Latest / Normal Men / Episode 71 - Thirst Traps

Transcript

Episode 71 - Thirst Traps · Normal Men

• 0:01
  Ed: Don't ruin the bet. Okay.
• 0:04
  Lowtax: Oh, we're saving this for the show.
• 0:06
  George: Okay, now we're recording. You say whatever you want.
• 0:09
  Ed: Now say the thing.
• 0:12
  Lowtax: Okay, okay, fair enough.
• 0:14
  Propter: We have been doing this for a year and a half.
• 0:18
  Lowtax: Look, it's all spontaneity. Like, otherwise, where's the fun in that, you know?
• 0:22
  George: Yeah, but there's gotta be. The spontaneity has to be recorded. That's the whole thing.
• 0:27
  Lowtax: No, I hear you. I hear you.
• 0:30
  Ed: Good lord.
• 0:32
  Lowtax: All right, so this guy, he is, he's on, he's at the Bad Place Twitter, and his handle is at Alfonso fr. He just like me. For real. For real.
• 0:47
  Ed: I knew you were.
• 0:49
  Lowtax: He was. He is commenting on the the Netflix GTA 6 trailer extended look thing. And he says of a picture, the preview picture from the trailer has Lucia and Jason, the two main characters, walking towards a robbery. And Lucia is pulling her handgun out, and Jason is tying a bandana around his face. And Alfonso, for real, for real, says, notice how she has her gun out. His is tucked and cucked. A literal V is on his face. She's wearing red, the color of War Mars, arguably the most masculine color. He's closest to the open passenger side door while she's on the side of the driver's seat. Cucking ritual.
• 1:54
  Ed: We have to, we have to shut footer down.
• 1:57
  Propter: It's, it's important that everyone understand for context that the female protagonist of the new Grand Theft Auto is a, I'm assuming, Cubana baddie, wearing literally a shirt that says baddie.
• 2:10
  George: So the Latina est of baddies. Like, this is. You could not get more Latina baddie than this particular Latina baddie.
• 2:18
  Ed: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:22
  Lowtax: Did you guys watch any of that?
• 2:24
  Ed: God, no. I hope that game sells two copies.
• 2:26
  George: It's gonna make roughly a trillion dollars, Ed. Sorry.
• 2:29
  Ed: Yeah, I'm well aware.
• 2:31
  George: I, I, I'm not a gamer. I have never owned a video gaming console. I've done some PC gaming stuff, like, very lightly occasionally over the years. I did watch the whole thing because I had a light Friday or lighter than expected Friday. And yeah, game looks fun as hell.
• 2:49
  Lowtax: I watched it. I, I am with Ed. I hope it sells two copies that end. It looks amazing, right? And it's Rockstar. They've got more money than God, so of course it's gonna look amazing. But listening to Lucia and Jason, I was like, oh, my God. I went to, I went to high school with, like, 20 of these people. Like, if I, if I buy this and play it by, like, hour 20, I'm gonna want to throw my PlayStation out the window.
• 3:25
  Ed: That sounds about right. Yeah. No, and, and to be fair, you would, you would deserve that for buying it. Yes, I, I, Rockstar is one of those companies where I don't think giving them money is a good idea. It pains me to say that because they are owned by, they are owned by Take2, which makes many things I enjoy. But yeah, I think it's just kind of a company of bad things. I know you really liked the drawer closing simulator though, Lowtax.
• 3:57
  Lowtax: Yes, that's right. The, the cowboy chores simulator.
• 4:00
  Propter: Yes, I, I have not played a Grand Theft Auto since Grand Theft Auto 2, which you have not played. Two was great. That was a top down.
• 4:11
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 4:12
  Propter: Back, back before they got all 3D. I did however play Bully, which was pretty good. So maybe I'll pick it back up at some point. Bully is Grand Theft Auto, but set in a prep school.
• 4:24
  Ed: So Grand Theft Auto 2 is confusing because it is actually Grand Theft Auto 3 because they made a quote unquote expansion pack that was a completely separate game for the first one which was in London. And no, I'm not going to say the word because I don't want to go bleep it, but it was set in 1969 and the only difference was you drove on the other side of the road.
• 4:50
  Lowtax: I have not played one since three, I think. Was that the one in Liberty City or whatever it was. The only thing fun about those games is stealing enough cars and like running over enough cops that they bring the military out and then you can, you can steal a tank.
• 5:13
  Ed: Yes.
• 5:13
  Lowtax: And like as soon as the tank hits something, it explodes and that's what you paid for. Yeah, that's fun for like 10 minutes and then it's like whatever, who cares?
• 5:25
  Ed: I mean like I actually really quite like them up through like gta. Well, I never played four though. I, I think four was really like. From what, from what I saw, I thought four. Four was really impressive. Five is just an incredibly cynical and mean spirited thing, like deeply unwell levels of it. Plus you know, the, the requisite like late aughts, early tens bigotry, big fan. Honestly, I just think that the English should, should shut their damn mouse about us is kind of a good starting point. But like I don't know, isn't it? I assume they've learned there. Well, I'm sure. Let's be that specific. I'm still not saying the word that that shall be bleeped. Yeah, no, I'm. It makes me Feel like things makes me feel like I'm contributing to the Meaning.
• 6:29
  Propter: The.
• 6:30
  Ed: The making mean of society by giving the money. Yeah, in like a really gross way. Less so for cowboys, probably. I didn't buy it.
• 6:40
  Propter: The coarsening of the aesthetic.
• 6:42
  Ed: Yeah, let's go with that. Thank you. Propter is here to class up the joint.
• 6:48
  Lowtax: Yeah. The cowboy chores game. I made it. Until you have to chase the guy on the horse, it.
• 6:58
  George: Sorry, isn't that the whole point of the cowboy choice game? Like, I'm pretty sure the entire thing was chasing guys on horses.
• 7:04
  Lowtax: I think it's supposed to open up and let you do, like, actual other things.
• 7:08
  Ed: Wait, did you play like two hours of this game?
• 7:11
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 7:11
  Ed: Okay.
• 7:12
  George: Yeah. Because the main playthrough is what, like 70 or 90 hours of gameplay or something more?
• 7:19
  Ed: I don't know, 37 of them are closing drawers.
• 7:22
  Lowtax: Yeah,
• 7:25
  Propter: this is talking about Red Dead Redemption, which is another major rockstar game
• 7:28
  Lowtax: line in which red Dead Redemption 2 specifically.
• 7:34
  Ed: Yeah, I had enough horse riding in Metal Gear Solid five the Phantom Pain.
• 7:43
  Lowtax: Oh, God.
• 7:43
  Ed: So, I mean, that is a game where that game involves tactical horseshitting. I mean, like, what more do you want? That wasn't an exaggeration in the slightest, as anyone who has ever played a Hideo Kojima game will absolutely know. Your horse takes tactical dump in order to spin out vehicles on the road
• 8:10
  Propter: right after you get instructed by horse ride men.
• 8:17
  Ed: God, I'm surprised that did not.
• 8:19
  George: This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much.
• 8:25
  Propter: I'm George In Charlotte, in D.C. i'm
• 8:27
  Lowtax: Propter Malone in Outer Florida. I'm Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer.
• 8:31
  Ed: And I'm Ed in Boston.
• 8:37
  Propter: So as long as we're talking about international conflict, we have one particular story ripped from the news, which is that we have. We being the President of the United States of America has recently renamed Lake Ontario Propter.
• 8:52
  Ed: I have a ton of dumb people in my mentions right now. I have so many dumb people in my mentions. Why do you have to bring it here? Well, I think.
• 8:59
  Propter: I think.
• 9:01
  George: Don't you understand, Ed? Don't you understand that, you know, holding to some objective, formulaic approach is only okay as long as you're not angering the libs, in which case.
• 9:11
  Ed: Well, I mean, I really. I do hope to eventually go photograph Mount McKinley. Yeah.
• 9:20
  Propter: So the deal here is that the President has changed the United States geographic surveys designation of the lake, and lots and lots of other people draw directly from the USGS's nomenclature, including GNIS, it's,
• 9:35
  Ed: it's just, it's the box what the names come out of.
• 9:39
  George: Yeah. Like, as they should. There's nothing unusual about that. And by the way, it's the exact same in a large number of other countries.
• 9:45
  Ed: Right.
• 9:45
  Propter: You kind of have to do it that way. Like, like. And the current status, as I understand it, is that. Is that for Google, if you look on Google and you're in the United States, you get Lake Ontario served as Lake America, which. Could we not come up with a better name? Even if, like, you can't just name everything America?
• 10:05
  George: I think a challenge accepted.
• 10:07
  Ed: Yeah, I think there's probably someone in the room to prevent him from calling it Lake Cuck. But, like, we're really running low on decorum here, folks.
• 10:19
  Propter: If you're in Canada, it's still Lake Ontario, and if you're elsewhere, it is depicted as, as being, I guess, contested between Lake Ontario and Lake America, which
• 10:30
  George: is how they've treated the Gulf of Mexico situation. Right, Right.
• 10:33
  Propter: Yeah. And like, I think that's how you have to do it because we're not the only country that gets stupid about names and, or, or borders.
• 10:43
  George: Actually, like, this is, this is not the first time that Google Maps has gotten involved in disputes about geography. And usually not always, usually borders are a far bigger oopsie than names. Like, names are the easy version of this. So I actually, actually know the guy that used to run Google Maps and have heard about this from his perspective before, because it's come up before. This is long before the Trump administer or this latest Gulf of Mexico Gulf, you know, Lake America, whatever, whatever thing we're talking about. And I mean, yeah, his perspective is exactly what you would expect from Ed, right? Which was like, we kind of. There's only so much you can do with this, Right. Because it pisses off everybody if you don't have some sort of objective process. And we do have the ability to serve different people in different places, different names, and that's fine. And we are not here to be the UN settling all of these geography questions. We are here to serve you some stuff from servers. Like, that's it.
• 11:46
  Ed: So, like, the UN doesn't even think this. Right? Like, UN gn. I forget what the geographic experts on geographic names. I don't know, like, they don't run a name server. They recommend things to national, like name registries. Right. Like, they don't. And, and neither does anyone else. MapQuest is out here getting a bunch of like, blue MAGA weirdos all excited because they're like, we're not going to do it. Yeah, but that's because MapQuest has 12 users. I know this because my employer used to own them.
• 12:17
  Lowtax: Open streets, not MapQuest, I think, right?
• 12:19
  Ed: No, MapQuest.
• 12:20
  Propter: Yeah.
• 12:21
  Ed: Actually, I don't even know if MapQuest has their own tiles. They might just use OpenStreet these days.
• 12:25
  Lowtax: I didn't even know. I didn't even know MapQuest was still around.
• 12:28
  Ed: Yeah, they were acquired and then divested by my employer. I know this because some of their former people are on my team. They're delightful people. But, yeah, like, what are you gonna do? Are you now going to keep, like, experts in, I don't know, sectarian zombie and politics on staff or when, when, like, are you going to decide whether or not that. That you know, a country the size of a postage stamp, rename something, whether it is legitimate or not? Like.
• 13:01
  George: No, I do think this is very revealing about how you should wait for
• 13:06
  Lowtax: the Office of Geographic Names to sign off on it.
• 13:10
  George: I do think this is just very revealing about how amerocentric a lot of posters are and that nothing that happens outside of our discourse, our borders, our politics, actually exists and is real, which is something you see all the time. I mean, the discussion about the, you know, what, what last week about Canadian trade, where. What do we libs here in the US want to see Canada do versus what's in Canada's best interest? They're not always the same thing. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. But yeah, like, guys, there's. There's a world outside our borders. Like, it's okay. This has all happened before in other parts of the world and the solution to it is not one you like, but that's okay because the Google company is not here to fix your politics for you.
• 13:54
  Lowtax: Yeah, I think he should be. I think he should rename whatever regions China and India are having disputes over.
• 14:02
  Ed: I mean, they are. They've already got us. They already have an if then for that. It's fine. He can. You can just add another one. It's fine.
• 14:11
  Lowtax: I don't think they have if thens because they're probably all writing Python like perverts.
• 14:16
  Ed: Python has an if statement.
• 14:19
  Lowtax: Does it?
• 14:19
  Ed: Yeah.
• 14:20
  Lowtax: Okay.
• 14:20
  Ed: Yeah, it does.
• 14:21
  George: Lowtax has just surmised that actually there are. Lowtax's implication there is that they are running all of Google Maps out of Excel, which. That'd be a neat trick.
• 14:32
  Propter: That might be true of MapQuest.
• 14:33
  Lowtax: No, but I said. I said Python, not Excel.
• 14:37
  George: No, sorry, your Implication was that Ed thought that, oh, I'm going to take
• 14:44
  Propter: a slight evolution on this, which is obviously, this is the way that the maps have to work, right? Like you have to have. You can't be in the position of exercising editorial judgment as Google on every name change. You got to pull the data from somewhere and it's unreasonable to expect them to start playing politics. But I think this is a useful opportunity to work the refs because Google has been put in an uncomfortable position by direct action of the United States President. And if you're a Googler, you should be pissed about that. This is a pain in your ass that is being caused by Donald J. Trump, and it's not fair that people are yelling at you, but that's why they're yelling at you. You didn't do this. Trump did this.
• 15:28
  Ed: Yes, but I'm not sure anyone running the show at Google cares now about anything that anyone who works for them thinks.
• 15:39
  George: I mean, yeah, I agree. Unfortunately, whether that's accurate and sustainable on the management at the search engine companies part is I don't know.
• 15:54
  Ed: But I look forward to finding out.
• 15:58
  George: I mean, look, the labor market's picking up, so we may find out in relatively short order. Tech has under. I mean, even accounting for the magic productivity fairy of AI, which thus far mixed results so far at the economic level, but inside specific industries, it seems to be having a pretty big impact under most definitions of productivity. I think that doesn't mean it'll have a big aggregate effect, but for now it's at least locally true that it increases. Software developer that was George. Yeah, get as mad at me as you want for making nuanced statements about the economic impact of AI. But no, like, like, we'll see if that holds because tech did overhire dramatically in 2020, 2021, and then basically went on a hiring strike for four years. And maybe that's sustainable because of the robot that talks like a human and maybe it's not. We'll find out. My view, of course, is it's not.
• 17:00
  Ed: But yeah, so far signs point to no, yeah, I am available for consulting. That's all I'll say. But yeah, like, like it is. It is not. No, I agree with you. Like there is that, that that pendulum is swinging and it's going to be really funny because I kind of expect it to sort of really start getting towards one end in about 2029. So there's going to be what you might call a confluence of factors about companies suddenly rediscovering decency. But I don't necessarily know what, what's going to happen till then.
• 17:39
  George: I mean, like, like the US political economy has just basically gone into turbo thermostatic swing. Right. Like, and it is incredibly rational from a strict like corporate welfare perspective to say, well, in four years these guys will be gone and someone else will come in. So do everything you can to play nice for four years without permanently capping what happens after that. And I think if you look at how has behaved over the past three years, probably, or two years, probably, I think you can make a very strong case that they are doing exactly that. Obviously there's uncertainty around how exactly you play these hands against either side of the political aisle. But I don't think anything that tech has done up to this point puts them in an unrecoverable position vis a vision. The Democrats, when we went a trifecta in 2028 and potentially a large majority trifecta now like other industries. That's not true. I'm not saying this for like corporations in general, but it certainly seems to me that Tech has been doing their best to play nice with the Trump administration without foreclosing the possibility of, you know, decent treatment in two and a half years.
• 18:50
  Lowtax: I don't think that's true of Elon.
• 18:54
  George: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not Elon.
• 18:56
  Lowtax: Peter Thiel or Mark Anderson or David.
• 19:02
  George: I'm talking, I'm talking big corporate tech. I'm not talking about every little VC everywhere. I'm talking.
• 19:07
  Lowtax: Oh, I think it's, I think that it's certainly true of people like Tim Cook.
• 19:13
  George: Yeah, it's, it's Satya Nadella, CEO of
• 19:17
  Lowtax: Microsoft up in Redmond.
• 19:22
  George: Jesus.
• 19:24
  Lowtax: That slack jawed yokel at Google. Yeah, it's, it's probably true of some of them, especially because you have leading Democrats like that moron in Silicon Valley who is so desperate to protect his boys and it's going to run for president explicitly to protect his boys while pretending to be a Bernie Broke.
• 19:50
  George: Is he, is he a leading Democrat? Yeah, he's loud. That's fair. Yeah, but leading, Yeah. Speaking of leading Democrats though, did y' all catch what Clyburn said about Supreme Court expansion?
• 20:23
  Propter: Hell yeah.
• 20:25
  George: So we should talk about that because we've talked about Clyburn before.
• 20:28
  Propter: Yeah.
• 20:30
  George: So I think it's important to understand like our, I'm gonna speak for the four of us here. If anyone doesn't isn't on board with this, then just interrupt me and we'll, whatever, we'll, we'll talk. It out. But I think we all kind of agree on this basic framing that the Democratic Party has a very unique, very, very important bloc of voters which are African American Southerners, especially African American, generally black folks, generally around the US but it's most visible in the south because of the Voting Rights Act. So you have concentrated populations of people who were given representation in local, state and federal office because of the Voting Rights act that were never going to defect from the Democratic Party as long as the Republican Party was following Nixon Southern strateg as it has for 50 years. So basically you have this very large and very coordinated like these. These folks are all on the same page. And the best example of this by far, in my opinion is the 2020 presidential election where the South Carolina Democratic primary coalesced around Biden, specifically at the leadership of people like Jim Clyburn, the longtime representative from a little bit south of me in South Carolina. And he won because of that. That was the only reason one like, like, you know, you can do your takes about the politics of, of commentators and pundits and whatever, and Democrats this and what no black folks decided we want Biden and so that's who we got. And I'm not necessarily complaining about that. I'm just saying that, I'm not saying that's a good thing, a bad thing or whatever. I'm just saying that's the reality of the Democratic electorate. So the big change to that and the one that we talked about when the decision came down earlier this year was the Roberts Court basically eliminating the Voting Rights act because that is enough to turn those federal Democrats elected in the Black Belt and in urban centers in the south especially, you know, like in New York or Illinois or California or Virginia. It's not necessarily an extinction level event for them. It may hurt them. And you know, Propter has pointed out, pointed out previously, like, there's gonna be tough choices there because of gerrymandering if efforts to basically counter gerrymander what Republicans are doing. But it's not like, oh, you know, your state is trying to get rid of you. It's like you're being asked to take one for the team in those kinds of states. But in the south, it's like, no, you're getting, we're getting rid of you. So the Voting Rights act blowing up is an extinction level event for the congressional back Black cauc. I think that maybe not extinction. Yeah, I shouldn't say it's a major, it's a major hit to their political power.
• 23:13
  Propter: It's. They're going to lose about 20% of their membership is, is where, or I should say the districts are being drawn with the intent of making them lose about 20% of their membership. And that's, that's, that's a massive hit, not just to their aggregate political power, but to their sway within the Democratic caucus. Correct.
• 23:32
  George: Those voters haven't gone away for presidential primaries because, again, elected at the state level, you can't gerrymander away from that. But, but the number of people in Congress and also their downstream effects in state and local office. Right. Like, you lose talent development pipelines, you lose the ability to build political machines. It's a big problem for them.
• 23:49
  Lowtax: 20, 20%, by the way, was John Roberts. His compromise position. Alito and Thomas wanted to bring back the three fifths compromise.
• 23:59
  George: So it turns out that Clyburn, who I think is the, I mean, he's the guy you want to watch on this because he's, he's realpolitik to the core. And he is, he's dug in there like, like a tick in upcountry or in the black belt of South Carolina. And they tried to gerrymander him away, and they couldn't do it without taking undue risk of a dummy mander. And so he's still alive after this. But if you look at where the population is shifting in South Carolina, maybe that won't be true then, you know, in a, in a couple of years. Clyburn's real old anyways, but. So, you know, who knows? He probably should have retired a while ago, but he hasn't. Anyhow, so Clyburn came out this morning and said that actually, yeah, we, we need to make it a baker's dozen on the Supreme Court.
• 24:42
  Ed: Had to discuss what a baker's dozen was.
• 24:47
  George: Wait, It's. It's just 13. Who's discussing that?
• 24:51
  Ed: Like every, everyone's favorite rice truck purveyor on, on the social media side of. Of choice, Shiv Ramdas was discovering that lots of people don't know what a baker's dozen is like. They were, they were in his mentions going, like, but, but how, how does this work if you have 12 justices?
• 25:15
  Propter: Well.
• 25:17
  George: Oh, I'm in shock.
• 25:18
  Ed: Yeah. No, me, I was, too. I was, I was, I was stunned. He. He's like, how are you learning this from, from me? This is your first language.
• 25:29
  George: This is my fourth also, like the median. It's one thing if, like, you're not someone in high school says it, because it is kind of an older term. Right. Like, I could understand someone who's 22, maybe not not having come across this term before, we don't buy in bulk as much as we used to. People are used to going to their bruisers bagels and getting a single bagel, not a dozen and getting one extra one thrown in.
• 25:49
  Ed: And we find fact. We do in fact blame the schools, but go on.
• 25:53
  George: Fine. But that. That the median. The median user on the social media side of choice is in their late 30s, maybe early 40s.
• 26:02
  Ed: I have a. I have to point out something here that I feel like is going to sound obvious, but you just used a forbidden word and that is medium.
• 26:12
  George: Yeah, right.
• 26:12
  Ed: Okay.
• 26:14
  George: Really? White tailed posters. We weigh out the distribution.
• 26:24
  Lowtax: And by the way, by the way, for folks, if you've never. If you've never read Shiv Ram Dass's Rice Truck thread, just Google Chevron da Rice truck.
• 26:36
  George: Also, just for the record, I'm not talking about fat tails, as in like big butts. I'm talking about the shape of a normal distribution versus the shape of the distribution we're in, which has fatter tails, I. E. More events that occur far away from the median. Sorry, proper.
• 26:50
  Lowtax: We've established that people do not know what a baker's dozen is, but they. They're going to be able to process what a fat tail is.
• 26:59
  George: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on, hold on. There's an issue here. First off. First off, it is absurd of you to malign the many, many valiant people listening to this podcast as equivalent to blue sky posters in general.
• 27:15
  Lowtax: I know many of the people who listen to this podcast. I will denounce them all day long.
• 27:21
  George: Well, now they know what a fat tail distribution is, so you're all welcome. It's distribution where unlikely events occur more likely than they ought to.
• 27:28
  Ed: Congratulations, you're now both above the median and the mean.
• 27:32
  Propter: I want to observe that sometimes talks with his hands and his explanation of fat tails was especially delightful. So.
• 27:41
  George: But enough about Latina baddies.
• 27:44
  Propter: So 13 is the number we've settled on and we will put the rice druck wink in the show notes. For those who have not seen it, there are two very good arguments for having 13 justices on the Supreme Court. Number one, 13 justices is the number of justices you need to get to such that you can add four Democratic justices and have a majority. That's important to us. And number two, there are currently 13 circuits in the there. There are currently 13 federal circuits, and once upon a time, each Supreme Court justice was responsible for one federal circuit. That's a little Bit weaker because honestly, we should have more than 13 federal circuits at this point. We should add a bunch of federal circuits too. It's insane how overstuffed the 9th Circuit is at this point. That's the west coast and also like Idaho and Montana and a bunch of other places. That covers what probably about a third of the total population of the United States.
• 28:40
  George: It's, by the way, if you look at the map of the circuits, it looks a lot like the map of the regional Federal Reserve banks because they're sort of a snapshot of how the country was populated and how big the economy was, etc. In a given time. So we have the same problem with the, with the Feds. So, like the San Francisco Fed is enormous. It's the entire country west of the Rockies, basically. Whereas we have the Philadelphia Fed, which covers southern New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, and like Delaware, I think is the other state. It's, it's just tiny. It makes no sense. But when they actually built, you know, set this all up, it made perfect sense because that's where the people were and we've just frozen it in time since then. For Federal Reserve banks, it's less of an issue than for circuits, though I
• 29:19
  Lowtax: will say where, yeah, it was set up roughly where people were. Although. How many Feds are there in the state of Missouri, George?
• 29:28
  George: 2. But the thing is, the thing is, first off, they've split up a bunch of states in a bunch of these places. And the second thing is if, if you look in the 1910s at where the big cities were west of the Mississippi, the answer is none, essentially. So you really were stuck with not very good options there. You know, we could argue that the Dallas Fed should have been in Louisiana and New Orleans maybe, and maybe you move the St. Louis Fed over to, or the Kansas City Fed over to Dallas, but that is sort of a separate question. They divided up very evenly in terms of GDP at the time, for the record, anyhow.
• 30:15
  Lowtax: Oh, my, my recollection was that there were two in Missouri because there was a very powerful senator from the state
• 30:22
  George: of Missouri that that may be the case out of. You're testing my Fed knowledge there. I'm pretty sure that's right, now that you say it. But also, like, you really did not have a lot of good options for other places to put that thing.
• 30:34
  Lowtax: I agree, I agree. But now we do have good options, and we should move the Dallas Fed to New Orleans and we should move the Kansas City Fed to Denver.
• 30:45
  George: Yeah, well, you also, the thing is, you also need to get rid of the Philly Fed entirely. And you probably need another new. You need like a Seattle Fed. Right? So like you have your California and then Seattle gets everything else in the Mountain West, Something like that.
• 30:58
  Lowtax: Seattle should get a Fed.
• 30:59
  Ed: Yeah. Why?
• 30:59
  George: Well, we're not giving it to Boise and Spokane is far too small. So what do you. What are you asking for here?
• 31:04
  Propter: Put it on a Portland Fed.
• 31:07
  George: Come on, we got to check with Dr. Go Like Hell machine before we establish that policy.
• 31:11
  Lowtax: Areno Fed.
• 31:13
  George: Oh, God.
• 31:16
  Lowtax: And we're taking the San Francisco Fed and we're moving it to la.
• 31:21
  Propter: That.
• 31:21
  George: No, because Wells Fargo is HQ there. It's the second largest bank by assets.
• 31:24
  Lowtax: So no, I don't care.
• 31:26
  George: San Francisco is the third largest city for bank assets after New York City, and I don't care.
• 31:32
  Lowtax: San Francisco's. San Francisco is a terrible place.
• 31:36
  Ed: He's right.
• 31:36
  George: They should move and anyone I know the second largest city by assets. Is it Toronto now in the United States?
• 31:48
  Ed: No. No idea.
• 31:50
  Propter: I did.
• 31:51
  George: This is like a layup. Like, why would I be asking?
• 31:53
  Propter: Is it Charlotte?
• 31:54
  George: Charlotte.
• 31:56
  Lowtax: Oh, okay.
• 31:58
  George: By the way, we're moving.
• 32:00
  Lowtax: We're moving the San Francisco Fed to Los Angeles because I want monetary policy set by people who talk to crystals.
• 32:07
  George: Wait, you might like my T shirt then.
• 32:11
  Ed: Yes, we see your Jerome Powell T shirt, but the audience.
• 32:13
  George: That's right.
• 32:14
  Ed: And that's a problem.
• 32:16
  George: I was hoping you would describe it. I showed up to breakfast this morning with Connor Sen. In Atlanta and he's like, what are you wearing
• 32:23
  Propter: now?
• 32:24
  Ed: Propter has to put that in the show notes. Good job.
• 32:26
  Propter: Yes, I will find a link to the Jerome Powell shirt. I will put that in the show notes. We will.
• 32:30
  George: It's all my blue sky somewhere.
• 32:31
  Propter: Cool. Okay, so, yeah, so what that indicates is that there's is. Is that there is Congressional Black Caucus support for packing the Senate, which in some ways is less of a big deal. We sort of knew that packing the
• 32:46
  George: Supreme Court, not the Senate. I'm sure they'd be on board with the Senate too, but that feels like a constitutional thing that's whole.
• 32:52
  Propter: Yeah, the CBC is very powerful in the House. They're much less powerful in the Senate for obvious reasons. They may have more power in the Senate. After the set of elections, we'll see how things shake out.
• 33:06
  George: I have an alternative pathway though. The CBC represents voters who are extremely risk averse. If you were a black person in the south, you would be risk averse too. You don't like socialists, not necessarily because you are ideologically opposed to their project because you think that the free market is superior to more government and involvement in the distribution of resources, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. No, it's because you're risk averse. It's because you want to win elections more than you want to pursue a specific ideology. There are some exceptions around this, around cultural issues, but in terms of economic issues and sort of broad party platforms, in that respect, it's risk aversion. And it's a very, very understandable perspective from, you know, given what we know about black voters in the South. If the head of the cbc, if the guy who is calling the shots at the CBC is saying we are on board for this particular kind of rad radicalism, that means those voters are on board for that particular kind of radicalism. I, I don't, I don't mean to say that as in, as in to demean black voters in the south as just cogs in a machine who will just do whatever Jim Clyburn tells them to. That is not what I mean at all by that. What I mean by that is they are very good at voting as a bloc and exercising their political power as a unit, as opposed to individuals who are sort of having to be bought into, buying into a specific, you know, come cater to me with this specific policy. No, no, you don't do that. You get, get to all of them at once. And they're valuable because they're all on the same page. So what that means is if you want to run as a Democrat, if you are John Ossoff and you want to run as a Democrat in the Democratic primaries for President in 2028 on the platform of expanding the Supreme Court, you will not, at the very least, you will not face a penalty with those voters. That is a huge movement of the Overton window and really, really important for how the party primary is going to play out. Forget any other dynamics. So, yeah, Propter, I agree. Bigger deal in the House, you know, et cetera, we'll see about the Senate. But in terms of the signaling and the way the primary voters behave in the presidential primary, where, you know, the presidential primary, I think is going to be the bigger issue here, that's a big deal. It's a, it's a huge unlock.
• 35:15
  Propter: I mean, it represents institutionalists getting on board. And that's important because this is, you know, packing the Supreme Court, is it, It's a lot of things. I think it's a necessary move because of how the Supreme Court has functioned for the past couple of years. But it's extremely.
• 35:31
  George: Another fun unlock is that it means that you get to call anyone who doesn't want to pack the Supreme Court a abject racist and go vote for the Republic Republicans, because the CBC likes this. So that's how it works in Democratic politics. I'm reliably informed.
• 35:44
  Lowtax: So that's right. And vote blue no matter who. Haters.
• 35:49
  Propter: Also, also, you know, not for nothing, the speaker of the House is a Clyburn ally, Tagim Jeffries. So prison boy, this has his imprimatur as well, even though he's not the one out front saying it. So, you know, this represents an alignment of certain institutional forces behind something that is an institutionally risky play. It's good to have whatever pressure we can have. I'm still in the camp that basically says that this is stuff that we should just do and not talk about, because I think voters don't actually care about this stuff.
• 36:20
  Ed: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:21
  Propter: So, you know, like, get.
• 36:24
  George: The only kind of voters that care about this stuff are voters who aren't going to vote for you anyways.
• 36:27
  Ed: Right.
• 36:28
  Propter: So, like, you know, get the trifecta and pack the Supreme Court and let's not have a big conversation about it. Let's just freaking do the thing and then we'll be able to pass laws again. It's going to be great.
• 36:40
  Lowtax: It should be. It should be more than 13, though.
• 36:44
  Propter: Yeah.
• 36:44
  George: In an ideal world, yes. But I'm. I'm willing to take 13 as the opening salvo in what will inevitably become an every four years for more justices get appointed until something gets so haywire that everyone throws up their hands and says we need a final settlement. But the only way you get to that is by actually firing the shots.
• 37:01
  Lowtax: Don't say what you're willing to settle for. George, you know, they're listening to this podcast.
• 37:07
  George: I assure you they are not.
• 37:09
  Propter: You know, there's all kinds of alternate plans on this. Like, one thing that's been put forward that I think has a fair amount of currency is having each Supreme Court case heard by a panel that is selected from all the circuit court judges, which.
• 37:25
  Ed: Sure, why not?
• 37:26
  Propter: You know, I think that that would maybe have some adverse effects, but it's appealing to the kind of people who design systems like this. So we'll see Rube Goldbergians, which we appreciate.
• 37:35
  George: A Rube Goldberg machine.
• 37:36
  Propter: It has. It has the advantage that. That it's. It's constitutional. Like, you can just do it. Like. Like, and it's not. It's also much harder to roll back because you're opting, you know, Article 3 judges into a status that is permissible under Article 3, you're not diminishing their status. Oh, no. But at the same time, if you were to then try to move that back to a specific selected Supreme Court sitting over the other appellate courts, I think that would get a lot of institutional resistance from the judges, for one thing. And they're the people who are ultimately in charge of making the decision as to whether or not it's constitutional. So there are people you want on your side in that particular pissing match. Anyway. I don't really have strong feelings about how we do it, except that I would like to change SCOTUS so that it is not operating the way that it is working right now, which is clearly dysfunctional and which is trampling over not one, but two other branches of government. We're not noticing that it's trampling over the executive right now because they like Trump and are willing to do pretty much whatever he want to do. But we will absolutely notice that the next time there's a Democratic president again.
• 38:47
  George: Yeah. All you have to do is have the memory of goldfish to not understand that the Supreme Court's project over the past 20 years has been to capture as much power as possible from the other branches of government at every possible opportunity. Like there's just no other way. I actually do think John Roberts is less of a pure Trump ideologue, or not pure Trump ideologue. But he's. He's not about Trump. He's about his ideological project. Right. And he is more cautious in his politics than he could be in his pursuit of that ideology. He's gotten a lot less cautious over the past 24 months for reasons that I don't entirely understand, but like these people are not stupid, unlike their fellow travelers in the executive and legislative branches of government.
• 39:36
  Propter: Yeah. John Roberts thinks, with some justification, that he is the most powerful man in American politics. He has been the most powerful man in American politics for the last 20 years. Years. And he will continue to be the most powerful man in American politics until the day he dies.
• 39:50
  George: So, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're an unelected body of kings and queens ruling over us. That's it. Like that. That's what the Supreme Court in its current format is and how we change that. There's a lot of different ways to go about it, as Propter said, but one way is to just make them less powerful by adding 4 to the denominator.
• 40:11
  Lowtax: That's at least something 1 billion Supreme Court justices
• 40:17
  George: like if anyone shows me a Matt Iglesias take on in response to Clyburn, I will be extraordinarily pissed off. I don't care.
• 40:28
  Lowtax: I bet he's got like a mundane take. He's probably with Clyburn on it.
• 40:32
  Propter: Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
• 40:33
  George: No way.
• 40:34
  Propter: You don't think so? I think. I think Iggy's gonna be pro court packing. But maybe, maybe he's changed.
• 40:38
  George: I think Iggy might have been pro court packing until up to the moment Clyburn that he said it. Nope. He thinks it's stupid and nobody should ever have said that.
• 40:47
  Lowtax: No, it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be because Clyburn said it. Not because Iggy's not racist, because he's really racist. But it would be because like some blue haired trans girl said that she agreed with Clyburn and that turned Iggy completely the other way.
• 41:06
  George: Yeah, his barista.
• 41:07
  Ed: The. The first search result was concerning, but it was about a different thing. He was being. He was being iffy about. I cannot find any reactions about the current situation.
• 41:18
  George: Good. Long, long may they never exist. What do we think Iglesias coffee order is by the way?
• 41:25
  Propter: Flat white.
• 41:29
  George: There's an extra consonant in there. Flat white. But like add a bunch of syrup to it. Like some kind of syrup. Like he can't just take a flat white straight. Like he needs sweetener. I do like that guess though. That's excellent.
• 41:46
  Propter: So. All right, we'll update. We'll update on Deglacia Sen. The Supreme Court.
• 41:52
  Ed: No, we won't.
• 41:53
  Propter: We get confirmation on that next week. We will never update on the Igis and the Supreme Court.
• 41:59
  Ed: That is correct. But anyway, episode existed by then.
• 42:06
  Propter: It is, it is. It is understandable to me that there's some trepidation about the Democratic Party in the happy future where we have a trifecta in 2029 and we still have basically a functional country and you know, it's not nuclear fire everywhere will be somewhat timid in their reforms. I think that there's justification for that in some ways. I think that probably there's going to be less widespread prosecution than some people would prefer, like me. But I think that in terms of institutional reforms there is going to be appetite to do it. There wasn't in. In in 2021 because the margin was zero, but I think in. In 2029 we're going to be there. That said, a lot depends on this election and a lot more depends on the 2028 elections. So get out there, vote, do the Best you can.
• 43:01
  Ed: Just remember you. This is important. You have to vote every time, not just once.
• 43:08
  Lowtax: That's right.
• 43:09
  George: Oh, well, then that's not even worth doing. So you expect me to go down to the polling place twice per year? Twice every two years? I don't know. It depends on how your state and local elections match up against the federal schedule. But at least twice every two years.
• 43:22
  Ed: I mean, I don't care about your local elections. I do care about mine.
• 43:27
  Lowtax: George, it's fine. We'll keep. We'll keep Roy Cooper around for a couple more cycles.
• 43:33
  George: I am just so mad that Ed has implied that social institutions are living things that require active maintenance from me, a voter who has to spend 15 minutes voting a couple times every Tuesday.
• 43:43
  Ed: I get a lot of people mad at me lately, usually around things like people should read theory, such as thinking of the thinking in systems.
• 43:52
  Propter: I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna throw a discourse bomb out there, which is that if you are sufficiently deeply committed to vote blue, no matter who, you only have to show up to vote once. You don't even have to show up for the primary, just show up in November.
• 44:04
  George: That's true. Although I will say, speaking purely about my own certainly local elections statewide is state. State stuff is a little different. But our local elections are a hot mess, and we could use as many primary voters as possible because turnout is nothing and some of the choices being made are suboptimal, so. But they did a really good job last. Last fall. We threw out a couple of really bad state reps on their ass. And good for the voters of Mecklenburg county in that respect.
• 44:34
  Propter: Hell, yeah.
• 44:37
  George: I think I.
• 44:38
  Lowtax: Local voters. Our local voters are fighting over a Waffle House going in.
• 44:42
  Ed: Good. Good.
• 44:44
  George: Our. Wait, how big is the split?
• 44:49
  Lowtax: I have no idea. Judging by Facebook, it's a pretty deep split, though.
• 44:55
  George: How is the Florida Panhandle arguing about a Waffle House like that is ground zero for the Waffle House infestation.
• 45:03
  Lowtax: So there's a housing development, like, kind of near me. We have the same commissioner that is full of rich people.
• 45:12
  Ed: And.
• 45:14
  Lowtax: And I think there. There's a classist thing going on there. Most of us are like, I don't give a shit. Put the Waffle House there.
• 45:20
  George: Do rich people not eat at Waffle House in the Panhandle?
• 45:23
  Ed: They don't. They don't admit to it.
• 45:29
  George: Y' all missing out. I. Y' all being the rich people in the Panhandle, Y' all missing out. I know you. I know everybody here is missing out.
• 45:38
  Lowtax: Missing out on people watching. Not so much the food.
• 45:40
  Ed: Food.
• 45:41
  George: Food's great.
• 45:41
  Ed: What time, what time of day is it? Because you are definitionally missing out. If it is after midnight, Saturday and
• 45:49
  George: Sunday between 9 and 10am it's great.
• 45:53
  Ed: That's like daylight hours. That's weird.
• 45:55
  Lowtax: Yeah, that's not, that's not right, George.
• 45:58
  George: That's when I eat a Waffle House because I've got a three year old. What do you want from me?
• 46:00
  Ed: Actually, that's a good point. He does have it. He does have a child fair.
• 46:04
  Lowtax: Although you have a three year old, you shouldn't, shouldn't be risking Waffle House, period. You should be at, you know, Denny's or IHOP or something.
• 46:11
  George: My, like my buddy actually go down
• 46:13
  Lowtax: at Waffle House at any time.
• 46:15
  George: That's fair. I mean, people are nice up here. I don't know what the panhandle's like up here. It's fine. My buddy, who I gave a ride back up, I was in Atlanta last night for the Charlotte FC Atlanta United match and my buddy caught a ride back to Charlotte with us today and he did a post match stop at the Waffle House. And his wife is employed in fairly high levels of food safety for a national chain. I shall not say more than that. And so apparently eating at Waffle House is for her a quite stressful experience because, not that they're actually bad on food safety there, I think the word was adequate. It's not the end of the world. But because all she can do, because the kitchen is fully visible to everyone in the house, the waffles are visible throughout the house, all she can do is watch closely all the potential or near miss or whatever food safety issues in process, including from customers who are very close to where the food is being cooked.
• 47:13
  Propter: So she's got the curse of knowledge here. She has the curse of expertise and therefore cannot properly enjoy the perfectly adequate precautions taken by Waddlehouse.
• 47:22
  George: My buddy does not feel similarly. He crushed a grand slam combo or whatever it was with great, great, great enthusiastic enthusiasm.
• 47:29
  Lowtax: After the match here, the cook didn't even heat his heroin up in that spoon.
• 47:36
  Propter: I will say, I will say that I, I think sober Waffle House is a very different experience than drunk Waffle House. But they, they're both important that you know, like, there's a lot to be said for approaching Waffle House.
• 47:47
  Lowtax: This is the most prompter ass take I have ever heard of my life.
• 47:51
  George: He's right. And he should say it louder for this.
• 47:53
  Ed: I'm not going to To. I have standards, but.
• 48:14
  Propter: All right, so we've got a pheromone maxi next on the. No, we don't call.
• 48:22
  Ed: No, we don't. No, we don't. What? We're not talking about this.
• 48:25
  Propter: I didn't, I didn't. I didn't write this. This one's Lowtax.
• 48:27
  George: We're pheromone maxing. Pheromone maxing.
• 48:31
  Ed: Okay. All of us are at least mostly successfully married. We're not talking about that.
• 48:39
  Propter: Okay. So anyway, so pheromone Maxine is the burgeoning listener. Is the Apparently. Is the apparently burgeoning practice of young men going on dates, working out and not showering so that they can waft their sweaty pheromones towards their date, which presumably renders them irresistible. Man. What do you think?
• 49:06
  Ed: No, I. I think we shouldn't be talking about this.
• 49:10
  Lowtax: I blame. I blame Ayala and Silicon Valley for this.
• 49:15
  George: If you ever need, like, a gut check on what are these crazy guys up to now, I want you to imagine what posters on our slash girl Dinner Diaries would say about whatever the behavior is. And that is the answer, right?
• 49:30
  Ed: Yeah.
• 49:31
  Propter: If.
• 49:31
  George: If that group would be conflicted about it, you know, this works for me. I can see why it wouldn't work for someone else or love it versus hate it or whatever. If, if, if that. If whatever you're doing falls into that category, it might not help, but you're probably not going to be hurt too bad and do your thing, man. I don't care if you. If the posters in that particular subreddit look at you like an alien and want to hurl you out a window, which I promise you, this particular story, they would look at you like an alien and want to hurl you out a window, then stop, reverse, get the hell out of there, like, as fast as possible.
• 50:05
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 50:06
  Propter: So I got an interesting spin on this in my mentions earlier today that I'm going to bring to the podcast, which is that I had a couple of gay men in my replies saying, yeah, that's actually pretty normal that, you know, you kind of go. You sort of throw it out there as I'm going to shower before our date. Unless. And you know, you get some tickers that there. That there's a preference there. So I think that this is not something.
• 50:30
  George: Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Kink is different from general dating advice. That's not the same thing.
• 50:40
  Propter: These gentlemen were not presenting this as king. These gentlemen were presenting this as being a norm. That exists within the gay dating community.
• 50:46
  Lowtax: Hold on.
• 50:46
  Ed: Like.
• 50:47
  George: Like the way you've. I'm just going how you framed it. I'm not trying to tell you what the gays are up to. I. I don't know. But the way you framed it right, was, you know, you're presenting it as a hey into this. And that to me says kink. That's not right. I mean, maybe, maybe I misread what you were saying.
• 51:03
  Propter: It was. It was presented as a reasonable question to ask that. That, you know, so should I shower or not? Was within the realm of acceptable discourse. And you know, you. You pick your preference and, and you roll with it. So I think this is something that may not be coming from manosphere land. I think this is something that has broken. Contain from. From our brethren, the homosexuals and crossed over. Crossed over into straight dating.
• 51:31
  George: Well, it's crossover in just one side of straight dating. Because again, I. I think.
• 51:35
  Lowtax: I don't think any actually dating. I. I'm sorry, I refuse to believe it.
• 51:41
  George: Okay, let me rephrase. Crossed into one side of people who are attempting to date as straight people.
• 51:47
  Lowtax: Okay, that's. That's fair.
• 51:49
  George: Yeah.
• 51:50
  Ed: Attempting to date. Attempting to be perceived as being. Attempting to date. Pick one.
• 51:55
  Lowtax: Yeah, there's. That's true.
• 51:58
  Ed: I mean, this, this, this is a subculture that. That is like, fellas is liking women gay. Right? Like, right, right. We are. We are dealing with some prime specimens here. Prime specimens.
• 52:11
  George: Again, just use the R Girl Dinner diaries test. Like, it's really. It's not hard. And if you've never been on there, go browse. If you jump into the comments because I sent you there, I'm gonna be pissed. Do not reply. I don't know. They don't care what you have to say. They. They are not interested in it. You will just get banned and that's.
• 52:28
  Ed: You'll.
• 52:28
  George: You'll deserve it. But if you want to do some. Some recon and understand some different perspectives on things and let me tell you, some of the stuff they're cooking in there is wild.
• 52:37
  Ed: Yep.
• 52:37
  George: And I do not endorse. They are not always right. But in terms of perception of men from women, not a bad place to open your context window just a little bit. The look on Lowtax's face as he reads the subreddit is wonderful.
• 52:57
  Lowtax: So what.
• 52:57
  Propter: What.
• 52:58
  Lowtax: What is going on here? Are we. Post your unhinged meals? Relationship spirals, Late night thoughts?
• 53:10
  George: The premise of the subreddit is take a picture of what you're eating and then tell us about what's going on. And what's going on could be anything. There's people in there talking about their families, there's people in there talking about work or other stuff, but mostly it's relationship stuff. It's mostly men doing awful things or the poster in question being in some kind of relationship quandary, difficulty, tangle, whatever, and trying to sort through it publicly. This is not how I deal with my particular relationship issues, which, you know, and a lot of people want to be private about that stuff and that's totally cool. But some people like to talk about stuff with people, and so it's a forum for that. And yeah, you get, you get, you. You get pretty raw insight into what is expected and what would be appreciated. And you know, at least from the subset of women who are posting in these kinds of forums, which, you know, you may be having some sample issues there, but confounding issues.
• 54:06
  Propter: But this is, this is Reddit, so you do kind of have a little over selection on the yes, kick him out of your life entirely, immediately, forever. Throw away the whole man for sure solution.
• 54:17
  Ed: But
• 54:19
  George: for basic behavior stuff though, right? Like for instance, should I shower before a date or not? It doesn't take much to imagine what the. This group would have to say about your choice. Right?
• 54:29
  Ed: Yeah, no, no, this is, this is pretty grim.
• 54:32
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is. This is bleak shit, man.
• 54:38
  George: I'm not endorsing it in general. I'm just suggesting people use it as a quick litmus test for their takes.
• 54:43
  Lowtax: Also as a side note, there is another subreddit called We Want Plates
• 54:52
  Ed: that
• 54:53
  Lowtax: deals with, you know how all the restaurants now they serve you shit on like a shovel or in. In some other. Yeah, stupid farmhouse ass device.
• 55:03
  Propter: It's kind of weird.
• 55:04
  Lowtax: Yeah. There is a subreddit called We Want Plates and that is, that is very fun. Total side note there.
• 55:12
  George: I'm just looking at this in confusion because. Where are y' all eating? Like, who. Who is.
• 55:19
  Lowtax: I mean, it's those like, like, you know how every restaurant. What was the. What was the ski. Like, every restaurant is either called the Thistle and Thorn and thinks that putting like turmeric on. On Brussels sprouts means you can charge $30 for them. Or it's called like, Burger Bitch with a neon sign that says. A neon sign that says, like, I'm gonna fuck a hamburger.
• 55:48
  Ed: Folks, please don't go to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• 55:52
  Lowtax: Yeah,
• 55:55
  Ed: that's. I'm sorry, I'm sorry to all of the Canterburyans. I understand that Burger Bitch is in fact Vegan.
• 56:05
  George: There's a restaurant called Burger and it's vegan.
• 56:07
  Ed: No, no, I'm full of. Okay.
• 56:10
  Lowtax: There is a restaurant called Burger Bitch, I believe, though, probably.
• 56:13
  George: Oh, yeah, I would believe that. Just not that it was vegan. I mean, I mean, that would be a big place.
• 56:17
  Ed: That. That would be a good, you know, senses. Having a sense of humor is important.
• 56:24
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 56:25
  George: And yet people listen to this podcast.
• 56:30
  Ed: Some of us are on it.
• 56:34
  George: I have been served some creative plating before. We did Omakase and Raleigh a few weeks ago or a couple months ago, and some of that was pretty creative. But look, if you're in a restaurant where the plating is a distraction as opposed to some sort of actual contribution to the gustatory experience, then you're in the wrong restaurant. So I don't know what to tell you. There were signs before you got to that point, and you should have listened to them and do better next time.
• 57:05
  Lowtax: Yeah, but every restaurant is that now or. It's a chicken tenders joint.
• 57:11
  Propter: Yeah.
• 57:12
  Lowtax: Which we need to put a stop to.
• 57:14
  Propter: What is up with chicken tenders? It's not good.
• 57:16
  Lowtax: What is. It's because we're a fucking nation of toddlers now who can't eat chicken on a bone.
• 57:24
  George: I mean, I like a chicken tender and I have a three year old, so we eat a lot of chicken tenders.
• 57:28
  Propter: That works out.
• 57:29
  Lowtax: You have a toddler.
• 57:30
  George: Yeah, she. She eats everything, though. So to be fair, it's just when she gets the opportunity, she wants chicken and fries. So, you know.
• 57:37
  Propter: Yeah,
• 57:40
  George: I don't know. Chicken tenders are fine. What are we talking about here?
• 57:43
  Ed: They're fine.
• 57:43
  George: I mean, I don't think we should be eating them three meals a day. But they're fine, right?
• 57:47
  Lowtax: They're fine. But we don't need 1700 chicken tender places every five blocks.
• 57:53
  Ed: I think this is a you problem because we do not have. We do not have 37 chicken tender
• 57:59
  Lowtax: locations because nobody trusts anyone in Boston to make fried chicken.
• 58:03
  Ed: Ed. I mean, and you're not wrong. But also because we have these things called other food. I know it's a concept that hasn't quite gotten to Florida yet, but you'll get there eventually.
• 58:18
  Lowtax: Oh, yes, other food. You have boiled fish, you have boiled beef, you have boiled shrimp, boiled lobster.
• 58:27
  Ed: All right, I'll give you the boiled lobster, boiled pork. We're not.
• 58:33
  George: I. What the reason, though, like, the actual reason behind this is A, ease of service and B, profit margins. Like, yeah, if you're just focused on chicken tenders, you can really Scale up. Like you can do a lot with that. You know, Zaxby's would probably be your best example of this. Rather than Chick Fil A, I would say I have a Zaxby's and a Chick Fil A literally across the street from me. I don't go to Zaxby's very much because, well, I. Zaxby sucks. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry if there's any Zaxby stands out there. And if you haven't had Zaxby's before, it's, it's various kinds of chicken tender. I mean that's pretty much the bit. They have salads and they have sandwiches and stuff, but it's all chicken tender related.
• 59:12
  Ed: They've invented salads now.
• 59:14
  George: They're actually called salads.
• 59:16
  Ed: Oh, I, I retract all surprise.
• 59:20
  George: And now you understand why I don't eat there very often.
• 59:22
  Ed: Yeah, I'd be embarrassed.
• 59:24
  George: But yeah, I mean it's, it's really like if you're, if all of your inputs are batter and chicken, like you can, you can really optimize a lot in the kitchen to deal with that. Whereas if you're McDonald's and you're hand battering chicken strips, which they are experimenting with in the Chicago area, by the way, you may at some point this year get the opportunity to have a hand battered chicken strip at McDonald's.
• 59:49
  Ed: Oh, that is never going to scale it.
• 59:52
  George: Well, it really, if you're not doing that for your whole restaurant's output, then yeah, you're right. It's, it's tough because you have to have an employee battering them by hand and it's messy and takes up a ton of space and, and the fryers get jammed up and it's a whole thing. But if you're exclusively focused on that,
• 1:00:06
  Ed: like need new fryers because how are you dealing with like crossing the streams. Right. You don't want batter on your, your french fries. You're, you're.
• 1:00:15
  George: Have you ever operated a deep fryer? Yeah, you just skim it out any.
• 1:00:20
  Ed: Sure. But like this, this is because this is becoming a substantial amount of training burden.
• 1:00:26
  George: Right. Which is why, which is why McDonald's doesn't have hand battered chicken strips yet. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Probably not. My guess would be not given how obs they are with rapid and efficient service. But whatever. So if you're. Yeah, well, rapid inefficient service.
• 1:00:41
  Lowtax: Unless you go inside now, I just
• 1:00:44
  George: mean in terms of the production in the kitchen, I don't mean, like, the service you get from the person at the machine or whatever. I'm talking about, like, how do we convert an order on the ticker to a completed bag as fast as humanly possible? And McDonald's is really, really, really good. Like, they. Yeah. And it, you know, whenever you're talking about something that scales to, you know, tens of thousands of locations and billions in revenue, like, if you're not really great at it, you're toast. So, like, all of the fast food chains are really good at this, but McDonald's is, like, uniquely. People will ask, like, why can I get, for instance, like, the Big Mac snack wrap in Canada? But, like, U.S. mcDonald's has snack wraps, but not the Big Mac version. And the reason is it takes too long to make. And that's the reason for literally any why any other country has whatever thing in McDonald's. And we can't have that here for whatever reason. It's always because US Consumers won't wait long enough. They need it now. Now, now, now. So it's like a huge. That's a huge focus. Anyhow, we are deep into the economics of fast food here.
• 1:01:42
  Ed: Canada. A better way to a better way to McDonald's. The big.
• 1:01:47
  George: The Big Mac snack wrap is phenomenal, by the way.
• 1:01:51
  Ed: Yes. Yeah.
• 1:01:51
  George: Yeah. So anyhow, to answer the question for why there are so many chicken places. That's why, like, it's really, really easy to scale it when, like, that's your thing and you just go, yeah.
• 1:02:02
  Ed: I mean, the alternative is, like, bubble tea places, right? It's the same thing.
• 1:02:07
  George: Dirty soda places also.
• 1:02:09
  Lowtax: And poke bowls.
• 1:02:10
  Propter: I mean, McDonald's getting. McDonald's is getting into the dirty soda game now, too.
• 1:02:13
  George: So every fast food places. I have been in a. In the past week, I have been in a Wendy's, a Taco bell, and a McDonald's. It's. It's been a rough week for me, guys. Just bear with me. I am training for a marathon. I need some cow. Cows. Every single one has to use the Patrick Wyman reference from our interview of him a while back. If you haven't heard that, go check the archives. It was hilarious. We really enjoyed having him on. But his wife talking about beverage strategy. Like, they've all got a beverage strategy. And the beverage strategy is caffeine and cream, and it sucks.
• 1:02:42
  Ed: All of those just look so gross.
• 1:02:45
  George: I'll say.
• 1:02:45
  Propter: I'll say that I've really enjoyed the dirty height. The dirty high C I had at McDonald's the other week. That was delicious.
• 1:02:52
  Lowtax: I feel like McDonald's shouldn't be. They shouldn't be doing that until they get the ice cream machines fixed.
• 1:02:58
  Propter: Yeah, that's. That's an IP thing, right? Like, they've got. They've got some insane legacy contract. All right, good. George actually know something.
• 1:03:04
  George: Yeah, no, no, no, you were. You were on it. You were on it. You were on it. Go ahead.
• 1:03:07
  Propter: Okay, so. So. So my understanding is they've got some insane legacy contract that's grandfathered back to, like, to, like, the early. Like, like days of. Of. Of massive McDonald's expansion across the steps. And. And they are like this sole source service contract with. With this. With this completely separate entity where McDonald's employees cannot fix the ice cream machine at the McDonald's. They have to get a subcontractor.
• 1:03:35
  Lowtax: They're Huns pushing the Germanic. The Germanic white whistles out of.
• 1:03:46
  George: And they're doing it with no ice cream machine spare parts until toe. Like, the Horsemen aren't allowed near the ice cream machines. No, that's literally. That's exactly it. Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  Propter: And. And it sucks. I mean, like, McDonald's ice cream is delicious. They do a good job of the soft serve. It's. Yeah, if it actually worked, it would be perfect, but it doesn't work, so.
• 1:04:08
  George: McFlurries are good too. They're not as good as a blizzard, but they're a serviceable choice. You know, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll. I'll do a McDonald's shake once in a while, but if I do a milkshake because the machine's down even less once in a while than the. Once in a while, I would otherwise. Consume that kind of calorie bump. But, yeah, you know, we're having a good time.
• 1:04:46
  Propter: All right, we got time for one more topic. What is swap ducks?
• 1:04:51
  Ed: What?
• 1:04:55
  Propter: These are your notes.
• 1:04:59
  Lowtax: No, that was just about Trump's truth show. Oh, God.
• 1:05:03
  Propter: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:04
  Lowtax: Okay, the AI ducks on the lake with the M16s did.
• 1:05:08
  George: What was he trying to do? Canadian geese.
• 1:05:12
  Lowtax: Okay, so. So Trump. Trump, of course, renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America and then posted an AI generated video, I assume Natalie generated it for him, of a bunch of ducks walking along a lake across from what I guess is supposed to be Toronto. The ducks have human arms for some reason.
• 1:05:39
  Ed: How else do you hold a gun?
• 1:05:41
  George: Yeah, yeah, like this guy's ever tried to hold up an M16 with a wing.
• 1:05:46
  Lowtax: Yeah, and they're holding M16s and they're marching along, and eventually there's a sign that says Lake America and they shoot the guns sideways and all that.
• 1:06:00
  George: So just speaking of signs in Lake Ontario, I do appreciate the Ontario Provincial Government putting up a sign saying, you know, this is Lake Ontario and it's entirely for American consumption. Right. Like, the Canadians don't need a sign to be reminded. The sign is in English and French.
• 1:06:19
  Ed: Some of them are Canadian.
• 1:06:22
  George: And it's like, yeah, entire audience of one or one country anyways. But we're going to do it in both of our languages because Canadians love it. Always on brand. Lovable bunch of weirdos.
• 1:06:37
  Lowtax: So if Mark Carney gets in a beef with somebody on Twitter, does he have to, like, post a reply? Twice the clap back twice in English and French.
• 1:06:49
  Ed: I would hope he's smart enough not to be on Twitter, but I'm probably.
• 1:06:53
  George: Oh, no, he's on Twitter. He's on Bluesky, too, but he's on Twitter.
• 1:06:56
  Lowtax: Twitter.
• 1:06:56
  George: Him.
• 1:06:59
  Lowtax: I'm sure he himself is not, but,
• 1:07:01
  Ed: I mean, that's only a little better. I don't know.
• 1:07:05
  Propter: He, like, he comes from banker world.
• 1:07:08
  Ed: That's. That's.
• 1:07:09
  Propter: That's a.
• 1:07:09
  George: That's a cult. It's. It's not that banker. Not that banker world.
• 1:07:13
  Propter: All right.
• 1:07:14
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:07:15
  George: No, no, no, no. He's. He's like.
• 1:07:18
  Lowtax: He's in. He's in a group chat with, like, Illuminati kind of bankers.
• 1:07:22
  Propter: The Gnomes of Zurich.
• 1:07:24
  George: Yeah. He's like, randomly calling up, like, the prime min or the finance Minister of Poland because the guy was cousins with someone that he did a deal with back in the 90s. Like, it's that kind of thing. It's not. It's not right. You know, pseudonymous bankers who live in New York and are just desperate to get a private equity job and, you know, hoping that the firm doesn't discover their posts before that happens. It's. It's not. It's not the same world, man.
• 1:07:51
  Lowtax: Yeah. Or he's talking to the Grand Council in Sligo or that.
• 1:07:59
  George: Sure.
• 1:08:00
  Propter: Yeah. All right, so the ongoing bit here is that there is an international cable of Irish central bankers, if you haven't been following along.
• 1:08:10
  Ed: So thank you for letting me know because I was a little lost.
• 1:08:15
  Lowtax: Yes. People keep blaming the Jews. It's actually the Irish who run all the banks.
• 1:08:21
  Ed: Quiet.
• 1:08:24
  Propter: They got. They got some of us coming and going, man.
• 1:08:29
  Ed: I. I like how, like, George just left. It's fine. It's fine. We. We have been left unsupervised. He's not going to listen to this anyway.
• 1:08:37
  Propter: All right.
• 1:08:37
  Lowtax: He's narcing on us.
• 1:08:39
  Propter: What do we think we have time
• 1:08:40
  Ed: for one more topic if you make us.
• 1:08:44
  Propter: What do you guys got?
• 1:08:45
  Ed: I assumed you had something.
• 1:08:48
  Lowtax: Yeah, I thought you're the one who's had the.
• 1:08:50
  Ed: About, you have.
• 1:08:52
  Propter: Oh, the AI.
• 1:08:54
  Lowtax: Many, many veil bag thing.
• 1:08:56
  Propter: Yeah. So let's, let's talk, let's talk briefly about sort of the status of AI harms and some of them that are real and some of them that are not real.
• 1:09:05
  Ed: Okay.
• 1:09:06
  Propter: Major arguments that get brought up against AI. I'm going to throw them out there. We're going to round table it. Number one, water use. Get to see this one a lot on the Internet.
• 1:09:18
  Ed: Anyone who brings that up is lying to you and should be roundly ignored.
• 1:09:23
  Propter: Yeah. So the AI water use thing comes out of basically tech companies showing very high increases in percentage terms on water use on relatively low bases. There are some local problems with water and AI, but there is not like a systemic problem with the use of water in data centers.
• 1:09:42
  Lowtax: Is there really a local problem outside of the one incident with meta?
• 1:09:46
  Propter: Yeah, like anytime we.
• 1:09:49
  George: Yeah, yeah, anytime you're messing with the physical landscape in a format measured in like multiple acres of impermeability, like yeah, something's gonna go wrong pretty regularly. Like it, it's all fixable and mitigatable and it's not like oh, that means you can't drink water within 10 miles of this place going forward. Like not that at all but like I don't know, people don't really, People's brains are just not wired for water. Like my neighborhood is adjacent to Mountain Island Lake, which is the water supply source for the city of Charlotte. So my neighborhood, if you want to build on a lot on my neighborhood, you can't have more than 24% of the surface area of my lot be what's called impermeable. So think your asphalt, your concretes, your roof tiles, whatever. Like, like all that has to be under 24 of the lot because again like we're right next to the lake and like you do not want, want large volumes of runoff flowing into drinking water sources. Like that's really bad. So you know, that doesn't necessarily apply for the vast majority of data centers. I'm sure somewhere some there's a, there's a data center directly adjacent to some sort of reservoir. But like I'm just saying that to, to give some context where like you don't really think about this stuff because it systems buried underneath your day to day life and like 99% of people don't. It doesn't matter for them, unless they're in the middle of a flood, which you very rarely are, so who cares? But, like, water stuff is tricky, and you can. If you are not educated on water stuff and you see some statistic or some situation, it's really easy to be like, well, that must be what it's like everywhere. It's like, no, that's not. No, no.
• 1:11:19
  Propter: Also, like, units screw everybody up for water talk because, you know, 100,000 gallons of water sounds like a lot of water, and that's a. It's a lot of water for a
• 1:11:27
  Ed: person, but that's not a lot of water.
• 1:11:31
  Propter: Any.
• 1:11:31
  George: That is medical advice. Yeah.
• 1:11:33
  Lowtax: Although it's, what, one day for a thousand people.
• 1:11:36
  Propter: Yeah. Like, I mean, it's so probably not
• 1:11:39
  Lowtax: even a thousand people.
• 1:11:40
  Propter: Like, if somebody's talking about, like, acre feet as a measurement, which is the amount of water it takes to put the depth of one foot over an entire acre of land. 3,000 water. Yeah. So, like, the scale of water use is different than you think it is. It's different than, you know, the bottle of water that you hold in your hand and that you drink. The other thing about water and data centers specifically, and I'm sure I'm going to get some pushback on this one eventually, is that in terms of, like, light industrial uses that pollute water or that cause dangers because of water emanating from them, Data centers are one of the best neighbors you could have in that category. There are a lot of.
• 1:12:20
  George: Effectively zero effect, at least as long as they're not running large volumes of diesel and natural gas generators on site, in which case a little more risk profile. But that's a problem at that point.
• 1:12:32
  Propter: You've got aromatics, and that's a different deal.
• 1:12:34
  George: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 1:12:35
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:12:35
  Lowtax: Like, the real demon with water is Propter and his favorite crop, alfalfa.
• 1:12:41
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:12:42
  Lowtax: And growing it in the middle of
• 1:12:45
  Ed: Waterhead.
• 1:12:48
  George: He's got. He's got a thoroughbred in the backyard. Sorry, paddock.
• 1:12:52
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:12:53
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:12:54
  Propter: So I posted about this, so I might as well talk. Talk about it on. On the podcast. But. But my dad's wife's work is that he's a plant biochemist and alfalfa's his organism.
• 1:13:04
  Ed: Oh, that's right. That's right. I rem.
• 1:13:07
  Propter: Now, he does, you know, he does like plant bacteria, symbiotic relationships, the bacteria that live in the nodules on Alfalfa.
• 1:13:14
  George: There are good uses for Alfalfa. Propter, don't worry.
• 1:13:18
  Propter: Alfalfa. Alfalfa is awesome. You just shouldn't grow it in the middle of a desert and, and irrigate it. You can grow it in the middle of a desert and not irrigate it. And that's fine. But if you're going. But yeah, it actually, it actually does. Okay. It just doesn't have harvestable yield. Yeah, like, like, like Alfalfa and deserts is like, it drops its taproot like super, super deep. So it's, it's very resilient to drought conditions. But also it'll use pretty much as much water as you throw at it.
• 1:13:45
  Ed: Yeah, like so, yeah. Data center cooling. Like, I have not, I have not, I have not designed a cooling system for a data center. However, my, my house draws remarkably high numbers of kilowatt hours. Like if you look at, if you look at like the cooling equipment, the biggest danger to water coming out of data centers is like, and this is me like trying to make the strongest possible argument I have for this is like leaching metal out of the tubes that, that like route water like in the high conductive parts. Right? Because obviously, like, you have, you, you warm air comes out of the, out of the computer, you know, area out of the computer sat like racks and is blown over metal tubes that have cold water in it because you want to transfer the heat and then you pump the water to make the, the heat go away. This is why they have the, you know, cooling towers and stuff because you need a lot of surface area, right? You use surface area to, to radiate out that heat. I know this is going to blow some people's minds, but they would like those pipes to not leak and to never leak. And that means they use like, inert substances and they use very, like, they use very good coatings inside of them that don't react to water. So like, I'm trying to give the absolute strongest argument for why you might encounter a problem. And like, I'm pretty sure water going through the pipes in your average house in New England is probably worse for.
• 1:15:21
  George: It definitely has. I will say too, it's, it really matters whether you're talking about east of the Mississippi roughly, or west of the Mississippi roughly. It's not the Mississippi. It's a little bit further west than that. But whatever. We don't have to talk about macroclimate. The point being, like east of the Mississippi roughly, it's very rare that you're in a situation where water use restrictions for long periods of time are necessary because there's a ton of water. There's so much water on the eastern side of the continent. Like, there is so Much to the point where live there it usually the problem is too much water. It's very rare that not enough water is a long term major issue west of the Mississippi and really it's further west than that. But roughly west of the Mississippi. We're in a different territory there. There's a lot more nuance. There are places that we should never be using any water for industrial uses whatsoever for any reason and that includes data centers. But we're already pumping multiple rivers worth of water into agricultural pursuits which use far, far, far, far, far, far far more water like like nationally data center use relative to agriculture alone and irrigation within agriculture alone. So this is just water poured on crops. That's it. It's 2.4% of the water we pour on crops. Like we are talking about such and again like not all of that data center usage is in areas that don't have large volumes of surplus water in the biosphere. So like again in the vast majority of North Carolina like you could be dumping large scale acre feet into data center uses. And it does not matter. There are exceptions. We're in a drought right now here and it's a pretty bad drought by the standards of the region. So like there are going to be times when you have issues but like generally in your typical year even accounting for climate change, etc etc etc. Like it's just not a concern. But if you're talking about Nevada or Colorado or you know, I'm not using those as typical data center locations but just illustratively right. Or whatever. Let alone building something like semiconductor manufacturing which requires enormous volumes of water with big throughput and actual effluent in it. In Arizona where we do not have enough water because we're pouring it all on the alfalfa. Like these people that have found religion around AI data centers being the big water use problem are either just jumping onto something because it's the hot thing to talk about or because they are really anti I if you're really anti I don't care. I'm not going to try and convince you that you are wrong. I'm just going to say you're jumping onto a thing here. Or they're complete idiots because. Because agriculture in the Mountain west is the single biggest threat to the environment in terms of water use by humans in the Western hemisphere. It's not close. It's obscene what we do to our bodies of water in the western hemisphere or Western United States.
• 1:18:04
  Lowtax: The biggest threat to the western United States is Arizona
• 1:18:10
  George: mostly. It's a little Complicated.
• 1:18:14
  Propter: Just to jump on what George said there. A lot of the water issues in the western United States are downstream of what was at one point maybe a useful full water rights regime, but a water rights regime that has been antiquated for centuries now. So, like, we can get into that in more detail some other time maybe. But the way we do water rights law in the west is crazy.
• 1:18:36
  Ed: We need to find a water lawyer. Somebody recommend us one.
• 1:18:39
  Lowtax: Oh, wow.
• 1:18:40
  George: You know, there actually is a Canada angle here, too, and we should talk about this in full detail at another point. But there is a lot of agriculture in eastern Washington, Idaho, that neck of the woods that operates under the assumption that the water they're using to irrigate potatoes and other things is not 100% dependent on what Canada chooses to release, dictated by a treaty that is under renegotiation right now. So, like, a hot topic we could dive into. You know, it's not like my mom wrote a book about this or anything like that. So, you know, whatever. That topic would be fun to dive into because that treaty negotiation is happening in the context of some very silly stuff from the other parts of the American government. And, like, man, you know, yeah, I hope you don't need that water on
• 1:19:26
  Ed: the Columbia River Basin for national security reasons. You should be buying Maine potatoes.
• 1:19:34
  George: Does Maine grow potatoes?
• 1:19:35
  Ed: Yeah, Maine grows a ton of potatoes. Like it.
• 1:19:39
  George: It is still somehow like a crab. We have returned to Maine.
• 1:19:44
  Ed: It is one of the few places where they still have, like, time off during the school year because, like, kids go help with harvesting the potatoes. I'm sure most of them sit at home playing Grand Theft Auto now, but, like, that's essential. That's, like, ostensibly the goal. That's the white voice to the French, mostly.
• 1:20:04
  Propter: All right.
• 1:20:05
  Lowtax: Do the kids still play Grand Theft Auto?
• 1:20:07
  Ed: Oh, they would will.
• 1:20:08
  Propter: Okay.
• 1:20:09
  George: They will be this November.
• 1:20:11
  Propter: Item number two, data center evils. Data center construction. Is that an environmental threat insofar as
• 1:20:19
  Ed: construction needs to be monitored no matter what it is? Yeah, sure, I guess.
• 1:20:25
  Propter: Yeah. So, like, there. There are some problems there that are basically related to lack of oversight generally and lack of law enforcement happening. Lots and lots of things going on. There's no question that there are. That some of the data center construction is being happened under conditions where people are trying to cut corners, do it fast, and do it not according to the law. Maybe some of the laws need to be changed. But these are the same problems that you see for any kind of construction anywhere. They're not special and unique to data centers. So that's, that's kind of the real deal.
• 1:20:55
  George: The only, the only thing I would
• 1:20:56
  Lowtax: say that's unique, we built the entire states of Florida and Georgia based on those principles.
• 1:21:03
  Ed: A data center is a warehouse with cool cooling. Like, that's base. It is a big box with cooling. And you can do that in some really shitty ways. Like the crypto people used to basically run machines to failure because they cheat down on H Vac and they literally rented shitty old warehouses on the, like, on the outskirts of towns and just put fans in the roof. Right. Because they didn't really care if the hardware blew up. GPUs are now a little more expensive than that. Right. Like, they're, they're, but there's, there's, they're still building boxes. It's, We've, we've built lots of boxes. Walmart exists, right?
• 1:21:39
  George: Yeah. The only thing I think that's unique about data centers in this respect is that there are a very large number of very, very large projects. And like, at a certain point, scale becomes important there. But like, we haven't rolled out a
• 1:21:53
  Ed: fleet of Walmarts in, in a very long time in this country. Yes.
• 1:21:56
  George: It's a linear expansion of the problems that any construction project has as opposed to an exponential one.
• 1:22:02
  Ed: Yeah, totally.
• 1:22:03
  Propter: All right, Third, third major prong for environmental impact and Data centers./AI is power usage.
• 1:22:11
  Ed: Yeah, that one's real. That's a problem.
• 1:22:13
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:22:13
  George: No, I'll take the other side on this.
• 1:22:14
  Propter: Interesting.
• 1:22:16
  George: In aggregate, so the way electricity grids work and the way electricity pricing works is you have a very large network of power generation, which is generally a combination of variable and fixed costs. And then you have a whole bunch of transmission and distribution assets that are purely fixed costs. So as long as the network is operating, you are just spreading that across all your users. On paper, if you just did like a toy model for how an electrical system should work, the addition of a new large load, and there are some exceptions around this and you know, around transmission upgrades and stuff, but let's stipulate that the large load is upgrading transmission, distribution and paying for that. Right. Not necessarily getting a beneficial rate. All they're doing is we'll upgrade the infrastructure and then we'll pay the rate that we're, we're being charged, that makes everyone else's electricity cheaper. And the reason for that is that the price that you're paying, your denominator gets larger relative to the numerator, which doesn't change, doesn't mean you don't have to Upgrade the grid you do. But the net, everybody's net welfare should be slightly at least better off than it was before. Now there are some tricky points with this when it comes to break evens of you know, when you're adding distribution electricity market, electricity market, microstructure the structure of utilities markets versus like, like integrated vertical utilities like I have Duke Energy. But most people are paying a retail utility who are then buying power from wholesale power markets. You know there are nuances here to all this stuff but in aggregate on average and most of the time the addition of new large loads should lower electricity ratepayers costs as long as those large loads are at least mostly paying for the infrastructure cost of upgrading.
• 1:24:03
  Ed: I agree with all of that in the long run. I'm not sure that's happening in the long run.
• 1:24:08
  Propter: And as a continuous function. Correct. So like you can get caught on the wrong side of discontinuities there. And some of these things can take a while to come online.
• 1:24:16
  George: You can, it depends how you address. So it depends on how all the, all of this is structured. Right. Like and, and there's a sliding scale from worst case to best case scenario. So like but the worst outcomes are utilities invest huge new capital in something like Vogel which was Georgia Powers nuclear power plant which was just obscenely over budget, took way longer than expected to be developed, etc etc etc, etc. And there are risks of creating a higher rate base for utility or for utility customers that aren't data centers when the data centers don't emerge. There are ways around that and there's a bunch of state laws that are looking at this in a place like Texas. It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter because of how their electricity market is regulated. Like that's just not a concern. They have a fully deregulated electricity market basically. So just trust me on that, that that's not the issue. The other thing is like technology wise, like, like where you're adding your incremental power, the breakevens are not that chunky like the, the, the, the building a high cost per megawatt hour generating facility is generally not how you're going to fix these problems. Generally how you can fix these problems is upgrading grid in infrastructure like distribution and transmission infrastructure. You're going to add generating assets and flexibility assets like, like solar, natural gas, maybe some wind and then batteries and fuel cells as well. And data centers are also going to invest a bunch in their on site reliability stuff. You know there are downstream, there are downstream effects of this in terms of price and like what it costs to buy all this stuff and add additional. But like you're then talking about the cost to add incremental power and how utilities select from a variety of different resource options. And that's not a data center problem, that's a how do we run utilities in this country problem. Because their reticence to say okay, let's max out our existing infrastructure, let's do everything we can to alleviate choke points with batteries, let's add additional long, long distance transmission, let's do everything we can to encourage flexible, very fast to power utility scale development. All of that is not in necessarily their instinct or their immediate best economic interest. Whereas slap another CCGT on it combined cycle gas turbine, basically the big, big gas generating plants. That is where the muscle memory goes for a bunch of reasons. So I say all this to say that the power problem, if it is a problem, is mostly because of how power markets work and how this is all structured as opposed to, to its data center's faults. We would have the exact same problem if any other load, large load came along in any other configuration. And it's not unique to data centers.
• 1:27:17
  Ed: But I totally get what you're saying. But like we're Talking about throwing 7, 7.5 gigawatts of power into the middle of Texas. And granted Texas, you know their stuff. Sure, whatever.
• 1:27:26
  George: Texas ain't the issue.
• 1:27:27
  Ed: Yeah, I agree. But like it's, that's not the only multi gigawatt data center like complex that they're building, right? And they're putting fucking turbines in the things, right? Like they're doing that because I, I totally hear what you're saying, but like it feels like a spherical cow argument to me to some, some extent.
• 1:27:44
  George: Like I don't know what that means.
• 1:27:47
  Ed: Consider a spherical cow, right?
• 1:27:49
  George: Like have you not heard that our cow's not spherical? I'm imagining rotund side of beef.
• 1:27:53
  Ed: Nod. I didn't know you had a physics degree. Oh, have you really not heard this one? It's like you asked thief.
• 1:28:00
  Lowtax: In North Carolina, you ask a physicist
• 1:28:02
  Ed: a question about, like about a cow and the physicist naturally says first assume a spherical cow of uniform density.
• 1:28:08
  George: Density right down here in North Carolina. We have, we have hogs. We don't have cows.
• 1:28:13
  Ed: I mean you can sphericize a hog if you would like, it's easier.
• 1:28:17
  George: And I do. They're smaller.
• 1:28:19
  Ed: But like, like I sure it is, it is a problem with power markets and, and it is a problem with like government, you know, executive function. Regardless, right. Like nothing is preventing you from saying you must put twice as much generation capacity as you use in solar on your, your roof. In fact, I think that would be a great idea. I also don't think that's an excuse. Like this is just a real problem they are exacerbating, but they are exaggerating it.
• 1:28:45
  Propter: I think kind of the synthesis here is that yes, data centers use a lot of electricity, which means that there's a spike in electrical demand. If we were to do this correctly in the long run for, among other reasons because the new unit of marginal power generation is almost certainly clear cleaner than an old unit of marginal power generation even if it's on the same source. So like new gas is cleaner than old gas.
• 1:29:11
  George: The, the exception to throw into that is that some, some long lived fossil assets are being kept alive longer. So coal in the TVA is one example.
• 1:29:19
  Propter: But overall, yes, sorry, sorry, I, I should specify that new build, new build is, is better for the environment than old build to the extent that things are not getting sunset. Yeah, that's bad because it's old.
• 1:29:31
  George: Yeah.
• 1:29:31
  Propter: But like even, I mean if, if God forbid we were to build new coal, it would be dramatically better than old coal. It wouldn't be as good as anything, not coal, but it would be better than old coal. We've gotten better at controlling emissions now don't build more coal. I think.
• 1:29:46
  George: Well anyway, yeah, it goes without saying anyhow, continue.
• 1:29:49
  Propter: So like there's, there's a happy path where we put together a bunch more distribution capacity and a bunch more generation capacity and we're in an age of cheap power and it is less polluted, polluting and that's net good. Like the data centers get serviced. Everybody else, everybody else's net power mix gets less polluting than it currently is because we're rolling out new stuff and, and that's if not net good for the environment, not net bad for the environment. You know that, that, that despite the fact we're using more power, we're using a cleaner mix and that's, that's moving in the right direction. It is also true that in part because of the haste with which some of this stuff is getting stood up and some of the, let's say imperfect morals of some of the actors looking at you, Elon Musk, you're getting temporary, mostly natural gas based solutions to on site power generation because these guys don't want to have to hassle with distribution while they're getting set up. They will eventually want to hassle with distribution because they are paying a premium, premium for dirty natural gas generation on site compared to what they could eventually be paying through through a proper grid build out. You get situations like what was at one point but I think is no longer true of Colossus 1 in Memphis
• 1:31:07
  George: and what I think is connected to TBA now. Yeah, it's connected to TVA now. Yeah.
• 1:31:12
  Propter: So but like Colossus 2 is still using, is still using on site natural gas generators and I know there was a picture of a New Jersey data center that was also using un. Unlicensed, unpermitted on site.
• 1:31:23
  George: Which to be clear like anytime that's happening, like if, if you're running an on unlicensed like spot emission source like that and you're. That should be reported to state regulators and that's legal. Like straightforwardly it's illegal. Like there's no jail time. I don't, I don't know enough about the penalties to say jail time but like that it, they can shut that down. Like that is something that's well within the regulatory schematics that we have under the Clean Air act and state laws. So like 100. I totally agree with that. I'm not saying that there aren't issues with it but like I just want to be clear here. Like if you, if you imagine a decarbon, a fully decarbonized economy where we are no longer burning internal combustion engine molecules to get around every day. I Ed, I know you walk. You don't have to be smug about it.
• 1:32:09
  Ed: No, I ha. I mean I do but I do own a car.
• 1:32:14
  George: Right. So if we, if we want to get to an economy where we are not 100% dependent on combustion for vast swaths of economic activity like the data center build out that's actually going to take place. I'm not talking about the pie in the sky forecast where either triple counting or quintuple counting stuff. I'm talking about like the actual data center build out is pretty small in comparison. So if we have a problem doing this now with data centers we're screwed. If we ever want to get rid of the ever move to a fully decarbonized economy where the grid is the energy source for everything and we have to do that like that, that, that's not really negotiable. Like the question is like when can we get to that point and like how do we go about doing that? When I say the grid I also mean micro grids and you know, stuff that's more local than the actual national or regional grid. But you know, suffice to say electrical grids are the answer to all that stuff. And we're going to have to get to that point. We have the technology to do this today. It's a cost issue at this point and a incent at this point. And eventually we're going to have to get to the point where that is how we're getting energy around the economy and if we don't get there, we're toast. And I don't know how to say this more plainly. That's a lot bigger lift than like the relatively limited impact of data center, like the much exaggerated impact of data centers to this point. Also keep in mind there are other tailwinds for electricity like grid demand. Right now we have flat grid demand for 20 years. And the big reason for that is that efficiency was going up so quickly that it overwhelmed the natural increase in electricity demand from economic growth. We are still getting plenty of growth in electricity demand from variously on touring of domestic manufacturing, transportation, electrification and natural economic growth that efficiency just no longer can keep up with. Like you can't re swap out all of the incandescent light bulbs for LEDs. Low tax X.
• 1:34:11
  Propter: He's cocoon.
• 1:34:12
  George: Is it that bad?
• 1:34:12
  Ed: He's a tired boy. All right.
• 1:34:15
  George: So anyhow, I like, I, I, I just like, I think it's right, you know, to, to sort of close this out because we've talked enough about this or I've talked enough about this. Nobody else has been talking. God. Okay, yes, it's a problem. No, it's not the end of the world. And yes, we can do a lot to make it better. But I, I just think it's exaggerated.
• 1:34:37
  Propter: Okay, I had one more, one more data center topic, one more AI topic by listener request here that we should talk about which is data collection and privacy. This is coming from a librarian listener. We respect your service goes.
• 1:34:51
  Ed: We do go read your user agreements. If generally speaking for you, and I am not your lawyer, proctor is not aware generally speaking, if you like are paying them, they're not training on you data unless you opted into it.
• 1:35:06
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:35:07
  Ed: So a little bit for US based
• 1:35:11
  Propter: companies, which is that for anthropic and OpenAI for the subscription plans, both of them auto opt you into training on your data. You can opt out of it. Yes, and you should, but the default is that you're in. So if you're on a subscription plan with either of them, opt out of them training on your data and they will not train on your data if you're through a subscription plan. If you're running through the API, you're opted out by default. Default?
• 1:35:35
  Ed: Yes.
• 1:35:36
  Propter: I don't know how Google does it. I don't really care how Google does it.
• 1:35:39
  Ed: I didn't have to opt out, but I have a Google domain.
• 1:35:42
  Propter: Okay.
• 1:35:43
  Ed: Like, I have access to Gemini's advanced nonsense, but I have a domain and that may change things. You should. Look, that said, I am not saying you should not opt out. I do. I also wouldn't worry about it that much because generally speaking, most of, most of the concerns people have around that are probably in practice not true, not like grounded in reality, you should opt out because you shouldn't. You are a paying customer. You shouldn't help them. Right. They are helping you. But like, I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
• 1:36:18
  Propter: Personally, I think the bigger concern with, with privacy and AI generally is data collection. Not by the AI companies themselves, but by whoever else is collecting your data through whatever mechanism they're doing. So it's become much, much easier to look through the haystack for needles. And that's true not just for data you're generating now. That's true for data you generated years ago, before AI was a thing.
• 1:36:38
  George: Also, like, this is legal advice. It's, it's subpoenable. It's all subpoenable. If you type something into API that can be. Into a, into a, into an AI output that can be subpoenaed in a way that calling up an attorney cannot. So, like, yeah, yeah, good call.
• 1:36:55
  Propter: Yeah, like the wall. If you don't.
• 1:36:57
  George: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:00
  Lowtax: So you're saying I shouldn't have asked Chat GPT to find me a hit guy for Mike Norvell last night.
• 1:37:06
  Ed: I am saying specifically, it's college football season, folks, that if you were going to go ahead and do that, you should be using the OpenAI API with zero data retention enabled. And if you don't know how to do that, please contact your technical account manager.
• 1:37:20
  Propter: But also, I think enough people were probably doing that last night that you're going to be okay. Yeah.
• 1:37:24
  Ed: That's all. Now, if you were using like Claude, I mean, come on, that. That's going to go call the cops on you.
• 1:37:34
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:37:35
  Propter: To speak very briefly to attorney client privilege, because George brought it up, the law is still a little bit unsettled. But as of right now, if you, the potential client, were to talk to an AI, you would blow attorney client privilege on whatever you were talking to the AI about. If you, the client, were to retain an attorney and then the attorney were to talk to an AI about whatever you would have instead talked to them about. That would be work product. And that would be protected under that. Not. Not attorney client privilege, but under a different privilege that probably would protect it. So, like, the landscape is still changing, but bottom line is, assume that the courts can get at anything that you. You not an attorney, say to an AI if they really want to.
• 1:38:26
  George: I apologize to listeners for assuming that you weren't attorneys. That's. That's on me.
• 1:38:33
  Ed: All right.
• 1:38:34
  Propter: Is that our show? We have anything else we want to talk about?
• 1:38:37
  Ed: I mean, I think if we do low tax might jump off a Bridge.
• 1:38:40
  George: It's 86 degrees and I have to go run 18 miles. So, yeah, I think.
• 1:38:45
  Lowtax: Okay, you guys, that was. That was about a half hour. So. So that's two months of AI talk. You guys just burned through right there.
• 1:38:53
  Ed: The people demand it. Lowtax.
• 1:38:55
  Lowtax: We didn't do it. Like, do we need to put this in, like, token form?
• 1:39:00
  Ed: That wasn't really AI talk. That was more data center talk, which is not covered. That is not covered under the Treaty of Paris.
• 1:39:09
  Lowtax: Data centers. Data centers count. Nobody uses data centers for anything. But AI.
• 1:39:13
  Propter: You are. Can we. Can we do like, a college football preview next week? Make it up to you with that preview.
• 1:39:17
  George: It's gonna be week two next week. Recap of the early season.
• 1:39:22
  Lowtax: No, it's still week one next week. Is it? Remember, this is the week zero thing where there's like three games and.
• 1:39:29
  George: Oh, yeah, I forgot there. I forgot there.
• 1:39:31
  Ed: So I can show up like 45 minutes late next week.
• 1:39:35
  George: Okay, so next week we're going to talk about the first few EPL matches and college football.
• 1:39:40
  Ed: All right. An hour.
• 1:39:42
  George: Beautiful.
• 1:39:44
  Ed: All right.
• 1:39:45
  George: Don't forget to send our show to people who you think might like it, rate us, review us all that fun stuff. This episode. I think you're safe to share. I think we didn't embarrass ourselves too badly. Unlike last week. We're not going to talk about last week again. So very happy to be back in Charlotte, I'm George.
• 1:40:05
  Propter: In dc, I'm Propter.
• 1:40:07
  Lowtax: In outer Florida, I am Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer.
• 1:40:10
  Ed: And in Boston, the mid.
• 1:40:11
  George: Stay normal, y'.
• 1:40:12
  Propter: All.