Numex retweeted
Arnold Schwarzenegger took no salary for Twins. The movie made $216 million.
He says it paid him more than $40 million. More than any movie he has ever made, including The Terminator.
In the video below, Andy Cohen asks which film earned his biggest paycheck, then starts guessing the number.
He has said Universal doubted an action star could carry a comedy. So Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito and director Ivan Reitman skipped their salaries and took a piece of the back end.
The budget was under $20 million.
Cohen asks: more than $20 million? “Much more,” Arnold says.
More than $40 million? He says it was more than that.
A sequel, Triplets, was planned, with Eddie Murphy as the third brother. It never happened after Reitman died in 2022.
The case for the studio: it was betting on an action star in a comedy he had never done. Skipping salaries kept the risk low. Nobody expected the film to become his biggest payday.
So did Universal protect its budget the smart way, or hand Arnold the best deal of his career?
Numex retweeted
Tobey Maguire collected $7.8 million from a billionaire at poker. The woman who ran his games says he wouldn’t tip her unless she barked like a seal.
She refused.
In the video below, Molly Bloom, the woman Jessica Chastain played in Molly’s Game, describes what happened next.
“If you want this tip, you need to get on the table and bark like a seal.”
She says it started as a joke. It turned into a 35-minute standoff while the game stopped and the whole table watched.
“I am not compromising my dignity here.”
A couple of weeks later, she says, Maguire convinced one of the richest players to host the game at his own house. The players followed. Then Maguire called her: “You’re done. You’re over.”
She also remembers a hand where he swore on his mother’s life that he had the best cards. His opponent folded. Maguire showed the bluff.
“It’s not really about money. It’s more about crushing souls.”
Years later, the money still mattered. In 2019, billionaire Andy Beal lost big to him and didn’t pay right away. Maguire testified this year that he hired lawyer Tom Goldstein to collect it, for a $500,000 fee.
The case for Maguire: poker is a game of pressure, and nobody at that table had to play.
He got every dollar of $7.8 million out of a billionaire. She turned down a tip and lost the whole game.
Was Maguire just a great poker player, or was he playing the people instead of the cards?
Numex retweeted
I'M F*CKING LOSING MY MIND OVER GROK BOT × BUZZCORE
I gave Grok Bot $5 and four ants. 30 seconds later the balance read $19,421.
every trade ran on pumpfun, and every one went through the same steps: scout finds it, sniper gets in, curve rides it, grad takes it out. no ant skips its job.
41 trades. 34 wins, 7 losses.
the big closes:
> 00:06, on WIF, +$312
> 00:12, on PYTH, +$283
> 00:17, on MEW, +$506
> 00:22, on W, +$855
> 00:27, on BONK, +$15,108
look at that last one.
the first four big closes made $1,956. BONK alone made $15,108. that's 78% of the whole session from one trade.
right before BONK the desk sat at 862x. one close later it ended at 3,884x.
most people would've closed BONK at +100% and called it a good day. the ants held it.
so be honest: at what % would you have sold BONK? 👇
send this to the friend who always sells too early.
Numex retweeted
In 1975, Sylvester Stallone sold his dog because he couldn’t afford to feed him. Then a studio offered him $360,000 for his script, and he said no.
In the video below, Stallone tells CBS’s Tracy Smith why: “I said, pass. I can’t do it.”
He was living in New York with pizza boxes for a mattress. He cleaned the lion cages at the Central Park Zoo.
He wrote the Rocky script in about three and a half days. By March 1975 it was finished, and he was still flat broke.
The dog was the only thing he had left to sell. “It’s the only thing I could sell,” he says.
Producers wanted the script. They just didn’t want Stallone to play Rocky.
The offers kept climbing until they reached $360,000. His answer stayed the same: he plays Rocky or he walks.
“I’ve literally crawled through every gutter in New York,” he says. He was sure he would never get a chance like this again.
In the end, the studio let him play the part. Reportedly he was paid $35,000 for the script.
He bought his dog back and put him in the movie.
Rocky won three Oscars and became one of the biggest hits of its time. This November, a film about Stallone’s fight to make it, I Play Rocky, comes out in theaters.
The case for the studio: Stallone was an unknown actor with almost no credits. Nobody knew if a boxing movie could work, and $360,000 for a first script was a fortune.
So was saying no the best bet in Hollywood history, or just the luckiest?
Numex retweeted
Michael Jordan signed with Nike in 1984 for about $500,000 a year, plus royalties. Last fiscal year, the Jordan Brand sold $7.03 billion.
The man who signed him says the idea that changed the deal came from Jordan’s mother.
In the video below, Sonny Vaccaro tells Rich Eisen how it came together.
Jordan was not on his A-list that day. Vaccaro had seen him play once, when North Carolina beat Georgetown, and never again until Jordan turned pro.
Eisen asks whether owning a piece of the company was Deloris Jordan’s idea. Vaccaro says it was.
He says he had already promised Michael a piece of the shoe. Then Deloris asked for more, and he and Phil Knight said yes.
Vaccaro says Jordan saved the company. “I don’t know if there’s a Nike today,” he adds. Nike would have been another Reebok or another Puma.
Forbes estimates Nike now pays Jordan nearly $300 million a year. His NBA salaries over his whole career added up to about $90 million.
The case for Vaccaro: he talked Nike into betting its marketing budget on one unproven rookie instead of several players.
So who deserves more credit for the deal: Vaccaro, who bet the budget, or Deloris Jordan, who asked for a piece?
Numex retweeted
Seann William Scott was paid $8,000 to play Stifler in “American Pie.” The film made $235 million worldwide.
He did not dispute it. He confirmed it himself, on camera.
In the video below, Rich Eisen reads him the number in a true or false game, and Scott answers.
It was 1999, and it was his first feature film.
He says $8,000 “was a lot of money at the time.”
Afterward, he says he bought a used Thunderbird for about $5,000 or $6,000.
While waiting for the movie to come out, he also took a job at the LA Zoo. He says he lasted two days and sold five churros.
Then “American Pie” became a hit, and Scott came back for three sequels.
For “American Reunion” in 2012, he reportedly earned about $5 million, plus a share of the profits.
That is 625 times what he got for the first film.
In 2023, the clip resurfaced while thousands of Hollywood actors were on strike over pay.
The case for the studio: it was a first feature with no track record, the amount was a deal he accepted, and Scott himself calls it a lot of money at the time. When the franchise proved itself, the pay followed.
So was $8,000 fair for the role that made him a star, or was that simply the market price for a newcomer?
Numex retweeted
Kevin Spacey lost House of Cards and was ordered to pay its producers $31 million. Now he says he has $0 left.
In the video below, Piers Morgan asks him how much money he really has.
His home was being foreclosed. Morgan asked why.
"Because I can't pay the bills that I owe."
Was he facing bankruptcy?
"Been a couple of times when I thought I was gonna file, but we've managed to sort of dodge it, at least as of today."
Then Morgan asked: "How much money do you have?"
"None."
Most of it went to lawyers. "I still owe a lot of legal bills that I have not been able to pay."
Morgan pushed: "Millions?"
"Many millions, yes. The house itself is many millions."
The biggest bill came from House of Cards. After the 2017 allegations, Netflix dropped him, and the show's producer, MRC, rewrote the final season without him. An arbitrator ordered Spacey to pay MRC about $31 million for breaching his contract. A court upheld it in 2022.
His side: he was found not liable in a New York civil case in 2022 and cleared on all charges in London in 2023. He says he lost his career and his fortune over cases he won.
The other side: MRC says it lost real money rebuilding a hit show around his exit, and the arbitrator agreed he broke the workplace rules in his contract.
The math: 2 Oscars, 2 court wins, $31 million owed, $0 left. Winning in court didn't erase the bill.
Asked what he'll do now, he raised his fists: "Get back on the horse."
So is Spacey a man who won his cases and still lost everything, or someone paying for what he cost the show?
Numex retweeted
Tyson got $50,000. Nintendo got over $1 billion. Same game.
That's the reported gap behind Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! Tyson later called the deal a bad one.
In the video below, Tyson talks about it.
Nintendo's US president was at a trade show in Las Vegas. He watched a 19-year-old Tyson knock out a fighter in the first round. He wanted him for the NES boxing game.
Tyson hadn't won a title yet. Nintendo reportedly paid him $50,000 for three years. No royalties.
Six weeks before the game came out, he held all three major heavyweight belts.
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! launched on October 18, 1987. Nintendo backed it with a $20 million marketing campaign. That was 400 times his fee.
By October 1989, it had sold 3 million copies.
When the license ran out, Nintendo didn't renew it. His name came off the box. The game became "Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream."
In 2019, he learned Nintendo was making a new Punch-Out without contacting him. He said publicly that his knockouts made the game.
The case for Nintendo: it signed an unproven 19-year-old before anyone knew he'd be champion. It took the risk. Tyson signed the contract.
One side got $50,000. The other got over $1 billion.
Was Nintendo just smart, or did it take advantage of a young fighter?
Numex retweeted
In 1995, Steve Jobs gave a 69-minute interview. Only about nine minutes ever aired.
Then the master tapes were lost.
He was 40. He ran NeXT and Pixar. Apple was two years away from bringing him back.
Journalist Robert Cringely recorded the conversation for the PBS series Triumph of the Nerds. For years, nobody could find the full tape.
In 2011, after Jobs died, VHS copies turned up in a garage in Britain. They became a film: Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview.
In the video below, Jobs explains how he thinks our species moves forward. He says the way to "ratchet up our species" is to spread the best things to everybody.
Numex retweeted
Anthropic just dropped Claude Duet. An 8-page PDF on how it actually works, and 50 prompts to run it ↓
the shift: your chatbot waits for you. Duet reads your apps every few hours and messages you first
the formula: what it watches + when it checks + when it asks = a chief of staff, not a notification machine
here's what's inside:
part 1 → how it works, what it won't do, and what early reviewers found
part 2 → 6 setup prompts for the first hour: voice, handoff, rhythm, approvals
part 3 → 7 money prompts: overdue invoices, renewals, payroll, price hikes
part 4 → 8 inbox prompts: reply debt, promise tracker, follow-up sweeps
part 5 → 7 client prompts: dead deals, scope creep, contract chasing
part 6 → 6 build prompts: dashboards, forecasts, investor updates
part 7 → a house-rules skill so every brief follows your rules
the result: 50 copy-paste prompts + 7 facts from Anthropic's help center most people miss, including a free limits reset
this 8-page PDF is the setup guide for an agent that works without being asked
bookmark it, then read the full course below ↓
Numex retweeted
He bet $325. He thought he won $14.2 MILLION.
DraftKings voided all five bets and refunded the stakes.
– Nicholas Bavas, 37, Dallas County, Iowa
– Feb 3, 2024: Pebble Beach Pro-Am, bad weather closing in
– 5 bets on how the golfers would finish after round 3
– Total stake: $325
– Potential payout: $14.2 MILLION (about 43,700x)
The tournament was called after 54 holes. Those standings became official. According to Bavas and his lawyers, all five bets matched them.
DraftKings was still taking wagers while the weather threatened the final round. Then it voided the bets, citing its house rules.
His side argued the rules at the time did not allow voiding this kind of multi-player parlay. They also said DraftKings changed the rules after the tournament to cover similar cases.
He sued in 2025. In July 2026, the court ruled for DraftKings.
$325 risked. $0 won. Years of legal fight.
The real lesson is not about golf. It is about reading the fine print.
Every sportsbook has pages of house rules. Almost nobody reads them before betting.
Now you can paste those rules into an AI model and ask one question: “Under what conditions can they void my bet?” It takes about 30 seconds.
Do the same with any market. On prediction markets, the payout is set by the contract rules and the resolution process, so ask the AI to explain exactly how the contract resolves before you trade.
$325 was the price of not checking.
Follow for more breakdowns like this.
Numex retweeted
Mo’Nique won an Oscar for “Precious.”
She was paid $50,000.
The film made $63.6 million.
Then she said no to promoting it for free. She says Hollywood blackballed her for it.
She never complained about the $50K. “That’s what I signed up for. It was an independent film.”
She finished the US promo run. Then Lionsgate asked her to fly to Cannes.
She said no.
They offered another week in France and a nicer room.
Her husband asked if there was a dollar amount.
The answer: “We will never pay anyone to promote a film.”
Then Tyler Perry called her into his room.
She says he told her:
A nomination = your next movie is worth $3-5M.
A win = $6-8M.
Her answer: “You can pay me to promote it.”
His: “I’m not in the habit of giving out money for free.”
Hers: “Then I’m not in the habit of working for free.”
She says Oprah’s makeup artist asked Oprah why she didn’t just pay her.
The reply, per Mo’Nique: “I won’t be paying her nothing.”
She won the Oscar anyway.
She says the big offers never came.
The studio’s side: every actor promotes their film. The campaign helped win her the Oscar. And $50K was the deal she signed.
So should Mo’Nique have promoted it for free?
Numex retweeted
holy sh*t, I gave Claude eyes and it showed me how it sees the street
→ tracks every person and car, with my own camera shake subtracted
→ traces up to 320 building edges per frame, no neural net. the vertical lines meet 1,600-4,500 px above the frame, so it knows I'm filming upward
→ reads street signs: NO STANDING, ONE WAY, YORK
→ flags anyone on a collision course with a countdown: "contact in 2.3 s" at the current pace
the bus came out as "clean-enirgybus". a lamp post was covering one letter, and it kept the typo instead of guessing
the countdown is the part I can't stop thinking about. Claude could help save lives on the road. someone just has to wire it into the traffic system the right way
would this be a useful feature?
Numex retweeted
DAMN, THIS BOARD PUTS 8 ARMS ON ONE BINARY, REBUILDS THE SDK AND HITS VERIFY 128/128 IN 0.12s
it runs the clean-room loop from this Opus 5.5 reverse engineering article, where one Touhou rebuild came back as 697 functions with 696 exact matches
the idea: rebuild an SDK directory from a binary, one arm per independent task, no code before the spec exists, and one rule on the footer: a catalog entry is not a network call
the split:
→ investigate: REA hands the agent a real disassembler through MCP, running locally
→ spec: every claim gets a tag, observation, inference or unknown, with the file and address
→ build: binary → AWS SDK → region catalog, each arm runs grip, transfer, place, return
→ verify: 50 inputs through both builds, 30 normal, 10 edge, 10 malformed
you only check:
→ the match rate the harness reports
→ the unknown tags, that's where the agent stopped guessing
→ effort: medium to navigate, high to annotate, max for obfuscated code
the line from the article I keep: "I think it matches" is not evidence
Numex retweeted
Trump called Jensen Huang. Live. On stage.
Jensen just said “put me on speaker.”
And then the whole room heard a number.
$20 trillion.
That’s how much investment Trump says is coming into the US right now.
Under the previous administration, he said, it was less than $1 trillion.
Same country. Same AI race.
A 20x gap, if you believe the claim.
At the same summit, Jensen was pushing back on “AI doomsday” predictions.
He called them unscientific and irresponsible.
So the CEO of the most valuable AI chip company is on stage.
And the President joins by phone.
When the AI story gets this big, it stops being tech news.
It becomes a money story.
Do you think $20 trillion is realistic?
Numex retweeted
Elon Musk just said something uncomfortable about AI.
“Humans will not. There won't be anything that humans can do that the AI and the robots can't do better.”
His vision goes far beyond chatbots.
AI could outperform humans at almost every job, while robots turn intelligence into real-world production.
But if machines can do everything better than us…
What exactly will give human life meaning?
This is the question nobody can ignore anymore.
Numex retweeted
Jerry Seinfeld turned down $110 million.
NBC offered him $5 million an episode for a tenth season. It was 1997, and Seinfeld was the biggest comedy on TV.
He said no.
Every year before the Christmas break, Jerry asked his co-stars if they wanted to keep going. In season 9, all three said they were done.
Jason Alexander explains why. He, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards were not partners in syndication.
Jerry and Larry David owned the show. The reruns would pay them for life.
Alexander says he has made less than $200,000 from them.
The cast was paid well, reportedly $600,000 an episode by the end. But Alexander says another season only tied them tighter to one character.
His words: “We were going to contribute to our own eventual demise as actors.”
Before the final taping, the four held hands backstage like every week. They called it the circle of power.
Same question today with AI: when your work builds something that pays forever, who owns it?
Who do you think was right, Jerry or the cast?
Numex retweeted
Elon Musk just admitted he may have sped up the AI race he was afraid of.
He helped launch OpenAI in 2015 to balance Google. Anthropic split off in 2021. His verdict: reality isn’t just an “interestingness maximizer.” It’s an “irony maximizer.”
Now count the irony. 1 lab became 2, and 2 became a race. He sued for $150B, and a jury in May ruled his claims fell outside the statute of limitations.
Then came the plot twist. He wrote that he was “clearly wrong” about Anthropic and called it the current AI leader.
My take: you can’t slow a race by adding runners. Every spin-out and every rival lab adds one more team with a reason to go faster.
Brake or gas? Which side are you on? Drop your take below.
Jerry Seinfeld turned down $110 million.
NBC offered him $5 million an episode for a tenth season. It was 1997, and Seinfeld was the biggest comedy on TV.
He said no.
Every year before the Christmas break, Jerry asked his co-stars if they wanted to keep going. In season 9, all three said they were done.
Jason Alexander explains why. He, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards were not partners in syndication.
Jerry and Larry David owned the show. The reruns would pay them for life.
Alexander says he has made less than $200,000 from them.
The cast was paid well, reportedly $600,000 an episode by the end. But Alexander says another season only tied them tighter to one character.
His words: “We were going to contribute to our own eventual demise as actors.”
Before the final taping, the four held hands backstage like every week. They called it the circle of power.
Same question today with AI: when your work builds something that pays forever, who owns it?
Who do you think was right, Jerry or the cast?
Numex retweeted
Anthropic’s CEO just put a date on it: 2027.
Dario Amodei says AI could be better than almost all humans at almost everything. It could take longer, he adds, but not “a whole bunch longer.”
He’s not an outside critic. He runs one of the labs building it.
The date isn’t the point. The question after it is: if machines do the work, how do humans find meaning?
His answer in 86 seconds: the idea that self-worth comes from economic labor will be invalidated.
“My true belief is that this is coming.”
Does 2027 sound too early or too late to you?
Numex retweeted
In the early days of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak faced a question that would follow them for years: what matters more, the money or the people who helped you make it?
Back in 1975, Atari hired them to build Breakout, an arcade game that had to run on as few chips as possible. Jobs took the assignment. Woz had the engineering skills to solve it.
There was one problem. Woz was already working full-time at Hewlett-Packard, so he spent four sleepless days getting the job done. The result was remarkable: just 45 chips, while Atari’s own engineers were using around 150.
Atari paid Jobs for the work. He told Woz the reward was $700 and handed him $350. But the actual payment had been roughly $5,000.
Woz accepted the money without questioning it. Years later, he discovered the truth in a book about Atari. By then, Apple had made both men incredibly wealthy.
And this wasn’t an isolated case. Before Apple went public in 1980, Jobs refused to give stock options to Daniel Kottke, a longtime friend who had helped build the company. Woz, meanwhile, shared his own shares with early employees who had been left out.
One man held on to the money. The other gave a meaningful part of his wealth away.
Jobs was undeniably brilliant at building a business. But brilliance and loyalty are two different things.
The real question isn't whether you can win in business. It's what you're willing to do to win, and who pays the price.