I’ve been a professional internet addict since 1997, turning my info-addiction into a living for most of that time.
There have been some very fat years.
Like when I worked on behalf of Corporate America as a Director at Austin’s most powerful public affairs firm — but alas, the corner office with a 9th-floor view of Lady Bird Lake wasn’t for me.
Like when I managed four out of Vox Media’s ten most popular websites — but alas, the startup turned into a (really lame and doomed) corporation, and I’m not a big-organization guy.
There have been some very lean years.
Like when I got drummed out of Democratic politics both in Texas and then in DC and was helping build what was then SB Nation and became Vox Media for a pittance.
Like when I lost ownership of my popular UFC/MMA website, Bloody Elbow, after less than a year of owning it independently and battled a complete mental breakdown.
But I’m crawling back up, thanks to support from my family, Zach Arnold, who helped me keep my MMA Draw Substack alive, and Ian Welsh and Yves Smith (of NakedCapitalism.com), who gave me a chance to write about politics and business for their prestigious and popular sites.
Point being, I consume much more information than I can process and comment on in a longer-form format, so I’m going to start doing a weekly links roundup here at NatWilsonTurner.com.
With that preamble out of the way, let’s get to it.
From me this week
Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years, Part 1: COVID
From the vantage point of September, 2026 it might seem like pointless assholism to kick cancer-ridden, senile old Joe Biden when he’s down.
Irving Berlin Defined American Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.11
Most of y’all probably don’t know that I’ve been doing a Music History podcast called Let It Roll since 2018. We’ve racked up 500 episodes, and now I’m re-presenting them all in chronological order by topic (we’re already 23 episodes deep; better get started if you want to catch up). Today’s was a special favorite.
I originally booked this interview because I wanted to talk to James Kaplan about his incredible two-part biography of Frank Sinatra and didn’t know much about Irving Berlin, but it was Kaplan’s current book so I jumped at the chance to talk to him.
But after reading the book and talking to James about it for an hour, I became a huge admirer of Berlin and was deeply touched by his story.
A classic second-generation immigrant’s tale, Berlin’s gifts not only enriched America, they defined American music.
The dude wrote “God Bless America” and “White Christmas” for God’s sake. Plus hundreds of others, many of which remain culturally current today: “Puttin On the Ritz” “Blue Skies” etc etc etc
But his story also touched my heart: The tragic loss of his first wife on their honeymoon in Cuba (inspiring the heartbreaking “Only You”), his pursuit through song of a millionaire heiress whose WASP father who didn’t approve of Berlin but couldn’t keep his songs out of her ears (he even took her to Europe to get away but Irving’s music had already beaten them to every destination!) or his love out of her heart, their marriage and loss of their infant first son on Christmas, the tearful reunion with the Father-in-Law who had initially refused to recognize the marriage but showed up immediately when his daughter was grieving, and finally the story of the secret Christmas ritual that he and his wife practiced until her death -- never explaining to their other children that they were dressing up and going out to put a wreath on their first child’s tomb.
Gave a whole new interpretation to “White Christmas.”
Happy listening, Nate
Short the Saudis in Combat Sports and Everywhere Else — The MMA Draw
Before I was Nat Wilson Turner, I was Kid Nate, the founder of Bloody Elbow (sadly lost to me now), and I still cover combat sports, but mostly through the lens of the financing and power players who own the UFC, WWE, and are currently trying to monopolize boxing globally.The MMA Draw newsletter is more about “King of Hollywood” Ari Emanuel (brother of Rahm and Zeke), his company TKO which has monopolized MMA and pro wrestling and is trying to monopolize boxing (with Saudi backing).
The regular cast of characters includes UFC frontman Dana White, disgraced former WWE owner Vince McMahon, Donald Trump, David Ellison of Paramount (Ari’s biggest money mark), Egon Durban of Silver Lake (financial brains behind Michael Dell and Ari), the Saudi enforcer turned boxing mogul Turki Alalshikh, and many more such charming individuals.
Zach Arnold and I also do a podcast called The Mad Squabbles Show where we try to grapple with the reality of combat sports turning from a sleazy backwater run by small-time grifters and carnies to Ari Emanuel’s multi-billion-dollar international empire.
Worth watching
Disgraceful Degradation — Dmitry Orlov. Orlov, one of the founders of “collapseology,” moves to YouTube and makes a major change to his famous analogy that US collapse will resemble Soviet collapse.
I feel sorry to have led people down a garden path that doesn’t lead to anything specific. People wanted to know when to throw the bags full of cans of spam and shotgun shells into the back of the pickup truck and drive for the hills. Feel free to do that anytime you like, I kept telling them. But I feel that I must do better. And now I believe that I finally can. If I think about something long and hard, sometimes a good idea does eventually pop into my head. I have no idea how that happens. It just happens. or it doesn’t. And in this case, it has finally dawned on me that there was to begin with a flaw in my comparison of the USA and the USSR. They’re not quite symmetrical after all.
There is a key difference that have that I have been neglecting to take into account. Yes, they were both 20th century military and industrial superpowers, and they both espoused opposing now defunct ideologies. and my superpower collapse soup analogy applied almost equally to both of them. But there is a rather important difference between them. The US is a colonial empire much like the British Empire and other western empires were once. These empires were based on the exploitation of their colonial possessions. They sucked resources out of them while preventing their social and economic development. Along the way, they saddled them with permanent debt servitude. They enforced their trade policies through military means. But the heavy-handed tactics of previous colonial eras are no longer necessary. Instead, there is control of mass media, cyber warfare, color revolutions, the IMF, the World Bank, and the US Treasury with its endless sanctions. These are all means of coercing compliance. from countless from countries around the world. And what this compliance means is willingness to export products and commodities in exchange for US government debt.
This is the wealth pump which the US has been running for decades to drain wealth from around the world to export inflation and to subjugate much of the planet. This wealth pump has become less effective over time. But even if it stops working altogether, there is a fall back to an older American technique, piracy. How well it can be made to work in the 21st century remains to be seen. But it won’t fail for the lack of trying.
Cold War 2.0 #84: Russia Secretly Helps Iran Develop Supersonic Missiles — Syriana Analysis, with Tarik Cyril Amar. Tarik Cyril Amar’s weekly appearances on Syriana Analysis are a weekly must listen to me. I love their dynamic, their accents, their humor, and they are subject matter experts I trust as much as I trust anyone about these topics (I trust no one about these topics).
Russia’s Ukraine Endgame — Putin Has Lost Patience With Zelensky — Vladimir Brovkin and World Affairs in Context. Former Harvard Prof Dr. Vladimir Brovkin understands Russia better than most. He’s worth listening to.
Setback for Trump: Iran intensifies US strikes as Vance denies wedding attack — Janta Ka Reporter. Great daily anti-Imperialist news roundups, and presenter Rifad Jawaid’s vicious and hilarious commentary on Trump regime buffoonery is always amusing listening — even when covering the most awful shit.
On Sh*t… Another Private Credit Fund Just Blew Up — Eurodollar University. My go-to for coverage of private credit’s struggles.
The AI bubble and its doomers
Did 700 AI bots actually form a civilization? — User Mag. Betteridge’s law of headlines in action. Doomerism is the other side of the coin of AI hype.
Bill Gates Warns A.I. Is More Dangerous Than Big Tech Will Admit — The New York Times. Wait for the doomer swerve. He’s playing up the scary trying to save MSFT’s investment in OpenAI. This is straight bullshite.
Dwarkesh Patel’s wildly popular but dangerously misleading account of the OpenAI Hugging Face incident — Gary Marcus. Marcus calls out the well-written and compelling AI doomer BS, with a classic Douglas Hofstadter line about Ray Kurzweil:
“What I find is that it’s a very bizarre mixture of ideas that are solid and good with ideas that are crazy. It’s as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can’t possibly figure out what’s good or bad.”
Red Alert: OpenAI is poised to cross an AI safety red line — Gary Marcus. Every time you think Scam Altman can’t make things worse, here he comes with some new outrage.
The new Sanders-Casar Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act – and why I oppose it — Gary Marcus. I am generally politically aligned with Sanders and Casar but I do not trust them on tech issues.
Taxpayers Must Not Be on the Hook for Bailing Out the AI Industry — Truthout. Oh but we will be.
Politics and corruption
Michael Needham — The White House Hack Tells All — John Helmer. A great piece on one of the newest idiots in the Trump administration, possibly the least qualified Deputy National Security Advisor in US history.
How a Brazilian Billionaire Helped Shape Trump’s Beef Import Plan — The Wall Street Journal. Joesley Batista met with Trump a day before the president announced a plan to waive tariffs on beef imports, angering farmers and ranchers.
A Crash Course Into the 14 Names on Rep. Thomas Massie’s Epstein List — bekah day. Fine folks.
Rahm Emanuel: ‘You Don’t Like My Ideas? Show Me Yours’ — Rolling Stone. This asshole….
Rahm Emanuel and Brothers to Donate $550,000 to Train Palestinian Pediatric Doctors in Israel — Haaretz. Cynicism taken to new depths.
Democrats shocked after 2 members cross aisle to help Republicans — CNN. Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez rescued a GOP procedural vote, reportedly to clear the way for Golden’s lobstermen bill. It also let Johnson proceed to messaging votes Democrats oppose, including a resolution condemning socialism.
Also worth your time
Paid actors, AI writing: How a new kind of video business cashed in on America’s divided politics — Semafor
US Crude Oil Production Is Showing A Lot Of Weakness — HFI Research. Not good for Team America.
Spy-scammer shootout — Events in Ukraine. Ukraine just over-the-top insane.