Welcome to The Weekly Wire.
A running collection of the stories, stats, nostalgia, news and general nonsense worth talking about this week. Updated throughout the week as we find more things worth talking about.
50 Years Later, Rocky Is Getting an Origin Story—About Rocky
I Play Rocky, the film about Sylvester Stallone fighting to make the original Rocky, received a strong festival reception and is emerging as a possible awards contender.
Claude Is Now Helping Build the Next Claude
Anthropic says Claude now leads 26% of the research and development work involved in building Anthropic’s next generation of AI models, up from essentially zero in February.
Even more striking: Claude now collaborates on roughly 90% of the company’s AI R&D tasks, although humans remain involved and the system isn’t autonomously designing its successor.
Toys R Us To Open 120 Stores In Huge Expansion
What year is this?
Here’s some good news for adults who “didn’t wanna grow up,” as the old ad jingle had it.
Toys “R” Us is kicking off its biggest expansion in nearly a decade, opening 120 stores amid surging demand from adult customers, the company said Thursday.
The retailer — whose 2017 bankruptcy devastated the toy industry — inked one-year leases across the country as toy sales notched their biggest spike since 2020, according to Circana, which tracks consumer data.
‘American Idol’ ditches Hollywood for Georgia after two decades as California loses another production
After more than two decades in Hollywood, American Idol is moving production to Georgia.
The show will film its upcoming season in the Atlanta area, where Georgia offers production tax credits of up to 30%. The move comes as Los Angeles continues losing TV production to states offering lower costs and more aggressive incentives.
College football’s best story this week is Lane Kiffin going back to Ole Miss
Week 3 has three ranked-vs.-ranked games, but the most obvious content game is LSU Tigers football visiting Ole Miss Rebels football with Lane Kiffin returning to Oxford.
The Fed Didn’t Just Raise Rates. It Changed Direction
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate Wednesday to a 3.75%–4.00% target range, its first increase since 2023, and signaled another increase could come before year-end. U.S. stocks finished lower after initially swinging around the announcement, while global markets were mixed Thursday morning.
The NCAA Admits Western Michigan Beat Michigan
The NCAA’s FBS oversight committee acknowledged that replay protocols were not properly followed at the end of Western Michigan’s controversial loss to Michigan in Week 1 but said it does not have the authority to overturn the result of the game.
Trump Doubled Down on the $5,000 Checks
President Donald Trump said Sunday that his proposed $5,000 payment to every U.S. adult would be “easy” to fit into the federal budget if Republicans retain Congress in November. House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged that Congress would have to approve the plan, while Republicans themselves remain divided over the cost and effect on the national debt and inflation.
AI Stocks Are Falling Because AI CEOs Want to Slow AI Down
Nasdaq 100 futures were down roughly 1.7%, while Nvidia fell more than 2% premarket and several chipmakers dropped 5%–6% after leaders from Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI publicly backed slowing the pace of frontier AI development because of safety concerns.
Until now, markets have mostly treated faster AI development as automatically bullish:
more chips
more data centers
more spending
more growth.
Now investors have to consider something different:
What if the companies themselves intentionally slow down?
That could affect trillions of dollars of expected infrastructure spending and valuations.
Paramount is Threatening to Leave California
California could lose nearly 58,000 jobs and $21.2 billion in annual economic activity if Paramount follows through on threats to move its headquarters and operations out of the state, according to a leaked economic report. Paramount is considering Georgia, Tennessee or Texas as it battles California and 11 other states trying to block its Warner Bros. Discovery merger. The report estimates California could also lose as much as $1.17 billion a year in state and local tax revenue.
President Trump Comes Out In Favor of Flock Cameras
Trump backs Flock’s controversial surveillance cameras while opposing efforts to slow US AI development amid growing concerns over technology risks.
He said he liked them for law enforcement. There have already been numerous firings of police officers who have abused the technology in their job.
Oil Is Back Above $108 — and Markets Now Expect the Fed to Raise Rates
Oil prices surged Monday as attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure and Gulf shipping deepened concerns about supply. At the same time, investors pushed the probability of a Federal Reserve rate hike this week to nearly 90%, creating a difficult combination of higher energy costs, higher borrowing costs and weaker stock markets.
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