Twitter Ouroboros, Dragon Hunting, Putin’s Shadow Army

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon compendium of the latest reporting from Puck.

Today, we lead with William D. Cohan’s vital postmortem on the Elon-Twitter deal: the winners, the losers, and how the company might fundamentally change now that the world’s wealthiest man has decided, again, to take the social media welterweight private at $54.20 a share.

Then, below the fold, Julia Alexander crunches the numbers on the House of the Dragon vs. The Rings of Power fantasy showdown. Julia Ioffe connects with an exiled Chechen journalist to unveil Putin’s shadow army. Teddy Schleifer details the future of MacKenzie Scott’s multi-billion-dollar donation machine. And Dylan Byers joins Peter Hamby to discuss Trump’s bizarre new litigation against CNN.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

A close reading of the most insane acquisition of our age: why Musk capitulated, the banks who scored, and who’s left holding the bag.

JULIA ALEXANDER

A midseason assessment of streaming’s favorite competition. Plus, an analysis of Murphy’s belated Netflix triumph and what it means for the future of the overall deal in the O.T.T. age.

JULIA IOFFE

Ramzan Kadyrov has long ruled Chechnya with the aid of Kremlin money and firepower. But if the war in Ukraine is putting some cracks in Putin’s image, it hasn’t spared his viceroy, either.

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

Notes on the aftermath of MacKenzie Scott’s divorce from Dan Jewett, and how the split will affect her vast billion-dollar donation machine.