Paramount Reveals Company Will Be 49.5% Owned By Foreign Investors If Warner Bros Merger Approved
Paramount Global has filed a petition with the FCC to approve its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would leave 49.5% of the merged entity owned by foreign investors, including Chinese partners and three Middle‑East sovereign funds. The financing package involves Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and Qatar Investment Authority, while the Ellison family and RedBird retain 100% of the voting Class A shares. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has previously railed against foreign stakes in U.S. tech, has signaled no objection to the financing structure. The filing argues the merger will boost competition and creative talent despite the heavy debt load.
Trump’s Surgeon General Search: Casey Means Out, Casey Means In Groucho Glasses & Mustache In!
The United States has been without a confirmed Surgeon General since January 2025, a gap that underscores the Trump administration’s staffing turmoil. Former nominee Janette Nesheiwat was withdrawn after a public outcry, and her replacement, wellness influencer Casey Means—who lacks...
With First Choice Women’s Centers V. Davenport, The Supreme Court Managed To Do At Least One Helpful Thing: Further Protect...
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously allowed First Women’s Choice Resource Centers to proceed with its federal lawsuit challenging a New Jersey subpoena demanding donor identities. The Court held that the mere existence of the subpoena creates a concrete, imminent injury...
Appeals Court Hands Roy Moore Another Loss In Yet Another Bogus Libel Lawsuit
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a jury verdict that awarded former Alabama judge Roy Moore $8.2 million in a defamation case against the Senate Majority PAC. The court held that the political ad’s consecutive quotes were accurate and did...
Online DRM Or A Bug: Sony’s Silence Adds To Recent PS Update Confusion
Sony’s latest PlayStation system update displays a “Valid Period” tag on newly purchased digital games, indicating a 30‑day window for an online check‑in before the license expires. A support bot has confirmed the timer is intentional, but several insiders and...
Paramount Is Trying To Blame Netflix For All The Negative Merger Press
Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery are pursuing a $111 billion merger that has sparked a backlash from more than 4,000 Hollywood insiders. The insiders signed a letter warning that the deal would deepen debt, trigger layoffs, and hurt consumers and...
The Other Side: Game Dev Tim Cain Isn’t Helping In The AI In Gaming Debate
Veteran game designer Tim Cain recently touted a future where generative AI creates entire games, TV episodes, and even doctor appointments, sparking a heated response from industry observers. The author argues that the conversation should move from whether AI will...
Leading Cancer Charity Stops Funding Open Access Publishing Because It’s Just Not Working
Cancer Research UK announced it will stop directly funding open‑access (OA) publishing, a move projected to save roughly £5.2 million (about $6.6 million) over the next three years. The charity cites the prevalence of hybrid journals, which charge authors for OA while...
Appeals Court Dumps California Law That Would Have Banned Federal Officers From Wearing Masks
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower‑court injunction that blocks California's law prohibiting federal immigration officers from wearing masks during enforcement actions. The state law, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, was intended to address public‑safety worries about masked...
FCC Leaks To Semafor They’re ‘Investigating’ ABC Because A Comedian Told A Joke. Again.
The Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump‑appointed chair Brendan Carr, is reportedly preparing a review of Disney’s ABC broadcast licenses after a Jimmy Kimmel monologue that displeased the president. ABC holds only eight licenses, none of which are due for...
The Secretary Of Health & Human Services Doesn’t Believe In The Foundation Of Modern Medicine
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly denied the germ theory of disease during a Senate hearing on the measles outbreak, prompting sharp rebuke from Senators Bernie Sanders and Bill Cassidy. Kennedy cited outdated studies to argue that sanitation, not vaccines, reduced...
Tech Lobbyists Hard At Work Undermining Proposed Alaska ‘Right To Repair’ Law
Lawmakers in Alaska are considering two right‑to‑repair bills that would amend the state’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act, obligating tech manufacturers to supply parts, tools, and software to independent repair shops and consumers. The proposals enjoy bipartisan public...
Amazon Gets Exemption From Trump FCC Router (Extortion) Ban, Doesn’t Say How
Amazon’s eero consumer routers and its Leo low‑Earth‑orbit routers have been placed on the FCC’s exemption list for the Trump administration’s foreign‑router ban. The FCC’s rule, announced by Chairman Brendan Carr, bars virtually all overseas‑made routers and even personal hotspots...
‘Stop Killing Games’ Got Its EU Parliament Hearing
The Stop Killing Games movement, founded by YouTuber Ross Scott, secured a European Parliament hearing to address the forced shutdown of online games. Advocates presented a proposal requiring publishers to provide offline functionality or release server code as open source...
DOJ Decides It’s Going To Try To Prosecute The Southern Poverty Law Center Out Of Existence
The Justice Department has filed a federal indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, accusing it of wire fraud, false statements, and money‑laundering related to payments made to informants infiltrating extremist groups. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed the SPLC...
Judge Just Noticed The Obvious Problem With Trump Suing His Own IRS For $10 Billion
Federal Judge Kathleen Williams flagged a fundamental flaw in former President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, which he effectively controls. The judge noted the lack of true adversarial parties, questioning whether a case or controversy exists under Article III....
California’s 3D Printer Law Would Criminalize Open Source, Enshittify The 3D Printing Space
A wave of state legislation targeting 3‑D printed firearms is poised to reshape the industry. California’s A.B. 2047 would require every printer to embed a “censorware” algorithm that scans files for gun‑like geometry and criminalizes any attempt to disable it....
RFK Jr. & White House Appear At Odds Over Attempts To Rein Him In
The Trump administration nominated Dr. Erica Schwartz, a former Deputy Surgeon General, to fill the long‑vacant CDC director post created after Susan Monarez’s dismissal in August 2025. Schwartz is widely praised for her evidence‑based public‑health background, but HHS Secretary RFK Jr....
Good News If You Have A Sony TV And Were Hoping It Would Become Less Useful For No Reason
Sony announced firmware updates that will cripple the electronic program guide for over‑the‑air (OTA) antenna channels on its premium Bravia televisions. After the May cutoff, the guide will no longer display full channel listings, logos, or thumbnail images, showing only...
Kash Patel Filed a Defamation Case Monday. His Other Defamation Case Got Dismissed Tuesday.
Kash Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic on Monday, citing an earlier claim against MSNBC commentator Frank Figliuzzi as evidence the outlet should have known its reporting was false. On Tuesday, a federal judge dismissed Patel’s Figliuzzi suit,...
Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav’s $550 Million Golden Parachute Sees ‘Symbolic’ Investor Rebuke
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is set to collect a $550 million golden parachute as the company finalizes its merger with Paramount. Shareholders cast a non‑binding advisory vote against the payout, but the board can still approve it. The deal,...
Wireless Giants To Get Off The Hook For Spying On Your Daily Movements For Years
The FCC has proposed $196 million in fines—$91 million for T‑Mobile, $57 million for AT&T, and $48 million for Verizon—over years of selling users' precise location data to third parties. Carriers have repeatedly contested the penalties, and a 5th Circuit ruling last year vacated AT&T's...
Digital Hopes, Real Power: The Rise Of Network Shutdowns
Internet shutdowns have accelerated into a global norm, with 304 incidents recorded in 2024 across 54 nations—the highest tally ever. Legal mechanisms in countries such as India, Kazakhstan and Ethiopia now codify the authority to sever connectivity during “public safety”...
Arkansas Tried To Pass An Unconstitutional Social Media Law. Again. It Lost. Again.
Arkansas enacted Act 900, a revised social‑media age‑verification law aimed at protecting minors, but a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction, finding the statute unconstitutional. The bill tries to ban "addictive practices," set default privacy and notification settings, and require...
Stop Begging Big Tech To Fix Your Social Media Experience. You Can Do It Yourself.
Bluesky has rolled out an advanced beta of its Attie AI tool, letting users craft highly personalized feed aggregators that pull from their Bluesky timeline, external RSS sources, and contextual cues. The author demonstrates how a single prompt generated a...
Kash Patel’s Defamation Suit Against The Atlantic Is Designed To Generate Headlines, Not Win In Court
FBI Director Kash Patel filed a 19‑page defamation lawsuit in Washington, D.C., seeking $250 million from The Atlantic after the magazine published a profile alleging he was frequently drunk and unresponsive. The complaint, drafted by MAGA‑aligned lawyer Jesse Binnall, hinges on...
You Can’t Vote Out Amazon Web Services: Fighting Internet Contracts One Library At A Time
Click‑through terms of service have become ubiquitous, binding users to sprawling contracts that often waive legal rights and grant companies broad licenses over personal data. Because these contracts of adhesion are non‑negotiable and the market is dominated by a few...
Judge Acquits Penis Costume-Wearing Grandma While Saying Some Dumb Stuff About Probable Cause
A Fairhope, Alabama municipal judge acquitted 62‑year‑old protester Renea Gamble, who was arrested while wearing an inflatable penis costume during a "No Kings" anti‑Trump rally. The judge acknowledged the officer’s subjective motive but suggested there might have been probable cause...
YouTuber Copyright Struck After Others Layer AI Voiceovers On Video Game Music
YouTuber Nubzombie’s Silent Hill 2 playthrough was hit with two copyright strikes after AI‑generated voiceovers were layered onto Akira Yamaoka’s original track. The claims came from separate entities—"Agro memos" and "詹姆斯.K"—both using the same underlying music and filing automated takedowns. Evidence suggests...
Rep. Mike Johnson Tries, Fails To Sneak Clean Section 702 Re-Authorization Past The Goal Line
Republican House Majority Leader Mike Johnson attempted a last‑minute push to reauthorize the NSA's Section 702 surveillance program, but both the five‑year renewal and an 18‑month extension were defeated after a coalition of 20 Republicans joined Democrats. The votes, held...
Trump Is Literally Negotiating With Himself Over How Much Taxpayer Money He Gets Because His Taxes Were Leaked
Former President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit demanding $10 billion from the IRS after a contractor leaked his 2019‑2020 tax returns. The case, lodged in the Southern District of Florida, now includes a consent motion seeking a 90‑day extension so...
Ctrl-Alt-Speech: The Silence Of The LLMs
The latest Ctrl‑Alt‑Speech podcast surveys a wave of online‑speech headlines, from federal agencies covertly testing Anthropic’s advanced AI model despite a Trump‑era ban to the company’s opposition to an AI liability bill backed by OpenAI. Apple warned the Grok app...
Oh Look, The MAGA FTC Built The Censorship Industrial Complex It Was Screaming About
The Federal Trade Commission, backed by eight red‑state attorneys general, forced all five major U.S. advertising agency holding companies to cease using NewsGuard’s journalism‑rating service. The move extends a prior condition on the Omnicom‑IPG merger and is framed as an...
The Wall Street Journal Wonders Why There Are Suddenly So Many Sleazy Fees
The Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece on the proliferation of “sleazy” surcharges such as a 3% credit‑card fee, a 5% wellness contribution and a $25‑a‑month trash‑service charge. The article attributes the surge to inflation‑driven cost‑shifting but omits that...
John Deere Pays $99 Million To Settle ‘Right To Repair’ Class Action
John Deere agreed to a $99 million settlement of a class‑action lawsuit alleging it monopolized tractor repairs. The fund will reimburse more than 200,000 owners for costly dealership repairs dating back to 2018, though the company denies any wrongdoing. The settlement...
1,000+ Hollywood Insiders Write Letter Opposing Paramount/Warner Bros Merger
More than 1,000 leading Hollywood professionals, including Glenn Close and Denis Villeneuve, have signed an open letter condemning the proposed $111 billion merger of Larry Ellison’s Paramount/CBS with Warner Bros. Discovery. The signatories argue the deal would shrink the U.S. studio...
The FAA’s “Temporary” Flight Restriction For Drones Is A Blatant Attempt To Criminalize Filming ICE
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a 21‑month nationwide temporary flight restriction that bars any drone from flying within 3,000 feet of ICE or Customs and Border Protection vehicles. The rule, effective Jan. 16, 2026, carries criminal penalties and allows drones to be...
DOJ Is Using A Grand Jury To Force Reddit To Unmask An Anonymous User
The Department of Justice is leveraging a grand jury to compel Reddit to disclose the identity of an anonymous user targeted by ICE. The initial ICE subpoena, mistakenly based on the 1930 Smoot‑Hawley Tariff Act, sought personal data for a...
Section 230 Is Dying By A Thousand Workarounds, And Massachusetts Just Added Another One
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously rejected Meta’s motion to dismiss, holding that Section 230 does not shield the company from claims that Instagram’s design features—such as infinite scroll, autoplay and algorithmic recommendations—were engineered to addict children, that the platform misled...
Whoops: Russia’s Attempt To Block VPNs Causes Major Banking Failure
Russia's latest attempt to curb VPN usage backfired, triggering a nationwide outage of online banking services. The government's filtering system mistakenly targeted IP ranges belonging to major banks such as Sberbank, VTB and T‑Bank, overwhelming the network and disabling mobile...
NVIDIA’s DLSS 5 Demo Video Briefly Taken Down Because YouTube’s Take Down Process Sucks
NVIDIA’s promotional video for its upcoming DLSS 5 upscaling technology was briefly removed from YouTube after an Italian broadcaster, La7, filed an automated copyright claim on the footage. The claim triggered a platform‑wide takedown of every video containing the trailer, even...
Trump’s Two-Faced AI Policy
The Trump administration has presented a contradictory AI agenda, championing deregulation while simultaneously imposing ideological controls. After revoking Biden’s AI regulatory framework, the White House launched an AI Action Plan and an executive order to ban "woke" AI in federal...
AI And Cybersecurity: A Glass Half-Empty/Half-Full Proposition, Where The Glass Is Holding Nitroglycerin
Anthropic unveiled Mythos, an AI model that can locate and exploit zero‑day vulnerabilities across all major operating systems and browsers, including decades‑old bugs. To curb misuse, Anthropic launched Project Glasswing, granting more than 40 leading tech firms early access, $100 million...
Court Dismisses Pepperdine’s Nonsense Trademark Suit Against Netflix Over ‘Running Point’
A U.S. District Court dismissed Pepperdine University’s trademark lawsuit against Netflix and Warner Bros. over the fictional basketball team “Waves” in the series *Running Point*. Judge Cynthia Valenzuela applied the Rogers test, finding the name was used artistically, not as a source...
Someone Filed a Bogus DMCA Notice to Kill a Story About A Sketchy SEO Firm. It Worked — Briefly.
A bogus DMCA takedown notice temporarily removed Press Gazette’s investigation into Clickout Media, a UK firm that buys news sites and fills them with affiliate gambling links. The notice falsely claimed the article copied a Verge story, prompting Google to...
Musk, Bezos, Both Cry To Trump’s FCC In Bid To Dominate Satellite Broadband
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Amazon are locked in a proxy fight at the FCC over dominance of low‑Earth‑orbit (LEO) satellite broadband. SpaceX alleges Amazon’s Project Leo violates orbital‑debris rules by launching satellites at excessively high altitudes, while Amazon...
RFK Jr. Amends ACIP’s Charter In Attempt To Exert More Control Over Panel Members
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after a federal court issued a preliminary injunction blocking his vaccine schedule changes, has amended the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) charter to expand his authority over member selection. The revised charter swaps language from...
Tech Lobbyists Are Trying To Kill Colorado’s Popular ‘Right To Repair’ Law
Tech giants Cisco and IBM are lobbying Colorado to pass SB26‑090, a bill that would exempt a broadly defined “critical infrastructure” from the state’s right‑to‑repair protections. Colorado’s 2022 law, praised for covering wheelchairs, farm equipment and consumer electronics, aims to...
Prosecutors Still Trying To Convict 62-Year-Old Woman For Wearing Penis Costume To Anti-Trump Protest
Renea Gamble, a 62‑year‑old protester in Fairhope, Alabama, was arrested for wearing a seven‑foot inflatable penis costume at a “No Kings” anti‑Trump rally. Local prosecutors have added disorderly‑conduct, disturbing‑the‑peace and false‑name charges, arguing the display violated community standards. The mayor...
Trump Attacks On Public Media Blocked By Judge (But It’s Too Little, Too Late)
A federal judge issued a permanent injunction blocking President Trump’s executive order that stripped the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of its $1.1 billion budget for FY 2026‑27, effectively defunding PBS and NPR. The order had already forced CPB to vote for dissolution...