Life in Ell

Skydancing on Journalism's Grave, Weekend Whats

Because we live in an age when the worst-case scenario is always the most likely one, Larry and David Ellison’s Skydance Paramount “won” the bidding war over Netflix, and is now positioned to own Warner Bros. By refusing to up the ante on an already ridiculously overpriced transaction, Netflix looks like this deal’s real winner. The rest of us are the losers. We’ve already seen the damage that the Ellison lineage has done to CBS News. CNN’s fate is likely to follow a similar path. You may argue that CBS is old news and CNN hasn’t really been reporting on the news since they replaced Bernard Shaw with nonstop, endlessly irritating opinion panels. But the billionaire bankrolling of media includes new and old media. The Ellisons will have CBS, CNN, and a huge chunk of the American version of TikTok. Bezos has WaPo. Zuck owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Elon owns X. The Murdochs own Fox, WSJ, and a host of other sources. Local TV news stations are being bought up by right-leaning conglomerates. From old media printed newspapers to new-fangled AI answer machines, the American brain is increasingly being fed a steady diet of feeds by mega-billionaires who probably have very different political views and goals than you do. And if their media machines don’t sway enough people, their ability to spend endlessly to support political candidates and causes should do the trick.

+ Given the buyers’ relationship with Trump, federal approval of this deal is a given. Can California stand in the way of a merger that will hurt jobs as much as it hurts democracy? California now biggest obstacle to Paramount’s Warner Bros takeover.

+ If you’re looking for a silver lining, this is a really bad deal for the buyers. “Mr. Ellison’s deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, which values the company at $31 a share, is an outcome few would have predicted just months ago. Shares of the media giant were trading as low as $12 a share in September, as it faced headwinds in its traditional television business.” NYT (Gift Article): Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for an Ellison Takeover. (Sort of like the Roadrunner always paves the way for the Coyote to win the race, by stopping at the edge of the cliff.)

2

War Hawking

If the absolutely massive buildup of arms in the Middle East didn’t convince you of the real possibility of a US attack on Iran, this headline might. U.S. tells embassy staff in Israel to leave now if they want amid Trump threats to attack Iran. It seems Marco Rubio didn’t send that memo, or like it very much. Marco Rubio orders US officials to stop commentary that could strain Iran talks. (Of course, even though Rubio is Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor, he’s not the one actually negotiating with Iran. That gig was given, again, to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.)

+ “As they made their public case this week for another American military campaign against Iran, President Trump and his aides asserted that Iran has restarted its nuclear program, has enough available nuclear material to build a bomb within days, and is developing long-range missiles that will soon be capable of hitting the United States. All three of these claims are either false or unproven.” NYT (Gift Article): In Trump’s Case for War, a Series of False or Unproven Claims. (False and unproven claims are the bread and butter of this administration. Why would war be different?)

+ And, as if things weren’t complicated enough ... Pakistan Strikes Afghanistan in ‘Open War’ Against Taliban Government.

3

Anthropic Your Battles

“The Pentagon’s version of Claude could not be used to facilitate the mass surveillance of Americans, nor could it be used in fully autonomous weaponry—situations where computers, rather than humans, make the final decision about whom to kill. According to a source familiar with this week’s meeting, Hegseth made clear that if Anthropic did not eliminate those two guardrails by Friday afternoon, two things could happen: The Department of Defense could use the Defense Production Act, a Cold War–era law, to essentially commandeer a more permissive iteration of the AI, or it could label Anthropic a ‘supply-chain risk,’ meaning that anyone doing business with the U.S. military would be forbidden from associating with the company.” Anthropic is refusing to bend. The Atlantic (Gift Article): Anthropic Takes a Stand.

+ “The danger is not that Silicon Valley will wield too much power over the military. It is that neither will fully understand the systems it is rushing to deploy—and that the consequences of that ignorance will be tested not in a laboratory, but on the world.” Thomas Wright: The Real Reason Anthropic Wants Guardrails. “AI is too powerful and too new to be set free from human oversight.” (And that’s even considering that human insight can look like this: Pentagon Fires Another Laser at a Drone, Prompting a New Air Closure.)

+ Anthropic might not be the only holdout. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shares Anthropic’s concerns when it comes to working with the Pentagon.

+ You can be sure not every AI CEO will be so careful. WSJ(Gift Article): Government Agencies Raise Alarm About Use of Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot. “Warnings about xAI’s safety and reliability preceded Pentagon decision to approve Grok for use in classified settings.”

4

Weekend Whats

What to Watch: The second season of Paradise is off to an excellent start. While the first season takes place in a bunker city, the second season starts off in an even weirder location. Graceland. Paradise is on Hulu.

+ What to Book: Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House is “a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go.”

+ What to Movie: In the excellent Triangle of Sadness, a cruise for the super-rich sinks, leaving survivors, including a fashion model celebrity couple, trapped on an island. It’s like Send Helpmeets The White Lotus. If you haven’t seen it, it’s now available on Netflix.

5

Extra, Extra

Block of Sh-t: “We’re not making this decision because we’re in trouble. Our business is strong. Gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. But something has changed.” Jack Dorsey’s Block lays off 4,000 and blames AI. If humans are stupid enough to believe Block’s layoffs are not actually about over-hiring, mismanagement, and a flat stock price over the last four years, maybe we really do need AI to take over. But that obvious reality didn’t stop the market from celebrating Block’s announcement. Expect to see a lot more of this. “Wall Street rewards CEOs who make steep cuts and attribute those cuts to AI. That could embolden other management teams to follow suit.” As I wrote yesterday, news like this is why it’s not just the tech we don’t trust. It’s the technologists.

+ Church and Seizure: “The Trump Justice Department secured a new indictment charging 30 more people in connection with an anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, in January.” Killing innocent people, ok. Protesting those killings, not ok.

+ Hasta La Vista, Babies: “Not so long ago, women like Ms. Paz — in their early 20s, from backgrounds that are far from privileged — would have been among the most likely to be having children. Now this group is a key contributor to the country’s declining birthrate, which is at an all-time low, down by over 25 percent since 2007, the year the fall began.” The Birthrate Is Plunging. Why Some Say That’s a Good Thing. (And why some are freaking out.)

+ Look Younger? “As brands sell children eyeshadow, lip gloss and skincare, parents face a dilemma: How young is too young to expose children to beauty?” WSJ (Gift Article): 6-Year-Olds Want Makeup. These Brands Are Cashing In.

+ The Kreme Always Rises: Ozempic and other weight loss drugs have drastically changed our eating habits. But don’t count out the carbs just yet. Krispy Kreme Shares Jump as Turnaround Gains Traction.

6

Feel Good Friday

“Akbar’s medal comes with a quiet footnote: He is believed to be the last newspaper hawker left in Paris. A job that once dotted street corners across the city has almost vanished, pushed out by the internet and the collapse of print journalism sales. In a city that now gets most of its headlines on phones, Akbar still delivers them by hand.” Ali Akbar, who’s sold newspapers on the streets of Paris for 50 years, is now a knight.

+ “The couple had about 15 extra invitations and decided to send them out to companies they liked, including In-N-Out Burger, Trader Joe’s, Sephora and Pokémon, in hopes of receiving some freebies. Also on the list was Bad Bunny, Mr. Wolter’s favorite artist, whom they bonded over on their first date. At best, maybe they would receive a signed postcard, they thought.” They Met in an E.R. and Were Married at the Super Bowl.

+ Could a vaccine prevent dementia? Shingles shot data only getting stronger.

+ “We have senior citizen retirees showing up saying, ‘I’m an old white woman — how can I help?’ We have students from community colleges and universities. We have people who look like longtime activists and people who look like they’ve never done this before.” Older, white Angelenos are joining Latino volunteers to monitor ICE raids.

+ A children’s hospital is renamed for Dolly Parton and hopes to transform pediatric care in Tennessee.