Financial Mindset

Singapore celebrated its 61st birthday with two films. One, Bersama Majulah , depicts the Southeast Asian country under siege by zombies; the other, Trace Project , tells an inspiring tale of a young man who grows up to become Singapore’s first astronaut on Mars. The twist? Neither film starred a human actor. Everything in both films—apart from their scripts—had been fully generated by AI. Generative AI in filmmaking is the first real proof of how the new technology can disrupt an established industry. It started with short-form content: According to Chinese state media, over 95% of the more than 120,000 Chinese microdramas released in the first quarter of 2026 were AI-generated, compared with nearly zero just a year ago. The technology is now encroaching on more established media: Last September, Hong Kong broadcaster TVB released a 10-episode short drama titled You, and Only You , the first of its kind in Hong Kong to feature AI-generated characters. (The network is now ...

A former senior federal official pleaded guilty Tuesday to defrauding the government of about $194 million, using invented classified programs to buy 298 gold bars, four luxury South Florida properties, watches and two BMWs. David J. Rush of Ashburn, Virginia, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in federal court in Alexandria, after reaching a tentative plea deal in September . Under the final agreement, he owes at least $195.4 million in restitution. The fraud caused $193.6 million in losses, according to court documents, and $1.8 million in private charter flights he billed to the government. Rush held senior executive posts and a TS/SCI clearance at an agency the filings call “Government Agency 1.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the CIA referred the case to the FBI after an internal investigation “identified potential crimes.” “David Rush abused his position and betrayed the public trust and should be held fully accountable for his ...

Mikel Arteta tells me he is not a fan of the word pressure, an external force that may make leaders freeze. He prefers to talk about expectation, desire, and fulfilling tasks. “It’s about putting a lot of focus on leading yourself,” he says. “And making very clear who you want to be, what you want to accomplish in life, what is your purpose, what drives you, what is your passion, and then making sure that you create your ecosystem around you to achieve.”   Arsenal, the English Premier League champions he manages, used to be the “bridesmaid club”, missing out again and again in the battle for the most lucrative title in world soccer. They were “chokers” who did not have what it takes to be truly elite.  Last year, that changed, as Arsenal won the title for the first time in 22 years. “We showed very important values not only in sport, but in life,” Arteta said at the time. “Perseverance, to be resilient, to be composed in moments when people are doubting. An...

World models are capturing the tech industry’s attention and investment dollars, amid growing expectations that AI will soon move beyond our screens and into the physical world of cars, robots, and other objects.  A slew of new startups are developing world models, which are typically based on video data rather than the text-based large language models like OpenAI’s GPT and Anthropic’s Claude. In just the last week, AMD announced plans to acquire World Labs for $8.2 billion in stock and video AI startup Runway unveiled the first open-weight version of its world model.  And just as generative AI helped bring about a broader industry to train and run LLMs, the rising popularity of world models is spurring new innovation and startups. On Monday, San Francisco-based Reactor said that it added Nvidia’s venture capital arm and Sapphire Ventures to its cap table, adding to a Series A round announced in May and bringing its total funding to $74 million.  Reactor, which emerg...

The TikTok creators arrived first. It was the summer of 2023, and Red Lobster had announced what it billed as an “iconic first”: “Ultimate Endless Shrimp Is Here to Stay All Day, Every Day.” The casual-dining chain was offering customers all the shrimp they could eat for $20—scampi, coconut, Alfredo-ed, skewered, or butterflied and deep-fried—not as a seasonal promotion but as a permanent fixture, along with a side dish and the brand’s famous Cheddar Bay Biscuits. “Insider tip,” the press release advised: “Avoid grabbing the extra biscuit to leave room for endless amounts of shrimp.” Red Lobster had unwittingly handed creators the perfect stage for a mukbang—the South Korean–born online genre in which hosts eat for an audience, sometimes to spectacular excess. Ambitious mukbang-ers eager to prove their gastronomic stamina descended on Red Lobster locations across the country to consume absurd quantities of shrimp. One YouTube video by Joey Kinsley, a.k.a. “Sir Yacht,” fea...

Nicolas Cage’s 2000 cult classic Gone in 60 Seconds took a minute. Clayton Lloyd Iley will be gone for 160 months. The 41-year-old Stephenville, Texas, businessman was sentenced to more than 13 years in federal prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas said . Prosecutors say he paid for more than 90 exotic and collector vehicles with money from his scheme. Iley ran an insurance brokerage out of Cross Plains, Texas, and from January 2020 through May 2026, prosecutors say he also moved money through two companies he controlled, including Spartan Global Security, which did business as “Black Eagle PMC” and offered private military contracting services. He told victims he could invest their money in a “Bonded Note” loan program that the Defense Department supposedly offered to private military contractors. The program didn’t exist, and instead, he collected more t...

As online sports betting surges in popularity and visibility, many Gen Zers are treating what was once a casual pastime as an investment strategy. Research from the Bank of America Institute found that one in five Americans view sports betting as an investment . Among Gen Z, that figure doubles to two in five. A recent Betterment survey of 1,000 U.S. retail investors dug deeper. It found that 52% of Gen Z investors redirected money intended for investing into sports betting in the past year, and 14% said they do so multiple times a month. Meanwhile, 26% of Gen Z investors said they treat sports betting as a deliberate part of their long-term financial strategy. The problem: Online sports betting is largely a losing game. Sportsbooks build a fee into every wager, known as the vig, which makes it difficult for a series of bets to turn a profit. BofA, which tracked payments flowing to and from betting platforms, found that customers across every generation recovered less tha...