Economic D-Day Is Here | EP. 077 Lemonade Stand 🍋

19:56And I was thinking, and the problem I keep running into is like, even if, because we've talked on this show about how the economic shock of China's growing manufacturing is causing some problems in a lot of countries because they're just really fucking good at it. And if they continue on this path, everyone is going to be economically dependent on them for manufacturing. It's offshoring everything to them. And there's things you could do. And it's like, if that was a priority, There is a way to give and take with a friendly ally to maybe like, we want this, we have to give something to you. Like there's a way to make this a win-win on a multi-decade long Northern border sharing ally.

20:34The fact that he turns every negotiation into a extremely contentious head-to-head bullying match, I think is counterproductive even if we had insane strength. Even if we were fully able to bully Canada, we don't seem to be able to do. It's like a human thing. If you were to do that to somebody in your life, they would resent you very quickly. You'd ruin all your friendships. You would ruin all your friendships so quickly. And it's insane that we, as a country, but especially as a fucking negotiator and a president, are running this strategy down mid over and over until nobody can trust anything you sign, say, shake hands on, agree on, or deal.

21:14and uh i think that's the problem because i don't think there's a world where it's impossible that you could even get canada to agree to change their ev tariffs with china or whatever but you have to be willing to you can't just take take take take demand demand demand threaten threaten

21:30Atrioc:threaten bully bully bully it doesn't work it's he wants to be in a perpetual mexican standoff guns pointed at everybody else everybody pointing guns at him but they're not allowed to have guns or they doesn't like if they use guns back it's like no if they agree to stop the stand down he wants another one he'll then pull the guns back out he wants it to be gone he takes out

21:49Aiden:a second gun exactly now i've got you where i want you it's to i think to actually connect the first the the first two stories here i think what's really funny is in in the iran scenario he has this excuse which i don't think is a good one given all the context that we've gone through on the show that the Iran nuclear deal was made by the Obama administration. It was made by another guy. And that deal wasn't effective. Ignore the merits of that argument and just take it at face value. I'm going to handle this differently. I'm a new guy, but with Canada, he made the last deal. So no matter what, it doesn't matter if it was the president before, it doesn't matter if it was him, him when it happened he can he's willing to throw everything out at any time yeah i wish i had yeah okay i just got the direct quote i'm sorry in 2020 usmca is the largest most significant modern and balanced trade agreement in history and it's the best agreement the united states has ever made so to say that and then to undo it not but six years later five years later really uh is people can't trust that of course and you just undermine your ability to do it at all going forward even honestly even if new administrations come in i think that's the frustrating part is the idea that he could totally i mean the republican party could lose the next election we could have an all democratic like senate house of representatives no it could be mark carney's clone wins in America and they handshake and they love each other and they kiss.

23:31Aiden:But it doesn't really matter who's in charge next because there's this underlying idea of no matter what the result, things can just flip to another insane guy within four years. Yeah. And that is the memory that will live on for at least a few more terms, I feel like. Yeah. I think you'd have to build a trust is a lot harder to build back than it is to lose. And I think like you just can't make a 20 year deal with it. You'd have to make a four-year deal, Max, and then renegotiate. You know, it's just, I think that is going to have consequences for a while to come. And it's depressing. I mean, it's like...

24:06Aiden:Do you ever think about how... We've talked about this, the idea of the benevolent dictator. It's like the benefit of tons of trade-offs. I hope they're very obvious. But when you have one guy in charge for a really long time, you can make a bunch of progress. I think Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore is like a good example. And even in China's case, right? You have for all of their problems that we've discussed at length, you have one consistent figure that's in charge and like pursuing a policy agenda for a long period of time that can result in good things for that place. You could also have an insane guy at the head.

24:47Is this your Putin for America pitch?

24:49Aiden:Is this trying to classify him in insane guys? No, I see what you're saying. But it's funny because it still depends on the person because, you know, if you gave Trump 20 years in power of complete control, he would still change his mind on his own deal. It would still go. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. If you have to be stable, it's like any human relationship, whether it's the government, whether it's a person, whether it's an autocrat, whether it's their guys, they have to they have to commit to things they say they're going to do. He loves D-Day. He loves D-Day.

25:18Atrioc:He just wants D-Day to happen. It's like,

25:21Aiden:if we had unlimited terms of Trump, like let's say we've had Trump for the last 25 years. We're still flip. No, I mean, and that's what's happening in Iran too, is that they, they are finding, even when we get to the negotiation table, things change or the second, the second, the balance of power is in his favor. He's like, well, the old deal, I don't like that. I'm good. It's like Darth Vader. It's like, that's what I've altered the deal. that's the problem and so everyone is rationally doing the rational thing which is find whatever leverage we have and grow that out as much as possible so that i have some counter punch otherwise uh you're gonna keep bullying me that is like just what you have to do and it's a i don't know it's a frustrating experience you know what never changes what never changes answer cells i don't think famously isn't that the problem is that they're constantly No, I'm holding on.

26:14I'm reading something. That's like the worst.

26:17Aiden:I'm reading something. Turns out they change all the time. They all the time. It's actually it's actually part of what makes it really hard to address. Yeah, it's a so it's basically been unaddressable until Doug is about to tell us that it's been 100 % cured right now until now.

26:36Atrioc:That's right. Okay. Major cancer breakthrough. Now, probably all of y 'all have heard stories where somebody I've done this on this show, right? Where you're like big scientific breakthrough. Seems like this could have huge implications for cancer. And you're like, whoa, that sounds cool. And then two years go by and you've never heard about it again. And this goes, this happens every one, two, three years. And eventually when you're a grizzled old, like man in your fifties, well, you start to be like, okay, is he looking at it? I don't know that I necessarily trust the next story here about some scientist eliminated tumors in mice or whatever.

27:12Atrioc:So Perry, I sent you an article, but you can honestly, you can pull this up anywhere. This is a huge story this past week. Moderna. We love them. They injected us all with microchips. Okay. I'm a Moderna taker. This I can talk to Bill Gates. It's awesome. You get to give me advice. Yeah. Constantly during this show, we communicate to each other the jokes. Yeah. The whole show is written by Atriarch and then we're fed the lines. I'm getting it from Bill Gates.

27:36Aiden:So if you have anything, if you're angry about anything we or Doug have said, Yeah, Blaine is so good.

27:41Atrioc:I don't like Atriox's script for that Doug joke. Okay, but this is not one of those stories. This is an actual, we made a thing that is going to help cancer for real now. So Moderna, a huge announcement last week. Let me just back up and quickly. You remember RNA vaccines, that cool new thing that we, I mean, not invented, but became - We invented. That we invented. That was a big thing about MLS. So obviously that really kicked off during COVID era. And that was how we made the COVID vaccines. And this is a really interesting and valuable new way to be able to make vaccines. The general difference is instead of a normal vaccine, where you inject a weakened version of a virus, for example, with RNA, you're, you're sending messengers, which will tell the cells to make something.

28:29Atrioc:So the idea is we can design in a lab. We want your cells to make a certain type of thing, inject that the cells make it. and then your body learns that's a bad thing. I'm going to look out for it. So it's very flexible and fast and has all these advantages over traditional vaccines. So given that, as you pointed out, actually, that was wrong. Cancer cells do change a lot. And this is first time here. And that's kind of trust because Aiden has a strong background in medical science. That's true. Well, in podcasting, which is downstream of, which is upstream of all upstream of all knowledge. Yes, it's cool.

29:03Atrioc:Once you click the first upload button, YouTube has you glance into the orb of knowledge. And from that point forward, you cannot be wrong. Yeah. So as we are creating this new type of vaccine that you can basically design in a lab, what you are going to tell your body to make, it opens up this idea of, could you make a personalized cancer vaccine? Part of the challenge with cancers again, is like they change all the time and it's your own body cells changing. How are you going to get your body to figure out exactly what the cancer cells look like? And they're changing all the time anyway. So in 2017, Moderna started developing a personalized cancer vaccine for melanoma, which is skin cancer.

29:42Atrioc:So here's the process that they came up with. You take a sample of somebody's cancer cells, the actual tumor. You use their program, which will analyze via machine learning, will analyze all the different cells, including healthy cells. And there's like thousands of different ways mutations might show up or different proteins that can show on the surface of a cell. and they design up to hopefully 34 of these basically markers of what a cancer cell looks like in this person's body rather than a healthy cell. Okay. So they are analyzing your specific DNA and the way the DNA is showing up and creating cancer.

30:18Atrioc:Okay. They then in their lab design and manufacture an RNA vaccine that is custom to you. It is specific to your specific cancer cells. Okay. And then they create that. They inject it. The immune system says, okay, I'm going to build this thing that you told me how to build. It builds it, or I should say the cells build it. The immune system goes, what are these things? What the fuck's going on here? It identifies them go, okay, I know to look out for these in the future. And then it goes on to the rest of the body, realizes it's present in the cancer cells and kills it. So you are creating, you're basically using machine learning to understand some specific traits of tumors from your specific body.

30:56Atrioc:You tell the body to make that very specific thing. and now the body is trained against your specific cancer. This is a sort of like conceptual dream that people have had for a long time now. In 2023, they've been working on this since 2017. In 2023, they started phase three trials. Phase three is basically the final test for medicine. This is the really big one you get. This one had 1 ,100 people, different countries, different hospitals, blind studies. It's the extremely thorough, if this passes, this is a legit drug that we can sell to people. and last week on Wednesday, they announced they had passed phase three trials.

31:32Atrioc:They passed it? They passed phase three trials.

31:34Aiden:I thought this was, they started it, dude. Wait, that's huge.

31:38Atrioc:Last week, and this is again, this is not hypothetical. It's not promising research. Last week, a major pharmaceutical company cleared the trials to prove that they have a cancer vaccine that dramatically reduces the death and recurrence of melanoma. That's insane. That's fucking insane. And for all of these patients, that's a custom made RNA for that individual person. Nothing like that has happened before and actually gotten through phase three trials. So this is fucking awesome. There's one and a half million Americans just in America living with melanoma. Every year, 110 ,000 new people are diagnosed.

32:09Atrioc:This is from the cancer organizations. I forget the names. 8 ,500 people die a year in the US from melanoma, about 60 ,000 globally. And the idea now is like, this is going to help them. In this particular case, it's melanoma post-surgery, but they're looking at approximately a 50 % reduction in cancer recurrence or death. So it's not 100 % gone, but 50 % reduction. A couple of asterisks here that I can get to later, but that's basically what we're looking at.

32:35Aiden:All this stuff about lives saved and people helped. What about Moderna stock price? That's what we're talking about.

32:43Atrioc:Nobody gives a shit except for the stock dude. Perry, can you pull up the Moderna stock market? So the graph is actually insane. It's insane. So last Wednesday, Moderna announced this and this had been kind of cooking for a while but again phase three passing is a big deal and they announced this and the stock went from 62 dollars and close to the day at 170 percent increase. Wait it doubled? It over doubled. Wait in a day that's crazy. At its peak it had over tripled. This is an S &P 500 company. That's a crazy swing for a company They went up over two and a half X in a single day. So, I mean, you guys can guess why.

33:27Well, what that says, though, is that company's entire value of all their drugs is to the market worth less than this drug passing stage three trials or the potential of what this can mean. There you go. It's the potential.

33:41Aiden:investors are reading the that this company could be at the forefront of developing

33:46Atrioc:a treatment for all cancers yes yes wow so a quote from barclay's analyst said they expect this particular therapy that just got passed could generate annual sales of about three billion dollars for melanoma by 2035 that's good that's but that's not like earth-shattering numbers right there. But again, the real signal here is this is the first time a custom RNA cancer vaccine has succeeded a phase three trial, right? And in phase three trials, like the vast, it's like 66 % fail in phase three, at least. So the underlying concept of we as humanity can design customized cures for people is now proven.

34:25Atrioc:So that's where what this really represents. The next day, the stock plunges 25%. I mean, still from a high. And so I was curious why. Well, Moderna is actually like not doing well other than this. Moderna, this last quarter posted a net loss of 782 million on revenues of 145 million. They have not had a hit since the COVID vaccine. They kind of like, you know, just COVID. Yeah, it was

34:55Aiden:a hit though. That one hit crazy.

34:57Atrioc:So they're kind of a one hit wonder. They were doing this awesome EP right in 2020. That summer, their music just fucking took me places. I was amazing.

35:05Aiden:I listen to all three albums.

35:09Atrioc:I actually just did one of the, you did all three different albums. Pfizer, I got the deluxe.

35:15Aiden:Oh, I meant I got three shots of Moderna.

35:19Atrioc:No, no, that's listening to the same album three times. My bad, my bad. So, okay. So what's next? The FDA still needs to approve this, but again, you know, this is, should all go well and phase three trials like is at a a level of uh let's say scrutiny where it should go through so we should actually people should be able to get this as a treatment in like a year or two uh moderna is obviously going to try this for other cancers melanoma is so here's here's some of the disclaimers like this isn't you know cancer is cured melanoma is one of the easier ones for this to work on it's why they started with this one and the idea is like it mutates a lot so it's easier for, you know, their algorithm to analyze it because you have a lot of different potential targets because it's such a high mutating one.

36:00Atrioc:So they're basically going to start going for cancers that also are high mutation and slowly work towards the harder ones. But Moderna is already trying this. They have mid-stage trials for bladder, kidney, pancreatic, stomach cancers. There's large trials ongoing right now for certain lung cancers. And then there's like Sam Burrell, the CEO of a medical research charity LifeArc said, this study will help build confidence that more tailored approaches to treatments for rare conditions that are driven by unique genetic mutations, meaning it's not even just cancer. It's anything that's genetically related.

36:33Atrioc:This is proving like, holy shit, there's some real potential here. And there's a lot of other companies that are trying this. For example, BioNTech is working on colon and pancreatic cancer, custom vaccines. So a lot of people are doing this. There's trials underway. And this is this giant signal to everybody of like, holy shit, this can work. This is awesome. This is awesome. This is a

36:54Aiden:fucking cool story. It's going to be so sick because like when the AI powered drones that are getting discovered in Ukraine right now come for us, we'll all be cancer free. Cancer free. It is one of those things. Run us down like dogs in the street. I will not. Tip top shape. Nothing will slow me down. I want to have a cough. I'm going to be on like the nth version of GLP once my body is going to be in peak condition for the drone war as the world has burnt to a crisp around you

37:27Atrioc:we are going to be so old and so unhappy this week's episode sponsored by Shopify hey guys one of the worst things you can imagine might happen when you're starting a business I got one let's say we're starting to talk about merch which I actually got a pitch from a merch company last week to do merch for this show and I couldn't pitch it to anybody because one of my coworkers was playing video games for 100 straight hours. That's one of the worst things I can imagine. Hold on. But at least they got a lot of ELO in that time, right? At least after 100 straight hours, they ended up at a much higher rank than they started.

38:00Aiden:I do not see how the fact that we only gained two ELO over that time period has to do with Shopify and its many features that would allow you to run a store and sell products through it.

38:10Atrioc:I think what's so great is technically I didn't need your involvement because using Shopify, it would have made it so easy to get this store set up. Even though one of our three co-hosts is playing video games all day long like a child. And making no progress. Making no progress, by the way. It's useless on that front. Thank you for Shopify for doing that. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go nothing. Even Aiden's horrendous habits. They'll go make it one. Cha-ching!

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39:17Aiden:Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Okay, speaking of robot drones and cancer research, I want to know what's at the forefront of robotics in China. Kind of, because I haven't seen clips. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell what, I pulled some clips. We had Fummy, our researcher, bring some clips. You've probably seen some of these. The World Robot. The World Humanoid Robot Games has kicked off in Beijing. You've probably seen some of these clips of them running Usain Bolt style.

39:57They beat Usain Bolt's record in the sprint. The thing that's different this year is that all of the robots are required to have no remote operation. You can't plug them in. It has to all run autonomously on its own when you tell what to do. And so there's two conferences here. There's the robot games, which is like basically an Olympics where they do high jump and running and everything else. And there's a conference, which is a slightly different name. It's like the World Robot Conference. And it's having the same time in Beijing. And that is more of like almost a business to business, people showing off real industrial capacity of the robots with things they can do.

40:36It's less public. This is sort of China's like, show off to the world, see the capabilities. Sports are a great way to see year-to-year progress. Happening. And what they're noticing this year is that there's been a pretty big leap. They're breaking a lot of records they couldn't break before. They're going autonomous longer than they could before. They're doing physical actions. I mean, I don't know if I have the clip here. What the hell? Yeah, that's the actual conference.

40:59Atrioc:Okay, if you audio listeners were looking at a robot cowboy riding a robot horse. yeah and now a robot playing ping pong pretty well that's the perfect one so same thing if you switch over here this is a 135 shot robot rally in tennis humans hitting the robots so it's like unpredictable and uh again it's moving around on its own it's adapting to what it sees it's all autonomous no no remote and so its ability to do mechanical tasks that were previously it would break down a lot quicker has dramatically increased. Now they're still not there. This isn't people at the conference were saying there isn't yet what they call the chat GPT moment for robots as in a perfectly economic use case that makes sense and it crushes that.

41:47But it's everyone is noticing that it's just a lot closer. Like you can do a lot more things into like all these robots. Again, there's many companies competing that are all going to independently. And from the Chinese side, now we've seen this economically from what they did in EVs. What people are saying at this conference is they have adopted a very similar playbook, which is there's state subsidies overall. Like if you hit this goal, you can make a lot of money, but there are lots of competing companies. A lot of people are in a full industrial race to make the best robot. And so many of them are trying to out-innovate each other to certain tasks.

42:20There's a really frenzied competition between these companies, all of which are starting to go IPO at the same time. So I don't know if I mentioned on this show, but in general, the Chinese stock market has been flat for like 30 years. Like they just don't, despite the economy growing, their stock market has been a bad place to put money. This summer, they've had the biggest IPOs, you know, basically ever in China, or at least - In their market's history. In their market's history. You know, like, and a lot of them are robotics. Unitree launched and did like a 600 % pop day one, bigger than SpaceX.

42:49Not a bigger company, but a bigger pump. And so it's like a lot of interest and passion into this as a new growing industry in China. And it is, you know, you can see the advancements in this field at the same time as the advances in AI. They haven't yet truly merged. But when they merge, it's a spooky thing and possibly a, I mean, it just changes the world in a dramatic way. If used in a good way, it could mean like a massive increase in, you know, the ability to output things from factories or whatever. But it's like, it just changes what is possible. And none of this is like right around the corner.

43:24It's not one year away, according to all the interviews from the thing. but people are just noticing that the advances starting to compound. Like this guy's figuring this out. This guy's figuring this out. They're adding it together. They're just guys doing this thing and it's becoming a really dense evolution. Wait, is that,

43:39Atrioc:am I correct? And looking at this Shanghai composite index has increased like 80 % in the last year and a half, something like that. Three, three years, three years, even still like, no, it's been a huge search. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

43:51Aiden:Yeah. So can I, yeah. Can I be a hater for a second?

43:57Atrioc:Yeah. You can steel man it. Hey.

44:03Aiden:One thing I find funny about this, and especially after going to applied intuition, I'm look, I'm a simple man. Yeah. I see a video of a robot playing tennis and moving around. I still think that's cool. Part of me still thinks that it's cool. but I remember a point of discussion we had at Applied Intuition, which is they had this back area that we weren't allowed to see that had robots that they were working on, different form factors of robots. And one of the ones is in the background of the interview we do in that episode, and it is a human form factor robot. And I think because we're human beings and because of media, there is this strong desired form factor of can we make a robot humanoid that does things like we do but see like looking at that running competition is kind of funny because you can make a faster row i think they have already made faster robots than that by just not doing a human form you put on a wheel and it would no yeah and and the idea that we need to chase this like perfected human form factor robot maybe it's because people think that that will be easier to accept or integrate from like a commercial perspective maybe that's the argument yeah but to me i've always thought it's a little dumb it's like in a world of like biological evolution of all these different like plants and animals that do all these insane things the idea that this is the form factor you should be chasing for your perfect robot that does a bunch of stuff or even having like the robot humanoid games you could be making and chasing other things and i'm sure and there are i've been to a company where they're working on other stuff like that i'm sure it's happening in the background already it already happens with drones it already happens but i think the obsession with the human form factor robot always feels a little silly to me well let me make a straw robot man okay

46:07Atrioc:okay the value of a humanoid robot is not inherently in the shape of humans being better than the shape of like Ultron or whatever but it's that we as humanity have built our society around the human shape so if you want a robot to help with people around the house or whatever human houses are meant for humans so most of the tasks are optimized for that rather than a big death machine that can move really fast that's that's the argument in my head it's like i will say does it need to run faster than you seen bolt no but if you want like if you know you want it to do laundry and use the laundry machine and get under the sink to pick up things and put things up in shelves like you know it's all built for humans right now yeah but imagine

46:47Aiden:like even dream with me for a second it's a it's a robot that does all your chores at home okay it's commercially affordable okay it has four arms instead of two you know it's surely that one's a little better at the job part of that is it's off putting i think i think what you said about it being like a form factor that we can anthropomorphize people call chat gpt like they say nice things to you're not saying like i think i think that might be it too i but in my head i'm like i think i rather what maybe i want a little spider robot at home that is the chores you want

47:19Atrioc:to yeah you don't need four arms if your arms move as fast as usain bolt okay i think really fast Aiden actually that was

47:28Aiden:this is this is just all he can dream this is perfect you don't need to upgrade this you know people made fun of me for teasing the fact that I didn't love project Hail Mary but I thought thought something cool about that movie is so many times in media the presentation of aliens is like so humanoid and because it's natural to express the guy in a costume but in that movie they take an they like no like this life form in a far off galaxy that we like meet up with it has no reason to be similar to us in really any way but it still thinks and talks like a redditor yeah that's universal you're being humanoidous i don't like this and would i want a little robots if the robot spider does the dishes really fast i think i prefer it oh i don't know i think it'd still be creepier if it's like my friend robot human and he's like hey and then a robot players like you're the marketing guy this makes sense but it's i'll just say that the reason this is all humanoid in this olympics thing is entirely marketing this is like a show to the world yeah of how good china has gotten their robotics and i think the one big question about this that i want to pose to you guys is like if you pull this chart up so the the the issue is that all of the parts that are going into these advanced robotics are almost entirely made in east asia and mostly in China, especially the magnets, precision bearing, the power electronics, the encoder, all this stuff is majority made in China, or if you include South Korea and Japan, we almost have none of it in America.

49:02Tesla, I've maligned them plenty, but there are only like robotics company, even close to the scale and size needed at the level that's going on in China. And they're ahead. It seems to me that they're quite ahead. And so it does feel like one of the big questions is if this is, it could be it could be farther away than people think it'd be closer than people think but if this is like a next industrial revolution where you start merging ai and physical robotics and this is happening not here it's happening like it's clearly not happening here it's happening in china and that's a big question like people have to start thinking about that waking up to that and kind of figure out what because nobody wants to be in the country that where the next industrial revolution doesn't happen as the history shows that's a really bad i mean even

49:44Aiden:looking at this graph, right, where Japan is represented in a pretty big portion of these different categories, right? In that, when I was going over that article of like Japanese robots replacing farm workers from a couple episodes ago, one of the points it made is that the Japanese robotics industry is falling behind relative to China and South Korea. And even though they do have that industry and it's been around for a long time, they aren't even necessarily keeping up in innovation. So there seems like there's a fewer and fewer players that are capable of developing these things at a point that can align with...

50:21I mean, it's what we read in Breakneck, where it's like this scale of so many competitors at the same time. Because we had like Boston Dynamics, who was like one of the early leaders in robotics, and they had those videos that went viral eight years ago. But they're not keeping pace. There's not enough pressure or competition or other people compared to what's going on with all these companies. So it's just a... I think it's going to become a really big story once robotics has a chat gpt moment where it's like oh this robot can run autonomously in a factory for three weeks without doing anything and it's like a big deal and once that happens it's like wait a minute this is a huge huge efficiency

50:56Atrioc:advantage i don't know we'll see it's been cleaning my clothes for three straight weeks your clothes are threadbare i've been trying to stop it it only knows how to clean with two of its arms the other two keep cleaning cleaning i wait one final quick anecdote which is just a funny part of this yeah the cultural difference between us and china right now when we went to china and we went into the mall to go look at their insane cars i well you were waiting around till check out the new xiaomi su7 i went downstairs and because there was a humanoid robotics stall in the mall and i got to like they showed off the robot dogs that were doing dances they didn't have the humanoids there because they were like oh we're doing a big show today this is in malls in malls they have multiple companies doing humanoid robotics and showing

51:41Aiden:them to people right there dude when the guy i walked downstairs because doug was there i saw the end of it and then when the guy made the dog like run at us from the other side of the room i was like oh my god so maybe this is different no you see yeah you just see it moving at you fast it's like wow that so maybe i don't want that maybe i don't want it feels creepier it feels

52:03Atrioc:it does feel creepier i want to be dominated by humanoid looking things okay i want to i want to

52:09Aiden:i want to be killed by a human robot i've always said that all right how do we transition this to new zealand housing um i china geographically okay it would take the humanoid robot i believe

52:25Atrioc:if I do the calculations here, 31 minutes to run from China to New Zealand. Yep. I think that's accurate, Doug. And what would they find housing-wise in New Zealand when they got there? And they would find a wealth

52:37Aiden:of townhomes. The Chinese robots would have plenty of townhomes to move into.

52:43Atrioc:The Chinese robots are going to need a place to live. What country has some space?

52:47Aiden:And they can move to Auckland. Okay. We've been to Auckland. So I think, yeah, me and H-Rock have been to Auckland together. We did a little New Zealand tour. We gambled. We did gamble. I went up a thousand New Zealand dollars. We went in the middle of the day to, it's a sad thing to do, which is a casino in the middle of the day. It was basically empty. Dude, we played Blacktruck with a viewer. Yeah, we sat down and gambled and then the only other person in the casino was like, are you A. It was crazy. It was crazy. I love the yard. It was crazy. And then we all won and we were like hugging each other like it was, yeah, anyway, sorry.

53:16It was great. It was great.

53:19Aiden:I think as someone who loosely follows New Zealand, a lot of the economic news you hear about the country right now is pretty negative, like rising costs of real estate, unaffordable rents, brain drain of their young educated population to either Australian universities or the Australian workforce, an aging population of Australian, older Australians moving there and buying property. And they're not really being a lot of opportunity for like working class New Zealanders right now as their real estate market has shot up over the course of like the last few decades and priced a lot of people out.

54:00Aiden:Uh, but this was a good story that kind of told a little, you know, a little news in the opposite direction. Uh, so in 2000, I think it was 2016. It might've been a bit earlier than that. New New Zealand or Auckland specifically, New Zealand's biggest city, changed their zoning laws. So they rezoned 75 % of the land. And this was to allow more dense housing to be built. They had a lot of it zoned for like single family homes. And if you look at the reform prior or if you look prior to the reform, 96 % of the land was zoned for low density housing. And after the reform, 45 % of it went to medium low, 23 % went to medium, 7 % went to high.

54:54Aiden:The basic idea that we need to build more buildings up and we are willing to relinquish the idea of large houses in exchange for smaller properties because of the demand of people who need to live here. And there is a limited amount of land in Auckland to even develop in the first place. And what was pretty cool is the results have kind of come in after a decade of this policy being around the housing stock. There are now about 620 ,000 available, sorry, 620 ,000 total units of housing, a hundred thousand more than over a decade ago before the reforms and median house prices have fallen about a quarter in that same time, more than the overall drop for the nation in the same time period and rental prices since 2016 rose 26 % more in the rest of the North Island of the country than in Auckland itself.

55:49Aiden:Uh, basically they just built a ton of townhome, uh, townhouses, uh, turning lots that would normally be one house into like four or five units of housing. And it's funny because if you look at Auckland on this chart in the same article, It's not a particularly dense city still like they could be building a lot more like towers and apartment buildings and build further up. This is not a particularly even aggressive policy, but this change has moved the needle in some direction. And I'm sure that there are young New Zealanders listening to this right now that are saying I'm still economically fucked.

56:25Aiden:Things are still expensive. New Zealand is not free of problems. And this is also off of the back of a giant increase in property costs over the past few decades that still needs to be like rectified and like reckoned with. But it is cool to see the impact of how a policy change on building did have a tangible effect on mitigating the cost of housing in the area. And that's pretty much it. No, it's awesome. I mean, listen, Auckland is not going to solve the economy of Australia. No individual city is going to solve youth unemployment, everything for the whole country. the fact that they built even for new zealand like it's like austin austin did a similar thing right and they're not it's still hard to be uh trying to find a job when you're a young person in austin but the point is that their their rent prices aren't rising the same level as other cities in the state like it's just cool it's it's cool to see that it worked uh it's shocking that building more housing would building housing makes the prices go down and it really blows my mind i think they tried capping the price on but not building anymore i think if you are from new Zealand, especially if you're a young person right now, if you're in your twenties, early thirties, would love to hear about what your economic experiences in the country.

57:36Aiden:If this change is really that noticeable by you, because ultimately rent still rose in Auckland. It's not like rent went down overall since, since 10 years ago. Uh, so I'm, I'm curious if this like seeming win or this very relative win feels like a win in your actual life. but it was interesting to read about at the very least. That's cool. That's really cool. That's awesome. I'm glad it's... I mean, this is just a lesson that I hope that all the world leaders in our audience take. It's like, this is one of the easiest wins is that rezoning has been successful in almost every city that's been tried.

58:21It's like, it's one of the... Most things in politics are trade-offs. I mean, this one has a trade-off in that housing prices for boomers might go down, but this is... It's harder to get a single family home.

58:30Atrioc:Yeah, I mean, I give a counter like a friend. I guess I don't know if he'd want to share it, but like a friend of mine who lives in Texas of ours bought a home and the value has gone down by like 50 K over the last couple of years. And that's got to feel fucking horrible. And that's because Austin has built so much house that is a buyer's market. And you cannot, you know, your housing value does not just like go up in perpetuity anymore. That's not how it works. And rents are down. It's great. Better than ever to be a renter in Austin. It's more affordable to pay rent and live in a place in Austin than it has been in a long time.

59:04Atrioc:And also owning a home is less valuable.

59:08Aiden:Yeah, it sucks because it feels like the niche sacrifice.

59:10Atrioc:I like the trade-off and that friend said, I like that this is happening. It just sucks to see my investment get fucked.

59:16Aiden:Exactly. I think that's the niche pool of people that I have some sympathy for that I think unfortunately needs. That is the trade-off that we need to make. is the people who have like managed to save enough money to all in it on a house that's pretty expensive are getting screwed. And then they don't have a lot of savings or assets in like anything else because they saved everything to just get over the hump of being able to afford a house and now somehow. Like this happens with friends who are like relatively successful in LA and they save for years to finally get a house here. They have two incomes, they put it all in.

59:51Aiden:Yeah, and that's all they got. and it dips for them. I think that is the, but there's no other way. Like there has to be, something has to give eventually in order for the problem to be solved. Yeah, 100%. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome.

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1:01:25Atrioc:God, I hope we have mass surveillance on all those new New Zealand homeowners.

1:01:29Aiden:Thank God, Doug, because there's a new Flock camera on every corner of Auckland. I made that up. Wait, is this about... There's Flock in Auckland? I have no idea. Oh, Flockland? Flockland. Flockland. They're calling it Flockland. Wait, is this Flock camera story? Flock camera. What's new about Flock cameras? We talked about it last week. We talked about Flock cameras.

1:01:50Atrioc:Yeah, it was like two or three weeks ago. So little flock camera update. This is becoming an increasingly contentious issue. And we talked about how a couple of weeks ago, various American cities are starting to say no to the flock cameras that their police departments and HOAs and schools and all these communities are installing. People are starting to really get some pushback. Yeah, I saw a story of a guy who took down a flock camera. Is this part of your thing? In Ohio? Okay, he took down a flock camera in Ohio and then a grand jury refused to indict him. wow like he was caught doing it and they just didn't indict him it's a sign of the times like i mean that's that's a wild thing because he they had 100 evidence that he i don't think they did evidence because the flock camera couldn't track him after he took it down there was no more video anyway i'm sorry that's the trick about crime now uh okay so so this is a minor story update and i'm going to give you some different perspectives that i thought were interesting flock this is about uh 10 days ago now, announced some changes and the response to this enormous increasing backlash.

1:02:50Atrioc:And they basically said, we're going to change our privacy and accountability and security. There's a blog post about it. You can check out. Here's some of the takeaways. Instead of storing license plate data for 30 days, they're only going to store it for seven. So we're like, we're voluntarily kind of clamping this down with the asterisk that it can be extended via evidence mode, which is an exceptional case where police are like, we need this data for longer periods of time for this case. we're going to filter the shared data so if you're sharing your data with another city or department which has been one of the big criticisms of like this city just ends up sharing all their information with the federal government that isn't on by default you have to pick specific categories that can be shared so a more ability to filter and they're going to audit automatically for abuse of their systems there's a washington post report that dozens of cops have now been arrested because they've been personally abusing the flock systems there was a cop who used flock to i believe over 700 times track where his ex-wife was jesus christ so now if abuse is detected by flock they will automatically lock out those individuals from the police force from using flock you now have to have a case code to search and in the end you know they kind of hype themselves up and were like look in july we detected over 1000 missing people and over 20 000 stolen cars so it is their attempt to kind of do PR couple of interesting responses.

1:04:10Atrioc:ACLU has been very critical of flock. They said the devil's in the details. These are conceptually good, but ultimately this feels like PR move. We wanted 48 hours of data retention going down to seven is not enough. This evidence mode and quote is just like they'll just be able to store data forever if they want the search filtering thing. They flock keeps saying we're going to get better about preventing other groups from having the data. They've said that a lot. So maybe this time is different, but probably not. A lot of left-leaning commentators are obviously like pretty not convinced by this.

1:04:47Atrioc:A quote from A.G. Dellinger in Gizmodo. As for the actual communities affected by flock, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to believe that a person ready to tear down a flock camera is going to have their mind changed by shortening the recommended data retention window from 30 days to seven.

1:05:06Yeah, that is, that's like the heart and soul of it, right? It's like, I don't think anyone has ever been convinced by one of these corporate blog posts. I've never seen one of these come out and it's been like, oh, you know what? Yeah.

1:05:18Atrioc:Well, let me give you another perspective because I do think let's, let's steal man and make sure we look at both sides. So this was a recent community hearing. Let me make sure you can hear it. Harry, I have volume up. Let me know if you're good. Okay. This is a public safety committing in San Diego a few days ago. The Emperor is a fan of flock, and we must continue utilizing flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium, because we all know that the flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers, they are following children.

1:05:57Atrioc:They are following children in parks and gymnasiums and we need this. I need this so I can stalk my ex-girlfriend. Okay, so Vader is still mad and I think he's got a good point. Different cases. Look, even the conservative commentators in some of the articles that I saw are, they're concerned. I think there's not that many people who are just stoked. Oh my God, stoked for Flock. I feel like if you're in a traditional

1:06:25Aiden:past 20 years. Yeah, like if you're a tea party guy who actually... Yeah, flock is insane. You'd hate it. Yeah. If you're an anti-vaccine Facebook mom, flock is like a fucking psychotic. There's a kid on your playground with cameras.

1:06:38Atrioc:Here's a quote from conservative Mike Fox. This pro-surveillance narrative relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of government in a constitutional republic and ignores the reality that institutional power is inevitably abused. It's kind of wild that conservatives would be at all supportive of this when this seemingly goes so against what has traditionally been considered. It's like the balance of real tough on crime and then it's privacy. That's the fucking balance. But yeah, it just doesn't seem like there's a, like this is a pretty popular movement now. This anti-flock thing is like nationwide.

1:07:13People that are in government that aren't listening are getting rolled over by their constituents or yelling at them in public forums. Like it's becoming a big thing. Like they just have to respond. The voters are seemingly against this overall.

1:07:27Aiden:I was going to say, is this my weak echo chamber mind? But I feel like flock sits in a very similar category as data centers where the pushback against it seems to be more bipartisan than you'd expect with a lot of issues right now.

1:07:42Atrioc:Yeah. I mean, there's look, let's also be clear. There's definitely normal people. There are definitely plenty of people. It's hard to quantify who just like the idea of police can solve more crime. right i think i think probably us three and most of our audience are not wild about what flock is doing but that exists i talked to somebody who's in the midwest kind of boomer era vibe a week or two ago and they were like yeah you know the people against it just don't want crime to be taken care of but like it's obviously good and we're trying to get installed in this other city and like somebody who's like kind of you know involved with their local community so these people exist who are like that's fine with me we want less crime but certainly the tide is going against it i mean people fucking hate flock as much as they hate the lakers fuck you first of all well actually i don't even know it's i don't even know if i wanted to defend the lakers anymore it's such a crazy time for me walk us through it aiden because i'm

1:08:29Aiden:it's pissing me off i have i have an interesting question for you guys i think what do you think the most valuable sports franchise in the world is the lakers um sacramento kings oh they're on the list if you go down far enough from the list uh they i think i have been just asking people this question for fun the last few weeks actually and i think it's interesting to hear what people's responses are a lot of people will say a really well-known basketball team like the Lakers. A lot of people will try to read, read the global context of sports and they'll be like, well, it's probably a soccer team.

1:09:16Aiden:And then it's probably Real Madrid or like Barcelona or something like that. And, uh, it is the, uh, Dallas Cowboys at an estimated 15 and a half billion dollars at the top of the national football league, a primarily American in sport. And do you have a general idea as to why NFL teams are worth so much TV rights? Yeah, it's the TV rights. And those TV rights are exploding over time. So recently, the NFL and the NBA both made gigantic new 11 year deals way larger than their previous ones. I think the NBA tripled their previous. The NBA is like, but that's crazy. 77 billion dollars actually worth

1:10:01Atrioc:more than curing cancer. Dude, wait a minute. Yeah, that's crazy. It's the football. It's National Football League. Moderna was 50 billion after double it. That's crazy.

1:10:13Aiden:And the NFL is 110 billion for 11 years. And these deals just gotten negotiated, I think a couple years ago now. And these broadcast rights are getting insanely large because it's the last thing really carrying network television at the same time as you have all these streaming platforms trying to cement their place in the market, right? There's only, like for most people, the way they consume TV now is they expect to watch it at any given convenience and with minimal ads or the ability to fast forward through things. And the traditional network TV experience doesn't really offer that anymore.

1:10:55Aiden:But what's the one thing that we all still watch live, tolerate the ads through? It's sports. So these forces have kind of become juggernauts for the leagues. They're able to demand so much from these networks. And in turn, because of the rev share deal and the way that like league revenue works, this gets distributed to the rest of the league, the rest of the owners, the rest of the players and things like the NFL and the NBA. So recently the Lakers announced the sale of their team for the highest recorded sale of a sports franchise ever, which is 12 and a half billion dollars, which is also crazy because the Lakers just sold, I think a little over a year ago for around 10 billion.

1:11:42Aiden:uh the fact that somebody uh almost flipped it like a house it's kind of funny uh because normally once you get a seat at the table within a very limited pool of owners you stick around for a while the guy who was the owner of the lakers prior to this also the owner of the dodgers is apparently in a bit of financial trouble right now and he is being investigated by the doj and the sec and is allegedly trying was trying to sell the lakers quickly in order to get a bunch of money in order to help with that case and this reporting if you want to hear the longer story is by pablo torre the same guy who did all of the investigative reporting on the kawaii leonard stuff so i really encourage you to look more into it or follow his stuff in general if you're curious about it.

1:12:30Aiden:But the reason why this deal is so crazy, it is led by not Jared Kushner. I was about to say.

1:12:39Atrioc:Bob Iger?

1:12:41Aiden:Josh. Josh Kushner?

1:12:42Atrioc:Yeah.

1:12:43Aiden:This deal was led by Josh Kushner, Jared Kushner's younger brother, and Bob Iger, the former two-time CEO of Disney. But behind Josh Kushner is his private equity fund thrive uh thrive he is a main fund called thrive capital yeah and this is his offshoot fund called thrive eternal which recently sent out a message to their investors to explain a new investment thesis uh that they at least have had for like the past year or so and the idea is in an age of uncertainty around investment in the age of ai when so many things can be changed and replaced with this technology that we don't fully understand yet how do we evaluate the future what's something that we expect to be untouched by ai no matter what that seems like a promising industry that continuously pumps new money out of it because of all of these other circumstances that are collided it's sports it's the ultimate right like authentic human experience right and And they made this acquisition of the NBA teams.

1:13:56Aiden:And as we can see, like within a year, they turned around a$2 billion profit on the sale of this team. Right. And that is crazy in itself. But it presents this idea, something that Pablo was talking about that I think is really interesting, is private equity has only been able to get chunks of teams for the past few years. Like the, the chain it's starting in 2019 was when private equity was able to have any stake in any of these major sports teams. And, uh, the rules were changed in the NBA, I think in 2019. And then the NFL in 2020, no, sorry. It was the MLB in 2019.

1:14:36Atrioc:What would change that allowed private equity to not be able to do that before?

1:14:41Aiden:Restrictions from the leagues themselves.

1:14:43Atrioc:Okay.

1:14:43Aiden:So they chose to have a, I think in the past you have this, like, it's so funny to talk about, you know, owners in this way. But goddammit, teams used to be more affordable. They used to be cheaper. No, it is. It's because they got more expensive. Yeah, the guy in your town who was rich enough could buy it in a sense. Yeah, I mean, sports teams were like a billionaire luxury toy. It's like a yacht or something. And when they were at a$1 billion to$5 billion valuation or whatever, then it was like a thing they could afford. But now, because of what you said, they are getting so valuable and so expensive that a regular working class billionaire can no longer buy one on its own.

1:15:26Could we rezone to make more of them? To make more teams or more billionaires? Borth. Borth. I don't know. Look into that. Get Chachapiti on that. Yeah, so now that they're so expensive, the only entities that have enough money to be throwing around billions to buy, it's like private equity and - And Bob Iger. Major banks. Well, Bob Iger's a small part of this deal. I mean, he's like the face of it, but it's like pushers money, thrive capital.

1:15:51Aiden:And there's also limitations in these leagues of how much sovereign wealth funds were able to buy. Like Norway's sovereign wealth fund couldn't buy out a sports team a long time ago. But now these caps have been changed. So the leagues are making changes that more and more of these like institutional scale investors can get into sports and have a share. And there's already a concern from sports fans. So I think a lot of people are familiar with the idea that private equity has been ruining youth sports in the U.S. As private equity firms like take ownership over like hockey stadiums and hockey clubs and like single areas, they're able to control so many facets of youth sports in a certain region that they can up the fees for everything even charging things like the like restricting your ability to record your kids game with your phone and then charging for the streaming service which i thought was ridiculous until i talked to my uncle who my cousins all play hockey in alberta and he was saying he pays the $50 a month fee for all of the game feeds.

1:17:00Aiden:And like he, he doesn't mind because it's like, it's got a nice overlay and like, he wasn't going to record it, but if he did, but he said, technically he's not supposed to record the games, which, which is crazy. And now sports fans, as they're beginning to interact with this, I think the MLB is like the first layer that was really getting hit by this because in 2019, when they lifted the restriction, uh, a private equity group got a huge chunk of the red socks and a private equity group that's interested in maximizing the team for profit and not this traditional chase of like, I'm an owner, I'm a rich owner who owns the sports team and I want to win.

1:17:35Yeah.

1:17:35Aiden:That is very different than a private equity firm that's in the sport to make money. Those goals aren't necessarily aligned. They're actually directly opposite if you really look into it because in a sports league, they split the TV revenue 30 ways or whatever. And so theoretically, theoretically whether your team is doing good or bad as long as the league is doing well you get a big cut so the maximized thing to do is to pay your salaries as low as you can yeah the salary for lose every game but get all the money on that's like the smartest thing to do billionaires don't usually do that because they want to win they want to be like the champion guy holding up the trophy so it's like yeah it's i mean the long-term fear is you have so many of these players you you have a market where realistically the only parties who can afford teams anymore are giant groups that are primarily interested in milking the funds out of something that is for a lot of cities, like part of civic life.

1:18:30Aiden:It's not, you know, going to the baseball game or supporting your team. It's like a generational thing. And the idea that now a group who's trying to aggressively price tickets and monetize food in every way there, you're at what point do you like push away the fans that give the team value? you in the first play supporting thrive capital could be like a cool thing i do with my son dude it'd be so funny dude getting that you know what we should do thrive capital jerseys but with like don't just his name on the back and go to a game i just feel like that'd be a good father son bonding moment to both like help shareholder equity and thrive capital like that's what i want him to grow up idolizing he's great thing yeah but i i the other thing i thought was really interesting about this is it sports has always been a platform for like statements and politics like you know very simple images of uh like protest at the olympics or something like that right there's a there's this soft power in sports it's why like qatar a place like qatar really wants the world cup right it puts your name on this grander stage and it's so interesting like even in even outside of this private equity stuff you look at the way like premier league teams are being bought up by like the a royal from the uae or or qatar or the way saudi arabia has like increased their spending in sports and over to have in order to have this like global presence in it it's all of this global money is like surging and spiking this industry that you know is very human yeah and it's kind of the last like bastion of human authenticity and it kind of makes you wonder when it's all gonna break like how how much longer can all this money keep getting put into it so people are saying that like if there ever is a down round in like what these t because these tv deals every time they do like you said they look so much bigger and if they ever like are flat to down in the next negotiation if no one's offering to pay you ever more billions for your tv rights it like collapses all the growth models baked into these sports teams.

1:20:44Because they don't run them right now for a profit. They run them kind of dead even, and they just sell the team for a higher valuation later because everything's growing. So it's weird.

1:20:51Aiden:Well, I think depending on the league you're in, you could be making a lot of money, right? Like if you have an NFL team, if you have an NFL team, because of the way the NFL is structured, you are probably making money. You probably have a profitable team, from my understanding. I think it's different in leagues where you don't have salary caps. I think it gets like really fucky in like the Premier League where you, they do have rules now, but you have people come in, spend all this money. The top end teams are losing money. I think like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester, United, Manchester city.

1:21:26Aiden:These are all orgs that I think are technically losing money. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, but they're because they're pushing the salary caps for like, uh, players higher and higher. So I think there is an aspect of like egos and owners too. It's like you get a small piece in a very exclusive pie and your team winning is kind of the only thing money can't buy. Yeah. If you're that rich, if you're that rich. Yeah. I will say there's one more angle of this story, which I think is interesting and I certainly can't explain it. So I'm going to just toss it up there. And like, yeah, it's that Mark Walter, the owner that sold the Lakers is he's in financial trouble, as you mentioned, But that financial trouble and that investigation he's under seems to be like the tip of a very large iceberg that expands broader outside of sports.

1:22:15He made his money through this hedge fund. And it's like he has tied it in with insurance companies that he bought. And he is taking this is what he's alleged of doing is the illegal crime, taking insurance premiums and using them to gamble on things with the idea that he could pay it back later with the he's gambling on buying sports teams. It's like Sam Beckman-Fried taking customer deposits. But if you look into it, it looks like, this may be the case, that a ton of private equity and hedge funds over the past few decades have been slowly but surely buying insurance companies and looting them to fund their operations.

1:22:56And it seems to be they also seem to know that if this all goes belly up, the insurance companies have to get bailed out because they are the insurance, the life insurance or whatever, health insurance for lots of citizens. So it's like, this could, like he's the guy getting caught, but as he starts to unwind all of his sports empires to pay, I mean, it's crazy. Now it may all end investigation because like you said, Josh Kushner bought it and Josh Kushner is into the Kushner family. He was assigned to Trump. And there's a history of like, Hey, you do scratch my back. I scratch yours. Maybe he gets a pardon.

1:23:27Maybe that all goes away. It's weird. They sold him in just a few days. I don't know.

1:23:31Aiden:Apparently the deal was in less than three days. Yeah. Which is like insane. So like open and close that. But also it seems like Josh Kushner and Bob Iger wanted to buy the new Las Vegas team that's going to start. But then the bidding price got so high. They're like, why don't we just buy an established team like the Lakers? They reached out and it worked out. But I just want to show you this clip real quick because as a Lakers fan, I'm so excited. You know, I don't like Kushner, but I'm so glad we have a true, authentic Lakers fan in Bob Iger to run the team.

1:24:01Atrioc:For the listener, a little bit of background. Uh, Bob is a, is a Clippers fan and he was sitting courtside, uh, for nearly every home game during my four years in LA. And so you and I have, have spoken on a number of occasions, but I know you're very close friends with, um, one of our, our recent guests, Chris Paul, who was just on the podcast, but there was, uh, there was a lot made of your relationship with him and your relationship with, with Adam Silver. it goes back a couple decades in sort of making the bubble possible, the NBA bubble happened this past season. Can you just speak a little bit about your relationship with Chris and your involvement in helping the bubble happen?

1:24:44Atrioc:Sure. I am a Clippers fan, having moved from New York to Los Angeles back in 2000 and being a big NBA fan. You've got to respect that. you gotta respect that guy who's buying a team just for the money is like i don't even like them i don't even i fucking hate them it's not in my dna to be a lakers fan this is you going

1:25:07Aiden:to the job interview for that valorant for valorant position and you saying that you don't even like shooters i did which you did do that i was in the last two for the role wow and we had lunch together and i was like i'll be honest with you i don't even like shooters and then they they passed and then at least Bob Iger, you know, got the gig

1:25:28Atrioc:fucking Bob at it again. To be fair, Adrian did not flash 12 billion dollars at right. They would have kind of funded a couple more to XK about that in the page around anyway, it's a it's a clusterfuck and I do think when Pablo Torres reporting come out more comes out, it's going to be like a bigger thing than just the Lakers, even though this is already a pretty big deal of private equity in sports.

1:25:53Aiden:Yeah, I think it's just a really fascinating, really fascinating business. I'm like, I'm so into the money behind it all right now. You greedy Bob Iger pig. Yeah, what can I say? Just want the cash.

1:26:08Atrioc:Do one more story. Let's hear about another fun subject, like data centers. Oh, okay. Okay, we're close up to the end of the show, and we did a subject last week on data centers and the political backlash. I kind of wanted to just follow up because, like you mentioned with Flock cameras, First of all, a lot of reporting is coming out on what people's polls and attitudes are towards data centers. But it is becoming one of the few truly bipartisan issues in America. And governors and state representatives who previously had been pro-Data Center and advocated how it's like we're bringing jobs to our state are all abandoning ship just simply out of voter pressure.

1:26:47It is becoming like a 80-20 lineup. up. And what's interesting is I talk a lot of data here from some good articles is that, uh, there's a broader backlash against the tech industry as a whole and AI as a whole. But if you go to individual products, like even for example, chat GPT, people have a generally positive view. I mean, if you talk about Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, people are more than 50 % positive. Uh, if you talk about like Apple and chat GPT, it's, it's closer to whatever, but the only ones that are even somewhat negative are grok and anthropic and most of the people are the purple bar which is they don't even know what it is they're not they haven't reached mainstream appeal but like if you ask you about their individual use of the products it's okay but data centers have become a flashpoint for i think a broader uh anger with i think part of it is like some of the marketing that ai firms have done to what it means to the average person i I think they've pushed the message that this will take your job.

1:27:50This will, it's about to change everything. And that is causing people to be, I don't know, upset or afraid across party lines. And what's interesting is, so I have a, by the way, this is sort of not unique to America, but most in America than anywhere else. So this graph that was really interesting, but the rise of AI and the rise of AI in daily life, and it's a proxy for like data center support. the U.S. is the most concerned or more concerned than excited of any country in the world, or at least of all the major ones polled. So it's like this is happening more uniquely here. People are more feeling upset about the consequences or angry about it.

1:28:29It's just strange. And if you look at it, the only remaining even solid or undecided data center group are MAGA Republicans. but like Republicans who are not MAGA, who are still like the entire Carson Republicans or like they are anti-data center. The left is anti-data center. The liberals are anti-data center. It's like this one group was like, Trump said he liked them a while back and I haven't changed my thoughts. They're still locked in. They just haven't moved their polling. But it is, it is like, if you look at this, like Harris voters, for example, it's a 13 point swing. drastically since January.

1:29:13In the last few months, it has become way more contentious. People asked why. So this is a pretty good study on people's responses on why. The largest concern seems to be environmental, which, listen, based on the data I've seen is the least impactful part of a data center. I've seen credible concerns over noise. If you're close enough to a data center, the powering of it is causing noise. Am I crazy? Am I wrong?

1:29:40Atrioc:No, I looked at the fact that you still have Discord notifications pop up with the text on your laptop that you use for this job. Sorry, I'm sorry. Actually, I turned off your remote this morning because I had to see someone's username. Just turn off notifications on your windows. Who has notifications on windows? We're doing a show. It's just like ASUS messages are popping up. If I watch these damn data centers, it wouldn't be pushing all these notifications on us. Data centers or no data centers.

1:30:06Aiden:You need a fucking calendar. Can I say that? Can I interrupt this segment to say that? related it's not even related you should disable that you're gonna put that calendar in the cloud

1:30:14Atrioc:where do you think the calendars are located in the fucking data this is a protest he's on the 80 20 fucking data centers i am you and i are a i cucks i'm gonna use a calendar i stored in some data center somewhere i'm gonna tell you uh kathy hochel of new york that's greg abbott of texas they have both pivoted from being pro data center to anti because of political pressure because of how much in America this is becoming an issue. And it's a thorny question because I don't have the answer. But like, given that I think some level of progress in this has to be made, they just have to be built in some way.

1:30:50It should be a way that's, you know, not environmentally damaging. It's not close to someone, so there's noise damage. But we can't have the country be the one that's falling behind in everything because of this. I just think it's a weird situation where I think they've done such a horrible job of articulating what the benefit is. Like if there are benefits, they are diffused and the negatives are localized. So what is the, I don't know. I'm just wondering how we can solve this issue as a country because it's coming down the pipe. Like I feel like the same thing would happen with robotics or anything.

1:31:23You know what I'm saying?

1:31:25Aiden:I feel like the simple solution because it kind of is telling that people's opinion on ai isn't necessarily aligned with this like people's use of it rather yeah their revealed preferences of usage so the fact that that is the case and the fact that environmental concerns are the highest right yeah it seems like if you address people's concerns with like quality of life noise pollution environmental concerns like if you can show tangible ways that these don't like mitigate the damage that's done around them i feel like you could change a lot of people's minds uh for the for like the layman who cares more about that than some like broader anti-ai principle yeah i guess and and that's easier said than done i'm sure yeah but that that feels like the simple i don't think it's irrational for people to feel this way if they don't see the benefit but i just i'm wondering how they saw it because it's down it's like something i think should be solved it should be a win-win situation where we are still building new things i think what i'm saying is that when we we talked about this a while ago where like do the majority of people see the like benefit or impact that ai is having on their life and we're making the argument that for a lot of young people in the country especially who are maybe more tapped into the consequences, they don't really see those benefits yet.

1:32:53Aiden:And the trade-offs don't seem worth it. But when you look at like a broad spectrum of people, when you think about, and you look at their view of AI and their own use of it, they already see the positive applications. They like being able to ask ChatGPT a question, it spits it back and they don't think about it much more than that. I think that's different than data centers though. No, but that's what I mean. Because they have that positive effect of AI like in their life already, if you just address these base concerns of like, well, a data center near you means these consequences, then the problem feels like it's solved, even if that's like a difficult problem to solve.

1:33:32Aiden:Do you know what I mean? Or do you feel like the, or are you saying the image of data centers is so tainted that even if the noise concerns, the environmental concerns, all these things are addressed, that people will no longer go back the other way?

1:33:45Atrioc:I think there happens to be actually an interesting Bloomberg article called why Chinese citizens are far more optimistic about AI than Americans. I actually don't think it's really environmental like the AI hate was really rising before the environmental aspects became a real solid reason to hate it.

1:34:01Aiden:But people are just propping up the environment as like their answer.

1:34:05Atrioc:The sense I get is that people, I mean obviously there are real environmental concerns. I'm not downplaying that but I think that that is the that fills the slot for a reason to be angry at this in general and that is based on the reporting by jasmine son that we talked about last week where she went and talked to people in small towns and they're like we like chat gpt like we're fine with it it's we're not opposed to ai conceptually it's we don't trust these tech companies and in this bloomberg article it was like the past decades defining tech stories in the u.s were mostly damaging social media harming teenagers the carbon cost of always on delivery the collapse of trust after edward snowden so this article makes the argument that china i mean it's crazy.

1:34:45Atrioc:China, people excited about AI in China is 84%. In the United States, it is 38%, more than double the population. And they're saying in China, the proliferation of technology has been carefully moderated by the government. And as everybody has seen in their lifetimes, this huge improvement in the quality of their lives. And then in America, it's like, we were at the top of the food chain relatively in terms of development two, three decades ago. and people largely feel anxious and worried and distrusting of tech broadly. So the sense I get, and I'm sure it's different per person, from multiple reports does seem to be that it is like America doesn't really trust these companies.

1:35:23Atrioc:The environmental concerns are the reason to make that into a concrete policy change. I think to back that up, there's a study that showed people are more supportive of having a coal plant built next to them than a data center. which environmentally makes, there's just no fucking way. So it does feel like environment has become the catch-all for a general anger towards what these represent rather than - Is it a clean coal plant? Yes. I mean, look, I can speak to this personally. As I started to get angry comments about the AI content I was making, like at the beginning of last year, the criticism, and it's kind of tapered off now as I've kind of changed what I've done.

1:36:08Atrioc:but initially it was just, we don't like AI. We don't like what it's doing. And it largely is about like generative AI. It feels like it's stealing people's work. It's going to take replace jobs. But now the first argument when you see, when people say, I just don't like that you're using AI is the environmental concern. Like it's switched to that. And I, and again, it gives me this feeling of like, that's just the most prominent reason to hate it. But ultimately people are scared and feeling frustrated with the whole industry having this much power and growth.

1:36:34Aiden:And then it gets,

1:36:35Atrioc:I'm sure people in the comments, It's like, this is obviously extremely nuanced. Let us know if you have other feelings on this. You know what I'd love to do is go to some towns and ask people.

1:36:46Aiden:It'd be so interesting to like interview. Because I think ultimately I feel like my perspective is so fueled by just people in our age range. Like between, basically between the age of like early 20s and like mid 30s. And also that inherently is a group of people that's more online. And I'd love to hear people's like just more average people's explanations of how they feel about this topic. I have a hard time imagining what would I do have a hard time imagining what would turn this around in the US. It feels like it rides on a larger wave that is difficult to challenge. You know what?

1:37:29Atrioc:Honestly, so as a certified AI hype bro. Yeah. The thing that you can always fall back on, we talked about this yesterday. You can always fall back on medicine, right? You can always fall back on like, well, it's going to cure cancer. And with that Moderna thing that I mentioned earlier, when I first saw the story, I was like, there was, there was like something like tweets or something that were like, you see AI is doing it. Thanks to AI. We're starting to cure cancer. We're going to be able to make customized drugs. And so that was one of the things I researched for the story. I was like, was AI a part of this?

1:37:59Atrioc:And like, no, they started this in 2017. It's just straight up not. it is machine learning which is different and moderna has a partnership with chat gbt but the idea that ai is curing cancer right now is not true like it's not and so they're leaning into like it's like clearly there's been a wake-up call among ai companies that like hey the chickens are coming home to roost in a way of like what we've been saying and like the impunity with which we've been acting is going to cause us serious financial harm in the ability to get this like there's like 165 billion of data centers that have already been paid for that haven't opened they've been like they've stopped construction because so like they you know and so they're saying a lot of like they're going back to the cancer thing because they're going back and it's just like dude it's like you can't claim credit for this modern one i guess if you are talking about machine learning broadly you can i guess but this is well before i think specifically like if you pull this graph this last thing i want to say is that even if ai were to have more like a lot of people are using chat GPT.

1:38:58It's actually almost too much for me. It's crazy, but it's becoming useful for a lot of people in a lot of ways. And that doesn't make you want to have a data center in your neighborhood because there's still a lot of, whether it's founded or not, and some of it is found, that's what I want to show. Electricity prices are surging in the United States. So people are seeing power go up at the same time as they're seeing a massive, massive, massive multi-trillion dollar buildout in data centers. Now, these are not one-to-one. Some of this is happening before, but it lines up with the chat GPT moment when the data center buildout began.

1:39:25and there is more strain on the grid. And so people are not seeing the dirt. Like they're going to say, my cost goes up. Maybe there's noise pollution. Maybe possibly the town gets tax benefits, but they're being like denied that in legal proceedings. Like it's, what do I get from having it built here? Why not NIMBY it? Why not be a NIMBY, which is what most people are about most things in general when it comes to data centers. So they have to solve that problem if they want to build them. That's just, you can't expect someone to leap at the chance to help you out.

1:39:57Aiden:Co-opting the YIMBY movement for data centers. Yes, rezone for data centers. Build them up.

1:40:04Atrioc:In my backyard. And we are going to walk the walk here, which is why we're happy to announce that big yellow thing back there. That's a data center now.

1:40:11Aiden:It's powerful. And it fuels all of the AI we use at Lemonade State.

1:40:16Atrioc:It fuels all of the scripts that have been telepathically through our cancer vaccines sent to each of us. I will say, I did look it up because someone in my chat was like, would you ever live next to a data center? I looked it up. There's dozens of data centers in Los Angeles and there's one within six miles of us now and where I live as well. Wait, where do you live again? You talking about my exact address? Shut up! You prompted it.

1:40:39Aiden:Someone's going to read your lips. If you enjoyed this episode and you hate me, you're in luck. You can go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand to watch the bonus episode this week because I won't be on it. If you are a person who just slogs through a lemonade stand and says, I hate every time Aiden fucking speaks, subscribe to the Patreon now for the best episode ever. It's going to be so peace, dude. You won't hear the Nordics mentioned once. You won't hear Estonia mentioned once.

1:41:05Atrioc:It would be funny if we do the Nordic fun fact episode. It's just you and me. And it's just you and me. And we're like, everything is wildly wrong. We just make up Nordic fun facts. It's make up to all negative. I heard in Sweden they don't even throw out their trash. They just throw it right on the ground.

1:41:21Aiden:You will see these two on the bonus episode this week and me on next week's main episode. Thank you for watching.

1:41:28Atrioc:Thanks, guys. Bye. Wait, real quick. Just a reminder. The cancer did not... The vaccine did not cure the cancer. I forget. Wait, did I emphasize that properly? What? Did the vaccine cure... Did I say the vaccine cure... I've already written my comment, Doug. You said it didn't cure it.

1:41:41Aiden:You said it didn't cure it, and you said it provided... I'm actually as a scientist. You provided about 50 % of cases. 50 % with an asterisk. Yes, yes. Okay, perfect. Wait, wait, wait. I actually forgot. I actually do want to throw this in at the end. There's an important correction I wanted to make about last week's episode. I actually thought somebody made a thread and this is not, it's an important correction. Do it. This is good for YouTube retention. I think in my explanation of the Sudan civil war, I remarked that way back when the SAF's violence in the Western part of the country was a historical reason for the violence that the RSF is causing now.

1:42:17Aiden:I think it is important for me to say that was incorrect. there was an older group called uh the janja weed that preceded the rsf became the rsf as it is now that committed those atrocities back then the saf did support them the important thing is like i think in the episode we're kind of guessing as to the reason for like the retribution and the terrible violence that is unfolding now and maybe it's because of like retaliation against this group that did something back then that's not the case um there's a point of that statement was for you to pick a group and say this is the problem this is the responsive that I agree with that I just think it's an important correction to make okay dirty laundry out

1:42:58Atrioc:I feel bad about the time that I said I was presenting my story to an old bald guy in a skinny bird and I think you don't look skinny anymore you put on a lot of weight and it's noticeable I would not call you that correct the story that was important correct the story

1:43:14Aiden:and thank you Thank you guys for watching. Thank you. See you next week, everybody. Bye. I want to correct when I said we're leaving the show. Yeah, I want to make that correction. We have more corrections to make. All right, bye. Bye, everybody. Bye. It's late. Your team has a launch to plan while your customer inbox fills up. No worries. In one prompt, Klaviyo builds the whole campaign. The emails, the texts, WhatsApp, all in your voice. Never without your okay. Plus, Klaviyo spots the revenue you're leaving on the table and answers those customer questions. so your team can get some rest. Go to klaviyo.com slash bestfriends.

1:43:53Hello.

1:43:54Aiden:Look what TJ Maxx dragged in. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. We are digital. We are downloadable. We are streamable. The fashion event of the year is certified fresh. Pull yourself together. We have work to do. Critics say it's smart and witty and the perfect sequel. That's all. Get runway ready for The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Disney Plus and Hulu. Rated PG-13.