Posting this again from earlier bread.

Last night someone reposted a thread from late in a bread. Not sure it made it into Notables. It was about the fact that we are now in the new war…"a battle for the minds."

Saw this morning this story Amazon bidding for a 50 Indie theatre chain. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/amazon-is-said-to-be-in-running-to-acquire-landmark-movie-chain

FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix & Google) realized that with the Internet, they were going to lose their grip on the traditional controlled media. Since they were losing control of the "pipe for news," they had to re-establish power by deligitimizing the pipes they don't own while continuing to buy up every screen and media property possible to reconsolidate their power.

Amazon now owns TV, shopping, Indie shopping (Whole Foods), books, online books, online audio, traditional media (WAPoo), damn near US mail, home security and surveillance (Ring doorbell), in home autonomous control (Alexa), nearly all the web hosting that serves everything else (AWS), now theatre. I'm sure next it will be the screens on the gas pumps, in the airports and I'm not sure whether they've begun rolling up radio. They already bought pillpack, so there are our drugs. They are said to be looking at Macy’s, Target, and Wayfair. Also, they may be looking at Lyft (there goes your free movement.)

Where are the antitrust people? They broke up AT&T when it was just damn phones. We all have played Monopoly…I don't understand why no one has stepped in. Perhaps it's part of the plan because if AMZN is found to be complicit in crimes, under the EOs from December, with one action/transaction they can liberate that expanse of media properties and screens–which of course equates to freeing OUR MINDS.

Feels like shits popping off this week. Will be interesting to see where this goes.

Is this notable?

Last night someone reposted a thread from late in a bread tying to Q’s note that we’re in "a battle for the minds." Trump this morning tweeted regarding the parade move that he was going to “go to the Paris parade, celebrating the end of the War.” Capital W war.

Saw this morning this story Amazon bidding for a 50 Indie theatre chain. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/amazon-is-said-to-be-in-running-to-acquire-landmark-movie-chain

FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix & Google) realized that with the Internet, they were going to lose their grip on the traditional controlled media. Since they were losing control of the "pipe for news," they had to re-establish power by deligitimizing the pipes they don't own while continuing to buy up every screen and media property possible to reconsolidate their power.

Amazon now owns TV, shopping, Indie shopping (Whole Foods), books, online books, online audio, traditional media (WAPoo), damn near US mail, home security and surveillance (Ring doorbell), in home autonomous control (Alexa), nearly all the web hosting that serves everything else (AWS), now theatre. I'm sure next it will be the screens on the gas pumps, in the airports and I'm not sure whether they've begun rolling up radio. They already bought pillpack, so there are our drugs. They are said to be looking at Macy’s, Target, and Wayfair. Also, they may be looking at Lyft (there goes your free movement.)

Where are the antitrust people? They broke up AT&T when it was just damn phones. We all have played Monopoly…I don't understand why no one has stepped in. Perhaps it's part of the plan because if AMZN is found to be complicit in crimes, under the EOs from December, with one action/transaction they can liberate that expanse of media properties and screens–which of course equates to freeing OUR MINDS.

Some sauces might make this notable:

• Who might be on Amazon’s acquisition list this year form The Street - https://www.thestreet.com/story/14438930/1/amazon-acquisition-rumors-2018.html

• Amazon buys PillPack. What’s the significance? The day they acquired it wiped out $13B in market cap from other publicly traded pharmacy companies - https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/07/09/how-much-can-amazons-pillpack-acquisition-contribute-to-its-overall-growth/#2d631c2385e1

• Is Amazon a monopoly? Donald Trump thinks so in Forbes- https://www.forbes.com/sites/brittainladd/2018/07/29/amazon-is-not-a-monopoly-president-trump-yet/#46c7c4474735

• Amazon controls 55% of e-commerce growth - https://fortune.com/2016/05/11/retailers-stocks/

• Further case in point to put it in perspective. From the above story, if you look at ecommerce sales over the last 12 months – Amazon $82.8B, Walmart $12.5B, Home Depot $4.7B, Macy’s $4.1B…you see the diminishing returns. When Walmart looks like a gnat, you know there’s some serious going on.

• Amazon Web Services dominates the digital cloud with 33%+ of all sites hosted there. These sites include 1,000,000 users from small business to Netflix, Adobe, HTC, GE, AOL, etc. Per the article, Amazon is at 33%, Microsoft is at 13% to 14%, IBM is 8% or 9%, Google is less than IBM and Alibaba is less than Google. Amazon DWARFS MS, IBM, Google & Alibaba. Source: https://www.quora.com/How-many-websites-are-hosted-on-AWS