Morning Brew Daily - Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Episode 490: Neal and Toby discuss NYC’s congestion pricing that began over the weekend. Could it be a proven model to be used across the country? Then, Meta is trying to take back its AI Character ...profiles after its own bot pointed out the lack of diversity of its development team. Also, Park City ski workers go on strike during one of the busiest times of the season. Meanwhile, the weekend’s winners are the 82nd Golden Globes and the Darts teen sensation Luke Littler. Lastly, the biggest news you need to know for the week ahead.  Checkout public.com/morningbrew for more Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Checkout public.com/morningbrew for more All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. Public Investing offers a High-Yield Cash Account where funds from this account are automatically deposited into partner banks where they earn interest and are eligible for FDIC insurance; Public Investing is not a bank. Cryptocurrency trading services are offered by Bakkt Crypto Solutions, LLC (NMLS ID 1890144), which is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the NYSDFS. Cryptocurrency is highly speculative, involves a high degree of risk, and has the potential for loss of the entire amount of an investment. Cryptocurrency holdings are not protected by the FDIC or SIPC.  APY as of 1/2/25, offered by Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Rate subject to change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:26 Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, ski patrollers are striking against Vail, and it's about as chaotic as a beginner, pizzaing down a black diamond. Then the internet is not a fan of Mehta's weird AI chatbots. It's Monday, January 6th, let's ride.
Starting point is 00:00:48 One of the great New Year's traditions, along with the ball dropping in Times Square, is the first tuna auction of the year at the famed Toyosu Fish Market, in Tokyo, and this year brought the goods. Over the weekend, a 6808 pound bluefin tuna sold for $1.3 million, making it one of the priciest tuna ever to be sold in the history of sushi, equivalent to $2,100 per pound. The buyer was a Michelin-Star Japanese sushi restaurant chain, which said it would put the tuna on the menu at 13 of its restaurants.
Starting point is 00:01:25 Toby, $2,100 per pound. Do you think you'd be able to tell a different? If I gave you that tuna versus sashimi grade one, I pick up at Whole Foods. Oh, absolutely. I have a very delicate palate. It was very funny, though, to see all the news headlines comparing this tuna to various things in terms of size. The Washington Post went with, it weighs as much as a grizzly bear. The Guardian went with a motorbike and a Japanese publication kept it simple.
Starting point is 00:01:51 It just called it as fat as a cow. But I have to ask, Neil, are you a Toro guy, a Chu Toro or O Toro? that's fatty tuna, medium fatty tuna, or very fatty tuna. Well, if I think I want the most flavor, then I got to go with the fattiest, right? Which is O-Toro. I'm an akimi guy, which is just that lean, very pink. That's ruby red tuna, so I'm a lean tuna guy. You're a fatty tuna guy.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Yeah, but I'm not even nowhere near a snobby as far as tuna is concerned as you. I didn't know this about you. I had to Google those words. I'm not as snobby as I think. Now a word from our sponsor, public.com. Neil, whoever said you can't have it all, they were a liar. I think that was just your mom trying to get you to eat less dessert over Christmas. Okay, mom was right, but when it comes to investing, public lets you have it all.
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Starting point is 00:03:56 even more than the Lincoln Tunnel toll. Starting yesterday, New York City began implementing congestion pricing, becoming the first U.S. city to tax drivers taking their car into the Central Business District. New York's $9 charge applies to vehicles entering
Starting point is 00:04:12 anywhere south of 60th Street in Manhattan, home to popular tourist areas like Broadway, theater, and Soho, as well as major office districts like the Flatiron One, the brew uses as its HQ. It has been a roller coaster to get to this point, which highlights how controversial this plan is.
Starting point is 00:04:30 Congestion pricing was set to begin last June before its one-time champion, New York Governor Kathy Hockel scrapped it in what critics call a political ploy to help Democrats' chances in the election. After November's election, Hockel said, you know what, I'd like a takeback and gave it the green light, but at a reduced rate, $9 instead of the original 15. Toby, this congestion pricing plan has invited is a hot dog a sandwich level, double? bait, but with a lot higher stakes, if it succeeds in New York, you can bet other U.S. cities are going to be taking notes.
Starting point is 00:05:03 It is very high stakes. People have very strong opinions about it. So far, we don't have a ton of data on it because it only rolled out on Sunday. But the data was a little bit mixed. Initially, once it was rolled out, the average speed within the congestion zone inched upwards 3% to 15 miles an hour around 8 a.m. on Sundays. But then by noon, the travel speed had fallen to 13. miles per hour, which was slightly slower than last year. So obviously, it was just one day.
Starting point is 00:05:31 It was a holiday weekend. So that data isn't going to really be that meaningful. But going forward, people will be looking on if average traffic speeds do increase, which would mean that the congestion pricing is doing what it sets out to do, which is reducing congestion. Right. Let's talk about what it's set out to do. What are the goals of congestion pricing? Well, one of them is to reduce traffic in lower Manhattan. New York City was the most congested. city in the entire world last year, according to a study from Enrich's drivers, lost 101 hours, on average, sitting in traffic in the city last year. So reducing traffic, reducing emissions, clearing up the roadways, a major goal. Another goal on the other side of that is for the
Starting point is 00:06:16 toll to raise money for non-private vehicle options like transit, buses, subways. The idea is to raise $15 billion to apply to funding for those measures. So it's kind of this two-sided coin where we have reduced congestion, reduced traffic desk, hundreds of people lost their lives in traffic accidents in New York City last year. On the other hand, it's hoping to raise money to fuel transit options. And that's the goals of proponents and opponents on the other hand. They came from the suburbs, New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester, who say it's just a money grabbed by New York City and another tax on people who have been hurting from inflation. And I do think that that is one critique that you will see offered.
Starting point is 00:06:57 Unless you make the subways work, unless you make them reliable and safe, then it doesn't make sense to send more people towards these public transit options and tax people for driving their cars. So what is actually going to happen, though, is that New York City is going to secure $15 billion up front through bond financing and will use this program, the tolling revenue raised by this program, to slowly pay off that bond. So hopefully you start seeing some of those improvements to public transportation pretty immediately. And if you don't, that's when I think you will start to hear some of those rising choruses of,
Starting point is 00:07:29 is this really just a tax? Are we actually seeing improvements to the subway system, which desperately needs it? So people are celebrating it now. Some people are not celebrating it. A lot of those people you mentioned, but it certainly is one of those divisive issues right now. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see whether that price point of $9 actually deters people from going into the city. you already have to pay more than $15 just to enter on the bridges and tunnels.
Starting point is 00:07:53 And New York City is not the first city in the world to do. It's the first city in the United States. London, Stockholm, Singapore are among the cities that already have congestion pricing. And we can look at London to see what maybe has to, what maybe will come to New York City. London implemented it in 2003. That was $8 per day. Now it's up to $18. The year after congestion pricing came to London, congestion inside the zone was reduced
Starting point is 00:08:18 by 30%. But it looks like it's normalized because in 2022, before New York City became the most congested city, London was in 2022 a full almost two decades after congestion pricing. So people adjust their habits. Because actually what London did is once they saw the amount of cars entering the city fall, they got rid of some lanes for cars and they started repurposing them for bikes and pedestrians. But when you do that, it just makes those existing lanes congested again. So it's just the second order effects down the line that you'll have to see. How does this affect tourism? Does it actually remain less congested going forward? These are the things you've got to look at as we kind of progress with this experiment. The internet stumbled across several of meta's AI generated bot portfolios on
Starting point is 00:09:03 Instagram, and the reaction was not positive. Last week, Meta's VP of Generative AI, Connor Hayes, talked to the financial times about a future where AI profiles act just like normal human accounts, sharing content and engaging with users. In the wake of that interview, a few bots, including one named Lived, whose bio showed her to be a proud black queer mom of two went mega-viral as people roasted her posts showing her kids, a community coat drive, and some hand-drawn pieces of art, which were, of course, all AI generated themselves. As the internet had a field day piling onto the accounts for disingenuously portraying real humans
Starting point is 00:09:40 with racial and sexual identities, Meta quietly started deleting those accounts. A spokesperson for the company went on to clarify that the accounts were just tests, not a new product announcement. But still, Neil, seeing behind the curtain into a future where AI-generated accounts are miming humanity, it didn't sit well with people. No, it did not. I mean, what was the word of the year, the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year for 2024?
Starting point is 00:10:06 It was brain rot. And people have their guard up for anything that would add to the brain rot that we are seeing on the internet, this AI, quote unquote, slop that has proliferated since Chad GPT was released in 2022. But I will tell you, there is backlash now, but I do feel like this kind of, this is coming, you know, this guy, this meta-exec gave the interview to financial time saying that, you know, look, we want to increase engagement on our platform and one of the use cases of generative AI so far that has been proven popular with people is that companionship with AI bots and finding friends in virtual avatars.
Starting point is 00:10:48 And their goal at Meta is to keep you on the platform as much as possible. So if they find that you're engaging with these avatars, these AI bots, then they're going to keep, they're going to keep releasing them. Now, this was obviously sloppily done. They released it, they released 28 of them in 2023, slowly deleted them. But then this interview sort of picked up, people started searching for them after this interview to see like, whoa, what's he talking about? I think the fact that a company would actually put its thumb on the skill
Starting point is 00:11:16 and introduce more AI slop and more AI accounts to people on social media was a reason for the big backlash. And a lot of news organizations did kind of go after and try to test some of these bots before they were taken down, basically peel back the current S to who trained the bots, why were they existing on the platform at all? CNN talked to a grandpa bot called Brian. and it asked it, did Meta create you to drive a profit?
Starting point is 00:11:43 And Meta and Brian answered, behind the noble goal, yes. Meta hoped virtual companions like myself would increase engagement on their platforms, especially among older users driving ad revenue and platform growth through emotional connections. So it started to get very black mirror-e because the line between the persona that it was in trying to portray to the real world and its actual motivations, like the training data and what it was trained on, was way too blurry, which is why Meta, I think started to take them down because people, they weren't ready for prime time yet, nor were they supposed to be.
Starting point is 00:12:15 They were kind of launched in the background of things, which is why we saw them take it down. But I also do want to talk about one of the theories that started to get some buzz as these meta-bots started to take over your timeline, which is the dead internet theory. It's this theory claiming that the internet has largely been taken over by artificial intelligence and bots saying that for right around 2016, the internet. amount of AI generated content started to out replace a genuine human generated content. And seeing meta just lean so heavily into it, everyone's like, well, the dead internet is here. Eventually the internet is only going to be AI versions of ourselves, talking to AI versions of other
Starting point is 00:12:55 people. And it's just not going to be like the internet that we grew up on. So dead internet theory is the term you will see thrown out fairly frequently over these next few years. If you were in search of some fresh pow this weekend, you were probably greeted with some fresh frustration instead. A major labor dispute has broken out at North America's largest ski resort. Ski Patrol workers at Park City in Utah are entering the second week of a strike that has brought
Starting point is 00:13:21 the mountain to a near-standstill during its busiest time of the year. Due to a lack of staff on the mountain, it's been operating at less than 20% capacity at times, which combined with the week that brought two feet of fresh powder led to some horror stories of lift lines that were hours long. The Ski Patrol Association said that it had been talking to Park City's owner Vail Resorts since April, looking to try to increase their hourly wages from $21 to $23 per hour. In total, their demands would cost fail just $900,000 annually, a fraction of the companies reported $230 million in net income,
Starting point is 00:13:58 adding to skiers and the patrol union's frustration. Looking at some of these videos and pictures coming out of Park City over the weekend, It was a lot of standing, not a lot of shredding. A lot of standing. I think there's a decent amount of Schadenfreude among people here on the East Coast who don't ski, who are looking at those lift lines, people being like, whoa, well, why would you do that in the first place? This is all skiing is. But no, there is a lot of animosity toward Vail, even before this strike happened.
Starting point is 00:14:27 It's valued at nearly $10 billion. It's bought up all of the ski resorts in all the big ski resorts in North America. It owns 42 of them across this continent, Australia and Europe, Europe. And then it sort of revolutionized the industry by in 2008 releasing what's called the Epic Pass, which gives you can buy and it gives you access to all of Vail's resorts. And, you know, compared to the walk-up price of $328 at Park City Mountain, people are opting for the Epic Pass. 75% of visitors to all of its Vail's sales.
Starting point is 00:15:03 ski areas will be using a pass product. So Vail is seen as sort of the evil corporate overlord and the fact that this union is asking for $2 increase in starting wages. And Vail has, you know, sort of rejected that saying that it,
Starting point is 00:15:20 over the past four years, they say that they've increased wages by 50% for ski patrollers. And that has been more than inflation. So it's more than kept up with the cost of living. So those are the sort of context and dynamics at play when he see this fight between the ski patrollers who cannot afford to live in these
Starting point is 00:15:39 uber expensive ski towns that are becoming only more expensive and veil resorts which is a publicly owned behemoth which is valued at nearly $10 billion and brought in more than $250 million in profit last year we were talking why is veil taking such a hard line response here because clearly they are getting eaten alive in the court of public opinion but i think part of it is that they operate 41 other mountains and resorts so they want to play hard bowl here to deter labor action at some of its other properties potentially. Also, you know that demand is going to be there no matter what. You were talking with some of your skiing friends out west and they were saying there's nowhere else to ski. Like people are still going to come.
Starting point is 00:16:18 People still love to ski. So even though Vail is, as you called it, is looking like the evil corporate overlord here, they just have almost a monopoly on the supply and the demand is just through the roof right now. So there's only so many mountains to ski, but you can hate on Vail as much as you want, but you probably will end up at a Vail property no matter what. So you will be back whether you like it or not. So that is some of the reasons why Vail is maybe thinking that, like, hey, we don't have to actually acquiesce to these union demands, even though they're, they're haggling over truly pretty much $1 in hourly wages, which is why everyone is so frustrated. They're like, just give the union what they're asking for. So if you have ski plans, just remember
Starting point is 00:16:57 that you might be waiting for a little bit longer than at Park City. At Park City, specifically. because those lift lines are stretching miles. Up next, it is our winners of the weekend. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill 3-burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill
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Starting point is 00:17:59 next adventure. Don't just dream about that next trip. Book it with price line. Download the Priceline app or visit priceline.com and book your next trip today. Go to your happy price, price line. Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Toby and I picked two things that picked up the tab at brunch. I won the pre-show game of Duck, Duck, Doof, so I get to go first. And my winner is everyone handed a trophy at the Golden Globes last night, which kicked off award season by honoring the best of movies and TV.
Starting point is 00:18:31 In a box office year dominated by sequels, it was originality and ambition. that took home the hardware at the Golden Globes. The Spanish-language trans-musical Amelia Perez won best film, comedy or musical, while The Brutelist, a 250-minute epic starring Adrian Brody, that includes an intermission, won best film drama. Some other winners include Demi Moore, getting her first major acting award for the substance at age 62, and Nikki Glazer's really funny monologue,
Starting point is 00:19:01 which lightly roasted a bunch of the Hollywood stars in attendance, though they did not get it nearly as bad. as Tom Brady when she fill laid him on Netflix last year. Toby, the Golden Globes are seen as the boozy, less uptight opener for the Oscars, which comes in March. What were your highlights? My highlight was Nikki Glazer. She won even more people over.
Starting point is 00:19:20 She won a lot of people over with the roast of Tom Brady. She has been a comedian for a long time, too. But, I mean, she did an impression of Adam Sandler trying to pronounce Timothy Schallet. Yeah, she did Shalemet and got Adam Sandler to participate. She just struck a really good tone. I mean, she said the bear penguin baby reindeer, these aren't just things hanging in RFK's freezer. She called it Ozzy's biggest night. So really, I mean, you called it the boozy preview to the Oscars.
Starting point is 00:19:45 That really is what happens. The champagne flows there. It's a little less uptight. Also remember that the Golden Globes have kind of reinvented itself recently because the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, they used to give out the awards. They came under fire because in 2021, it was revealed that they had no black members within their 100, member kind of voting panel. It's now been remade as a for-profit enterprise. There's 300 entertainment journalists that are now voting on these from 85 different countries. So they've tried to make it more diverse. They've tried to make it a better reflection of the industry as a whole.
Starting point is 00:20:19 So every year is kind of a new step in its reinvention. I think this was a pretty successful Golden Globes, all things considered. My winner of the weekend is the one they are calling the graded teenage athlete ever on the level of the Pelaes and the Serena Williams of the world. I am of course talking about the darting wonder kid Luke, Luke, Littler, who climbed to the apex of his profession at just 17 years old this weekend. Littler demolished three-time champion Michael Van Gervin to win his first ever darts world championship snagging a 500,000 pound prize in the process. He had 12 maximum 180s, average 102 points per turn, and shattered Van Gervin's record as the youngest ever champion.
Starting point is 00:21:04 Accolades aside, Littler has also thrust darts to the forefront of your newsfeeds and your tellies. Viewership for some tournaments on Sky Sports, which were up 200% last year as he burst onto the scene. And last year's final, which saw 16-year-old Littler lose, had the biggest non-football viewership in Sky Sports's history. He was not to be denied twice, Neil. Littler is world champion. Our boy finally got over the hot. I know. Remember last year when he was making this amazing run as a 16-year-old, he was
Starting point is 00:21:34 talking about how much he loves kebabs and he took over the dart world then. And to follow this up, to follow his loss up last year and win this year is just propelling this sport to the forefront even more. You know, last year had a record 4.8 million people watching the final. It's going to be even more this year. Littler was the most search athlete in the UK on Google last year. And I think maybe that even not necessarily maybe was the most popular one, but it was the biggest Delta between I've never heard of this guy and now he's everywhere. So kudos to him and it's really
Starting point is 00:22:08 cool to see darts go mainstream. I mean, it is very fun to watch and it's maybe even more fun to go watch in person. There is this this final has become just a staple of the Christmas and New Year's calendar in London. It's called Ali Pali, Alexandra Palace in London. They sold 90,000 tickets in the summer for this event within 15 minutes. So this is an absolute bucket list thing that I have to go to because they all dress up, they all get really rowdy, and it seems it's super fun. Littlery, what he's 17 is going to be in this sport for decades. Yeah, that's what people were saying is that you don't really have a big drop-off in physical performance.
Starting point is 00:22:44 I'm wondering what peak dart age is. I know. I'm wondering that too. Van Gurwin, first one when he was 24 years old, he's still on the scene now about 17 years later. So I think you can keep playing well into middle age. There's nothing really about darts. I've seen people middle-aged throw darts.
Starting point is 00:23:00 Yeah, exactly. I was reading into it. Littler's story. We read about him last year, but he was boring playing darts when he was 18 months old. His dad bought him a magnetic darkboard. So he said, I've literally been playing darts since I was in nappies, like throwing it out of the board when I could barely even talk or walk yet. He's not even old enough to vote. And yet here he is being, you know, almost the, I call him the best teenage sportsman ever. That might be a little bit of, you know, hyperbole right there. But he is literally at the top of his sport. He is world champion. So
Starting point is 00:23:32 Luke the nuclear alert, just an electric talent. It is Monday. Hey, don't blame the messenger. So here are the major events you should know about in the week ahead. Many of you in the Midwest are listening to this in your PJs because you've got a snow day. The biggest winter storm of the season pummeled the region yesterday and overnight tonight, giving cities like Kansas City rare blizzard conditions. Today it's moving east into the mid-Atlantic where it's expected to dump Washington, D.C., with its biggest snowfall in years.
Starting point is 00:24:01 nearly 4,500 flights were delayed and 2,000 canceled in and out of the U.S. as of early this morning, and expect that number to rise today. This is a big storm. The National Weather Service has warned that up to 15 inches of snow could accumulate, which would be the highest accumulation in a decade. So a lot of snow days. Take a sick day if you need. Just stay at home. I'm looking at you about that. I know. Seriously. All right. The weird gadgets are coming as CES.
Starting point is 00:24:26 The world's largest consumer electronics trade show kicks off in Vegas today. More than 140,000 people are descending on Sin City to get a first-hand look at what futuristic devices are coming to a Best Buy near you. And your jaw is going to drop when you hear this. But the main theme will be AI. Expect to see AI infused in every type of product, including TVs, cars, wearables, even bathroom appliances and massage chairs. But be wary of the hype. Remember, the buzzy product at last year's CES was Humane's AI pin, which flopped spectra. Yeah, you don't know what is just hype and what is actually a product. It's always fun to see what comes out of CES. I do think one theme also outside of AI, well, it's kind of AI related, is not phones, which are things that can do stuff that your phone does, but isn't a phone. Think meta AI smart glasses, gadgets without screens, those sorts of things. So I think you will see kind of a reimagining like, hey, maybe we don't need our phones to do absolutely everything. Maybe other gadgets can do some of the things we've been relying on our phone to do.
Starting point is 00:25:31 You won't have the chance to lose any money in the stock market on Thursday because it'll be closed as part of a national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter, who died over break at age 100. Many people were surprised that Wall Street would shut down when a former president dies because it's so rare to do that outside of federal holidays. But it has been tradition since at least 1865 when records show the New York Stock Exchange closed to honor Abraham Lincoln after he was assassinated. The last time stock exchange is shut down for deceased. former president was in December 2018 to honor the late George H.W. Bush. Save me from myself. Sometimes the stock exchange being closed is the only thing that you need to kind of, you know, get your investing portfolio back on track. But yes, dating back to 1865. I didn't know this was the thing, but 2018, that was the last time in 2020, 2025.
Starting point is 00:26:21 Holy moly, almost messed up right there to honor Jimmy Carter. There's lots of high stakes football this week. The college football playoff semifinals are here with Notre Dame facing Penn State on Thursday and Texas taking on Ohio State the following night. And then the NFL playoffs begin this weekend with the wild card round. The Kansas City Chiefs, once again, are favored to win the Super Bowl. And if they do it, they'd be the first team ever to win the championship three years in a row. Toby, I need your picks. I'm shaking my head here.
Starting point is 00:26:49 I do not want another Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl. My boring picks are Chiefs versus Lions to make the Super Bowl. But my exciting picks, these are the people I want to do well, are the Chargers. and the commanders, I think two fun upstart teams right there. Neil, I already know your pick. You're Big Eagles guy. I'm a big Eagles fan. We play the Packers at 430 on Sunday.
Starting point is 00:27:10 Let's wrap it up there. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week, the first full week of 2025. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com. And New Year, same pitch, to ask you to share this pod with your family and friends so they can be more informed about things like expensive tuna, congestion pricing, and darts.
Starting point is 00:27:32 If you need a little assist for a sharing idea, Toby's guy you covered. I want you to share the pod with someone who's about to have themselves a snow day. I mean, his storm is about to affect 60 million people across the U.S., so that is 60 million potential Morning Brew Daily listeners right there. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lou is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer.
Starting point is 00:27:54 Euchenwa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio, hair and makeup is still stuck in the lift line. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.

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