> One of the longest-running tropes at The Verge is that a workable antitrust policy for the United States would be simply to forbid companies from buying Time Warner because it has never worked and it may never work again, and that we should just pass one law.
Checks out:
Jan 11, 2001: AOL and Time Warner merged to create AOL Time Warner
June 14, 2018: AT&T acquired Time Warner, renamed WarnerMedia
April 8, 2022: WarnerMedia spun out of AT&T, merged with Discovery
gcanyon 1 days ago [-]
I was at HBO during the AOL merger, and for a time my work email became gcanyon0264@aol.com, because AOL corporate email shared namespace with its customers, and my personal AOL account was… gcanyon@aol.com
penskymaterial 1 days ago [-]
> because AOL corporate email shared namespace with its customers
I wonder where this ranks in the top 5 stupidest things I've ever heard. It's bad enough merging customer databases when two companies merge.
No other major ISP has ever done this that I know of. Likely because it's completely unnecessary. Who made this decision (and why weren't they fired immediately)?
miki123211 21 hours ago [-]
Ah, so this is why our email addresses are @gmail.com and not @google.com.
I was always wondering about that; it seemed to me that it would have been free advertising to Google if their users had to write and say @google.com all the time.
mike_d 22 hours ago [-]
> Who made this decision
Nobody. Going back to 1989 every AOL account had a screen name that was used as your login and your identity. Being an employee was just a flag on your account in the database.
In 1993 AOL launched its internet gateway that accepted something@aol.com and put it in your AOL Mail box. You could tell that someone was an AOL employee because a banner (I think it was) appeared at the top of the message telling you.
Some of the network engineering folks had real aol.net addresses, but I don't know how that was handled internally. I also think the Netscape folks eventually made enough of a stink to keep their previous email address too.
Garlef 15 hours ago [-]
Merging banks also seems to be a fun endeavor
gcanyon 11 hours ago [-]
> top 5 stupidest things I've ever heard
Yeah, we weren't thrilled.
setgree 1 days ago [-]
By that logic we should encourage giant companies to buy Warner Brothers. Each time it fails, it helps topple leviathans, which decreases market concentration.
ethbr1 17 hours ago [-]
Time Warner: "No, I am the pill that poisons."
s3p 1 days ago [-]
Oh this is hilarious. Didn't AT&T also acquire HBO and spin them off too?
lukemercado 1 days ago [-]
They did, but first they rebranded them as Max, thus destroying the incredible name value of HBO. It was renamed back to HBO as part of the spinout IIRC.
rwc 1 days ago [-]
The "credit" for that move actually belongs to WarnerBros Discovery
brendoelfrendo 1 days ago [-]
My favorite part of that story is that McKinsey both advised WarnerBros Discovery to make that change, and then advised them to change it back, making millions each time. I wish I made that much money being bad at my job.
overfeed 1 days ago [-]
McKinsey and other management consultants exist to launder decisions made by upper management that management do not want to face consequences for. "It's not my fault, the consultants advised me that was the best option"
frmrtntn 16 hours ago [-]
Consultants are for decision based evidence making.
6510 1 days ago [-]
One of those jobs LLMs can easily take over.
maccard 1 days ago [-]
Nope the entire point of the job is to have a person to blame when it goes wrong.
bulbar 16 minutes ago [-]
Society is already buying in the "AI did it" framing. See the latest 'jailbreaks' at openai and anthropic. They said "oh dear, look what our AI did, somebody needs to do something why don't we have regulations yet".
nom 1 days ago [-]
the blame is absorbed by McKinsey the corporation, not the people working there
they'll just use AI like everyone else but charge extra for it
dylan604 1 days ago [-]
I'm not sure if you are suggesting the CEO hedging their bets or the consultants, but I'd say both of those jobs could be replaced by an LLM.
newsclues 1 days ago [-]
You can replace low and maybe mid skill employees with software but it’s the high end ones consultants or CEO that are great at their jobs with good software can be orders of magnitude more efficient.
nikanj 1 days ago [-]
You misunderstand their job. They get paid millions to carefully construct a report that supports whatever stupid plan the coke-fueled execs came up with.
paimapi 1 days ago [-]
They are also functionally both a way for certain well-connected shareholders to exert disproportionate influence and a placating propaganda machine for the shareholders who aren't
Grease on the very corroded wheel of modern capitalism
Melatonic 1 days ago [-]
They also somehow made everyone download new apps because apparently the old one couldn't be updated.
lotsofpulp 1 days ago [-]
HBO was part of Time Warner.
benced 1 days ago [-]
Companies wasting their money is the company's problem and it's really unclear to me why the government should give a single damn.
NewJazz 1 days ago [-]
Because big companies destroying value makes the world worse? They're sucking up capital and not delivering anything to justify it.
Ekaros 21 hours ago [-]
Really thinking about what happens with these mergers and splits. In the end it is just moving numbers from one pile to an other. Nothing is really created or destroyed...
Well there is massive waste of time on doing all the stuff need for it to happen. But I think they would have come up with something as unproductive as that anyway so overall it is not like that time would have been spend for anything actually productive.
Made up "value" moving from one place to an other. Just so that some people have something to do. And most likely they would not have much productive things to do in any case.
freejazz 10 hours ago [-]
> Nothing is really created or destroyed...
Well you aren't losing your job
IncreasePosts 1 days ago [-]
Won't investors just learn to avoid investing in companies like that?
paimapi 1 days ago [-]
are you too young to have lived through the multiple recessions that have happened in the past few decades or Bernie Madoff or Enron? Or Theranos and FTX? and that's just off the top, give me ten minutes to dig in and I'll get you at least twenty more
SideQuark 1 days ago [-]
None of those were the result of mergers.
paimapi 1 days ago [-]
Pedantic. The point was "aren't investors rational" and they clearly hop on short term fads to their and our detriment. Plus saying Enron wasn't a product of a merger is very funny
lotsofpulp 1 days ago [-]
Passive investors earned 10% per year for the last 30 years doing no work and taking on no risk.
Seems very rational to me.
NewJazz 9 hours ago [-]
Passive investors were still taking on risk
paimapi 24 hours ago [-]
I'm sure passive investors loved the dotcom bubble and the housing market crash
I'm sure they'll love it when this AI bubble pops too
lotsofpulp 22 hours ago [-]
If they were passive, they wouldn’t care, because they should not have a reason to liquidate all equities during the few down years.
leonidasrup 22 hours ago [-]
It really depends on luck, timing and inflation.
For example if you bought S&P 500 in Jul 1929, you got your investment back in 1955 (inflation adjusted). If you bought S&P 500 in Apr 2000, you got your investment back in 2014 (inflation adjusted).
Why would you use inflation adjusted numbers? It seems like the proper comparison would be t-bills or cds.
lotsofpulp 22 hours ago [-]
99.99% of people are not investing a lump sum on one date and liquidating it all on another date. Extend this graph to today, and it will be much greener.
Plus it’s political suicide to let SP500 stagnate or drop.
paimapi 15 hours ago [-]
your own NYT link shows the vast majority of withdrawal dates to have a median of 4.1% followed by the 'slightly above inflation' group then the 'did not keep up with inflation' group with the green returns being the smallest likelihood. there's even this literal quote in the article:
"Market returns are more volatile than most people realize,” Mr. Easterling said, “even over periods as long as 20 years.”
in your second link, a commenter rightfully calls out that the log scale makes the data reductive
I think whatever it is that you need to fall asleep at night is your own habit - it doesn't need to be the rest of ours
nothercastle 1 days ago [-]
With passive investment everyone is buying crap all the time because they have no ability to discern what is or isn’t crap and the base assumption is 95% of stocks are losers but the other 5% win big
lotsofpulp 1 days ago [-]
If everyone is buying crap all the time, how do businesses fail? Wouldn’t they be able to succeed by just issuing more shares?
nothercastle 14 hours ago [-]
A lot of them do and have. Companies really only fail when lenders stop lending.
No. Every investor is just living the Arrested Development “…but it might work for us” meme.
tclancy 1 days ago [-]
Just because they get it wrong doesn’t make it right. You don’t even need to reach back 100 years to sort this.
dozerly 24 hours ago [-]
If they destroy things that were servicing public good like jobs, the market they are selling into, etc, it becomes the governments job to care. If you are advocating for zero oversight of corporations by government I don’t think you’ve seen the consequences of the last 40 years of the US. Monopolies only serve the owning class at the expense of the people.
xbar 1 days ago [-]
March, 1989: Time and Warner announce merger, Paramount launches hostile bid for Time.
January, 1990: Time responds by buying Warner Communications for $14 billion.
...Paramount sulks, and bides its time....
fuzzfactor 18 hours ago [-]
Time? Warner? What were they doing in bed together to begin with?
That's what I've been thinking about so many "ordained" or duress "marriages" since long before 1989.
jauntywundrkind 12 hours ago [-]
This time at least it succeeds immensely, at one thing. At helping America cash out one of it's greatest soft empires of all time: Hollywood.
All that culture that America has built for ourselves and exported to the world is now owned in massive part by sovereign wealth at Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Dubai. Perhaps our greatest export (along with, as every feel knows, microcode and pizza delivery), now massively foreign owned, given up.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/hollywood-hungry-gu...
And boatload of debt has been raised, to grease the handoff, to payoff some of the richest people for the acquisition, thanks to the overwhelming investment of these brutal human-rights-violating unfree countries, a massive 40,000 lb albatross of debt to wear around Hollywood's neck. All to do what America lately has traded its past couple bits of good and values for: helping a couple extremely rich dudes cash out, get filthy rich.
slowin 1 days ago [-]
This is more consolidation of US media under extremely pro-Israel ownership. I don't think this will work out as well as they hope (look at CBS -- Bari Weiss has driven it into the ground) but it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over, including both "news" and "entertainment", including TikTok.
I'm not pro-Israel by any means but foreign adversary is a bit much.
Matl 18 hours ago [-]
They're killing Americans in the West Bank, grabbing US tax payer money while laughing at how easy Americans are to manipulate, aggressively spying on all kinds of US targets incl by placing spy equipment on Secret Service vehicles during visits, spitting on Christians who visit Israel, harassing American lawmakers and diplomats, dragging the US into wars that don't serve its interests or the interests of its other partners, draining US military equipment meant to protect other assets etc. etc.
I am sure no other country could get away with the amount of shit the Israelis pull on a regular basis.
righthand 11 hours ago [-]
Their spyware is also fully integrated into CENTCOM too.
mschuster91 12 hours ago [-]
> I am sure no other country could get away with the amount of shit the Israelis pull on a regular basis.
German here. Assuming you're American, that's a rich list LOL.
> aggressively spying on all kinds of US targets incl by placing spy equipment on Secret Service vehicles during visits
The US spies on everyone, including allies as nominally close as Germany. Thanks Snowden for revealing that one. And both the US and Russia are known to use their embassies as SIGINT collection bases.
> dragging the US into wars that don't serve its interests or the interests of its other partners
The US has dragged all of NATO into the mess that Afghanistan ended up being. I might let that one slide because 9/11 was a thing, but a few years later Bush dragged a bunch of other European countries into the mess that Iraq ended up being, and just this year, Trump was pissed that we didn't want to join the fun of bombing Iraq.
> draining US military equipment meant to protect other assets
Trump gave all but zero warning about invading Iran to anyone (well he did toy with the idea, but everyone dismissed it as the usual "deranged madman" brainfarts), leading to everyone (funnily including the US) emptying their entire stockpile of anti-air missiles out of sheer necessity. Millions of dollars just to take a glorified lawnmower on wings.
Israel didn't need to drag the US into bombing Iran. Many parts of the US Republicans have wanted to bomb the Mullahs into submission for decades.
Matl 11 hours ago [-]
I am not American but given Germany's own role in much of what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank, the weapons shipments to Israel, (no 2 supplier after the US) and the diplomatic cover it gives to Israel, there's a lot Germany still needs to reflect on today.
Hint: The lesson was supposed to be that genocide is bad, period. Not that it's ok as long as it is some of the descendants Germany hurt doing it this time.
genyudi 6 hours ago [-]
Real genocide is bad. Abusing the term for propaganda is also bad.
The Islamist approach for global propaganda is try and associate each culture’s negative terms with Israel. So when they push content to Westerners they say Israel is colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. When they speak to Muslims the Jews are Kuffars and the war against them is holy. When they target the right wing Israel is taking American tax dollars for their own universal healthcare.
jkahrs595 5 hours ago [-]
Account made today. I am shocked at what you’re saying on your first day! Shocked!
cogman10 3 hours ago [-]
Time to point out Israel is spending $1 on online propaganda [1]. Every time they come up in HN you'll see some new green accounts fly in to defend Israel. And, funnily, those green accounts all go silent the moment you point out the $1 billion Israel is spending on propaganda.
The “scholars association” is a club of a few hundred people that anyone can join and they didn’t even have a majority vote on the topic.
The UN is openly biased against Israel. One of the reasons it gave for calling it a genocide was that during intense fighting an Israeli tank shell hit a fertility clinic destroying a few thousand embryos.
To put this in context: more than 100,000 babies were born in Gaza over the past 3 years, there are about a million abortions a year in the US, but one incident of an Israeli shell hitting an IVF clinic is enough for the UN commission to conclude it must be a genocide.
wds 4 hours ago [-]
>The UN is openly biased against Israel.
The UN was openly biased against apartheid South Africa as well.
genyudi 4 hours ago [-]
Nope. During the years of SA apartheid the UN condemned Israel more times than SA - and Israel isn’t even an apartheid!
jibe 12 hours ago [-]
Bari Weiss is an American, not an Israeli. Calling American Jews “foreign adversaries” is just evil.
causesothere 1 days ago [-]
Do they have the US interests at heart? Or their own? I think the latter, almost certainly. That makes them adversarial from a game theory perspective at the very least.
fortzi 16 hours ago [-]
Can’t you say that about every other country?
causesothere 12 hours ago [-]
Yes? Maybe its ok to think that other states don't have your states interests at heart?
fortzi 10 hours ago [-]
States have interests, not hearts.
causesothere 8 hours ago [-]
Ok. Artichokes have hearts and no interests.
knottn 14 hours ago [-]
Obviously not Canada.
fortzi 10 hours ago [-]
I bet if you ask a few Canadians, at least some will tell you that the US is adversarial to Canada.
HDThoreaun 24 hours ago [-]
I am pretty sure that the ellisons care more about US interests than israeli interests. Whether they are selfish is orthogonal to whether they are a foreign adversary. Most people are selfish.
Matl 17 hours ago [-]
They literally condition your employment at Oracle to you loving Israel.
> An anonymous Substack, Oracle For Palestine, written by a group of Oracle employees, claims that that “our leadership’s unquestioning public support for Israel” has led to a failure of the company to address the one-sided political positions taken by top management and the discrimination faced by employees who don’t share the political views of management.
> “In response to legitimate concerns, many of us have been referred to internal mental health resources rather than having those concerns addressed appropriately,” said the group in a post last year.
> For employees, it’s clear: if you’re not for America or Israel, don’t work here
It sounds like internal opposition to Israel is punished at Oracle by systemically discounting their detractors as mentally unwell. You must love Israel at Oracle to avoid this discriminatory action.
AlexandrB 16 hours ago [-]
A lot of citation needed. Requiring that folks shut the hell up about the current political cause célèbre while at work is not the same as requiring that they "love Israel".
Matl 16 hours ago [-]
"If Oracle employees don't agree with our mission to support Israel maybe we aren't the right company for them"[1].
Some "really profoundly scary technology" was provided to the Israeli military by Oracle[2].
Given they're really happy to be political[3], this isn't your average 'no politics at work'.
“The violent genocide committed against an unjustly occupied people.”
ftfy
Qiu_Zhanxuan 22 hours ago [-]
not sure about that, really
Jackpillar 15 hours ago [-]
Larry Ellison is the largest private donor to the IDF in the world.
phatfish 15 hours ago [-]
They meddle in other countries politics more than Russia. They are an adversary to everyone except themselves. Explains a lot really...
deaux 22 hours ago [-]
US politicians are supposed to represent their voters who elected them. A foreign state putting massive resources into a state-supported program to get them to represent the foreign state's interest instead, is obviously a foreign adversary. It doesn't get much more adverserial than that! It's a direct attack on US internal democracy.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
You've just been raised to consider this as "normal". There's nothing normal about it, and if any other new country had started doing this you'd have recognized it for what it is.
Before someone says "all countries do this" - no they don't. Scale matters, impact matters.
a96 17 hours ago [-]
Yes. It seems to be a very domestic adversary.
mindslight 1 days ago [-]
They pushed us into an unwinnnable quagmire that is helping to destroy our global leadership position - like Grump himself, their effects are indistinguishable from what an adversary would do.
Infinitesimus 1 days ago [-]
The U.S. cannot claim to be "pushed" into any war. The US chose to participate in this war and chooses to stay involved every single day since it started.
bijowo1676 1 days ago [-]
US is not a single entity, it consists of a lot of politicians on the AIPAC's payroll or have videos of themselves doing illegal stuff on some tropical island
krior 22 hours ago [-]
And the citizens do not have enough spine to bring their politicians to justice. If they weren't causing so much death and destruction around the globe the sidestepping-of-responsibility-shuffle of the american people would be really funny to watch.
mullingitover 9 hours ago [-]
> And the citizens do not have enough spine to bring their politicians to justice.
This really betrays a lack of understanding of the structure of the government in the US. The Constitution, for better and worse, heavily insulates the government from tempestuous public opinion. The framers were readers of greek history who understood that democracy was a condition that a republic could devolve into. They built the system to give the voters the vibes that they had a say in the workings of their government while ensuring that in reality they had no such thing.
mindslight 14 hours ago [-]
What exactly are you imagining could be done? I'm all ears. Seriously, please, offer suggestions!
From my perspective the situation is that my fellow citizens who would be the most predisposed towards extrajudicial violence that might "bring their politicians to justice" are also the most steeped in propaganda and so end up getting their own itches scratched by that very state organized death and destruction.
mindslight 1 days ago [-]
"The US" is not a singular entity making an explicit deliberate choice, right? Just as it makes sense to say that Grump dragged the US into this war, it also makes sense to say that Israel helped. Of course both along with half of US voters. Think joint responsibility, not severable.
krior 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but I have not seen anyone really do anything opposed to the war (or all the other shit), so its fair to say that the US made the choice to approve of the war.
phatfish 15 hours ago [-]
Try saying something against Israel with that famous American free speech.
gretzquee 15 hours ago [-]
[dead]
fortzi 16 hours ago [-]
No one pushed “you”, the most powerful empire in the world, into anything. Take responsibility for your own choices.
You used the term “us” so I’m playing along with that “us” vs. “them” state of mind.
mindslight 14 hours ago [-]
I am not the most powerful empire in the world. It would sure be nice if I were, but unfortunately I am not.
So what exactly do you mean by my own choices? I do take responsibility for my own choices. I've done nothing that majorly supports this war.
What I have done that supports this war: 1. continue to pay taxes and otherwise participate in society. 2. voted for conservative (ie democrat) politicians that might work to oppose the con artist in chief regardless of their general support for Israel (although since we're talking about the Iran War specifically, I don't know if this actually counts)
Meanwhile I have protested, the regime in general not the war specifically. Stand out on a corner, sign, smile and wave. Most people honk in support, but once again what can they actually do? There is of course always more one can do to express opposition. But not working hard enough to oppose something is not the same as choosing to support it.
fortzi 10 hours ago [-]
Sorry if I wasn’t clear, but by “you” I meant the United States.
My point is that the US is responsible for its actions, and can’t excuse itself by claiming to be pushed around by anyone.
mindslight 10 hours ago [-]
I assume you understand that you're not actually talking to the United States itself with this comment, so it seems like you're trying to assert some principle of collective guilt? I'd say that's an awful lot like the tripe that's used to try and justify the genocide in Gaza, whereby every Palestinian civilian is purportedly responsible for Hamas's rockets (etc). Or to justify the rockets themselves for that matter, whereby every Israeli is purportedly responsible for their government's atrocities.
tencentshill 10 hours ago [-]
Getting us into a useless war that decimates our economy isn't very allied of them. A waste of intelligent people and decades of political connections too, Trump is so easy to manipulate you don't NEED to be secretive.
kilper4 24 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
mindslight 24 hours ago [-]
We're finally getting some mainstream traction on recognizing the horrible actions of Israel and its undue influence over other countries' politics, but you fucking people have to keep making it about "Jews". SMH. I'd ask if your goal is simply to inflame racial tensions, but looking at your comment history it seems like that answer is yes.
Some of the most anti-Israel-aggression people I've met in my life have been Jewish, which makes perfect sense as they're generally more interested in the actions of Israel.
xdennis 24 hours ago [-]
> Jews must be the textbook example of "with friends like these, who needs enemies?"
Aren't you people supposed to say "Israelis" so that you can pretend your antisemitism is "legitimate criticism of the country of Israel"?
ButlerianJihad 22 hours ago [-]
Israel and her children have been weaponized by the democratic West (including México and Ukraine) as an arsenal of vengeance against our perceived adversaries, but Israel and her children cannot be contained or controlled by the democratic West forever.
"Now I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds..."
fuzzfactor 18 hours ago [-]
You could also say that Trump and a significant portion of the Republican party were weaponized by the rest of the party and are not so easily contained or controlled now.
not my downvote btw
elcritch 1 days ago [-]
Let’s check where much of the ownership and money come from. From the LA Times:
> The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday granted Paramount Skydance’s request to allow Middle Eastern royal families to hold a substantial stake in a merged Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery.
> Foreign investors, including the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, are slated to indirectly own nearly 50% of the equity in David Ellison’s proposed mega-studio. That will give them a hefty stake in CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, HBO and two historic Hollywood film studios.
So foreign “adversaries” literally own enormous stakes in these companies and have been cleared by the FCC. Yet only possible pro-Israel influence by Ellison gets called out?
When they take dollars for oil, they would rather swap paper currency with real assets (ownership of firms). If US doesn't want that, they should make moves to remove USD as a reserve currency or preferred currency for global trade.
1 days ago [-]
fakedang 1 days ago [-]
Out of those 3, one is a covert ally of Israel and the other is an overt ally. David and Larry Ellison are avowed Zionists.
1 days ago [-]
colordrops 1 days ago [-]
Please. Ellison controls it, the gulf states are just investors. They also invested in Twitter, but people call out Elon, and no one has a problem with that.
Most of the gulf states are pretty much controlled by Zionists at this point anyway, or at least heavily aligned with them.
FridayoLeary 1 days ago [-]
Naturally. Because OP isn't going to let pesky facts interfere with his narrative.
colordrops 1 days ago [-]
What about the pesky fact that there is a huge difference between the operational owner of a company and it's investors. Oh and those gulf state investors are aligned with the Zionists.
FridayoLeary 1 days ago [-]
Of course they are. Who isn't? The Taliban?
colordrops 1 days ago [-]
Stating obvious falsehoods as if they were true doesn't help your Zionist cause anymore. It's not only the Taliban and everyone knows it, so don't bother gaslighting. Just look at half of Eurpope. Or the Ed Sheeran debacle.
deaux 22 hours ago [-]
The European countries you're pointing towards are similar to the US in that most of their populace doesn't support the Israeli government but their politicians effectively do. Even the most vocally anti-Israel country, Ireland, is in truth the biggest US regime ally in the EU. This renders their Israel talk completely meaningless.
The part of Europe you're talking about is also more like a fifth than half.
colordrops 20 hours ago [-]
Yeah but it's not just the Taliban, which is absurd.
I think you could make a graph showing the inverse relationship between how pro palestinian a country is, versus how crap of a place it is to live in.
geysersam 23 hours ago [-]
> the inverse relationship
So you're saying if a place is more pro-palestinian it's less crap to live there. Makes sense.
s3p 1 days ago [-]
Is it possible the next administration sues to break them up? Couldn't they also just launch endless investigations of the owners until they spun it off into its own thing
autoexec 1 days ago [-]
The next administration absolutely could, but that would require them to care more about about the well-being of the country than they do about themselves and the bribes and favors they could rake in if they don't.
That's seems to be the fatal flaw in our system. Congress, the FTC, and the president need to willing to put the interests of the nation above the interests of corporations. Maybe I'll live to see that happen, but a lot of people have died waiting for it (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/The_Boss...) and it gets less likely all the time.
fuzzfactor 18 hours ago [-]
111x less likely than with a mere "unicorn."
$111 billion sheds a lot of gratuity as it moves from one place to another.
The "big deal" is what it does for the shareholders in black & white.
A number of those very major shareholding individuals who have the most to gain have been pushing for a deal forever, and naturally all the retail investors will be entitled to go along for the ride.
But probably a greater number of insiders who are pushing for the deal are not that major of a shareholder or even shareholders at all. Corporate employees who are higher-ups and in accessory corporations like banks and consultants within range, can often be subject to bonuses and commissions anyway which can motivate them en masse much more so than whether they had any nominal amount in their retail portfolio or not. There might even be a legislator or two who stands to gain somewhere along the line, sooner or later.
The number of people who are going to get rich without having to have been opportune shareholders can really make the difference.
The big shareholders were already rich or were going to get richer anyway.
That's probably what the extra $11 billion is for, for everybody else close to the deal, and that's even more incentive for them to expedite.
You can only imagine that one guy negotiated an extra 10% more than a $100 billion deal was worth, especially since the buyers could easily afford it. But then gets 10% of that so he gets a billion, bringing the final total to $111 billion so no other numbers need to be adjusted ;)
samudrijan 1 days ago [-]
You can count on the corporate Dems to gnash their teeth and wring their hands and collect their paycheck.
HWR_14 23 hours ago [-]
I don't see how. The government approved the merger. Absent breaking the conditions that were attached to the merger, it's a done deal.
Hypothetically California could have done something to prevent the merger. Then they [Paramount] leave California, as threatened, and then complete the merger.
The Federal government is the entity which needs to be the enforcer of antitrust. Otherwise major companies like these WILL pick and and leave the state blocking them. It's a 111 billion deal - this is worth moving states for the parties involved.
johnnyanmac 1 days ago [-]
Okay. They should have called the bluff. It'd be better if the federal government did this, but that's not the world we live in right now.
Here's the issue: nothing stops them from leaving the state anyway after the deal is made. The concessions lack any weight. California folded potentially for nothing.
bobthepanda 1 days ago [-]
There is already a deep recession in the creative industry in LA, film jobs are down by a third since 2022. They’re not negotiating from a position of strength
johnnyanmac 1 days ago [-]
I'm aware. There's a lot of FUD around this industry and a large corporation leaving wouldn't help.
At the same time, this promise to "support labor" falls flat when they have been actively combatting with it for recent years. Their words ring hollow.
And if we're being realistic: this is mostly Newsom trying to cover his tracks and look "strong" for 2028.
Jackpillar 15 hours ago [-]
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta was going to call Ellisons bluff and scrap the merger until Gavin Newsom personally pressured Bonta to let it happen*.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the political spectrum if you believe that establishment democrats will do anything to prevent this.
Has she driven it into the ground? Remember that the goal is not to provide entertainment or news, but to act as a politically-aligned propaganda outlet. Has it really failed to achieve that goal?
slowin 9 hours ago [-]
I agree that's the goal, looks like the ratings are down quite a bit though so in that sense the goal is failing:
Likud would't have started a war with Iran if they wanted the US to win.
fortzi 10 hours ago [-]
I’m sorry, but I can’t help but see this view as ultra US centric. The Israeli government wanted to strike at Iran and needed a strong ally. It’s not a ploy to set a trap for the US, which is bonkers.
bigyabai 9 hours ago [-]
Here, let me rephrase it to be Israel-centric for you:
The Israeli government didn't need America to join. If they wanted to kill the ayatollah, they could do it alone. If they wanted to denuclearize Iran, every single expert affirmed that it wasn't a realistic goal, no matter how many allies they had. The net outcome of this war is extremely negative for the United States so far, and scott-free for Israel. Defense commentators had been predicting this Iran war manipulation for decades, and warned US policymakers to oppose it as far as they could. Israeli lobbyists now propose US enlistment laws, such is their need for wanton escalation under Trump: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260903-a-proposal-seeks-...
So, what was the goal? For decades, Netanyahu has used the threat of violence and war to secure his position as prime minister. He campaigned for Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, denied any incitement, and then took his place when he was killed. He's ostensibly corrupt and stands accused of manufacturing crises to enable his political support. His administration spends hundreds of millions of dollars rehabilitating his internationally reviled image. I wasn't born yesterday, you can't ambiguate Likud's history of escalation, assassination and manipulation.
1 days ago [-]
tootie 1 days ago [-]
Is Israel the main concern? They gave tens of millions to Trump. They are now Republican media.
autoexec 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, it's not great that the head of the corporation is so close with Netanyahu, but there are more immediate problems for the US. These corporations aren't ideological though, they'll just do whatever it takes to get what more of what they want. David Ellison and his daddy have both been more than happy to throw huge piles of money at Democrats and support them when they thought it was convenient. When Republicans are out of power they'll support whoever replaces them. When you have no morals whatsoever what difference is there in supporting a Democrat, or a genocide, or a Republican?
ethanpil 1 days ago [-]
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Jugglewhoa 1 days ago [-]
The shills always conveniently forget to mention AIPAC.
bsoqk 1 days ago [-]
This is the worst deflection I’ve seen in this website and that’s saying a lot.
fortzi 1 days ago [-]
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melbournesky 1 days ago [-]
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eks391 1 days ago [-]
Consider me a politically ignorant folk who has heard Israel = Good his whole life, thought it was silly when recently people started hating on Israel, and has heard it long enough that he's wondering what he's been ignoring.
With that introduction, is there a quick sum up somewhere to get someone like me to understand why there's so much division on this topic? All I really know is that in the most recent stuff with Gaza, people think that Israel's actions are too much, but I would be lying if I claimed to know what any of those Middle East scurmishes are about.
I gotta be honest, given the LLMs we have today, it takes less words to get a list of references and context to read than it takes to type out your comment.
If you're genuinely curious about why people's views on Israel have shifted you could've got yourself excellent information with a simple prompt as such:
"Give me a brief neutral summary backed with reliable sources on the state of tensions in the Middle East today and the role played by Israel and other states. Help me understand why people's views on Israel have shifted so much since the start of the war in Gaza?"
_factor 1 days ago [-]
Note the Israeli training data scandal to influence AI responses. AI is not reliable for this purpose.
1 days ago [-]
johnnyanmac 1 days ago [-]
Keeping the other response in mind: I cannot think of a worse idea than to rely on black box tech for output on your political opinions. That on its surface simply feels like a top 3 dystopia cliche that I hope we avoid.
bdhe 1 days ago [-]
I said list of references. You'd read the primary sources and make up your political opinion. But LLMs are good at providing pointers, much like wikipedia.
starik36 1 days ago [-]
You've managed to work your favorite conspiracy into this completely unrelated conversation as well! Congrats!
stoatmagoats 1 days ago [-]
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s well documented and easily evident. You can start by reading The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
xdennis 24 hours ago [-]
John Mearsheimer is the same guy who justifies why Ukraine deserves to be occupied by Russia.
colordrops 23 hours ago [-]
Apparently you haven't listened to his discussions on the topic. He says no such thing.
starik36 1 days ago [-]
And working Israel into every conversation. What is that evidence of?
Yes, the story of Arabs trying to destroy Jews and failing. And then crying about it for all eternity. Great night time reading.
8note 1 days ago [-]
are you unfamiliar with bari weiss and CBS?
jsonc 1 days ago [-]
tell me, is ignorance as blissful as they say it is?
colordrops 1 days ago [-]
Uh Israel's influence in the US is pretty well understood by the average American now. You can put away your propaganda as it doesn't work anymore.
FridayoLeary 1 days ago [-]
And what's wrong with that?
I think it's great that the America supports Israel, whose values and interests basically align with the West, over the rest of the Middle East, Russia and China with their values, which being as diplomatic as possible, do not.
Just take a look at all the countries that are the most against Israel. They are a mixture of failed states, third world and what they all share in common is a distressing lack of regard for human rights. Both of other nationalities and their own. Europe is unfortunately going in that direction, and I believe it's no coincience that they are simultaneously becoming worse countries and more anti Israel. It's not causation but it is correlation.
arczyx 1 days ago [-]
> distressing lack of regard for human rights
The US couped, invaded, and destroyed tens of countries since WW2 until now. Israel is still massacring civilians in Gaza during a ceasefire and continuing their pogrom in the West Bank, killing people and stealing more lands. This is your example of human rights?
FridayoLeary 1 days ago [-]
Yes. Your argument is fallacious because it's classic whataboutism. Just because the US have done some morally questionable things doesn't mean they are not committed to humanism in general and by comparison to all the other countries I've mentioned, they are so much better. And their trajectory over time is one of continued improvement.
As for your charges against Israel, they are factually incorrect. Israel is not still massacring civilians in Gaza, neither did they at any point engage in anything like a systemic, strategic program of killing civilians in Gaza. If you want to know what the casualty figures would look like if that was indeed the case, look at Iran which did do just that with the protests last year where they succeeded in murdering in one week roughly the amount of people Israel killed in Gaza in an entire year of active fighting. The worst you can accuse them of is of not doing enough to minimize civilian casualties. I will argue they did plenty but that's for another time. As for "progroms" in the West Bank, I would love to see what you're talking about. For your reference this is a wikipedia page on progroms[1] For some context, the number of extremist violent settlers that the whole world is fixated on numbers according to estimates in the dozens to hundreds.
Finally, I will leave it up to your imagination what it would look like if the roles were reversed, if the Arabs were dominant in Israel and the Jews were a minority, to help things along, here's examples from the wider Arab world[2]
those charges are very factually correct. eg. israel has killed >1000 civilian gazans since signing the ceasefire. thats about the same as how iran responded to a similar uprising as oct 7th. by comparison israel has killed at the very lowest, 70k civilians, probably more like 300k -500k if anyone is ever allowed to investigate the rubble from israel's subsequent destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure.
the systematic killing is pretty clear - tell people to evacuate to an israeli defined "safe zone" and then drop bombs on it. other defined policies had the idf mowing down escaped israeli-citizen hostages waving white flags and approaching the gaza border. assigning snipers to get headshots on children.
its a system informed by the fact that going too hard would result in instant sanctions, but the intent is made plenty clear, and the results are easily visible by counting the number of living gazans still in northern gaza.
palestine was under arab and turkish rules for centuries, and jews did much better than arabs are under israeli occupation
if the west was more values-similar with israel, there would be constant swastikas drawn on everything jewish owned or in jewish view, with a couple real true blue nazis going around beating up, killing, and stealing jewish property, and the government would keep pardoning them and insisting its not a problem because its only a couple hundred thousand nazis in a country witb many millions.
i sure saw in that video where cnn gets attacked by the idf clearing the way for settlers that the west bank is covered in stars of david, drawn the same way swatstikas are to terrorize people
YZF 23 hours ago [-]
Wow. You managed to cram so much propaganda into one post it's pretty impressive.
Civilians like maybe Ali Al-Amoudi? Or maybe Muhammad Yazouri? Nayal Abu Obeid? Izz al-Din al-Beik? Izz al-Din al-Haddad? Mohammed Odeh?
Is there any combatant Hamas doesn't call a civilian?
Since Hamas hasn't disarmed and Gaza wasn't demilitarized there is effectively no ceasefire. There is a war and Israel is attacking military targets as it is allowed to do under international law. Minimizing civilian casualties as it is required to do.
If Hamas, the democratically elected government of Gaza, has a problem with that then it can surrender.
Israel has only attacked the safe zone when there were military targets present, such as the attack on Mohammed Deif. That's on Hamas. Once you get the civilian/combatant breakdown from Hamas then we can check how many civilians per capita were attacked in humanitarian zones (very few) vs. zones that were evacuated (the majority).
EDIT: Re: The Ottomans. Massacred Jews in Safed in 1517. Ethnically cleansed Jaffa of Jews in 1917. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. No comparison whatsoever to Israeli Arabs who are equal citizens in Israel. As to the Palestinians in the occupied territories, they're not citizens. Also AFAIK the Jews didn't mount a campaign of suicide bombings against the Arabs or fire rockets into Arab cities.
FireBeyond 12 hours ago [-]
There's many problems here. But scream bloody murder about propaganda and then push this on people:
> If Hamas, the democratically elected government of Gaza, has a problem with that then it can surrender.
The last election in Gaza was over two decades ago.
Hamas seized and have kept control of Gaza. Coincidentally, they are the only people with weapons in Gaza.
FridayoLeary 12 hours ago [-]
Doesn't mean they didn't enjoy broad support up to and including Oct7.
SauciestGNU 10 hours ago [-]
Who knew that militant resistance against a genocidal occupying force might be popular amongst the victims of said occupation and genocide.
nautikos2 1 days ago [-]
It's not whataboutism if you're comparing apples with apples. Just saying.
bijowo1676 24 hours ago [-]
typical jewish propaganda and hasbara.
Arab jews did not want to move to Israel, they were fine living among muslims. Mossad faked terrorist bombings in Baghdad and killed bunch of jews to create an illusion of jew hatred in Iraq.
Next you’re going to say that all the antisemitic commenters on HN are also Mossad in an attempt to convince Jews to move to Israel.
Are you Mossad?
I note that you wrote: “typical jewish propaganda and hasbara” - you forgot to say “Zionist” or “Israeli”. Was that a slip or have your handlers in Israel instructed you to be openly antisemitic now?
Jews were ethnically cleansed from all Arab countries.
Re: your link. I mean the Iraqi authorities said so. Yeah right.
kelnos 1 days ago [-]
Not sure what your values are, but mine don't include decades of apartheid followed by genocide.
FridayoLeary 1 days ago [-]
Mine don't either.
8note 1 days ago [-]
israel shares that same lack of care gor human rights. consider the use of rape and possibly bestiality to torture hostages in prisons, the state protection of terrorists, the lack of gay or even interfaith marriage, the genocide in gaza.
israel doesnt at all align with (modern) western values, instead more like the old apartheid south africa, or really, more like nazi germany in terms of supremacism and industrial might put towards surveiling and killing the less-than-human people you allude to as being less-than-human.
the causation of all those failed states is israel. it makes failed states because those are easier to conquer land from, and cant fight against all the abuses of humans.
sure, the US was half supportive of the nazis too, but that wasn't a good thing.
FridayoLeary 1 days ago [-]
>consider the use of rape and possibly bestiality to torture hostages in prisons, the state protection of terrorists, the lack of gay or even interfaith marriage, the genocide in gaza.
Argument: Unproven claims, there are virtually no jewish terrorists, anyway in your own distorted mind Israel is a terrorist state.
Counterpoint: Oct 7, Bibas family, Hamas, Palestinan Authority/PLO, Islam.
>the lack of gay or even interfaith marriage, the genocide in gaza.
........
...
I mean, lets just take a moment to reflect on this. For more context Israel has a pretty strong gay culture, so your complaint is about a legal technicality. So you are mentioning that in the same breath as the the death of 70,000 Gazans? And you think that's somehow an argument that makes you look good???
I am a pretty outspoken supporter of Israel, but I have never come close to that level of disrespect to the Palestinian people as you have managed.
>the causation of all those failed states is israel. it makes failed states because those are easier to conquer land from, and cant fight against all the abuses of humans.
The causation of all those failed states is Third World values. Like blaming everyone else for their own failures.
halflife 1 days ago [-]
You don’t get it, in their twisted worldview, Israel is to blame for anything. Coincides is exactly what’s being taught in every household in the failed states surrounding Israel. No jobs? Israel. Illness and death? Israel. Taliban slaughtering people? Israel.
Instead of understanding that these governments use the Israeli Palestinian conflict as a scapegoat, and Israel as a boogeyman, just to make the populous blind to the true cause for their suffering.
bigyabai 12 hours ago [-]
It's simple: I don't want billions of taxpayer dollars going to a country that enforces the Hannibal Directive or the Dahiya doctrine.
If the Israeli government cooperates with the ICC, adopts full secularity and stops undermining their neighbors security, then I'd feel a lot better supporting them. Right now I'm only ashamed. There is no upside to sending Israel foreign aid after Likud manipulated Trump into starting an illegal war.
halflife 10 hours ago [-]
Wow that’s a lot to unpack.
Dahyia doctrine - this means inflict damage on your enemy in such way that will deter him from ever trying to attack you again. It was named in the 2006 Lebanon war, which Hezbollah started, after which nasrallah admitted that if he knew of the Israeli response, he would not have started the war. I suppose your a 5 star general with a better way of creating deterrence.
Hannibal directive - affects only soldiers, and it means that the army must do whatever’s necessary to prevent a kidnapping. This is after a soldier was kidnapped into Gaza, kept there for 5 years without seeing any natural party to assess his condition (which is illegal but no one cares about that when Israelis are the victims), and eventually was released against 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, one of which was sinwar. Again, I assume you are a 5 star general that can find a better solution.
Israel is a secular state. The only thing controlled by religion is marriage (btw USA gives weapons to turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, where is the protest against support of these unsecular countries?)
And finally - how exactly is the Iran war illegal?
If Israel wanted to clean their slate, they can always present their case to the ICC. Little wonder that Likud lashes out and call the ICC "biased" for not sharing their beliefs, but such is the culture gap that the Israeli state has fostered. And such is the standards of cooperation and compliance that the rest of the world has come to expect since the horror of WWII. It's hard to not blame Israel for the terrible optics that their leadership has promoted and incorporated into their state's identity. The whataboutism in your comment proves that you also know it's wrong, but just refuse to hold Israel accountable the way that the House of Saud is (very justifiably) criticized. It's clear that Israel demands an ethical double-standard from the world.
Congress never agreed to it. Israel can fight all they want, but extended US operations are jeopardized without a congressional authorization. The upcoming midterms are going to shake things up, and it's very possible that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 will be enforced to stop funding for in-theater operations outside of CENTCOM basics and foreign aid. The war isn't popular, and US taxpayers can only foot the bill for so long before they abandon Likud's warmongering initiatives. Even Trump doesn't want to escalate, considering how many threats he wussed out of.
halflife 2 hours ago [-]
Sexual predator karim khan, which was the icc prosecutor, was supposed to arrive with a delegation to Israel to investigate the charges and see evidence from the Israeli side. A day before he cancelled the delegation and one sidedly published the accusations.
A year later we learned that he threatened his victim that if she would expose him, it would hurt the case against Israel.
And before you say that you don’t trust Israeli media, the world doesn’t care enough when it’s Palestinians at fault, so it’s not covered anywhere else.
bijowo1676 15 hours ago [-]
We know from Bible and from Church and from the history, who exactly is performing ritual sacrifice of children.
Its all corroborated and backed by evidence and was a official Church position for centuries
For example the stories of simon of trent and william of norwich
halflife 14 hours ago [-]
What the hell are you talking about
slg 12 hours ago [-]
Antisemitism. And I don't mean in the way some people try calling criticism of Israel antisemitism. I mean that person is bringing up nearly millennia old blood libel conspiracies.
From Wikpedia[1]:
>Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic trope which falsely accuses Jews of murdering Christians in order to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals... Blood libels often claim that Jews require human blood for the baking of matzos, an unleavened flatbread which is eaten during Passover. Earlier versions of the blood libel accused Jews of ritually re-enacting the crucifixion. The accusations often assert that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and historically, blood libel claims have been made in order to account for the otherwise unexplained deaths of children. In some cases, the alleged victims of human sacrifice have become venerated as Christian martyrs. Many of these – most prominently William of Norwich (1144), Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (1255), and Simon of Trent (1475) – became objects of local cults and veneration
It is not conspiracy, Saint Simon of Trent was recognized by Church for centuries
Even jewish historian Toaff documented cases of infanticide and connection to religious rituals in his book “Pasque di sangue”. Its all corroborated with evidence
>Saint Simon of Trent was recognized by Church for centuries
And why is that past tense?
>Even jewish historian Toaff documented cases of infanticide and connection to religious rituals in his book “Pasque di sangue”. Its all corroborated with evidence
From your own link:
>Toaff withdrew the book from circulation a week after its publication and republished it the following year with an afterword stating that there was no relationship between the use of dried blood in Jewish ritual and the alleged ritual murders underlying the blood libel.
bijowo1676 4 hours ago [-]
>And why is that past tense?
because the Church has issued "nostra aetate", which was written by ashkenazi jews Gregory Baum, John Oesterreicher, Bruno hussar. This was a political decision driven by aftermath of ww2 and coordinated by the World Jewish Congress and had no basis in theological nor facts nor any other legitimate reasons.
>Toaff withdrew
of course, he withdrew because people did not like the original research he published. He literally received death threats by people who did not like the facts, so he decided to withdraw and self-censor out of caution for his own life.
slg 4 hours ago [-]
Thank you, I think this explanation underlines my above point better than I could in my own words.
FridayoLeary 23 hours ago [-]
Hamas
bijowo1676 15 hours ago [-]
Its not hamas who worships Baal
Its not hamas who performs mass ritual sacrifice of innocent children. These things have happened before hamas was created and documented by Church and in the Bible
tempaccountabcd 1 days ago [-]
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ramesh31 1 days ago [-]
Under what criteria exactly is Israel a "foreign adversary"...?
popalchemist 1 days ago [-]
Have you been paying attention to american politics the last 15 years or so? It's become astoundingly clear that Mossad has blackmail material on virtually every major politician and uses it to get its way - including billions of dollars in funding and drawing the US into conflicts that do not benefit us and instead result in the deaths of Americans (and as of Trump's statement yesterday, the threat of bombings on American soil.)
Helloworldboy 1 days ago [-]
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burnerRhodov3 1 days ago [-]
This is not about the jews.. this is about the billionaires taking over media. If you're going to be angry, please place your anger in the right direction and don't get all antisemetic. Elon buying X, Bezos buying washington post, ellison controlling media... They are slowly controlling the stack.
za3faran 1 days ago [-]
Calling out israel is not antisemitic.
deaux 22 hours ago [-]
You're right it's not about Jewish people; particularly in the US, but also in Europe, there are millions of Jewish people who are not Zionist, denounce the Israeli government and are great people.
That's why he said Israel. But good hasbara tactic conflating mention of Israel with "jews", keep it up.
kilper4 24 hours ago [-]
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bushbaba 13 hours ago [-]
What an anti semetic remark. You seem to have no issue with Saudi owning a major portion of tech, a country where lgtbq, woman’s, freedom of speech, and minority rights is not really a thing.
slowin 13 hours ago [-]
Being anti-Zionist and concerned about the single largest US donor to the IDF now controlling a massive chunk of American MSM is not antisemitic. I also didn't say anything about Saudi Arabia, so I don't know why you're trying to put words in my mouth there. For the record I don't think anyone should have a major position in tech, that's a huge problem.
Also, Israel is murdering women, children, lgbtq and attacking our freedom of speech (they also have murdered more journalists than any country in history and will not allow journalists into Gaza), so that's certainly a priority to address, especially since I as a US citizen am made complicit in these actions. The consent for these crimes against humanity was manufactured by the very MSM that Ellison is buying here. It's a move in the wrong direction.
bushbaba 12 hours ago [-]
You keep saying he’s donated to the IDF. Do you have any source for that? Now if you mean FIDF, that is an organization which is somewhat equivalent to the USO program. Not really “military”, in the sense that no munitions were bought.
slowin 12 hours ago [-]
> You keep saying he’s donated to the IDF.
I've said it once. This is the second time you've lied about what I've said in this thread. I don't feel the need to continue this conversation, but here's more background on Ellison (and other billionaires) donations to the IDF:
>but it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over
It's not antisemitic to criticize Israel, but this language is verging on antisemitic because Israel very much does not have "direct editorial control" over Skydance. David Ellison is the one with "direct editorial control" and you can certainly say he's "extremely pro-Israel" but he himself is not "a foreign adversary" by any definition of those words. So either you're being hyperbolic with the meaning of "direct editorial control" or you're insinuating that David Ellison will defer to Israel on everything because he's Jewish which is a common antisemitic trope[1]. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former, but the latter is enough of a possibility that I would suggest rephrasing this comment to avoid giving supporters of Israel a legitimate line of complaint against your underlying point.
Isn't technically every Israeli adult over a certain age ex-IDF? I had understood service to be compulsory for all citizens.
slg 1 days ago [-]
Yes, military service is compulsory in Israel so using "ex-IDF soldier" in this context does stick out because it isn't actually adding any new details. It gives the impression that the reason that language was chosen was that it implies something more nefarious than "Israeli" without the requirement of actually detailing what makes it nefarious.
ButlerianJihad 22 hours ago [-]
When I discovered that Dr. Ruth Westheimer had been a particularly fearsome and accurate ace sniper [who 'never killed anybody'] for the IDF, I came to the conclusion that that was completely in-character for what she did stateside, on the airwaves and in other popular media in these United States. I mean, same thing for Netta Barzilai. Bravissimo.
deaux 22 hours ago [-]
Until just 2 years ago, it was not compulsory for Haredi Jews. So no.
slg 1 days ago [-]
If you want to make an accusation, make an accusation. Do you think a specific person at the head of this company is "a foreign advisory"? Because the vagueness of an accusation can come across like a dog whistle. If you believe ethics and facts are on your side, what's the point of being vague?
bijowo1676 24 hours ago [-]
its not a dog whistle, it is proven fact that some jews have repeatedly betrayed the interests of the United States and engaged in espionage
>David Ellison appoints Israeli to lead merged Paramount-Warner studios
The same thing happened with the Tik Tok purchase, the entire point of handing control of the Tik Tok algorithm to Larry Ellison was so that they could clamp down on the discussion about the genocide in Gaza. You can see the results of it in the reports that the world Jewish congress put out directly:
>TikTok is the exception, removing 64% of content overall (and 71% of
content formally reported to it), compared to 12–15% on every other major platform.
slg 1 days ago [-]
It seems like you fully ignored my point, so I'll repeat myself:
>you can certainly say he's "extremely pro-Israel" but he himself is not "a foreign adversary" by any definition of those words.
All you're showing is that his family is pro-Israel, but that does not mean they are controlled by Israel. These conversations about Israel always seem to remove the agency on the American end which is where a lot of the historical antisemitic tropes live. Whether it's intentional or not, it's phrased in a way that evokes the trope of a shadowy cabal of Jews pulling the strings behind the scenes, and other countries rarely get talked about in this same way. For example, have you ever heard anyone suggest Google and Microsoft are controlled by India because their CEOs were born in India?
Dig1t 1 days ago [-]
"controlled by Israel" is kind of impossible to prove and that was never anyone's argument. But it's very obvious that these people are placing ethnic affinity and the interests of a foreign nation above the United States. They are going out of their way to buy media to shape the discourse of this country in favor of a foreign nation and a specific ethnic group.
>other countries rarely get talked about in this same way
They actually do, but the Israeli lobby has grown so powerful that it is now dominating most of the political action in the USA in a way that has become impossible to ignore.
There are actually plenty of conversations to be had about Indian ethnic affinity and lobbying. USINPAC is the Indian lobbying organization which is actually modeled after AIPAC (the notorious Israeli lobbying group which has political control over most of the US congress).
There is a looming argument which hasn't yet entered the public mainstream discourse about Indian foreign influence and Indian ethnic nepotism in the United States, but that is an entirely separate conversation.
Most Indian CEOs are the same caste (Brahmin) and there is a good argument that many of them have been nominated by the boards of their companies and institutional investors with large stakes so that they can navigate India's notorious bureaucracy and deepen ties to the country, which supplies much of the cheap labor for the tech industry. Many of them have direct ties to the Bharatiya Janata Party in India and can use the access to people like Modi to access more Indian labor as well as build more in India. Modi talks openly about exporting human capital and using its diaspora to wield influence in the United States. One can argue that they are taking a cue from Israel here.
>Narendra Modi urges the Indian diaspora to become an extension of foreign policy
>"controlled by Israel"... was never anyone's argument.
Yes it was. My comment was directly in response to someone saying "it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over". I know that was not your argument, but it was someone's argument and I responded to refute it. I don't know what point you thought was being discussed, but it's now clear you misread the conversation.
nixon_why69 1 days ago [-]
They put Bari Weiss in charge of CBS news. Her only credential is being rabidly zionist. This trait got her blog purchased for 100s of millions of dollars (!!) and then put her in charge of CBS news.
If you want to split hairs between "controlled by Israel" and "controlled by people who's sole interest is supporting Israel", go ahead.
Dig1t 1 days ago [-]
Before the Tik Tok purchase went through, the prime minister of Israel gave a talk in which he said:
>But we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields with which we engage, and the most important ones are on social media. And the most important purchase that's going on right now is? Tik Tok. Number One.
Later, control of the Tik Tok algorithm was given to Larry Ellison and they immediately used it to clamp down on discussion of the genocide in Gaza (as well as any other types of discussion they deem "antisemitism").
Now Larry Ellison's son has been given control of all these other media companies and has appointed an Israeli to run things.
This is DIRECT evidence of Larry and David Ellison working directly with the highest levels of a foreign government to manipulate public opinion on behalf of that foreign government.
Obviously Larry Ellison had met with Netanyahu, or with someone in the Israeli government, and discussed the details of this deal. If the government of Israel can ask a citizen in a different country to do something on their behalf, that is a form of control.
dkobia 1 days ago [-]
A behemoth indeed but the numbers also tell an interesting story. For TV screen share, Youtube has ~13% of total US viewing time vs ~6% for Paramount/Warner. They also go into this merger with staggering debt which does not bode well.
scyzoryk_xyz 1 days ago [-]
This would be the anti anti trust argument - that it's not studio vs studio, but it's type of screen-time vs other types of screen-time.
Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games? This was during the streaming wars IIRC.
Regardless of how you look at it, this is yet another confluence of IP franchises merging together, whatever juice is left in them squeezed out and reprocessed over and over over time. Kind of what Oracle is in software I guess?
Working in an adjacent entertainment IP focus business myself, my eyes are glazing over a bit at this point.
AgentMatt 1 days ago [-]
> Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games? This was during the streaming wars IIRC.
Yea, and spending time with your friends and family, meeting new people, sleeping...
From [1]:
> “Think about if you didn’t watch Netflix last night: What did you do? There’s such a broad range of things that you did to relax and unwind, hang out, and connect—and we compete with all of that.”
When I read that interview, I became a lot more cautious of using Netflix and other streaming platforms, knowing their design is adversarial to my values (I want to be deliberate about what I watch, not be manipulated into mindless consumption).
Why do they even want you watching? Once the fee is paid isn’t it better you don’t watch kind of like the gym?
johneth 21 hours ago [-]
They need to keep you watching to a certain extent, otherwise you'd eventually question why you're subscribed in the first place.
patwolf 1 days ago [-]
This is the same argument from when Sirius and XM radio merged. It didn't matter that they were monopolizing satellite radio because the real competition was terrestrial radio and internet radio.
scyzoryk_xyz 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah, it's a rhetorical maneuver that's as old as monopoly power when you think about it.
"Actually we're really David and we need to band together against Goliath." Points at imagined external threat
The part that's wild to me is that we know that this merger extends to politics and control over media. The IP's, studios, franchises, all the actual businesses are just part of the estate. It's the Hearst Media Empire story retold again.
bunderbunder 1 days ago [-]
From my perspective YouTube has quietly won the streaming wars. It has a vastly wider variety of content, especially for non-fiction shows. In the cases where there's more direct genre competition, I tend to prefer YouTube overall because, despite its offerings being generally lower budget, they tend to represent a wider variety of "editorial voices". There's a lot of outright slop to wade through, ofc, but there's also a lot of creative risk taking out there to discover.
Meanwhile, yeah, Paramount, Time Warner, Disney, etc. have all become so money-minded and risk-averse that it reminds me of the twilight days of the old Hollywood studio system, where all the major production companies were locked into a heated battle to determine who could be the absolute blandest.
autoexec 1 days ago [-]
> despite its offerings being generally lower budget, they tend to represent a wider variety of "editorial voices".
There's a huge amount of censorship with youtube though. The movies and shows on cable and streaming services can still talk about dead people without being forced to say they are "unalived". CNN can talk about a pandemic without calling it a "panini". Besides censoring specific words and phrases Youtube demonitizes entire genres of content along with anything that is "unfriendly" to advertisers. If that's the future of media in the US we're screwed.
mikepurvis 1 days ago [-]
I kind of agree, and it's interesting how Nebula and Spotify (at least their video efforts) have been based on elevating and funding those ultra-budget YouTube creators. Like I watch Lindsay Ellis and Practical Engineering and SkillUp all on non-YouTube platforms now, despite YouTube being the recommendation algorithm that originally brought me there.
It's really the opposite model of the "major" streaming players who fund tentpole releases in the conventional Hollywood way, and then have a long tail of niche content (cooking reality shows and the like) that are clearly on a much tighter budget, but still basically modeled on being a cheaper version of a cable show rather than a much better funded version of a YouTube comedy troupe.
bunderbunder 1 days ago [-]
I was just listening to an interview with an up and coming playwright, and he made an interesting point that he really doesn’t like how expensive live theater has become. I guess he has been deliberately targeting super low budget not-even-off-broadway venues because he felt that a big budget stifles creativity. The more money the production stands to lose, the more pressure there is to play it safe.
That kind of describes my relationship with Nebula. There’s a lot of great stuff on there, and lately I have been watching it more than YouTube. But still, YouTube is where I tend to go when I’m looking to find something new that I genuinely haven’t seen before. I think the lower floor for production values is a big part of that.
mikepurvis 15 hours ago [-]
I would definitely encourage folks to seek out community theatre where you are. Not that I don't enjoy a full on broadway-style blowout every now and then, but it's also been shocking to me how much of the difference between a $40 seat and a $150 seat is pyrotechnics and spectacle that don't really make the experience for me.
The words and the performances, the chemistry and creativity of the actors, that's the real priceless stuff.
to11mtm 1 days ago [-]
> Regardless of how you look at it, this is yet another confluence of IP franchises merging together, whatever juice is left in them squeezed out and reprocessed over and over over time. Kind of what Oracle is in software I guess?
Cantrill tried to, as diplomatically as possible, warn everyone.
Nobody listened.
jedberg 1 days ago [-]
> Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games?
Yes. He always told us that we don't need to worry about the other streamers nearly as much as we have to worry about them turning off the TV and playing games or (gasp!) going outside. TikTok/Instagram Reels wasn't a thing yet, but if it were, I'm sure they would have been on the list too.
mikepurvis 1 days ago [-]
“Being an adult is staring at medium screens all day to come home and stare at a little screen while a big screen is on in the background”
Reed Hastings may be rich, but he is a fucking moron. By his logic the greatest threat to entertainment is people who parent without screens.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
You're misinterpreting what "threat" means. And in fact he used the word "competition."
He was talking about the "incumbent" they are trying to displace. Netflix's challenge was not getting people to switch from watching Hulu to Netflix, but to get them not to sleep in order to watch Netflix.
Evil maybe, but nothing moronic about it.
nothercastle 1 days ago [-]
But why? People not sleeping translates to negative profit and value to the company
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Why would that be true?
doctorpangloss 1 days ago [-]
That's not true. That's the point. It is the same thing as what Reed Hastings is saying. He thinks he is saying some deep insightful thing, and it's ridiculous. It's 200% wrong.
estearum 18 hours ago [-]
You all seem extremely confused about this statement. Go see it in context lol.
thousand_nights 1 days ago [-]
youtube has slowly become like 90% of my TV time over the past few years, I think it's the fact that you don't have to commit to watching 40+ minutes of something every time and there's just way too much interesting content on it
and i'm not even someone you'd class as young anymore, so I don't think this is a younger generation thing
runako 1 days ago [-]
> you don't have to commit to watching 40+ minutes of something
This is funny because I have stopped clicking YouTube links for the simple reason that every video seems to be 45+ minutes. Which I get is based on how monetization works on YouTube.
Like Old Twitter, short-form video is a forcing function with value in forcing posters to get to the point. (I have never seen a YouTube Shorts or whatever link in the wild.)
ecshafer 1 days ago [-]
X (Formerly Twitter) (The everything app) does have a huge issue with long drawn on tweets now. Not to mention people who try and bait people in with intentionally cutting things off.
criddell 1 days ago [-]
Are you watching YouTubeTV, or just independent-ish creator YouTube?
I watch probably an hour of YouTube a week and would watch more if I could find anything good.
My favorite TV of the past five years is probably Severance. Is there anything of that caliber on YouTube? One of the best movies I saw last year was on Netflix (Train Dreams). Are there great movies on YouTube?
I’d love to year about some of your favorite stuff on YouTube.
thousand_nights 1 days ago [-]
independent-ish creators (I'm aware that a lot of channels seem to be bought out by private equity lately), but mostly science, technology, speedrunning, mysteries, recipe guides, things like that, basically stuff that I'm interested in
criddell 18 hours ago [-]
Oh nice. I never thought of looking for recipes on YouTube before.
How much work do you put into curating your feed? Mine is terrible. For example, I’ll watch a video on how to fix my dishwasher and suddenly it thinks I want to fix all dishwashers.
Gigachad 1 days ago [-]
There is some good content, but sadly the bulk of youtube now is someone sitting in a room reading an AI script for 30 minutes covering 2 minutes of content.
BeetleB 1 days ago [-]
I'm in the opposite camp. I find Youtube exhausting, and it keeps getting worse and worse.
Their ads are terrible. And since I watch via a device like Roku, etc, I have to put up with them. I've actively removed them from my devices. Occasionally, I feel like looking up some video. I install it, and often before I even watch the video I uninstall it because the awful UI reminds me of all the other awful stuff in it.
Curation doesn't exist. I have to work hard to find good content. Harder than any video service out there.
And shorts. Oh. Dear. God.
For some very targeted stuff (home repairs, video game walkthroughs), it's great. For the rest, it just sucks.
munificent 1 days ago [-]
Of all of the various online services, YouTube is the one where I feel I get the most value in return for paying for premium. 90% of my video and music consumption is through YouTube, and it's all ad-free. (Well, except that so much of hobby YouTube is implicitly all ad because the video is about some piece of hobby gear, but that's sort of the nature of the beast.)
I've never watched a YouTube short.
My recommendations are all very well aligned with my interests. The trick here is to go through your watch history and delete things that are leading the recommendation algorithm astray. I am ruthless about that.
BeetleB 1 days ago [-]
> 90% of my video and music consumption is through YouTube, and it's all ad-free.
If it works for you, great! Most video I watch is in the form of TV shows and movies. And Youtube sucks for that. Youtube is great for some hobby stuff. I used to like it for reviews, but even that sucks now - when I do a search I'm inundated with low effort reviews (i.e. by people who haven't used the product they're reviewing).
But if there's a creator you really like and follow, I can understand that.
> I've never watched a YouTube short.
Don't you think they should give you an option not to present them to you, given that you don't watch them?
> My recommendations are all very well aligned with my interests. The trick here is to go through your watch history and delete things that are leading the recommendation algorithm astray. I am ruthless about that.
I don't want to pay money and then have to do this. This is a pain I don't have to deal with in any other service.
munificent 13 hours ago [-]
> Don't you think they should give you an option not to present them to you, given that you don't watch them?
Yes, I certainly do! The fact that YouTube still tries to get me to watch Shorts every few weeks is 100% a user-hostile choice. Seems like basically every app these days does that kind of shit. It makes me sad, but it's pretty clearly in the set of things I can't change, so I try to just be mindful of the serenity prayer and accept it.
allenrb 1 days ago [-]
There are a few ways to disable/hide shorts. One day I said to a friend, “man I wish I could block these things, they’re insulting to my intelligence and just encourage clicking around” and my friend said “I’ve been blocking them for a while, just do this.” And while I can’t remember what “this” was, it’s worth a quick google.
Shorts are like the video equivalent of snacking on Doritos all day long.
BeetleB 1 days ago [-]
I know how to disable them on my PC. How do I disable them on Roku?
lallysingh 1 days ago [-]
If you have the ads turned off, it's a lot nicer. I got that with some family bundle for more Drive space.
BeetleB 1 days ago [-]
Let me put it this way.
Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads.
I don't want to pay for that.
johnnyanmac 1 days ago [-]
>Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads.
Depends on what you watch, as always. my YT feed is a mix of news, random gaming content, documentaries on a variety of topics, and odd little tech trivia. It covers all the bases at once.
Any other streaming service is simply "okay, maybe there's 1-2 shows on here I want to watch". Then I just pluck it onto my NAS and move about on my day. Why would I pay for a streaming service that struggles to even keep the few shows I like on there running past 1-2 seasons?
Nebula is the only other service I ever considered paying for. It's not a "Youtube killer" and misses out on a lot of the odd trivia sides of YT, but it overally feels more fleshed out on content than Netflix".
BeetleB 1 days ago [-]
> Any other streaming service is simply "okay, maybe there's 1-2 shows on here I want to watch".
If there's even 1 show I want to watch, it's great to watch it. The problem with Youtube is even when they have stuff I want to watch, it's a pain to watch it. Their UI is atrocious!
> Why would I pay for a streaming service that struggles to even keep the few shows I like on there running past 1-2 seasons?
You just unsubscribe at that point.
Know how much stuff I had bookmarked on Youtube that is no longer available? A whole damn lot.
johnnyanmac 1 days ago [-]
Maybe I'm missing something, but every video service Ui feels the same these days. Grid of videos with some loose sorting, click to play/pause, seek controls. I wouldn't call any of them good/bad on UI alone.
chihuahua 1 days ago [-]
Or just watch Youtube on a laptop, and install an ad blocker.
BeetleB 1 days ago [-]
Depends on the personality. Do you watch movies on a laptop?
For me, the big screen and ambience play a big role.
mrguyorama 9 hours ago [-]
HDMI cables are cheap. The best roku is a 30ft HDMI cable.
Actually I've used the steam deck in this role a bunch, works great.
chihuahua 13 hours ago [-]
For the big screen, I have another tiny PC and a wireless keyboard.
thousand_nights 1 days ago [-]
> Their ads are terrible.
I imagine they are that's why I pay for YT Premium, which I think is my most bang for buck subscription based on the amount of time I spend watching it
> Curation doesn't exist.
I don't find this a problem personally because 95% of my feed is just channels I'm subscribed to but YMMV depends on what you expect out of it
leptons 1 days ago [-]
I watch Youtube on a Chromecast using the SmartTube app, which is a 3rd party front-end (side-loaded APK) for Youtube that eliminates all the ads, and lets you configure practically everything. Don't like "shorts", just disable them and they are gone. That's the main reason I sought out an alternative to the Youtube app, I hated the shorts and there was no way to get rid of them in the Youtube app.
I used to pay for a Youtube subscription to get rid of the ads, but that doesn't include the in-video ads that content creators put in there - but SmartTube has that covered too, in most videos I watch the in-video ads are skipped too. I have 5 chromecasts on the 5 TVs around my house, and every one of them has SmartTube installed. I wouldn't want to watch Youtube without it.
Alone, their annual streaming revenue was something like $10 billion each compared to Netflix/YouTube at $50-$60 billion each, so they're lagging
(eg radio vs TV).
lokar 1 days ago [-]
I wonder what that % would look like for US voters over 60
fnordpiglet 14 hours ago [-]
I imagine that’s a segment with a declining NPV, which is generally not a good thing to finance on debt.
caned 1 days ago [-]
It's never been a better time to start consuming less. Let's drive that demand way, way down.
bigwheels 1 days ago [-]
Can this be undone in the future if folks realize it was too monopolistic and it was in fact an anti-trust violation?
I wonder if David Ellison is a fun guy IRL.
hilariously 1 days ago [-]
Should we wonder if Goebbels was a fun guy irl? I don't get it.
fortzi 1 days ago [-]
Are you seriously making that comparison?
DetroitThrow 1 days ago [-]
Should we compare Ellison to a lawnmower instead, as bcantrill so eloquently did?
zargon 1 days ago [-]
Never make the mistake of anthropomorphizing David Ellison.
fortzi 16 hours ago [-]
Is that a reference? If so, I’m not familiar with it
bigyabai 11 hours ago [-]
Yes. Ellison was called a sociopath by Oracle employees a long time ago, and most of Oracle's customers seem to agree. Hence the quote:
> Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.
i bet warner bros has made an absolute ton of goebbels inspired scenes.
goebbels is the movie influence of hollywood. its appropriate regardless
hilariously 1 days ago [-]
He's literally the media arm of a genocidal state, what do you want?
fortzi 16 hours ago [-]
You’re misusing the word “literally”
hilariously 16 hours ago [-]
He's literally buying up american media to make them the arm of a genocidal state, so no, I am literally not.
Y_Y 1 days ago [-]
He has a nice yacht, I bet it's fun on the yacht.
yolp5 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
fhub 1 days ago [-]
Are you insinuating something about David Ellison here?
ajmurmann 1 days ago [-]
It's insane that this comment is grey while the parent that's insinuating without proof that someone is a pedophile is going strong. What has happened to HN?!
rexpop 1 days ago [-]
Billionaires are all pedophiles, or else cannibals. Albeit, perhaps, only metaphorically.
They're certainly all friends with pedophiles, and they're certainly not opposed to human trafficking and pedophilia.
They could make it stop, but they're spending their money on yachts with many beds.
fhub 1 days ago [-]
Casually insinuating serious sexual misconduct about someone without evidence seems pretty far outside the spirit of HN.
yolp5 1 days ago [-]
It's one big club
kridsdale1 1 days ago [-]
He’s only making an implication.
tclancy 1 days ago [-]
Really just an intimation.
doobiedowner 1 days ago [-]
He keeps his underwear on
causesothere 22 hours ago [-]
Evidence suggests the powerful, especially the billionaire class, is regularly involved in sex trafficking. At this point I think it's reasonable to assume they are until you shown otherwise.
Frankly, to become a billionaire demonstrates a lack of empathy. Someday we'll recognize it as the mental health condition it is.
lokar 1 days ago [-]
IMO, a better solution for the broadcast media part of this is to delegate content regulation to the states when the signal from a tv/radio station is entirely within one state (and some kind of join regulation when it spans >1).
Concentrating so much power in the federal government is problematic, and unnecessary.
johnnyanmac 1 days ago [-]
I don't see it as a great idea to divide how content within a country is presented into 50 pieces based on whatever ideology that state's leadership has at that time.
Besides, that does nothing to address this mega-merger.
lokar 1 days ago [-]
It’s lower risk than allowing one lunatic to do it.
Hamuko 1 days ago [-]
Seems to me that these companies will say pretty much whatever during the merger process, and as long as there's no concrete repercussions written down somewhere, just do whatever since it's much harder to break a company apart than it is to block a merger.
bigwheels 1 days ago [-]
The pre-merger settlement approved by the current supreme court was that Skydance would: (1) Agree to production quota of 30 movies per year, (2) Domestic spending commitments, and (3) Separate cable package negotiations.
Film Rights: Star Trek, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, DC Comics, Tom & Jerry, Harry Potter, Citizen Kane, Transformers, A Quiet Place, Looney Tunes, The Conjuring, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Dora The Explorer, Mission Impossible, The Lord of the Rings, SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dune 3, Minecraft, MonsterVerse
Remember that Citizen Kane is the movie about a media tycoon who buys everything he can and ends up alone in a mansion full of stuff.
kridsdale1 1 days ago [-]
Please enjoy this SlopGen Fantasy Skydance Kingdom.
You have to cling to some beacon of hope in a world that decided future is dead and proceeded to drown itself in its own dystopia fetishism.
amanaplanacanal 1 days ago [-]
I thought Trek had turned from hope to dystopia with the release of Picard.
Or did we decide that isn't canon?
TeMPOraL 22 hours ago [-]
Went better with S3.
(Within context of larger canon, I take S2 as a cautionary tale about what happens if humanity is allowed to retain an identity of an independent polity on the interstellar stage. Federation's biggest benefit for the galaxy turns out to be keeping humans contained and putting their energy and creativity into more useful pursuits than asserting independence on other people's territory.)
But let's not forget that Lower Decks and SNW corrected hard on earier NuTrek transgressions against the utopian future.
triceratops 14 hours ago [-]
I would say Mortal Kombat slaps but it commits a lot more violence than that.
joquarky 1 days ago [-]
> 1) Agree to production quota of 30 movies per year,
Why? Does the population need movies? Who does this even benefit?
> (2) Domestic spending commitments, and
Never heard of Hollywood accounting? They have mastery of exploiting loopholes.
> (3) Separate cable package negotiations.
What's "cable"? Is that the 1900's alternative to putting up a TV antenna?
whycome 1 days ago [-]
So you’re saying this opens up the possibility of some wild crossover media stories. Star Trek exploring new worlds that also include krypton, cybertron, and the game of thrones world. Oh Dune too. And maybe do the time travel thing to see a Lord of the Rings middle earth. And have Dora graduate to captain of a star ship (or explore the sea and encounter SpongeBob and Aquaman). Batman can team up with the Mission Impossible crew to solve a mystery. Ninja turtles in a mortal kombat? Wonder Woman in Westeros with Harry Potter?
Maybe a Sora descendant will allow user-directed content to emerge.
hnlmorg 1 days ago [-]
> Star Trek exploring new worlds that also include krypton, cybertron, and the game of thrones world. Oh Dune too. And maybe do the time travel thing to see a Lord of the Rings middle earth.
Sadly that isn’t far removed from the novelty “Strange New Worlds” series they recently released. What a mess season 4 was. :(
ern 1 days ago [-]
I've heard that Strange New Worlds was the best of Nu-Trek, so that's disheartening. Star Trek seems to have lost its way from the start of Enterprise (the prequel series) onward.
hnlmorg 1 days ago [-]
Strange New Worlds started off strong, so I’d definitely recommend it. But it lost its way in the later series.
Lower Decks was a reverse of that. Took a while to find itself but finished strong. I’d also highly recommend Lower Decks, albeit you need to watch it thinking of it as a beta-cannon type show (ie set in the ST universe but not itself a ST show).
johnnyanmac 1 days ago [-]
>Maybe a Sora descendant will allow user-directed content to emerge.
Sora didn't die because UGC social media doesn't work. Sora died because UGC social media would just be reposted to Tiktok.
These new tech companies are still too obsessed with 2000's/2010's versions of monetization. sell it as a service on a subscription (with some free tier rate throttling) focused on content creators (who will make the money back by posting) and it would have at least lasted longer.
krapp 1 days ago [-]
Nothing of the sort would ever happen. They would be insane to risk the integrity of their IPs by doing something so ridiculous.
That said, as snowflakey as Star Trek fans are, I would love to see their reaction to Dora the Explorer ordering Batman to launch photon torpedos at Unicron. They'd probably complain about "yet another DEI captain."
halfcat 1 days ago [-]
> They would be insane to risk the integrity of their IPs
> Can this be undone in the future if folks realize it was too monopolistic and it was in fact an anti-trust violation?
I predict the democrats winning, shoving it all under that table and pushing for "reconciliation" and "moving forward" while continuing the rotten status quo that got Trump elected in the first place. Maybe a few token prosecutions of low level wage workers involved.
zmgsabst 1 days ago [-]
An extra sprinkle of race-baiting and you’d have the Obama-era Occupy Wall St special.
tclancy 1 days ago [-]
Please expand on this. I always find these sorts of comments to be illuminating in one way or the other.
zmgsabst 15 hours ago [-]
Circa 2008, into 2010, you had the Democrats running on holding Wall St accountable and a genuine class movement to reform capital in the US, Occupy Wall St.
Obama et al instead tore open old racial wounds, thereby destroying class solidarity in exchange for Wall St promoting their ideology, thereby creating “Woke”.
This was the origin of the Obama -> Bernie -> Trump cohort, who helped bring Trump into power a decade later.
thereader12 13 hours ago [-]
Is there some deeper analysis you can link, right now it is really, really hard to assume good faith.
zmgsabst 12 hours ago [-]
I’m genuinely curious:
Which part are you struggling to take as in good faith?
I’m sure it’s not your preferred narrative of the times, but we both knew that before I answered; so what is it that strikes you as in bad faith rather than my genuine interpretation of events?
aweiland 10 hours ago [-]
I'm struggling to follow. The typical Obama was divisive/made race and issue has actually been a right wing dog whistle for "he is black and I don't like that."
thereader12 6 hours ago [-]
Obama using race to distract from Occupy Wall Street. Bernie Sanders leading to Trump. The hole thing really. My good faith interpretation is you are leaving out parts you think are obvious and so if you show me those parts I will understand. Now, I think the parts you're leaving out are just not allowed on the site.
zmgsabst 2 hours ago [-]
Obama used race (and in particular, neo-Marxist theories like intersectionality and equity) to displace conversation about class with conversation about race. At exactly the moment class-unity was driving meaningful capital reform in the fallout of the 2008 GFC.
There were numerous memes at the time pointing out the shift in the language of NYT et al from discussing class issues to racial grievances. Clear as day in Google’s metrics of media terms.
That shift in focus is what broke Occupy Wall St as a class movement — and was adopted by Wall St to appoint commissars of that ideology in exchange. Woke.
The Obama -> Bernie -> Trump pipeline is a cohort of working Millennials, ie, the proletariat who have lost faith in Democrat politics serving capital and racial tribes rather than the working class. So they elected someone with the right platform they believed would break the system — following the rigging of the 2016 primary. They’re one of the relatively small (1-2%) but engaged cohorts that switch teams, eg, when the election comes down to under 1% difference, which way they vote matters — and they generally vote anti-establishment, with increasing aggression.
Democrats have completed failed to perceive that reality and engaged in name calling instead — eg, the multiple replies calling me a racist to slander me and poison the well for debate.
I usually don’t reply because there’s no point making serious discussions to people who have already made up their mind, eg, sibling replies.
mrguyorama 9 hours ago [-]
>Obama et al instead tore open old racial wounds
Ah yes, we all remember how America had no racism or anything like that before 2008.
Just like the emancipation proclamation solved slavery, racism was solved in the 60s. We definitely don't have (literally the same) people running around being rather transparent in their moronic racism all the time.
How dare Obama talk about a problem that affects 30% of the country continuously.
zmgsabst 2 hours ago [-]
US was less racist in 2008 and more united around class solidarity.
cindyllm 1 days ago [-]
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SpicyLemonZest 1 days ago [-]
There wouldn't be a clear "undo" button after years of joint operation. A future administration could in principle order the Time Warner assets to be spun back off, but realistically that'd be a huge headache, and I'd rather they spend their time and political capital imprisoning everyone who negotiated the deal.
rwmj 1 days ago [-]
I learned from working with some that psychopaths are a lot of fun going for a drink after work, but at work they make your life a misery.
nutjob2 1 days ago [-]
If the Trumps get their cut, you're golden.
anthonypasq 1 days ago [-]
serious question how could you possible argue this is monopolistic when Disney, Netflix, and Youtube exist. It doesn't pass the barest level of scrutiny.
rileymat2 1 days ago [-]
Monopoly is the wrong word, but it has a close cousin, “anticompetitive”. For free market people one of the major role of the government is maintaining competition and avoiding collusion, combining to competitors is straightforward collusion.
tavavex 1 days ago [-]
How long until the US just has The Media Company that controls nearly all high-budget mass media and film industries in that country?
btian 1 days ago [-]
Is that even a risk? There's still Disney, Comcast, Sony, Netflix, Amazon, Apple...
tavavex 1 days ago [-]
The tech companies may not merge until way later, but I can imagine the legacy media conglomerates buying up one another.
trojanfootball 1 days ago [-]
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prometheus1992 1 days ago [-]
not a fan of CNN, but a very right leaning person is the owner of CNN now. pre-dictatorship vibes!!
Georgelemental 1 days ago [-]
Where "right" means specifically "Likud"
BurningFrog 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
kashunstva 1 days ago [-]
The other thing that is growing is the conflation of opposition to Israel’s belligerence and human rights violations with antisemitism.
BurningFrog 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
pyvpx 1 days ago [-]
There are vastly more Semitic people than Zionists. In fact most Zionists aren’t Semitic whatsoever.
Post truth world. Sad stuff.
fortzi 1 days ago [-]
What on earth are you talking about?!
pyvpx 1 days ago [-]
Instead of asking here, go look up the definitions of Semitic people and Zionism. Really simple and straightforward answer.
fortzi 16 hours ago [-]
While the definition of Semitic people is straightforward, everyone has their own idea of what Zionism is.
pyvpx 4 hours ago [-]
Not the Zionists. You can ask them; they are not shy and surprisingly united in their political theory and thought.
righthand 1 days ago [-]
No it’s not, antisemitism is not equal to criticism of Israel.
jandrese 1 days ago [-]
And it's definitely not for being critical of Israel's government's policies. You can believe that the Jewish people deserve to have a peaceful place to live, and also believe that what they are doing to Palestine is wrong.
BurningFrog 1 days ago [-]
So how do you interpret the accusation of American jew David Ellison to be a "pre-dictator" working for Likud?
righthand 1 days ago [-]
How is that an attack on all Jews?
BurningFrog 8 hours ago [-]
This is my most failed conversation in a while...
BurningFrog 1 days ago [-]
He's donated to and voted for candidates of both parties, and claims to be a centrist.
mindslight 1 days ago [-]
"Centrist" in a grassroots political perspective means one sees merit in the values generally (purportedly) held by both tribes. "Centrist" for an oligarch just means they place bets on both horses.
tempaccountabcd 1 days ago [-]
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nomel 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
TheOtherHobbes 1 days ago [-]
I think the public should be able to view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets, and that is very much not happening in the US.
If - for example - you find a major news outlet that's pro-union, pro-single-payer, pro-wealth-taxes, and pro-debt-free-education, let me know.
nomel 1 days ago [-]
> view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets
Do you think this is being prevented somehow? There are many left leaning news agencies [1]. Maybe the "problem" is that they're all for profit, most of which comes from ads, most of which are anti union companies.
>>Do you think only left leaning perspectives should be reported?
No! but where did you get that from?
There is Fox news, X, and Truth socia for right leaning perspectives.
nomel 3 hours ago [-]
> not a fan of CNN, but a very right leaning person is the owner of CNN now. pre-dictatorship vibes!!
It seems very clear that you think it's bad that CNN is probably going to move right in their reporting. This is based on the fairly safe assumption that "pre-dictatorship vibes" are bad.
Maybe I misread. Could you expand on it maybe?
estearum 1 days ago [-]
It's the right wing perma-victim complex.
"We'll tell you the truth about the Dominion voting machines, which mainstream media WON'T tell you!" - Fox News, knowingly lying while also being literally the largest broadcast network in the country.
jasondigitized 1 days ago [-]
In a alternative universe, a very wealthy person starts a not for profit news agency and gives zero f's how many eyeballs it gets. Hires an army of world class journalists, investigators, and producers to churn out high quality, vetted, in depth content. Does this exist?
kridsdale1 1 days ago [-]
Bezos with the WaPo was this until 2024.
BeetleB 1 days ago [-]
Did it improve under Bezos? I remember finding it of poor quality before him.
philsnow 1 days ago [-]
You'll still only get half-truths, but maybe (maybe) the sum of the vectors will be roughly normal
nomel 1 days ago [-]
I'm not saying new should be entirely left and right. My point is that the adversarial system will find more flaws than a more neutral system. There's plenty of time, and all sorts of in-between agencies, to point out the neutral stuffs. My point is that the existence of even super politically aligned news agencies isn't some pure bad thing, or a sign of a dictatorship. We need both. All the news agencies being aligned one way would be a VERY BAD thing. All the news agencies being aligned to some "center" would be only slightly less bad.
CNN nudging more towards the right doesn't somehow influence the overall left leaning spread [1], or is in any way indicative of a rising dictatorship.
Do you have an example of left-leaning reporting that is mass media in the US?
1 days ago [-]
reliabilityguy 1 days ago [-]
WaPo, NYT, The Atlantic, NPR, and many others.
jedberg 1 days ago [-]
Only people on the right think NPR is on the left. NPR is the most middle of the road you can get. Just because they report facts that contradict the administration doesn't make them left leaning.
Did you read the link you posted? Two of them rated it as "barely left" and one rated it "center".
And all of them rated it "highly factual"
BurningFrog 1 days ago [-]
I used to be an avid NPR listener, but after George Floyd it's astoundingly woke when I try listening. That's not very often anymore, to be fair.
kashunstva 1 days ago [-]
I’m curious about how you would objectively define “woke”. I’d also be curious about how NPR scores on those measures relative to other comparable media.
EDIT: And if you didn't mean it in that way, and were serious, consider looking at e.g. Ground News' rating of NPR: https://ground.news/interest/npr. They (and others) clearly show NPR to have (slight) left bias. This means you are almost certainly going to see woke perspectives there from time to time, and more often than other less-biased or right-biased sources.
1 days ago [-]
BeetleB 1 days ago [-]
I know hard core leftists love to bash NPR/PBS, but as a non-leftist, non-centrist, non-right wing person, I definitely find NPR to have a left wing bias. Not as left wing as Democracy Now, etc - but definitely left leaning.
delecti 1 days ago [-]
> as a non-leftist, non-centrist, non-right wing person
I'm curious what you think your politics are then.
BeetleB 1 days ago [-]
I think it's important not to tie identity to any part of the spectrum (e.g. "I'm center left").
I have opinions on issues, and they can vary across the spectrum. On some issues (e.g. healthcare) I'm far to the left (well, in the US - would just be considered "normal" left in other countries). On things like immigration I'm either center or right (everyone seems to have their own idea of what "center" means). On gun control I'm both left and right - I'd like to outlaw them, but am opposed to some gun control initiatives.
On several social issues I can be far to the left on some and far to the right on others.
In an election, I voted both for a Green Party candidate and a Republican candidate (different offices, of course).
What I see is people who identify on the spectrum may have strong opinions on some issues (e.g. left), and then they adopt the leftist viewpoint on other issues - in order to be consistent. In my experience, these people are also more likely to follow "leaders" than be opinionated.
delecti 12 hours ago [-]
I don't know that one needs to identify with part of the political spectrum for it to be an accurate description. It sounds like you're broadly left leaning, but that assessment of you doesn't need to do anything to how you view yourself. I'm likewise very left leaning on just about everything, but don't really consider it to be part of my identity
BeetleB 11 hours ago [-]
I would agree with your assessment. It's just that if I go and say "It's OK to deport undocumented people who came as children"[1], people will have a hard time calling me a leftist.
But since it's not my identity, things can change.
When I was younger, my views were more consistent with the right. At some point, after learning a lot of realities, a lot of those views moved to the left. Since it was never part of my identity, it was easier to shift. No internal strife, crisis, etc.
[1] My views on this topic are more nuanced than this, but I phrase it this way to illustrate the dichotomy one can have in politics that people fail to comprehend.
penskymaterial 1 days ago [-]
The NPR front page right now has a clip from a profanity-filled interview with a drag queen.
Famously fair and balanced, I know.
jedberg 1 days ago [-]
Ok, and they also have the President saying Iraq should bomb Los Angeles. What is your point?
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Huh?
Here are all the headlines currently above the fold on the homepage. Don't see anything about a drag queen below the fold either.
Maybe something autocorrected in your address bar when you tried to navigate to NPR?
* What happened during Christa Pike's failed execution
* Christa Pike conscious and able to speak after failed execution
* As Trump focuses the FBI on immigration, counterintelligence is falling behind
* Democrats' advantage is clear with less than a month to go in the midterm elections
* What voters in 6 key states could tell us about the 2026 midterms
* People are asking ChatGPT to help them decide how to vote in the midterms
* Alaska's US Senate race collides with the pollock industry in a fight over fish
* Poll: Residents are losing faith in Vermont as a good place to start life
* In race for Tennessee governor, Blackburn refuses to debate Democrat Green
* Disney, ABC battle Trump's FCC in court over free speech protections
* New Hollywood era begins with an epic mega merger between Paramount and Warner Bros.
* She died covering war for Fox News. Her parents blame the network — and a star reporter
* Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey's new Pentagon roles raise ethics worries
* Jim Bakker, who built 'PTL Club' televangelism empire, has died at 86
* Cornell names former acting U.S. attorney general to review rape case
* Cornell students protest the university's handling of 2024 rape allegations
* Francis Halzen wins Nobel Prize in physics for work on high-energy neutrinos from space
lokar 1 days ago [-]
NPR takes "both sides" reporting to an absurd extreme
prometheus1992 1 days ago [-]
WaPo? definitely not. going through independence crisis.
NYT - i think so.
NPR - funding crisis.
The Atlantic - i don't read this - is this the one who's journalist was added in the top secret signal chat?
sailfast 1 days ago [-]
Have you read the WaPo and NYT lately?
hilariously 1 days ago [-]
It's not a clear divide between right and left, and NYT, the Atlantic, and NPR stans right wing voices constantly, have constantly used their editorialization to promote right wing ideals, and have gone out of their way to center right wing voices to give the appearance of being centrist to the right, which has had a direct impact in their perception as not really left wing by any of the left.
Now the center right is supporting concentration camps like "alligator alcatraz" so the overton window has shifted a lot in the last ten years.
lovich 1 days ago [-]
WaPo definitely is not with Bezos at the helm and preventing them from endorsing Harris
platevoltage 1 days ago [-]
To the left of outright fascist propaganda? I'll give you that.
ButlerianJihad 1 days ago [-]
I think it is amusing that people try to peg each news outlet as "left" or "right" as if they are an 18-year-old who votes whilst standing on a seesaw.
First, political views are not one-dimensional and so the "left"/"right" and far-extreme-ultra game is just "are they on my side or are they considered bonkers by my brethren?" games.
I believe that it's far better to consider news outlets as a product of their sponsors vs. their intended audience. By and large, they are all corporations trying to maximize revenue by attracting and maintaining a large audience for their materials, thereby paying their sponsors and advertisers the revenue they need.
So, they will produce stories that engage the audience. Whether that is enraging us, stoking controversy, appealing to us with smooth words: doesn't matter. There's no such thing as bad engagement. The corollary is that they don't want to lose audience members so any slide into supporting unpopular causes or candidates or ideologies is nipped in the bud.
Folks also can't seem to accept that editorial opinions or ideologies can shift, especially for example, if a news outlet supports "whoever/whatever is currently in power this year" or as a contrarian, opposes them, and riles up the opposition parties.
Wikipedia's relentless blacklisting and deprecation of "unreliable sources" is a great public experiment in this regard. If you really want a nice left-leaning anodyne view of the world, go with Wikipedia and "blacklist" or stop paying attention to any source they don't like.
penskymaterial 1 days ago [-]
Yes, all of them, minus the ones you can count on one hand that's missing a few fingers from a fireworks mishap.
netsharc 1 days ago [-]
This is probably my leftist bias, but ever consider that "leftists" are more interested in laws and decency whereas "rightists" are more interested in protecting their tribe/movement? But you think both sides play like "the right" (each only interested in exposing flaws of the other side) because you're seeing from your right-leaning perspective...
Democrat Al Franken got kicked out of Senate when it was found he inapproprately kissed a woman. I can name a long list of creeps in the GOP side who received protection from their side. Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Sexual Harassment Hegseth, Epstein-Friend in Chief. The GOP doesn't seem to have any principles about which sexual deviant they have, they just care about having the majority (in congress) or the power. Oh yeah, speaking of that, sexual assaulter Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh...
I'd trust left-leaning media to report wrongdoing whoever does it, whereas right-leaning media will gloss or bare-face lie about wrongdoing done by the right, and exaggerate about wrongdoings by the left...
nomel 20 hours ago [-]
Left or right news orgs, try to pay attention to "lies by omission". I've noticed logical kids/teens are pretty good at pointing it out, since they have less context.
Terr_ 1 days ago [-]
It sure feels like there are people who care about formulating and holding principles (e.g. "adultery is bad") that ought to apply to everyone, and then there are people who pretend to do the same but all the "principles" are just reflections of some ultimate virtue of loyalty/obedience, towards some hierarchy they consider existentially important.
The first group will define good/bad acts and then judge people by what acts they commit. The other will defines good/bad people, and then judge acts by which person is doing them. If you want investigative journalism, clearly group #1 is preferable.
On a similar note, I highly recommend a playlist of long-form videos from ~2016, titled (in the sense of an expose) "The Alt-Right Playbook". In particular, the video "Always a Bigger Fish" [0] tries to make sense of some persistent "how can they possibly believe X but not Y" disagreements when it comes to democracy and egalitarianism.
Right wing people have repeatedly captured and destroyed journalism outlets they deem undesirable. Not that I’m saying CNN is any good.
dfxm12 1 days ago [-]
Don't think about CNN specifically, but rather about one more cable news network lurching to the right & the diversity of viewpoints being reported being decreased. Ellison's effect on CBS News is clear.
EA-3167 1 days ago [-]
Ah yes, but Larry Ellison is Jewish.
Literally the only difference between him and the rest of the wannabe media barons, but you could fart the word “Israel” with your armpit and get upvotes these days.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Well no, the difference is that this merger is in favor with the current administration which has engaged in a broad and pervasive pattern of authoritarian behaviors while being in lock-step with Israel's interests.
This merger is only happening because the deal that the seller actually preferred (Netflix buying them) was unlikely to be approved by regulators. The President literally came out right after the deal was approved and said "it could be a problem" and "I would have a say" in whether it went through.
In fact the very existence of Paramount Skydance itself, as a merged entity, appears to have been contingent upon Paramount modifying its own HR policies, placing a government ombudsman at their marquee journalistic outlet (CBS), and paying $16 million to Trump's "presidential library fund."
EA-3167 1 days ago [-]
I'm not arguing any of that, obviously this all reeks of corruption and cronyism as almost everything in this admin does.
But that's not what people were focusing on here, it's a lot of "Practically Likud" and the increasingly uncomfortable dog whistle "Zionist".
estearum 1 days ago [-]
If the correct label for a person's beliefs is "an increasingly uncomfortable dog whistle" umm... maybe the label isn't the problem...
EA-3167 1 days ago [-]
When your label applies to 95% of an ethnicity maybe you’re just a bigot hiding behind a cause.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
There are more American evangelicals who are Zionists than there are Jews in the entire world bro.
EA-3167 1 days ago [-]
A weird cult existing doesn’t change tbat “Zionism” remain overwhelmingly popular among Jews. Granted since the term has been demonized and represented as something heinous this is the result:
https://www.jewishdatabank.org/api/download/?studyId=1277&me...
So 90% believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, but they aren’t stupid and it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that “Zionist” has become a kind of slur in the hands of so many.
It really isn’t hard to understand, it’s just convenient for people to hide behind. You meet a white nationalist and they don’t open with a Hitlergrusse, they talk about “preserving the family” or “13/50” and so on. You didn’t invent this shit.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Well hold on now… you’re upset about people using a term that accurately and precisely describes a set of beliefs… that the believes of those beliefs readily label themselves as…
And then you’re calling 50-120 million Americans “a weird cult”?
Are you a parody? I’m honestly baffled.
And by the way, it’s hilarious to claim that Ellison being Jewish (is he? I honestly have no idea) or Zionism would be “literally the only thing unique about him” compared to the rest of the media barons. Not only is there a lot of other stuff that’s unique about him/his company, as I’ve articulated, but also his Zionist beliefs aren’t unique whatsoever among his peers!
You truly live in a hall of mirrors.
Zionist is a slur, and not only is Ellison uniquely a Zionist, but it’s in fact the only unique thing about him and his company. Totally insane shit.
EA-3167 1 days ago [-]
People who believe in an imminent “end times” are in a cult, I don’t care if the religion is ancient or brand new. “We have to prepare the world for Armageddon, and that can only happen when the Jews return to Israel,” is a batshit thing to believe.
Never mind their overall impact on American policy and politics.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
But someone’s belief that their special book gives them a special right to a special plot of land is in fact so special that it can’t even be labeled with its own name…?
Yeah they’re all fucking crazy people.
Calling evangelicals evangelicals is fine. Calling zionists Zionists is fine.
Both terms have besmirched connotations because both belief systems are besmirched. Simple as that.
EA-3167 1 days ago [-]
Zionism isn’t religious for a large number of Jews, it’s just a practical response to centuries of pogroms and genocide. Stellar wordplay though, very much how I expect sincere people to act when pressed on the reality of how the cause they claim to care about has been hijacked by bigots.
Best of luck to you.
estearum 18 hours ago [-]
If it’s a practical response then where does the “right” originate from?
I’m beyond reproach if my practical response to needing a bathroom is to break into your home and defecate in your toilet?
Hikikomori 21 hours ago [-]
>Zionism isn’t religious for a large number of Jews, it’s just a practical response to centuries of pogroms and genocide
And the response is to do your own to another people? Great.
8note 1 days ago [-]
but uhh, zionism is the same idea as white nationalism.
a jewish state is the same in concept as a white state - a place where the non-white or non-jews are second class citizens, and really, should be removed because they have no place in the state.
even if 90% of white people believed in a white nationalist state, white nationalism would still be bad on its own merrits. its not racist to be against ethnostates, regardless of whos ethnostate it is
EA-3167 24 hours ago [-]
Great rant, but there’s a flaw in your otherwise deeply informed and informative analysis.
21% of Israeli CITIZENS… with full voting rights and legal protections, are Arabs. They’re no less citizens of Israel than black Americans are of the US, and yeah that comes with some measure of mutual ethnic and religious tension… it is the Middle East. That’s not the same as a white “utopia” or the usual South Africa comparison.
A lot of the talk around this is layered bad faith, misinformation, and outright bullshit that’s accepted simply because it’s convenient to do so. After all if you believe that shit you can feel justified in your enmity towards a whole people in the name of justice.
By the way how many Jews are citizens of Arab majority nations? How many even live there? Did they live there at one point and did they all magically leave or was there a huge explosion? Just some food for thought.
Hikikomori 21 hours ago [-]
There's only 21% because of the nakba, which was done in part because the ideals of democracy was incongruous with the ethnical composition of the land.
ButlerianJihad 21 hours ago [-]
Students of history have noticed an inconvenient truth that Western Europe nations were sort of unanimous in systematically converting, suppressing, and expelling Jews over several centuries. Those students, born in Allied nations since WWII, somehow unquestioningly accept that antisemitism is a cardinal sin, and we conclude that all those kings and princesses and rulers must have been wrong and bad and very evil people for enacting such policies.
Russia was historically particularly vicious against the Kievan Rus', and Jews were prohibited from even living in the capital city. The term "beyond the Pale" applied in Ukraine as much as it applied to UK-occupied Ireland. But today on television, we have a pretty and delicate blonde empress making a totes adorbs farce of Catherine the Great's bloody legacy.
The democratic West is now a guaranteed safe haven for Eastern Bloc dissidents and refugees, with open arms and blank checks.
Arab Muslims and Israelis need to get along now, because there's a significant mosque dropped on top of Temple Mount, and they're our last best hope for something. And "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". For now.
EA-3167 10 hours ago [-]
That’s the thing, increasingly they do get along. One of the major reasons that Hamas pulled the trigger on October 7 was to make sure that accords between KSA and Israel didn’t proceed. One after another countries in the region have made peace with Israel and vice versa, with notable exceptions that aren’t at peace with anyone.
joquarky 1 days ago [-]
If it makes you uncomfortable, then your subconscious mind is trying to tell you something.
EA-3167 1 days ago [-]
It makes me uncomfortable when people refer to black people as “thugs” with a wink and a nod as well. You aren’t clever for using dog whistles, it’s been a notable feature of antisemitism to “play with words” as Sartre put it.
Still if I’m to consult my subconscious… it tells me that a lot of people use causes and movements to justify the sort of bullying, hateful, trend-chasing behavior they always displayed all along. It’s when people feel they have free license to let go that you learn more about THEM.
1 days ago [-]
Hikikomori 1 days ago [-]
More importantly he's a zionist and put bari Weiss in charge. It's pretty clear what they want to do.
kwanbix 1 days ago [-]
Yes! What the consumer needs! Less competition! Hurrah!
Sorry for the sarcasm.
stavros 1 days ago [-]
Less regulation means more innovation!
roroh4310 1 days ago [-]
I will believe this internet comment. Thanks!
stavros 1 days ago [-]
It is in your best interest. All this innovation is sure to mean better quality of life for the average person, and not at all a widening of the income gap.
blakesterz 1 days ago [-]
First it was Time in 1990, then AOL then AT&T then Discovery and now this. That's 5 owners since 90 for Warner Brothers and none of those really worked out well. I don't know enough to know if this stands a better chance, but if I was going to bet, I'd bet Warner has a new owner before 2030.
jedberg 1 days ago [-]
This is the first time they are being bought by another company that makes content. Every other purchase was to add content creation to an existing company. So maybe there is chance.
But probably not with Ellison in charge. He'll probably just drive both companies into the ground.
lotsofpulp 15 hours ago [-]
Are they being bought by another company that makes content? Seems like the money is coming from Larry Ellison, whose main business is Oracle. Or the Saudis. Either way, neither Skydance not Paramount’s core businesses perform well enough to get this deal done.
bigbuppo 1 days ago [-]
At least it drains a few hundred billion dollars from the Ellisons.
euroderf 15 hours ago [-]
I'm reading in most news sources that this merger is just wonderful and will benefit my life greatly
JKCalhoun 1 days ago [-]
So what does this mean? Superman vs. the Transformers?
I'm not sure I was interested in either company by themselves—less likely to be interested in the merged one.
runamuck 1 days ago [-]
That sounds awesome.
xnx 1 days ago [-]
Seems fine. There are more options for entertainment than ever. Often these mergers don't work out anyway.
ramon156 1 days ago [-]
how exactly do they "not work out"? its two behemoths merging for the sake of more money
lotsofpulp 1 days ago [-]
ATT shareholders lost $50B on Time Warner. And ATT lost $15B at least on DirecTV. Comcast is desperately trying to get rid of NBC Universal.
I would bet Ellison loses on this merger too. No one under the age of 60 cares about these legacy media companies to justify tens of billions of dollar valuations. At best, professional media studios are just an add on business for companies like Amazon and Apple and Disney and Sony, with Netflix being the outlier.
insane_dreamer 11 hours ago [-]
the concern isn't about entertainment, it's control of TV news networks
pupppet 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
chasing 1 days ago [-]
You have to admit that David Ellison is extremely talented at being born to one of the wealthiest people in human history.
jansport123 1 days ago [-]
he worked pretty hard for that
cdrnsf 1 days ago [-]
So when do they raise prices and start laying folks off?
cmorgan31 1 days ago [-]
They already acknowledged layoffs so likely within 30 days the cull list will be presented to senior leadership.
superxpro12 1 days ago [-]
Its so weird how these layoffs somehow targeted every left wing news organization or show. We just cant be certain how that happened. oh well
toomuchtodo 1 days ago [-]
Their debt load is enormous due to how quickly debt costs have risen from M&A talks to issuing the debt.
Or maybe "because it makes business sense" wasn't the point of it?
cdrnsf 1 days ago [-]
Seems more like an ideological project than good business.
brnt 1 days ago [-]
Do we really need two Ellisons?
thinkingtoilet 1 days ago [-]
Do we even need one?
b0rtb0rt 1 days ago [-]
so does this mean i get paramount plus for free with my hbo?
throw03172019 1 days ago [-]
It means they are going to raise prices for both platforms because they can.
fooqux 1 days ago [-]
And then everything else will follow suit. Not that they haven't already been doing just that.
TheOtherHobbes 1 days ago [-]
Plus ads. And biographies of Trump's kids.
2muchcoffeeman 1 days ago [-]
Everybody just stop subscribing and do something else and pirate the shit out of their content.
bigbuppo 1 days ago [-]
Already unsubscribed when the news broke about a possible merger. I think I'm down to just youtube premium and Dropout now.
mns 20 hours ago [-]
They'll merge everything into some Skydance+ app, place ads in the basic tier with 720p, you'll get 1080p with ads for the price of Netflix (probably because of the "premium" HBO content) and then some insane subscription for the full 4K catalogue.
rylando 1 days ago [-]
Free? I don’t think a monopoly knows the meaning of that word
Hamuko 1 days ago [-]
It means that Paramount Plus is saddled with debt, and HBO is saddled with debt. And that someone needs to pay off that debt.
greyw 1 days ago [-]
If it makes them more money
msuniverse2026 22 hours ago [-]
Interesting numerology behind the $111B figure.
platevoltage 1 days ago [-]
Who else is mourning the end of Star Trek?
ajmurmann 1 days ago [-]
IMO Star Trek is mostly dead anyways. The Orville was the best Star Trek in a very long time. Strange Worlds started so strong but season 3 and 4 really took a nose five r
bevr1337 1 days ago [-]
I've found season 4 of SNW to be the best Star Trek in the 21st century. Can you share what you enjoyed more in its earlier seasons?
DSC and Picard were long slogs in the spirit of "grit" and "realism." SNW having fun, switching up the mood every episode, and telling stories is a breath of fresh air. Strange New Episodes! The Henson Studio collaboration was amazing. Since Netflix canned Dark Crystal, I've been missing my weird muppets traveling across time and space.
Both LD and SNW managed to get less of that Kurtzman stink compared to Academy, DSC, or the movie which shall never be named. I hope they'll let the franchise mellow until they find new direction. (And a new owner.)
* Lower Decks is the truest Trek to ever Trek, but I know that's asinine so I saved my opinion for the footnote.
* ENT was off to a good start, but the 9/11-ification of TV took it off course.
ajmurmann 1 days ago [-]
I didn't like DSC and most of Picard either, just like you because it was too gritty. Although it certainly helped that TNG is by faaar my favorite of the Treks.
I liked that season 1 and 2 of SNW felt like the stakes were lower and there were fewer gimmicky episodes. The muppet episode for me for example was a huge negative. So was the fake documentary, the Event Horizon remake and of course the double episode where they were fighting manifested evil which to be couldn't be further from the Trek spirit.
bevr1337 12 hours ago [-]
> Although it certainly helped that TNG is by faaar my favorite of the Treks.
The final season of Picard was pure fan service AND I LOVED EVERY MOMENT OF IT! Even when I'm critical of Trek, I'm still there and trying to enjoy. Thank you for sharing.
platevoltage 1 days ago [-]
I have a hard time saying Lower Decks is my favorite Star Trek show, but it really kind of is.
platevoltage 1 days ago [-]
Hard disagree.
jmyeet 1 days ago [-]
Fun fact: Skydance was originally started as a vehicle to buy David Ellison an acting career [1], which spent $60M on Fly Boys. It grossed $17M. There's a very real "failed in Hollywood to alt-right" pipeline, actually.
The truth is that Hollywood was already dying and it had been systematically dismantled by short-term profit seeking. It dismantled the system that created hugely valuable properties like Friends, Cheers, ER, Seinfeld, etc where 22 episodes were created every year to a system where streamers could cut out having to pay for syndication by creating 8 episodes every 3-4 years.
You see a lot of stars of shows having podcasts now from shows that ended years or even decades ago (The Office, The Sopranos). In a healthy ecosystem, successful actors would be working actors.
You see productions chase tax rebates all across North America such as Georgia and Canada where once productions were typically based in LA and that had a ton of ecosystem benefits. As soon as the tax rebates go, so do the productions.
Gavin Newsom clearly isn't serious about becoming president because approving this merger is going to lead to even more layoffs and fewer productions. It's going to be deeply unpopular in California. For good reason.
So what's core to all this (IMHO) is... housing. Housing is an input cost to everything in that locations. LA used to be relatively cheap. It had a mix of housing types from single family homes to mansions to budget apartments so Ho actors, writers, etc could reasonably start out.
And then with declining demand as productions spread out and less pilots and shows were being made overall, the industry has become dominated by nepo babies.
I actually think that in future centuries when history is written about the turning point for American empire, it'll be the downfall of Hollywood. You cannot overstate the value the US had to export culture to the entire world with Hollywood.
>Fun fact: Skydance was originally started as a vehicle to buy David Ellison an acting career
Damn, I wish my daddy was a multi-billionaire and fund my hobbies with 8 figures.
>So what's core to all this (IMHO) is... housing.
The Backrooms and Obsession were made by youtubers with shoestring budgets.
The core is Hollywood hasn't made any new innovative and memorable IPs to convince people to spend money watching them in over a decade. People aren't gonna go to the cinema to watch a crappy new sequel/reboot of the Terminator or the Matrix when they can watch the better originals they already have at home on DVD for free as many times they want.
>the industry has become dominated by nepo babies
More like it's been dominated by accountants and nepo-babies cosplaying as socialist political activists to score brownie points with the public but with zero talent to create something good worth watching. "Evil cannot create anything new it can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made"
fakedang 1 days ago [-]
The Backrooms and Obsession also aren't your typical Hollywood productions. Heck, they got all the Hollywood producers browning their pants instead.
ajmurmann 1 days ago [-]
If it's innovative it's not Hollywood, so we can conclude that Hollywood isn't innovative?
xdennis 23 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
smashah 1 days ago [-]
How much did the Gulf states pledge towards this?
mondrian 1 days ago [-]
Saudis, Abu Dhabi and Qatar put in 24B and own 38.5% of the company.
1 days ago [-]
Hobadee 24 hours ago [-]
I don't get how anyone views this as a monopoly? As a media company, they provide entertainment. It's hard to argue that if the quality of entertainment slips, people are forced to continue consuming the entertainment. There are already SOOO many alternatives; everyone and their mothers are starting up their own paid streaming services (Nebula, etc...) and anyone can start a YouTube channel and get millions of viewers if they have good content. (And don't offend the YouTube overlords)
If we want to talk about monopolies, let's talk about YouTube. That's a far larger gatekeeper, and they have a proven track record of shutting people out for breaking their random rules, with little oversight.
flowerlad 1 days ago [-]
CNN will become another Fox News, leaving The New York Times as the last remaining bastion of independent reporting on what the current administration is doing.
fjert 1 days ago [-]
I was worried about this at first, but it probably doesn't make business sense to try and pivot CNN's slant that way. It would alienate its current audience and damage its brand. I can't imagine many Fox News enjoyers wanting to watch CNN even if it shifts its slant more right. So what would the target audience be?
I suppose if they did it gradually enough, they could potentially normalize more right leaning viewpoints to its audience without them noticing.
lelandfe 17 hours ago [-]
Try to square Bari Weiss’ continued presence with a want for CBS to do well. Expect similar treatment for CNN.
JoyfulTurkey 1 days ago [-]
Associated Press?
cheesecakegood 1 days ago [-]
So they’ve committed to for example releasing 30-32 movies a year for the next five years [1] but after that, no promises. Good thing mergers are famously temporary and we never need to worry about the next 10 years! Oh wait…
T-Mobile raised a lot of plan prices exactly 5 years after their merger with Sprint.
thomasjb 1 days ago [-]
Apparently the Force Majeure section of the deal is very weak, so if there's the slightest upset, they get out of that.
tedd4u 23 hours ago [-]
Say goodbye to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
17 hours ago [-]
trebligdivad 1 days ago [-]
When do we get Bugs Bunny on the Enterprise ?
wccrawford 1 days ago [-]
I'm not even mad. Let's do it. With Marvin the Martian.
They had a Lower Decks cartoon crossover already, so they can't even deny the possibility now.
tmpz22 1 days ago [-]
That would be less immersion breaking then some of the recent Strange New World episodes.
vimfan69 1 days ago [-]
Holy shit. Hacker news going crazy with bots. Who woulda guessed this
dzonga 16 hours ago [-]
> Editorial Independence Board” for CBS News and CNN. The board’s members would be chosen by Skydance and report to the company’s board of directors.
stupid shit like this is why people - younger people - end up yearning for failed communist / socialist policies. because after all there's no accountability in the system.
the system has failed them. it has failed to be impartial. to hold elite greed at bay.
laws are broken daily, the judiciary is captured. what a tragedy.
sentientlaserbe 14 hours ago [-]
So they see one failed system and reach for another. Maybe the systems are the problem?
Hikikomori 1 days ago [-]
Another nail in Americas coffin.
stock_toaster 1 days ago [-]
It's yet another oligarchy centralization play. I assume more to come.
vconnor 18 hours ago [-]
Good. Time for someone else to have a go.
ReptileMan 1 days ago [-]
Let's hope that the fears of new owners being rightwing are correct so we can finally see The Censored Eleven in their full glory.
popalchemist 1 days ago [-]
The most significant thing here is not just the inevitable loss of jobs and the adverse effects of conglomeration/monopolies, but that the most historically filmmaker/artist-friendly studio is now co-owned by MAGA billionaires and the Saudis, direct opponents to democracy.
holoduke 1 days ago [-]
In 1 or 2 years AI movies will be better in everything. From acting , to camera work to environments to story telling. Check out the quality of some of work already out there. There is a massive shift going on. China is going full speed mode. The film industry will be reshaped. Warner Bros should have used those billions to purchase products like seadance. Otherwise they are out
platevoltage 1 days ago [-]
Some of you are outright hostile towards art and it's gross.
mondrian 1 days ago [-]
To be fair to art, commercial movie theaters are increasingly comparable to theme parks.
holoduke 7 hours ago [-]
Ai is the ultimate form of art made by humans.
platevoltage 7 hours ago [-]
** Professor Farnsworth saying "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" meme **
_sys49152 1 days ago [-]
art has been outright hostile to those not born with rich parents that can fund artseeking.
johnnyanmac 1 days ago [-]
We in this community don't exactly fit the "tragic failed artist" archetype that well. Heck, I'm sure many of us can in fact fun artseeking now after a some 10-20+ years in the tech industry.
Instead some individuals choose to root on the end of the artist.
platevoltage 1 days ago [-]
Where did art hurt you?
dyauspitr 1 days ago [-]
So all TV is going to be republican propaganda now. Cool from some perspectives, horrible from the other 9 out of 10 situations.
optimalsolver 1 days ago [-]
From what I see on r/stablediffusion, Hollywood has maybe 2 years left, in the optimistic case.
fooqux 1 days ago [-]
Even if it gets good enough, you're forgetting about everything else that goes into movie making and distribution. Hollywood will keep their hold on media, they just might use AI to increase profits even higher.
holoduke 1 days ago [-]
But why Hollywood?
john_strinlai 1 days ago [-]
i am extremely wary of making any predictions about ai, given what's happened in the last year, but i would put good money on hollywood being around in 2 years. there's much more to the movie industry than slapping some video together.
r/stablediffusion seems to be a bit disconnected from reality, to put it nicely.
foobarian 1 days ago [-]
The vibe I get is like when the Meta VR app store product launched, and there was huge promises and optimism about all the amazing apps and experiences, but when you bought it and actually tried, it was a few juiced up flagship things and a bunch of shovelware.
beanjuiceII 1 days ago [-]
ehhhh i dunno about that. the stuff i've seen from people, and watched looks much better than most crap hollywood puts out anymore
john_strinlai 1 days ago [-]
to reiterate: there is more to the movie industry than putting a video together
LunaSea 16 hours ago [-]
But nobody will pay for that
platevoltage 1 days ago [-]
Please post a link to some of this "stuff". I'm begging you.
_sys49152 1 days ago [-]
im seeing a lot more focus on emotions/emotional acting - its incredible. maybe 3 years and most likely from china.
johnnyanmac 1 days ago [-]
Can we point to a single good piece of longform content from AI before trying to tick a clock on when Hollywood as a whole will end?
cdrnsf 1 days ago [-]
I'll pass on slop stories and the quality of the visuals won't change that.
1 days ago [-]
Papazsazsa 1 days ago [-]
I've seen plenty of negative (and legitimate) sentiment around this merger but I'm cautiously optimistic that David Ellison, being half the age of anyone else with greenlight authority, will do something different/better.
hilariously 1 days ago [-]
As long as you are hoping he has a really, really, really positive view of Israel you're going to be happy!
Helloworldboy 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
developerDan 1 days ago [-]
His running of Skydance says otherwise. The most formulaic and bland film studio there is.
Papazsazsa 1 days ago [-]
Skydance/Paramount has had plenty of success attracting young audiences via UFC & gaming partnerships, so I'm not sure that's a counterpoint. Re forumulaic/bland that's a personal taste thing and not worth arguing.
The key contributor to Hollywood's waning influence is the generation gap; it's a cultural institution that is supposed to be culturally salient. Take the Mandalorian movie as an example; the biggest studio using the biggest IP to spend $300M on a movie... which lost $100M. That movie was competing at the box office at the same time with Obsession, which was made for $750k by a young Youtuber has made over half a billion worldwide.
As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older. He can shake things up if he wants to, and I hope he does.
developerDan 1 days ago [-]
Being formulaic and bland is an important aspect of expecting someone to “do something different” or “shake things up”. If the owner of a film studio has so much green light power but the studio has primarily produced film following a single formula, which the audiences have grown bored with (hence bland), then how can there be an expectation of that owner suddenly doing something different simply because they bought another studio?
Papazsazsa 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
8note 1 days ago [-]
there was a mandalorian movie?
is the thing he's bringing... advertising for the movies theyre going to make?
yolp5 1 days ago [-]
> As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older.
Who do you think he has more in common with? An average consumer his own age, or adult members of any age from the elite class that hes likely spent most of his time around?
Papazsazsa 1 days ago [-]
False dichotomy. He obviously has materially different generational priors.
> One of the longest-running tropes at The Verge is that a workable antitrust policy for the United States would be simply to forbid companies from buying Time Warner because it has never worked and it may never work again, and that we should just pass one law.
Checks out:
Jan 11, 2001: AOL and Time Warner merged to create AOL Time Warner
June 14, 2018: AT&T acquired Time Warner, renamed WarnerMedia
April 8, 2022: WarnerMedia spun out of AT&T, merged with Discovery
I wonder where this ranks in the top 5 stupidest things I've ever heard. It's bad enough merging customer databases when two companies merge.
No other major ISP has ever done this that I know of. Likely because it's completely unnecessary. Who made this decision (and why weren't they fired immediately)?
I was always wondering about that; it seemed to me that it would have been free advertising to Google if their users had to write and say @google.com all the time.
Nobody. Going back to 1989 every AOL account had a screen name that was used as your login and your identity. Being an employee was just a flag on your account in the database.
In 1993 AOL launched its internet gateway that accepted something@aol.com and put it in your AOL Mail box. You could tell that someone was an AOL employee because a banner (I think it was) appeared at the top of the message telling you.
Some of the network engineering folks had real aol.net addresses, but I don't know how that was handled internally. I also think the Netscape folks eventually made enough of a stink to keep their previous email address too.
Yeah, we weren't thrilled.
they'll just use AI like everyone else but charge extra for it
Grease on the very corroded wheel of modern capitalism
Well there is massive waste of time on doing all the stuff need for it to happen. But I think they would have come up with something as unproductive as that anyway so overall it is not like that time would have been spend for anything actually productive.
Made up "value" moving from one place to an other. Just so that some people have something to do. And most likely they would not have much productive things to do in any case.
Well you aren't losing your job
Seems very rational to me.
I'm sure they'll love it when this AI bubble pops too
For example if you bought S&P 500 in Jul 1929, you got your investment back in 1955 (inflation adjusted). If you bought S&P 500 in Apr 2000, you got your investment back in 2014 (inflation adjusted).
https://www.multpl.com/inflation-adjusted-s-p-500
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011...
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/oLP2K6gdbC
Plus it’s political suicide to let SP500 stagnate or drop.
"Market returns are more volatile than most people realize,” Mr. Easterling said, “even over periods as long as 20 years.”
in your second link, a commenter rightfully calls out that the log scale makes the data reductive
I think whatever it is that you need to fall asleep at night is your own habit - it doesn't need to be the rest of ours
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania?wprov=sfti1
...Paramount sulks, and bides its time....
That's what I've been thinking about so many "ordained" or duress "marriages" since long before 1989.
All that culture that America has built for ourselves and exported to the world is now owned in massive part by sovereign wealth at Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Dubai. Perhaps our greatest export (along with, as every feel knows, microcode and pizza delivery), now massively foreign owned, given up. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/hollywood-hungry-gu...
And boatload of debt has been raised, to grease the handoff, to payoff some of the richest people for the acquisition, thanks to the overwhelming investment of these brutal human-rights-violating unfree countries, a massive 40,000 lb albatross of debt to wear around Hollywood's neck. All to do what America lately has traded its past couple bits of good and values for: helping a couple extremely rich dudes cash out, get filthy rich.
https://www.972mag.com/ellisons-paramount-tiktok-israel-medi...
I am sure no other country could get away with the amount of shit the Israelis pull on a regular basis.
German here. Assuming you're American, that's a rich list LOL.
> aggressively spying on all kinds of US targets incl by placing spy equipment on Secret Service vehicles during visits
The US spies on everyone, including allies as nominally close as Germany. Thanks Snowden for revealing that one. And both the US and Russia are known to use their embassies as SIGINT collection bases.
> dragging the US into wars that don't serve its interests or the interests of its other partners
The US has dragged all of NATO into the mess that Afghanistan ended up being. I might let that one slide because 9/11 was a thing, but a few years later Bush dragged a bunch of other European countries into the mess that Iraq ended up being, and just this year, Trump was pissed that we didn't want to join the fun of bombing Iraq.
> draining US military equipment meant to protect other assets
Trump gave all but zero warning about invading Iran to anyone (well he did toy with the idea, but everyone dismissed it as the usual "deranged madman" brainfarts), leading to everyone (funnily including the US) emptying their entire stockpile of anti-air missiles out of sheer necessity. Millions of dollars just to take a glorified lawnmower on wings.
Israel didn't need to drag the US into bombing Iran. Many parts of the US Republicans have wanted to bomb the Mullahs into submission for decades.
Hint: The lesson was supposed to be that genocide is bad, period. Not that it's ok as long as it is some of the descendants Germany hurt doing it this time.
The Islamist approach for global propaganda is try and associate each culture’s negative terms with Israel. So when they push content to Westerners they say Israel is colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. When they speak to Muslims the Jews are Kuffars and the war against them is holy. When they target the right wing Israel is taking American tax dollars for their own universal healthcare.
[1] https://quincyinst.org/research/the-eighth-front-inside-isra...
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, scholars' association says [2]
A genocide is unfolding before our eyes: History will not forgive our inaction, UN Special Committee warns General Assembly in report [3]
Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children in Gaza, UN inquiry finds [4]
[1]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-is-committi...
[3]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2024/11/gen...
[4]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/23/israel-deliber...
The UN is openly biased against Israel. One of the reasons it gave for calling it a genocide was that during intense fighting an Israeli tank shell hit a fertility clinic destroying a few thousand embryos.
To put this in context: more than 100,000 babies were born in Gaza over the past 3 years, there are about a million abortions a year in the US, but one incident of an Israeli shell hitting an IVF clinic is enough for the UN commission to conclude it must be a genocide.
The UN was openly biased against apartheid South Africa as well.
> An anonymous Substack, Oracle For Palestine, written by a group of Oracle employees, claims that that “our leadership’s unquestioning public support for Israel” has led to a failure of the company to address the one-sided political positions taken by top management and the discrimination faced by employees who don’t share the political views of management.
> “In response to legitimate concerns, many of us have been referred to internal mental health resources rather than having those concerns addressed appropriately,” said the group in a post last year.
From a Ctech interview with Safra Catz: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/t05ji8sue
> For employees, it’s clear: if you’re not for America or Israel, don’t work here
It sounds like internal opposition to Israel is punished at Oracle by systemically discounting their detractors as mentally unwell. You must love Israel at Oracle to avoid this discriminatory action.
Some "really profoundly scary technology" was provided to the Israeli military by Oracle[2].
Given they're really happy to be political[3], this isn't your average 'no politics at work'.
1 - https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3912017...
2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8yo7_Inikg
3 - https://www.ynetnews.com/tech-and-digital/article/h1w11pj11a...
“The violent genocide committed against an unjustly occupied people.”
ftfy
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
You've just been raised to consider this as "normal". There's nothing normal about it, and if any other new country had started doing this you'd have recognized it for what it is.
Before someone says "all countries do this" - no they don't. Scale matters, impact matters.
This really betrays a lack of understanding of the structure of the government in the US. The Constitution, for better and worse, heavily insulates the government from tempestuous public opinion. The framers were readers of greek history who understood that democracy was a condition that a republic could devolve into. They built the system to give the voters the vibes that they had a say in the workings of their government while ensuring that in reality they had no such thing.
From my perspective the situation is that my fellow citizens who would be the most predisposed towards extrajudicial violence that might "bring their politicians to justice" are also the most steeped in propaganda and so end up getting their own itches scratched by that very state organized death and destruction.
You used the term “us” so I’m playing along with that “us” vs. “them” state of mind.
So what exactly do you mean by my own choices? I do take responsibility for my own choices. I've done nothing that majorly supports this war.
What I have done that supports this war: 1. continue to pay taxes and otherwise participate in society. 2. voted for conservative (ie democrat) politicians that might work to oppose the con artist in chief regardless of their general support for Israel (although since we're talking about the Iran War specifically, I don't know if this actually counts)
Meanwhile I have protested, the regime in general not the war specifically. Stand out on a corner, sign, smile and wave. Most people honk in support, but once again what can they actually do? There is of course always more one can do to express opposition. But not working hard enough to oppose something is not the same as choosing to support it.
My point is that the US is responsible for its actions, and can’t excuse itself by claiming to be pushed around by anyone.
Some of the most anti-Israel-aggression people I've met in my life have been Jewish, which makes perfect sense as they're generally more interested in the actions of Israel.
Aren't you people supposed to say "Israelis" so that you can pretend your antisemitism is "legitimate criticism of the country of Israel"?
"Now I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds..."
not my downvote btw
> The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday granted Paramount Skydance’s request to allow Middle Eastern royal families to hold a substantial stake in a merged Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery.
> Foreign investors, including the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, are slated to indirectly own nearly 50% of the equity in David Ellison’s proposed mega-studio. That will give them a hefty stake in CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, HBO and two historic Hollywood film studios.
So foreign “adversaries” literally own enormous stakes in these companies and have been cleared by the FCC. Yet only possible pro-Israel influence by Ellison gets called out?
1: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20... 2: https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2026/04/15/qatar_is...
Most of the gulf states are pretty much controlled by Zionists at this point anyway, or at least heavily aligned with them.
The part of Europe you're talking about is also more like a fifth than half.
I think you could make a graph showing the inverse relationship between how pro palestinian a country is, versus how crap of a place it is to live in.
So you're saying if a place is more pro-palestinian it's less crap to live there. Makes sense.
$111 billion sheds a lot of gratuity as it moves from one place to another.
The "big deal" is what it does for the shareholders in black & white.
A number of those very major shareholding individuals who have the most to gain have been pushing for a deal forever, and naturally all the retail investors will be entitled to go along for the ride.
But probably a greater number of insiders who are pushing for the deal are not that major of a shareholder or even shareholders at all. Corporate employees who are higher-ups and in accessory corporations like banks and consultants within range, can often be subject to bonuses and commissions anyway which can motivate them en masse much more so than whether they had any nominal amount in their retail portfolio or not. There might even be a legislator or two who stands to gain somewhere along the line, sooner or later.
The number of people who are going to get rich without having to have been opportune shareholders can really make the difference.
The big shareholders were already rich or were going to get richer anyway.
That's probably what the extra $11 billion is for, for everybody else close to the deal, and that's even more incentive for them to expedite.
You can only imagine that one guy negotiated an extra 10% more than a $100 billion deal was worth, especially since the buyers could easily afford it. But then gets 10% of that so he gets a billion, bringing the final total to $111 billion so no other numbers need to be adjusted ;)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/paramount-merger-settlemen...
Hypothetically California could have done something to prevent the merger. Then they [Paramount] leave California, as threatened, and then complete the merger.
The Federal government is the entity which needs to be the enforcer of antitrust. Otherwise major companies like these WILL pick and and leave the state blocking them. It's a 111 billion deal - this is worth moving states for the parties involved.
Here's the issue: nothing stops them from leaving the state anyway after the deal is made. The concessions lack any weight. California folded potentially for nothing.
At the same time, this promise to "support labor" falls flat when they have been actively combatting with it for recent years. Their words ring hollow.
And if we're being realistic: this is mostly Newsom trying to cover his tracks and look "strong" for 2028.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the political spectrum if you believe that establishment democrats will do anything to prevent this.
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/paramount-warner-bros-dea...
https://www.rawstory.com/bari-weiss-60-minutes-2677864198/
Sorry, I don’t follow
The Israeli government didn't need America to join. If they wanted to kill the ayatollah, they could do it alone. If they wanted to denuclearize Iran, every single expert affirmed that it wasn't a realistic goal, no matter how many allies they had. The net outcome of this war is extremely negative for the United States so far, and scott-free for Israel. Defense commentators had been predicting this Iran war manipulation for decades, and warned US policymakers to oppose it as far as they could. Israeli lobbyists now propose US enlistment laws, such is their need for wanton escalation under Trump: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260903-a-proposal-seeks-...
So, what was the goal? For decades, Netanyahu has used the threat of violence and war to secure his position as prime minister. He campaigned for Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, denied any incitement, and then took his place when he was killed. He's ostensibly corrupt and stands accused of manufacturing crises to enable his political support. His administration spends hundreds of millions of dollars rehabilitating his internationally reviled image. I wasn't born yesterday, you can't ambiguate Likud's history of escalation, assassination and manipulation.
With that introduction, is there a quick sum up somewhere to get someone like me to understand why there's so much division on this topic? All I really know is that in the most recent stuff with Gaza, people think that Israel's actions are too much, but I would be lying if I claimed to know what any of those Middle East scurmishes are about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Rindsberg
If you're genuinely curious about why people's views on Israel have shifted you could've got yourself excellent information with a simple prompt as such:
"Give me a brief neutral summary backed with reliable sources on the state of tensions in the Middle East today and the role played by Israel and other states. Help me understand why people's views on Israel have shifted so much since the start of the war in Gaza?"
He is the largest private donor to the IDF and literally vetted Marco Rubio for Israel, https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/larry-ellison-vetted-marco-ru...
Let's all stop arguing, sit down, and read a story called the Nakba.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
I think it's great that the America supports Israel, whose values and interests basically align with the West, over the rest of the Middle East, Russia and China with their values, which being as diplomatic as possible, do not.
Just take a look at all the countries that are the most against Israel. They are a mixture of failed states, third world and what they all share in common is a distressing lack of regard for human rights. Both of other nationalities and their own. Europe is unfortunately going in that direction, and I believe it's no coincience that they are simultaneously becoming worse countries and more anti Israel. It's not causation but it is correlation.
The US couped, invaded, and destroyed tens of countries since WW2 until now. Israel is still massacring civilians in Gaza during a ceasefire and continuing their pogrom in the West Bank, killing people and stealing more lands. This is your example of human rights?
As for your charges against Israel, they are factually incorrect. Israel is not still massacring civilians in Gaza, neither did they at any point engage in anything like a systemic, strategic program of killing civilians in Gaza. If you want to know what the casualty figures would look like if that was indeed the case, look at Iran which did do just that with the protests last year where they succeeded in murdering in one week roughly the amount of people Israel killed in Gaza in an entire year of active fighting. The worst you can accuse them of is of not doing enough to minimize civilian casualties. I will argue they did plenty but that's for another time. As for "progroms" in the West Bank, I would love to see what you're talking about. For your reference this is a wikipedia page on progroms[1] For some context, the number of extremist violent settlers that the whole world is fixated on numbers according to estimates in the dozens to hundreds.
Finally, I will leave it up to your imagination what it would look like if the roles were reversed, if the Arabs were dominant in Israel and the Jews were a minority, to help things along, here's examples from the wider Arab world[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_...
the systematic killing is pretty clear - tell people to evacuate to an israeli defined "safe zone" and then drop bombs on it. other defined policies had the idf mowing down escaped israeli-citizen hostages waving white flags and approaching the gaza border. assigning snipers to get headshots on children.
its a system informed by the fact that going too hard would result in instant sanctions, but the intent is made plenty clear, and the results are easily visible by counting the number of living gazans still in northern gaza.
palestine was under arab and turkish rules for centuries, and jews did much better than arabs are under israeli occupation
if the west was more values-similar with israel, there would be constant swastikas drawn on everything jewish owned or in jewish view, with a couple real true blue nazis going around beating up, killing, and stealing jewish property, and the government would keep pardoning them and insisting its not a problem because its only a couple hundred thousand nazis in a country witb many millions.
i sure saw in that video where cnn gets attacked by the idf clearing the way for settlers that the west bank is covered in stars of david, drawn the same way swatstikas are to terrorize people
Civilians like maybe Ali Al-Amoudi? Or maybe Muhammad Yazouri? Nayal Abu Obeid? Izz al-Din al-Beik? Izz al-Din al-Haddad? Mohammed Odeh?
Is there any combatant Hamas doesn't call a civilian?
Since Hamas hasn't disarmed and Gaza wasn't demilitarized there is effectively no ceasefire. There is a war and Israel is attacking military targets as it is allowed to do under international law. Minimizing civilian casualties as it is required to do.
If Hamas, the democratically elected government of Gaza, has a problem with that then it can surrender.
Israel has only attacked the safe zone when there were military targets present, such as the attack on Mohammed Deif. That's on Hamas. Once you get the civilian/combatant breakdown from Hamas then we can check how many civilians per capita were attacked in humanitarian zones (very few) vs. zones that were evacuated (the majority).
EDIT: Re: The Ottomans. Massacred Jews in Safed in 1517. Ethnically cleansed Jaffa of Jews in 1917. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. No comparison whatsoever to Israeli Arabs who are equal citizens in Israel. As to the Palestinians in the occupied territories, they're not citizens. Also AFAIK the Jews didn't mount a campaign of suicide bombings against the Arabs or fire rockets into Arab cities.
> If Hamas, the democratically elected government of Gaza, has a problem with that then it can surrender.
The last election in Gaza was over two decades ago.
Hamas seized and have kept control of Gaza. Coincidentally, they are the only people with weapons in Gaza.
Arab jews did not want to move to Israel, they were fine living among muslims. Mossad faked terrorist bombings in Baghdad and killed bunch of jews to create an illusion of jew hatred in Iraq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bomb...
Are you Mossad?
I note that you wrote: “typical jewish propaganda and hasbara” - you forgot to say “Zionist” or “Israeli”. Was that a slip or have your handlers in Israel instructed you to be openly antisemitic now?
Jews were ethnically cleansed from all Arab countries.
Re: your link. I mean the Iraqi authorities said so. Yeah right.
israel doesnt at all align with (modern) western values, instead more like the old apartheid south africa, or really, more like nazi germany in terms of supremacism and industrial might put towards surveiling and killing the less-than-human people you allude to as being less-than-human.
the causation of all those failed states is israel. it makes failed states because those are easier to conquer land from, and cant fight against all the abuses of humans.
sure, the US was half supportive of the nazis too, but that wasn't a good thing.
Argument: Unproven claims, there are virtually no jewish terrorists, anyway in your own distorted mind Israel is a terrorist state.
Counterpoint: Oct 7, Bibas family, Hamas, Palestinan Authority/PLO, Islam.
>the lack of gay or even interfaith marriage, the genocide in gaza.
........
...
I mean, lets just take a moment to reflect on this. For more context Israel has a pretty strong gay culture, so your complaint is about a legal technicality. So you are mentioning that in the same breath as the the death of 70,000 Gazans? And you think that's somehow an argument that makes you look good???
I am a pretty outspoken supporter of Israel, but I have never come close to that level of disrespect to the Palestinian people as you have managed.
>the causation of all those failed states is israel. it makes failed states because those are easier to conquer land from, and cant fight against all the abuses of humans.
The causation of all those failed states is Third World values. Like blaming everyone else for their own failures.
Instead of understanding that these governments use the Israeli Palestinian conflict as a scapegoat, and Israel as a boogeyman, just to make the populous blind to the true cause for their suffering.
If the Israeli government cooperates with the ICC, adopts full secularity and stops undermining their neighbors security, then I'd feel a lot better supporting them. Right now I'm only ashamed. There is no upside to sending Israel foreign aid after Likud manipulated Trump into starting an illegal war.
Dahyia doctrine - this means inflict damage on your enemy in such way that will deter him from ever trying to attack you again. It was named in the 2006 Lebanon war, which Hezbollah started, after which nasrallah admitted that if he knew of the Israeli response, he would not have started the war. I suppose your a 5 star general with a better way of creating deterrence.
Hannibal directive - affects only soldiers, and it means that the army must do whatever’s necessary to prevent a kidnapping. This is after a soldier was kidnapped into Gaza, kept there for 5 years without seeing any natural party to assess his condition (which is illegal but no one cares about that when Israelis are the victims), and eventually was released against 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, one of which was sinwar. Again, I assume you are a 5 star general that can find a better solution.
Israel is a secular state. The only thing controlled by religion is marriage (btw USA gives weapons to turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, where is the protest against support of these unsecular countries?)
And finally - how exactly is the Iran war illegal?
If Israel wanted to clean their slate, they can always present their case to the ICC. Little wonder that Likud lashes out and call the ICC "biased" for not sharing their beliefs, but such is the culture gap that the Israeli state has fostered. And such is the standards of cooperation and compliance that the rest of the world has come to expect since the horror of WWII. It's hard to not blame Israel for the terrible optics that their leadership has promoted and incorporated into their state's identity. The whataboutism in your comment proves that you also know it's wrong, but just refuse to hold Israel accountable the way that the House of Saud is (very justifiably) criticized. It's clear that Israel demands an ethical double-standard from the world.
> Hannibal directive - affects only soldiers
Officially, maybe. In practice, we know that Israeli forces have deliberately killed civilians and reservists during Hannibal scenarios, too: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240709-israels-use-of-ha...
> how exactly is the Iran war illegal?
Congress never agreed to it. Israel can fight all they want, but extended US operations are jeopardized without a congressional authorization. The upcoming midterms are going to shake things up, and it's very possible that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 will be enforced to stop funding for in-theater operations outside of CENTCOM basics and foreign aid. The war isn't popular, and US taxpayers can only foot the bill for so long before they abandon Likud's warmongering initiatives. Even Trump doesn't want to escalate, considering how many threats he wussed out of.
A year later we learned that he threatened his victim that if she would expose him, it would hurt the case against Israel.
Here’s a recent video of a child carrying weapons for terrorists: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bj0epw85gx
And before you say that you don’t trust Israeli media, the world doesn’t care enough when it’s Palestinians at fault, so it’s not covered anywhere else.
Its all corroborated and backed by evidence and was a official Church position for centuries
For example the stories of simon of trent and william of norwich
From Wikpedia[1]:
>Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic trope which falsely accuses Jews of murdering Christians in order to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals... Blood libels often claim that Jews require human blood for the baking of matzos, an unleavened flatbread which is eaten during Passover. Earlier versions of the blood libel accused Jews of ritually re-enacting the crucifixion. The accusations often assert that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and historically, blood libel claims have been made in order to account for the otherwise unexplained deaths of children. In some cases, the alleged victims of human sacrifice have become venerated as Christian martyrs. Many of these – most prominently William of Norwich (1144), Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (1255), and Simon of Trent (1475) – became objects of local cults and veneration
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
Even jewish historian Toaff documented cases of infanticide and connection to religious rituals in his book “Pasque di sangue”. Its all corroborated with evidence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passovers_of_Blood
And why is that past tense?
>Even jewish historian Toaff documented cases of infanticide and connection to religious rituals in his book “Pasque di sangue”. Its all corroborated with evidence
From your own link:
>Toaff withdrew the book from circulation a week after its publication and republished it the following year with an afterword stating that there was no relationship between the use of dried blood in Jewish ritual and the alleged ritual murders underlying the blood libel.
because the Church has issued "nostra aetate", which was written by ashkenazi jews Gregory Baum, John Oesterreicher, Bruno hussar. This was a political decision driven by aftermath of ww2 and coordinated by the World Jewish Congress and had no basis in theological nor facts nor any other legitimate reasons.
>Toaff withdrew
of course, he withdrew because people did not like the original research he published. He literally received death threats by people who did not like the facts, so he decided to withdraw and self-censor out of caution for his own life.
Its not hamas who performs mass ritual sacrifice of innocent children. These things have happened before hamas was created and documented by Church and in the Bible
That's why he said Israel. But good hasbara tactic conflating mention of Israel with "jews", keep it up.
Also, Israel is murdering women, children, lgbtq and attacking our freedom of speech (they also have murdered more journalists than any country in history and will not allow journalists into Gaza), so that's certainly a priority to address, especially since I as a US citizen am made complicit in these actions. The consent for these crimes against humanity was manufactured by the very MSM that Ellison is buying here. It's a move in the wrong direction.
I've said it once. This is the second time you've lied about what I've said in this thread. I don't feel the need to continue this conversation, but here's more background on Ellison (and other billionaires) donations to the IDF:
https://truthout.org/articles/these-billionaires-subsidize-t...
It's not antisemitic to criticize Israel, but this language is verging on antisemitic because Israel very much does not have "direct editorial control" over Skydance. David Ellison is the one with "direct editorial control" and you can certainly say he's "extremely pro-Israel" but he himself is not "a foreign adversary" by any definition of those words. So either you're being hyperbolic with the meaning of "direct editorial control" or you're insinuating that David Ellison will defer to Israel on everything because he's Jewish which is a common antisemitic trope[1]. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former, but the latter is enough of a possibility that I would suggest rephrasing this comment to avoid giving supporters of Israel a legitimate line of complaint against your underlying point.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_loyalty#Jews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Ami_Kadish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_espionage_in_the_Unite...
https://greydynamics.com/sayanim-jewish-diaspora-mossad-supp...
Larry Ellison:
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/larry-ellison-vetted-marco-ru...
>Larry Ellison Vetted Marco Rubio for Fealty to Israel
Indeed Israeli media covers this also:
https://forward.com/fast-forward/853703/david-ellison-appoin...
>David Ellison appoints Israeli to lead merged Paramount-Warner studios
The same thing happened with the Tik Tok purchase, the entire point of handing control of the Tik Tok algorithm to Larry Ellison was so that they could clamp down on the discussion about the genocide in Gaza. You can see the results of it in the reports that the world Jewish congress put out directly:
>https://wjc-org-website.s3.amazonaws.com/horizon/assets/YNN3...
>TikTok is the exception, removing 64% of content overall (and 71% of content formally reported to it), compared to 12–15% on every other major platform.
>you can certainly say he's "extremely pro-Israel" but he himself is not "a foreign adversary" by any definition of those words.
All you're showing is that his family is pro-Israel, but that does not mean they are controlled by Israel. These conversations about Israel always seem to remove the agency on the American end which is where a lot of the historical antisemitic tropes live. Whether it's intentional or not, it's phrased in a way that evokes the trope of a shadowy cabal of Jews pulling the strings behind the scenes, and other countries rarely get talked about in this same way. For example, have you ever heard anyone suggest Google and Microsoft are controlled by India because their CEOs were born in India?
>other countries rarely get talked about in this same way
They actually do, but the Israeli lobby has grown so powerful that it is now dominating most of the political action in the USA in a way that has become impossible to ignore.
There are actually plenty of conversations to be had about Indian ethnic affinity and lobbying. USINPAC is the Indian lobbying organization which is actually modeled after AIPAC (the notorious Israeli lobbying group which has political control over most of the US congress).
https://www.trackaipac.com/
There is a looming argument which hasn't yet entered the public mainstream discourse about Indian foreign influence and Indian ethnic nepotism in the United States, but that is an entirely separate conversation.
Most Indian CEOs are the same caste (Brahmin) and there is a good argument that many of them have been nominated by the boards of their companies and institutional investors with large stakes so that they can navigate India's notorious bureaucracy and deepen ties to the country, which supplies much of the cheap labor for the tech industry. Many of them have direct ties to the Bharatiya Janata Party in India and can use the access to people like Modi to access more Indian labor as well as build more in India. Modi talks openly about exporting human capital and using its diaspora to wield influence in the United States. One can argue that they are taking a cue from Israel here.
>Narendra Modi urges the Indian diaspora to become an extension of foreign policy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/02/narendra-modi-...
Yes it was. My comment was directly in response to someone saying "it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over". I know that was not your argument, but it was someone's argument and I responded to refute it. I don't know what point you thought was being discussed, but it's now clear you misread the conversation.
If you want to split hairs between "controlled by Israel" and "controlled by people who's sole interest is supporting Israel", go ahead.
>But we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields with which we engage, and the most important ones are on social media. And the most important purchase that's going on right now is? Tik Tok. Number One.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3tdrO8bA7rs
Later, control of the Tik Tok algorithm was given to Larry Ellison and they immediately used it to clamp down on discussion of the genocide in Gaza (as well as any other types of discussion they deem "antisemitism").
Now Larry Ellison's son has been given control of all these other media companies and has appointed an Israeli to run things.
This is DIRECT evidence of Larry and David Ellison working directly with the highest levels of a foreign government to manipulate public opinion on behalf of that foreign government.
Obviously Larry Ellison had met with Netanyahu, or with someone in the Israeli government, and discussed the details of this deal. If the government of Israel can ask a citizen in a different country to do something on their behalf, that is a form of control.
Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games? This was during the streaming wars IIRC.
Regardless of how you look at it, this is yet another confluence of IP franchises merging together, whatever juice is left in them squeezed out and reprocessed over and over over time. Kind of what Oracle is in software I guess?
Working in an adjacent entertainment IP focus business myself, my eyes are glazing over a bit at this point.
Yea, and spending time with your friends and family, meeting new people, sleeping...
From [1]:
> “Think about if you didn’t watch Netflix last night: What did you do? There’s such a broad range of things that you did to relax and unwind, hang out, and connect—and we compete with all of that.”
When I read that interview, I became a lot more cautious of using Netflix and other streaming platforms, knowing their design is adversarial to my values (I want to be deliberate about what I watch, not be manipulated into mindless consumption).
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/40491939/netflix-ceo-reed-hastin...
"Actually we're really David and we need to band together against Goliath." Points at imagined external threat
The part that's wild to me is that we know that this merger extends to politics and control over media. The IP's, studios, franchises, all the actual businesses are just part of the estate. It's the Hearst Media Empire story retold again.
Meanwhile, yeah, Paramount, Time Warner, Disney, etc. have all become so money-minded and risk-averse that it reminds me of the twilight days of the old Hollywood studio system, where all the major production companies were locked into a heated battle to determine who could be the absolute blandest.
There's a huge amount of censorship with youtube though. The movies and shows on cable and streaming services can still talk about dead people without being forced to say they are "unalived". CNN can talk about a pandemic without calling it a "panini". Besides censoring specific words and phrases Youtube demonitizes entire genres of content along with anything that is "unfriendly" to advertisers. If that's the future of media in the US we're screwed.
It's really the opposite model of the "major" streaming players who fund tentpole releases in the conventional Hollywood way, and then have a long tail of niche content (cooking reality shows and the like) that are clearly on a much tighter budget, but still basically modeled on being a cheaper version of a cable show rather than a much better funded version of a YouTube comedy troupe.
That kind of describes my relationship with Nebula. There’s a lot of great stuff on there, and lately I have been watching it more than YouTube. But still, YouTube is where I tend to go when I’m looking to find something new that I genuinely haven’t seen before. I think the lower floor for production values is a big part of that.
The words and the performances, the chemistry and creativity of the actors, that's the real priceless stuff.
Cantrill tried to, as diplomatically as possible, warn everyone.
Nobody listened.
Yes. He always told us that we don't need to worry about the other streamers nearly as much as we have to worry about them turning off the TV and playing games or (gasp!) going outside. TikTok/Instagram Reels wasn't a thing yet, but if it were, I'm sure they would have been on the list too.
https://x.com/andlikelaura/status/1392091221032460291
He was talking about the "incumbent" they are trying to displace. Netflix's challenge was not getting people to switch from watching Hulu to Netflix, but to get them not to sleep in order to watch Netflix.
Evil maybe, but nothing moronic about it.
and i'm not even someone you'd class as young anymore, so I don't think this is a younger generation thing
This is funny because I have stopped clicking YouTube links for the simple reason that every video seems to be 45+ minutes. Which I get is based on how monetization works on YouTube.
Like Old Twitter, short-form video is a forcing function with value in forcing posters to get to the point. (I have never seen a YouTube Shorts or whatever link in the wild.)
I watch probably an hour of YouTube a week and would watch more if I could find anything good.
My favorite TV of the past five years is probably Severance. Is there anything of that caliber on YouTube? One of the best movies I saw last year was on Netflix (Train Dreams). Are there great movies on YouTube?
I’d love to year about some of your favorite stuff on YouTube.
How much work do you put into curating your feed? Mine is terrible. For example, I’ll watch a video on how to fix my dishwasher and suddenly it thinks I want to fix all dishwashers.
Their ads are terrible. And since I watch via a device like Roku, etc, I have to put up with them. I've actively removed them from my devices. Occasionally, I feel like looking up some video. I install it, and often before I even watch the video I uninstall it because the awful UI reminds me of all the other awful stuff in it.
Curation doesn't exist. I have to work hard to find good content. Harder than any video service out there.
And shorts. Oh. Dear. God.
For some very targeted stuff (home repairs, video game walkthroughs), it's great. For the rest, it just sucks.
I've never watched a YouTube short.
My recommendations are all very well aligned with my interests. The trick here is to go through your watch history and delete things that are leading the recommendation algorithm astray. I am ruthless about that.
If it works for you, great! Most video I watch is in the form of TV shows and movies. And Youtube sucks for that. Youtube is great for some hobby stuff. I used to like it for reviews, but even that sucks now - when I do a search I'm inundated with low effort reviews (i.e. by people who haven't used the product they're reviewing).
But if there's a creator you really like and follow, I can understand that.
> I've never watched a YouTube short.
Don't you think they should give you an option not to present them to you, given that you don't watch them?
> My recommendations are all very well aligned with my interests. The trick here is to go through your watch history and delete things that are leading the recommendation algorithm astray. I am ruthless about that.
I don't want to pay money and then have to do this. This is a pain I don't have to deal with in any other service.
Yes, I certainly do! The fact that YouTube still tries to get me to watch Shorts every few weeks is 100% a user-hostile choice. Seems like basically every app these days does that kind of shit. It makes me sad, but it's pretty clearly in the set of things I can't change, so I try to just be mindful of the serenity prayer and accept it.
Shorts are like the video equivalent of snacking on Doritos all day long.
Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads.
I don't want to pay for that.
Depends on what you watch, as always. my YT feed is a mix of news, random gaming content, documentaries on a variety of topics, and odd little tech trivia. It covers all the bases at once.
Any other streaming service is simply "okay, maybe there's 1-2 shows on here I want to watch". Then I just pluck it onto my NAS and move about on my day. Why would I pay for a streaming service that struggles to even keep the few shows I like on there running past 1-2 seasons?
Nebula is the only other service I ever considered paying for. It's not a "Youtube killer" and misses out on a lot of the odd trivia sides of YT, but it overally feels more fleshed out on content than Netflix".
If there's even 1 show I want to watch, it's great to watch it. The problem with Youtube is even when they have stuff I want to watch, it's a pain to watch it. Their UI is atrocious!
> Why would I pay for a streaming service that struggles to even keep the few shows I like on there running past 1-2 seasons?
You just unsubscribe at that point.
Know how much stuff I had bookmarked on Youtube that is no longer available? A whole damn lot.
For me, the big screen and ambience play a big role.
Actually I've used the steam deck in this role a bunch, works great.
I imagine they are that's why I pay for YT Premium, which I think is my most bang for buck subscription based on the amount of time I spend watching it
> Curation doesn't exist.
I don't find this a problem personally because 95% of my feed is just channels I'm subscribed to but YMMV depends on what you expect out of it
I used to pay for a Youtube subscription to get rid of the ads, but that doesn't include the in-video ads that content creators put in there - but SmartTube has that covered too, in most videos I watch the in-video ads are skipped too. I have 5 chromecasts on the 5 TVs around my house, and every one of them has SmartTube installed. I wouldn't want to watch Youtube without it.
https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube/releases
I wonder if David Ellison is a fun guy IRL.
> Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s
goebbels is the movie influence of hollywood. its appropriate regardless
They're certainly all friends with pedophiles, and they're certainly not opposed to human trafficking and pedophilia.
They could make it stop, but they're spending their money on yachts with many beds.
Frankly, to become a billionaire demonstrates a lack of empathy. Someday we'll recognize it as the mental health condition it is.
Concentrating so much power in the federal government is problematic, and unnecessary.
Besides, that does nothing to address this mega-merger.
Assets: TNT, CBS, CNN, MTV, TCM, Showtime, Adult Swim, DC Studios, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, HBO/HBO Max, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network
Film Rights: Star Trek, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, DC Comics, Tom & Jerry, Harry Potter, Citizen Kane, Transformers, A Quiet Place, Looney Tunes, The Conjuring, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Dora The Explorer, Mission Impossible, The Lord of the Rings, SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dune 3, Minecraft, MonsterVerse
Remember that Citizen Kane is the movie about a media tycoon who buys everything he can and ends up alone in a mansion full of stuff.
https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6ac56dbab5448191866eb7c80c31c025
Do Trekkies not crave novelty?
Or did we decide that isn't canon?
(Within context of larger canon, I take S2 as a cautionary tale about what happens if humanity is allowed to retain an identity of an independent polity on the interstellar stage. Federation's biggest benefit for the galaxy turns out to be keeping humans contained and putting their energy and creativity into more useful pursuits than asserting independence on other people's territory.)
But let's not forget that Lower Decks and SNW corrected hard on earier NuTrek transgressions against the utopian future.
Why? Does the population need movies? Who does this even benefit?
> (2) Domestic spending commitments, and
Never heard of Hollywood accounting? They have mastery of exploiting loopholes.
> (3) Separate cable package negotiations.
What's "cable"? Is that the 1900's alternative to putting up a TV antenna?
Maybe a Sora descendant will allow user-directed content to emerge.
Sadly that isn’t far removed from the novelty “Strange New Worlds” series they recently released. What a mess season 4 was. :(
Lower Decks was a reverse of that. Took a while to find itself but finished strong. I’d also highly recommend Lower Decks, albeit you need to watch it thinking of it as a beta-cannon type show (ie set in the ST universe but not itself a ST show).
Sora didn't die because UGC social media doesn't work. Sora died because UGC social media would just be reposted to Tiktok.
These new tech companies are still too obsessed with 2000's/2010's versions of monetization. sell it as a service on a subscription (with some free tier rate throttling) focused on content creators (who will make the money back by posting) and it would have at least lasted longer.
That said, as snowflakey as Star Trek fans are, I would love to see their reaction to Dora the Explorer ordering Batman to launch photon torpedos at Unicron. They'd probably complain about "yet another DEI captain."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_vs._Teenage_Mutant_Ninj...
I predict the democrats winning, shoving it all under that table and pushing for "reconciliation" and "moving forward" while continuing the rotten status quo that got Trump elected in the first place. Maybe a few token prosecutions of low level wage workers involved.
Obama et al instead tore open old racial wounds, thereby destroying class solidarity in exchange for Wall St promoting their ideology, thereby creating “Woke”.
This was the origin of the Obama -> Bernie -> Trump cohort, who helped bring Trump into power a decade later.
Which part are you struggling to take as in good faith?
I’m sure it’s not your preferred narrative of the times, but we both knew that before I answered; so what is it that strikes you as in bad faith rather than my genuine interpretation of events?
There were numerous memes at the time pointing out the shift in the language of NYT et al from discussing class issues to racial grievances. Clear as day in Google’s metrics of media terms.
That shift in focus is what broke Occupy Wall St as a class movement — and was adopted by Wall St to appoint commissars of that ideology in exchange. Woke.
The Obama -> Bernie -> Trump pipeline is a cohort of working Millennials, ie, the proletariat who have lost faith in Democrat politics serving capital and racial tribes rather than the working class. So they elected someone with the right platform they believed would break the system — following the rigging of the 2016 primary. They’re one of the relatively small (1-2%) but engaged cohorts that switch teams, eg, when the election comes down to under 1% difference, which way they vote matters — and they generally vote anti-establishment, with increasing aggression.
Democrats have completed failed to perceive that reality and engaged in name calling instead — eg, the multiple replies calling me a racist to slander me and poison the well for debate.
I usually don’t reply because there’s no point making serious discussions to people who have already made up their mind, eg, sibling replies.
Ah yes, we all remember how America had no racism or anything like that before 2008.
Just like the emancipation proclamation solved slavery, racism was solved in the 60s. We definitely don't have (literally the same) people running around being rather transparent in their moronic racism all the time.
How dare Obama talk about a problem that affects 30% of the country continuously.
Post truth world. Sad stuff.
If - for example - you find a major news outlet that's pro-union, pro-single-payer, pro-wealth-taxes, and pro-debt-free-education, let me know.
Do you think this is being prevented somehow? There are many left leaning news agencies [1]. Maybe the "problem" is that they're all for profit, most of which comes from ads, most of which are anti union companies.
What's the alternative? Mandated reporting?
[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...
No! but where did you get that from?
There is Fox news, X, and Truth socia for right leaning perspectives.
It seems very clear that you think it's bad that CNN is probably going to move right in their reporting. This is based on the fairly safe assumption that "pre-dictatorship vibes" are bad.
Maybe I misread. Could you expand on it maybe?
"We'll tell you the truth about the Dominion voting machines, which mainstream media WON'T tell you!" - Fox News, knowingly lying while also being literally the largest broadcast network in the country.
CNN nudging more towards the right doesn't somehow influence the overall left leaning spread [1], or is in any way indicative of a rising dictatorship.
[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...
And all of them rated it "highly factual"
https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiede...
EDIT: And if you didn't mean it in that way, and were serious, consider looking at e.g. Ground News' rating of NPR: https://ground.news/interest/npr. They (and others) clearly show NPR to have (slight) left bias. This means you are almost certainly going to see woke perspectives there from time to time, and more often than other less-biased or right-biased sources.
I'm curious what you think your politics are then.
I have opinions on issues, and they can vary across the spectrum. On some issues (e.g. healthcare) I'm far to the left (well, in the US - would just be considered "normal" left in other countries). On things like immigration I'm either center or right (everyone seems to have their own idea of what "center" means). On gun control I'm both left and right - I'd like to outlaw them, but am opposed to some gun control initiatives.
On several social issues I can be far to the left on some and far to the right on others.
In an election, I voted both for a Green Party candidate and a Republican candidate (different offices, of course).
What I see is people who identify on the spectrum may have strong opinions on some issues (e.g. left), and then they adopt the leftist viewpoint on other issues - in order to be consistent. In my experience, these people are also more likely to follow "leaders" than be opinionated.
But since it's not my identity, things can change.
When I was younger, my views were more consistent with the right. At some point, after learning a lot of realities, a lot of those views moved to the left. Since it was never part of my identity, it was easier to shift. No internal strife, crisis, etc.
[1] My views on this topic are more nuanced than this, but I phrase it this way to illustrate the dichotomy one can have in politics that people fail to comprehend.
Famously fair and balanced, I know.
Here are all the headlines currently above the fold on the homepage. Don't see anything about a drag queen below the fold either.
Maybe something autocorrected in your address bar when you tried to navigate to NPR?
* What happened during Christa Pike's failed execution
* Christa Pike conscious and able to speak after failed execution
* As Trump focuses the FBI on immigration, counterintelligence is falling behind
* Democrats' advantage is clear with less than a month to go in the midterm elections
* What voters in 6 key states could tell us about the 2026 midterms
* People are asking ChatGPT to help them decide how to vote in the midterms
* Alaska's US Senate race collides with the pollock industry in a fight over fish
* Poll: Residents are losing faith in Vermont as a good place to start life
* In race for Tennessee governor, Blackburn refuses to debate Democrat Green
* Disney, ABC battle Trump's FCC in court over free speech protections
* New Hollywood era begins with an epic mega merger between Paramount and Warner Bros.
* She died covering war for Fox News. Her parents blame the network — and a star reporter
* Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey's new Pentagon roles raise ethics worries
* Jim Bakker, who built 'PTL Club' televangelism empire, has died at 86
* Cornell names former acting U.S. attorney general to review rape case
* Cornell students protest the university's handling of 2024 rape allegations
* Francis Halzen wins Nobel Prize in physics for work on high-energy neutrinos from space
NYT - i think so.
NPR - funding crisis.
The Atlantic - i don't read this - is this the one who's journalist was added in the top secret signal chat?
Now the center right is supporting concentration camps like "alligator alcatraz" so the overton window has shifted a lot in the last ten years.
First, political views are not one-dimensional and so the "left"/"right" and far-extreme-ultra game is just "are they on my side or are they considered bonkers by my brethren?" games.
I believe that it's far better to consider news outlets as a product of their sponsors vs. their intended audience. By and large, they are all corporations trying to maximize revenue by attracting and maintaining a large audience for their materials, thereby paying their sponsors and advertisers the revenue they need.
So, they will produce stories that engage the audience. Whether that is enraging us, stoking controversy, appealing to us with smooth words: doesn't matter. There's no such thing as bad engagement. The corollary is that they don't want to lose audience members so any slide into supporting unpopular causes or candidates or ideologies is nipped in the bud.
Folks also can't seem to accept that editorial opinions or ideologies can shift, especially for example, if a news outlet supports "whoever/whatever is currently in power this year" or as a contrarian, opposes them, and riles up the opposition parties.
Wikipedia's relentless blacklisting and deprecation of "unreliable sources" is a great public experiment in this regard. If you really want a nice left-leaning anodyne view of the world, go with Wikipedia and "blacklist" or stop paying attention to any source they don't like.
Democrat Al Franken got kicked out of Senate when it was found he inapproprately kissed a woman. I can name a long list of creeps in the GOP side who received protection from their side. Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Sexual Harassment Hegseth, Epstein-Friend in Chief. The GOP doesn't seem to have any principles about which sexual deviant they have, they just care about having the majority (in congress) or the power. Oh yeah, speaking of that, sexual assaulter Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh...
I'd trust left-leaning media to report wrongdoing whoever does it, whereas right-leaning media will gloss or bare-face lie about wrongdoing done by the right, and exaggerate about wrongdoings by the left...
The first group will define good/bad acts and then judge people by what acts they commit. The other will defines good/bad people, and then judge acts by which person is doing them. If you want investigative journalism, clearly group #1 is preferable.
On a similar note, I highly recommend a playlist of long-form videos from ~2016, titled (in the sense of an expose) "The Alt-Right Playbook". In particular, the video "Always a Bigger Fish" [0] tries to make sense of some persistent "how can they possibly believe X but not Y" disagreements when it comes to democracy and egalitarianism.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs&list=PLJA_jUddXv...
Right wing people have repeatedly captured and destroyed journalism outlets they deem undesirable. Not that I’m saying CNN is any good.
Literally the only difference between him and the rest of the wannabe media barons, but you could fart the word “Israel” with your armpit and get upvotes these days.
This merger is only happening because the deal that the seller actually preferred (Netflix buying them) was unlikely to be approved by regulators. The President literally came out right after the deal was approved and said "it could be a problem" and "I would have a say" in whether it went through.
In fact the very existence of Paramount Skydance itself, as a merged entity, appears to have been contingent upon Paramount modifying its own HR policies, placing a government ombudsman at their marquee journalistic outlet (CBS), and paying $16 million to Trump's "presidential library fund."
But that's not what people were focusing on here, it's a lot of "Practically Likud" and the increasingly uncomfortable dog whistle "Zionist".
So 90% believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, but they aren’t stupid and it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that “Zionist” has become a kind of slur in the hands of so many.
It really isn’t hard to understand, it’s just convenient for people to hide behind. You meet a white nationalist and they don’t open with a Hitlergrusse, they talk about “preserving the family” or “13/50” and so on. You didn’t invent this shit.
And then you’re calling 50-120 million Americans “a weird cult”?
Are you a parody? I’m honestly baffled.
And by the way, it’s hilarious to claim that Ellison being Jewish (is he? I honestly have no idea) or Zionism would be “literally the only thing unique about him” compared to the rest of the media barons. Not only is there a lot of other stuff that’s unique about him/his company, as I’ve articulated, but also his Zionist beliefs aren’t unique whatsoever among his peers!
You truly live in a hall of mirrors.
Zionist is a slur, and not only is Ellison uniquely a Zionist, but it’s in fact the only unique thing about him and his company. Totally insane shit.
Never mind their overall impact on American policy and politics.
Yeah they’re all fucking crazy people.
Calling evangelicals evangelicals is fine. Calling zionists Zionists is fine.
Both terms have besmirched connotations because both belief systems are besmirched. Simple as that.
Best of luck to you.
I’m beyond reproach if my practical response to needing a bathroom is to break into your home and defecate in your toilet?
And the response is to do your own to another people? Great.
a jewish state is the same in concept as a white state - a place where the non-white or non-jews are second class citizens, and really, should be removed because they have no place in the state.
even if 90% of white people believed in a white nationalist state, white nationalism would still be bad on its own merrits. its not racist to be against ethnostates, regardless of whos ethnostate it is
21% of Israeli CITIZENS… with full voting rights and legal protections, are Arabs. They’re no less citizens of Israel than black Americans are of the US, and yeah that comes with some measure of mutual ethnic and religious tension… it is the Middle East. That’s not the same as a white “utopia” or the usual South Africa comparison.
A lot of the talk around this is layered bad faith, misinformation, and outright bullshit that’s accepted simply because it’s convenient to do so. After all if you believe that shit you can feel justified in your enmity towards a whole people in the name of justice.
By the way how many Jews are citizens of Arab majority nations? How many even live there? Did they live there at one point and did they all magically leave or was there a huge explosion? Just some food for thought.
Russia was historically particularly vicious against the Kievan Rus', and Jews were prohibited from even living in the capital city. The term "beyond the Pale" applied in Ukraine as much as it applied to UK-occupied Ireland. But today on television, we have a pretty and delicate blonde empress making a totes adorbs farce of Catherine the Great's bloody legacy.
The democratic West is now a guaranteed safe haven for Eastern Bloc dissidents and refugees, with open arms and blank checks.
Arab Muslims and Israelis need to get along now, because there's a significant mosque dropped on top of Temple Mount, and they're our last best hope for something. And "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". For now.
Still if I’m to consult my subconscious… it tells me that a lot of people use causes and movements to justify the sort of bullying, hateful, trend-chasing behavior they always displayed all along. It’s when people feel they have free license to let go that you learn more about THEM.
Sorry for the sarcasm.
But probably not with Ellison in charge. He'll probably just drive both companies into the ground.
I'm not sure I was interested in either company by themselves—less likely to be interested in the merged one.
I would bet Ellison loses on this merger too. No one under the age of 60 cares about these legacy media companies to justify tens of billions of dollar valuations. At best, professional media studios are just an add on business for companies like Amazon and Apple and Disney and Sony, with Netflix being the outlier.
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/skydance-credit-rating-down...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-01/paramount... | https://archive.today/SEtX9
DSC and Picard were long slogs in the spirit of "grit" and "realism." SNW having fun, switching up the mood every episode, and telling stories is a breath of fresh air. Strange New Episodes! The Henson Studio collaboration was amazing. Since Netflix canned Dark Crystal, I've been missing my weird muppets traveling across time and space.
Both LD and SNW managed to get less of that Kurtzman stink compared to Academy, DSC, or the movie which shall never be named. I hope they'll let the franchise mellow until they find new direction. (And a new owner.)
* Lower Decks is the truest Trek to ever Trek, but I know that's asinine so I saved my opinion for the footnote.
* ENT was off to a good start, but the 9/11-ification of TV took it off course.
I liked that season 1 and 2 of SNW felt like the stakes were lower and there were fewer gimmicky episodes. The muppet episode for me for example was a huge negative. So was the fake documentary, the Event Horizon remake and of course the double episode where they were fighting manifested evil which to be couldn't be further from the Trek spirit.
The final season of Picard was pure fan service AND I LOVED EVERY MOMENT OF IT! Even when I'm critical of Trek, I'm still there and trying to enjoy. Thank you for sharing.
The truth is that Hollywood was already dying and it had been systematically dismantled by short-term profit seeking. It dismantled the system that created hugely valuable properties like Friends, Cheers, ER, Seinfeld, etc where 22 episodes were created every year to a system where streamers could cut out having to pay for syndication by creating 8 episodes every 3-4 years.
You see a lot of stars of shows having podcasts now from shows that ended years or even decades ago (The Office, The Sopranos). In a healthy ecosystem, successful actors would be working actors.
You see productions chase tax rebates all across North America such as Georgia and Canada where once productions were typically based in LA and that had a ton of ecosystem benefits. As soon as the tax rebates go, so do the productions.
Gavin Newsom clearly isn't serious about becoming president because approving this merger is going to lead to even more layoffs and fewer productions. It's going to be deeply unpopular in California. For good reason.
So what's core to all this (IMHO) is... housing. Housing is an input cost to everything in that locations. LA used to be relatively cheap. It had a mix of housing types from single family homes to mansions to budget apartments so Ho actors, writers, etc could reasonably start out.
And then with declining demand as productions spread out and less pilots and shows were being made overall, the industry has become dominated by nepo babies.
I actually think that in future centuries when history is written about the turning point for American empire, it'll be the downfall of Hollywood. You cannot overstate the value the US had to export culture to the entire world with Hollywood.
[1]: https://brobible.com/culture/article/david-ellison-tried-to-...
Damn, I wish my daddy was a multi-billionaire and fund my hobbies with 8 figures.
>So what's core to all this (IMHO) is... housing.
The Backrooms and Obsession were made by youtubers with shoestring budgets.
The core is Hollywood hasn't made any new innovative and memorable IPs to convince people to spend money watching them in over a decade. People aren't gonna go to the cinema to watch a crappy new sequel/reboot of the Terminator or the Matrix when they can watch the better originals they already have at home on DVD for free as many times they want.
>the industry has become dominated by nepo babies
More like it's been dominated by accountants and nepo-babies cosplaying as socialist political activists to score brownie points with the public but with zero talent to create something good worth watching. "Evil cannot create anything new it can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made"
If we want to talk about monopolies, let's talk about YouTube. That's a far larger gatekeeper, and they have a proven track record of shutting people out for breaking their random rules, with little oversight.
I suppose if they did it gradually enough, they could potentially normalize more right leaning viewpoints to its audience without them noticing.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/09/25/paramount-hollywood-prom...
They had a Lower Decks cartoon crossover already, so they can't even deny the possibility now.
stupid shit like this is why people - younger people - end up yearning for failed communist / socialist policies. because after all there's no accountability in the system.
the system has failed them. it has failed to be impartial. to hold elite greed at bay.
laws are broken daily, the judiciary is captured. what a tragedy.
Instead some individuals choose to root on the end of the artist.
r/stablediffusion seems to be a bit disconnected from reality, to put it nicely.
The key contributor to Hollywood's waning influence is the generation gap; it's a cultural institution that is supposed to be culturally salient. Take the Mandalorian movie as an example; the biggest studio using the biggest IP to spend $300M on a movie... which lost $100M. That movie was competing at the box office at the same time with Obsession, which was made for $750k by a young Youtuber has made over half a billion worldwide.
As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older. He can shake things up if he wants to, and I hope he does.
is the thing he's bringing... advertising for the movies theyre going to make?
Who do you think he has more in common with? An average consumer his own age, or adult members of any age from the elite class that hes likely spent most of his time around?