Previously: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46160315 (1333 comments) |
Previously: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46160315 (1333 comments) |
Honestly would rather have the Warner Bros content over there than on Netflix.
It frequently crashes after displaying ads, forcing me to re-open the app and watch ads again.
When watching ads does succeed (all 3 minutes of them…) and playback of my show begins, it shows the enormous pause button, the giant fade-to-black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, and covers up the subtitles, as though I had pressed ‘Play’.
And trying to pause requires you to press the pause button TWICE.
I tried to play a series, but instead of starting from the last-played episode + 1, it always plays the most recent episode since it’s a rewatch. This happened every time until I got caught up.
So I strongly disagree. If only to be able to watch all of this content without all of frustrating design flaws.
EDIT: They also end each episode with 2-3 minutes of ads. So you had to exit the show, then re-enter to not get hit with two ad breaks in a row.
My parents pay over $300/mo for an Xfinity bundle. It includes everything (phone, internet, and all streaming services on one bill)
The paramount+ app on the Xfinity box took TEN MINUTES to load a show. This is after crashing three times back to the logo.
Xfinity warns that it’s a 3P app and they aren’t responsible for it but it should be criminal to take the money and subject elderly people to this under spec hardware. Even live sports will pause and stutter.
And why are you not paying for ad free streaming?
I mean, the way things are going, it's unlikely in both the cases. But I would get more time to collect everything I want by then with Paramount. Also, under Paramount WB Archive would be in the spotlight far more than under Netflix.
I don’t think they want the film division but the vast number of cable channels that Discovery owns. Giving them a rather large control of the American mind share.
The second best outcome would be the cartoon villain Larry not getting what he wants.
That's a weird way to write "and for us to go back to owning copies of movies instead of just renting them."
Meet the new boss…
>> how hard they try to push an agenda…
Are you talking about a political agenda? What kind of Netflix shows have any kind of political agenda?
Now that we have the Ellison, I don't know anymore. His daughter is excellent, but with a different studio. His son has no idea. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. We'll see.
My European colleagues are mostly worried about more MAGA nonsense in the media with the Ellisons
Once they axed Prodigy and sold season 2 to Netflix (ironic, in retrospect), the writing was on the wall.
I couldn't care less about the "casting" functionality but I use the (3rd gen?) version with a remote as a netflix/hbo/prime terminal. I know it's google, but it works much better than any random android box.
Problem is, what do I do when it dies? I heard they discontinued it and they put out a more expensive box out instead. Or did they, being google, cancel it?
EPL requiring both Peacock and a cable subscription to watch all of the games is extremely annoying. But I do it anyway.
All of those combined let me watch all the Arsenal games except FA and Carabao Cup.
I think a big copyright holders in a strange way actually don't want a repeat of cable. They want all content to be exclusive by default to their own streaming service.
Sony does that now
That's kind of a silly argument. "People are better off paying $100+/month for 4+ streaming services than $25/month for one that has everything."
If your argument were that you'd have to pay more than the current combined cost, it'd be a better argument against mergers. Arguing against something because it's a better deal is just strange.
Instead of a one-time Blu-Ray purchase for ~$25 for a movie to watch as many times as you'd like, it's an ongoing subscription for $25/month. If you only want to watch that one movie in two different calendar months, you've easily doubled your spend.
(Yes, it is still apples-to-oranges because you may watch more than one movie in a month, but the flipside is that the $25/month is a variable catalog fee. The movie you want to watch may be "vaulted" that second month you want to go watch it. With Blu-Ray you control your film catalog, with Netflix some finance team does.)
(Also, yes, easy to forget Blu-Ray in this debate because Blu-Ray is dying/dead, especially in physical retail with Target and Best Buy dropping its sections. You can also substitute a lot of the same arguments here with arguments for Movies Anywhere and/or iTunes Store.)
One could imagine something similar, that sure you can put your own movie or TV show on your own website, but you must also sell it to companies who asks on reasonable terms. So Netflix can make a movie but couldn't say no to say Plex if they wanted to buy the rights to show it on Plex.tv.
Content has no such restriction. Are you really saying every piece of content anyone produces must be licensed? Who decides what is “reasonable”?
How is that law going to apply to Sony who is Japanese owned and CrunchyRoll?
Do we force PluralSight and Udacity to share their content? YouTube creators?
How does the law decide how much Disney should license the Avengers for compared to my cat videos I’m going to put on my website?
Should we expand the law so if I post open source code under AGPL, I must license it to at a certain price?
If the vote looks close, Paramount would be expected to raise their bid to cover that cost.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065280/000119312525... 8.3(a)
Either way, this entertainment merger is going to get ugly. Consumers are absolutely going to get harmed either way with that clawback clause.
Warner bros is being divided into the cable TV stations + discover channel stations and the movie studio and the backlog is separate.
Netflix wants the movie studio + tv back catalog
No.
Paramount has nothing to do with these numbers, which both come from the Plan of Merger among Netflix, Warner and others [1].
Paramount's bid constitutes an Acquisition Proposal under § 6.2(c). It is a "proposal, offer or indication of interest" from Paramount, a party who is not "Buyer and its Affiliates," which "is structured to result in such Person or group of Persons (or their stockholders), directly or indirectly, acquiring beneficial ownership of 20% or more of the Company’s consolidated total assets."
Given it "is publicly proposed" after the date of the Plan of Merger and "prior to the Company Stockholder Meeting," it is a Company Qualifying Transaction (8.3(D)(x)).
If 8.3(D)(y) is then satisfied (a condition I got bored jumping around to pin down–if thar be dragons, they be here) and Warner consummates the Company Qualifying Transaction or "enters into a definitive agreement providing for" it (8.3(a)(D)(z)(2), the Buyer can terminate the Plan of Merger under 8.1(b)(iii). That, in turn, triggers the Company Termination Fee of $2.8bn, which is separate from the Regulatory Termination Fee of $5.8bn Netflix would have to pay Warner if other shit happened.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065280/000119312525...
From everything I've seen he's basically an ideologue, and has already re-structured CBS to align with his vision.
Just something that seems very out in the open yet kind of pushed off to the side.
"Only we have sufficiently greased the current government to get this deal done"
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/25/trump-pushed-paramount-reviv...
The wild move for Ellison would be to bid for one of Trump’s crypto projects if the shareholder vote looks like it could fail.
[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/netflixs-sarandos-w...
https://deadline.com/2025/12/trump-paramount-60-minutes-davi...
Also some say it’s “flawed democracy”, IMHO - for last ~3 decades (or even more) it’s just a charade of democracy. Probably soon you won’t even have that.
First-past-the-post two party system, bizarre primary elections, electoral college, land votes instead of people (how many senators are from california and how many from wyoming, they also say it’s “to balance the tyranny of majority”), abhorrent and disgusting gerrymandering (so states could also force tyranny of the minority in congress too :) ), voter suppression (voting on Tuesdays, employers can control if you can go vote that day, voting booth count is getting smaller, voter registration shenanigans in marginalised communities), etc.
Any country that has only ever really been able to choose one of two political parties who both represent the interests of wealthy elites above all else can't really call itself a "Democracy."
"It can't happen here", said the arrogant American...
It seems the main thrust of the pitch is "we're friends with Trump therefore more likely to win approval" which is so deeply gross but also probably persuasive to many. Jared Kushner is involved in the Paramount bid so you know they're greasing the right wheels.
Those people are mostly gone now. Our society used to elevate people like that, but it just doesn't now.
It's up to us not to forget, and to vote accordingly, and to call BS when we see it.
Otherwise we lose our democracy.
too many people are too comfortable - both with not voting, but also to vote blindly.
> we lose our democracy.
it's half-way into the grave imho.
Trump exposed what looks great on paper (checks and balances) as being worthless if you're willing to break all conventions, use the government as a tool against your political enemies, and have a strong enough political base to beat the Senate (ultimately the only ones with the power to stop you) into submission.
What all of this really exposed is that laws and constraints don't mean anything if there's no actual way to enforce them at the highest level.
The latter leaves behind “sports and news television brands around the world including CNN, TNT Sports in the U.S., and Discovery, top free-to-air channels across Europe, and digital products such as the profitable Discovery+ streaming service and Bleacher Report (B/R)” [3]. (Paramount is effectively bidding $5.9bn for these assets.)
Note that Zaslav, Warner’s CEO, is a prominent donor to Democrats [4], as is Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder [5]. (Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO with Greg Peters, is mixed, leaning Dem [6]. No clue on the latter.) Ellison is a staunch Trump ally. The partisan tinge will be difficult to ignore.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/media/paramount-makes-hostile-t...
[2] https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-to-acquire-warner-...
[3] https://www.wbd.com/news/warner-bros-discovery-separate-two-...
[4] https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=david+...
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/reed-hastings...
[6] https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=Ted+Sa...
[1] https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/reindeer-games
[2] predb.me
(1)https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/08/trump-netflix-wbd-paramount.... (2)https://www.techradar.com/streaming/netflix/trump-says-the-b...
Amazon took MGM, maybe netflix can take over paramount after it takes over warner bros?
I know people have strong opinions on this, but both from studios like warner and netflix, their quality has been subpar, i don't think this will change much in terms of risk taking. There used to be lots of more flops but lots of really good blockbusters as well. Now there are a lot less of both, it is profitable but enshittified.
(Arguably, Skydance's ideas for Paramount are too similar to the weird Paramount and CBS divorce era, that I find it hard to believe Skydance is less wrong of a steward for Paramount than Paramount was before the consolidation. But a lot of that opinion comes from bias as a Star Trek fan and Skydance's approach seems to return to the semi-broken idea that Star Trek seems to be better as a film franchise than a TV franchise.)
Skydance owning both Paramount and Warner Brothers might be very concerning in terms of IP consolidation alone.
It's one of the Ellison family's forays into media. David's sister/Larry's daughter Megan has Annapurna. Annapurna produced the Spike Jonze's AI romance "Her" and many of the the most prominent indie games of the last decade (Outer Wilds, Cocoon, Stray, Kentucky Route Zero, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Journey, Donut Country…).
Paramount's multi-year sale process deserves an HBO miniseries. But at this point, it's a de facto LBO platform for the Ellisons.
It works for one person on the short term but erodes society and all future opportunity.
Ecosystems are what built SV dispute a few selfish monopolistic pricks.
From my observations, SV just had good marketing and PR during the 2000s - 2010s.
Malcolm Harris wrote a book “Palo Alto” about how this culture took root in SV long before it was called Silicon Valley: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/10/palo-alto-book...
> How the Ellison Empire is Killing America’s Democratic Media
The only interesting thing about David Ellison is that his politics are different (slightly to the center) from his father. That's uncommon in those circles.
This thread is using it as an opportunity to scream about Trump, but Democrats will be all in on this. They have the same funders and the same interests. The NYT is the outlet that legitimized Weiss in the first place, a woman whose only previous interest was claiming that Palestinians were harassing her on college campuses by being there, and trying her best to get them expelled and fired. The Democrats were no opposition to the genocide; it began under their watch, they fully funded and shielded it, and they happily rounded up protesters. They'll be overjoyed to accept Ellison attention and Ellison cash.
I told all of you not to buy Oracle. Awful company, awful people, awful product.
His kids are nepobabies that each run their own media company. His son is running Paramount, and his daughter has Annapurna.
My man, you don't have to mince words here. This hostile bid is backed by Jared Kushner, who is the President's son in law. One Rich Asshole owns Paramount, and is most certainly supporting the bid here.
This deal would also leave CNN in a very vulnerable position (they are owned by WB), which is exactly what Trump wants.
Do you mean primaries? Runoffs are a thing in some elections in the US, but not a thing that would start in spring for the congressional midterms.
He's trying to shakedown Netflix to pay fealty.
Adding Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn815egjqjpo
> He's trying to shakedown Netflix to pay fealty.
I am not a supporter of most things this admin is doing, but also wouldn't be too sure on this one. I found it interestingly odd that out of nowhere he makes a comment on the deal after attending an event dealing with celebrating music and film. A regular shakedown would have happened before the deal when he met with the Netflix CEO recently, which the added link article mentions and was a person who Trump liked.
And now we see the Paramount thing that leads me to think it fits more with the suggestion that he takes the side of the last person he speaks with, which was probably someone at the same event on the paramount side.
I wouldn't rule out that he now plays them against each other in order to get something from it, but don't think it was the original reason for helping to throw a wrench into it
"Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by Jared Kushner, is part of Paramount's hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery, according to a regulatory filing."
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/08/jared-kushner-paramount-war...
We're not even gonna get a good investigative journalism podcast about the corruption because it's just right there in front of you. There's not much to uncover.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46048351 ("Larry Ellison Met with Trump to Discuss Which CNN Reporters They Plan to Fire (techdirt.com)")
Viewing this acquisition in terms of simple revenue alone is like positing Musk bought Twitter for its ad revenue. Total information control is priceless.
(In case anyone hasn't kept up with the plutocratic oligarchy in the US: Oracle's Larry Ellison currently owns Paramount (since July 2024), and Warner Bros. Entertainment owns CNN. This isn't explained in the CNBC OP: David Ellison is Larry's son and the token CEO).
Now maybe nothing matters. But conflicts of interest will come up in those cases. Trump doesn't win _everything_. Trump wins at places where the Supreme Court is using him for their own project of reworking the constitutional order. Basically Trump shoots up a volley with some absolutely batshit PoV, they interpret the topic in some saner (still crazy) right wing legal idea. And the Supreme Court fast track's these cases about executive power.
This case would be State AGs having independent standing to challenge major M&A.
It will drag things out at a minimum, in a way the Supreme Court's rapid resolution of executive branch cases is not dragged out.
Are you betting on the content conglomerate bidding tens of billions, or the nepo baby LBO shop wearing the corpse of a movie studio as a salmon hat to spur copyright reform?
I think there is a better chance of the state collapsing than there is of seeing meaningful IP reform
we'll see meaningful copyright reform and sanity in our lifetime.
Netflix is the largest streaming service in the country right now. It is 4x larger than Paramount+ in terms of total subscribers. Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers is naturally going to receive more scrutiny for this reason alone.
Hostile takeovers hit their zenith "in the 1980s" [1], when about 50% of attempts succeeded [2].
Since then, Delaware courts have become more Board friendly (specifically, friendly to takeover defences), antitrust made "it more difficult for companies with large market shares to acquire competitors without some level of cooperation from the target company," and stocks became more expensive [1]. (I'm struggling to find recent literature on frequencies.)
Compared to the 1980s and pre-Covid hostile takeover zenith, stocks remain expensive. But money is chaper, particularly for the politically connected. Antitrust is a wild card. And Warner has reduced takeover defences given it's already in the market for a sale (Revlon duties).
So...somewhere below 50%?
[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/11/08/the-comeback-of-h...
[2] https://faculty.fiu.edu/~daiglerr/pdf/hostile_takeovers.pdf
> It seems the main thrust of the pitch is "we're friends with Trump therefore more likely to win approval"
It seems to me that the main thrust of the pitch is more money.
It would be a lot nicer if I could see a social network of torrenters and locate the market leader — the most popular with the best rips or most friends or something like that.
It feels like Altavista when I really wanted Google.
Use literally any torrent indexer (I use 1337x) and you'll be able to see # of seeders/leechers to determine popularity.
What professional media companies create and promote gets less and less relevant every year. The content served by Meta/ByteDance/Alphabet’s computers and other online sources get more and more relevant.
People get extremely angry when Magic The Gathering charges more money, for more exclusive products, in more frequently occurring releases. Rage, grief, and sorrow over an aspect of your life that you allow a singular company to control. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can walk away , and find more fulfilling activities that you control.
This is what the kids call “touching grass”.
At this point I don’t watch TV, I don’t watch movies, I don’t play Magic The Gathering, I only play video games over 10 years old.
As I have gotten older I see now that this entertainment is junk food that replaces real satisfaction and accomplishment in life. Humans now more than ever have the opportunity to learn and do anything, but instead they spend it squandered on a shadow of real life.
A bit too condescending if you ask me. People are free to choose to spend time on things they find entertaining and that has no bearing on whether you find it "junk food" or whether the company producing the entertainment is trying to squeeze every penny they can out of it.
I'm building a Steam library for my retirement.
I quit gaming when I had kids, and currently play tennis and do inline skating as my regular active hobbies (which, I believe, count as touching grass), with gaming as my injury / infirmity backup.
For some people, they may their particular hobby/form of entertainment a core part of their identity. So walking away feels a huge indictment of themselves in particular. It can be hard for people to find something else to "pivot" their identity to in many cases.
(Apple TV is nearly as bad at theatrical runs as Netflix, though admittedly some of Apple's biggest "mistakes" are in presenting things beyond Oscar-bait such as Argyle that "box office flopped", but yet it is far better for physical theaters that they tried and as a fan of physical theaters I want to keep seeing them trying.)
I doubt that Netflix is going to take all of its content out of the video on demand/pay once markets like iTunes. Disney hasn’t.
Disney and WB are part of the MovieAnywhere consortium where you can buy content from iTunes, Amazon Prime, Google, Vudu etc and it automatically shows up in the other libraries
Do you seriously need a Ukrainian to tell you how to do corruption in the year 2025 of our Lord? In US? In this economy?
Don't be cheap. You can get Roe v Wade back and Kavanaught's head on a pike if you bid high enough. Independent prosecutors will for sure find a pdf file one him somewhere.
As a Jew myself, I think the actions of Israel over the past 2 years are clearly ethnic cleansing and I believe anyone who supports that effort should be exposed for doing so.
This article is relating to Paramount's continued attempt to purchase WB despite Netflix announcing a deal with WB.
But not with things it does not. The numbers you quoted are not Paramount’s. (Though that is orthogonal to you being wrong on Warner owing Netflix a break-up fee if Paramount wins.)
Wasn't there a former Comcast employee as CEO of "X" initially?
> My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE! Oh well, far worse things can happen.
I think it would be quite boring, though
Netflix.
If they win, they own HBO. If they lose, they have a beef with Ellison.
(Speaking out of my ass here. But I think there is broad underappreciation of how intensely a lot of Hollywood creatives do not want to work for a rightwinger. I imagine Netflix, Disney and others will have a bit of a bonanza over the coming years of picking up disaffecteds from Paramount et al, even assuming the latter don't wind up in bankruptcy.)
They just know the words as derogatory, without realizing that they represent the world as they think they'd like it to be.
New Line has been part of Warner since they merged with TBS in the mid 90s.
The Hobbit for instance is a WB production, not Newline.
Apparently sometime shortly before they got the axe they paid Susanna Clarke a 7 figure sum to option Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I don't know a whole lot about options but 7 figures sounds like about 8-16x what people usually do especially for a 3 year old book by an unknown author. IIRC, that's more than Andy Weir got for The Martian. And more than Lev Grossman is worth today, and he got five seasons out of three books.
That option expired unused and BBC One and Cuba Pictures made it into a very good miniseries. Does feel a bit like a pattern of financial exuberence.
Then on that questionable base you build a shaky empire that is supposed to work if people behave nicely. It works till somebody comes around who doesn't care about that and it all falls down. Lets not forget current government was voted by +-half of US population, for second time. Nobody should be shocked by direction its taking again, maybe surprised by intensity of it but thats it.
I am a minority in the fact that I openly welcome the visible consistent hostility of USG towards whole Europe and Ukraine conflict when russia attacks whole western world including US and our philosophy of existence, as much as it can (luckily for us not that much). We are waking up from our deep comfy slumber, not in ideal fashion but we already have a bigger combined military than US has in many, for us the most important aspects (since we don't want to drag ourselves to remote wars unlike you guys so ie aircraft carriers are rather unimportant).
Green deal will be soon gone (good idea in vacuum but not in world where literally nobody else cares about it and we just destroy our economy and future trying to make our 10% part count), social services will get cuts to bring them to more sustainable levels based on unavoidable demographics and more focus on more practical and military manufacturing, like it or not.
My bigger issue with regards to how democratic we are would be more related to campaign finance laws, corruption, and the immense power wielded by those in charge that can be pointed at political challengers if the politician is so inclined.
Plus, they already own all of the online media. The important bits, anyway.
The Ellison family's willingness to be tied to serial harassers, and in the case of Annapurna in direct expense of being a beloved media producer, makes you wonder what worse skeletons that family has in its closet if this is already just the open awful stuff they want us to know about their close associates.
I guess if there is any common denominator it’s a familial default to loyalty vs fear of public perception? Not the worst trait in the world despite leading to this outcome.
Also to be fair Lasseter’s “serial harassment” (while real and I’m not trying to discount) consisted of his insistence that everyone hug him when greeting him. So while you can make the argument his firing had merit, his ”issue” is pretty easy to prevent at a new firm: No hugs policy
As far as I understand it, that's the least objectionable of the many stories about him. From a 2017 article [1], we also have:
> “He’s very tactile in a weird way,” said one former female executive who, like others, spoke with Deadline on condition that she not be named in the story for fear of reprisals. “He would rub my leg in a meeting … It was creepy and weird. It got to the point where I wouldn’t sit next to him in a meeting, because it undermined everything I said.”
> Lasseter was observed passionately kissing a female subordinate at a 2010 Miramax party,
> one person saw Lasseter pull the female executive tightly to him and move his hands over her body. The female executive later sought to laugh off the encounter, saying she didn’t think her job description included “being groped by John Lasseter,” the observer said. “But you could tell she was pissed.”
[1]: https://deadline.com/2017/11/john-lasseter-behavior-pixar-di...
Topmost link on DDG starts with:
"John Lasseter was accused by multiple former employees and reports of a pattern of unwanted sexualized behavior at Pixar and Disney Animation, including persistent unwelcome touching, kisses, and leering that made staff uncomfortable"
Or maybe they just happened to make an off-topic comment that had nothing to do with the hostile takeover.
Except there is robust competition in media —be it news, social, etc.
I think the political angle in terms of motivation is overstated. In terms of closing the deal though, it’s huge. David Ellison has been producing movies for quite some time. So his desire to become a big time player in that space would be a believable motivation. But he can use his father’s connections to Trump to sink the Netflix bid (or create enough FUD to convince shareholders to favor his bid).
As of a few years ago, there were six corporations owning 90% of US media: NewsCorp, TimeWarner, Comcast, Disney, Viacom, Sony.
* https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/fs5g0b/more_tha...
* https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-9...
Add to that local channel ownership (like Sinclair) concentration:
* https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/media-consolidation-me...
* https://www.vox.com/2018/4/6/17202824/sinclair-tribune-map
* https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/broadcasters-urge-fcc-to-h...
This is especially true when it comes to investigative journalism, where it may take weeks or months to run down leads and information.
It feels like year by year, Asia, even China, is becoming more and more culturally relevant. Western media is just too damn stagnant.
Hollywood used to be known as possibly the most important cultural powerhouse history has seen. It might still be that, but it certainly doesn't feel like it anymore.
Or maybe I'm just getting old.
And powerful export sectors.
I can think of only Korean Squid Game and a few Japanese anime shows that are somewhat successful.
Do Chinese movies even get distributed into places like India, Africa, South America as US produced stuff does?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ne_Zha_2
Like its predecessor, the film received highly positive reviews from critics, and achieved even greater commercial success at a gross of $2.2 billion worldwide against a production budget of US$80 million.
Ne Zha 2 broke numerous box office records inside and outside China, including becoming the highest-grossing film in a single box office territory, the highest-grossing animated film, being the first adult animated film in this position, the highest-grossing non-English language film and the first animated film in history to cross the $2 billion mark, as well as being the highest-selling animated film based on ticket sales.
It also ranks as the highest-grossing film of 2025 and the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time.
Having grandchildren made it hard to avoid.
As for China in Africa:
Global power dynamics in Africa are shifting, with China eclipsing the influence of the US and France. China has become Africa’s single largest trading partner.
Source: https://theconversation.com/maps-showing-chinas-growing-infl...
FWiW China has been a significant employer of US mercs in Africa.
The government and who runs it should not be in business I'm sorry. This isn't free markets, it's manipulation and corruption.
It's almost more that we have semi-functional regulation. Trump's influence over this transaction entirely stems from his antitrust powers.
Anticorruption agency head cant be removed even by parliament vote, not even the executive.
But then again, every governmemt and political person has their taxes published by default
Add: it's also not one anticorruption agency, but the whole bunch of them -- law enforcement one (think of FBI, but investigating corruption in government), special prosecutors office, another agency monitoring assets of anyone close enough to government (including immigration officers on a country level) and their family and a whole separate court with judges vetted by independent panel.
It's elections of Doge of Venice level of indirection.
So, in those states only, electoral votes can be gerrymandered in exactly the same was as Congressional seats, because they are exactly the same districts. (Of course, both states are small enough that the gerrymandering opportunities are fairly limited, and would have limited impact on Presidentual elections, as Maine has only two CDs and Nebraska only 3.)
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/03/nx-s1-5630076/the-press-corps...
Just in case you think this is just another liberal hit piece, let me repeat that Fox News refused to sign the agreement.
but that's not the whole thing being said.
Party X may have been planning on something, but party Y threw a wrench in the middle, causing party X to have to make some response. By implication, party X believes party Y to be throwing a wrench, hence, party X must act. Therefore, party Y also must be planning something that counteracts party X's desires. If it weren't so, party X would not act (as that costs money).
This seems like a variation on the fallacy of the excluded middle.
Make no mistake, it (Netflix) is still a billionaire corp; on the humanity scale, it scores quite low, but not lawn mower low. They're still outside the Ellison event horizon.
What does that mean?
Even if there were no mechanism for donating to the IDF available to the general public, do you believe someone like Ellison couldn't easily give money to whomever he wanted?
I think we can leave the pedantry for the ICC and just stop at him being a rather nasty genocide supporter regardless of the details.
Yeah, I know, way too optimistic.
Paramount broke its tradition of barely treading water [1] in 2023 by booking multibillion cable losses [2] before being acquired in a de facto LBO [3] at half the price it traded at in 2005 [4]. (90% off its 2021 peak, though that may have been meme-y.)
Paramount Skydance–the one bidding for Warner–has $15bn of debt on $600mm operating cash flow supporting $15bn of equity trading above book value while still posting losses [5].
It's not dead. But it's at least necrotic.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/cbs:us:net-income
[2] https://www.filmtake.com/distribution/paramounts-financial-t...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount_Skydance
The way you write it I can’t see why WB would be allowed to sell itself when it makes the most sense for Patamount to go bankrupt some time from now and be split up amongst US media; Netflix/HBO/Disney/Peacock
Also Clarke has a chronic illness, which is preventing her from trying for another book of that caliber. That mountain of cash is probably keeping her very comfortable.
“Larry Ellison donates $16.6 million, says, ‘Since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home’”
Oh and i know FIDF - Friends of the IDF (nonprofit through which these donations are going) are just that. Just friends.
That's the same guy who tried to take over that anti-corruption office. He would be controlling it now, if it weren't for the massive country-wide protests about it. I'm not sure that they're doing fine.
Economist, July 2025:
> "On July 22nd the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, passed a bill that would place the country’s two main anti-corruption bodies—NABU, which investigates wrongdoing, and SAPO, which prosecutes it—under the control of the presidency. This was not the work of rogue MPs. It was orchestrated from the top by President Volodymyr Zelensky and his all-powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak."
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/07/23/volodymyr-zelen... ( https://archive.is/kYh4w )
BBC, last week: "...was forced to U-turn after mass demonstrations",
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz0nljm4y74o ("Andriy Yermak: How Zelensky's right-hand man fell from power" / "Fall of Zelensky's top aide - reboot for Kyiv or costly shake-up?")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_anti-corruption_protests_...
Well, they won for now, that's what matters.
Both cheap entertainment and junk food cede your autonomy to large corporations whose main goal is to make you addicted to their product and extract the maximal amount of money.
This is purely subjective, but I believe that the path to personal fulfillment does not involve watching TV and playing video games in your spare time. I say this as someone who was addicted to video games and played 40 hours a week in addition to a full time job.
When someone says “No matter who wins, we lose” they are implying that we are all beholden to corporations who will inevitably screw us, but that does not have to be the case. You can choose not to participate.
I’m sorry that you were addicted to playing video games (truly) but I think your past experience is preventing you from thinking rationally about this.
People can find fulfillment from many different things, including the ones that you personally don’t find fulfilling. One's fulfillment is also irrelevant with respect to whether the product they are consuming was designed by a corporation to extract maximum profits (though I sympathize with your anti-corporate stance, despite the fact I find this point of yours to be irrational).
You admitted your view was subjective, yet you are prescribing it as a general view that applies to everyone which is both elitist and dissonant.
I didn't get that read at all. I read it as their journey of understanding how the world works and how they've reached their opinions on personal autonomy.
Your replies feel as if they're trying to paint turbobrew's comments as something more than they are; as some kind of prescribed doctrine, as opposed to an individuals opinion.
But that may just be because I happen to strongly agree with turbobrew's commentary.
I typed out my ideas as they came to me, so I may have missed the mark. The core idea I want to portray is that you can choose not to play the game of for profit corporations. You can walk away.
I struggle with defining the line for myself because a lot of my own hobbies and goals are creative - making music, building a video game, performing improv comedy. And those things are naturally in want of an audience.
Does it mean that I'm part of the problem in wanting to create entertainment, because I'm essentially asking an audience to indulge in the "junk food" that I create? I don't know.
I'd be interested in your thoughts on that question because your ideas seem to be well-articulated. My current thinking is that there is a distinction between:
- "So good" and "So good I could watch it for hours"
- "The artistic content" and "The platform moderating your access to it"
- "Pro-social" and "Anti-social" encouragement / culture of various media (the medium is the message, etc).
Making good quality, non-addictive, pro-social art, independently seems to be an ideal outcome, but then your art - while also being extremely expensive to create and distribute - is in competition with highly visible, well-established, strongly addictive... McDonald's franchises.
If you haven’t already I would check out the book “Hooked” as well to learn more about the addictive patterns that are put out there to trap you.
I wasted thousands of hours in the 1990s reading Usenet. The part of Usenet I used (i.e., not the binary newsgroups) never made anyone any money and was never intended to make money by the people who built and administered it.
The software I used to read Usenet, namely Wayne Davison's trn, was likewise never intended to make any money: since its license had a clause prohibiting commercial use, it technically did not qualify as open-source software, but it was freely redistributable, i.e., basically given away (along with its source code).
But trn was designed for addiction. Hitting the space key always brought up a new screenful of text. Whenever I got bored with a post, the n key would skip the rest of the post and show me the first screenful of the next post. Once I'd been shown all the posts in one group, trn would automatically start showing me the next group with unread messages. In summary, the path of least resistance (namely, repeatedly hitting the space key till bored, then hitting the n key) caused a continuous "waterfall" or firehose of text to scroll by on the screen.
Moreover, it was difficult to use trn reflectively: e.g., if I found myself returning in my thoughts to a screenful of text I saw a minute ago, there was a good chance that there was no practical way for me put that earlier screenful back on the screen unless I was still reading the post in which the desired screenful occurred, in which cause I could scroll backward using the b key. (The early web, when the back button still reliably returned the user to the previous page, was a big improvement over trn in its support for reflective use.)
Point is that we should put the blame for the addictiveness of modern life on the right cause: not large corporations, not even the profit motive, but rather the technological progress that has accumulated over the centuries, which enables the creation and the delivery at an affordable price to the average person of experiences that are much more potent or pleasurable than anything available to an average person in the environment in which we evolved.
Yes, sex and eating good food with interesting people were always potent experiences for people, but in past centuries, it took a lot of effort, expense or risk to obtain those experiences in contrast to the ease, cost-efficiency and safety with which potent experiences can be arranged on the internet. And if a person carries around a smartphone, these cheap easy-to-arrange safe potent experiences are available at almost every waking moment.
For me the Usenet of the 1990s was a potent experience because I was strongly motivated by curiosity and learning. (1990s Usenet was full of conversations between very smart people.) Comedian and talk-show host Arsenio Hall joked in the 1990s that the internet was cocaine for smart people. This was true even before the US government lifted (in 1993 IIRC) the ban on using the US internet backbone for any commercial purpose.
The analog I would say is being addicted to Chess, which is decentralized activity.
The Ellisons are personal friends of Trump and Netanyahu. Netanyahu has spoken repeatedly about media as a weapon, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3tdrO8bA7rs. Ellison is the largest individual donor to the IDF. Trump handed Tiktok to Ellison.
The bid is backed by Kushner (i.e. Trump) and their Saudi allies.
Even Paramount still has “South Park” and the creators are basically daring Paramount to cancel them.
But its possible to starve them of talent, funding and eventually let them wither into obscurity, by not promoting nor giving it the opportunity to flourish.
But there's still youtube even if these incumbent media outlets are compromised - independents can still create and distribute there. This is very different from the airwaves or cable.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/one-batt...
> Netflix's 93% RT Hit Show That Has the U.S. Government Furious Is a Streaming Sensation
https://collider.com/netflix-boots-streaming-success-after-g...
And that’s before we’ve even touched HBO. John Oliver is probably the most obvious example. But I’d say shows like Watchmen count too. Fahrenheit 451. Succession was pretty clearly mocking FOX News and its media ecosystem.
Art that’s critical of the government doesn’t literally have to be shouting “Trump bad”, it can be done through critique or mocking of the values it holds.
I knew about Tulsa, about Black Wall Street but I didn't know there was actually a plane. I was like, "That's surely creative license" when I saw it. But nope, the racists actually had a fucking plane.
They are using very general language and they aren’t disagreeing with my characterization, so I think I’m describing their position accurately.
And you’re absolutely right, it’s all about masks and he gets it.
So now if I choose to play a video game, that means my personal fulfillment is being controlled by a corporation? You seem to be conflating one's agency to choose versus a corporation having utter control over one's choices. Again, I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but you mentioned being addicted to video games and I think that is affecting your objectivity. As someone who plays video games only a few hours a week, your claim sounds ridiculous.
> I typed out my ideas as they came to me, so I may have missed the mark. The core idea I want to portray is that you can choose not to play the game of for profit corporations. You can walk away.
Sure, no argument there - but that's not what you said originally.
Choosing to play a video game made by a corporation doesn't mean the corporation is controlling one's fulfillment, nor does it mean one is not getting fulfillment or satifsfaction from it (your words).
Arguably they promote a chilling effect around acquisitions, which does help competition: "don't try to buy something unless you're prepared to deal with a possible fallout" should result in fewer attempts at consolidating dominant positions.
I'd almost be tempted to posit that such a clause should become mandatory for deals over a certain threshold (e.g. $1bn), with amounts determined according to certain parameters.
The kroger Albertsons deal was the other way around, the seller had to pay the buyer if the deal didn't go through.
Food on the other hand, that's a real problem.
You don’t have to be “harmed”, just do not pay them your money. Problem solved. If the prospect of not being “entertained” fills you with anxiety and frustration, maybe that’s something to reflect on.
It's not as bad as food scarcity, of course. But it can do some collateral damage.
I mean the franchise didnt get anything top tier apart from Aliens labirynth and the vP 2 game from.. 2001?
But also, yeah Episode 8 is the worst movie in the main film series. It makes Episode 2 look good.
It also has weird "subversive" dialogue about sacrifice being bad that doesn't really fit what's happening in the movie itself where sacrifice of two characters saves the day. Which is "subversive" in the sense that a movie with dialogue saying "this is a shitty movie plot" is subversive.
It also rips off the ending of Return of the Jedi by killing the main bad guy so is "subversive" in that it trolls whoever was stuck making episode 9 without a functional villain.
There is a real problem with too many sequels and adaptations though.
Maybe 3rd. Jedi is gorgeous but the script for everything past Jabba’s Palace is a mess. Doesn’t know what to do with all its characters, feels the need to have them all around anyway.
As for sequels, we are at a weird time in history. Due maybe in part just how prevalent media is and how easy (relatively) it is to create, we've been super-saturated in "like X but with Y" stories. We have dedicated websites mapping tropes. It's hard to come up with anything that hasn't been done a few million times. AI will probably accelerate that, and I can't say I know what comes next.
WB under Discovery was already becoming an also ran and more financial engineering than a real company.