The Lion King singer showed the courage of a lion in real life! Singer Jason Weaver, who performed as young Simba in the Disney animated classic, turned down an offer of a whopping $2 million in favor of a royalty deal.

The Incident

Jason Weaver was the singing voice of Simba and performed the popular Disney bangers like “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” and “Hakuna Matata.” Disney offered him a flat remuneration of $2 million for his work. That amount of money is a lot now, and was way more back in 1994, during The Lion King’s release. However, Weaver trusted the wise advice of his mom and decided to reject the seemingly lucrative offer to opt for royalties instead.

The Advice

That was quite a big deal in the early 90s, especially coming from Disney, the source for the bread-earning members of many families during that time. But when he was offered the paycheck, it was Weaver’s mother who turned out to be of sound counsel. She figured out quickly that, though the money was good, it would be everything he’ll ever get from the successful franchise, for the remainder of his life. Disney had already forecasted the success of The Lion King, indicating that they’ll make a lot more money from it. So the offer was nothing more than a drop in the ocean! Realizing this fact, Weaver’s mum advised him to negotiate royalties instead of taking the money upfront.

The Result

Turning down that amount of cash was actually a big gamble for the Simba actor. He ended up being paid just $100,000 upfront for his contribution to the movie. But the brave step was proven right, as it went a long way to secure him lifelong royalty. The smart move has earned Weaver, now 42, much more than compensating for turning down the initial offer.

Autonomous vehicles are truly within the grasp of humankind. But the brain of a sci-fi geek can wonder whether it’ll bring an apocalyptic scene, where a troop of autonomous cars is pursuing human prey across a desolate landscape. Well, of course, it’s not going to happen, but luckily, if it did, there’s a strangely simple solution for that. And it involves nothing but salt!

The Salt Trap

Back in 2017, artist James Bridle demonstrated how an understanding of road markings using salt could paralyze a self-driving car midway by delivering confusing messages. You need to draw two circles of salt, one in a block line and the other in broken stripes. When the car comes to the middle of it, the markings will direct it to go right ahead and also not to cross, simultaneously. The result is the fabulous “Autonomous Trap 001.” Future models may be able to overcome this fun technological quirk, but it has surely raised a valid question about the possibility of the success of the trick. It’s astonishing to find out that there may be a simple way to manipulate the environment to disrupt the self-driving capacity of an autonomous car.

The Response

This salt circle trap has caught the attention of none other than Elon Musk, the Tesla boss and newly-appointed CEO of Twitter. As an avid enthusiast, Musk is known for dabbling in autonomous vehicles. Responding to the demonstration, he explained that the salt circle trick will probably be able to trap a Tesla car with the production Autopilot build. But he suspected that it won’t work its magic on the FSD models or the cars with Full Self-Driving capabilities. Musk further suggested that making a ring of traffic cones would be effective on the FSD cars. So, if you ever find yourself facing a murderous fleet of autonomous cars, all you need to do is just take your salt bags and traffic cones out! Easy-peasy, right?