John Eden

The hardest problems - the ones that create the most value - live in the gaps between disciplines

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@shaunmmaguire They're not choices. The choosing happened months ago, by the donors, unions and party apparatus that decide who is viable before a single vote is cast. The November ballot is a ratification. The machine goes through the motions of an election because the bald truth, that these two were picked in advance, would provoke a revolt.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@isaiah_p_taylor I’m with you 100 percent. I do these deals, and have never allowed a client to agree to a spring back. And as I say to everyone I work with: If an investor fights for a right, they’ll activate it. Bottom line is that this nonsense you’re dealing with is partially a function of not doing the right game theory when the docs were drafted.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@theallinpod David, you asked what Obama is fighting for. I'll tell you, as it's the same thing that all politicians fight for: the creation of a subservient, ignorant class that is always in need of an inspiring, superior political figure to make decisions for them. The lie, therefore, is deeply instrumental.

So, for the cheap seats, let's frame the truth properly: Obama knows how agentic AI works. He's deliberately casting it as a bane upon humanity because doing so will help people of his ilk retain their sinecures. That's it. Bare, unmitigated self-interest, with his signature dash of silver-tongued hypocrisy.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

Paramount and Warner Bros. are not competing against each other for your evening. They're competing against YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. Those companies fund their content budgets from (i) advertising machines, (ii) retail and cloud businesses, and (iii) hardware ecosystems worth trillions. For them, a film or series is a feature. For a traditional studio, it is the whole business.

Here's the math that no press release can change. The average household spends roughly $74 a month on paid streaming, and that number isn't growing fast enough to cover what premium film and television cost to make. A studio's cost structure is largely fixed. The only lever left is to spread those costs across a bigger library, a bigger subscriber base, and a bigger global distribution footprint. That's scale. There is no other lever.

The alternative to this merger was never a vibrant field of independent studios. It was two shrinking companies managed into decline, then sold off in pieces to the very tech platforms the mayor should worry about. If the concern is who decides what Americans see and hear, an engagement-optimizing algorithm inside a trillion-dollar platform is a far less accountable decider than a studio operating under an enforceable consent decree.

And there is a consent decree. The settlement that cleared this deal was negotiated by twelve state attorneys general, including New York's. It commits the combined company to at least 30 theatrical releases a year, with a $30 million penalty for each shortfall, plus $1.5 billion in new production investment and independent editorial boards at CNN and CBS. Attorney General James herself said these commitments will let the industry continue to thrive. That's not a monument to corruption. That's accountability written into a court order.

Antitrust law protects competition. It cannot mandate that private companies run cost structures their revenue no longer supports. The workers the mayor rightly cares about aren't protected by a studio that can't afford to make movies. They're protected by one that can.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

America is free only when the media is competitive, independent, and accountable to the people.

This merger strikes a chilling blow against that freedom — and hands even more power to billionaires like David Ellison to decide what Americans see and hear, all while lifting scrutiny off the federal leaders who pushed it through. I am grateful to Attorney General Tish James for the protections she secured for workers.

This decision is a shameful monument to corruption and a betrayal that the American people won't soon forget.

https://t.co/Rhbb66AFrX

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@NYCMayor Respectfully, the choice was never this merger vs. a competitive media market. It was one studio with the scale to compete against YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple, or two shrinking studios sold off for parts to those same platforms.

Your own AG signed the settlement: 30 theatrical releases a year, $1.5B in new production, independent newsroom boards, all enforceable in court.

If you care who decides what Americans see, an algorithm answers to no one. This company now answers to a consent decree.

[The All-In Podcast @theallinpod]

All-In Summit: Bill Gurley

(0:00) Bill Gurley takes the stage at the All-In Summit

(1:29) Bill's Presentation: Searching for Feynman

Links to additional resources mentioned in talk and used in research:
https://t.co/LrixEr9Bw6

@bgurley

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@spencerpratt @spencerpratt You should find out who is pulling his strings and make that public. Not all of us can take the risk of taking this step, but you are in a unique position to apply some sunlight to this nonsense.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@MHerskovitz Well said. One question, though, from someone who has seen a great many technology cycles unfold: If Hollywood had not been helmed by the inept and the greedy, but instead by the talented and principled, would that have allowed it to deploy technology to continue on making movies in the traditional way you're lamenting the disappearance of?

I'm not sure, and here's why: The mind of the audience has been changing radically for decades. Where once we could sit with an idea - expressed in a book or a movie - for hours to see where it might take us (and what that idea might mean for our own development), we now embarrassingly prefer idea-fragments, those little pieces of broken thoughts and sentiments delivered by soulless addiction machines (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.).

Could a deft Hollywood have somehow mounted an effective resistance against this deadly cultural development?

[Bill Gurley @bgurley]

I'm not of fan of regulation for two reasons - 1) its hard to get right, and 2) its highly susceptible to regulatory capture. That said, if we insist on doing it, we should try to get it correct.

As "safety" seems is the primary goal of this AI regulation exercise, I wanted to share that I recently went deep on both the 737 Max (2 crashes) and Fukushima accidents. In both cases, the investigations led to a conclusion that "regulatory capture" was the EXACT failure that led to both safety incidents. Boeing/FAA and Tepco/NISA.

As a result, with safety as the #1 goal, the regulator MUST BE someone with authority and accountability "over" the regulated company. The idea that it could be a friendly third party with lots of cross-relationships is structurally broken idea. Ask Mr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa.

If we insist on doing this the regulator (1) needs to be 100% independent, 2) the "tests" and "procedures" need to come for the regulator not the company, and (3) the regulator needs to understand their responsibility is to the American people. They need to feel the authority over the regulated company and the responsibility to the nation.

It's imperative. Or it will fail.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

No, Derek, the truly indefensible narrative is that founders playing at this scale can - as individual humans with the same wetware as the rest of us - deactivate their natural self-interest and somehow act for the benefit of all humanity. It’s just not how humans work, no matter what they say, and no matter how beautifully they say it.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@DavidSacks Bang on. D and S are saying these things so that when the negative externalities arrive (whatever they may be, including cyber, bio, and national security harms), they can say: "We tried to do this slowly and carefully!"

It's half-hearted narrative control undertaken by founders who don't understand how law and politics actually function (which is to say, non-linearly with respect to bad actors, but almost certainly not in a fashion where you can seed a pre-apology and then fully escape accountability in the future).

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@GavinSBaker It’s a shame that people with little likability created the base narrative about AI - what it would be capable of, what it would do to labor, and whether our leaders should even care about those things.

But here’s the bottom line. It’s too late for the same people to adopt a gentler, pro-social narrative so that data centers can overcome the massive political opposition they face in many key states.

Maybe one day SV will realize that positioning a technological revolution is something they must be done by skilled communicators, deft human beings who actually understand how to balance opportunity and manage naturally felt fear - not by apologists who wake up when it’s already too late.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

They could definitely leave.

But your why question deserves a smasher.

Here it is: The tech companies now basically control content distribution.

This means that studios no longer compete with just each other - they have to compete with tech companies that have much more favorable opex profiles.

To retain the ability to make and sell entertainment products, studios need a way of managing this new reality. And there aren’t a lot of options.

You could radically rely on AI to product content for a song. The best (including Paramount) don’t want to do that. They still want to create great films, not AI slop.

So what’s left?

You’ve got to create scale to reduce your costs. That’s the only way to retain shareholders (who invest in the company’s future) in a world where leaner, meaner tech companies have lower opex and better margins.

In a nutshell, the merger is a result of reading economic realities with open eyes.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@kimrushton @alexisohanian Rushton is right. You can’t take a thousand bad steps and then erase them with five sound ones. That’s the fundamental error “crisis managers” and PR clowns make. They’re more akin to people who paint the walls with two coats after a murder than true problem solvers.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

Exactly. And trust is generated by verifiable behavior, not mere words.

[Kim Rushton 🏴‍☠️ @kimrushton]

@BrianRoemmele Dario is wrong. Trust in the source precedes trust in the output. Most big labs sneer at that. This is a grave miscalculation.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@DEADLINE @DEADLINE

Two guilds whose members Bonta says he is protecting have put terms on the table and asked him to hurry.

His answer is a two week trial in March 2027.

Crews are not paid in trial dates.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

Two guilds whose members Bonta says he is protecting have put terms on the table and asked him to hurry.

His answer is a two week trial in March 2027.

Crews are not paid in trial dates.

https://t.co/6gWsPbDv9z

[Jay Martin @JayMartinBC]

Before a collapse, nothing looks wrong. The numbers are printing records, the money is flowing, and the people warning about it are laughed out of the room.

Last time it was housing. Today it's AI.

The fire doesn't start when the rally ends. It starts inside the climb. Here's how it happens.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@profgalloway I am not here to dunk on you. Truly. Instead, I want to pass on a piece of wisdom a Straussian once told me: Whatever political convictions you develop over your life, it's your responsibility - and yours alone - to carefully vet the character and maturity of those you align with politically.

You didn't do this in ZM's case. You fell for this guy because he happened to be, at a particular point in time, singing from a page in the secular hymnal you find compelling.

Again, I'm not here to gloat. I've made the mistake many times myself. But you should own that you made the wrong call on ZM.

[John Eden @johnmichaeleden]

@jeffreytucker @jeffreytucker This is brilliant.