Ka whi

[Joseph Kahn @JosephKahn]

Here’s why so much of today’s entertainment feels mediocre.

For most of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the major studios owned the theaters. That system ended in 1948 with the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Paramount Pictures. The Paramount Decrees forced the Big Five studios to divest their theater chains and banned practices like block booking. The result? Studios no longer had a guaranteed screen for every film they made. If a movie was bad, theater owners simply wouldn’t book it. Survival required quality—studios had to compete on merit.

The same logic held through the home-video and television eras. Studios made the discs, but they didn’t own Target, Best Buy, or Blockbuster. Networks made shows, but every program lived or died by Nielsen ratings and advertiser dollars. There was friction, transparency, and real risk.

Then streaming arrived.

In 2020, a federal judge officially terminated the Paramount Decrees, declaring them obsolete in a world dominated by Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and the rest. The irony is brutal: streaming has recreated vertical integration on steroids. The same companies now control production and the only theaters that matter—their own apps. Unlike the old studio-owned cinema chains, these platforms don’t have to disclose viewership numbers because the business model is subscription-based, not per-ticket or ad-supported. Metrics are secret. Accountability is gone.

Because every subscriber dollar flows into the same corporate pool regardless of what is watched, the streamers have zero financial incentive to pay market rates—or any real money at all—for outside independent films and series. Why license an indie movie for $10–20 million when you can spend that and more on an in-house project that keeps 100 % of the upside, strengthens your IP library, and is guaranteed top-of-app promotion? Independents are now forced to sell their work for flat, often insultingly low fees (or give it away entirely for “exposure”) because the platform already has a full slate of self-produced content it will always prioritize. The gate is not just closed, the gatekeeper owns the only road.

With no obligation to report performance, studios face zero external pressure to justify budgets. They can greenlight endless in-house projects that are guaranteed distribution, while acquiring outside films or series for pennies on the dollar—if they bother at all. Independent producers are left begging for scraps or shut out entirely.

This is monopoly power the 1948 Court never imagined: total control of both creation and exhibition, insulated from market feedback. When studios and theaters were forcibly separated, independent cinema flourished because talent and good ideas could still find an audience. Today a handful of tech-entertainment giants own the entire pipeline in a way even the old moguls couldn’t dream off.

Monopolies aren't capitalist. We prevent them to open real competition, innovation, quality, and the occasional movie that wasn't filtered through a Teslabot in Netflix's HR wearing an Apple Vision Pro.

[Seth Harp @sethharpesq]

Incredibly sad and disturbing video depicting the violent end of an Afghan man who made the mistake of working for the Special Forces and the CIA. "I should have served with the fucking Taliban," he says seconds before he draws on the cop: https://t.co/ChNMbhg7Kf

[𝙷𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚖𝚊𝚗 @shagbark_hick]

The reason it feels nearly impossible to quit Twitter is because of the almost complete and total absence of intellectual life in the offline world.

There is nowhere for a Thinking Man to "land" anymore. Even the cities are largely voids of anything resembling satisfying discourse -- largely because in those cities, rents are so high people now have to WORK more than they READ. You simply cannot live as a "starving artist" in cities where the median rent is $2k-3k/mo.

I've been practically everywhere in the US -- the last scraps of that culture were already basically finished in the mid-2010's. After Covid, it's all dead. Everywhere. Even where people swear up and down it isn't dead.

Formerly, there were always cheap havens for library layabouts, slacker autodidacts, artists, writers, whatever. Now, basically none exist -- and whatever made the formation of yesteryear's "scenes" possible seems to have come unglued. In fact, the types of people who ever built them seem to be going rapidly extinct.

In lieu of robust offline discourse (which is to say discussions that exceed the daily gibbering about who-got-what new UTV, who won what game, and so forth), Twitter discourse comes to the intellectually-starved man like smartphone pornography comes to the randy young "incel." It's almost too tantalizing to stay away from. Hence the jokes made towards anyone who swears they're "quitting X."

Yet the more we use it, the more we distract ourselves and shy away from actually BUILDING real-life, IRL iterations of the very thing we seek here. It's a complete trap, and without question, I have fallen into it.

Sure -- many will rise to defend the very limited daily chatter that takes place in so many bars and diners, etc. They're right to defend it, but for some people, it is simply not enough. It cannot sustain them. They need to talk about ideas with "ideas men" sometimes. There is nothing wrong with this need -- it has always existed.

I'd say we desperately need some kind of a low-rent, cheap "mecca" for academic bums and creative dropouts, but I fear that the formation of one may no longer be possible. Where once the intellectually starved young man struck out for old New York, or for Milan, or for Paris, or whatever -- now, he sates his hunger with paltry surrogates on the internet, and is consequently never moved to action. This has the effect of neutering him; his archetype may well fade into history because of that little piece of glass in his pocket.

Very likely, I need to try to build such a haven offline anyway, even if such an effort only constitutes a kind of tragic "last stand." Though I'm re-assessing how exactly I've been approaching this, I'm just not gonna give up. I can't really afford to -- the alternative simply seems to be too bleak.

[scary lawyerguy @scarylawyerguy]

He's not only escaped any/every attempt to hold him accountable for his actions, he's enriched himself and his family to the tune of billions of dollars while also getting to be President (again). It's enough to make you lose all faith in everything from the rule of law to karma

[jo johnson @josbjohnson]

you keep looking for meaning in your job when your job is just how you pay for the time to find meaning elsewhere. but you’ve been spending the elsewhere time on nothing, so the job became the everything, and now everything feels meaningless.

life will feel different when you stop running from the parts of you that actually want something. the ideas you keep shelving. the dreams you only visit in your head.

use the time you have to chase them. build something. write something. create something.

anything.

[Ka whi @steve_nasmith]

@McNabb_KC @tiido_bling Is ngahluleka internet for not gone lie cuh ?😂

[El Padre De Los Gatos 🧙RogerArc @Gato_fun]

@walterwhitepill a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit in

[Ka whi @steve_nasmith]

@mcuban Thank you for speaking up on this

[Ka whi @steve_nasmith]

@kenmoos @mementomori1110 Same exact thing, we just have a million different flavors for people who like desert for breakfast

[teflon don @theteflondon13]

The Great Bill Burr had this to say about Shedeur Sanders… 😭😭😭😭

[Ka whi @steve_nasmith]

@RinoTheBouncer Scarface: the world is yours

[Ka whi @steve_nasmith]

@demmons35 @isaiahhole Just checked- 266 in Ohio

[Ka whi @steve_nasmith]

@demmons35 @isaiahhole When I lived in Ypsi 5 years ago the only chick filas were in Holland, Lansing, and I think there was one at the airport or on EMU campus. Way more Qdoba I noticed than Chipotle

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

The moment in American Gangster (2007) when Frank Lucas shoots Idris Elba’s character in broad daylight is pure, cold power.

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

Imagine China occupying California, Nevada, Arizona, and Oregon and then the EU telling America: “Make a deal with the occupier or we won’t support you.”

Absurd, right? No country would accept that.

Yet this is exactly what Ukraine is being told today.

And let’s not forget: Ukraine gave up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal under U.S. security guarantees. They trusted America.

Now Ukraine being pushed to surrender their land to the same aggressor that invaded them.

This isn’t “peacemaking.” This is betrayal.

Author: David Imedo

[The Land @CLEVELAND_WINS]

@DeionSandersJr Yo, Shedeur has a great attitude. He’s joyful and positive. Gives glory to God. I’m rooting for him! His attitude is awesome. We need more dudes like this on the Browns. This is not arrogance this is confidence.

[Ka whi @steve_nasmith]

We throwing up the Apple Watch ✊⌚️

[Ka whi @steve_nasmith]

So bummed for Shadeur and Isaiah they didn’t get that extra yard to make it a TD. Instead some OSU meat head got an extra fantasy boost from Q lol

[Tommy Callahan @yalltitanup]

Shedeur Sanders is the ONLY QB in league history to have multiple 50+ yard passes in his first start.

Legendary. #DawgPound  @ShedeurSanders