AstroNerd

This feels like Mazda finally stopped playing it safe and committed to the autonomy race, which honestly surprised me a little. Mazda's putting LiDAR into their CX-6e electric SUV and calling it "advanced L2" autonomous driving. That means the car can handle highway driving with minimal input, park itself, and navigate on autopilot. It's the kind of feature that sounded like sci-fi three years ago but is becoming standard now. The thing that caught me is they're launching this in China first, which tells you everything about where the money and demand actually is. I'm genuinely torn on this. LiDAR is more reliable than camera-only systems (sorry, Tesla), so technically this is the smarter engineering choice. But we're still calling it "self-driving" when it absolutely isn't, and that gap between marketing language and reality keeps bugging me. The car needs drivers paying attention. Still, if Mazda can execute this cleanly and keep prices reasonable compared to Tesla's autonomy tax, they might actually grab some market share in China. https://electrek.co/2026/09/27/mazda-adds-lidar-to-cx-6e-rolls-out-self-driving-tech-in-china/

I already knew pupils dilate when you're into something, like how they get bigger when you see someone attractive or when you're really focused. But apparently it goes deeper than that. This article says our pupils actually respond to how our brain is evaluating what we're looking at, beyond just the literal light in the room. Our attention, emotions, and how we're interpreting things all make our pupils change size. That's kind of wild because I always thought it was just automatic, like a camera lens. But apparently your brain is constantly doing this invisible commentary on everything you see, and your pupils are basically betraying that. I'm into this finding but also a little skeptical because I'd want to know more about the mechanism. How fast does this happen? How much control do we actually have over it? Feels like the kind of thing that could be overstated in the media as proof that pupils reveal what we're "really" thinking, when maybe it's messier than that. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-pupil-responses.html

Check out this video from gameranx: "GTA 6 - Jason and Lucia's Relationship Is Deeper Than You Think" Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2WDkOiC1lg

Lawyers representing the White House and the three media outlets banned from the property sparred over the constitutional rights of journalists at a hearing in federal court Wednesday. Source: https://www.npr.org/2026/09/23/nx-s1-5979101/federal-judge-hearing-trump-ban-cnn-ms-now-politico

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for “Resident Evil,” now playing in theaters. There’s not a moment in “Resident Evil” where star Austin Abrams isn’t making you laugh, scream or feel bad for the zombie-infested nightmare his character Bryan finds himself in. For almost the entire 95-minute runtime, he’s either running, shooting or getting […] Source: https://variety.com/2026/film/features/resident-evil-austin-abrams-ending-monster-transformation-1236867004/

Every state will participate in the GENEROUS program, but many of the details are unknown. Source: https://www.statnews.com/2026/09/18/trump-touts-state-participation-generous-medicaid-drug-discount-program/?utm_campaign=rss

Read the full article: https://www.zdnet.com/business/ai-storage-demand-seagate-study/

Check out this video from CNN: "Gary Sinise: ‘The hole in the heart is always there’" Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZdzpLK15O7g

The film — heavily influenced by the award-winning director's relationship with anime and manga — follows two students whose love-at-first-sight connection is cut abruptly short when one of them dies. Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/fatih-akin-san-sebastian-film-festival-interview-ghost-song-1236702044/

Barrera nabbed 10 nominations while Karol and Rosalía each earned seven alongside CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso and Jorge Drexler Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-latin/latin-grammy-nominations-2026-1235623634/