The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 3.6 Sabrina Carpenter Jenna Ortega Nudity Scandal Exposes A Lot, WB Killed Rooster Teeth, & Today’s News

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Just when I thought it couldn’t get creepier… Use code “PHIL” for $20 OFF your first SeatGeek order & returning buyers use code “PDS” for $10 off AND your chance at weekly $500 prizes! https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/PHIL Daily Dip newsletter subscribers can win up to $1,000 in SeatGeek credit so make sure you’re subscribed: https://www.dailydip.co/ Get your https://BeautifulBastard.com gear. The comfiest hoodie you’ll ever own and awesome tees, long sleeves, and crews –✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ – 00:00 - AI Company Runs Creepy Ads on Meta Using Photos of 16-Year-Old Jenna Ortega 02:51 - Authors Upset as AI-Generated Knockoff Books Hit Market 06:40 - WB Doubles Down on Live Service Games, Shuts Down Rooster Teeth 10:16 - German Man Was Vaccinated 217 Times 12:13 - Sponsored by SeatGeek 13:28 - Haiti Gang Leader Demands PM Resign 16:07 - Super Tuesday Recap  19:26 - New Beautiful Bastard Drop 20:00 - Home Builders Are Fighting to Keep Buildings Less Energy Efficient 28:05 - Your Thoughts on Yesterday’s Show ——————————   Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Star Pralle, Chris Tolve Associate Producer on Energy Efficiency: Chris Tolve  ———————————— #DeFranco #SabrinaCarpenter #RoosterTeeth ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup, you beautiful bastards. You're watching the Philip DeFranco Show, and we got a lot of news to talk about today. So just keep hitting that like button to train YouTube, let it know you like these big daily dives into the news, and let's jump into it. Starting with, well, it got worse. You know, there's a new celebrity AI scandal

on social media every single week, and they just keep, they get more disturbing every time. This time, it didn't originate on X. It actually had to do with the meta platforms. With a new report from Cat Ten Barge at NBC finding that they ran ads for a deepfake app that included censored digitally undressed images of Jenna Ortega at 16 years old. Also, that app, which is called Perky AI, advertised that it can undress women using AI.

I met his ad library showing that Perky ran 11 ads featuring Jenna across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Reportedly, thousands of people saw the version depicting Jenna on Instagram. With a manipulated photo that was used of Jenna being blurred and censored, NBC included an example where you can see her face and blurred body alongside a prompt bar that says, No Clothes. NBC also saying other iterations of those prompts included things like latex costume, Batman underwear. While according to the report, Meta suspended Perky's page after NBC reached out, the app had actually run over 260 different ads on Meta platforms since September.

And reportedly 30 of those ads were previously suspended for not meeting Meta's advertising standards, but not the ones that featured the underage picture of Ortega. NBC also noting that other ads that were not taken down until the outlet contacted Meta included one of Sabrina Carpenter. And so ultimately with all this, you had Meta giving a statement to NBC saying its policies do not allow child nudity or other content sexualizing children as well as AI non-consensual nudity. And Perky's app is now no longer available in the app store. And the app was apparently already under review when NBC contacted Apple about it. Well, the story by itself is like, it's disgusting enough. It is disturbing enough. One of the biggest issues it should also shine a light on is all of the people this is impacting

and all the people it will impact that, you know, I or someone else isn't going to be able to put in a thumbnail. Regular fucking people. And that includes kids. As we've now seen multiple reports of how this issue is impacting teenagers specifically, including situations like this one teen in New Jersey who's now suing a classmate for allegedly creating deep fakes of her and other girls at school. And this lawsuit noting that this doesn't just create like a few days of embarrassment while walking down the hallways. Right now, arguing these victims will be haunted for the rest of their lives by knowing that they were and likely will continue to be exploited

for the sexual gratification of others and that absent court intervention there is an everlasting threat that such images will be circulated in the future so yes it is completely fucked up and wrong that this is happening to carpenter that it's happening to ortega but the best we can do with this is to use those high profile examples and note the much bigger grander problem pandora's box has been open and we're talking about people that are gonna suffer both reputational and psychological harm because of these images. And again, what I'm just talking about here, it's just one of a few of many incredibly disturbing cases

where teens have been impacted. In fact, according to the AI Incident Database, there was an increase of AI-generated sexual abuse materials of children in 2023. But very notably, there have also been an increase in cases against perpetrators and legislative attempts to combat the problem. But it needs to move faster. Legislation will always trail behind technology.

That is an absolute certainty, but we need to do the most to close that gap. But also, we've got to talk about some of the other AI news that's less horrible, but still really frustrating. Because I think more and more people are realizing that it is only a matter of time because many entertainment and business jobs start getting replaced by AI. For example, over the past year, we've seen another type of AI content explode. And it's not just trash, it's fraud. We're talking about completely AI written books that make themselves look deceptively similar to a real author's book, right? With the aim of stealing that author's customers. And actually recently, the Washington Post reported on several of the victims of this scam, that including well-known

tech journalist, Kara Swisher. Because just weeks before the release of her new memoir, Burn Book, she spotted dozens of counterfeits on Amazon, including a biography promising the inside story of her life from an author she had never heard of. And her finding a cover that showed an AI-generated image of herself. And these garbage clone biographies, they went on and on, each one claiming a slightly different title, author, and cover image. And presumably the entire text was AI-generated as well, pulling whatever publicly available information was on the internet. Or even just making shit up, you know, something large language models are known to do. Right, and we've seen some of these fake books just outright lie in at least one way, claiming to

have been written by the real author. With, for example, publishing industry analyst Jane Friedman finding that five books did this with her name back in August, and Friedman writing at the time. I know my work gets pirated, and frankly, I don't care. But here's what does wrinkle me. Garbage books getting uploaded to Amazon where my name is credited as the author, and it falls on me, the author, the one with a reputation at stake to get these misleading books removed from Amazon. I don't own the copyright to these junk books. I don't exactly own my name either. Lots of other people who are also legit authors share my name after all. So on what grounds can I successfully demand this stop, at least in Amazon's eyes? And then also in this space, you know, instead of just

trying to rip off the original book, we're seeing scammers just bill themselves as summaries, companions, or workbooks for real bestsellers, right? So we have this situation where, yeah, the real, real big names that have a lot of clout, they can appeal to Amazon to get the fakes taken down, but most people don't have that recourse. And I mean, it's already hard enough for small and unknown authors to break into the market and build a readership. Now, they've also got to compete with an ocean of AI-generated trash that's looking to siphon off a few sales like parasites. You know, with this, we've seen some authors reacting to their online clones on social media, like comedian Paul Scheer.

That's what popped up. The biography of Paul Scheer by Philip James. The real Paul Scheer story. Paul Scheer beyond the script. The wit and wisdom of Paul Scheer set out on a comedic odyssey. How many books have I not written? But then, of course, the other victims here are the people who wasted their money on this shitty junk like to go back to car swisher that bs ai book

included things like if you don't have any confidence you can't possibly be confident and in addition to nonsensical quotes right you have a text alternating between first and third person perspectives and it's likely not going to get better the executive director of the authors guild telling the post i think we are going to be dealing with an explosion of ai generated books before we get anywhere near fixing the problem. Though, to be fair, reportedly Amazon is trying to fix this issue. Because while it does allow AI-generated content to be sold on its platform, it doesn't allow content that infringes on intellectual property, as well as books whose descriptions are misleading or whose substance is, quote,

typically disappointing to customers. So notably, the lack of any requirement that authors disclose their work as AI-gener generated to customers certainly encourages that disappointment. Which is why you have people like the Authors Guild pushing to change that policy. And so it's going to be interesting to see how this develops, how they try to curb all this AI bullshit. The current situation is disappointing to me as like an avid reader and actually someone after all these years that's actually finally interested in writing something. I bought this book and everything! Though, side note, I just want to attach to the end of the story. Since I last talked about and recommended Project Hail Mary and then the Bobiverse franchise, I get messages

asking me like, what am I listening to? And because I do not want to start a book club, because I enjoy it too much, I do not want to turn it into a job. And I also don't want to add it to the list of side projects that I just abandoned. I am currently in the middle of this bad boy. Well, technically, you shouldn't review a book before it's over. I'm liking it. And honestly, I think person to person book recommendations and things like book talk in general are going to be more important than ever with all this AI garbage bullshit we're dealing with. In a world of AI fraud and then eventually AI competition that is legitimate, a lot of what's going to come down the pipeline that's important, I think, is human curation, which is already important now. It's going to

be even more important moving forward. And then Warner Bros is making some wild gamer decisions. And I'm not talking about like choosing Aerith over Tifa. Sorry, me as a teenager. Our preferences have changed. But rather, I'm talking about them choosing live service games as the future for the company. Because this comment was made by the head of WB's gaming division, J.B. Perrette, at a Morgan Stanley speaking event. Also, if you're not familiar, you might be asking like, what is a live service game mean?

To put it simply, it's a game that's constantly in development and releasing new content, which in turn means that it needs to be as engaging as possible in order to keep people coming back. And practically speaking, these are often free-to-play games, and they rely on microtransactions to make money to continue fueling development costs. But a lot of people felt WB's comments were especially weird because of its history with gaming. Last year, it released the Harry Potter game, which ended up being the most sold game that year. Then this year, it dropped Suicide Squad, which bombed hard. And because of that, Perrette said, The challenge we've had is that our business historically

has been very AAA console based. And so, as you know, that's a great business when you have a hit like Harry Potter, it makes the year look amazing. And then when you don't have a release, or unfortunately we also have disappointments, we just released Suicide Squad this quarter, which was not as strong.

It just makes it very volatile. But there, he's missing a key thing. One of the reasons so many people fucking hated Suicide Squad was because it was full of all this live service bullshit. It constantly tried to push you to its in-game store that ruined the experience for people playing, which is why we're seeing some of the biggest names in gaming like Moist Critical saying, how can a company shit out a Suicide Squad game, watch it flop and die, and then still say they want more live service games? Absolute lobotomites at WB. And in general, there's backlash online towards the company

embracing live service games, which also, and we touch on this in a lot of different avenues. Well, generally, they are hated in the gaming space. Still, a lot of people at times buy live service games, which is why the industry sees them as generally successful. And it's probably why over 500 studios have said that they're working on live service games right now and why Warner Bros wants to double down on them. With Perrette saying, rather than just launching a one and done console game, how do we develop a game around, for example, a Hogwarts Legacy or Harry Potter that is a live service where people can live and work and build and play in that world in an ongoing basis? And that said, despite live service having kind of become this toxic word in gaming, it's arguably not just by itself the problem they have. I mean, some of the most popular games out there right now, League, WoW, CSGO, PoE, they're all live service games and most people don't mind how they

do monetization. Though a big aspect of that is that most are free to play games. With everyone kind of having the understanding that, hey, the developers and studios have to get paid somehow. It's viewed as a trade-off. Or the game is free, but it lives off of microtransactions if you're making an experience that is consistently fun. But honestly, as far as what the future of this space looks like, it's based off of people like yourself. If more games that are essentially forced into being a live service game fail, and the people making decisions, they lose money, then yeah, it increases the likelihood of the industry changing in the way that you want. But if the industry continues seeing a number of these games doing wild numbers,

despite all the online complaining, that just becomes noise. It's an annoyance text. Because a lot of this comes down to consumer behavior. These companies are not in the business of purposefully losing money. And if anything, they are in the business of finding the line of how much they can fuck with you, how much they can annoy you while still getting your money. Them's the breaks. And actually, before I leave this story, there was actually some breaking news as I was recording this. It deals with both WB Gaming and actually R Space because they have now killed off Rooster Teeth. With Rooster Teeth saying in a memo that it was shutting down production with the exception of its podcast studio. And saying that part of the company alongside its IPs are being shopped around for a buyer. And as far as

why this is happening, you had Rooster Teeth giving a few reasons, but it mostly boiled down to quote, challenges facing digital media resulting from fundamental shifts in consumer behavior and monetization across platforms, advertising, and patronage. And obviously there've been a lot of reactions to the news, people reminiscing about the crazy amount of shows and content they've done over the years. So people also saying, you know, over the last few years, it feels a little rough due to toxic workplace allegations. I don't know. All of this is still fresh for me. And I'm just kind of thinking like, wow, another former tightened down. It was like very few establishments that were kind of like the old guard have survived. And then I hope you enjoy getting your 217th COVID vaccine.

It's something you might expect to hear over on Twitter from someone that's not a fan of the COVID vaccine, seeing someone get one. Right, a hyperbolic jab, if you will. But here's the thing. Apparently there was one guy that maybe got a response like that, and he was like, bet. Just some random 62-year-old German man.

And you might've actually heard about this a while ago, though the number was different. Because a little while back, German prosecutors actually confirmed that this guy had obtained at least 130 coronavirus vaccines over a nine-month period. And so they investigated him, suspecting fraud. But eventually, the guy actually revealed he had had 217 shots in 29 months, meaning that he got vaccinated almost twice a week for two

and a half years. And as far as why he did this to himself, reportedly he only cited private reasons. So prosecutors were like, oh, you're not a fraudster. You're just crazy. And they ended up dropping the case. But then there was an update. Medical researchers asked, hey, can we study you? Because this shit's so crazy. You are a one of one. And he actually agreed. In fact, he actually seemed very eager with him saying that he insisted that they give him another shot during the study. Like the man is a vaccine addict. But so with all this, they hypothesized that the sheer overwhelming number of shots could have caused his immune system to become fatigued. But here's the thing. When the researchers published their results in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases this week,

that is not what they found. Instead, not only did they find no fatigue, no observable side effects, and no harm to his immune system, they found that he had more immune cells in a control group that had received the standard three-dose vaccine regimen. Which, big disclaimer,

please, for the love of God, that is not to say you should pause this video and go try to break his record. Because one, you should never pause these videos. If anything, you should watch them at 0.75 speed. Apparently that helps videos and may help your non-Philip DeFranco initiated friends understand what I'm saying, since I talk like a meth addict half the time. But also because this is just one guy. This is just one case. And public health officials are clear. They do not recommend hyper-vaccination. Now they recommend updating your shot, especially if you're older.

In fact, last month, the CDC recommended that people over 65 get a second dose of the new COVID vaccine released last fall. Yeah. Interesting story. And I guess congratulations to that guy for not growing a third arm. And then I want to start this out by congratulating our latest weekly winner, Jalen B. Another $500 credit towards your choice of SeatGeek tickets. Jalen's one, I've been waiting for Megan Thee Stallion to tour. And also 2, has apparently been a viewer for 12 years. Oh my God, thank you. Most of the people in my life last six. You're a champ. I love your face. I appreciate you. But also for everyone else, that is right. In case you missed it, SeatGeek and I are sending several of you and your friends to your favorite live events. So listen up. With over 28 million downloads,

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And then, things are absolutely crazy in Haiti right now. And even describing it like that, I'm underselling it. Gang violence flaring up in the country's capital after gang leader Jimmy barbecue Sherry Zare threatened civil war if Prime Minister Ariel Henry doesn't resign. With him even going as far as to capture the capital's airport on Monday to prevent Henry from returning to the country after his week-long trip to Kenya. And

that's probably where we should start with all this. Henry was over there to try and get an African-led multinational force to go into Haiti to help stop gang violence, which is notably always very high in Haiti. And this year, it was especially bad, with 1,200 people being killed in the capital so far. But after Henry left for Africa, barbecue and his G9 alliance of gangs ramped up the violence in an effort to get him to resign. With that including the attack on the airport that I mentioned as well as multiple attacks on prisons which have released thousands of prisoners. The weird side story about the prison, not everyone escaped. One of the prisons had the Colombians who assassinated the last president in it.

And they just sat in their cells asking for help from the world saying, Please, please help us. They are massacring people indiscriminately inside the cells. Although to be clear, it is not clear if the gangs actually went around executing people. Regardless, the unrest that we're seeing is unlikely to get any better, with barbecue threatening if Ariel Henry does not resign, we'll be heading straight for a civil war that will lead to genocide. And while we've seen all of this play out, Henry still hasn't made a public statement about the situation.

Instead, only a minister declared a state of emergency and urged police to use any force necessary to stop the gangs. But the wild thing is the gangs might actually get their wish. And that's because they're not the only ones opposed to Henri, who notably took power without an election back in 2021 after the president was assassinated. And on top of that, he has promised presidential elections, but then still hasn't done them for over two and a half years. And there haven't been any elections in Haiti since 2016.

So the place has no elected officials at all. So you have tons of Haitians who aren't a fan of Henri. And internationally, I mean, he's losing partners. With his flight back from Africa being a prime example of this, where he couldn't land in Haiti because of the situation at the airport. Then he was also turned away from landing in the neighboring Dominican Republic, instead having to reroute all the way to Puerto Rico. And now that he's in the United States, the U.S. is pressuring him to resign, with our ambassador to the U.N. saying, what we've asked the Haitian PM to do is to move forward on

a political process that will lead to the establishment of a presidential transitional council that will lead to election. But with that, the US has also declined the possibility of sending troops into Haiti to deal with a civil unrest. And so you have this situation where if no one is willing to send troops into Haiti, it means that the gangs there will continue to have a huge role in the country. And nowhere is that more obvious than in the capital,

where gangs control about 80% of it. And this is no one really knows what Barbecue's long-term plan is, as really he's only said that, quote, "'Either Haiti becomes a paradise for all of us "' or a hell for all of us, which really just sounds like more of a threat than a plan. But for now, we're going to have to wait to see what happens as you have the UN having an emergency meeting on the situation today. And a spokesperson saying, the secretary general is deeply concerned by the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Port

-au-Prince, where armed gangs have intensified their attacks on critical infrastructure over the weekend. So moving forward, it all seems bad. It's just different versions and levels of bad. And then we should talk about Super Tuesday and all the things that just got exposed. Some expected, some surprising. Not surprising, Donald Trump continued his domination over the GOP. While Nikki Haley did win Vermont last night, this morning she dropped out of the race. Notably, she did not immediately endorse Trump.

At least for now, saying that Donald Trump needs to earn her voters. So it remains to be seen if Donald Trump would do anything like that. Because while Trump can now obviously pivot towards the general election, everything he has said is like, if you support Nikki Haley, we don't want you. I mean, Trump said that anyone that makes a contribution

to Birdbrain from this moment forth will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don't want them and will not accept them. Though all of this, as you have places like the New York Times saying there are warning signs for Trump with the votes that happened last night. Noting that a majority of Haley's primary voters

said they were voting against her opponent more than for her. Something they called a sign of anti-Trump motivation that could last until November. And notably, this issue was leading among moderate voters by nearly two to one. And well, for Haley, in a primary, the moderates only make up 20%.

In the general election, especially in a state like North Carolina, that could be massive. Though notably, last night, we saw that Biden also has a vulnerability, with part of the Democratic base not being fully behind him. His places like Axios have noted the uncommitted protest vote against Biden has continued. Noting that in Michigan's Democratic primary last week, thousands of Arab Americans and young voters cast ballots for uncommitted

to protest Biden's pro-Israel policies in the war in Gaza, right, making up 13% of the electorate. And last night, the protests continued in Minnesota, another key Midwestern state Biden needs to win in November. More than 45,000 Democratic voters, nearly 19% of the vote that night, voted uncommitted rather than for Biden. And again, while we are talking about a small minority of the base,

in a general election, that will prove massive. And again, so many facets of what we're talking about, it becomes a question of the feelings that people are having today. What does that look like as we get very close to and then in November? Will the voters stay home? Will they vote for someone else? Because there are those that are firm in this stance who have said, they'll stay home or do a protest vote in the actual general election because a short-term pain can be a long-term win. Well, obviously they are free to have that opinion. You have people

pushing back and saying, well, we already saw what a protest vote can do if you look to 2016. We had some Democrats and leftists saying, you know, fuck Hillary Clinton. What's the worst Trump could do? And now for the foreseeable future, we have a very conservative Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade was overturned by seemingly things that those on the left are not a fan of. So it ended up being short term loss, long term loss. But again, that's not to say the disagreements that people have with the candidates are a one-to-one to 2016. Though it is very 2016 that we just have two just hugely unpopular candidates running for president. Of course, it wasn't all general election related last night. There's a lot of other stuff at play, but what was really a standout was what happened in California. In the Senate race in California,

for Dianne Feinstein's old spot, Representative Adam Schiff essentially dragged a dead body across the finish line. Because if you don't know, in California, there is a nonpartisan primary system. It got put into place back in 2010. It was this idea that, hey, maybe we can get more centrist politicians. But instead, it just turned into a political game. Because on the Democratic side, Adam Schiff's main opponent was Katie Porter. And so to fight her off from possibly coming into second place, Schiff's campaign promoted Steve Garvey, a Republican, to get him all that Republican support so he can easily beat him in November. And it worked.

Garvey got second place. So obviously it was a win for Schiff. It may have also exposed that this idea to create a better system might just be just as broken. Though I would say maybe a nonpartisan primary system, I think it could work, but it would need to be ranked choice voting. Otherwise you kind of just have a different version

of the same problem. But hey, that's the situation. And we are another day closer to the 2024 election. Good luck. And then, do you want and or need possibly the most comfortable hoodie on the planet? Because if you do, you gotta get in on this new beautifulbastard.com drug. Because in addition to our limited quantity special cut-and-sew cotton tie-dye hoodie, black hoodie, houndstooth hoodie,

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And honestly, private companies, a very big part of it. But for today, I want to focus on your home. Because according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, homes account for nearly one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions nationwide. And notably, that figure doesn't even count non-residential buildings like schools, offices, and businesses. Because when you factor those in, as well as their construction, you're talking about 40% of all carbon emissions. But the point of what I want to talk about isn't that we all have to go homeless to save the planet. If we don't save the planet, our home is going to be a bit of an issue. Instead, we can just do what a growing movement of advocates, experts, investors, and politicians are calling for.

Bring building codes up to date to make anything with four walls and a roof more energy efficient or even net zero. Regulators could actually do this in a number of ways, like requiring new buildings to come with framing on their roofs to support solar panels or wiring homes to make it easier to install electric car charging ports. With the idea in both of these cases being that if the homes come pre-equipped with the necessary infrastructure, their owners will be more likely and more able to buy solar panels or put an electric car in their garage. Though this, as we're also seeing a string of states and cities banning natural gas hookups and new properties, the more and more people are having to embrace all electric appliances instead. Most notably, they're replacing gas stoves with induction stoves,

which as we talked about on the show, can actually have health benefits. Though of course there, you know, some prefer the gas ones for their convenience, so there's a trade-off. I personally have gas though. I've been playing around with the idea of maybe making a switch. But all of this that we're talking about, it's what's been dubbed the electrify everything movement. But also, whether it be clean or dirty, there are ways to consume whatever energy we do use more efficiently.

For example, building homes with thicker insulation, triple pane windows, and tighter air sealing, all of which traps the heat inside during the winter and keeps it outside during the summer, meaning less AC and heating, and therefore a cheaper power bill for renters and homeowners. With a good ventilation system

acting like the lungs of the building, you'll cycle out the stale air for fresh, clean oxygen, which is also good for your health as you're no longer breathing in dust and shitty-ass particles. Actually, coupled with the insulation, people in homes designed like this describe a more comfy, tranquil life. You can relax with radiators and AC units not constantly rumbling or whirring. Enjoy a little more peace and quiet, which actually brings us to another point, noise pollution. Because thicker walls and windows not only keep the heat in or out, they also muffle the relentless noise of the outside world. From construction to emergency vehicles

to people nearby blasting shitty music, it gives you and them more privacy. But all of this is most builders are actually reluctant to do any of this unless they're forced to do so by building codes. And while in the US, each state and city is responsible for drawing up its own code, they usually look to one central authority for guidance,

the International Code Council, or ICC. It's a Washington-based nonprofit that updates its recommended standards every three years. And its last update to the code in 2021 absolutely shocked the construction industry because it actually recommended boosting the energy efficiency of new residential buildings by nearly 10%, which I know may not sound like a lot,

but to put it in perspective, the previous two code updates boosted efficiency by little more than 1%. So compared to the 1980s, buildings under today's code would be roughly 50% more efficient. Thing is, when the construction firms saw these numbers, they were pissed, right? Because tighter regulations means less profits. So the National Association of Home Builders, which by the way, is the housing industry's largest lobbying group, they jumped straight into the action to make sure state and local governments didn't adopt these

building codes. With them mobilizing its 140,000 members, funding studies, launching awareness efforts, donating to political campaigns. And boy, oh boy, were they successful. But among other things, them supporting a law that actually got passed last year in Alabama without preventing cities and counties from making builders install things like electric vehicle circuitry or solar panel framing. Right, and this is similar state-level what they call preemption laws. Laws designed to block local governments from adopting stricter codes have been passed elsewhere. Like in Idaho, which banned cities from making their codes any more stringent than the state's code. Or in Colorado, which is

currently debating a bill that would mandate any code changes pay for themselves within 10 years. Or in North Carolina, which froze residential building standards last year. So now it's actually illegal to update them until 2031. And this is a fun thing. That law wasn't just pushed by the builder's lobby. They wrote it. But from their perspective, they're without a doubt the good guys. They see it as them saving residents from red tape that would price many people out of the housing market. With one North Carolina developer telling the Washington Post, all that energy code is going to do in my price range is make it to where the working man and woman would not be able to buy a home. And they're citing a survey of North Carolina builders conducted by their lobby,

which estimated that the new standards would pack on an additional $20,000 to the price tag of homes in the $250,000 range. But a key caveat there is that is probably an exaggeration. Because a federal study found that the price hike would total at most around $6,500, not $20,400. And adding that even though the upfront costs might increase, the new codes themselves would actually pay for themselves through lower power bills, with homeowners nationwide expected to recoup their costs in 10 and a half years on average. And during the first year alone, North Carolina would be expected to reduce CO2 emissions by the equivalent of taking 29,000 cars off the road. All of which is why critics say that the homebuilders' supposed concern for affordability, it's just posturing.

And saying that what's really motivating them is a concern for their own bottom line. As well as a desire to not have to bring all their employees up to speed on the new standards. But notably, the homebuilders aren't alone on their side of the battle. Because they've actually allied themselves with fossil fuel companies, natural gas lobbies, and heating and cooling equipment manufacturers. Which is also why they've been so effective in beating back new standards. Right, and I mean that even for the historically progressive 2021 code released by the ICC, that was initially supposed to be even more progressive, but industry lobbyists killed some of the most ambitious measures. And then after the new code was done, they got to work making sure that future updates never caught them off guard again,

starting with the procedural rules around how these codes are designed. Right, because traditionally, only local government officials working for the ICC could vote on the final codes. But in 2021, the ICC changed the rules. So now, energy-related codes go to two consensus committees instead, one for residential and one for commercial. And there, public officials have to compromise with trade groups representing fossil fuel and real estate interests. And so with that, the stage was set for another war over the updated codes for 2024. And right off the bat, we saw just a mess. Like in 2022, the ICC suddenly made it so that the codes need to be approved by two thirds of the committee members

in order to move on to the next phase, right? Rather than the simple majority required previously. And then you had the Huffington Post obtaining a secret email from a gas utility executive sent to a committee chair. And it showed them pressuring the chair to ax a proposal requiring new buildings to be wired for electric vehicle chargers.

And this happening before the proposal even came up for a vote. You also had the Post obtaining more documents and they interviewed sources exposing more antics. Like late last year, the ICC abruptly changed its own written policies to give the gas groups twice as much time to file appeals against codes they don't like,

with it also skipping a key bureaucratic step meant to avoid frivolous challenges. And then even if you consider these backroom maneuvers kind of small on their own, altogether, they had the general effect of slowing down the entire code drafting process. So for this three-year cycle, committee members had to spend far more time debating and bargaining over proposals than before. For the public officials who volunteer their time to do

this unpaid work, they often can't afford to dedicate their lives to it. Or at the very least, not to the extent that lobbyists working for trade groups easily can. Right? Money beats no money every time. So right now, we're waiting to see what watered-down bullshit comes out of this whole mess. But already, we're seeing some green groups starting to pull out of the process for the 2027 codes, with them even suggesting that it may be necessary to form an alternative organization to the ICC. And so now what we're left with is a broken process at the federal level. And at the state and local level, you have standards that are 15 years old in some cases. But the point of all this isn't to give you the impression that

nothing else can be done. For example, the Biden administration is actually trying to entice state governments to bring their standards up to date, dangling millions of dollars in front of them from the Inflation Reduction Act and other programs. That's actually squeezed some concessions out of states like Michigan, for instance. Also last May, the White House announced a plan to adopt new energy standards for homes built and financed by the federal government, a move that officials said will result in energy savings of more than 35% for families and that applying to an estimated 170,000 new homes per year. Also as a cherry on top, the administration allocated $830 million to clean energy retrofits for existing homes, as well as $4 billion in financing for

lower carbon versions of materials like steel, cement, and glass. But again, with how our system is built, there's only so much Joe can do. And if industry lobbyists succeed in kneecapping any legislation meant to update our building codes, we as a nation could be stuck with millions of inefficient houses, stores, office buildings, you name it, for decades to come. Because of course, we can always retrofit existing buildings later down the line. But it'll be cheaper and easier to just make sure that buildings are made sustainable in the first place. And failing to update building codes could come back to bite us in the ass in more ways than one. Like if a hurricane or some other natural disaster sweeps through your town,

having a carefully designed house could be the difference between it crumbling to the ground and it still standing up afterwards. Or to come back to where we started between you having a home and you going homeless. And actually, that kind of threat will become more common as inefficient construction makes the climate crisis worse. So strong green building codes are key to preventing climate change and protecting ourselves from its effects. This is another classic example of paying a little now to save so much moving forward versus some making more money now and they're just being a catastrophe on the other end of this. And then finally today, we have Yesterday Today,

where we dive into the comments on yesterday's show and see what y'all had to say. You know, there was a fair share of conversation around the Selena Gomez plagiarism allegations with makeup experiments saying, it's not uncommon for huge mainstream creators to copy the work of smaller creators, but it's normally not the singer that does it.

It's the director of the music vid or producer or someone like that. The artist is normally none the wiser and just going with the idea. But then people like Maria F. responding, also, honestly, I see there might have been some inspiration taken. But to me, someone not really a fan of anyone, it really doesn't look like Selena's work looks like the other woman's work to me. But maybe I'm missing something. In my opinion, you can't monopolize inspiration either way. So long it's not theft, you're not being stolen from. But then Supreme Sloth saying, and she made it racist somehow right and that itself had its own like debate some people asking why it was important

for sarah to say you know this is happening to her as a palestinian woman but going back to the main question and debate we had morbidly maddie which by the way amazing name saying when i was in school my teacher used to say be careful to scream copying unless you can put the art next to each other and they're identical and this being a european that's the look people make when they try to get something to look French or South European. Especially the bathrobe breakfast thing. I've seen that so many times, I can't count. Like, in my opinion, that's not copying.

It's shot in the same place, sure, but that's about it. It looks like a stereotypical French movie on both ends, and where did the inspiration for that come from? I don't doubt she's been copied before, but this was not a good example on that. Also, and I'll keep this part limited, because it could really come off as me, like, patting myself on the back, I was really happy to see so many of you loving that space segment at the end, especially as someone, you know, a lot of long timers know I've gone from a person that was just like randomly scared of roaming black holes to someone that's been fascinated by the whole space of space. The last thing I'll touch on here is when we were talking about third spaces at the end of yesterday's

show, which I'm not going to re-explain if you missed yesterday's show, go check it out. But Blue Jiva saying that comment on the third place where you said, which I'm not gonna re-explain. If you missed yesterday's show, go check it out. But Blue Jiva saying, that comment on the third place where you said, hopefully it helps one of you? Me, that was me. I've been struggling being a remote employee with two kids, so places one and two are the same and fight viciously for my time and energy. My third place has become solo drives

to the grocery store, which we live five minutes from, so it doesn't provide much. Plus, as someone who had a rough upbringing then foolishly married my first wife at 18, I don't feel like I've lost me, but that I never existed. I'm gonna find that third place and hopefully myself. Thank you, Phil. Which just to that, I got to say, I love your face. I hope you find that third place.

And the only thing I'll add is don't force it, but try. Again, to use the workout metaphor, sometimes you find the energy to do things by doing the thing first. You and maybe other people have already taken the first step. You've decided in your brain and now your body just has to follow through. But that is where your show is going to end today. As always, thank you for being a part of these daily dives into the news. My name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love your faces and I'll see you right back here tomorrow.