Rewatching "The Incredibles" for the first time in a while is a reminder that the opening bits include an ongoing bit about denying insurance claims ... and it hits very weirdly these days.

It's always a bit difficult but fascinating to write an obit, and the most recent one was especially informative: Dick Beattie, the NYC legal legend who helped pioneer leveraged buyouts and featured heavily in "Barbarians at the Gate" www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/b...

on.ft.com/4jB6PUs Top Paul Weiss lawyer defects from firm after its capitulation to Donald Trump

Does it feel like there are a lot of crypto physical attacks — ie, kidnappings, assaults, &c — these days? (Hard to escape that feeling with the latest arrests in NYC.) @bwarner.bsky.social finds that we could be heading toward a record this year in today's DealBook www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/b...

Feels like this could be said of most memoirs these days, but yes, business moguls especially www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general...

Terrific story — and a blast from my SF past. Haven't thought about the coyotes since we used to walk our (then-puppy) dog in Bernal Heights in the mid-2010s, and owners of small canines were hypervigilant about coyotes www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/u...

Ouch www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/b...

As an American Catholic — with all the internal contradictions and emotional baggage that entails — it’s still kind of amazing to see an American pope

Capitalists the world over are still reckoning with Warren Buffett finally announcing that he would seek to step down as Berkshire Hathaway's CEO. But why was this so affecting — to both average investors and moguls like Bill Ackman and Jamie Dimon? 🧵

What's kept me busy today: Warren Buffett finally announcing that he plans to retire, by year end. Greg Abel will be his successor — and appeared shocked to hear Buffett's plans, announced in front of tens of thousands in Omaha For @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/b...

Everything is local eu.amestrib.com/story/news/2...

Thrive Capital, Josh Kushner's VC firm, has long invested in AI companies like OpenAI. But now it's betting on a different kind of strategy: buying and building AI start-ups — largely in unsexy sectors like, um, IT. Yes, others are trying to do that too. But Thrive is doing something else 🧵

This is the content I want, having just rewatched "Conclave" again www.vulture.com/article/conc...

I wrote about how this underscores Chobani's growth ambitions and a potential future attempt at an IPO. But another interesting thing that Ulukaya spoke about was Chobani's commitment to hiring refugees, even in this moment. “We cannot operate any other way,” he said. “To me, anybody is welcome.”

ICYMI: I got a jump on Chobani announcing that it plans to spend more than $1bn on a huge new factory in Rome, NY, in what it says will the largest dairy products plant in the nation. Why? The company insists it expects to keep growing hugely. 🧵

Jesus, it's been a while, longer than I could have ever dreamed of. Also, perhaps a sign that I've been here so long I forgot when my work anniversary was

Our pain is real. (But seriously, Jonny Kim's résumé is as gold-plated as it gets.) www.wsj.com/lifestyle/jo...

Rippling says Keith O'Brien, the payroll employee whom it accuses of spying for archrival Deel, has confessed in Irish court — and that his handler was Deel cofounder and CEO Alex Bouaziz. O'Brien says he was paid thousands, with codewords straight from a spy novel. More TK shortly

Its gone to the Irish High Court this morning! This chap is in big trouble!! www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

This is one of the stranger, and more gripping, tales of a software rivalry I've heard of recently: accusations of a mole, a "honeypot" trap and the alleged spy fleeing to a bathroom when confronted. (It's in today's DealBook newsletter) Oh, and it involves two HR providers, Rippling and Deel 🧵

What a description

Spicing up the Tulane M&A law conference this morning

Does anyone have an opinion on Bluetooth keyboards? Am specifically curious about how, say, the Satechi X1/X2 stack up to the Apple Magic Keyboard. (Am potentially open to mechanical keybs as well, but the noise during Zoom calls might be a dealbreaker)

Getting on a flight, which of course means “watch blockbusters on a sub-iPad-quality screen” time

Alex Clavel, the head of SoftBank's Vision Funds, told me that yes, the Japanese tech investor is being mindful of AI valuations — but it feels like it has to pay for entry. “Valuing world-beating companies in revolutionary times is not an easy thing to pinpoint,” he told me for today's DealBook

It's based on a single use case, but I was surprisingly impressed by how good Grok 3's DeepSearch was. (That use case being an extremely nerdy question about a discontinued watch model.)

Just learned that J. Crew no longer makes perhaps their best-ever shirt, the selvedge chambray work shirt (www.jcrew.com/uk/p/mens/ca...), and it bums me out to no end

In today's DealBook newsletter, I wrote up the results of a fun little experiment I did: How would DeepSeek R1 and ChatGPT o1 (ie, the reasoning models), solve the growing tension over Trump's pressure on Denmark over Greenland?

Have been playing around with DeepSeek and, while this is super-surface-level and probably addressable if you modified your own version of DS, this is kinda interesting

When you think about sleek W hotel lobbies or the Heavenly Bed, among other ways hotels work now, that was because of what Barry Sternlicht did at Starwood, which he left 20 years ago. Well, guess what? I report first in @nytimes.com that he's back in hotels — with the Starwood name. 🧵

Altadena's demographics were already shifting with gentrification. The fire likely accelerated that and may lead to the erasure of a Black community. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/u...

Kismet is wanting to watch "Master and Commander" and, lo, there it is for free on iPlayer

L.A. news choppers are better able to survey the damage today vs. yesterday. KABC is flying over parts of the Palisades right now. Block after block is gone. abc7.com/watch/live/

I’ve driven from Hollywood to Eagle Rock to Mar Vista to Brentwood to Atwater to Runyon to Studio City for emergency stuff and reporting and just got home for the day. All I can say is love this city.

I know the cost of making triple-A games has outstripped that of Hollywood blockbusters for some time, but this, to a video game now-dilettante, is jaw-dropping

And two days before Christmas someone gave to me: some norovirus for the whole family

Exclusive here from Bloomberg News, which asked 84 of the biggest listed US companies to share their demographics data with us. We found that Black workers are losing share, all but erasing the progress they made after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

A rare and shocking glimpse into a Hollywood smear campaign www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/b...

Last Christmas by Wham! Is the official Christmas Number 1 for the 2nd year in a row, and 40 years after the song originally debuted.

Encyclopaedia Britannica said in 2012 that it would stop publishing its namesake hefty tomes in print. But the company hasn't faded away — and instead remade itself for the digital era. 🧵

You get the sense from this great WSJ piece on fighting over the James Bond franchise that Barbara Broccoli, the woman with the keys to the 007 kingdom, doesn't like Amazon, which owns the franchise otherwise: • "Don’t have temporary people make permanent decisions.” • “These people are f— idiots.”

Probably not many remember Chinese chip investor Canyon Bridge, but it made waves with a bid for Lattice Semiconductor 7 years ago. The US blocked the deal. So Canyon Bridge bought UK based Imagination. US seems to have been justified. Knowledge transfer programs sent key IP to China AI chip firms.

Databricks's huge new round — $8.6 billion so far of a $10 billion round — could have been bigger, its cofounder and CEO, Ali Ghodsi told me for today's DealBook newsletter. Follow along, it's🧵 time:

Today wasn't supposed to be an occasion for buying stuff for myself — I was picking up other shopping — but when a bottle of Johnnie Green Label is available for just £30, well ... you have to do what you have to do

I'm rewatching "Top Gun: Maverick," and there's a way to tell that Mav and Iceman are old. They end texts with periods.

Shot: "Hey honey, isn't this a sick burn? 'feels like a spoof documentary designed to play on screens in the background of episodes of Succession' www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio... Chaser: "Hey, let's put it on!" :-/

I still find it curious that Brits unironically refer to holiday shindigs as “fayres” like Medieval Times does

EVAN GERSHKOVICH IS BACK WHERE HE BELONGS — on the byline of a WSJ article. So great to see Evan publishing stories again. www.wsj.com/world/russia...

Murdoch's next move: www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/b...