Great episode, though to do our now weekly Ben correction, the line is “Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.” It’s also followed by Nic Cage cocking his gun and telling Connery “Carla was the prom queen” in extremely badass fashion. Fantastic line. I broadly agree that there is a lot to bemoan about the redistricting fiascos, but if Democrats just won elections it would be much less of an issue.
The AI data center discussion is much more interesting and nuanced, I think - and it will be ongoing for the foreseeable future. Kevin O’Leary (Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful) just helped get a massive “giga center” approved in Utah that apparently will use the energy equivalent currently being utilized by the entire state - which feels almost too preposterous to be true.
When you revisit the data center discussion next time, I’d love to potentially hear from some global perspective, as this is hardly just an American issue. Australia is building data centers at a remarkable pace as well, but they’ve also got a booming “How do we keep these things environmentally sound?” Industry of startups that is growing alongside them, which I find curiously lacking in the American start up space, but maybe I’m just not looking in the right spots.
One unnecessary and pointless personal defense against Ben - I actually prefer to bag my own groceries. I'm not sure who (if anyone) teaches the folks working at the grocery store how to do it, but the lack of efficiency and understanding of bag capacity is striking. So, nowadays, I always use the self-checkout.
I don't always agree with the choices they make, but if I've got a big cart it's preposterous to think that I, as an amateur, would be faster than a person who does this for 8 hours every single day.
I think Ben is wrong about this happening because people think they can commit theft, especially as they now have software that catches people trying to do that. I think it's more likely that people get used to the self-checkouts being faster and start to do that by default, so every once in a while they are wrong. It's the same reason they were trying to claim that oil companies wouldn't over-produce oil after just discussing how oil companies had over-produced oil and put themselves out of business. It's all just people, and they make mistakes.
My grocery store is right next to my gym, so I go almost every day and get a handful of items. When it comes time to pay, my options are:
- Get in a long full service line behind a bunch of elderly shoppers who will pay by check and want to show pictures of their grandkids to the cashier, OR
- Go to the self-checkout area where there is no line.
It's not rocket surgery. I'm not doing it because I want to steal, I'm doing it because I want to get on with my day.
I have my gripes about northern Nevada (mainly that its cities are too small and too economically depressed), but southern Nevada is way worse, Ben. At least the north has decent weather, and lakes! If you ask me what the worst places in the US are, I'm offering Las Vegas and Phoenix without hesitation. I will never understand why millions of people want to live in that miserable oven down there.
That sounds about right. Remember the media stunt 25 years ago where Battle Mountain was awarded the title "armpit of America?"
There's an austere beauty to the mountains, especially, and I'm curious about this weirdly fertile place called Jarbridge near the Idaho state line that I'll probably never see because it sounds like you have to be pretty outdoorsy to even get there, but it is very empty. I'm the kind of person who likes civilization, so any prolonged exposure to emptiness makes me sad. I think the weather gets less mild the further you get from the Sierra Front, too, but I'm not entirely sure about that.
The northwest, on the other hand... Reno has many hidden gems, but on the whole it is very small and its economy is fragile. Lots of people who live there like that just fine, because they're in it for the easy outdoor/wilderness recreation access while checking the fundamental urban amenity boxes. I on the other hand am very interested in what it would look like with a few million more residents on its bones. The population is slowly growing, but unfortunately a major employment center especially for newcomers is that tech complex 30 miles out of town where the datacenters are, with no other way to get to it than by car, so I'm told those people spend a very large part of their days sitting in traffic on I-80.
Your comment in the episode got a chuckle out of me, in any case!
Agreed. Also, how does it make any sense to take a technology where the biggest challenge is keeping it cold, and put it somewhere hot? It really just shows you how much of a hurdle permitting is that they will knowingly spend more money on HVAC systems and electricity to build them in the wrong places.
Yeah, the message here is that Democrats should stop (Republicans apparently have no sovereignty over their own choices so there's no reason to tell them to stop) because they will only need to be 6% more appealing than Republicans to get the same number of seats in Congress. Just accept that being a better person achieves worse outcomes. Because that's how humans respond to incentives.
I think Josh was right that VA changing the retirement age of the justices seems very kangaroo court. But I think he was also right to be less sanguine than Megan about the potential of these aggressive gerrymanders to self correct.
There is another aspect of these recent court decisions related to gerrymandering that concerns me.
The Callais decision came down after early primary voting in Louisiana had already begun. Some 40,000 voters had already cat primary ballots. And the governor of LA declared a *state of emergency* that required him to cancel the *Congressional primaries* but not the primary election in its entirety which included other races such as the Senate. (What type of emergency would that be, exactly?)
Aside from making a mockery of SCOTUS's rationale for its Purcell principle by injecting a ton of confusion, it resulted in Louisiana throwing out the votes of 40,000 voters who cast valid ballots that will be counted for the other races.
Megan called the Virginia decision "reasonable," but she did not mention the dissent, which, relying on VA constitutional and statutory definitions of "elections," was also reasonable. So, if we credit the court with choosing between two reasonable legal interpretations, it means that the majority chose the interpretation that resulted in the cancellation of an election in which 3 million people cast votes.
In 2020, the judicial system and the Supreme Court held up and mostly denied all of the many requests (in the form of stupid lawsuits) to throw away votes. (I believe there was one case in which a SCOTUS majority held some PA votes aside, and would have thrown them away if it swung the election to Trump, but that is as close as we got.)
Now, we are still 6 months away from the midterm and we have seen Republican majorities on both SCOTUS and SC of VA throw validly cast votes away in a manner that benefitted Republicans.
I think that is a very dangrous precedent, and it probably means that if the Democrats come out ahead in the midterm but only narrowly, the courts will hand the win to the GOP.
Yeah, it's this kind of thing that sometimes makes them seem more like anti-anti's (people who don't love MAGA, but who reserve most of their disdain for people who are anti-MAGA).
Josh makes a point about energy regulation and rolling blackouts and how that's what gray davis encountered, but the california energy crisis was a victim of too little government intervention, as it was caused by intentional manipulation in the energy markets by companies like enron, who ordered plants to shutdown in order for prices to spike. this was all worsened because davis' republican predecessor signed a bill that deregulated energy markets.
I think the California energy crisis that Josh referred to had more to do with an ill-conceived deregulatory market design. Utilities were prohibited from entering into long-term supply contracts, which created the (perverse) incentives for marketers like Enron to induce manufactured shortages driving up spot market prices.
I would love to read a more thorough investigation of that situation, I've always wondered how they could make more money by tripping off their own power plants. Like, shouldn't that make them come out even at best or even help their competitors? Seems like a situation that can only happen because of perverse incentives, but I don't know what those are.
So what happens to the personal items that are left in the cabin of the plane in these evacuation situations? Do they go row by row, seat by seat and label each item for return? Like if someone left a purse with, say, medicine that they need to survive, how quickly would the airline return it to that person? Do they bring it to the terminal immediately or mail it to them in 6-8 weeks? Does anyone know?
Really loved to hear about the recent history of permitting reform efforts, I didn't know about most of that.
Let's not forget that the most recent American state to experience massive blackouts was Texas, not California, something that seems to be a direct result of their anti-regulatory framework. The golden mean must be somewhere between the two (though if I had to choose the lessor of two evils, I'd take the Californian brown-outs any day).
I don't know if everyone loves the topic of energy production and grid management as much as I do, but I'd love it if you brought in someone to talk about the Iberian Peninsula blackout, it's a huge story that has NOT gotten enough attention. Obviously our grids are very different, but as more renewables come online are we actually confident that what happened to them won't happen to us? (As someone who has put electrons on the grid, I suspect the report by Red Electrica contained some serious green-washing, but I'd love to hear from an expert on the subject).
Every once in a while you guys will make an argument that leaves me confused about what you actually believe (which is why it's important to have public disagreements, even if it feels a bit uncomfortable, because challenging ideas creates clarity). On this episode, Megan and Josh complain about some of the more heavy-handed and radical ideas democrats have come up with to fight the redistricting battle, but I'm not entirely clear on what you think they should do instead?
Josh at least goes into detail about how this battle was started by Republicans, though he inaccurately attributes this all to Trump. In reality, the significant escalation started with Republicans and Project Roadmap back in the 2008-10 time frame. And it's important to remember that Democrat's first reaction to that escalation was to DE-ESCALATE, with many blue states setting up bipartisan redistricting commissions. Eventually they realized their mistake and are now trying to undo the damage, as the one-sided nature of the current situation causes Republicans to rebuff every effort by Democrats to come up with an anti-gerrymandering consensus which would theoretically be best for everyone. And obviously Trump super-charged this by insisting that they launch a mid-cycle redistricting effort and encouraged them to be even more aggressive than they already had been, I just think it's wrong to indicate that this is a Trump-specific problem. The question that matters is, how should Democrats respond?
As long as Republicans can keep more representatives than vote share, there is no reason for them to ever call a truce. Losing one or two districts because they went too far won't convince them to abandon gerrymandering, it will convince them to come up with a better strategy to maximize their advantage next time. Given that, the only chance Democrats have of ending the redistricting wars is to dramatically escalate to the point that the Republican advantage is at least reduced to zero. Most likely, it would take a sustained advantage by Democrats to bring Republicans to the table (which seems unlikely for many reasons).
I agree that many of these court-packing and other kinds of schemes are a bad idea, that many of them would likely backfire or be such an egregious escalation that it would damage the liberal brand. I also agree with Megan that the advantage Republicans are gaining does not present an insurmountable problem and we shouldn't act like the sky is falling. Beyond that I can only surmise that Megan and Josh think Democrats should allow Republicans to continue their advantage and just "try to win more". I'd love if Democrats became more appealing, but I also don't think they should need to be 8% more appealing than Republicans just to pull even.
Megan's position seems to be:
1. Aggressive redistricting efforts by Democrats are very very bad.
2. Aggressive redistricting efforts by Republicans are...unfortunate but unavoidable.
It seems like the party that breaks the rules more should get more ire. Josh nearly accomplished that (sort of like an after-thought), but Megan seems like she believes that Democrats are the only ones capable of making moral decisions and therefore deserve most of the blame. I'm sure she doesn't actually think that, but when you spend the whole time deriding Democrats for trying to get back to par, that certainly seems like what she's aiming at.
Fixing this problem will require a strategy of proportional responses that convince opponents that further escalation won't be profitable. At the very least, it keeps them in the game. You can't negotiate with a lion when your head is in his mouth.
Enjoyed the show but I was a little surprised you didn’t mention the Utah data center that will take up 62 square miles. The Great Salt Lake and other water sources already are struggling. The data center is not going to help.
Is the "picking up carry on" stuff on the plane partly a result of a kind of chain reaction?
Imagine you are sitting on a place, not in an exit row, when the evacuation begins. If people start picking up their stuff, it slows the line down, leaving more and more passengers sitting, trapped in their seats, with their stuff, watching other passengers take their stuff out.
While trapped in your seat, why not grab your laptop? *You* aren't slowing anyone down, you are doing this while you wait for your chance to deplane.
So maybe you get a nobody does it or everybody does it kind of effect.
Another variation using Gh brownie or another brand mix is to turn it into an acceptable lower-fat snack bar by replacing all the liquid with canned pumpkin, then adding 2 teaspoons of vanilla, 1-2 teaspoons of espresso powder, and walnuts.
I have also used applesauce as a substitute, but I believe the pumpkin works better. It’s not decadent but decent. If you keep the egg, use less pumpkin by substituting liquid—say, 1/3 cup oil and 1 tablespoon water, which equals about 6 tablespoons of pumpkin plus the egg; or if you omit the egg, add an extra 3-4 tablespoons of pumpkin.
Great episode, though to do our now weekly Ben correction, the line is “Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.” It’s also followed by Nic Cage cocking his gun and telling Connery “Carla was the prom queen” in extremely badass fashion. Fantastic line. I broadly agree that there is a lot to bemoan about the redistricting fiascos, but if Democrats just won elections it would be much less of an issue.
The AI data center discussion is much more interesting and nuanced, I think - and it will be ongoing for the foreseeable future. Kevin O’Leary (Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful) just helped get a massive “giga center” approved in Utah that apparently will use the energy equivalent currently being utilized by the entire state - which feels almost too preposterous to be true.
When you revisit the data center discussion next time, I’d love to potentially hear from some global perspective, as this is hardly just an American issue. Australia is building data centers at a remarkable pace as well, but they’ve also got a booming “How do we keep these things environmentally sound?” Industry of startups that is growing alongside them, which I find curiously lacking in the American start up space, but maybe I’m just not looking in the right spots.
I’m sure all the brownies are delicious.
I agree that is the line but I think I said that!
Oh I see, I said cheerleader instead of prom queen.
You’re right. I’m a moron.
I apologize to the listeners.
Objection withdrawn.
I came to post for the first time ever to correct you. But I see someone else has gotten to you before me. Carry on.
Either way, it's a great quote and I agree that Democrats need to stop being so squeamish and take it on as their mantra.
Cue Sean Connery gruffly calling me a “pedantic little shit”
I came here to make this exact point re correcting Ben, thank you, John Murphy 🫡
One unnecessary and pointless personal defense against Ben - I actually prefer to bag my own groceries. I'm not sure who (if anyone) teaches the folks working at the grocery store how to do it, but the lack of efficiency and understanding of bag capacity is striking. So, nowadays, I always use the self-checkout.
I am not a thief.
I don't always agree with the choices they make, but if I've got a big cart it's preposterous to think that I, as an amateur, would be faster than a person who does this for 8 hours every single day.
I think Ben is wrong about this happening because people think they can commit theft, especially as they now have software that catches people trying to do that. I think it's more likely that people get used to the self-checkouts being faster and start to do that by default, so every once in a while they are wrong. It's the same reason they were trying to claim that oil companies wouldn't over-produce oil after just discussing how oil companies had over-produced oil and put themselves out of business. It's all just people, and they make mistakes.
My grocery store is right next to my gym, so I go almost every day and get a handful of items. When it comes time to pay, my options are:
- Get in a long full service line behind a bunch of elderly shoppers who will pay by check and want to show pictures of their grandkids to the cashier, OR
- Go to the self-checkout area where there is no line.
It's not rocket surgery. I'm not doing it because I want to steal, I'm doing it because I want to get on with my day.
I go through self checkout because I like to keep listening to podcasts while I v
bag my groceries and I like to bag them a certain way.
I have my gripes about northern Nevada (mainly that its cities are too small and too economically depressed), but southern Nevada is way worse, Ben. At least the north has decent weather, and lakes! If you ask me what the worst places in the US are, I'm offering Las Vegas and Phoenix without hesitation. I will never understand why millions of people want to live in that miserable oven down there.
Northwest Nevada is fine it seems like. But the area south of me is northeast Nevada and it’s the emptiest and saddest place in America
That sounds about right. Remember the media stunt 25 years ago where Battle Mountain was awarded the title "armpit of America?"
There's an austere beauty to the mountains, especially, and I'm curious about this weirdly fertile place called Jarbridge near the Idaho state line that I'll probably never see because it sounds like you have to be pretty outdoorsy to even get there, but it is very empty. I'm the kind of person who likes civilization, so any prolonged exposure to emptiness makes me sad. I think the weather gets less mild the further you get from the Sierra Front, too, but I'm not entirely sure about that.
The northwest, on the other hand... Reno has many hidden gems, but on the whole it is very small and its economy is fragile. Lots of people who live there like that just fine, because they're in it for the easy outdoor/wilderness recreation access while checking the fundamental urban amenity boxes. I on the other hand am very interested in what it would look like with a few million more residents on its bones. The population is slowly growing, but unfortunately a major employment center especially for newcomers is that tech complex 30 miles out of town where the datacenters are, with no other way to get to it than by car, so I'm told those people spend a very large part of their days sitting in traffic on I-80.
Your comment in the episode got a chuckle out of me, in any case!
Agreed. Also, how does it make any sense to take a technology where the biggest challenge is keeping it cold, and put it somewhere hot? It really just shows you how much of a hurdle permitting is that they will knowingly spend more money on HVAC systems and electricity to build them in the wrong places.
cue king of the hill scene when they arrive in phoenix
There needs to be an episode with Kristen Soltis Anderson as the guest, bringing brownies, and Megan and Josh being subjected to a blind taste test.
1:21:47 Megan's prescription for Democrats is to... do what, exactly?
Until Congress bans gerrymandering, these are the rules of the game.
Nate Silver recently had a piece touching on the game theory of gerrymandering. I'd like to know where she disagrees.
Yeah, the message here is that Democrats should stop (Republicans apparently have no sovereignty over their own choices so there's no reason to tell them to stop) because they will only need to be 6% more appealing than Republicans to get the same number of seats in Congress. Just accept that being a better person achieves worse outcomes. Because that's how humans respond to incentives.
On the gerrymandering thing...
I think Josh was right that VA changing the retirement age of the justices seems very kangaroo court. But I think he was also right to be less sanguine than Megan about the potential of these aggressive gerrymanders to self correct.
There is another aspect of these recent court decisions related to gerrymandering that concerns me.
The Callais decision came down after early primary voting in Louisiana had already begun. Some 40,000 voters had already cat primary ballots. And the governor of LA declared a *state of emergency* that required him to cancel the *Congressional primaries* but not the primary election in its entirety which included other races such as the Senate. (What type of emergency would that be, exactly?)
Aside from making a mockery of SCOTUS's rationale for its Purcell principle by injecting a ton of confusion, it resulted in Louisiana throwing out the votes of 40,000 voters who cast valid ballots that will be counted for the other races.
Megan called the Virginia decision "reasonable," but she did not mention the dissent, which, relying on VA constitutional and statutory definitions of "elections," was also reasonable. So, if we credit the court with choosing between two reasonable legal interpretations, it means that the majority chose the interpretation that resulted in the cancellation of an election in which 3 million people cast votes.
In 2020, the judicial system and the Supreme Court held up and mostly denied all of the many requests (in the form of stupid lawsuits) to throw away votes. (I believe there was one case in which a SCOTUS majority held some PA votes aside, and would have thrown them away if it swung the election to Trump, but that is as close as we got.)
Now, we are still 6 months away from the midterm and we have seen Republican majorities on both SCOTUS and SC of VA throw validly cast votes away in a manner that benefitted Republicans.
I think that is a very dangrous precedent, and it probably means that if the Democrats come out ahead in the midterm but only narrowly, the courts will hand the win to the GOP.
Yeah, it's this kind of thing that sometimes makes them seem more like anti-anti's (people who don't love MAGA, but who reserve most of their disdain for people who are anti-MAGA).
Josh makes a point about energy regulation and rolling blackouts and how that's what gray davis encountered, but the california energy crisis was a victim of too little government intervention, as it was caused by intentional manipulation in the energy markets by companies like enron, who ordered plants to shutdown in order for prices to spike. this was all worsened because davis' republican predecessor signed a bill that deregulated energy markets.
I think the California energy crisis that Josh referred to had more to do with an ill-conceived deregulatory market design. Utilities were prohibited from entering into long-term supply contracts, which created the (perverse) incentives for marketers like Enron to induce manufactured shortages driving up spot market prices.
I would love to read a more thorough investigation of that situation, I've always wondered how they could make more money by tripping off their own power plants. Like, shouldn't that make them come out even at best or even help their competitors? Seems like a situation that can only happen because of perverse incentives, but I don't know what those are.
So what happens to the personal items that are left in the cabin of the plane in these evacuation situations? Do they go row by row, seat by seat and label each item for return? Like if someone left a purse with, say, medicine that they need to survive, how quickly would the airline return it to that person? Do they bring it to the terminal immediately or mail it to them in 6-8 weeks? Does anyone know?
Last guy off the plane gets to take whatever he wants among everyone's left items without risking anyone's life but his own!
Maybe Jia Tolentino would happily volunteer to be last off.
Really loved to hear about the recent history of permitting reform efforts, I didn't know about most of that.
Let's not forget that the most recent American state to experience massive blackouts was Texas, not California, something that seems to be a direct result of their anti-regulatory framework. The golden mean must be somewhere between the two (though if I had to choose the lessor of two evils, I'd take the Californian brown-outs any day).
I don't know if everyone loves the topic of energy production and grid management as much as I do, but I'd love it if you brought in someone to talk about the Iberian Peninsula blackout, it's a huge story that has NOT gotten enough attention. Obviously our grids are very different, but as more renewables come online are we actually confident that what happened to them won't happen to us? (As someone who has put electrons on the grid, I suspect the report by Red Electrica contained some serious green-washing, but I'd love to hear from an expert on the subject).
Every once in a while you guys will make an argument that leaves me confused about what you actually believe (which is why it's important to have public disagreements, even if it feels a bit uncomfortable, because challenging ideas creates clarity). On this episode, Megan and Josh complain about some of the more heavy-handed and radical ideas democrats have come up with to fight the redistricting battle, but I'm not entirely clear on what you think they should do instead?
Josh at least goes into detail about how this battle was started by Republicans, though he inaccurately attributes this all to Trump. In reality, the significant escalation started with Republicans and Project Roadmap back in the 2008-10 time frame. And it's important to remember that Democrat's first reaction to that escalation was to DE-ESCALATE, with many blue states setting up bipartisan redistricting commissions. Eventually they realized their mistake and are now trying to undo the damage, as the one-sided nature of the current situation causes Republicans to rebuff every effort by Democrats to come up with an anti-gerrymandering consensus which would theoretically be best for everyone. And obviously Trump super-charged this by insisting that they launch a mid-cycle redistricting effort and encouraged them to be even more aggressive than they already had been, I just think it's wrong to indicate that this is a Trump-specific problem. The question that matters is, how should Democrats respond?
As long as Republicans can keep more representatives than vote share, there is no reason for them to ever call a truce. Losing one or two districts because they went too far won't convince them to abandon gerrymandering, it will convince them to come up with a better strategy to maximize their advantage next time. Given that, the only chance Democrats have of ending the redistricting wars is to dramatically escalate to the point that the Republican advantage is at least reduced to zero. Most likely, it would take a sustained advantage by Democrats to bring Republicans to the table (which seems unlikely for many reasons).
I agree that many of these court-packing and other kinds of schemes are a bad idea, that many of them would likely backfire or be such an egregious escalation that it would damage the liberal brand. I also agree with Megan that the advantage Republicans are gaining does not present an insurmountable problem and we shouldn't act like the sky is falling. Beyond that I can only surmise that Megan and Josh think Democrats should allow Republicans to continue their advantage and just "try to win more". I'd love if Democrats became more appealing, but I also don't think they should need to be 8% more appealing than Republicans just to pull even.
Megan's position seems to be:
1. Aggressive redistricting efforts by Democrats are very very bad.
2. Aggressive redistricting efforts by Republicans are...unfortunate but unavoidable.
It seems like the party that breaks the rules more should get more ire. Josh nearly accomplished that (sort of like an after-thought), but Megan seems like she believes that Democrats are the only ones capable of making moral decisions and therefore deserve most of the blame. I'm sure she doesn't actually think that, but when you spend the whole time deriding Democrats for trying to get back to par, that certainly seems like what she's aiming at.
Fixing this problem will require a strategy of proportional responses that convince opponents that further escalation won't be profitable. At the very least, it keeps them in the game. You can't negotiate with a lion when your head is in his mouth.
Enjoyed the show but I was a little surprised you didn’t mention the Utah data center that will take up 62 square miles. The Great Salt Lake and other water sources already are struggling. The data center is not going to help.
Unlike Gia T I pay for the pumpkin and mix vs shoplift with a sense of confidence
Is the "picking up carry on" stuff on the plane partly a result of a kind of chain reaction?
Imagine you are sitting on a place, not in an exit row, when the evacuation begins. If people start picking up their stuff, it slows the line down, leaving more and more passengers sitting, trapped in their seats, with their stuff, watching other passengers take their stuff out.
While trapped in your seat, why not grab your laptop? *You* aren't slowing anyone down, you are doing this while you wait for your chance to deplane.
So maybe you get a nobody does it or everybody does it kind of effect.
Another variation using Gh brownie or another brand mix is to turn it into an acceptable lower-fat snack bar by replacing all the liquid with canned pumpkin, then adding 2 teaspoons of vanilla, 1-2 teaspoons of espresso powder, and walnuts.
I have also used applesauce as a substitute, but I believe the pumpkin works better. It’s not decadent but decent. If you keep the egg, use less pumpkin by substituting liquid—say, 1/3 cup oil and 1 tablespoon water, which equals about 6 tablespoons of pumpkin plus the egg; or if you omit the egg, add an extra 3-4 tablespoons of pumpkin.