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Free for ALL Friday
Sylvester Stallone Hid His Struggles for Decades. Now He’s Coming Clean.
Sylvester Stallone has loomed large in our popular imagination for 50 years. Now 80, and with a new memoir, he’s ready to examine his own life, his work and the impact it has had on our culture.
As he told me [not me, the NYT] in our candid and at times shocking conversations, he can “make a castle out of regrets” for what his drive and fame did to his mind and his body. He also explained how his very difficult childhood, with abusive and neglectful parents, motivated the tough-guy image he showed the world.
Q. Your dad was not only abusive, but he was competitive with you. Why do you think he was that way with you?
A. I don’t know. … They say a fly sitting on a ton of cow [expletive] thinks himself a king. He had this sort of imperiousness and he was cold as hell, and so my father was very, very cold and tough. There was a cat making noise outside the house. He went out, got the cat, took it into the laundry room, shot it and left it in the wash tub. I think he did that to impress me. Like, You’ll never be as tough as your old man.
Q. You keep using the word “tough.” But I don’t hear tough. I hear messed up.
A. You know, you’re right. I’m using “tough” as a masculine banner for something much more perverse and weird.
Link: New York Times Magazine
How AI-Powered Bungling by Florida Cops Cost a Father His Freedom and $45,000
An assistant manager was arrested and charged with a heinous crime he did not commit, all because someone else used his photos to impersonate him online.
The supermarket assistant manager was working a day shift in Jacksonville when he stepped out of the store’s office and saw two sheriff’s deputies talking with his boss — who then pointed directly at him. The officers walked over to the man and told him to place his hands behind his back, slapping him in cuffs in front of customers and coworkers.
Forced to spend the night in jail, Nick was bailed out by his wife, but was ordered by a court to live separately from his children, the youngest of whom was just 7 months old at the time. It was a “life-ruining” ordeal for Nick and his family, costing them $45,000 in lost wages and legal fees and traumatizing his kids.
An investigation reveals the 38-year-old was arrested, detained, and charged with heinous crimes — all because someone else pulled photos of him off the internet without his knowledge for the purpose of impersonating him and then messaged them to an undercover officer posing as a child during the sting operation.
Relying on artificial-intelligence-powered facial recognition tools, officers opted to arrest the man in the photos, Nick, and failed to do the basic investigative work that officers did routinely before AI came along.
Link: Sun Sentinel
Will A.I. Make Your Brain Lazy? Here’s What the New Research Actually Shows.
People are increasingly worried that if we rely on chatbots for thinking, our brains will become slower and less engaged. Is A.I. making us stupider? Scientists, too, want to know.
A team of researchers from the University of California, Irvine, and the education company McGraw Hill examined a decade of data from a popular online learning tool by McGraw Hill, starting in 2015.
Across millions of math sessions by a group that ranged from fifth graders to college students, the researchers compared performance from before 2022, when ChatGPT first came out, with the work that followed its arrival.
Researchers found that after 2022, the time students spent mulling over online test questions dropped precipitously on the questions readily handled by chatbots, while their performance improved. But when the students were given proctored tests away from their computers, their results were worse than they had been before A.I.
“Part of how A.I. is making us dumber,” says Dr. Adam Green, a cognitive neuroscientist at Georgetown University, is “undercutting the development of learning how to think in younger people that now have an alternative.”
Link: New York Times
The Gap Between the Rich and the Very, Very Rich Is Getting Wider
The 0.1% holds about 15% of the nation’s total wealth, with average household wealth of over $200 million each
The ultrawealthy aren’t just pulling away from average Americans. Buoyed by a stock-market boom that has added trillions of dollars to their net worth, the extremely rich are even pulling away from other rich Americans.
The top 0.1% wealthiest Americans have seen their total wealth more than double since the end of 2019, according to new data from the Federal Reserve. In dollar terms, the very richest Americans have gained a total of $14.5 trillion in wealth over that period, with most of that—about $10 trillion—coming from gains in stocks and mutual funds.
The 0.1% now control about $28 trillion, or about 15% of the nation’s total wealth, which amounts to nearly $186 trillion. The average wealth for a household in this group is more than $200 million.
The people who fall into this group aren’t usually traditional salaried workers. Rather, they are much more likely to be the owner of a bunch of car dealerships or an heir living off investment income.
Link: Wall Street Journal
How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes
Meta is exploiting a lucrative tax break intended to support research and experimentation. Its own accountants say the gambit is risky.
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta’s A.I. push is a tremendous success. “Our investments in A.I. are accelerating every major part of our core business,” he has told investors.
But when Meta files its taxes, it tells the Internal Revenue Service a different story. It claims that its A.I. data centers are a giant experiment that could fail, according to four people with knowledge of the company’s operations.
Here’s what Meta is doing: For tax purposes, the company classifies its enormous, multibillion-dollar data centers as “pilot models.” Under a tax credit created in the 1980s to spur innovation, companies can get a rebate for supplies, but only if they are being tested in an experimental effort, not standard business operations.
Characterizing its A.I. data centers as experimental is “kind of wild and out there,” said Andre Shevchuck, a partner at the advisory firm BPM who specializes in the research and experimentation tax credit. The move caused some unease within Meta’s finance department.
Link: New York Times
Nurse Charged With Helping Man in Hospital Escape From ICE Custody
FBI accuses Chloe Freeman of federal misdemeanor in case of undocumented Mexican migrant arrested in Michigan
The federal government is charging a Michigan nurse accused of illegally helping an undocumented immigrant who was being treated in a hospital escape from immigration officials, court records unsealed this week show.
An FBI agent’s declaration accuses Chloe Renae Freeman, 33, of “instigating or assisting escape,” a federal misdemeanor, by helping a patient leave an Ann Arbor hospital while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in May.
Freeman, who worked at the hospital at the time, told hospital investigators she did not agree with federal immigration officials “separating people from their families” and that she “was going to set him free,” the FBI complaint says.
“Law enforcement have been unable to locate OBP since his escape from Trinity Health Ann Arbor hospital,” the document adds.
Link: The Guardian
Trump Administration Diverts Human Rights Funds to Push Far-Right Agenda Abroad
Support such as for white Afrikaners and anti-communism reveals how US is redefining what qualifies as human rights
With hours left before the funding expires, the Trump administration is pushing to direct more than $175m of the state department’s flagship human rights fund to a slate of awards that includes a huge $40m grant for an anti-communism fund, support for a group advancing white Afrikaner rights in South Africa, a campaign against Brazil’s supreme court and programs that would reward ideological allies in Europe who protect “western civilizational norms.”
Sources with knowledge of the grant process have told the Guardian that the awards were personally lobbied for by members of the Trump administration, and reflect interests that include JD Vance’s warnings of the collapse of traditional western values in Europe and Stephen Miller’s push against immigration and to support white minorities in countries like South Africa.
“The story for me is the high-level – including White House-directed – attention on these programs,” said a person familiar with the discussions over the democracy awards. “These awards have been briefed at the highest levels of the department and have buy-in from the White House.”
Link: The Guardian
‘No Fatties, No Trannies, No Beardos, No Weirdos, No Wimps’: Hegseth Lays Out His Military Vision
In his “State of the Force” address, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth focused on the culture war and accused reporters of “treason” over Iran war coverage.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of junior officers and enlisted troops at a base in Virginia on Wednesday to extol the virtues of basing Pentagon policy on culture-war issues and to complain about the news media.
Calling it a “State of the Force” address, Mr. Hegseth doubled down on his decisions to fire dozens of admirals and generals, bar transgender people from serving and eliminate diversity programs. And not for the first time, he used vulgarities to describe certain groups of Americans.
“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” he said of the people who he believes have no place in the military.
As he pointed to a few reporters in the back of the auditorium, the defense secretary criticized “anti-American losers in our media,” accusing them of aiding the country’s enemies through their reporting on the war in Iran. “It’s treason, actually,” he said of the reporting. “I mean, I hate to have to say it, but it has to be said.”
Link: New York Times
A Pentagon Influencer Called Liberal Women a ‘Pestilence’ Who Will End Western Civilization
Kurt Schlichter was part of a task force rooting out so-called woke ideologies at the military’s war colleges. He has called to bar childless adults from voting.
A retired Army colonel turned social media influencer, who has worked with the Pentagon to promote Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s agenda, has a history of praising dictators, denigrating women and minorities, and suggesting that only people with children should be allowed to vote.
In an August 2021 thread on X, Schlichter demanded an authoritarian crackdown on “liberals.” “We must, by any means necessary, force them to be like us. No quarter. No compromise,” Schlichter wrote.
Schlichter also suggested that people who don’t have children, who do not serve in the military, and who don’t own property should not be allowed to vote. “Penalize barren, non-familial lifestyles through taxes and disqualification from political participation,” Schlichter wrote.
“These self-righteous crones are a pestilence, a plague upon Western society, a group of doggedly ignorant feminist/chauvinists playing out their personal psychodramas on the world stage whose antics, if unchecked, will inevitably lead to the fall of civilization,” he wrote.
Link: Wired
Backup: https://archive.is/W0iz4#selection-743.0-747.161
Read the Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s 2026 Interview With TIME
President Donald Trump sat down for an interview with TIME at the White House on Sept. 28.
TIME: Given the news this week, I have to ask: Why should Americans believe that you respect the free press when you’re restricting access of some of our colleagues to the White House?
Trump: Because I do respect the free press, but I don’t respect fake news. I’ll give you an example. CNN and MSDNC, which is MS Now—they changed the name because it does so poorly.
He’s a Trump-appointed judge. He was appointed by you.
Yeah, he was. He was. It’s one of those things.
Last week, you said you might annihilate Iran. That was the word you used.
Yeah, I would do that. It’s possible.
How can the president of peace be calling for the annihilation of an entire people?
Because by annihilating Iran, we’ve created peace in the world. With Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace.
Link: TIME
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. See you in the comments!