Nicolas Puech, heir of the Hermes family, pictured on his estate in Spain in March 2011 —
A descendant of Europe’s richest family has reportedly begun a process to adopt his middle-aged gardener, planning to leave him at least half of his roughly €12 billion ($13 billion) fortune.
Nicolas Puech, 80, a fifth-generation descendant of the founder of French luxury goods company Hermes, wants to cancel a contract that would bequeath his fortune to the Isocrates Foundation, which he founded, and instead make his employee a legal heir.
Swiss newspapers Tribune de Geneve and 24 heures reported the news earlier this month.
The charitable foundation is contesting Puech’s plan to cut ties, which it says it learned of only recently. “From a legal point of view, a unilateral cancellation of the contract of inheritance seems void and unfounded,” the organization said in a statement shared with CNN. “The foundation has therefore opposed the cancellation of the contract, while leaving the door open for discussions with its founder.”
Referring to the Swiss media reports on Puech’s “wish to adopt his employee,” the charity said it wasn’t in a position “to judge or comment (on) this initiative,” adding that it “leaves it to the relevant authorities to decide on this matter.” CNN has contactedthe billionaire’slawyer for comment.
Established by Puech in 2011 and funded by him since, the Isocrates Foundation supports public interest journalism and civil society organizations working toward a “healthy digital public space,” according to its website.
The inheritance contract between the foundation and Puech, who isn’t known to have children, reportedly provides for his shares in Hermes to be left to the foundation. That is, unless he becomes a father, in which case his child would be entitled to a part of the inheritance, and at least 50% in the case of a son.
Puech purportedly owns 5.7% of Hermes, a company known for its silk scarves and leather handbags. A post-pandemic boom in demand for luxury goods has propelled Hermes to a valuation of nearly €211 billion ($230.8 billion), making Puech’s stake worth around €12 billion.
Hermes stopped breaking out Puech’s stake in 2016 but listed him as holding a 5.8% stake in its 2015 annual report. The latest report lists “other members of the Hermes family group” as holding a 5.7% share in the firm.
Richard Ekstract is mentioned in a recent WSJ article which features the book “Warhol After Warhol: Secrets, Lies, & Corruption in the Art World.” Richard got cheated out of millions of dollars because he couldn’t get his Warhol painting authenticated. Read on for the details.
Roger M. Heuberger emailed this recent WSJ article to Marcia Grand and me. I coincidentally bought the ereader version of the book a week ago. Thank you Roger.
By Belinda Lacks
In 2003, Richard Dorment received a call from a man named Joe Simon, a film producer who had bought a print of Andy Warhol’s “Red Self-Portrait” in 1989 for $195,000. Mr. Simon now wanted to sell his print for $2 million, but there was a wrinkle: It had been declared a fake by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. Mr. Simon asked Mr. Dorment, an art historian and, at the time, the chief art critic at the Daily Telegraph, to offer some expert insight into why the print had been rejected. Mr. Dorment said he didn’t want to get involved—he’s no Warhol expert, he demurred—but Mr. Simon steamrolled over his objections and eventually pulled him into a high-stakes dispute with a formidable art organization.
At the heart of the debate were Warhol’s working methods. To mass-produce his paintings, Warhol used a commercial printing technique called silk-screening, a quick process for making multiple copies of an image. Prior to Warhol, silk-screening was rarely used for fine art, but it proved to have many advantages over traditional printmaking methods, such as etching, which limits the number of prints that can be made. Early in his career, to create texture, Warhol would add paint flourishes by hand to his silk-screened pictures. By the 1970s, most of his work was produced by third parties, with the artist delivering instructions to his printers over the phone. Outsourcing further allowed him to churn out so many prints that his art dealers feared he’d flood the market. It also made him one of the world’s easiest artists to fake.
Today, discerning which Warhol pictures are genuine is the business of authenticators, whose trained eyes and in-depth knowledge are supposed to be bulwarks against forgeries. Sometimes authenticators make bad calls, prompting other experts to weigh in and correct the error. With reputations and multimillion-dollar fortunes at stake, convincing an authenticator to reverse a decision is rarely easy. Armed with conclusive evidence, however, it shouldn’t be impossible—unless, as Mr. Dorment discovered, you’re going up against a powerful, moneyed and secretive authentication board. “Warhol After Warhol: Secrets, Lies, & Corruption in the Art World” is Mr. Dorment’s riveting memoir of how he tried to prove the authenticity—and importance—of Mr. Simon’s “Red Self-Portrait.”
The elements at the root of the global economy, the tragedy of Benedict Arnold, how to tell if you’ve got a real Warhol and more. Mr. Dorment initially concedes that Mr. Simon’s painting looks like a fake. “Red Self-Portrait” is one of Warhol’s best-known works, but it was originally made as a series of 11 silk screens in 1964, a year before Mr. Simon’s print was produced. The subject matter of both versions is the same—the expressionless face and shoulders of a young Andy Warhol, photographed in an automatic photo booth in Times Square—but there are some critical differences. The first batch was printed on linen (Warhol’s preferred material) with an acrylic-paint background; Mr. Simon’s was printed on cotton duck using a plastic-based ink that gives the picture a shiny surface.
The authentication board recognized the 1964 series as genuine; in 2006 one print from the series sold for $3.7 million. But the board deemed Mr. Simon’s picture to be counterfeit, and stamped the back with a red “Denied”—a stain that, in effect, makes it worthless. Mr. Dorment spends much of his scholarly yet wholly accessible account discrediting that judgment. Drawing from eyewitness statements of those who knew and worked with Warhol, the author argues that not only did the artist authorize the second printing, he also approved of it—so much so that he chose the 1965 version over the original to be the cover image of his first catalogue raisonné, published in 1970.
Warhol’s motivation for producing the later series explains its perceived faults. In 1965 Warhol’s friend, a magazine publisher named Richard Ekstract, arranged for the artist to borrow a prototype of an early consumer videotape recorder. Warhol quickly realized the camera’s filmmaking potential and wanted more time with it, so he cut Ekstract a deal: For an extension on the use of the camera and other electronic equipment, Warhol would produce a new set of “Red Self-Portraits” for the publisher. To save money, Warhol’s business manager hatched the idea of turning over the original acetates to Ekstract so the publisher could foot the costly silk-screening bill. Since Warhol didn’t directly supervise the work, the pictures look very different from their predecessors.
Why, then, would the Warhol board deny the authenticity of the second series? “As far as I could see,” Mr. Dorment writes, “they did this for no other reason than because the date of its creation did not accord with their predetermined belief that Warhol did not start making ‘hands-off’ works until the 1970s.” In any case, the board refused to disclose the rationale behind its decision, so Mr. Simon spent years gathering documentation to disprove it. Having failed to accomplish that, in 2007 he brought a $20 million lawsuit against the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the authentication board’s parent organization. Mr. Simon accused the foundation of artificially driving up the value of its own collection—from which it occasionally sells pieces—by removing legitimate competing artwork from the market. (The board contacted other owners of the later “Red Self-Portrait” series and invited them to submit their pictures for authentication with, according to Mr. Dorment, “the deliberate intention of mutilating them.”) Mr. Dorment wrote articles in the New York Review of Books in support of Mr. Simon’s picture, attracting the wrath of the foundation’s president, Joel Wachs, who, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, accused Mr. Dorment of applying pressure on the board to authenticate a different painting owned by Mr. Simon that was truly a forgery. Mr. Dorment calls the allegation a libel designed to “damage my reputation for integrity both as a critic and as an art historian.” The Guardian eventually printed a correction.
Mr. Simon’s case proved ill-fated. A friend, the Russian oligarch Leonid Rozhetskin, promised to pay his legal bills. But before the trial even began, Rozhetskin disappeared and was later found dead. (Apparently Rozhetskin had fallen afoul of one of Vladimir Putin’s cronies.) That left Mr. Simon at a disadvantage against the deep-pocketed foundation. Mr. Dorment recounts the courtroom antics in painful detail, as the defense counsel buried the real issue of authenticity under what he describes as a mountain of theatrics, obstructions and diversions designed to prolong the trial. The foundation ended up spending $7 million in legal fees, forcing Mr. Simon, who could no longer afford litigation, to drop the case. Mr. Dorment’s is an entirely one-sided account; we never really get to hear the foundation’s version of any of these events. But then he might say that is his point: In the context of Warhol, the foundation’s version of history shouldn’t be the only official version allowed. For Mr. Dorment, the board’s refusal to recognize the picture is an affront to Warhol’s legacy—the very thing the foundation was established to protect. The picture is not only authentic, Mr. Dorment asserts, but “the hinge that opened the door into Warhol’s hands-off working methods.”
In 2011 the authentication board stopped accepting submissions from the public but, as Mr. Dorment notes, continues to wield influence through its catalogue raisonné, which excludes the 1965 edition of “Red Self-Portrait,” rendering it virtually untouchable. In 2022 Richard Ekstract—who died earlier this year—offered his unsigned “Red Self-Portrait” for auction. Estimated to fetch between $500,000 to $700,000, it failed to sell.
Andre Braugher, a prolific and critically acclaimed actor whose simmering intensity and commanding presence earned him an Emmy Award for his role as a detective on television drama “Homicide: Life on the Street” and laughs as a stern, tart-tongued police captain on the sitcom “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” died on Monday. He was 61.
His death was confirmed on Tuesday by his longtime publicist Jennifer Allen. She said that Mr. Braugher, who lived in New Jersey, had died after a brief illness. She did not say where he died.
Projecting a no-nonsense authority, Mr. Braugher was a natural for police roles, which also included turns as a detective opposite Telly Savalas in television movie reboots of the 1970s police series “Kojak” in 1989 and 1990, and as another cop in “Hack,” a series about a disgraced police officer who becomes a taxi-driving vigilante, seen on CBS from 2002 to 2004.
Even so, Mr. Braugher, a Stanford University graduate who trained at the Juilliard School in New York, also enjoyed a fruitful and multifaceted career as a stage, film and television actor in roles that did not involve a badge or a sidearm.
He made his film debut as Cpl. Thomas Searles, a proper Boston intellectual turned soldier, in the 1989 film “Glory,” about the storied 54th Massachusetts Regiment, one of the Union’s first Black fighting units in the Civil War. The film also starred Denzel Washington (who won an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role), Morgan Freeman and Matthew Broderick, who played the regiment’s white abolitionist leader, Col. Robert Gould Shaw. (Shaw was a childhood friend of Mr. Braugher’s character.)
“I’d rather not work than do a part I’m ashamed of,” Mr. Braugher said in interview that year with The New York Times. “I can tell you now that my mother will be proud of me when she sees me in this role.”
Among his other big-screen roles were an egomaniacal actor in “Get on the Bus” (1996), Spike Lee’s talky road movie about a group of Black men traveling to Washington for the Million Man March; the captain of a capsized ocean liner in “Poseidon,” the 2006 remake of the 1970s disaster movie “The Poseidon Adventure”; and the United States secretary of defense in “Salt” (2010), an espionage thriller starring Angelina Jolie.
In one of his last films, Mr. Braugher brought gravitas to the role of Dean Baquet, the former executive editor of The Times, in “She Said” (2022), a drama about two Times reporters’ efforts to document sexual abuse by the film mogul Harvey Weinstein, which helped ignite the #MeToo movement.
He was also a respected stage actor who appeared in several New York Shakespeare Festival productions, including “Measure for Measure,” “Twelfth Night” “As You Like It” and “Henry V,” for which his performance in the title role earned him an Obie Award in 1997.
But it was his role as Detective Frank Pembleton on “Homicide” that proved indelible. A gritty police procedural series set in crime-ravaged quarters of Baltimore, “Homicide” ran on NBC from 1993 to 1999.
“We had a lot of great, incredibly talented actors on that show, but we could see that he would be the quarterback of the team,” Tom Fontana, the show’s executive producer, was quoted as saying in a recent article in Variety. “He has great nobility about him.”
While the role made him a familiar face in prime time, Mr. Braugher later expressed reservations about the heroic portrayals of police officers on television, particularly in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
“I look up after all these decades of playing these characters, and I say to myself, it’s been so pervasive that I’ve been inside this storytelling, and I, too, have fallen prey to the mythologythat’s been built up,” he said in a 2020 interview with Variety. “It’s almost like the air you breathe or the water that you swim in. It’s hard to see. But because there are so many cop shows on television, that’s where the public gets its information about the state of policing. Cops breaking the law to quote, ‘defend the law,’ is a real terrible slippery slope.”
With “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” Mr. Braugher would get the opportunity to upend some of those cop-show clichés by lampooning them.
Andre Keith Braugher was born in Chicago on July 1, 1962, and grew up on the city’s West Side. His mother, Sally, worked for the United States Postal Service. His father, Floyd, was a heavy-equipment operator for the State of Illinois.
“We lived in a ghetto,” he told The Times in 2014. “I could have pretended I was hard or tough and not a square. I wound up not getting in trouble. I don’t consider myself to be especially wise, but I will say that it’s pretty clear that some people want to get out and some people don’t. I wanted out.”
Mr. Braugher attended St. Ignatius College Prep, a prestigious Jesuit high school in Chicago, and later earned a scholarship to Stanford. His father, who wanted him to be an engineer, was furious when he gravitated to acting instead.
“Show me Black actors who are earning a living,” he recalled his father telling him. “What the hell are you going to do, juggle and travel the country?”
After graduating from Stanford with a major in mathematics, he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Juilliard School.
Mr. Braugher insisted on living in New Jersey even though he often worked in California. Among his other roles in acclaimed television series, he played an unorthodox physician on the ABC drama “Gideon’s Crossing” (2000-1) and the car salesman Owen Thoreau Jr. on the TNT series “Men of a Certain Age” (2009-11). He also starred in the sixth and final season of the Paramount+ legal drama “The Good Fight” (2017-22).
Mr. Braugher won an Emmy for “Homicide” in 1998 and another in 2006 for his role as the steely leader of a heist crew in the FX mini-series “Thief,” set in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
He is survived by his wife, the actress Ami Brabson; his sons, Michael, Isaiah and John Wesley; his brother, Charles Jennings; and his mother. His father died in 2011.
Mr. Braugher took a marked detour into comedy in 2013 with “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” playing Capt. Raymond Holt, an erudite if stiff precinct commander. He received four Emmy nominations and won two Critics Choice Awards for best supporting actor in a comedy series.
It was a counterintuitive role on a number of levels. For one, Mr. Braugher had little experience playing for laughs — indeed, it was a joke on the show that his character was so rigid, he had to strain to smile, even if he was always good for a devastating wisecrack.
“I’d never done it before,” he told Variety. “ Am I any good? I remember turning to my wife and asking her, ‘Is this funny?’ And she said, ‘Yes, of course, you’re not being deceived.’ But I kept looking at it, saying to myself, ‘Is this good?’ I couldn’t really judge.”
He also flouted stereotypes with his portrayal of Capt. Holt as a gay character whose sexual orientation is merely a matter of fact, not a source of amusement.
“As long as there’s no pink hot pants and singing ‘Y.M.C.A.,’ then everything’s OK,” Mr. Braugher said in a 2018 video interview. “Typically, when you see gay characters on shows, they’re goofballs or caricatures,” he added. “But this is one more facet of Holt as opposed to being Holt’s defining characteristic, so that’s what’s important to me.”
His teenage son, he said, asked him, “You’re playing a gay police captain?” “I said ‘No, I’m playing the police captain who’s gay.’ So we have to sit down and understand what that distinction is.”
In 1974, early in Diane von Furstenberg’s fashion career, she debuted the wrap dress—a fitted, feminine garment for the modern woman just joining the workplace. Within two years, she sold five million of them. Half a century later, ladies around the world are still wearing the garment. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Fashion & Lace Museum, in von Furstenberg’s native Brussels, has devoted an exhibition to it, and Rizzoli has filled a book with essays about and images of the dress. Von Furstenberg has been jetting around the globe since long before she designed the wrap dress. Here, she shares a few travel tips.
Last flight you took? I came back from Europe a week ago.
What do you wear to the airport? I wear comfortable clothes. I take my makeup off before—I don’t travel with makeup.
Check bags or carry-on only? La petite valse, as we say in French, is the focal point of my life. I travel the lightest of anyone you’ve ever met. That’s also because I make clothes that take no room, are extremely packable, and easy to mix and match. My best design ideas have always come when I pack. One of the famous things that I say is “You know how to pack, you know how to live.” If you pack lightly, you live lightly. What takes the most room is your toiletries and your shoes, and I try to simplify that as much as possible.
Items you can’t fly without? I always have some kind of warm scarf with me. In my bag, strangely enough, I always have jewelry, my diary, my iPad—I can’t travel without my phone and my iPad. I have my must-have medicine, which is nothing much.
How do you pass time on the plane? I read, or I listen to a book. I’m addicted to jigsaw puzzles on my iPad. You can do a jigsaw puzzle with your own photographs, which is fun. When you do a jigsaw puzzle and you listen to a book, they are two parts of your brain that don’t conflict. It makes me feel less guilty because if I do only the puzzle, I feel like I’m wasting my time.
Are you a nervous flier? I’m not nervous because I’m not a nervous liver. I love long flights because when you are in flight, it’s being in no-man’s-land. I love being in no-man’s-land.
I always hear people have anxiety to leave. I’ve never had anxiety to leave. I am happy to leave because it’s an adventure. I’m a very content traveler.
Advice for travelers? Packing is such a big part of traveling. If you pack well, it means you have a clear understanding of where you are going and what you will be doing. If your bag is organized, traveling is easier.
Miami, FL 33137 delacruzcollection.org House in Motion/ New Perspectives
Christina Quarles
Elizabeth Webb
Ilona Szwarc
Murjoni Merriweather
Patricia Ayres
Victoria Martinez
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El Espacio 23
2270 NW 23rd St.
Miami, FL 33142
elespacio23.org
To Weave the Sky: Textile Abstractions Gabriel Chaile
Gisela McDaniel
Karina Peisajovich
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ICA Miami
61 NE 41 St
Miami, FL 33137 icamiami.org
Collection Highlights Melissa Joseph
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Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami
770 NE 125th street North Miami, FL 33161
mocanomi.org
Juan Francisco Elso: Por America
Karlo Ibarra
Maria de los Angeles Rodriguez Jiménez
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The Bunker
444 Bunker Rd
West Palm Beach, FL 33405 thebunkerartspace.com Collection Highlights
Bony Ramirez
Cajsa von Zeipel
Lucia Hierro
Margarita Cabrera
Raul de Nieves
Tschabala Self
Valerie Hegarty
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Boca Raton Museum of Art
501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, FL 33432
bocamuseum.org Smoke and Mirrors: Magical Thinking in Contemporary Art
Mark Thomas Gibson
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Exhibitions
MiMo / Little River Ariel Baron Robbins and Leo Castaneda in A Public XR Metaverse mud.foundation
Elisabeth Condon: Tempis Fugit at Emerson Dorsch emersondorsch.com
Ellon Gibbs, Cameron Platter and Typoe in OMGWTF at Primary Projects thisisprimary.com
Joyce Billet, Marisa Telleria and Vickie Pierre in You Are Here at Dimensions Variable dimensionsvariable.net
Sandra Ramos and Marlon Portales in Text/Image at Pan American Projects panamericanart.com
Patricia Schnall Gutierrez: Painting and Drawing at BlackShip Gallery blackship,gallery
Allapattah/ Liberty City
Basil Kincaid and Ornella Pocetti in In Spirtual Light at Mindy Solomon Gallery mindysolomon.com
Alex Nunez in Archepelagic Narratives of Female Metamorphosis at Collective 62 thecollective62.com
Design District
Su Su: Impressions at David Castillo davidcastillogallery.com
Sandra Ramos: Entropydoscopes at Pan American Art Projects second location grand opening, panamericanart.com
Omar Barquet in Landscape of Memories at Zilberman Gallery zilbermangallery.com
Miami Beach Alejandra Moros and Emiliana Henriquez in Bounce at Oolite Arts oolitearts.org
Juana Valdes, Mette Tommerup and Lydia Rubio in Port Miami Public Art, 1103 North Cruise Boulevard
Chemu Ng’ok in Shadowboxing It: Painting Peripheries at Central Fine centralfine.com
Edison Penafiel: Run, Run, Run Like The Wind, Public Art at 41st Street and Pine Tree Drive Opa Locka
Adama Delphine Fawundu and Victoria Undondian in Fragmented Worlds / Coherent Lives tennorthgroup.com Hollywood South Florida Cultural Consortium at Art and Culture Center Hollywood
artandculturecenter.org
Ana Samoylova
Hermes Berrio
Misael Soto
Regina Jestrow
Vincent Miranda
Special Projects Allapattah Derrick Adams, Bony Ramirez, Lauren Halsey and Naama Tsabar in Gimme Shelter at Historic Hampton House, 4240 NW 27th Ave
Design District
Devin B. Johnson and Lauren Halsey in FORMS by Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch
December 5-10, 35 NE 40th St Kennedy Yanko: Soul Talk
December 5 – 10, 95 NE 40th St
Carlos Rigau and Cristina Lei Rodruguez in Making Miami, December 6-25 makingmiami.com Miami Beach Merav & Halil and Marlon Portales in MUSES curated by Tam Gryn
December 6-8, 1100 Lincoln Road
Jarvis Boyland and Chiffon Thomas in Bedroom Bathroom
December 5-9, triangleprojectsmiamishow.as.me
Christina Pettersson in No Vacancy at The Cadillac Hotel
November 16- December 14, 3925 Collins Ave Mimo/Little River PJ Mills, Peter Hosfeld and David Rohn in Feria Clandestina
December 7-9, 5940 Biscayne Blvd Coconut Grove Sandra Ramos in Vuelve a nosotros tus ojos. La Caridad nos une. Santuario Nuestra Senora de la Caridad
December 4- January 15, 3609 S Miami Ave Downtown Polen Cerci in A World of Artistry
December 7-15, Intercontinental Hotel,100 Chopin Plaza
Rose Marie Cromwell and Marisa Telleria in AIM Biennial
aimbiennial.org Mark Thomas Gibson in Miami MoCAAD: Soul Basel
December 4, 1000 Northwest 2nd Avenue miamimocaad.org Little Havana Amy Bravo, Karlo Ibarra and Joiri Minaya in Caribbean Dreams by Good to Know FYI
December 6-8, 3555 SW 8th St Miami Shores Samara Ash: Lady Unity & Cardinal public mural unveiling
While artificial intelligence has taken the limelight over the past year, technology that can appear to operate like human brains has been top of mind for researchers, investors and tech executives in Silicon Valley and beyond for more than a decade.
Here are some of the people involved in the origins of the modern A.I. movement who have influenced the technology’s development.
Sam Altman
Mr. Altman is the chief executive of OpenAI, the San Francisco A.I. lab that made the chatbot ChatGPT that went viral over the past year and ushered in recognition of the power of generative artificial intelligence. Mr. Altman helped start OpenAI after meeting with Elon Musk about the technology in 2015. At the time, Mr. Altman ran Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley start-up incubator.
Dario Amodei
Mr. Amodei, an A.I. researcher who joined OpenAI early on, runs the A.I. start-up Anthropic. A former researcher at Google, he helped set OpenAI’s research direction but left in 2021 after disagreements about the path the company was taking. That year, he founded Anthropic, which is dedicated to creating safe A.I. systems.
Bill Gates
Mr. Gates,a founder of Microsoft and for many years the richest man in the world, was long skeptical of how powerful A.I. could become. Then in August 2022, he was given a demonstration of OpenAI’s GPT-4, the A.I. model underlying ChatGPT. After seeing what GPT-4 could do, Mr. Gates became an A.I. convert. His endorsement helped Microsoft move aggressively to capitalize on generative A.I.
Demis Hassabis
Mr. Hassabis, a neuroscientist, is a founder of DeepMind, one of the most important labs of this wave of A.I. He secured financial backing to create DeepMind from the investor Peter Thiel and built a lab that produced AlphaGo, an A.I. software that shocked the world in 2016 when it beat the world’s best player of the board game Go. (Mr. Hassabis was an award-winning chess player as a teenager.) Google bought DeepMind, which is based in Britain, in 2014, and Mr. Hassabis is one of the company’s top A.I. executives.
Geoffrey Hinton
A professor at the University of Toronto, Mr. Hinton and two of his graduate students were responsible for neural networks, a key underlying technology of this wave of A.I. Neural networks captivated the tech industry, and Google quickly agreed to pay Mr. Hinton and his crew $44 million in 2012 to bring them on, beating out Microsoft and Baidu, a Chinese tech company.
Reid Hoffman
Mr. Hoffman, a former PayPal executive who founded LinkedIn and became a venture capitalist, was — alongside Mr. Musk and Mr. Thiel — part of a group that invested $1 billion in OpenAI.
Elon Musk
Mr. Musk, who leads Tesla and founded SpaceX, helped to establish OpenAI in 2015. He has long been concerned about A.I.’s potential dangers. At the time, he sought to position OpenAI, a nonprofit, as a more ethical counterweight to other tech companies. Mr. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after disagreements with Mr. Altman.
Satya Nadella
Mr. Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, spearheaded the company’s investments in OpenAI in 2019 and this year, committing $13 billion to the start-up over that period. Microsoft has since gone whole hog on A.I., incorporating OpenAI’s technology into its Bing search engine and across many of its other products.
Larry Page
Mr. Page, who founded Google with Sergey Brin, has long been a proponent of A.I. and its benefits. He pushed for Google’s acquisition of DeepMind in 2014. Mr. Page has a more optimistic view of A.I. than others, telling Silicon Valley executives that robots and humans will live harmoniously one day.
Peter Thiel
Mr. Thiel, a PayPal executive turned venture capitalist who made much of his fortune from an early investment in Facebook, was a key investor in early A.I. labs. He poured money into DeepMind and, later, OpenAI.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Mr. Yudkowsky, an internet philosopher and self-taught A.I. researcher, helped seed much of the philosophical thinking around the technology. He was a leader in a community who called themselves Rationalists or, in later years, effective altruists, and who believed in the power of A.I. but also worried the technology could destroy people. Mr. Yudkowsky hosted an annual conference (funded by Mr. Thiel) on A.I., where Mr. Hassabis met Mr. Thiel and secured his backing for DeepMind.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has pushed for A.I. for at least a decade. Recognizing the power of the technology, he tried to buy DeepMind, before Google made the winning bid. He then went on a hiring spree to bring aboard A.I. talent to Facebook.
Reporting was contributed by Cade Metz, Karen Weise, Nico Grant and Mike Isaac.
I still have trouble believing that Ivana Trump fell down the staircase in her townhouse, hit a very vulnerable spot on her body, and died. Of course, I know it’s possible, but I still don’t believe it. We never heard about her children or her housekeeper questioning the circumstances of her accident.. We never heard any hysterics from Ivana’s mother, Marie Zelnickov, age 96. Marie now lives with Ivanka in Miami. Why isn’t she screaming out, “What happened to my daughter?” I would like Dateline to investigate. Look at the current article in New York magazine.—LWH
Ivana Trump, former president Donald Trump’s first wife, died on July 14, 2022 at the age of 73, owing to injuries she suffered in an accidental fall on the “grand curving staircase” at her Upper East Side townhouse. Her funeral drew about 400 people and featured a gold-hued coffin, Secret Service agents, and loving remembrances from her three adult children as well as several friends. Then this icon of ’80s glamour and New York tabloid drama was laid to rest … at a New Jersey golf course?
Many found the decision to bury Ivana at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster puzzling. She is the first person to be buried at the former president’s New Jersey property, and the ground had to be consecrated so she could have a traditional Catholic burial.
A New York Post photographer scoped out the site shortly after Ivana was laid to rest and found that while her grave isn’t literally on the golf course, the whole vibe is surprisingly understated:
Photos taken by The Post Thursday show Trump’s grave alone against a bucolic scenery of trees and shrubbery. The grave looks upon a sprawling green space upon the country club’s vast estate.
The plot where Ivana was buried has a bouquet of more than two dozen white flowers and a plaque that reads in all capital letters Ivana Trump with the dates she was born and died.
The grave is in a place where golfers would not see it as they tee off for a round of golf. The small section of the club is below the backside of the first tee.
A little over a year later, the mystery persists. Photographs published by The Daily Mail on August 12, 2023 show that Ivana’s grave is marked with a small headstone, which “has become overgrown with grass and is barely visible.”
So what exactly is going on here? I have a few theories.
Theory 1: Trump really loves northern New Jersey.
If Trump National Golf Club Bedminster held a special place in Ivana’s heart, there’s no record of it. Donald bought the property in 2002, a full decade after their divorce was finalized. While Ivana maintained a friendship with her ex-husband through her final days, and her daughter, Ivanka, was married at the club, it does not appear that Ivana ever publicly praised the property.
There is, however, ample evidence that Donald Trump thinks Bedminster is a phenomenal place to be laid to rest. “Wouldn’t you want to be buried here?” he mused to The Wall Street Journal in 2015. The idea has been on his mind for at least 15 years. Back in 2007, Trump filed paperwork to build a windowless wedding chapel at Bedminster that would later be converted into a mausoleum for himself and his family.
Drawings filed with the Somerset County township called for what NJ.com described as a “19-foot-high, classical-style stone structure” with “four imposing obelisks surrounding its exterior and a small altar and six vaults inside. Locals balked at the proposal, which they deemed gaudy, and Trump withdrew the plan. Five years later, he came back with a new idea: Instead of a mausoleum, he would be buried at a large cemetery with more than 1,000 graves. “The idea, apparently, was that Trump’s golf-club members would buy the other plots, seizing the chance at eternal membership,” the Washington Post reported.
Facing continued opposition to his ghoulish ambitions, Trump revised his plans once again. In 2014, the Trump Organization filed paperwork to build two graveyards at Bedminster. One would have 284 lots for sale to the public, while the other would consist of just ten plots for Trump and his family near the first tee. The company’s filing with the state said Trump “specifically chose this property for his final resting place as it is his favorite property.”
In an October 2023 interview, Eric Trump revealed it was his father’s idea to have his mother laid to rest at the “family funeral plot.” “He was the one to say, you know, ‘I want her with us,’” Eric said. “It was pretty amazing again, you know, kind of a wife long removed — ex-wife long removed. He’s an incredible man. He’s got a heart of gold.”
Theory 2: Trump is running an elaborate tax scheme.
Some remain skeptical that Trump actually considers this the most fabulous piece of property he owns
The average person might say Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s seaside Florida resort, is more spectacular, but they’re not looking at Bedminister through the eyes of a person with an alleged passion for tax avoidance. This tweet from Brooke Harrington, a professor of sociology at Dartmouth, sparked speculation that Bedminster’s real appeal as a graveyard lies in New Jersey tax law
Indeed, as Insider reported, there are some surprising perks to being the proprietor of a New Jersey graveyard:
Under New Jersey state tax code, any land that is dedicated to cemetery purposes is exempt from all taxes, rates, and assessments. Cemetery companies are also specifically exempt from paying any real estate taxes, rates, and assessments or personal property taxes on their lands, as well as business taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, and inheritance taxes.
And the Trump family has definitely been pursuing the tax advantages of cemetery ownership. A document published by ProPublica shows that the Trump Family Trust sought to designate a property in Hackettstown, New Jersey, about 20 miles from Bedminster, as a nonprofit cemetery company back in 2016.
But there is reason to question this too-Trumpy-to-be-true allegation. First, all this cemetery business is unnecessary because he has already found a way to drastically reduce his Bedminster tax burden. When the Post’s David Farenthold looked into Trump’s cemetery obsession in 2017, he concluded it wouldn’t be very profitable as a business venture or a tax-avoidance scheme:
… the savings would hardly be worth the trouble. That’s because Trump had already found a way to lower his taxes on that wooded, largely unused parcel. He had persuaded the township to declare it a farm, because some trees on the site are turned into mulch. Because of pro-farmer tax policies, Trump’s company pays just $16.31 per year in taxes on the parcel, which he bought for $461,000.
According to a 2019 HuffPost analysis, Trump slashed his Bedminster tax bill by about $88,000 a year by keeping eight goats and farming 113 acres of hay on the property.
Is is possible that the cemetery business is some kind of backup tax- avoidance scheme? I suppose, but it doesn’t make a ton of sense to this humble TurboTax user.
Theory 3: Trump is just keeping it weird.
“It’s always been my suspicion that there’s something we don’t know” about Trump’s cemetery plan, Bedminster land-use board member Nick Strakhov told Farenthold in 2017
It does seem we’re missing a key piece of the boneyard puzzle. But there is one thing we know about Trump now that wasn’t quite as apparent back then: He is a super-weird guy. He has managed to be weird with various kinds of paper, toilet bowls, aircraft carriers, and “dangerous fruit,” to name just a few of his proclivities. The thought of our inevitable demise brings out strange feelings and behavior in most people. Some of the rich plan to freeze themselves or shoot their remains into space; is it any surprise that Trump has some grandiose idea about how he and his family should be laid to rest?
“It’s never something you like to think about, but it makes sense,” Trump told the New York Post during his first attempt to make Bedminster a cemetery in 2007. “This is such beautiful land, and Bedminster is one of the richest places in the country.”
Trumpy commentary on the wealth of northern New Jersey aside, that sounds astonishingly well adjusted.
This piece was updated to include Eric Trump’s comments on his mother’s gravesite.
Elon Musk Visits Israel Amid Backlash Against His Endorsement of Antisemitic Post
Alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Musk toured an Israeli village where dozens of people were killed in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.
Elon Musk Visits an Israeli Kibbutz Attacked by Hamas
0:27Video released by the Israeli government showed Elon Musk with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu touring the scene of a Hamas attack in Kfar Aza.Credit…Israel’s Government Press Office
Elon Musk traveled to Israel and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, touring the scene of a Hamas attack in a visit that appeared aimed at calming the outcry over his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory on X, the social media platform he owns.
Dozens of major brands suspended their advertisingon X after Mr. Musk this month agreed with a post that accused Jewish communities of pushing “hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The flight of advertisers threatened to cost X tens of millions of dollars, and the White House denounced Mr. Musk for “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.”
On Tuesday, after arriving in Israel, Mr. Musk wrote on X that “actions speak louder than words.” Wearing a flak jacket, he toured Kfar Aza, an Israeli kibbutz where dozens of people were killed during the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7.
Video shared by Mr. Netanyahu’s office showed the two men, accompanied by security personnel, walking through the village in the rain and inspecting the blackened ruins of a house. Mr. Netanyahu said on X that he gave Mr. Musk the tour “to show him up close the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas.”
In a conversation with Mr. Netanyahu broadcast on X, Mr. Musk called the visit to Kfar Aza “jarring” and said he also had been shown footage of the Oct. 7 massacre that he found “troubling.”
Mr. Netanyahu spent the bulk of the conversation explaining the rationale for the war in Gaza. Mr. Musk said in agreement that it was important to “get rid of the ones who are hellbent on murdering Jewish people,” though he also added that it was important to minimize civilian casualties in the enclave.
Mr. Musk also said it was a challenge to stop “the sort of propaganda that is convincing people to engage in murder,” an apparent reference to the ideology that had fueled Hamas’ attack. Mr. Netanyahu did not raise Mr. Musk’s social media post during the conversation and Mr. Musk did not refer to it, or to the role of X in shaping public attitudes over antisemitism.
But his visit did draw criticism from some who accused the Israeli government of giving Mr. Musk cover.
“Welcoming such a toxic mogul with open arms and taking him around sites of a massacre that has been belittled, demeaned and denied on his watch should be a stain on Netanyahu’s legacy,” wrote Ben Samuels, the U.S. correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Since Mr. Musk’s post, dozens of major brands including IBM, Apple and Disney have paused their advertising campaigns on X, and the company, which Mr. Musk purchased in October last year for $44 billion, could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year. Other major companies, including Amazon, Coca-Cola and Microsoft, have also halted or are considering pausing their ads on the social network, according to internal documents.
Mr. Musk has also faced broader criticism for toleratingand even encouraging antisemitic abuse on his social media platform. He has attacked George Soros, the financier who is a frequent target of antisemitic abuse, and threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, a rights group that has highlighted the rise in antisemitism on X.
In May, he likened Mr. Soros, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, to Magneto — the X-Men supervillain who has Jewish roots — and said that Mr. Soros “hates humanity.”
That same month, Mr. Musk cast doubt that a gunman behind a mass shooting in Allen, Texas, that left eight people dead had supported Nazi ideology, calling it a “very bad psyop.”
Mr. Musk has not explained why he visited Israel, but he has had past dealings with its prime minister. In September, he hosted Mr. Netanyahu for an event at a Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., as both men sought to deflect criticism.
“It’s not an easy thing to be maligned — I know you’ve never seen that, right?” Mr. Netanyahu said during the event.
“Me, maligned?” Mr. Musk responded, laughing. “Never.”
During that exchange Mr. Musk also responded to reports of rising antisemitic content on the social network.
“Obviously I’m against antisemitism — I’m against anti-anything,” he said. “And I’m in favor of that which helps uphold society and takes us to a better future for humanity.”
Following his recent controversy, Mr. Musk posted a similar statement earlier this month, calling news stories that he was antisemitic “bogus.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he wrote.
On Monday, Israel appeared to reach an understanding with Mr. Musk over his proposal this month to deploy Starlink, the satellite internet service he owns, in Gaza for aid agencies to use amid cellular and internet blackouts. Palestinians have blamed Israel for the communications interruptions.
Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, said that Mr. Musk had consented not to open access to the system in Israel and in Gaza without the permission of his ministry. “This understanding is vital,” Mr. Karhi wrote on X.
A correction was made on November 27, 2023:
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Benjamin Netanyahu. He is Israel’s prime minister, not its president.
The chef and restaurateur, best known for the celebrity hotspot Carbone in Greenwich Village, on the routines that help him manage a growing hospitality empire
Mario Carbone and his partners have 25 restaurants around the country. MARK PETERSON/REDUX
Mario Carbone is famous for his spicy rigatoni vodka. But the chef has set his sights far beyond pasta.
With 25 restaurants around the country, he and his partners Rich Torrisi and Jeff Zalaznick have established a hospitality empire that includes a luxury apartment building, Villa Miami; a private members’ club, ZZ’s, which charges a $20,000 application fee; and a consumer-goods brand, Carbone Fine Food, which launched in 2021 and introduced jars of his famous spicy vodka sauce earlier this year. Carbone, 43, said he hoped hotels were in the future.
The trio’s best-known business remains Carbone, the Greenwich Village celebrity hotspot where it’s nearly impossible for a mere mortal to snag a reservation. Carbone said that to have a leg up booking a table, you had to know one of the secret email addresses.
“There are several that exist, and there’s basically a control room somewhere in the world run by one of our partners,” he said. “She’s been doing it for over a decade now, taking tens of thousands of reservations every single day.” Now there are several Carbone locations around the world, including in Miami, Dallas and Hong Kong.
Carbone was born and raised in Queens and now lives in New York and Miami with his girlfriend, the publicist Cait Bailey. Here, he discusses his love of cigars, why he thinks social media has hurt restaurant culture and the moment he felt he’d made it.
What time do you get up on Mondays, and what’s the first thing you do after waking up?
I get up at 5:30 a.m., and the first thing I do is let my dog Rocco out. I make myself a coffee and usually a small breakfast. By 7, I’m trying to get my morning exercise in—playing tennis, going for a run. I have a makeshift gym in my garage.
How do you like your coffee and breakfast?
I drink pretty much exclusively iced coffee. I like it very strong, I usually do two shots of espresso and cold brew. My breakfast is usually a banana, a little bit of yogurt, egg whites and a wrap and avocado. Boring, healthy, just to get something in my stomach before I go.
In the midst of a busy work life, do you find time to meditate or reflect?
I’m pretty peaceful by nature. If I don’t have quiet time to do my work and be in my thoughts, then I’m easily thrown off.
What’s the most important thing for you to delegate to your assistant?
Travel is something I have no interest in dealing with on my own. I find it time-consuming and mind-numbing.
Is there anything you refuse to delegate?
That is a very long list. I’m manic about the smallest things that I could probably not do myself. My assistant is critical in my world, and she allows me the opportunity to touch all of these really small [details] that I believe if I was to give up, I would be doing whatever the project is a disservice.
‘The amount of work I can get done with a singular good knife and a cutting board could probably replace an entire junk drawer of QVC-type items,’ Mario Carbone said. PHOTO: CARBONE FINE FOOD
Do you think people will ever get sick of Carbone’s spicy rigatoni vodka?
I hope not. I haven’t, and I’ve eaten it more than most.
What do you cook for yourself at home?
Usually pretty simple stuff. Ten to 15 minutes max is my attention span during the week to cook for myself, a quick steak or a simple bowl of pasta. The only time of the week where I get even the slightest bit ambitious is probably on a Sunday, whether it’s just for me and my girlfriend or friends and family who are coming over.
You designed the kitchens for the Villa, the luxury apartment building you’re opening in Miami. What’s your favorite thing in them?
We designed a small version of the pasta cookers, the tanks that I use in the restaurants, which are sunken wells of water. At any time, you can drop pasta in. You have all your burners free, and you have this very sleek countertop-height sunken tank for boiling water the way we do at the restaurants.
When, in the 10 years since Carbone’s opening, did you feel like you’d made it?
Maybe having President Obama for the first time. Even if we had lots of celebrities and big moments early on, I was able to really soak that one in.
Are there any food trends you can’t stand?
Certainly the food world has become very susceptible to cooking for social media. I do think it’s a wonderful thing that everyone now has the power to render a judgment or support their favorite location through their own channels. On the other side of that is when you get too distracted by it as an entrepreneur or chef and you start trying to make things for that Instagrammable moment. You’re generally going to fail, because your end goal is no longer to make the most delicious thing possible.
What do you do to relax?
I am an avid cigar smoker. Usually I’m sharing it with someone, my father or a close friend. It gives you some time where you know you’re not going anywhere.
Is there a kitchen product people spring for that you think is unnecessary or overrated?
There are too many kitchen gadgets in the world. When I’m cooking at someone else’s house, their drawers are ridiculous. The amount of work I can get done with a singular good knife and a cutting board could probably replace an entire junk drawer of QVC-type items people have purchased in their lives.
What’s a piece of advice that’s guided you?
I remember my dad talking to me when I was younger and trying to find my path. His great fatherly advice was, “I don’t care what you choose to do with your life. I do care that whatever you choose to do, you pour yourself into it, you give a damn about it and you try to be the best at whatever it is
There are always smiling faces and great rewards when Emily and Chris Campbell host an event for Fountainhead Arts. A very inspiring evening. Chris is top right.Emily is in red..
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They make Fountainhead Arts work. Nicole Martinez, founder Kathryn Mikesell and Francesca Nabors
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Adam Lambert is still the best. Cher thinks so too. He can make world peace with his voice
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Eliot and I attended the introduction of the Books & Books Literary Foundation this morning. This is the start of something big.
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Inspiring words from Arnold Schwarzenegger to everyone who feels lost or unhappy in the world. From his new documentary “Arnold.”
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The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC has a major role in the tv series “A Murder At The End Of The World.” Eliot bought many books in his collection from Otto Penzler who opened the bookshop in 1979. Look carefully. You can spot Otto in the bookstore scene. The Mysterious Bookshop is the oldest mystery specialist book store in America. Previously located in midtown, the bookshop now calls Tribeca its home.
DigiDame 