Annotated DC

In the final Harley Quinn episode of season one of Batman: Caped Crusader, the climax includes a scene where Barbara Gordon and Harley are dangling over a pit, only for Harley to fall despite Babs' attempt to save her.

This possibly seems to mirror a similar situation in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker's flashback sequence, albeit in ROTJ Harley drops by accident while in Caped Crusader Harley chooses to fall to save Barbara's life.

It's interesting to note that Paramount say that they've approaches the AGs with list of compromises (splitting CNN off into its own thing, for example) only to be flatly told no (because shedding a channel or two doesn't prevent the monopoly that prompted the lawsuit in the first place).

WAY too early to tell, but even though Paramount have reportedly said they're willing to take the case to the Supreme Court if the judge rules against them in two weeks, the fact that the AGs sole goal is for the merger not to happen combined with their already lackluster explanation prior to her TRO ruling, I think that we may be on to a good thing?

Hm, okay.

So the Caped Crusader panel is on Thursday, Batman-related comics panels on Friday along with the MAWS one (hopefully there's a season four announcement), with Saturday having the panels for the Knightfall movie, the non-Batman comics, and the Absolute Line.

I mean, he's factually correct as the stats and facts support their argument that there is an antitrust issue here, but he's mistaken in thinking that Trump and his cronies care about that kind of thing?

Relevant for here, as OpenAI making money is how Oracle (the largest backer of the Paramount-WBD merger) pays its bills.

Even as the AI bubble becomes a mainstream talking point on Wall Street, tech companies continue to peddle the fantasy that AI is poised to become an almost magical money-maker. Case in point, OpenAI wants you to believe that by 2030, it’ll be raking in $100 billion a year just from ads alone — even though it’s currently struggling to reach just $1 billion. That massive gulf was observed in a new analysis from marketing consulting firm Emarketer, first flagged by AdWeek, which found OpenAI is on pace to undershoot its own five-year ad revenue projections by a whopping 90 percent. In fact, Emarketer’s take is even more devastating than that: it estimates that the entire addressable market for chatbot advertising — the maximum amount of money up for grabs overall — at $5.4 billion. That figure isn’t just bad news for OpenAI, but for every giant tech company, all of which are jockeying for a piece of the AI ad pie. In 2026, Emarketer projects that the combination of OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon will bring in under $1 billion in ad revenue. For context, OpenAI had projected that its AI ad revenue alone would hit $2.5 billion by the end of this year. It all adds up to a difficult question for investors. If the top AI companies — which have burned over $1.6 trillion building AI so far — can’t even hit OpenAI’s meager projection for 2026, what hope do they have of hitting their projections four years from now? To hit that number, AdWeek observes, OpenAI needs three miracles to happen all at once. First, advertisers have to abandon decades worth of infrastructure built around search engines and social media and put all their advertising budgets into chatbots. Once that happens, OpenAI has to out-muscle previous ad-sales giants like Google and Meta, while the entire AI-ad market balloons from just a six-figure stream in 2026 to a raging, 12-figure river by 2030. Basically, OpenAI will have to make a lot of history to justify these numbers. And whether it can do so is no small matter: according to OpenAI’s own forecasts, advertising is supposed to make up 36 percent of the company’s total revenue by 2030. If the AI lab can’t make the math work, the company’s five-year financial story falls apart, and with it, a major bullet point justifying one of the largest financial bubbles the world has ever seen.

As the earlier Ed Zitron interview said, OpenAI needs to be making over $100bn or so in profit to pay back its investors, including Oracle who makes its money from leaving servers to the AI company. As the interview said though, OpenAI needs Oracle to build more data centres for growth and EVENTUAL profit, but Oracle is already $600bn down due to OpenAI not fully paying their bills.

So, even though will likely be bailed out because it has a TON of government contracts at this stage, chances are the Paramount-WBD may get cancelled due to their already being in a ton of debt even before they decided to by WBD and get even MORE.

California Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín has granted a request by 12 state attorneys general to issue a temporary restraining order against the pending $110 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. The state AGs sued to block the merger last week, arguing it would create an entertainment giant that would control 27% of the wide-release theatrical distribution market, 30% of the submarket comprising “anticipated blockbuster films,” and 27% of the basic cable bundle. The group warned that the deal’s approval could give the combined company increased leverage over movie theaters and cable distributors, lead to an increase in consumer prices and reduce content output. In her order, Olguin said that the states presented “compelling evidence that the combined firm resulting from the transaction will possess substantial market share in the wide-release theatrical distribution market” and that the court is persuaded that the proposed merger is likely to violate antitrust laws on that market share alone. “Because the Plaintiff States make a strong showing that the Transaction will substantially lessen competition in the wide-release theatrical distribution market, they demonstrate irreparable harm would result if a TRO does not issue,” she wrote. “The Transaction would also be difficult, if not impossible, to unwind if permitted to proceed given the anticipated consolidation of operations, sharing of business-sensitive information, and potential termination or reassignment of employees. The Plaintiff States have sufficiently established that irreparable harm would result in the absence of a TRO.” The TRO will remain in effect for 14 days, with the possibility of an additional 14-day extension.

...

On Friday, Paramount’s attorney Jeffrey Kessler said that a preliminary injunction hearing prior to Sept. 30 is needed in order to prevent the media giant from suffering “very severe harm” due to a 25 cent per share ticking fee for every quarter until closing, translating to around $7 million per day and $650 million per quarter. Olguin wrote in her ruling that Paramount will suffer “no apparent harm in the near term,” but set a preliminary injunction hearing for 3 p.m. on Aug. 3. Paramount will have until July 27 to provide their opposition brief, with plaintiffs’ reply due July 30. “Even if Defendants argued that they would suffer economic harm as a result of delaying the merger, the equities do not weigh in their favor when contrasted with the potential public harms that would result from consummation of the Transaction, including the loss of competition,” she added. “Paramount and Warner Bros. will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace while they wait for the Court to adjudicate this case. The balance of equities, combined with the public’s vital interest in antitrust enforcement, therefore tips sharply in favor of the requested injunctive relief.”

Yay, it's a start!

Although Paramount going on to whine that the law was being politicised against them when it was revealed that Paramount was trying to use political influence to get the merger to happen in the first place, via bribes both directly to Trump and to the heads of the FCC, that's a bit rich.

Also, Judge Martínez-Olguín initially said she'd come to an agreement by Wednesday (when the EU is having their own thing to determine if antitrust is an issue there), only for her to come out on Monday morning with her judgement? Makes it exceptionally clear that the AGs showing up with stats and maths to outline their point was far stronger than Paramount just going "trust us"...

Jimmy: I ain't no snitch!

My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 7 Promo

May have to replace the link as Adult Swim hasn't provided a link to the preview yet, but I just noticed something.

Spoilers

One month on from the battle with Cyborg Superman, Clark is feeling at a loose end because his powers haven't come back, but on the plus side: Jimmy, Lois and Kara have been nominated for awards! Unfortunately, when the ceremony is attacked by whimsical terrorists, Lois and Clark find themselves in a Die Hard situation as events unfold...

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After the drama of last week's episode, this mostly comedy centric episode was there to effectively decompress before things apparently begin to ramp up once more as we close in on the season finale.

I liked this episode, it was more than a touch silly but it moved along everyone's individual character plots along in a meaningful way. Will say though, I did think that it's funny that while the showrunners have said they're not allowed to use Batman in the show (yet), it is kind of hilarious that despite that this episode has Vicki Vale, Silver St. Cloud and Gotham rogues the Terrible Trio in a plot that involves the frequent Joker scheme to poison the city's water supply (seriously he does it a lot) as a distraction.

Anyways, good episode on to references and random musings.

First up, we get what I believe is another Korean-inspired dress for Lois (the first one being an outfit all the way back in season one). It's nice!

In Steve Lombard's van, there's a mounted sports jersey, a reference to how in the comic (and seemingly in the show, what with his having randomly thrown balls at people) he was apparently a highly thought of football player in college, the basis of which is what his later career as a sports journalist is based on.

Oh hey, Vicki's back for her season appearance. I hope next season we actually get to go to Gotham, as her having to constantly commute to Metropolis seems expensive.

Turns out that Jimmy's (contractually obligated) date is actually Princess Dr Marina Maru, aka the Wonder Woman villain Dr Poison. Unlike the versions from the comic who are Japanese (and apparently Russian one time?), Maru here is from the fictional DC country of Markovia, home of Terra and Geoforce. Huh, I wonder if her being part of the Markovian royal family makes her related to them?

As mentioned, alongside Vicki, we also get the return of frequent Batman love interest Silver St Cloud! Not sure if Lois is really short (she's often next to the huge Clark, so it's hard to tell) or if Silver is very tall herself, we stan tall Silver regardless.

Kara also gets a nice dress, and she's also apparently quite good at public speaking, as she has accepted the joint award for both her and Clark saying Metropolis due to Superman being unavailable. While they do say in the show that since the Cyborg Superman fight Kara has effectively had to be on call full time due to Clark getting depowered, I'm curious that she hasn't just said that Superman was injured in the fight but is taking time to recover? Like, people know she's having to work alone presently, providing context won't hurt I'd thought?

I like how Dr Poison's haircut eventually is mirrored in her custom gas mask, even if the exact nature of her crimes this episode are a touch... confusing. Apparently she's known for contraversal opinions about self-expression (the action moves elsewhere before she elaborates) but she seemingly wants to end the era of mankind by turning everyone into talking animals... which admittedly as loopy mad science plans goes it certainly fits with Jimmy's other WORMS dates, albeit kind of like an episode of Cowboy Bebop where an eco-terrorist group had a similar plan? Certainly more child friendly than most comics-accurate Dr Poison plots, which consist of everyone else just kinda... dying of poison?

Bizarro's reappearance was actually pretty sweet (I like how he can't fly, and instead just jumps really far like Golden Age Superman). Kind of want to know how his job interview went for his ice cream gig though?

During Clark's hallucination, I couldn't make out much of what was being said besides a reference to Rao, the name both of Krypton's sun as well as their god. Presumably this means that the Fortress of Solitude has some kind of reset for his power? But we'll see.

Side note, while it's funny that Clark seems frustrated over not contributing much (in his mind) in the episode, I go think that it's funny that out of the three protagonists left in the museum, he's the one who manages to get injured, stripped to his vest, and climbing through air vents. Living the Die Hard dream!

As stated previously, the three henchmen with voice lines in this episode (Shark, Vulture, and Fox) are a reference to the Terrible Trio, a supervillain team that primarily fight Batman and Dr Midnite. I do think that it's kind of morbidly funny that it's the villains from Gotham who are the ones who leap immediately to shooting kids to solve their problems. A Metropolis villain would never!