August 27, 2026

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Duck! Yesterday, in the small town of Buñol, Spain, thousands of people gathered to be left on red. The revelers attended the town’s annual tomato-flinging food fight, a tradition dating back to 1945 and now attended by international tourists, subject to only one rule: squash the tomatoes before you toss them. This year’s event included 165 tons of tomatoes. While the world’s biggest food fight leaves behind an epic mess, don’t feel bad for the town: Because of the citric acid contained in the tomatoes strewn everywhere, the cleanup leaves Buñol more sparkling than it was before.

—Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, Abby Rubenstein

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

Meta’s $18b settlement of a landmark social media addiction case
Nvidia’s big growth prediction
Why retirees are choosing Delaware

Markets

Nasdaq

26,130.2

-0.08%

S&P

7,675.7

-0.02%

Dow

53,463.88

-0.21%

10-Year

4.664%

+2.0 bps

Bitcoin

$78,725.1

+0.22%

Abercrombie

$147.75

+35.67%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 6:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Stocks did their best pancake impression yesterday, closing mostly flat, with investors bracing for Nvidia’s earnings after the bell (more on that below) and digesting the news that the Fed’s favorite inflation gauge showed sticky inflation in July.
Stock spotlight: Yesterday was a good day for mall lovers: Abercrombie & Fitch raised its outlook for the year as it reported rising profits and sales. That gave the chain even more of a boost than a teen gets at the school dance for overapplying its cologne.

Markets Sponsored by Frontieras

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MINOR ADJUSTMENTS

Meta settles children’s mental health case for $18b

Photo of family and advocates of young people that allegedly died from the impacts of social media stand with a banner outside a courthouse.

Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images

Meta agreed to pay as much as $18 billion to settle a federal lawsuit brought by California and other states that accused the company of using practices intentionally designed to keep children addicted to its platforms and of collecting data from children under the age of 13 without parental consent.

“As much as” means that Meta will pay the 47 states involved in the settlement $12.7 billion over the next 10 years. Meta will only pay the remaining $5.3 billion if its rivals TikTok and Google’s YouTube also implement similar safeguards to the ones Meta agreed to as part of its deal to resolve the suit—and kick in a matching $5.3 billion of their own. Meta did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

Here are some of the Facebook and Instagram changes Meta agreed to make:

Time limit: Users aged 13 to 17 will only get two hours per day for brainrot on its platforms.
Night mode: Teens will be blocked from the apps between midnight and 6am.
School mode: There’ll be no push notifications for teen users during school hours of 8am to 3pm.

Meta will also hide likes and reactions from minors on posts by default and block “extreme makeup filters,” although adults will still be able to yassify themselves and their pets.

The impact on Meta’s business

Fewer kids spending time on Instagram looking at reposted MrBeast content at 3am could impact Meta’s ad business. Yesterday, the company said it expects to “accrue a legal expense of approximately $10 billion in the third quarter of 2026 related to the agreement.”

But the deal takes away the existential threat Meta was facing from the trial, as the states were seeking up to $1.4 trillion, which is close to Meta’s whole market cap.

Investor reaction: Meta shares had an up-and-down day yesterday, but ultimately finished slightly up when the market closed.

There’s still litigation to come…Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, is not part of this deal and has sued the company separately. Meta is also facing other lawsuits from individuals and school districts. Meta plans on fighting those cases, saying it sees them as weaker than the one it settled yesterday, according to the Washington Post.—DL

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Final Day: Others burn coal while they bank it

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One rock, six markets, totaling $2.1t. Invest before Frontieras’ midnight PT deadline.

World

Tour de headlines

Jensen Huang in front of an Nvidia backdrop

Philip Fong/Getty Images

📈 Nvidia predicts 70% revenue growth in 2028. The AI chipmaker told investors yesterday it expects to keep growing—a lot, and that quieted their AI bubble fears enough to send the stock up 4.71% in after-hours trading last night. Nvidia’s earnings report is widely viewed as a proxy for the AI industry as a whole, and the company’s $96.22 billion in Q2 revenue trounced expectations. Still, Nvidia’s stock initially dipped in response, that is until CFO Colette Kress said during a post-earnings conference call, “We expect to grow revenue by approximately 70% in fiscal 2028.” That’s compared to analysts’ expectations of 45% growth, and Kress said that demand was even stronger but the forecast reflected supply constraints.

💔 At least 160 dead and hundreds missing after flash floods in Nepal and China. The massive flash floods that hit the border area yesterday were likely triggered by an ice avalanche from a glacier in the Himalaya region, experts said. The flooding and mudslides that resulted swept away buildings and roads, leaving many dead and hundreds more missing as of last night. Locals, workers, and foreign tourists, including many pilgrims traveling to a sacred site, were among those still unaccounted for yesterday, with the death toll expected to rise. You can see the latest updates here.

💊 FDA approves groundbreaking pancreatic cancer drug. In a move that experts expect to transform care for one of the deadliest cancers, the Food and Drug Administration yesterday approved a pancreatic cancer treatment that in clinical trials extended some patients’ lives nearly twice as long as standard chemotherapy. The daily pill from Revolution Medicines will be sold under the brand name Rasonque for $39,800 a month, which is expected to be covered by insurance. It was approved for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who have already tried chemotherapy. Though the pill is not a cure, it’s considered a major advancement, as it targets a genetic mutation found in pancreatic cancers, as well as some other cancers, that scientists have been working for years to address.—AR

MICRO-LOST

Bill Gates warns ‘there is no plan’ for AI transition

Photo of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and older man with short salt and pepper hair, wearing glasses and a suit and tie.

Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

One of the world’s greatest tech innovators just rang one of the loudest AI alarms yet. “AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice,” Bill Gates wrote in an essay yesterday, saying he doesn’t “see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era.”

“We need time to prepare for the social, political, and economic upheaval,” the Microsoft co-founder and former AI optimist wrote in the nearly 6,000-word essay. According to Gates:

The threat that AI and robotics present to blue- and white-collar jobs isn’t comparable to previous technological transitions, which happened over generations and resulted in tech that required—not replaced—human cognition.
“This would be the worst possible time for humans to lose their critical thinking skills,” Gates wrote, referencing the rise of deepfakes and chatbot sycophancy alongside AI’s burgeoning capabilities for cyberattacks and bioterrorism.

What do we do? Gates urged governments to impose taxes on AI tokens and bots, set aside certain jobs for humans, and cooperate internationally on regulation—especially the US and China.

Tea: “I don’t really know anybody who’s not concerned,” Gates told Axios, saying that many of the largest tech companies are privately worried about what they might create.—ML

Reader Poll

Do you agree with Bill Gates about the dangers of AI?

Yes, the time to act is now.
No, the tech is already here and we’ll be fine.
I agree with some, but not all, of his recommendations.

Three Headlines and a Lie

Three of these headlines are real and one is faker than your pledge to stop at one cup of coffee per day. Can you spot the odd one out?

The new cure for career burnout: clown school
A simple bean is changing beauty pageants
Denmark’s PM blasts plastic surgeon for his unsolicited offer to ‘fix’ spot on her nose
Wisconsin kitten with 29 toes breaks world record for most toes on a cat

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Answer

We made up the one about the beauty pageant bean.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: sycophancy, meaning “obsequious flattery.” Thanks to Kari Bliss from Grand Rapids, MI, and several of our other incredible, amazing, stupendous readers for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

✢ A Note From Frontieras

This is a paid advertisement for Frontieras’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at https://invest.frontieras.com.

Reservation of the ticker symbol is not a guarantee that we will be listed on the NASDAQ. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.

Under Regulation A+, a company has the ability to change its share price by up to 20%, without requalifying the offering with the SEC.

✤ A Note From Airalo

Code is valid from August 27, 2026–September 2, 2026. Code can be redeemed once per customer. eSIMs purchased using this code can be installed within 365 days of purchase. Once installed and activated, the eSIM is valid for the stated number of days on the package purchased.

Written by Abigail Rubenstein, Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, and Matty Merritt

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