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Resident retweeted
GTA's publisher paid to make parents hate the game. A $1 million production went on to generate $40 million in first year revenue.
Reviewers were attacking its outdated graphics and design. Its PR man gave the tabloids a better story: a bloody game that would corrupt children's souls.
He approached tabloids and lawyers himself. The people selling GTA were feeding the campaign against it.
The violence needed no fabrication. You could steal cars, shoot pedestrians and burn people who hadn't attacked you. Every complaint described something a customer could do in the game.
The scandal gave GTA coverage beyond game reviews. People who weren't reading about graphics were hearing about a threat to their children.
The publisher paid to provoke the condemnation. The newspapers spread it. The game brought in 40 times its development budget in its first year.
Resident retweeted
Warren Buffett bought $10.6 million of Washington Post stock. The market marked it down to $8 million.
1973. Berkshire bought into a company the stock market valued at roughly $100 million.
Buffett estimated the business was worth $400 million to $500 million. In his later shareholder letter, he said most media executives and analysts would have reached the same estimate.
By the end of 1974, Berkshire was sitting on a paper loss of about 25%. Buffett said the business had continued to do well. Its intrinsic value had grown.
The shares had become cheaper than the bargain he originally bought.
Katharine Graham, the company's CEO, bought back large quantities of stock at those depressed prices. The business grew, and the remaining shares represented larger pieces of it.
Then investors began paying closer to what the business was worth.
By the end of 1985, Berkshire's remaining shares plus proceeds from a proportionate redemption totaled $221 million.
In an interview broadcast in 1985, Buffett said he didn't need to be in Washington to know what the Washington Post was worth.
"Prices don't tell me anything about a business."
A $10.6 million purchase. Marked down to $8 million. Then $221 million in shares and redemption proceeds.
Resident retweeted
Warren Buffett gave his kids 75 cents in allowance. Then he used a slot machine to win it back.
He bought the machine and installed it on the third floor of the family home.
The children did not have to get to Las Vegas. They only had to go upstairs.
Buffett said he could give them any allowance they wanted. There was one condition: the money had to be in dimes.
"I mean, I had it all back by nightfall."
His son Howard remembered the arrangement. As soon as the allowances started, the machine appeared in the attic. The children went upstairs, and their father won the money back.
"In 10 years, I couldn't get three of those melons to line up."
His daughter Susie said the neighbors' children brought their dimes over too.
At Berkshire Hathaway's 2007 annual meeting, Buffett said he had thought the machine would be a good lesson for his children. They were there as he told the story. The shareholders laughed.
The allowance came from Dad. The slot-machine money went back to Dad.
Resident retweeted
In 2008, Elon Musk nearly went broke building cars and rockets. Today, Tesla has shown a car lifting off with SpaceX thrusters.
The two companies behind that demonstration almost died in the same year.
Musk had made about $180 million from PayPal. Instead of retiring, he poured his fortune into businesses that were rapidly running out of cash.
SpaceX's first three launches failed. A fourth failure could have ended the company.
Tesla was trying to turn its original Roadster into a viable business. Then the financial crisis hit, just as Musk was going through a divorce.
He later told 60 Minutes that the Sunday before Christmas was the closest he had ever come to a nervous breakdown.
Survival came in stages. The fourth Falcon 1 reached orbit in September. On December 23, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion resupply contract. On Christmas Eve, Tesla closed the financing that kept it alive.
That is the history behind this clip. The original Roadster belonged to a company struggling to survive. Its successor has now demonstrated a brief flight using technology from the other company Musk nearly lost.
The car is not in production yet. But a man who once struggled to keep both companies alive is now bringing their engineering together in one vehicle.
Elon Musk said AI could give everyone better healthcare than he gets, then a reporter interrupted him
Standing beside Trump, Musk described an "age of abundance." Not universal basic income. "Universal high income."
His example was medicine. With robots and superintelligence, he said, everyone could have better medical care than anyone standing there, "including me."
"Not if they haven't got a job," a reporter replied.
Musk answered with a job that machines already replaced. Buildings full of human computers once calculated bank interest. Digital computers took over. He expects jobs to evolve again, not disappear.
But those are two different claims. Machines can deliver better care. People can afford that care. In this exchange, he explains why work can change, not how universal high income would be funded.
The press exchange is free to watch. Listen to the moment a prediction about better medicine becomes a question about jobs.
At five or six, Elon Musk thought he was insane and He hoped nobody would find out.
Not because he had done something wrong. Because his mind kept producing ideas, and the people around him did not seem to experience the same thing.
On Joe Rogan’s podcast, he describes it as a “never-ending explosion.” Even when everyone leaves and he is at home brushing his teeth, it continues.
His childhood conclusion was simple: “I’m strange.”
A child’s reference group is small: family, classmates, teachers. If nobody describes an experience like yours, you can mistake unfamiliarity for evidence that something is wrong. You are comparing everything happening inside your head with the little other people reveal.
Musk’s later success makes it tempting to call that childhood fear an early sign of genius. But a restless mind does not prove talent, and constant ideas are not finished work.
“I’m strange” gives you nothing specific to work on. “I keep coming back to this problem” gives you something to investigate.
Pick one recurring idea. Write it clearly or build a small version, then show it to someone who can identify what works and what does not. That feedback is more useful than asking whether they think like you.
You can find out whether an idea has value without first deciding whether you are exceptional.
Gary Coleman was paid $70,000 an episode as a teenager. In his 30s, he worked as a security guard. The people who had managed his money were his own parents.
In the video below, Coleman says that even after the lawsuit, he still doesn't know where $18 million went.
He was the star of Diff'rent Strokes. In the first season he got $1,500 an episode.
His parents were his personal managers and, ABC News reported, took the biggest cut, 20%. California law said 25% of his income had to be set aside for his future. ABC reported that even that disappeared.
"I kept getting told, don't spend so much," Coleman said. "Everybody wanted a piece of me."
In 1989, at 21, he cut them off and sued his parents and his former business adviser. That same year, his mother asked a court to take control of his finances, saying he couldn't handle his own affairs.
His father said he was not a bookkeeper: "All we did was sign documents and gave our approval."
In 1993 a judge ruled that his parents and the adviser had skimmed some of his earnings and awarded him nearly $1.3 million. Six years later Coleman filed for bankruptcy.
Did his parents rob him, or were they ordinary people in over their heads with money they never understood?
Resident retweeted
Warren Buffett disowned his granddaughter in 2006 after she spoke publicly about the family's wealth
For years, Nicole Buffett had called him Grandpa. Then she received a letter telling her he had never accepted her as his granddaughter.
Nicole had entered the family through Warren's son Peter, who adopted her and her twin sister. She wasn't Warren's biological granddaughter, but she grew up visiting his home in Omaha and spending holidays with the family.
His wife Susan named Nicole among her "adored grandchildren" in her will.
To Nicole, this wasn't a family connection she had invented. It was her childhood.
Having the Buffett name never meant having access to Warren's billions. He paid for her education, while she pursued art and worked for a family in San Francisco, helping with their home and children.
The rupture came after she appeared in The One Percent, a documentary about wealth inequality, and discussed life inside one of America's richest families.
Then came the letter.
"I have not emotionally or legally adopted you as a grandchild, nor have the rest of my family adopted you as a niece or a cousin."
It wasn't just Warren distancing himself. The letter told her that the wider family hadn't accepted her either.
He signed it "Warren."
Only a year earlier, he had sent her a card signed "Grandpa."
Nicole still had the card. She also had photographs of herself and her sister with him, memories of staying in his home, and years of believing she belonged.
In the video below, she tells her side of the story. Even as she describes his rejection, she still calls him Grandpa.
Was Buffett justified in cutting ties after she spoke publicly, or did denying their family relationship take it too far?
Save the video to finish Nicole's story, and follow for more stories behind the private lives of the world's most famous billionaires.
Warren Buffett disowned his granddaughter in 2006 after she spoke publicly about the family's wealth
For years, Nicole Buffett had called him Grandpa. Then she received a letter telling her he had never accepted her as his granddaughter.
Nicole had entered the family through Warren's son Peter, who adopted her and her twin sister. She wasn't Warren's biological granddaughter, but she grew up visiting his home in Omaha and spending holidays with the family.
His wife Susan named Nicole among her "adored grandchildren" in her will.
To Nicole, this wasn't a family connection she had invented. It was her childhood.
Having the Buffett name never meant having access to Warren's billions. He paid for her education, while she pursued art and worked for a family in San Francisco, helping with their home and children.
The rupture came after she appeared in The One Percent, a documentary about wealth inequality, and discussed life inside one of America's richest families.
Then came the letter.
"I have not emotionally or legally adopted you as a grandchild, nor have the rest of my family adopted you as a niece or a cousin."
It wasn't just Warren distancing himself. The letter told her that the wider family hadn't accepted her either.
He signed it "Warren."
Only a year earlier, he had sent her a card signed "Grandpa."
Nicole still had the card. She also had photographs of herself and her sister with him, memories of staying in his home, and years of believing she belonged.
In the video below, she tells her side of the story. Even as she describes his rejection, she still calls him Grandpa.
Was Buffett justified in cutting ties after she spoke publicly, or did denying their family relationship take it too far?
Save the video to finish Nicole's story, and follow for more stories behind the private lives of the world's most famous billionaires.
In 1973, J. Paul Getty, the richest man in the world, refused to pay a $17 million ransom for his kidnapped 16-year-old grandson. He had the money. He just wouldn’t pay.
Eight days after John Paul Getty III disappeared in Rome, his mother asked the kidnappers to contact the family again.
She said they were ready to negotiate. When a reporter took that to mean they were ready to pay, she corrected him: “No, I didn't say the family is ready to pay. I said the family is ready to negotiate.”
Getty had 14 other grandchildren. He argued that paying for one could put all the others at risk of being kidnapped.
He refused for months. Then the kidnappers cut off the boy’s ear and sent it to an Italian newspaper with a lock of his hair.
The ransom was negotiated down, and Getty finally agreed to pay part of it. His grandson was freed five months after the kidnapping.
That explains why his mother chose her words so carefully. The family was ready to negotiate. Getty wasn’t ready to pay.
Was he protecting his other grandchildren, or putting his money before his grandson’s life?
Resident retweeted
Buffett called his $31,500 home a great investment, then admitted the trade he missed
The clip shows him arriving at his Omaha house, not explaining the math. That part comes from Berkshire's 2010 shareholder letter.
Buffett called the house his third-best investment. Yet he wrote that renting and putting the purchase money into stocks would have made him far richer.
He still valued the 52 years of family memories the house had given him. His two best investments, he joked, were wedding rings.
But this wasn't a license to buy any house at any price. In the same letter, he warned that ownership can become a nightmare when borrowers stretch beyond their means.
His point: buy a home you can afford, even if the best financial return might be somewhere else.
Buffett called his $31,500 home a great investment, then admitted the trade he missed
The clip shows him arriving at his Omaha house, not explaining the math. That part comes from Berkshire's 2010 shareholder letter.
Buffett called the house his third-best investment. Yet he wrote that renting and putting the purchase money into stocks would have made him far richer.
He still valued the 52 years of family memories the house had given him. His two best investments, he joked, were wedding rings.
But this wasn't a license to buy any house at any price. In the same letter, he warned that ownership can become a nightmare when borrowers stretch beyond their means.
His point: buy a home you can afford, even if the best financial return might be somewhere else.
Razo tried to throw XenaTheWitch into the POOL, then she caught him in a chokehold on the couch and he appeared to pass out 😳
"You knocked my son out!"
🚨UPDATE: A MILK-SOAKED miamaxxed confronted Clavicular’s best friend Drago after the fight as he sat bleeding from the neck over his snapped $16K chain 😳
“She was trying to strangle me the whole time.”
“You just beat the shit out of me.”
Clavicular casually hammer-curls 35KG dumbbells, then flexes right in front of his new gym girlfriend. She looks absolutely stunned 😳👀