We’ve noted how right wing billionaire Larry Ellison, as part of his attempt to control the entirety of media, had launched a $108 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers backed by Saudi cash. Larry, as we’ve seen with CBS and his interest in TikTok, is trying to convert what’s left of U.S. media into a giant safe space […]
One of the little-known but extremely telling episodes in the history of modern copyright, discussed in Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available), concerns the Marrakesh Treaty. A post on the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) site from 2017 has a good summary of what the treaty is about, and why it is important: It sets out exceptions and […]
Here’s a fun game the Trump administration keeps playing: destroy a successful government program, wait a few months, then breathlessly announce you’ve “invented” the exact same thing but with obvious corruption mechanisms baked in. Last week, the administration excitedly announced a new “Tech Force”—a program to bring tech talent into government for two-year stints to […]
If you’ve been around a while, you might remember that Verizon used to be completely obnoxious when it came to forcing you to use their phones and their shitty apps. At one point, Verizon wouldn’t even let you use a competing GPS mapping app, locking you to Verizon’s substandard VCAST apps. The company also adored […]
Once again, this administration is demonstrating it has zero interest in serving the public. The administration acts together to serve a single person: Donald Trump. Anything that looks like it might benefit the public more than it benefits Trump is unacceptable. The man at the top considers everything to be zero sum. And that means […]
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If you’re wondering what independent journalism that won’t bend to White House pressure looks like, you’re looking at it. On Sunday night, CBS News’ newly imported “editor in chief,” Bari Weiss, killed a 60 Minutes story about Trump’s illegal deportations to a Salvadoran concentration camp—hours before it was set to air. Why? Because it might […]
Brendan Carr was dragged before Congress last week for some light questioning about all the terrible, illegal bullshit he’s been up to. While the hearing mostly focused on FCC independence and Carr’s failed bid to try and censor Jimmy Kimmel, it didn’t touch on the other extremist nonsense Carr’s been up to, including his assault […]
I guess I’m a masochist, so here we go. In my recent post about Let It Die: Inferno and the game developer’s fairly minimal use of AI and machine learning platforms, I attempted to make the point that wildly stratified opinions on the use or non-use of AI was making actual nuanced conversation quite difficult. […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. On the morning of Thursday, July 31, James B. Milliken was enjoying a round of golf at the remote Sand Hills club in Western Nebraska when his cellphone buzzed. Milliken was still days away from taking the helm of the sprawling University of California system, but […]
You generally don’t see criminal charges filed against judges at any level of the court system. If it does happen, it’s used to address egregious and constant criminal activity by sitting judges. The most common path towards discipline relies on the court system itself, which allows courts to punish judges for misbehavior and, in rare […]
Fourteen years ago, right after the FCC issued its order on net neutrality, Marsha Blackburn flipped out and released a video talking (misleadingly!) about how wonderful Facebook and Twitter were and how they would be destroyed if the big evil government interfered in any way with the internet. As she says “there has never been […]
We’ve noted repeatedly how right wing billionaire Larry Ellison hired Bari Weiss to run CBS for a very obvious set of reasons: to coddle wealth and power, validate and amplify right wing grievance bullshit, divide and distract the electorate, and undermine real journalism. And she’s doing all of those things incredibly well. Weiss’ first major […]
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Imagine having all the power but none of the brains. That’s the current administration, the one that behaves like a blind, enraged bull set loose in its own china shop. “We can always get more china,” says the administration, shortly before realizing it really can’t, thanks to tariff efforts that ensure China won’t be buying […]
I’ve written a lot about the AOL–>AT&T–>Time Warner–>Discovery mergers simply because I think they perfectly encapsulate the pointless, destructive incompetence at the heart of modern media consolidation, and the cannibalistic nature of Wall Street’s obsession with illusory quarterly growth propped up by smoke, mirrors, and complex accounting. Ever since the original AOL Time Warner merger back […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about Trump announcing all the things he’s going to spend his tariff tax revenue on: Behold, the Party of Fiscal Responsibility Corruptibility! In second place, it’s Thad with a comment about what’s going on with AI: Also, the problem isn’t […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, USA Today published its latest bogus oped against Section 230 that misrepresented the law, a district court rejected CDT’s challenge of Trump’s ridiculous executive order about 230, and Trump appointed an unqualified 230-hater to a top DOJ role. Lindsay Graham threatened to repeal 230 if it wasn’t reformed, […]
With national public health being run by RFK Jr., or run into the ground if you prefer, it’s been left to individual states to figure out where and how to fill in the gaps. Some states, such as Florida, have fully embraced Kennedy’s anti-scientific posture and are moving as quickly as possible to dismantle public […]
The state of streaming is… bad. It’s very bad. The first step in wanting to watch anything is a web search: “Where can I stream X?” Then you have to scroll past an AI summary with no answers, and then scroll past the sponsored links. After that, you find out that the thing you want […]
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