Jeremy Kagan 🇺🇸

Big win for Google as Walmart pulls the plug on OpenAI's instant checkout (1/3 fewer conversions than native). Google's UCP is the win/win here. Also looks like the Clarity act yield compromise is not yet set in stone. Today's pmtclaw.com

Let’s be clear about what happened here. Sami Steigmann, 86 years old, survivor of a Nazi labor camp and subjected to medical experimentation as a child, was blocked from speaking to Brooklyn middle schoolers because of his pro-Israel views. Meanwhile, artwork by the incoming Mayor’s wife was finding its way into those same classrooms. Rama Duwaji is a pro-Palestinian “advocate” who illustrated work for an author who publicly described Jews as “vampires” and “parasites.”   Her work was being promoted in New York City schools while a Holocaust survivor was shown the door. This predates Mamdani’s mayoralty - which makes it worse, not better. It means the ideological rot in the New York City Public Schools system runs deeper than any one administration.  This isn’t about who sits in City Hall. It’s about a school bureaucracy that has internalized exactly the kind of viewpoint discrimination that Title VI was designed to prohibit. The legal question practically writes itself: what legitimate educational interest is served by silencing a Holocaust survivor? There is none. The reason isn’t pedagogical. It’s political. New York families deserve answers. And if they don’t get them, they may have legal options. #Mamdani #ZohranMamdani #RamaDuwaji #EndJewHatred #NYCPolitics @ccampy

NYC first lady Rama Duwaji created artwork for DSA's anti-Israel campaign trib.al/5JduPeD

George Lucas traded $350,000 in directing salary for something Fox executives thought was worthless: the right to sell Star Wars toys. It was 1976. Over 40 studios had already passed on his script, including Disney. Fox only greenlit the project because they wanted Lucas for other films. Nobody at the studio expected to make money on a space opera with no stars, so when Lucas offered to cut his directing fee from $500,000 to $150,000 in exchange for merchandising and sequel rights, Fox said yes on the spot. Movie merchandise was a dead business. Fox had lost money on Doctor Dolittle lunchboxes a decade earlier. They thought they were getting the better deal. Lucas couldn’t even find a toy company that wanted in. Kenner, a division of cereal company General Foods, finally bought the licensing for a flat $100,000. Then Star Wars opened. Between 1977 and 1978, Kenner sold $100 million worth of toys off that $100,000 investment. They couldn’t make enough for Christmas ’77, so they sold empty boxes with IOUs inside, promising to mail the action figures later. Parents paid real money for cardboard and a promise. Nobody around the production saw any of this coming. Alec Guinness, who played Obi-Wan, privately called the script “fairy-tale rubbish.” But he was shrewd enough to negotiate 2.25% of royalties instead of a flat fee. About 20 minutes of total screen time earned his estate somewhere between $50 million and $100 million. Lucas himself was so convinced the film would flop that he offered Spielberg a bet while visiting the Close Encounters set: swap 2.5% of each other’s profits. Spielberg took it. That handshake has paid him around $40 million. And then the money started compounding. Lucas poured his Star Wars profits into ILM, the effects house he’d built for the film. When its computer graphics division got too expensive to maintain, he sold it to Steve Jobs in 1986 for $10 million. Jobs renamed it Pixar. Disney bought Pixar twenty years later for $7.4 billion. Then in 2012, Disney came back for the rest, buying Lucasfilm itself for $4.05 billion. Total franchise revenue today sits around $46.7 billion, over $20 billion from merchandise alone. The filmmaker 40 studios passed on is now worth $5.3 billion according to Forbes. Fifty years ago today, cameras rolled on a desert in Tunisia. The $350,000 pay cut that made it all possible might be the best trade in business history.

🚨 BREAKING: Someone just open-sourced a full offline survival computer with AI, Wikipedia, and maps built in. Project N.O.M.A.D. is an open-source offline survival computer. Self-contained. Zero internet required after install. Zero telemetry. Everything runs locally on your hardware. What it includes: → Full Wikipedia archives via Kiwix → Offline maps via OpenStreetMap → Local AI models via Ollama + Open WebUI → Calculators, reference tools, resource libraries → A management UI to control everything from a browser One curl command installs the entire system on any Debian-based machine. Runs headless as a server so any device on your local network can access it. Minimum specs to run the base system: dual-core processor, 4GB RAM, 5GB storage. To run local LLMs offline, you want 32GB RAM and an NVIDIA RTX 3060 or better. No accounts. No authentication by default. No cloud dependency. No phone-home behavior. Built to function when nothing else does. The grid, the cloud, the API you depend on. None of it is guaranteed. The people building local-first systems right now are the ones who won’t be asking for help when access disappears.

This SEO data study found that while ChatGPT usage has plateaued, Gemini usage tripled in the last six months of 2025.

We’ve received many messages asking how to support our life-saving work following the devastating arson attack in Northwest London. If you would like to help Hatzola Stamford Hill continue responding to emergencies you can donate here: Hatzola.org/donate/ Your support at this time means more than ever. Thank you for standing with us.

Dear @Keir_Starmer When they say "globalise the Intifada" This is what they mean:

Tech startups are an incredibly important part of the NYC economy. However, the NY State Senate is advancing a bill that would eliminate QSBS for NY state tax residents and tax founders, employees and investors on startup exits that are completely tax-free at the federal level, and in the vast majority of states. It's retroactive to January 1, 2025. We believe if this passes it will dramatically hurt the NY tech ecosystem. New York would become one of the most punitive states in the country for founders at exit - right as New Jersey and Connecticut are moving in the opposite direction. Tech:NYC has put together an open letter to Albany. Takes two minutes to sign. lnkd.in/eXaFxE-W

BREAKING 🔴🔴 An IRGC terror group in the UK, called Ashab al-Yamin takes responsibility for torching 4 ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer EMT services in Golders Green, London last night. The terrorists are on the loose. The UK is dealing with a serious problem.

Here's a blog post I wrote about the shift, but it's more about policy and politics than about culture. I am not great at writing about culture, but maybe at some point I'll try. noahpinion.blog/p/where-does-a…

Back in my day, being a liberal meant: - Do you and we won't judge (be gay, be black, be Jewish, whatever, do you) - Crime is bad. Believing criminals should go to jail and are accountable for their own actions (because society needs safety). Families in particular need safe communities. And safe communities help poor Americans up level their life. - Business is good! Growing business funds social programs. Pro business! We loved growth. We loved American companies who succeeded, because that helps grow future tax revenue. We believed the pie gets bigger. - America, while flawed, is awesome. We still loved America and wanted to win. - Legal immigration is a great thing. Brings smart people to America. Do more of this. More smart people, legally coming here. - Illegal immigration is not a great thing, because illegal immigrants aren't paying taxes but pull on benefits...this harms the average American who relies on some budget discipline to afford social programs for citizens. We are now politically homeless. It's sad.

A proposed change to QSBS in NY has demonstrated how quickly and willing the New York tech community is to work together to support our ecosystem. At stake is a major shift in policy that would tax startup gains at up to 14.8% in New York City, retroactively, just as other states move to attract founders and capital. The tech industry is one of the largest and fastest-growing areas of New York's economy, accounting for 41% of the city’s net new jobs since 2019.  Builders are paying attention, and they are mobile. The decisions made now will shape where companies are started, where talent stays, and where the next generation of innovation happens.  Founders and investors who care about the future of building in New York, add your name by tomorrow at noon: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

Do Series A and Series B startups fail less often than seed startups? Kinda. A bit. but not by much. The As and Bs do get acquired at a higher clip (as a share of total companies in the stage) but again...not a massive difference.

How many VC funds have $1 of DPI? And how many have 1x DPI? Damn this thing takes forever.

For those keeping track, the wife of New York’s mayor has made hateful remarks about Jews, Black Americans, and the LGBTQ community. But don't worry about it, because Zionists or something.

Joe Kent: “There is zero evidence that Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon, Netanyahu is warmongering.” The Deputy Speaker of the Iranian Parliament: “We tried to develop nuclear weapons, but couldn't keep it secret.”

UC Berkeley will pay $1 million and make changes to its nondiscrimination policy to settle a lawsuit that alleges the university allowed antisemitic harassment to go unchecked. Cal will clarify that the word “Zionist” cannot be used as a “proxy” for Jew or Israeli.

I fear that AI has decimated the traditional email inbox as we know it. Too many personalized emails slip through spam filter. Hope someone builds a better mousetrap. This one is cooked in its current form.

The biggest beneficiaries of yesterday's news? Self-service enterprise and CTV-led DSPs: Amazon DSP Google DV360 Yahoo DSP Viant (not Publicis' managed service programmatic solution)