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2011. Bloomberg asks Elon Musk about a Chinese EV maker called BYD.
He starts laughing before he even answers.
The reporter presses: "Warren Buffett owns 10% of that. Why do you laugh?"
Musk, still laughing: "Have you seen their car?"
He goes on: "I don't think it's particularly attractive, the technology is not very strong... their focus should be on making sure they don't die in China."
BYD didn't die in China. In 2025, it became the world's biggest EV maker, selling more electric cars than Tesla.
Munger and Buffett had bought that 10% stake three years before this interview. While Musk was laughing at the car, Berkshire was already holding it.
In 2023, someone posted the old clip. Musk replied himself: "That was many years ago. Their cars are highly competitive these days."
He wasn't wrong that the car looked rough in 2011. He was wrong about what "not attractive yet" was going to turn into.
Laughing at a competitor is easy. The hard part is guessing which rough draft becomes the finished product.
In 1992, Paul Verhoeven asked Sharon Stone to take off her underwear for Basic Instinct. He promised the camera would not see anything.
They were shooting the famous interrogation scene. Verhoeven told her the white cotton was reflecting the studio lights. He guaranteed nothing would be visible on screen. Stone trusted him.
Months later, she sat in a screening room watching the final cut. The scene played. She realized she was completely exposed. She walked straight up to Verhoeven and slapped him across the face.
But Verhoeven tells a different story.
He claims Stone knew exactly what she was doing. According to him, she watched the playback on the monitor immediately after the shot. He says her outrage months later was pure panic, fueled by agents who told her the scene would ruin her career.
Stone called her lawyer. Under Screen Actors Guild rules, she had the legal power to force the studio to cut the shot.
In the end, she let it stay. She admitted it was exactly what the character would do.
The consequences were a mix of massive success and a hidden trap.
Financially, Basic Instinct grossed over $350 million worldwide. Stone was paid a flat fee of $500,000. Since she was not a proven star before filming, her contract had no backend points. The studio made hundreds of millions off that single shot. She saw zero extra dollars from the box office.
Career-wise, the scene made her a global superstar, but it boxed her in. For the next decade, Hollywood only wanted her to play the cold seductress. She had to fight aggressively to prove she was a serious dramatic actress.
That struggle eventually led to her Oscar-nominated role in Casino, which finally allowed her to command $5 to $7 million per film.
As for the director, the broken trust was permanent. Stone and Verhoeven never worked together again.
Twenty-four years ago today, Jason Mizell was shot and killed inside the Queens studio he built. He was 37.
The world knew him as Jam Master Jay, the DJ of Run-D.M.C. Kangol hat, dark glasses, hands on the turntables.
He played on the records that took hip hop from neighborhood parties to MTV and a sneaker deal with Adidas.
Run-D.M.C. was the first rap act to earn gold, platinum, and multi-platinum albums, and their sound helped make rap a business.
In Queens, he ran a studio where younger artists could record close to home. He was there the night he was shot.
After he died, the money kept moving. People kept buying the records. His face stayed on shirts and posters. The songs kept turning up in movies and on the radio.
His family did not get the money his work had earned. Instead they got unpaid taxes, old contracts, and a years-long fight over what his share of Run-D.M.C. was worth. His widow spent years in court just trying to claim what he was owed.
The murder case moved slower. For most of two decades, no one was charged. In February 2024, a federal jury convicted two men of killing him.