I didn’t know it at the time, but the future of entertainment depended on a single data point shared with me over a cup of coffee in the 90s. I was chatting with Marc Randolph, one of the co-founders of a small, just-launched company called Netflix. Even though the company had only rented a relative handful of DVDs at that point, Randolph was very bullish on its prospects because the founders had an answer to the one key question that they believed would ultimately determine the company’s success: Would consumers be willing to rent a DVD by mail? The early answer was yes. That answer upended the entire movie rental business, and it was followed by a series of additional yeses. Would bandwidth reach a level where we could reasonably download and then stream movies? Yes. Could Netflix successfully manage the transition and the competition associated with adapting to the streaming age? Yes. Could a tech upstart from the Bay Area establish itself as one of the most powerful, influential players in the business of Hollywood? Yes? And now the biggest yes of all: Would Netflix eventually become a 300 million subscriber behemoth so massive and valuable that it could win a bidding competition against the likes of Paramount and Comcast to buy one of Hollywood’s most storied studios? NYT (Gift Article): Netflix to Buy Warner Bros. in $83 Billion Deal to Create a Streaming Giant. “Netflix announced plans on Friday to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business, in a deal that will send shock waves through Hollywood and the broader media landscape. The cash-and-stock deal values the business at $82.7 billion, including debt. The acquisition is expected to close after Warner Bros. Discovery carves out its cable unit, which the companies expected be completed by the third quarter of 2026. That means there will be a separate public company controlling channels like CNN, TNT and Discovery.” (I suppose this is an appropriate moment to look back at that moment in September of 2000 when Netflix offered to sell itself to Blockbuster for $50 million. John Antioco, CEO of Blockbuster, declined, saying, “The dot-com hysteria is completely overblown.”) 2Are You Not Entertained?“Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for the late Charlie Kirk’s Conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, showcased ardent support for the Secretary of Defense via social media, saying ‘Every new attack aimed at Pete Hegseth makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean.’ In response, Hegseth said: ‘Your wish is our command, Andrew. Just sunk another narco boat.’” The latest strike took place on the same day Congressional officials were gathering information on the infamous second strike. The second strike was a crime. The first strike was a crime. But, as Phil Klay explains in the NYT(Gift Article), these strikes are something more than that. “This [legality] discussion misses the bigger effort the Trump administration seems to be engaged in. In lieu of careful analysis of the campaign’s legality, detailed rationales for the boat strikes and explanations of why they couldn’t be done with more traditional methods, we get Mr. Hegseth posting an image of himself with laser eyes and video after video of alleged drug traffickers being killed. The cartoon turtle is just one example in an avalanche of juvenile public messaging about those we kill. I suspect the question the administration cares about is not ‘is this legal,’ ‘is this a war crime,’ ‘is this murder’ or even ‘is this good for America,’ but rather, ‘isn’t this violence delightful?’” What Trump Is Really Doing With His Boat Strikes. “We’re in the Colosseum, one brought to us digitally so that we need not leave our homes to hear the cheers of the crowd, to watch the killing done for our entertainment.” 3Clause and Effect“He switched from vodka to light beer. He started booking two-hundred-dollar-an-hour corporate Santa gigs. He reconnected with his son and even employed him as an elf. The easy explanation would be that playing Santa Claus saved Billy and that the magic of Christmas had wrapped its warm glow around another lost soul. That’s what Billy thought. That’s what a lot of men who worked at Macy’s thought when they, too, found happiness sitting in a gold-painted chair wearing a red costume. But there was something else at work on Thirty-fourth Street. Something more profound. A better story, actually.” David Gauvey Herbert in Esquire: Yes, Bob, There is a Santa Clause. 4Weekend WhatsWhat to Watch: Michael Shannon, Matthew Macfadyen, and Nick Offerman lead an excellent cast in the the story of James Garfield, who rose from obscurity to become America’s 20th president — and Charles Guiteau, the man who assassinated him. Watch Death by Lightning on Netflix. 5Extra, ExtraErasure Head: “The document released overnight is the clearest statement yet of how the president wants his America First foreign policy to be a clarion call for other nationalist politicians to overhaul their political systems. And it echoes some of the language of the Great Replacement Theory, a nationalist conspiracy theory embraced by some of his top aides that warns of a deliberate effort to replace white people with nonwhite immigrants.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Administration Says Europe Faces ‘Civilizational Erasure.’ (I could use some news erasure...) 6Feel Good Friday“Mesfin Yana Dollar came to the U.S. for surgery. Now he works at the Mayo Clinic, assisting with some of the world’s most complex open-heart surgeries.” WaPo (Gift Article): A heart surgeon saved his life as a teen. Now they perform surgeries together.
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Friday, December 5, 2025
Tentpole Position
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