Lizard_King

Behind Paramount’s Relentless Campaign to Woo Warner Discovery and President Trump David Ellison has launched a hostile takeover bid for Warner Discovery, taking his case directly to shareholders after Netflix clinched a deal.

New WSJ reporting: "During a December visit to Washington, David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he'd make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump's ire, people familiar with the matter said..."

Can a Group Allied With the Right Defend the 1st Amendment for All? — Assigned FIRE, a product of the “academic freedom” campaign, wants to protect free speech for everyone. Yet its stances show deference to religious views and a persistent anti-queer strain.

NEW: FIRE positions itself as an alternative voice for free expression, but an analysis by @billiejsweeney.bsky.social found deference to religious-based viewpoints in free speech debates — and in some cases, the elevation of those views over all others.

www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

The Data Doesn’t Lie: How ProPublica Reports the Truth in an Era of False Claims As federal data becomes less available, our journalists are doing shoe-leather reporting to provide readers with the precise numbers.

ProPublica reporter @nicolefoy.bsky.social found that more than 170 U.S. citizens had been detained by immigration agents.

“The number became an important, irrefutable fact in the conversation about the immigration crackdown,” our editor-in-chief @sengelberg.bsky.social writes.

Trump says Lisa Cook is unfit to be a Fed governor because she claimed two different properties as her primary residence on her mortgage applications. (Cook denies this.)

Trump did the exact same thing on mortgage applications submitted a mere 7 weeks apart.

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Torture Techniques from CIA Black Sites Were Used at Alligator Alcatraz Amnesty International, interviewing migrant detainees, identifies use of the confinement box. There can be no denying it is a torture prison

They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.

Admiral told lawmakers everyone on alleged drug boat was on a list of military targets Adm. Frank Bradley said U.S. intelligence had identified the 11 people on the boat and determined the military was authorized to kill them as part of Trump’s campaign against alleged drug-smuggling ve...

What does this even mean? What makes them military combatants, as opposed to alleged criminals with due process rights (Trump designated them "terrorists", but on what legal grounds)? Did Congress ever authorize military force against this "enemy"? www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

The evidence is the text. All you have to do is read the Constitution.

In general, I agree. But whatever one’s opinion of US foreign policy before, in 2025 I am especially ambivalent on the country losing its veto power over the world’s transactions.

Book Marks reviews of American Canto by Olivia Nuzzi American Canto by Olivia Nuzzi has an overall rating of Pan based on 9 book reviews.

One lesson we should draw from many talented critics lining up to take an entertaining industrial grade shit on a book that got a six figure advance from S&S is that the death of the well-turned negative review has been vastly exaggerated bookmarks.reviews/reviews/amer...

How a Cryptocurrency Helps Criminals Launder Money and Evade Sanctions

Crypto's main function is money laundering, and it should be regulated out of existence. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/t...

And they think psychologically breaking a partner will get her to stay

The U.S. citizens getting caught in Trump’s immigration crackdown Latinos describe being detained and assaulted by officers who want to know: “Where were you born?”

Anyone with an internationally adopted kid or gave birth while serving the USG abroad has got to see this and be really nervous about their kid's safety

"Where were you born" can be a very complicated story and doesn't have as much to do with citizenship status as it's implied.

wapo.st/48WU4RW

And outlets are still being shut down, or sold and then slimmed down, even though they're profitable. Sometimes WILDLY profitable. But being wildly profitable and providing jobs and health insurance and a good product is a sin.

It's either making private equity billions, or it's not. That's it.

man it is way too early in the morning to read sentences like this tucson.com/news/local/s...

“Kill all boats no matter where they are going or what they possess” isn’t a strategy, it’s just a killing spree

I'm starting to wonder how much "the male loneliness epidemic" is just straight and bisexual women identifying low-effort, mean, and incompetent men and choosing not to date, marry, and tolerate them anymore

One side effect of writing my most recent book (but really, all of them) is that I’m permanently radicalized about relationships and marriage

There's a subset of GOPer that seems to have entered politics almost entirely for the potential to be adjacent to killing people and well imo that sort of person probably shouldn't be in office

US government adopted the far-right Great Replacement myth and is now demanding NATO countries to dismantle the EU and the European project. They themselves frame it as a binary choice. Essentially the end of NATO as we know it.

Embattled Planned Parenthood Affiliate CEO Wanted to Halt Abortions Sources level new allegations against Planned Parenthood Southeast interim CEO Mairo Akposé, who remains in her role after an investigation they call a "farce."

NEW: The controversial interim CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast floated ending in-clinic abortion procedures and spoke of dropping abortion care altogether.

Leader of the affiliate serving Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi remains in her role after an investigation that sources call a "farce."

reminds me of what Trump is doing with that selling the visa stuff and clearly he’s incredibly popular

Apeasement Isn't Working Reactionary centrism has both failed & cannot learn from it's mistakes.

post after post validating the rhetoric, values, & worldview of the far right

it seems pretty obvious that this strengthens them, emboldens them - all whole alienating your actual voters - but this government just isn't getting it

www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/appeasement

Trump, the Village People, and some football: Welcome to FIFA’s carnival of cringe A bizarre World Cup fever dream played out in Washington DC, memorable for all the wrong reasons

Good god this sounds brutal

TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF U.S., ET AL. V. BARBARA, ET AL. The petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment is granted.

NEW: The Supreme Court will once again consider the legality of Trump's attack on birthright citizenship, this time (likely) on the merits.

Microsoft Teams Starts Telling Your Boss Where You Are—Now Just 8 Weeks Away Microsoft confirms start date for new Teams update — no more hiding places.

microsoft promised to "empower every user" and google to "revolutionise knowledge and technological innovation" but in reality what they have given us is an invasive surveillance dystopian nightmare hard to escape

www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...

American Ingenuity Beat the Polio Outbreak—So Why Risk Letting It Return? We should, none of us, consent to going back to the past…

When Paul woke, he couldn’t move. A tent surrounded him, too foggy to see through. The humidity was supposed to help, but in the damp darkness he felt only fear. In a scene that predates the Matrix by 50 years, he was one kid in a sea of many, each in a metal pod and plugged in to machinery. #Polio

Exclusive: Woman detained by feds in Keys says she was following agents’ orders “This is not the America that I grew up in, and this is not the America that we represent.”

“Traumatized, humiliated, degraded.”

The nurse, a US citizen, 4’11”, 85 lbs, says she was following orders when she was dragged out of her car by masked immigration agents in Florida.

It was the 3rd time she had been stopped and told to produce ID.

Free link ⤵️
www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

The Times and The Sunday Ti... @thetimes X.com 'Frustrated' Tony Blair plotting policy overhaul to save Labour

Remember when Britain voted for Tony Blair? It was twenty years ago, so the public are entitled to ask why the fuck this malicious clown’s opinion on anything is relevant now.

Kedrosky: Very much so, for some of the reasons I’m describing, that the nature of large language models, that architecturally—for reasons of data set exhaustion and for reasons of declining returns for increasing investment—we’re kind of at a cul-de-sac already. We’re seeing that happen. So the notion that I can extrapolate from here towards my own private God is belied by the data itself, which shows you that we’re already seeing this sharply asymptotic decline in the rate of improvement of models outside of software, but in almost every other domain.

I found this interview with a tech expert and investor very helpful. It rebuts the idea some AI in schools boosters push that genAI is just going to keep getting better.

paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-wi...