Hello and welcome, my name is John August.

My name is Drew Markquart.

And this is a script on Sidecast, a short episode about one thing.

In this case, how do we avoid two things becoming one thing?

Yes, we're talking about mergers.

Yeah, you blogged about this this week and you almost never blog anymore.

You know, I was once mostly known as a blogger, but now I write things down to say out loud,

which are then transcribed and added to the blog.

So I'm not sure it's any more efficient.

I'm still a person who writes down words just now that gets spoken aloud before they get written down again.

There's a dictation element.

There is a dictation element.

But regardless, today I am talking and blogging about the federal trade commissions proposed merger guidelines,

which are much more interesting and less technical than the name would imply.

And crucially, this isn't one of those episodes where you say, you know,

if you're not a WGA member, you can skip this, right?

Yeah, I used to say that a lot in the early Sidecast episodes.

I basically stopped saying that, I guess.

And I figured like anyone who's bothered to listen to Sidecast at this point knows whether they are interested or not.

But you're right, this does apply to everyone.

If you make film and television, if you watch film and television,

if you are involved with technology, publishing, retail, agriculture,

...