President-elect Trump is asking the Supreme Court to halt Friday's sentencing in his New York hush money case, according to a new court filing.
Why it matters: If the high court intervenes, it could hand Trump another legal win by delaying the hearing or blocking the lower court from proceeding with levying a punishment for his historic felony conviction.
Catch up quick: Trump's legal team made the request to the Supreme Court after Judge Juan Merchan denied his latest bid to halt his sentencing. An appeals judge rejected his request to dismiss his conviction, as well.
Merchan has said he does not intend to sentence Trump to jail time — but the president-elect's legal team is demanding to have his sentencing stopped altogether.
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced just days before his presidential inauguration.
Editor's note: This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
Tens of thousands of people evacuated, some having run on foot to flee oncoming flames.
The big picture: The wildfires are the result of an unheard-of combination of factors at this time of year — the worst high wind event in Southern California since 2011, plus some of the driest conditions on record for early January.
Downtown LA has received just 0.16 inches of rain since May 6 of last year, making it the second-driest period on record for May 6 to Dec 31, according to the National Weather Service.
January is typically during the region's wet season.
Bone-dry conditions in Southern California contrast with the northern parts of the state, where atmospheric rivers have squelched fire risks.
Even worse, the region had an unusually hot summer that dried out vegetation even further.
Whipped by powerful Santa Ana winds gusting up to 99 mph, particularly in hilly terrain, the fires forced chaotic evacuations in parts of the area, particularly related to the Palisades Fire.
High winds are affecting the wildfires, with gusts of 50 to 70 mph and higher in some lower elevations. Burbank Airport, for example, gusted to 84 mph.
Near the Palisades Fire, winds have reached 98 mph, with 90 mph winds not far from the Eaton Fire near Altadena, Calif.
UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain referred to the high winds as an "atmospheric blow dryer" for its effects on trees and other vegetation.
Context: Climate change is intensifying hydroclimate extremes, both wet and dry, including weather whiplash events where California see-saws between the two.
With dry conditions lasting later into the fall, that means Southern California is more vulnerable to dry high wind events, Swain noted.
"Climate change is increasing the overlap between extremely dry vegetation conditions later in the season and the occurrence of these wind events," he said in an online briefing.
What they're saying: Alex Hall, also with UCLA, said the hydroclimate situation plus the strong winds have suddenly created a precarious situation.
"Southern California has experienced a particularly hot summer, followed by almost no precipitation during what is normally our wet season," he said.
"And all of this comes on the heels of two very rainy years, which means there is plenty of fuel for potential wildfires."
What's next: More wind-driven wildfires may yet erupt before this event is over.
President Biden insisted in a new interview out Wednesday that he could have beaten President-elect Trump in the 2024 election, even as he admitted he was unsure that he had the stamina for another term.
Why it matters: Since Democrats' defeat, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' teams have reportedly blamed each other for the outcome.
Many Democrats have expressed anger at Biden's decision to seek reelection initially despite polls showing voters across the political spectrum expressing concerns about his age.
What he's saying: "It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes," Biden told USA Today when asked if he believed he could have won.
Biden added that his belief was based on polling he had seen.
However, Biden was more circumspect when asked if he had the vigor to serve another four years in office, admitting: "I don't know."
"Who the hell knows? So far, so good. But who knows what I'm going to be when I'm 86 years old?" the president added in the interview, which was conducted Sunday.
Flashback: Biden has been defiant about his decision to drop out of the race.
Zoom out: Biden covered a wide range of topics in his USA Today interview, including the fact that he is still considering whether to issue preemptive pardons for figures like former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and former health adviser Anthony Fauci, whom could be targeted by Trump.
Biden said the decision would come down to who Trump appoints to key administration roles, but noted that he had urged Trump during their Oval Office meeting to not "go back and try to settle scores."
Trump, he added, had complimented some of the Biden administration's economic achievements. "He thought I was leaving with a good record," Biden said.
Data: Esgauge, Conference Board. Note: Includes proposals for employer information report disclosures and diversity in workplace, board and executive. Chart: Axios Visuals
Anti-DEI shareholder proposals have surged over the past few years.
Why it matters: These measures are a somewhat obscure but important piece of the pushback against corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts — programs meant to broaden a company's hiring pool of candidates and make employees from different backgrounds feel more welcome.
The big picture: Corporate diversity efforts are quickly falling out of fashion, especially as President-elect Trump heads back to the White House.
Companies, like Meta, that used to tout their diversity efforts are now rapidly running away from them.
Zoom in: Anti-DEIproposals typically ask public firms to scrutinize their DEI policies to see if they pose legal, financial or reputation risks.
There were 13 anti-DEI proposals at Russell 3000 firms last year, according to research provided to Axios by yhe Conference Board.
The number of anti-DEI proposals is still a fraction of the pro-DEI proposals, but has more than tripled since 2020.
The companies targeted were biggies like Alphabet, Apple, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Boeing, which dismantled its DEI department last year.
Their opposition got a huge boost in 2023, after the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action at the university level.
After the ruling came down, scrutiny of company programs grew, and some groups began filing lawsuits against corporations for, effectively, discriminating against white people in hiring.
Of 70 senior executives recently surveyed by the Conference Board, 69% said the ruling negatively affected their DEI efforts.
State of play: Over the holidays, Costco grabbed headlines when it put out a robust defense of its DEI efforts, in response to one of these proposals from a conservative think tank called the National Center for Public Policy Research.
"Our efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with everyone at our Company the importance of creating opportunities for all," Costco's board of directors wrote.
"We believe that these efforts enhance our capacity to attract and retain employees who will help our business succeed."
The other side:Stefan Padfield, executive director of the Free Enterprise Project, part of the group that filed the Costco proposal, claimed the company's DEI program institutionalizes racism.
He called Costco's diversity efforts "neo-racism."
Where it stands: These proposals almost always get voted down, but the point isn't to win votes, says Andrew Jones, senior researcher at the Conference Board.
The idea is to "bring scrutiny to DEI and amplify broader opposition," he says. Those efforts appear to be working.
Earlier this week, McDonald's was the latest major company to announce it was scaling back its DEI efforts.
In early December I got the kind of tip we’ve been getting a lot over the past year. A reader had noticed a post from someone on Reddit complaining about a very graphic sexual ad appearing in their Instagram Reels. I’ve seen a lot of ads for scams or shady dating sites recently, and some of them were pretty suggestive, to put it mildly, but the ad the person on Reddit complained about was straight up a close up image of a vagina.
The reader who tipped 404 Media did exactly what I would have done, which is look up the advertiser in Facebook’s Ad Library, and found that the same advertiser was running around 800 ads across all of Meta’s platforms in November, the vast majority of which are just different close-up images of vaginas. When clicked, the ad takes users to a variety of sites for "confidential dating” or “hot dates” in your area. Facebook started to remove some of these ads on December 13, but at the time of writing, most of them were still undetected by its moderators according to the Ad Library.
Like I said, we get a lot of tips like this these days. We get so many, in fact, that we don’t write stories about them unless there’s something novel or that our readers need to know about them. Facebook taking money to put explicit porn in its ads despite it being a clear violation of its own policies is not new, but definitely a new low for the company and a clear indicator of Facebook’s “fuck it” approach to content moderation, and moderation of its ads specifically.
AI Forensics, a tech platform and algorithmic auditing firm, today put out a report that quantifies just how widespread this problem is. It found over 3,000 pornographic ads promoting “dubious sexual enhancement products” which generated over 8 million impressions over a year in the European Union alone.
In an attempt to show that the ads didn’t use some clever technique to bypass Meta’s moderation tools, AI Forensics uploaded the exact same visuals as standard, non-promoted posts on Instagram and Facebook, and they were removed promptly for violating Meta’s Community Standards.
“Our findings suggest that although Meta has the technology to automatically detect pornographic content, it does not apply it to enforce its community standards on advertisements as it does for non-sponsored content,” AI Forensics said in its report. “This double standard is not a temporary bug, but persisted since as early as, at least, December 2023.”
Facebook Ads containing pornography found by AI Forensics
When we write about this problem with Facebook’s moderation we always stress that there’s nothing inherently alarming about nudity itself on social media. The problem is that the policy against it is blatantly hypocritical because it often bans legitimate adult content creators, sex workers, and sex educators who are trying to play by the platform’s rules, while bad actors who don’t care about Facebook’s rules find loopholes that allow them to post all the pornography they want. Additionally, that pornography is almost always stolen from the same legitimate creators who Facebook polices so heavily, the ads are almost always for products and services that are trying to scam or take advantage of the audience Facebook is allegedly trying to protect, and in some cases promote tools for creating nonconsensual pornography.
What’s adding insult to injury right now is that in addition to Facebook’s hypocrisy I lay out above, Facebook is now punishing us for publishing stories about this very problem.
In October, I published a story with the headline When Does Instagram Decide a Nipple Becomes Female, in which artist Ada Ada Ada tests the boundaries of Instagram’s automated and human moderation systems by uploading a daily image of her naked torso during her transition. The project exposes how silly Instagram’s rules are around allowing images of male nipples while not allowing images of female nipples, and how those rules are arbitrarily enforced.
It was disappointing but not at all surprising that Facebook punished us for sharing that story on its platform. “We removed you photo,” an automated notification from Facebook to the official 404 Media account read. “This goes against our Community Standards on nudity or sexual activity.”
Separately, when Jason tried to share it on his Threads, it removed his post because it included “nudity or sexual activity.” Weirdly, none of the images in the post Jason shared were flagged when Ada Ada Ada uploaded them to Instagram, but they were when Jason shared them on Threads. Threads also removed Joe’s post about a story I wrote about people making AI-generated porn of the Vatican’s new mascot, a story that is about adult content, but that doesn’t contain nude images.
Our official 404 Media page, as well as Jason’s personal account, which he has had for 20 years and which is the “admin” of the 404 Media page, was dinged several times for sharing stories about a bill that would rewrite obscenity standards, the FBI charging a man with cyberstalking, and AI-generated fake images about a natural disaster on Twitter. Facebook has threatened the existence of not just the official 404 Media page, but also of Jason’s personal account.
Not a single one of these stories or the images they include violate Facebook’s policies as they are written, but Facebook nonetheless has limited how many people see these stories and our page in general because we shared them. Facebook has also prevented us from inviting people from liking the page (which presumably would limit its reach also) and warned us that it was “at risk of being suspended,” and later, “unpublished.”
As many sex workers and educators have told us over the years, while Facebook gave us the chance to appeal all of these decisions, trying to correct Facebook’s moderation efforts is not simple, and the “appeals” process consists solely of clicking a few predetermined boxes; there is no chance to interact with a moderator or plead your case. We appealed three of the decisions in late October, none of which were accepted.
The appeal we filed on Ada Ada Ada’s story on the official 404 Media page in mid-December was accepted within a few hours and got the restrictions lifted off of the 404 Media page (and Jason’s personal account) in mid-December. But an appeal Jason filed on his Threads post about the same story was not accepted: “We reviewed your post again. We confirmed that it does not follow our Community Guidelines on nudity or sexual activity,” the appeal determination on Jason’s Threads post read. The different determinations between what was essentially the exact same post shows how all-over-the-place Meta’s moderation remains, which creates an infuriating dynamic for adult content creators. Mark Zuckerberg has personally expressed regret for giving into pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” content during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, but neither he nor Meta has extended an apology to adult content creators who are censored regularly.
It was hard enough to deal with having to constantly prove to Facebook that our journalism is not pornography or harmful content when we worked at VICE, where we had a whole audience and social media team who dealt with this kind of thing. It’s much harder for us to do that now that we’re an independent publication with only four workers who have to do this in addition to everything else. I can’t imagine how demoralizing it would be to have to deal with this as a single adult content creator trying to promote their work on Facebook’s platforms.
Again, this is frustrating as is, but infuriating when I regularly see Facebook not only take money from advertisers that are pushing nudity on Facebook, but doing it for the explicit purpose of creating nonconsensual content or scamming its users.
The silver lining here is that Facebook was already increasingly a waste of our time. The only reason we’re able to share our stories via our official Facebook page is that we’ve fully automated that process, because it is not actually worth our time to post our stories there organically. Since before we started 404 Media, we knew there was very little chance that Facebook would help us reach people, grow our audience, and make the case that people should support our journalism, so in a way we lost nothing because there’s nothing to lose.
On the other hand, that perspective is based on us having already accepted Facebook’s rejection of our journalism years ago. It’s not as if people don’t get any news on Facebook. According to Pew, about a third of adults in the U.S. get news from Facebook, but according to media monitoring tool Newswhip, the top 10 publishers on Facebook are British tabloids, People, Fox News, CNN, and BBC. Smaller publishers, especially publishers who are trying to report on some of the biggest problems that are plaguing Facebook, are punished for pointing out that those problems involve adult content, which disincentivizes that reporting and allows those problems to fester.
I don’t like it, but ultimately the choices Facebook is making here are shaping its platform, and it’s going to be a bigger problem for its users who are going to fall victim to these ads than it is for us as a publisher.
We're back! And holy moly what a start to the year. We just published a bunch of stories. First, Jason talks about blowback inside Meta to its new board member, and Meta's subsequent censoring of those views. We also chat about those mad Meta AI profiles. After the break, Sam explains why Pornhub is blocked in most of the U.S. south. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph talks about why the government is planning to name one of its most important (and at risk) witnesses.
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
The round-trip flight cost over $2,000, but the amenities really let me down.
It definitely wasn't worth it for me — I hope I actually get a first-class experience someday.
I travel often and have only flown economy. However, faced with long-haul flights from the East Coast of the US to Hawaii, I decided to spring for first-class tickets.
I was traveling without my family, so I thought it might be my only chance to see what it's like at the front of the plane without shelling out for multiple tickets.
After looking at different itineraries, I picked a round-trip flight on Alaska Airlines that cost over $2,000. I'd never flown with the airline before, but I excitedly hit buy on the nonrefundable first-class tickets.
I thought the luxury experience would be worth the investment. Instead, in my opinion, what I got wasn't much better than economy.
Unfortunately, I should've done my research.
I was bummed that I wouldn't be able to use any lounges.
Jamie Davis Smith
My first incorrect assumption what that my first-class ticket would automatically get me access to an airport lounge. I thought this would be especially nice since my itinerary included a layover in each direction.
Unfortunately, there weren't Alaska lounges at any of the four airports I flew through during my trip, and you have to be an Alaska Lounge+ member to access any of the airline's partner lounges.
To make things worse, I assumed the first-class seats would be as nice as those I've seen on other airlines. My heart sank when I learned that Alaska Airlines' first-class seats don't recline much and don't have seat-back screens.
I'd been looking forward to a deep recline to help me sleep and zone out while watching movies and catching up on emails throughout my 18-hour travel day.
At this point, I wondered if it would've been better to fly economy on a different airline, but it was too late to change my ticket.
Still, I tried to look on the bright side.
Although they didn't recline, the seats were pretty comfortable.
Jamie Davis Smith
When I boarded my first flight, I was cautiously optimistic.
I was glad to see my first-class chair was noticeably bigger than a typical economy seat. Plus, it had plenty of padding to make it more comfortable.
Unfortunately, the seats reclined even less than I expected. I also didn't get a pillow or an amenities kit, just a blanket, which is what I'm used to on longer economy flights on other airlines.
Unfortunately, things only got more boring from there.
There wasn't even anywhere for me to hang my tablet to watch movies.
Jamie Davis Smith
I packed a tablet with a big screen so I could watch movies and TV shows through Alaska's app, which seemed to have a pretty good selection. However, there wasn't a tablet holder on the seatback for either of my flights there.
Because I had only one tray table, I had to choose between watching movies or using my computer to catch up on emails. Given the limited space, things got even tighter when the food came out.
I also had to pay an extra $32 ($8 on each leg of my flight) for WiFi.
I subsisted on snack boxes throughout the long flights there.
I didn't get an entrée on either of my first two flights.
Jamie Davis Smith
When it was time to eat, I was hoping for a hot meal. I left my house at 4 a.m. without breakfast and was starving.
I waited to see what would be on my tray, only to discover that because I had not selected a meal in advance (which I didn't know was a thing), I was stuck with a snack box and a couple of mediocre sides.
I got the same snack box (sans entrée) on my second flight, leaving me hangry when I landed.
As I deplaned, I longingly thought about the delicious food I had on a recent Turkish Airlines flight in economy.
The return flight was slightly better but still far from luxurious.
I finally had somewhere to put my tablet on my first flight home.
Jamie Davis Smith
When it came time to board my first flight home, I was happy to see that the plane was nicer.
This time, I had a tablet holder on the back of my seat so I could watch from a comfortable distance and save some tray space.
The seats didn't recline more than the other plane, but they did have footrests. My flight left at 11 p.m., and I was so tired that I dozed off easily.
Unfortunately, I was soon disappointed again when I boarded my connecting flight. The plane was an older model without a tablet holder.
I had at least preordered a meal for this leg, which was better than the snack box.
I'm looking forward to having a better first-class experience someday.
I won't be flying first class on Alaska Airlines again.
Jamie Davis Smith
I can't totally blame Alaska for my underwhelming first-class experience.
If I had done some research before booking, it would've been much clearer that the airline is known for its no-frills planes. However, it still felt like I was paying first-class prices, so I think some disappointment is appropriate.
I won't be flying first class on Alaska again, but I hope to have a real, luxurious experience on another airline in the future.
Alaska Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
TikTok influencer Jools Lebron sparked the "very mindful, very demure" trend, with many brands jumping on the bandwagon.
The Hapa Blonde/GC Images
TikTok published its global "What's Next" trends report for marketing creatives on Wednesday.
It advised marketers to try out AI tech and hire a wider set of creators to reach niche communities.
TikTok also dove into how marketers should change how they talk about life stages with consumers.
TikTok shared on Wednesday the culture and technology trends it thinks will shape the creative side of marketing in the coming year.
The company is encouraging marketers to lean into artificial intelligence as a creative tool, hire a wider set of influencers to reach niche communities, and adjust how they speak to a new crop of consumers who view life stages differently than their predecessors. The trends are laid out in TikTok's 2025 "What's Next" report.
Business Insider spoke to Cassie Taylor, TikTok's global creative solutions and trends lead, and several marketing partners who had early access to the report about where TikTok marketing is heading next.
TikTok's deep dive into global trends did not address the elephant in the room: its app could be pulled from US app stores as early as January 19, as mandated by a divest-or-ban law. If that does happen, TikTok would still operate in other markets. Brands would likely shift their US attention to other short-video products, such as Instagram reels or YouTube shorts. Taylor declined to comment on a potential ban.
Here are BI's key takeaways from the 36-page report:
1. AI is a marketer's friend, not a foe (hopefully)
Last year, TikTok announced a bunch of new generative-AI tools for marketers inside a creative suite called Symphony. The product allows creatives to generate ad scripts and trend summaries and translate and dub videos into new languages, among other offerings. One of Symphony's more striking features helps brands use AI-generated avatars built from the likenesses of influencers or paid actors. That tool remains in limited use, Taylor said.
Some influencers and marketers have expressed nervousness about the potential for generative AI to take away jobs. TikTok acknowledged that uncertainty in its report. Still, the company wrote that marketers can gain a "creative edge" if they embrace AI.
"Even a few years ago when we started to see different apps come out with AI, it was a little bit of, 'Do we like this? Do we not like this?' Should we be worried about it?'" Taylor said. "It's now been around just enough time from a trend perspective for people to really see its value."
Bridget Jewell, an executive creative director at Dentsu Creative who sits on a creative partner council for TikTok, said the agency uses TikTok's Symphony suite to come up with video ideas and identify trending sounds.
"It's the tool that allows us to think about things differently," Jewell said.
2. Work with influencers to connect with niche communities
Marketers go back and forth on whether to hire celebrities and mega influencers for reach or to work with creators who have more targeted audiences. TikTok is betting the latter will take off in 2025.
"As communities seek trusted voices, more people are becoming creators, from quiet reviewers to quirky characters," the company wrote in its report. "It's not about the loudest voice, but increasing the number of creators, sometimes even by 50% — to drive impact at scale."
Working with creators who know how to speak to a specific community can help a brand build trust, Taylor said.
"I'm not saying there isn't a time and place for a mass message," Taylor said. "What I'm saying is people will build a relationship with you on TikTok if you're talking to them like the community."
Jamie Gersch, chief marketing officer of the fashion brand Rothy's, told BI the company looks to work on campaigns with influencers who are already engaging with its products on social media.
"The in-house team is living and breathing on the platform and finding people that are naturally talking about us and love us," Gersch said.
3. Brands should treat life stages differently for modern consumers
Marketers should rethink the way they talk about traditional life milestones like buying a home when they speak to TikTok users.
These milestones can induce "FOMO and anxiety about falling behind," the company wrote. It pointed to users on the app who have shared their struggles with student debt and homeownership.
Instead of posting videos that value classic life stages, brands could lean into other goals TikTok users have shown they care about, like improving mental health or going on a hike.
"People are getting married later. People are moving abroad as a milestone. People are having different career goals," Taylor said.
"People imprint onto me what they remember from a certain era of my life, and they're attached to that," she told Real Simple.
But the actor and model, whose career started at age 11 when she appeared in the controversial 1978 movie "Pretty Baby," hopes that this will change with the release of her new book, "Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old."
Shields said she is embracing aging, which feels "rebellious" because "our society has become so myopically focused on youth."
Brookes doesn't want people to "lose sight of the value that comes with age and experience and time," she said.
Here are three lessons she has learned in her 59 years.
Brooke Shields in 1983.
CBS via Getty Images
Friends are important
Shields said that she wouldn't be alive today without her friends.
She sees spending time with friends as self-love. "I leave either knowing a bit more about myself or remembering something I liked about myself through them," she said.
Plus, "it's really important to have friends so it's not all on your partner," she said.
Friendships are important for our physical and mental well-being. Professor Rose Anne Kenny, a gerontologist at Trinity College Dublin and lead researcher on the The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, thinks friendship is just as important as diet and exercise for longevity.
Love yourself
"It's kind of a cliché, but God, you really have to learn early to love yourself," Shields said, adding: "There's just such freedom in finding all the ways you like yourself."
She said part of that is finding a sense of humor about yourself that isn't self-deprecating — which she used to be. But "after 30, 40 years, you start to believe your self-deprecation, and that's dangerous," she said.
Brooke Shields, Andre Agassi, Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Elton John in the '90s.
KMazur/WireImage
Don't fear aging
Shields wants her daughters, aged 21 and 18, not to be "terrified" of aging because "there's something to be said" about life at 59.
"I feel like more of a new person now than I've ever felt," she said, adding: "I'm a bit more in my own life and skin. I'm sitting with myself more. I don't bore myself." This is because she's no longer focused on age-related milestones, such as having children, she said.
Plus, she said she couldn't have launched her hair care business in her 20s, without the life experience she now has.
"I think a life experience is the biggest gift we can be granted," she said.
I preferred the Burger King Whopper over McDonald's Big Mac.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
One could argue that fast-food chains are defined by their signature burgers.
I compared the Big Mac and the Whopper with cheese to find out which burger came out on top.
Burger King's Whopper impressed me with its flame-grilled patty and fresh toppings.
Practically every fast-food chain has a signature burger … and some are better than others.
I decided to compare the most famous burgers from the two biggest burger chains in the US: McDonald's and Burger King.
I tried the McDonald's Big Mac and the Burger King Whopper with cheese to determine which classic fast-food burger is best based on taste and value.
Every fast-food chain is striving for value in 2025, amid price hikes and a competitive market with other brands. Even casual dining establishments like Chili's and Applebee's are fighting to offer customers the best deals.
On Tuesday, McDonald's announced it would be introducing a new value meal on the heels of its highly popular $5 value combo, in which customers can order any full-price menu item and get an additional menu item — with choices ranging from a six-piece chicken nugget to a double cheeseburger — for $1.
Here's how the McDonald's Big Mac stacked up against the Burger King Whopper.
First, I tried the Big Mac from McDonald's.
The Big Mac came in a cardboard box.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
The Big Mac, often considered the most iconic fast-food burger, has been a McDonald's menu staple since 1967. Created by Pittsburgh franchise owner Jim Delligatti, the original Big Mac featured a triple-decker burger and sold for just 45 cents.
It was launched nationwide in 1968 and soon became the chain's signature item.
The Big Mac is topped with cheese, shredded lettuce, and a signature sauce.
The burger came topped with lettuce, pickles, and Big Mac sauce.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
The Big Mac consists of two 1.6-ounce beef patties, pickles, shredded lettuce, chopped onions, a slice of American cheese, and Mac sauce, all sandwiched between a sesame seed bun.
Similar to a club sandwich, a third bun is also placed in the middle of the sandwich.
It cost me $7.69, excluding tax, at my local McDonald's in Brooklyn, New York.
There was a generous serving of pickles and shredded lettuce on the burger.
The burger could have used a touch more sauce.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
The Big Mac is unique in that the top beef patty doesn't have any cheese or sauce on it — all of that goodness is toward the bottom of the burger.
I thought that the lettuce overpowered the burger, and overpowered the cheese, meat, and sauce flavors. I was hoping for a tangier kick from ketchup and mustard, or just more Big Mac sauce.
The extra bun made the burger taste dry.
I thought the burger could have benefitted from removing the third bun.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
The burger tasted noticeably dry, likely because the toppings were unevenly distributed, making it bottom-heavy. The cheese and Big Mac sauce were concentrated at the bottom, leaving the dry bun and patty to dominate the first bites with little flavor or moisture.
I liked the tanginess of the pickles and the sauce. I just wish their flavor was more prevalent.
While I recognize the Big Mac's iconic status on the McDonald's menu, it's far from my favorite. Next time, I'll stick with a Quarter Pounder.
Burger King's signature Whopper has been around for decades.
The Whopper has been around since 1957.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
Burger King's iconic Whopper has been a staple since 1957, debuting just four years after the chain's founding. Priced at 37 cents, it offered a larger, premium option compared to the chain's original 18-cent burger.
What sets the Whopper — and all Burger King burgers — apart is their flame-grilling, which gives them a unique smoky flavor.
The Whopper is a classic cheeseburger.
Both burgers came served on a sesame seed bun.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
A standard Whopper comes with a quarter-pound beef patty, pickles, onions, lettuce, tomato, ketchup, and mayonnaise on a sesame seed bun.
I opted to order mine with cheese for a closer comparison to the Big Mac. At my local Burger King in Brooklyn, it cost me $8.49, excluding tax, putting it at 80 cents more than the Big Mac I tried.
The burger was piled high with lettuce, tomato, and condiments.
The burger came with pickles, onions, lettuce, tomato, ketchup, and mayonnaise.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
From the start, it was clear this burger was going to be bursting with flavor. Thick layers of ketchup and mayonnaise oozed from the sides, while the oversize bun managed to hold everything together.
This burger stood out as my favorite for its taste and texture.
This burger impressed me with its smoky flavor and size.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
The lettuce, tomatoes, and onions were incredibly fresh, adding a satisfying crunch to the burger, and the cheese added a punch of rich flavor to each bite.
The patties had a smoky, savory flavor, giving the sandwich a just-grilled taste. I also appreciated the patty's shape — larger in diameter but flatter than other burgers — making it easier to eat.
All of the elements felt well-balanced, with not one single ingredient overpowering the others, like I felt happened with the shredded lettuce on the Big Mac.
Overall, I had to give the win to the Burger King Whopper.
I preferred the Burger King Whopper over McDonald's Big Mac.
Erin McDowell/Business Insider
I much preferred the flavors of the Whopper with cheese and thought it was more balanced. It tasted like a classic cookout burger, and the flavor of every ingredient came through in each bite.
I also thought the Whopper was worth the slightly higher price tag. It was more flavorful and was a large-sized fast-food burger for under $10 — something that's becoming increasingly rare these days as prices rise.
Apple’s long-term goal for Vision Pro is believed to be an Apple Glasses product, in which an ordinary-looking pair of glasses will be able to display both text and AR content.
We’ve seen some competitors take early steps in that direction, and the RayNeo X3 Pro AR glasses look like the closest thing we’ve yet seen in a real-world product …
