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The road to a third-straight World Series could present challenges to the two-time defending champions

The former footballer keeps flexing pieces of his vast — and expensive — timepiece collection.

The former footballer keeps flexing pieces of his vast — and expensive — timepiece collection.

Walmart Boss Rules Out Personal Pricing In Stores As It Rolls Out Digital Price Labels

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

Walmart's boss has ruled out personal pricing in a bid to alleviate customers' concerns about new pricing technology at its stores.

In a statement posted on the company's website on July 25, Walmart CEO John Furner claimed that the retail giant isn't using personal information to set prices as it rolls out digital shelf labels.

Digital pricing, driven by electronic shelf labels and artificial intelligence (AI), is increasingly enabling retailers to quickly update in-store prices rather than relying on staff to change traditional paper price signs.

"Digital price labels are rapidly replacing paper shelf tags at U.S. supermarkets," said Furner.

Some campaigners are concerned that algorithms and data-led "dynamic pricing," a pricing strategy that adjusts food prices in real time, will be used.

"We don't set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won't," Furner said.

"Whether you're buying groceries or electronics on a hot afternoon or in a sudden rush for an item, it's never a reason to charge you more.

"We don't set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won't."

He also said that the company won't use the information consumers share with it, whether through its agentic AI-powered shopping assistant "Sparky" or otherwise, to raise your price or hide lower-priced options that meet your needs.

Walmart said in March that 2,300 Walmart U.S. locations already use digital shelves, and it expects this technology to be chain-wide within the next year.

According to a 2024 Harvard Business School post on dynamic pricing, long used in air travel and hospitality, companies lacking transparent pricing models have faced backlash for "hidden" surge pricing.

"This happens when digital platforms raise prices dynamically based on real-time demand without giving customers clear, upfront explanations," it said.

Democratic lawmakers are pushing for legislation to ban what it characterizes as "surveillance pricing."

In August 2025, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced H.R. 4966, the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act, to ban surveillance pricing at the federal level.

The bill directs the Federal Trade Commission to enforce a ban on price gouging by grocery stores. Specifically, H.R. 4966 says "an operator of a retail food store may not sell or offer for sale an item at a grossly excessive price," with a metric yet to be set.

This includes a ban on electronic shelf labels in stores larger than 10,000 square feet. Instead, those stores would be required to rely on a physical sticker, stamp, or label that is attached to the item, shelf, or sign.

"Companies should not be allowed to use electronic labeling or your personal information to charge you a higher price. We need to ban corporate price gouging and surveillance pricing," said Tlaib.

Milton Jones, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said his labor organization is among those that have endorsed the bill.

"Technologies like electronic shelf tags threaten to usher in a new era where the price of an item you pick up from the shelf can change within the amount of time it takes to walk to the register," Jones said at the time.

The bill has not passed and remains in committee.

In a Sept. 14 report, the Washington Legal Foundation, a conservative, pro-business public-interest law firm and legal policy center, claimed that "surveillance pricing doesn't actually raise prices."

It said that because grocery stores "compete vigorously" with each other, they can't raise their prices above the market level, and if they do, customers will immediately walk across the street and buy for less.

The report said that a grocery store's ability to "discriminate" against "even high-income consumers is extremely limited."

"So when they do look at personal data, they almost always use it to target discounts," it said.

"High grocery prices have nothing to do with surveillance pricing. High prices instead reflect economy-wide pressures, like tariffs, high labor costs, and general inflation."

The report said that there is a "vision of the grocery industry" that is "basically fictional" as it imagines grocery firms as "quasi-monopolies feasting on fat profit margins."

It said that grocery retailers' margins are "razor thin" and that, on average, they earn only 1.7 percent, some of the "thinnest in the economy."

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2026 - 17:00

Bet $20, get $350 in FanCash with Fanatics Sportsbook promo code NYPOST350.

Season 18, Episode 8 is titled "Mac and Dennis Tear Their ACLs" and while we don't quite know what to expect from the new episode, we'd say the episode title is a good hint.

Louis Geri was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for taking homemade explosives to a D.C. church hosting a Mass for Supreme Court justices.

A tropical classic is making a comeback high above Beverly Hills.

More protein, same favorite cheese cracker.

The Hills are alive — with the sound of an absolute real estate bargain.

Giants tight end Isaiah Likely’s wife, Melanie Guevara Likely, showed a not-so-glamorous part of being an NFL WAG while supporting Big Blue during a powerful nor-easter that engulfed the East Coast on Sunday.

$4 Billion Startup 'Corgi' Melts Down Into Real Life Social Media 'Mean Girls'

San Francisco insurance startup Corgi has found itself in the spotlight for reasons that have little to do with insurance, after controversial social media posts by employees triggered criticism, internal disagreement and questions about the company’s unusual culture, according to the NY Post.

The latest controversy involved Nicole Clash, a Corgi marketing employee who came under fire for repeatedly using an ableist slur online and for a since-deleted post suggesting she would not police people who use the N-word.

The Post writes that another employee, partnerships manager Ella Schlaghecke, publicly pushed back, arguing there is a difference between opposing censorship and refusing to challenge dehumanizing language. Clash later said she deleted some posts after reconsidering them and emphasized that her comments did not represent Corgi.

That followed a separate blowup involving Brooke LeBlanc, Corgi’s head of community. The 29-year-old posted a lengthy list of requirements for a future husband, including that he be financially secure, hardworking, fit, sober, masculine and between 35 and 42.

“Sorry, I don’t want to date a loser!” she wrote. The post went viral, with LeBlanc claiming it produced five potential suitors before she ultimately deleted her X account.

LeBlanc

Corgi co-founder and CEO Nico Laqua also entered the fray with a post criticizing cancel culture and arguing that startup builders should focus on creating durable businesses rather than pleasing social media personalities and venture capitalists. Corgi later stressed that Laqua’s comments came before Clash’s remarks and said neither he nor the company supported that language.

The spectacle has added to Corgi’s already unconventional reputation.

The roughly 400-person company describes itself as an AI-native insurance platform that underwrites and sells coverage directly to businesses. But it has also promoted an extreme startup work culture. Laqua has said employees should not expect every Saturday and Sunday off and has claimed he sleeps only three or four hours a night, sometimes on an office mattress.

Corgi has also faced speculation about its hiring and marketing practices. The term “Corgi girls” emerged amid claims that the startup deliberately recruits attractive, highly online women for growth and promotional roles, fueled partly by viral posts announcing female hires.

The company strongly denies that characterization, saying it hires employees for their ability to contribute to the business and calling suggestions that female staffers are a marketing tactic disrespectful and inaccurate.

Corgi’s unconventional strategy extends offline. The company has announced plans for as many as 100 round-the-clock “Corgi Cafes” aimed partly at programmers and startup employees working late hours. The employee reportedly overseeing that expansion recently departed, although Corgi says the cafe initiative remains underway.

Clash

Behind the online drama is a growing insurance business that is also expanding into additional insurance and reinsurance products.

Some Silicon Valley observers see Corgi’s provocative personality as a branding strategy designed to distinguish an otherwise unglamorous insurance company. Others argue the approach risks overwhelming the underlying business.

PR executive Chris Harihar said the danger is that Corgi becomes known for employee controversies rather than insurance. One San Francisco venture capitalist similarly described widespread eye-rolling toward the company while acknowledging that insurance and fintech ultimately depend heavily on branding.

Corgi appears to be betting that an irreverent, Gen Z-oriented identity can attract customers who might otherwise ignore an insurance startup. So far, it has certainly generated attention. Whether that attention ultimately helps sell insurance is another question.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2026 - 16:40

The actress may have dropped some Easter eggs during a "Verity" press tour appearance.

The actress may have dropped some Easter eggs during a "Verity" press tour appearance.

First, Quit Pretending...

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Clusterfuck Nation,

"The Republican party has plenty of things wrong with it, but the other side is so crazy they're celebrating our assassinations and sharia law."

- DC_Draino on X (Rogan O'Handley)

The leaves turn and the season quickens and, in a few weeks, comes an election more dreaded than all the slavering blood beasts of Halloween.

Do you suppose, as I do, that America is tired of being insane?

The pathetic part of this national nervous breakdown is how unnecessary it actually is.

Our national problems are not that difficult to understand and correct.

Here's an inventory of them:

Making a living 1.

So many blunders, starting with off-shoring our factories. So few well-paying working-class jobs. Some of the former working-class are now working three part-time gigs and still not making a living. Quite a few are just at home, on "disability," smoking drugs, flirting with suicide on fentanyl, eating too much crap snack food, getting tattoos. We've quit pretending that's all right.

Mr. Trump proposes to change that and is re-shoring industry. It takes time to build it, get it running. Meanwhile nobody can find a plumber, an electrician, because of the bad political decision to send everyone to college, including kids not really able to finish high school. Result: "elite overproduction" Translation: too many college graduates, with the situation made worse by bogus fields-of-study that were concocted to keep students busy without preparing them for the real world. Hence, they are "elite" only by certification, not superior knowledge or skills. Young people need to learn real skills. Mr. Trump issued EO 145278 (April 2025) "Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future." Pell grants for short-term vocational training. Grants for apprenticeship positions.

Making a living 2.

Rewrite the immigration law. We don't need 1-million-plus newcomers each year. How about none for a while? Give American citizens priority for any and all jobs. Keep the border closed and deport all illegal immigrants. They have no "right" to be here. We don't need "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore" (Emma Lazarus, 1883). It's not 1883 anymore. Quit pretending we have to be "the beacon of the world." Let them make themselves free in their own lands.

Making a living 3.

America needs household servants and poor people need work. The current work-around for the well-off is to hire illegal aliens for this kind of work. It allows them to believe that putting poor Americans on the dole (out of "empathy") and allowing them to be useless is "progressive." (That's insane.) There's plenty to do, even for people of limited ability. Make menial labor okay again. These days, many people of means live in chaotic households where nothing is taken care of. It reflects their chaotic lives. (No wonder wealthy liberals are crazy.) Get poor people off welfare and off making babies they can't take care of. Give them a place to live in your 5,000 square-foot McMansion and a paycheck.

Nothing Works.

Because we automated too many transactions. Spent $XX-Billions and fifty years computerizing the US Telephone system to improve communication. Result: it's impossible to get a real human being on the phone. How is that an improvement? How is it better for Americans to get fucked around on "phone trees" for hours every week? Too many "help desks" located in foreign lands that employ people who barely speak English. Quit pretending that's okay. Start by requiring doctors' offices and hospitals to provide humans to the answer their phones.

The Horror That Is Medicine.

Get this: the situation is too dire to fix at-scale. The complexity and opportunities for racketeering are now too vast. Since failure is already well underway, and trust in doctors is broken, allow medicine to reorganize at the local clinic scale on a pay-for-service basis. Streamline medical education and the entry positions to practice. Government should not take over medicine, but can subsidize medical education. It would comprise a tiny percentage of the annual budget. Accept that there's a lot doctors will have to learn on-the-job. Forbid insurance companies from owning hospitals, clinics, and doctor practices. To restore trust, quit pretending that Covid-19 was anything but a nefarious exercise and prosecute the large number of pharma executives, hospital admins, doctors, bureaucrats, who enabled it to happen. Make personal responsibility for your body great again. Let RFKjr do his job.

Scam Education.

It's failing at-scale as medicine is. Kids are allowed to "graduate" from high school not knowing how to read or do basic arithmetic. How did that become okay? Answer: the teachers' unions are corrupt and degenerate, dedicated to Marxist social disruption and maximizing their pensions. Manipulating kids into fake sexual crises is a criminal enterprise. Centralizing K-12 schools into gigantic buildings was as much a mistake as off-shoring industry. School's primary mission should be to produce basically literate citizens in the language of the USA, which is English. If you can't speak and read English, you're unlikely to learn anything else and unlikely to thrive in this society.

Black / White race conflict.

Failing to teach black ghetto kids to speak English correctly stigmatizes them for life. Quit pretending you can compensate for that with grievance politics. It's only made race relations worse and driven whites and blacks into separate cultures that can barely communicate with each other. That is opposite of the direction America was going in two generations ago. How did it reverse? I will tell you: By the 1980s, liberal shame over the Civil Rights movement's failure to produce perfect social "equity" inspired the "solution" of "multiculturalism," which said, let's just have different standards of language, manners, and behavior for different ethnic groups (and everybody will get along). It was a shuck and jive. To be a coherent nation requires a common culture, the same standards for all citizens. That was America's strength when we were strong, not our "diversity."

The Law.

The Woke judiciary is punking America thanks largely to appointments made by Barack Obama and "Joe Biden." It's extremely difficult to get rid of political "activist" judges with lifetime appointments. Or to wait for the SCOTUS to reverse their multitudinous noxious rulings. But it's less difficult to put out-of-business the small cadre of lawfare ninjas who bring all the lawsuits that their chosen activist judges rule on - namely, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias and their many associates. They have engaged in manifold seditions from RussiaGate to the Mar-a-Lago raid and are liable for prosecution for the roles they played. Eisen and Elias run numerous NGOs that assist their shenanigans. The funding streams to them can be turned off, especially if any of the money comes from foreign entities, such as Arabella Advisors (and its pass-through orgs) or from foreign nationals like Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and Shanghai-based Neville Roy Singham (currently under investigation by a New York federal grand jury). George Soros's many Open Society affiliated NGOs have been busy for years pumping money into state attorney general and many county district attorney elections. In a 5-4 ruling on the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment bars the government from limiting independent spending on political speech by corporations, unions, and other associations. A later D.C. Circuit decision, SpeechNow.org v. FEC, led to the creation of "Super PACs" (political action committees) that can spend unlimited sums on activism as long as they do not give money directly to candidates or coordinate with them. Years later, there is a growing consensus that these decisions led to tremendous mischief in politics and the administration of law. They can be revisited.

Fraud and Grift.

Artificial Intelligence (or "Super Intelligence," if you like) is already pretty good. Good enough to trace money flows from the US Treasury through states such as Minnesota, New York, Illinois, and California, and further down the line into local orgs like the now-infamous Minneapolis "Learing" Center and the Feeding Our Future scam. AI can go over their books super-efficiently, too. Veep JD Vance is probably already using AI on his Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent estimated aggregate fraud in annual government spending at around half a trillion dollars a year.

Free and Fair Elections.

It's astounding that there's any disagreement over the provisions in the SAVE ACT: only citizens can vote. . . ID required. . . One-day only election with results next day at the latest. . . Mail-in voting only for military, voters too ill to go to the polls, and persons out-of-the-country for a good reason. It's a sign of epic dysfunction that we go into the midterms having failed to move this bill through a Republican-controlled Senate.

This is just a casual survey of a few things in our national life that need repair.

You have to ask: who is behind all the pretending.

What stands in the way of getting any of this done? I think you know.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2026 - 16:20

Most of the single-use, plastic cold beverage cups placed in recycling bins at Starbucks stores ended up in landfills or incinerators, Vermont-based Beyond Plastics said Monday.

In what was likely a first-of-its-kind case, a teenage boy presented an ectopic tooth growing in a highly unusual place.

The actor admitted he was "scared" to film the kissing scene.

The actor admitted he was "scared" to film the kissing scene.

A beloved homeless artist famed for painting the birds of Central Park was the woman found viciously murdered in a gazebo near the park’s boathouse, The Post has learned.