour ended, coincidentally, near the Kitty Hawk monument, the site of the Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903.

The converted Cessna Caravan was able to take off, navigate, land, and taxi under remote supervision from Joby's Santa Cruz, California, headquarters and Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, some 2,323 miles away.

"This journey across America offers a glimpse into a new era of aviation," Joby Aviation founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said in the announcement. "Autonomy has an important role to play in the future of flight, allowing us to connect remote communities, deliver critical supplies, respond faster to disasters, support military operations and keep pilots out of harm's way."

The aviation firm's Electric Skies Tour originated in Concord, California, departing from Buchanan Field Airport bound for Phoenix. From there, the self-guided aircraft traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, through Shaw Air Base in South Carolina to its destination in the Outer Banks, landing at Dare County Regional Airport.

"During the cross-country journey, the aircraft proved its ability to seamlessly integrate into high-density environments like Phoenix Deer Valley, one of the nation's busiest general aviation ports," the announcement noted.

The Joby plane was also able to remotely reroute around severe weather conditions in real time.

According to the report, the aircraft will begin its return westbound journey with stops including Raleigh, North Carolina; Washington; Louisville, Kentucky; Wichita, Kansas; Oklahoma City; Salt Lake City; and Portland, Oregon.

In a March blog, Robert Wilkos, co-founder of VIPJets.com, a private jet charter firm headquartered in Houston, expressed some concerns about the possibility of future pilotless flights.

Wilkos noted that moving accountability from "crew in cockpit" to "system plus remote supervision" shifts the liability and affects insurance. As a result, he believes that total "pilotless" aircraft for passenger business jets will remain a long-term objective.

He said single-pilot operations are a better choice since they incorporate human decision-making along with technology.

"If regulators and stakeholders demand extremely high evidence for airlines to reduce crew, you should assume the evidence bar will be high for passenger-carrying business aviation too, even if the equipment is technically capable," he said in the blog.

"Regulators are still showing caution about removing human redundancy, and industry resistance is visible."

Wilkos also noted the importance of certifications for such flights and believes programs such as Joby have highlighted that certification process.

"Joby reported progress toward Type Inspection Authorization (TIA) flight testing and noted FAA acceptance of a large portion of its certification test plans, describing TIA as a key step toward certification flight testing."

Federal Aviation Administration described TIA as a formal phase where aviation regulators, such as the FAA, review tests and flight operations to ensure safety standards.

Founded in 2009, Joby has completed more than 400 flights and 800 automated flight hours in both controlled and uncontrolled airspace. The aircraft has also been used in U.S. military exercises.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 08:05

What's next after you finish Ted Lasso? Check out one of these shows

Aaron Donald returned from retirement after 1,005 days away, receiving a thunderous welcome at SoFi Stadium and helping the Rams beat the Giants 28-6.

Diana died on Aug. 31, 1997 at the age of 36.

Diana died on Aug. 31, 1997 at the age of 36.

Agentic Wars Begin: Amazon Blocks Meta's Agents As Muse Takes World By Storm

Amazon.com has blocked Meta’s new AI agent from its retail site after the social media company declined a request to remove the bot, Bloomberg reported.

Meta’s Muse, which was introduced earlier this month and has taken the world by storm, quickly rising to the top of mobile app charts, a sign that the social media company is gaining traction in the increasingly crowded market for consumer AI assistants, and sent the company's stock price soaring, is designed to help people carry out such common online tasks as shopping and booking appointments.

However, since it has its own agentic product, Amazon prohibits other companies from deploying automated tools to shop its site and started blocking Muse on Sunday night, a spokesperson said. Shoppers using Muse see a series of pop-ups saying its use violates Amazon’s terms of use.

“We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate,” Amazon spokesperson Lara Hendrickson said in an emailed statement, adding that an opt-in requirement is standard practice for food delivery apps and online travel agencies. “Agentic third-party applications such as Muse have the same obligations, and we’ve requested that Meta remove Amazon from the experience.”

Amazon builds its own automated shopping tools, but has sought to prevent rivals’ bots from browsing and making purchases from its catalog. The company last year sued Perplexity AI Inc., saying the widely used artificial intelligence startup sought to conceal its shopping agents after Amazon asked Perplexity to remove them. The legal skirmish is widely seen as a high-profile test case that could help determine the rules of the road governing agentic shopping.

So far, consumers are mostly using bots to research products rather than let them make purchases. So Amazon’s move to block shopping agents from accessing its site means the company is unlikely to lose much business. But if consumers start using AI agents to buy stuff, the bots could select other e-commerce sites, costing Amazon sales and advertising revenue.

Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said earlier this year that the agentic shopping experience left much to be desired, and that the bots often flubbed pricing or other data.

“We’re having conversations with all those folks to try and make that better and find something that works for customers and all the companies,” he said in April. 

Perhaps to offset the negative vibes from the angry Amazon response, late on Monday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he was "teaming up with Shopify to make shopping and checkout easier in Muse. Shoppers find more. Shops sell more. More partnerships like this coming soon."

Teaming up with Shopify to make shopping and checkout easier in Muse. Shoppers find more. Shops sell more. More partnerships like this coming soon. https://t.co/ccak4J7IIb

— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) September 21, 2026

Maybe... but more likely the won't be, since every retailer will want to have their own proprietary agents access to their own content and product offering. 

Hence agent wars. 

Meta's Muse is ranked the No. 1 free app on the US Apple iOS App and Google Play stores as of Monday. The assistant, which is available for people 18 years and older, was downloaded more than 902,000 times in the six days after Meta introduced it on Sept. 8, according to Abe Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower. That’s more than the 773,000 downloads of its predecessor, the Meta AI app, in the same post-launch period. 

According to Goldman, Meta’s Muse (powered by Muse Spark) represents a major leap because it delivers ready-to-use personal agents with simple chat interfaces, including deep WhatsApp integration for Muse, so no coding is required - unlike earlier Claude-style bots.

They actively handle tasks like booking holidays or restaurants, and go further by proactively chasing email follow-ups, flagging inconsistencies or conflicts in your inbox, monitoring threads, and advancing goals in the background even when you’re offline. Classic chatbots like ChatGPT stay reactive: they answer questions or draft text only when prompted, never independently act across your apps or keep working on your behalf. As Goldman's TMT specialist Sean Johnstone writes, "the more I use Instinct the more I like it – its really is like having your own dedicated PA."

The sudden surge of Muse means the frontier models' agentic dominance just got another major competitor. It also means there will be an unprecedented demand for hardware: as Wccftech writes, "If Meta’s Muse Personal Agent Scales To Just 100 Million Users, It Would Require 1.58 Million AMD Ryzen CPUs, 800 Petabyte Of RAM, And 10,000 Petabyte Of SSD Under Ideal Conditions." More: 

If you were wondering why everyone has suddenly turned so bullish on CPUs from Intel, AMD, and Arm, look no further than the underlying compute requirements for serving Meta's Muse personal agent to just 100 million users, assuming minimal sharing, especially as Meta has promised each Muse user a dedicated VM that can work continuously in the background.

Also, Meta is currently allowing up to 100 million free tokens per week, with paid subscription tiers starting around $20 per month for heavy power users.

Every Muse user is supposed to get their own cloud PC.
2 vCPUs, 8GB RAM, 100GB disk.

If Meta actually leaves those boxes on, user growth turns into a chip and memory problem.

that’s what i'm trying to size

a few thoughts on $META and Muse:

Muse is 13 days old and US only… https://t.co/57wvCNGsIj

— dylan ツ (@demian_ai) September 21, 2026

Of course, the agentic fee will only cover a tiny fraction of the hardware required to run the compute the agents will soak up, which means that - if successful in getting more people to use it - Zuckerberg is about to take Meta's capex into hyperdrive. Which, for the company formerly known as Facebook before it changed its name to Meta after a catastrophic foray into the metaverse which cost it nearly $100 billion in wasted funds, won't be the first time it has aggressively chased an overhyped concept only to crash and burn. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 07:55

'Survival Mode' - Farmers Crushed As Trump's War On Iran Sends Diesel Cost Soaring

As Donald Trump's war on Iran nears the seven-month mark, the economic damage is reverberating all over the world, and all across the United States. Among the Americans who are feeling the most pain from a war their federal legislators never declared are the nation's farmers, who are growing increasingly desperate under the weight of rising costs for diesel, fertilizer and equipment.

It's a demographic that leans hard to the right, but now feels let down by Trump and others in Washington. "It's his war that caused this, this war in Iran. We're not winning that war. And many farmers feel like we shouldn't be there," farmer John Boyd, Jr told CNN. Trump says the war in Iran is necessary to prevent the country from building a nuclear weapon. However, going back to 2007 and up to the eve of the war, the US intelligence committee has repeatedly assessed that Iran was not building one. 

"I've done this 34 years. I have never worried and stressed like I have the last year," North Carolina farmer Matt Bell told CBS News. "We've cut everything we can cut." Trying every option he can think of to improve his cash flow, Bell has put off replacing equipment, produced some of his own fertilizer, and opened a pumpkin patch and hayride business for the fall. The rising costs come after a difficult period had already weakened his operation's financial security. 

"We're just getting to the point now there's nothing left to cut," farmer Matt Bell told CBS News

"The last several years in agriculture have been terrible, and we have just cut the fat anywhere we could. But we're just getting to the point now there's nothing left to cut. You cannot run without fuel. You cannot run without fertilizer. You have to have that," Bell said. 

As a result of a major reduction in oil exports from the Persian Gulf, the nationwide average cost for a gallon of diesel hit $6.49 this week, up 75% from a year ago, according to the AAA. Lately, the price volatility has led Bell's diesel distributors to offer price quotations that are only good for a matter of hours. He'd budgeted $35,000 for fuel in 2026, but blew past that number in August. "Every piece of equipment on this farm runs on diesel," he emphasized. 

In an interview with Sky News, Texas cattle rancher Lynn Fleming said her August outlay for few was almost double what she'd paid in recent years. "Obviously the main [factor] is what we're facing everyday with the Iranian situation," Fleming said. Her husband, Robert, said he felt blindsided by the war. "We had no idea that he was going to pull the prank with the Strait of Hormuz. He didn't tell us ... he was going to go do the military maneuvers and try to control the oil supply over there. We had no warning of what was going to happen." A major cornerstone of Trump's 2024 campaign was his pledge to be a "peace president" who would refrain from starting any new wars.    

American farmer on Trump: “We had no idea the he was going to pull the prank with the Strait of Hormuz.. and try to control the oil supply. We had no warning of what was going to happen.” pic.twitter.com/u3IE50pEqn

— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) September 18, 2026

In addition to the war, Bell blames Trump's tariff policies for boosting the prices of many of a farmer's essentials. "Everything we're touching, the fertilizer, fuel, chemicals, seed, parts — you know, the whole nine yards, everything that we touch has gone up," he said.  

Cattle ranchers say they felt undercut by Trump's decision to combat rising food prices by eliminating tariffs on imported beef -- at a time when US ranchers were already under financial duress. "I'm already absorbing your high fuel prices that came out of nowhere," South Texas rancher Josh Eilers told Sky. "It's like, c'mon guys, just help me out a little bit. I just can't keep absorbing more and more and more, or I simply won't be able to afford to do this anymore." 

“I’m paying $7 a gallon here for diesel fuel.”

“My combine holds 140 gallons.”

“That’s right at $1,000 to fill up my combine.”

For farmer John Boyd Jr., those numbers illustrate a much bigger problem in American agriculture.

Farmers are paying more for the fuel, fertilizer,… pic.twitter.com/lTesmNvLHW

— Farm Action (@FarmActionUS) September 16, 2026

"I do not want any American to feel sorry for the American farmer," said Bell. "I want the Americans to be mad that we have been put in this situation. We're fighting for survival and we're running out of options... I am very mad. I think there's been some very bad policy that's been made that has led things to get to where we are." 

Most of the farmers and ranchers quoted in this article say they voted for Trump. Their ire over the state of affairs is surely contributing to a major nationwide dip in Republican enthusiasm going into the midterms. Robert Fleming had this to say: "I'm afraid there's going to be some changes made [in] voting. Maybe people not even voting, who knows, because a lot of the people feel like we the people are not being heard." 

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 07:45

As impressive as the Week 1 win over the Cowboys may have been, the follow-up produced a major step back against a far better opponent.

A Republican senator demanded Monday that the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena both first son Donald Trump Jr. and former first son Hunter Biden to investigate whether either or both men unlawfully used their proximity to the White House for money or other perks. Bettina Anderson and Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding was paid for by...

The family of an 83-year-old Canadian woman is demanding answers after she died through the country's medical assistance in dying program despite allegedly becoming distraught when told the procedure would end her life and showing signs of cognitive decline, according to a report.

The Yankees and Aaron Judge have two basic public postures when it comes to his injuries — dissembling and disrespectful.

The late Princess of Wales died in August 1997 from severe injuries sustained in a high-speed car crash.

The late Princess of Wales died in August 1997 from severe injuries sustained in a high-speed car crash.

DoorDash ended a legal battle with New York City by agreeing to a settlement that will pay food delivery drivers in the Big Apple millions in backpay.

Expect this interview to fall into a great void in the very circles that had embraced Azaiaza when he was a propagandist-by-proxy. This crowd wants to eat up Hamas’ propaganda because it doesn’t care about truth, but only hating on Israel.

More and more women are turning to unregulated peptides to battle menopause. They've even developed their own slang, in part to evade content moderation on Instagram and TikTok.

NY Lawmaker Launches $30 Million Effort To Coordinate Democrat Control Of AI

New York Assemblymember Alex Bores is launching a $30 million effort to unite Democrats behind a common artificial intelligence regulatory agenda ahead of the 2028 elections, taking the issue that defined his unsuccessful congressional campaign to a national stage.

New York State Assembly member Alex Bores

His congressional run was bankrolled by Anthropic's political money, a PAC funded with $20 million from the company and $401,250 from its employees, and his new group has not said who is funding it.

The organization, "Who Decides," is launching Tuesday with Bores and his former chief of staff, Anna Myers, leading an effort to "build the winning Democratic answer to AI." Its objective is to turn concerns about the technology into a shared platform for Democratic candidates, from presidential contenders to candidates further down the ballot.

"Who Decides' goal is that by 2028, Democratic candidates from the top of the ticket on down run with a common AI safety agenda," the group's launch announcement states. "That means addressing the harms people already see and the broader danger that increasingly powerful and out-of-control systems could destabilize our economy, our democracy, and our safety."

The group plans to concentrate on 11 states it identifies as important to the 2028 presidential primary and general election: South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, Virginia, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Its plans include quarterly state and national polling, national conferences and partnerships with local organizations, Politico reports.

Those partnerships would bring together labor unions, parents, educators, civil-rights organizations, faith groups and other constituencies. The organization says it will work with those groups to develop AI policy positions and put them before candidates through questionnaires, forums, endorsements and briefings.

"We don't let five people write the laws for hundreds of millions of Americans," Bores says in the announcement, referring to the concentration of decision-making among AI executives. "There is no reason to let them write the rules for AI."

An Organizing Push Ahead Of 2028

The launch follows a series of warnings from within the AI industry and competing political responses over how aggressively Washington should intervene. Former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon warned last week that increasingly powerful AI could threaten humanity. Leaders at Anthropic and OpenAI subsequently called for slowing development so safety measures could keep pace.

Former President Barack Obama has urged Democrats to make AI a central political issue, with plans addressing both safety and the technology's economic consequences. His comments included a call for the party's 2028 presidential candidates to focus on the issue.

The launch comes days after AI techbros agreed that a 'pause' in development was needed along with new oversight (something Beijing won't agree to). In a Saturday essay which set off the calls to slow down, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposes governance that lives largely inside the industry: third-party evaluators embedded in the labs on terms the labs set, with the right to publish their findings; coordination among frontier companies on safety standards, enabled by a narrow antitrust waiver from Washington; and, only later, agreements with foreign governments. He calls federal regulation of every frontier lab the most effective approach but argues that passing laws takes time. Who Decides starts from the premise that "a few executives inside a handful of companies are making all the decisions," and it refuses their money. The two efforts want many of the same rules, including published safety plans, incident reporting and independent testing of frontier models, and disagree about who should write them and how soon. The industry's safety wing has already bet on Bores once: Public First Action, a PAC funded by a $20 million Anthropic donation, spent $450,000 supporting him in the primary.

President Trump pushed in the opposite direction Monday, rejecting calls for additional restrictions and arguing that existing government powers were sufficient. He also warned that slowing American development could benefit China.

Incest Is Best?

Bores' new group grew out of a campaign funded by Amodei's network - which runs through Effective altruism. The same network produced METR, the evaluator Amodei's essay names as his preferred watchdog - which itself was bankrolled largely by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Its most famous adherent, Sam Bankman-Fried, is in prison for fraud, and his $500 million stake in Anthropic, bought in 2022 with FTX customer funds, was liquidated in the exchange's bankruptcy. Anthropic grew up inside that world: Moskovitz and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn funded its early rounds; Dario Amodei was an early signer of the movement's giving pledge; his sister and co-founder Daniela is married to Holden Karnofsky, the Open Philanthropy co-founder who joined Anthropic last year; and the trust with power over the company's board includes the CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism.

Bores' new group grew out of a campaign funded by Amodei's network - which runs through effective altruism, a left-wing 'movement' that began with global poverty and animal welfare, preaches earning as much as possible in order to give it away, and over the past decade made preventing an AI catastrophe its central cause, bankrolled largely by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. The same network produced METR, the evaluator Amodei's essay names as his preferred watchdog. The movement's most famous adherent, Sam Bankman-Fried, is in prison for fraud, and his $500 million stake in Anthropic, bought in 2022 with what prosecutors said were FTX customer funds, was liquidated in the exchange's bankruptcy. Anthropic grew up inside that world: Moskovitz and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn funded its early rounds; Dario Amodei was an early signer of the movement's giving pledge; his sister and co-founder Daniela is married to Holden Karnofsky, the Open Philanthropy co-founder who joined Anthropic last year; and the trust with power over the company's board includes the CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism.

The same network reached Bores. Anthropic's $20 million gift to Public First Action, which backed him, sits alongside $401,250 that Anthropic employees gave to campaigns supporting him. Who Decides' pledge bans frontier-lab executives and corporate money - but doesn't bar the philanthropies that fund the AI-safety field. The group won't say who supplied the $10 million it has reportedly raised. The movement has tried electoral politics before: in 2022, Bankman-Fried's super PAC spent more than $10 million on Carrick Flynn's House primary in Oregon (which Flynn lost). 

Who Decides, meanwhile, is calling for an AI agenda that a future Democratic president could act on during the first 100 days in office.

From A Congressional Defeat To A National Campaign

Bores made AI regulation a central issue in his congressional primary campaign after helping pass New York's RAISE Act. The legislation requires major frontier AI developers to publish safety plans and report critical safety incidents. Although he lost the primary, Bores and Myers describe the campaign as the foundation for their new organization.

"The lesson Bores and Myers took from those fights was that confronting the AI industry is fertile political ground and that public demand for answers on AI policy exists but remains scattered," the announcement states.

The organization says it will reject "corporate money or contributions from senior executives at frontier AI companies." Its website directs prospective donors to a Givebutter fundraising page.

The $30 million figure refers to the overall effort, rather than an established amount already raised. A New York Times report summarized by Techmeme says the nonprofit has raised $10 million and plans to seek another $20 million in 2027.

For Bores and Myers, the stated task is to turn separate concerns about AI into a coordinated political program.

"What's missing is a coalition capable of turning that energy into a governing consensus before the technology, the economic dislocation, and the partisan battle lines harden," the launch announcement says.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 06:55

Mayor Zohran Mamdani renewed his call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes and accused him of visiting a “genocide” on Palestinians just days before the leader is to speak at the UN General Assembly. “When it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu, I have described him as I believe him to...