How Did the Intellectual Dark Web Become a Cesspool?
Every week I highlight three newsletters that are worth your time. If you find value in this project, do two things for me: (1) Hit the like button, and (2) Share this with someone. Most of what we do in Bulwark+ is only for our members, but this email will always be open to everyone. To get it each week, sign up for free here. (Just choose the free option at the bottom.) Join now  Also: Almost all of the newsletters I link to have free versions. You only pay if you want to upgrade. So dont hesitate to click through and sign up. 1. Arc Digital  Arc Digital isnt just a newsletterits a whole media company. Im a big fan. A couple months ago they moved to Substack and have only gotten better since then. Two pieces from Arc Digital last week really spoke to me. The first was an Adam Wakeling piece about the dissipation of the vaunted intellectual dark web:  The term Intellectual Dark Web, or IDW, was coined by American venture capitalist Eric Weinstein and popularized by Bari Weiss in a 2018 New York Times article. It had no clear definition but described a loose grouping of public figures including (among others) Eric and Bret Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris, Joe Rogan, and Dave Rubin. . . . Weiss finished her article on the cautious note that I cant be alone in hoping the I.D.W. finds a way to eschew the cranks, grifters, and bigots and sticks to the truth-seeking. Three years later, not only are the cranks, grifters, and bigots still around, they sometimes seem to be actually running the show. . . . Everyone likes to be an original thinker, and to feel that they knowor understandthings which others dont. Even the term woke, mostly used with derision these days, implies that someone is awake to realities to which others are still sleeping peacefully. Non-mainstream ideas can be fun to talk about, and sometimes even get proven right in the end. There are dangers to heterodoxy, though. Most non-mainstream ideas are non-mainstream because theyre simply bad. The experts are sometimes wrong, but if they had been consistently wrong for the past three centuries, you wouldnt be reading this article online because I would be an illiterate peasant in a cottage, the internet wouldnt exist, and Jordan Peterson would be the local eccentric lobster fisherman in some North Sea village. And when the experts are proven wrong, its usually by other experts. Charles Darwin was wrong about how traits are passed on from parents to offspring, but the right explanation (being DNA) was discovered by a team of scientists at Cambridge University, not a slick televangelist. Read the whole thing here. Its truly great. The other Arc Digital piece was by Luke Burgis and the headline alone will make you sit up straight: Empathy Lessons . . . from a Hitman.  Dave Romero had a thin ponytail and a sallow face. His narrow eyes and deep crows feet gave the impression that he could read your soul. He walked proudly, with the confidence of someone who never failed to even a score. He showed up at the front door of my house at seven oclock in the morning as I was getting ready to take my dog for a walk. When I heard the doorbell, I thought it was the Mormon missionaries again. But they dont come at seven a.m. What I found instead was Dave Romero, Customer Relations Specialist of Fyre Pharmaceutical (not its real name), come to collect a debt. My e-commerce company was flailing after a buyout deal fell through thanks to the Great Recession. Id already maxed out my credit to keep the company afloat while I figured out next steps. In an effort to buy myself some time, I made a list of the suppliers I would pay first, a sort of debt triage plan. My decision to exclude Fyre Pharmaceutical from my list of priority payments would have been different had I known that the companys founders were rumored to have connections with organized crime, that they were said to be involved in gun trafficking, and that one of my competitors mysteriously vanished after crossing them. Again, read the whole thing. The payoff is tremendous. And consider subscribing to Arc Digital. 2. Dry Powder  This is a Puck Media newsletter about the entertainment industry from William Cohan. He has a theory about why AT&T got into the whole Warner Bros. clusterfork:  The key to understanding the genesis of AT&Ts humiliating spin-off of WarnerMedia actually comes down to understanding the motives of the people who made it happen: the bankers. M&A bankers, after all, get paid for their deal-making advicefees that can run into the tens of millions of dollarsregardless of how the deals turn out. Good, bad, indifferent, most bankers care a little, but not a lot. We dont know yet what AT&T agreed to pay Goldman Sachs and the prestigious advisory boutique, Lion Tree, for their advice on unwinding WarnerMedia, which they acquired in 2018 for $85 billion plus debt, into the $43 billion sale to Discovery plus 71 percent of the equity in the newly formed company, Warner Bros. Discovery. But as a proxy, we can look at what TimeWarner paid its three bankers for the sale of the company to AT&T three years ago: Allen & Co got paid $50 million, as did Citigroup. Morgan Stanley got paid $40 million. Thats $140 million alone, just for their sagacious advice and valuation work. Its no surprise then that the investment bankers involved in AT&T C.E.O. John Stankeys Great Unwind appear to view the deal as evidence not of tail-between-the-legs ineptitude but rather his courage and genius. According to my well-informed sources with knowledge of the deal, the investment banking logic for AT&Ts capitulation on WarnerMedia goes something like this: AT&T is really just a holding company for a bunch of OpCos, and Stankeys job is to allocate capital, unlock value, find the right home for assets, and create the right financial flexibility for a fast-shifting media and entertainment landscape that was rapidly going direct to the consumer, instead of from business to business. Investment bankers prefer to talk about industry transformations rather than transactions. The Great Unwind, so the M&A logic goes, is an example of Stankey being flexible enough to initiate an industry transformation by recognizing that the WarnerMedia assets would perform better in the hands of a new leader, instead of those of Stankey, who ran WarnerMedia before becoming C.E.O. of AT&T in July 2020, or Jason Kilar, who succeeded Stankey at WarnerMedia and got the cold shiv in this merger. You can read the whole thing here, and sign up for Dry Powder here. 3. 500 Words  Ken Hessers newsletter is a real potpourri and here are his thoughts on who should be the next Jeopardy! host. (YSWIDT?) Maybe its recency bias, but Mayim Bialiks 2 week run last night was terrific. Shes a few weeks younger than me (Kate Winslet falls into this category also! ), and I always found a superbly impressive woman. She brought the full package to her hosting duties. shes brilliant, has excellent pronunciation and projection skills as an actress, portrays a charming demeanor with contestants, and is obviously thrilled to be there. It also helps, frankly, that shes not a man. I would think she has to be a frontrunner, if she actually wants the job full time. I initially predicted this was Ken Jennings job to lose, now Im not so sure. He was a more than competent host and has the pedigree. He also took a production role in the show prior to Alex death. That said, Im not 100% sure hes secured the gig. I wonder. My wifes favorite host of any show on television, and this is not revealing a state secret of Haile Plantation, is Cat Deeley of Foxs SYTYCDance, mainly because she is a classic British Presenter, a total pro who balances all aspects of the hosting duties with utmost precision, preparation, with appropriate empathy for the contestants. Anderson Cooper is the closest thing we have here in the States, and his two weeks hosting delivered in all aspects. He was awesome. Two years ago, I picked him as the most likely non-Jennings successor to Alex, but my guess is his plate is full at this point, and him taking the job permanently would be a stretch. Aaron Rodgers made it clear he wants the job. I thought he overperformed and was exemplary in his preparation. Still, he the reigning NFL MVP and probably playing another 5 years, at least. The show is not altering its production schedule at this point to accommodate. Read the whole thing. If you find this valuable, please hit the like button and share it with a friend. And if you want to get the Newsletter of Newsletters every week, sign up now. Its free. Join now