An excellent piece by Jamelle Bouie on historical analogies to AI politics. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...
Opinion | The Railroads Were Once the Octopus That A.I. Is Now
New matrix, meet the old matrix.
nytimes.com
Iowa and Montana are trying to involve the Supreme Court in the Paramount antitrust suit. It's very dumb.
variety.com
Oh, and the National Association of Broadcasters is pushing a captured FCC to sunset ATSC 1.0, so they can guarantee the implementation of DRM across networks. Requiring internet allows for targeted advertising. Too bad for rural folks without broadband who just want to watch the news!
I endorse every word of this. (Too bad @matthewstoller.bsky.social chooses to post on the Nazi website.) www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-r...
Monopoly Round-Up: How to Stop the Enshittification of America
Cheating as a business model exists because Americans can no longer sue big business. A Democratic Congress could fix this problem with one simple law. Plus, a defeat for Paramount-Warner, and more...
thebignewsletter.com
Here are the liberal corporate lawyers helping Trump take over the media through corruption and flouting the law. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-resist...
Thinking Like a Criminal Is the Only Way to Understand Corporate America
Executives and big law lawyers in the Nexstar-TEGNA case are openly showing contempt for a judge. And the ABA Antitrust bar is silent on the corruption of the Paramount-Warner merger.
thebignewsletter.com
If this merger goes through, CBS, CNN, TikTok, & more will all be controlled by Trump-megadonor Larry Ellison & his son, giving Trump & the billionaire class unprecedented control over what we see. Glad to see state attorneys general taking a stand for a free press & democracy.
Paramount and Warner Bros. merger hit with temporary restraining order
A California judge granted a temporary restraining order as part of the lawsuit brought by state attorneys general due to antitrust concerns.
cnbc.com
I think Elon Musk explicitly coming out against democracy should probably tell us something about the nature of extreme wealth.
The vast theft of wealth by Wall Street, Trump and corporate America is pretty much an endorsement of socialism. When you foster a legal system where property ownership has nothing to do with merit but only raw power you foster this political reaction.
hey I know let's do 100 low-altitude jet flyovers and explode 850,000 fireworks in 100°F+ heat over a city of 800,000 Americans
Whitney Bauck@whitneybauck.bsky.social · 3mo ago"Exposure to particulate air pollution, known as PM 2.5, is associated with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in older adults.... heat might make the blood-brain barrier more permeable, allowing more pollutants into the brain." Oof. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/c...
Yes, it turns out there's good evidence that incredibly high egg prices from 2022-2025 were the result of a conspiracy. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/crime-pays...
Crime Pays: The Egg Bandits Made A Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing
The Stringer Bell rule is obsolete, as Trump and state attorneys general let the egg producers off the hook for a brazen conspiracy. Still, egg prices did drop as a result of the investigation.
thebignewsletter.com
It's so funny that The Atlantic started as an abolitionist journal and is now, among other things, the retirement home for Bush-era xenophobes
I wrote up an obvious reason why the war in Iran didn't crash the economy. America prepared for it by stockpiling oil, a decision made in the 1970s when we aggressively managed markets with public power. There's a lesson here - preparing for shocks works. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/one-obviou...
Why the Iran War Hasn't Crashed the Economy
In the 1970s, governments prepared for oil shocks. It turns out, stockpiling and diversification works, which is probably why economists hate doing it.
thebignewsletter.com
This podcast episode (hosted by @ddayen.bsky.social and @matthewstoller.bsky.social) on how Meta is dying has an amazing, must listen side discussion on resistance to authoritarianism. Starts at 36:00. pca.st/episode/6aa8...
Meta Is Dying
Last month, the veteran journalist Julia Angwin wrote an op-ed, “Meta Is Dying. It’s About Time,” which details the ways in which Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp have become a kind of zombie…
pca.st
I really enjoyed doing this show with Julia Angwin on why Facebook is dying. Along with an interesting discussion of how authoritarian systems. www.organizedmoney.fm/p/meta-is-dy...
Meta Is Dying
Tech zombies trap users and vendors then scam for cash to the bitter end.
organizedmoney.fm
Shocked but not surprised Why would Trump DOJ not wait for or respect views of career staff? Hmm 🤔
Exclusive | Justice Department Decision to Allow Paramount Deal Surprised Staff Investigators
Department staffers investigating the Warner acquisition were leaning toward recommending a challenge to the merger, people familiar with the matter say.
wsj.com
What we learned last night with the Platner loss is that Bluesky is real life.
Graham Platner's win is a pretty ugly moment for the oligarchs. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-r...
Monopoly Round-Up: Graham Platner and Stock Market Democrats
Controversy erupted in a Maine Senate race, causing Democrats nationwide to go at each others' throat. Fights over oligarchy are becoming unavoidable.
thebignewsletter.com
Congratulations Bluesky on your favorite candidate Graham Platner winning the Maine primary!
Enshittification by @doctorow.pluralistic.net has been such a fun, enlightening, and frustrating read. I loved the section on the so-called Anti-trust Renaissance under Biden's FTC. I've always been anti-monopoly but I'm as convinced as ever that it is crucial in de-enshittifying society.
Positioning on Platner has become a way of re-litigating the war debates of the 2000s and the Bush/Obama response to the financial crisis. Those choices were unpopular for everyone but elites, so the discourse happens through scandal. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-r...
Monopoly Round-Up: Graham Platner and Stock Market Democrats
Controversy erupted in a Maine Senate race, causing Democrats nationwide to go at each others' throat. Fights over oligarchy are becoming unavoidable.
thebignewsletter.com
So you're saying misogyny is inherint in being a populist. Yeah we've known that since 2016.
Being smeared as a sexist for expressing populist views brings me back. Makes me feel young again.
Scott Lemieux@lemieuxlgm.bsky.social · 4mo agoI don't even think you can say the misogyny is subtextual at this point. It's just the text
Paramount's general counsel Makan Delrahim says opposition to the Paramount-Warner merger is driven by anti-semitism. He really believes that. These people are total lunatics.
A very weird manufacturing indicator, the sector is growing and the growth is accelerating, but manufacturing employment is contracting. And the comments from executives are deeply pessimistic. www.ismworld.org/supply-manag...
Electricity bills are soaring, and Americans are fed up. The political backlash against utilities is finally here, driven by the broader revolt against the affordability crisis, says @matthewstoller.bsky.social. “Everybody is mad at utilities." #Velshi
"Everybody is mad at utilities:" Why the industry faces a political reckoning
Utility costs are soaring to record levels, and Americans are right to ask, Where's all the money going? Antitrust analyst Matt Stoller blames a broken system that guarantees utility monopolies a profit on everything they spend, rewarding waste while the grid gets worse, and Wall Street gets richer. But the tide is starting to turn, Stoller says, driven by a broader revolt against the affordability crisis. As he puts it: "Everybody is mad at utilities."
msnbc.com
I wrote up two events last week that will shake up the stock market, which are the very scammy SpaceX IPO and the repricing of AI tools. The bill for data centers is coming due, and corporate America has to pay for it. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-r...
Monopoly Round-Up: After SpaceX Goes Public, Does the Stock Market Finally Fall?
Elon Musk's SpaceX IPO is a very scary moment for the stock market. And AI is getting repriced in an ugly way as corporate America finally has to start paying for the tools.
thebignewsletter.com
1. Trump has repeatedly promoted an online casino, Stake, on social media after its founder and owner, Bijan Tehrani donated $1 million to Trump's Super PAC, MAGA Inc. According to multiple state regulators, Stake is an illegal operation.
Trump promotes unregulated online casino after $1 million Super PAC donation
On Truth Social, Trump has repeatedly promoted Stake, an unregulated online casino that, according to state gambling regulators, is operating illegally.
popular.info
My dumb read on Iran is that you can tell it’s a real deal when Trump starts effusively praising Iran’s leadership in a cringe and slightly homoerotic manner.
The Falcon Heavy is a great rocket; the boosters first landed in 2018. It gives SpaceX a dominant lead in the most minor market in which SpaceX competes. A good chunk of that market is Starlink. Starship is a disaster that will be less economical than the Falcon Heavy and should be cancelled.
Steven T. Dennis@steventdennis.bsky.social · 5mo agoA lot of hate for SpaceX on this platform, but the reason they are dominant is not because they are a “catastrophe factory” but because they have done what no other entity on Earth has done in history: Land and reuse orbital rockets at scale.
Where’s all your money going when you pay your electric bill? It’s not going to where they say it is. It’s not building a better grid, but to a legal form of theft. open.substack.com/pub/mattstol...
"Where’s all the f&$*#ing money going?" The Waste and Costs of American Utilities
NextEra's $67 billion takeover of Dominion shows the problem with utilities. We spend a lot, and get little in return. Why? Utility monopolies profit from gold-plating, waste and inefficiency.
open.substack.com