Weekly Skews - S6 Ep27: Weekly Skews – Technically It’s Not a Calf

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Kash Patel continues living like a ten-year-old who found a winning lottery ticket. Trump’s supporters debate the strict meaning of “worship” with regards to the golden statue of him they built to take pilgrimages to. Then, we get into Mr. Wonderful’s planet-eating Death Star of a data center project in Utah, the fight against it, and his ability to sniff out all the Chinese A.I. saboteurs who’ve, uh, lived in Box Elder County, Utah, their whole lives.This episode is sponsored by ZBiotics. Go to https://www.zbiotics.com/SKEW now. You'll get 15% off your first order when you use SKEW at checkoutWeekly Skews is brought to you by Fast Growing Trees. Right now, they have great deals on spring planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to our show get TWENTY PERCENT OFF their first purchase when using the code SKEW at checkout.Visit https://www.fastgrowingtrees.com/skew and use the code SKEWThis episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10%  https://www.betterhelp.com/skews 

What's up. Welcome back, everybody. Happy Skews Day to you. It's May 19th, 2026. We're recording this on Monday, May 18th. About 1 o'clock on the left coast. I'm trying to. That's Mark. How's it going on Mark? Good, man. We're talking about some fun stuff today, specifically some blast from me, which is always fun. And then we're going to talk about some stuff with data centers going around this country, including a Holy War, Mr. Wonderful, from Shark Tank, is engaged in against some Chinese. these agents who of course found a home in Utah. Not really. But before we get to that, I want to talk about how I just, why is the federal government now turn into a make a wish for like the 10 biggest dipshit's in the country? Have you? I can't really keep track of it. Today we're talking about cash Patel going snorkeling at Pearl Harbor. Right. I mean, it's not that surprising to me, you know, because people, anyone with any kind of like actual professionalism or, you know, competency or whatever has been weeded out over the years of the Trump era that we live in,

you know, they're not, not super welcome around those parks anymore. So this is what you're left with. You end up with guys like Cash Patel running the FBI. Do you, so, okay, but like, so why Pearl, like, you, you've been to Hawaii, right? Yeah. The whole, it's literally nothing but coastline for the most part. snorkel fucking anywhere. Why the USS Arizona? Right. I, because, because they could hook it up there. Do you know what I mean? It's like, does the DOD operate that? Does the Navy operate,

or like at some corner, some sort of federal, you know what I mean? Like as a, oh, it's a federal park because it's a war memorial. Right. Right. That's what I'm saying. So he's got like, he's got the hookup there. Whereas, like, if you got to like Turtle Bay or whatever, they might be like, fuck that guy. I mean, probably not, but they might not like him or whatever, you know, so. Yeah, I'd still think, like, by the way I've said to Turtle Bay, place fucking rules. But, like, so let me read, let me read me, me rear. So, if you guys don't what we're talking about, I'll be reading from this news, start in New York Times. So Navy SEAL used two boats to transport, escort Mr. Patel, and nine other people

and wanted a DOD email called a quote, VIP Snorkel, next to one of the military's most sacred sites, the underwater tomb of the USS Arizona that holds the remains of more than 900 Navy's sailors and Marines who died at Pearl Harbor. Mr. Patel swam in the vicinity of the tomb for 30 minutes. I hope it wasn't after eating so he didn't get a cramp. Eat a banana cash. So

nobody swims here. This is not a thing you're allowed to do. Yeah, I was wondering that too. I mean, I would think surely because I didn't realize, I mean, it makes sense. I just had never thought about it. But that there's you know, it's an underwater tomb. There's remains down there.

It's like, so yeah, you wouldn't think they'd be letting Midwestern tourist. If you guys are up on your World War II Dad history, like the boat capsized and people were trapped in an air pocket there, they had to, like, they took them days to die. And their fellow sailors were listening to them knock on the

hole knowing they couldn't save them. There's a reason this is a fucking bleak-ass fucking solemn monument to the dead of the World War II. So like, with some exceptions over the years for dignitaries, the only people allowed in the water around the tomb are military and national park service divers in turn the remains of the last Arizona's

survivors in the wreck. So the people that listen to their buddies die will will for the remains to be taken back there and buried with their comrades, right? And out of respect

for the dead-in-tuned to the wreck of Arizona, rules bar visitors from even wearing swimwear at the memorial. So you're not allowed to do this, but Camp,

Cash Patel sprinted past a sign in a swim shirt and nose plugs, yelled cannonball and jumped off the fucking dock into this corpse-infested blood. It's funny.

He's got on a little, like, tank tops that are striped, or whatever, like, those, you know, those, like old style, like, uh, it's like, it's like, yeah, right, yeah,

yeah, the snorke up on his head and, and all that stuff. And it's like, just, like, imagine, like a still image of all these Navy officials and everything.

And the camera, like, slowly pans over. And at the end of it is cash Patel dressed like that, you know? Like, they're,

they're all in their, like, Navy stuff is what I'm saying. They're all, like, dressed appropriately and looking somber and severe. And then you get to cash but tail and he looks like

Dennis the Menace on a beach vacation or whatever like that's funny Water wings like a pink swan intertum Yeah around his way Yeah So let me Let me to be quote here

The idea of a high-ranking government official receiving an escort from the seals For a recreational swim near the tomb is horrifying, said William M. McBride and Navy veteran and professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis Quote, snorkel around Arizona is a disrespectful is playing kickball on top of the graves at Arlington.

I would say, I would surmise it's more like playing kickball in the graves at Arlington. Like, can you imagine like what the public furor that would have happened if like Hunter Biden was called playing laser tag at ground zero? Yeah. But also, I think you were alluding to this up top, I guess, sort of, but like, I mean, why did he want to do this? Do you know what I mean? I can't figure it out.

You can snorkel. Like, like, he just wanted, like, he thought it was like, oh, I'm going to go snorkeball. I should also combine it with a reverend historical tour. But like you can't, like, I feel like, I don't give a shit about this like perfunctory stuff usually. This is just so fucking egregious. I was trying to think of like, like, come up with analogies where this would be like, it'd be like if you put a slip and slide down the hill a little roundtop in Gettysburg. Or like, uh, played seven minutes in heaven inside the two of the unknown soldier.

or you made s'mores of the eternal flame or, you know that thing where you lay down, like someone digs a hole in the beach, you lay down the sand and they cover your body up to the neck and give you some big voluptuous tities? Yeah. What if you did that at Omaha Beach? Yeah, don't give him any ideas, man.

Although that one, apparently that's like super dangerous and people don't realize it somehow, that last one. It can like, I don't know, like, suffocate. you or something, but so that would hit Oh, the wet sand

because it, yeah, the wet sand weighs down. People don't realize how dangerous that the, the titty sand move is. It'd be funny if that's how he went out, you know.

The FBI director's down at Omaha Beach due to undisclosed reasons the federal government will not, we got to, now we have to invade France to give revenge. So anyway, I just like, I just look forward

to the future news stories about like Cash Patel, using the last surviving World War II veteran to cut in line at Disney World? That's pretty much where we're at. All right. Well, let's just get right into it. Why not? What do you say?

Let's just kick it off the way we do around here. Matt, please hit me with that daily dumbass graphic if you got it. This week's DD, the Poor and Down Trotting for complaining about war, famine, and pestilence when they know the Lord is busy with Trump's ballroom. It's hard to believe that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand. It's extraordinary. We only had to wait 200 years. All right. So that is from a event over the weekend in National Ball called the Rededicate 250.

You know, it's all about getting ready for America's big birthday. So when people pray at your birthday party, that usually means you're dying, right? I want to have some more fun with blasphemy in a second here, but let's talk about the ballroom first. Here's John Federman, you know, the esteemed Democratic Center, supposedly Democratic Center from the great state of Pennsylvania

on Fox News over the weekend. The reflecting pool in the ballroom, you know, I don't care about those things. I think it's entirely appropriate. I mean, I think I've seen a picture, assuming that it's not AI, you know, so far the reflecting pole looks good. But if that's $13 million. So, stroke brains wild.

So Fat a minute later on this interview, he says that America is turning 50. Yeah. Which would be, yeah, great news. Then he said, we need ballroom. But I want to do all points with really he said, like, I've seen a picture assuming it's not AI. It absolutely was fucking AI what he was looking at. Here's a picture that he's referring to. That's the Trump that's a picture that Trump posted the true social which means John Federman is getting his news from Trump's own social media site.

Here's an actual photo of the reflecting pool looks like over the weekend. If you want to throw this up, Matt. Yeah, it's under construction, which is the point of the whole fucking conversation they're having. I don't get why they need to put a fake crystal blue bottom at the bottom of the reflecting pool. Water's already blue enough. But here's the thing. The reflecting pool is like basically across the street from where Federman goes to work. day or it's Congress, so three days a month

or whatever. But like, galump, you're ovass over there and fucking look at it. Like, FIFA, faux fom, your fucking dips shit. Like, I don't understand. They get some villagers in the way, you know. But like, go look at it if you're wondering what it looks like. But instead, you're pretending an AI

photo is weird to carry water for a president, supposedly of the other party, right? Yeah, it's one of the real travesties of Trump getting, well, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty low on the list in terms of stakes. But it's is a shame that Trump is the one that's in charge, you know, for America's big birthday for 250. It's like you couldn't have a person with less taste at the top. And it's the type of

thing he normally cares about too. So like he's really going to dumb it up. I'm sure. And that's a... What is it? His birthday's a lot forth? Coincidentally? So like it's like he gets to wrap... Yeah, yeah. I'm going to look up and make sure. I'm thinking pretty sure it coincides with his birthday. I don't like that either. No. No. No. It's huge. His birthday is June and mid-June, but they're wrapping up. Sorry, they're combining celebrations. That's right.

Yeah, I think I remember hearing that that they were going to like, it's like trying to combine them or something or like conflate the two, even though his birthday isn't July 4th. Right. So they do with me. They got me with the whole, the whole propaganda efforts to make sure that Donald Trump is America and his birthday is America's birthday, right? So to talk about blast me in for a second.

Let's talk about the 22-foot golden statue of Trump that his supporters put up a derail with the dubbed Don Colossus. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just for comparison sake, here's a photo of this statue alongside a different statue of Kim Jong-owned.

I mean, yeah, it's just so on the nose. Not just, I mean, in that way, in the, like, this is what dictators do and pretty much only dictators do. But also, obviously, in the, you know, the, like,

the, everybody everybody knows I'm Bible dumb as shit, but I know about the golden cow deal, you know? I know that's like a Bible story. That was bad. You're not supposed to do that. And so making a golden statue of himself is like some

pretty on the nose idolat or bullshit, you know, but they seem to be oblivious to it. If you aren't familiar with the story, so after Moses led everybody the Jews out of Egypt, they're lost in the desert for 40 years, after Moses got old and people were starting to lose faith.

Moses decided to go up the mountain, Mount Sinai, to get the Ten Commandments and went up by himself. And it was gone for a little while, and they got impatient. Right. Yeah. How long, canonically was he, was Moses going to? I don't know.

Because I always wondered that too. It's like, well, they came up with that pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah, it's like if you, if you, if you, if you're trapped and you eat someone, you're like, well, that's kind of forgivable. You're like, no, they were stuck in an elevator for 45 minutes. Like, okay, that's a little bit different. But, like, so, like, I don't want to forget how long he was gone.

But it was long enough that the tribes got impatient and melted out all their gold because he needed something to worship because they had felt abandoned by God and Moses. And they made a golden calf out of all their jewelry and started, like, worship again. In which case, Moses came back down to the mountain with tablets, the first command of which was, you know, worship no God before me. Coincidentally. Yeah, they're like, oh, shoot. what is that over? Let's go over there, Moses. We've got the sun in your eyes.

Maybe we'll scoot over this way. We're like, you know, trying to shoe it away, get it out of that. Yeah, just, there's a bunch of, Desert people doing Jim Halpert face at the gab. Like, oh, shit. All right. Man, I've honestly not really thought about that part of it either. It is funny.

It's like, you know, that's the first one, you know? The first Jim Halper face? Oh, yeah. Well, that. But I was definitely like the, you know. Oh, the first commandment. Yeah, right. And that they had done it, you know, talk about it on the nose.

But it's in a world where that actually occurred, which is obviously not the world we live in. It's very funny to think about. They're like, ooh, we didn't. Yeah. We got a, boy, we have egg on our face right now. Well, the God of the Old Testament's a bit of a diva and a drama queen. You know, we don't use the C-World on this show.

But, like, that would be the appropriate. But, like, so he was like, of course, he made the First Commandment all about himself. And he was like, come on. You're messing with the first rule of this party is it's about me, right? So, yeah. Yeah. So this statue, Don Colossus, was commissioned by the dollar-signed Patriot Cryptocurrency Group.

You know, cryptocurrency is always stylized the dollar sign in front of the name. So patron all caps, Cryptosuracy Group. It unveiled during a dedication ceremony led by Pastor Mark Burns, a longtime spiritual advisor to Trump. Now, you're not a church-going folk, Tray. but do you, when you're a hypothetical pastor, does your, does your pastor have a cryptocurrency in your head when you're imagined him? No, but it depends on where, you know, what church you're going to. I'm not surprised there are pastors with cryptocurrencies and that they build golden statues of Donald Trump in particular, you know.

Yeah. I guess the question is like, does your, maybe the question is, does your pastor need a cryptocurrency or maybe the question is, there's a cryptocurrency need a pastor to succeed in this current environment, which I imagine it might. So Mark Burns, I want to quote here. from this piece headline, Pastor clarifies that shiny, giant Trump statue

worshipers love is not in an idol. Pastor Mark Burns, let me be clear. This is not a golden calf. Fact check true, it is not in fact a calf. It's also not even real gold,

even though Trump keeps saying it is. Trumps keeps saying it's solid gold. Right. Yeah, I knew he was saying that and I was like, I mean, surely not,

right? That would be insane. Yeah, but of course, I don't know why I even questioned it for a second. That's a very, also on the nose thing for him to do,

you know, just to keep saying that. Yeah, it's the, be quote here, you could call it quote, the real deal, all caps gold. By the way, I want to be going back

to Pastor Mark Burns, let me be clear, this is not a golden calf. I just love that Obama's permanent legacy is people saying that when they're about to say something they really want you to take seriously.

Let me be clear. Now, most people use it before saying the biggest lie you've ever heard in your entire fucking life. So, more quotes from

Pastor Burns. You're in gross error if you think for one second that I worship this magnificent statue. So yeah, we just gathered around this idol and sing its praises, but worship, where do you guys get this stuff? I mean, what is that and what is that for if it's not some form of worship, right? Or I mean, like, and I guess it's like, whatever. The difference between worship and admiration or reverence or any of these other ones. words, but, like, that's the only reason for a statue like that, you know. I'm trying to think of, like, like, the only other statues were living people I can think of.

I'm not a living person. They're sports statues and shit, you know. I was just like, you build it outside, but even then, like, it's after a player retires. Yeah. So it's kind of like his career's death. Yeah, right. And it's usually a moment. Like, Nick Foles has a statue outside of the Philly Stadium for the Philly Special when they won

their first Super Bowl or whatever. And it's like, it's a statue of him, but it's because of the thing that happened. do you know what I mean? And so that feels a little different. But even, yeah, it's like... Well, the moment is him raising his fist and yelling, when the crowd was chanting fight, fight, fight after that dipshit took a shot at him in Butler, Pennsylvania.

So, like, really it's a memorial of that firefighter bleeding out while the crowd cheered Trump. Yeah, I guess you're right. That's what the moment. Yeah, it's just like, again, but if you're... I know that all kinds of statues, especially in the South, South loves their statues of, like, historical figures of, you know, dubious import and morality. But usually not when they're like alive and currently the president and everything.

It's all pretty, you know, it's just, it's ridiculous. Yeah, I just like, I keep going back to this, but like, like, you're in gross air to think for one second that I, that I worship this magnificent statue. I was going to put out that another word for magnificent is exalted. It literally means we worship it. Um, so this thing cost approximately $450,000. Uh, this is pretty funny. Alan Kultural, who's a sculptor, he told the Daily Beast that suggesting the gold, uh,

when he suggested the gold leaf finish for the sculpture, it was quote, like pitching ice water to a man dying of thirst. It was not a hard sell. So this guy's basically like, these fucking idiots, it's a little dog turn. And it was easy. Uh, he had to delay delivery for like, like, this is supposed to be, like, revealed like six months ago. but he didn't send it because they wouldn't pay for it. That also makes sense. This is just some group who loves Trump, right?

It's not Trump himself. But again, they idolize Trump literally. And he's famous for not paying for services rendered and stuff, right? So I'm, you know, I don't blame this guy. You should just do that anyway. It's like, I'm not saying that. Well, it's more vulgar than, it's more vulgar than even you're describing. It's not just the statute of worship.

They're pretending to worship the statue in order to push the cryptocurrency. Right. all about selling dollar sign patriot right so uh let me let me trump defended this uh it will become a landmark trump said uh no no you don't understand it's not an idol people would just make a pilgrimage to this they will drown them all over to fucking come see it it's not an idol uh i want to play this this is the florida geo gog congressman my goddopoulos uh he was on c span i think he's from He was on C-SPAN the other day, if you got this video about it? He was asked about those. Actions around the world. America is no longer respected. And let me ask you the third question.

Why is the president Bill's golden statue of himself? And I think like he's Jesus Christ on the world's fish. Putting up purchase. I think I saved the door. He's Christ. Okay. Dale, jump in. We'll have the congressman response. Well, let's just talk about gas prices first. All right. He tried to pivot from the idolatry to talk about gas braces. Which also doesn't seem like a great idea to me right now in the context of everything. I don't know.

Did you notice how much that dude was blinking? Like I don't know if that, I don't know if it's just because of the question he was being asked and he's in a state of discomfort or if he just always blinks that fucking much. But either way, it was off-putting to me. You know, so many of these people often are. But, yeah, I don't trust that guy. I don't even know anything about Hardopoulos. I probably should have looked him up. but like it strikes me as like the problem

what are you supposed to do when you're a sane public but you're from Florida and you're asked about with the president worshipping himself with a gold statue and you're like I guess I'd rather talk about gas price so one last thing for this fucking ceremony if you got this picture Matt

pull it up and then we'll zoom in on him see this so if you throw up this picture do you see the weird guy in a hat from the statue throw up the next picture to zoom in Matt okay that we're in the world the Zorro looking guy with the Carmen

San Diego hat. That's Brock Pierce. We've talked about it before because he was a child actor who played Gordon and the Mighty Ducks in D2, Mighty Ducks 2. He's a cryptocurrency guy. So in year 2000, he had to flee the country for a little bit because he was accused of, like, drugging and raping some teenage boys. Jesus Christ. Yeah, his business partner was convicted, and then Brock Pierce eventually had to come back into the country. He was also accused of some cryptocurrency scams.

anyway he's a close friend and ally of Jeffrey Hepstein he's all over the Jeffrey the Epstein docks and you know how Epstein had a weird temple on his island now he's helping dedicate a golden idol of Donald Trump so why are the people who are worried about Satan being involved in all of our affairs so unconcerned with a guy accused of doing a butt raping teen boys

right he's also in all of the emails to a guy who committed ritualistic child sexual abuse with a temple on his island and I was dedicated a golden statue to God claims to have the mandate of heaven. Yeah. And all the churchy people are just like,

it took 200 years for God to raise this glorious man up. You know, finally is here. Yeah, absolutely. I know. It's wild shit. But next up, we have, for an honorable mention for Daily Dumbass, we have people who don't like Mr. Wonderful.

For not realizing he's wonderful. I mean, it's right there in his, in his name. Of course you protest, and that's what happens. I noted, you know, what's happening in Utah right now. You think over 90% of the protesters are actually

not people that live in Utah or Box Southern County, but being bused in. So people live in Utah aren't stupid. They see this happening. And they realize, I'm a... So now, a bunch of, like, rural white Utahans,

his name's like Lakeland and Brandlis. are, because they're upset about data centers and now paid protesters, which I don't know if you can bus people into rural Utah. Right. From where? You know? Yeah. They're coming in from rural Nevada?

I don't fucking know. I was thinking the same thing when you said that. I was like, yeah, the progressive hotbed of, yeah, rural Nevada or wherever the hell they would come. You had to go all the way to like Denver, I think, to make that happen. But is this some data center shit? Yes. I don't.

I mean, like, dude. I don't know. What are regular people of any political stripe supposed to like about these things other than the fact that they're told to like them by guys like him? You know what I mean? They supposedly bring a lot of free tax-based money, right? So like, the Box Elder County, Utah has a population of like 50,000 people, I think. So this this thing was supposedly bringing millions of millions of dollars. Like it basically would triple the county's tax revenue if all the numbers are to be believed, right? but in exchange for what becomes a thing

because no one's made it clear how much damage they're going to do or they won't even really like explain themselves which is part of the political problem these people face is they put the cart way before the horse and they don't understand why people hate them it's basically as people don't like being told what to do or informed that things are actually for their benefit

when they don't understand them right it's just basic retail politics but yeah Mr. Wonderful's trying he's building a data center over on 40,000 acres in Box County, Box Elder County, Utah, which 40,000 acres is about twice the size of Manhattan, I believe. So it's big.

Damn. Yeah. So it's got a lot of pushback, and I want to play this video from a hearing about the data center if you want to see what the vibe is like on the ground in Utah. All of this is false. Then why won't they let people talk? Why won't they let's talk about quick?

It's false. This is not real information. I'm we sitting here like it's okay It's a straight way If people don't start actually listening And doing some actual organic retail politics at local level People are going to end up fucking dead over this shit We've talked about some stochastic attacks

They've happened already But like you don't You can't force things on people at this level Without doing some sort of fucking winning over of people Right And we're like This stuff feels like a simmering cauldron We keep going back to it because like

I'm amazed by how fast this is happening? Like, how is every fucking county in America get in a data center? All in the last, like, three years. Right. And no one's told us what they're for, except Claude can do coding now.

Yeah. Yeah, well, it's like the AI bubble, right? Like, our whole economy somehow is now just, you know, intertwined with AI and shit. And AI needs data centers, so it's just, they're just everywhere now. All of a sudden, even though it's, highly uncertain or unclear what it even is that it's supposed to really do for most people

and it seems like it's increasingly hugely unpopular and you know none of that matters so but you're right I mean people are right I mean they're gonna burn these fucking things down that one lady tried right a lady tried already I think to burn one down but yeah yeah that you can't just they're so used to just being able to just to just do that you just push shit through and be I don't fucking get over it. You know what I mean? Like the the peasant or whatever, but, you know. Well, people get mad about, like, stuff happening on their phone.

Like, you don't like the apps. You don't like Facebook. You don't like being followed around. You don't like surveillance. You don't like whatever. You don't like, like, when you talk about maybe taking a trip to the beach near your Alexa, then all of a sudden you get 14 ads for fucking lounge chairs at Myrtle, you know. And like, like, people hate that shit.

But it's not usually around the corner where you can see where it's turning your groundwater brown. and you can go throw a rock at it, which is part of this. And I want to come back to the Utah because it's the most egregious example, because of the size and scale of it. But there's a bunch of examples of the stuff going around the country that want to talk about, but we'll get to it after this break. All right. All right. We'll be right back.

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BetterHelp.com slash skews to get 10% off today. All right, we're back. Data Center, hell. Let's go. All right, so around the country real quick. In Georgia this week, Fad County specifically, they, 29 million gallons of water, 30 million gallons of water kind of went missing in a county that's under

it's under drought conditions. And people didn't really notice it until like their water pressure was real low. And so they got to the bottom of it. I figured out because the data center was stealing all their water. So you imagine like this how you find out of the data center they're putting in your county. You just walk into the kitchen naked with shampoo still in your hair.

And Katie's because like it's because of the dang AI, Tray. Yeah. I mean, that's how that, you know, that's all their stories is like people's water being flammable. and shit because, you know, fracking. Fracking, you know, people by the right, yeah, you know, but like the, I,

people often don't know they're getting fucked until it slaps them in the face because, you know, they're, they're not cared enough about to be informed ahead of time. I'm not saying they don't pay enough attention. I'm saying people don't give a shit about, you know,

the actual residents and whatnot. Even if they had been, yeah, right, exactly, but even if people of residents had been paying attention to this, like, like, this is so, uh, the county utility, investigated and trace the problem to two industrial scale water hookups feeding a 615 acre data center campus code named Project Excalibur, cool name, owned by Blackstone.

One connection had been installed without the utility's knowledge. The other existed but was not linked to QTS's billing account, meaning the water flowed unmetered and uncharged. So they were literally just fucking, they had two lines, one of which the city knew about, but had forgotten the meters, they weren't being charged for it. Another one, they just hooked up a second connection without telling anybody they're just fucking stealing.

I'm not saying they're literally, they're just stealing water. Literally, that's, yeah, that's got to be illegal, right? Like, especially on that scale, you would think? Like, from the municipality, like... Well, when you and I, when you or I steal, that's a crime. When a corporation does it, they pay a little fine. Yeah. Right.

So, what happened here was the county officials encouraged Fayville residents to cut back of water in their lawns. So I'm sorry, your kids can't play in the sprinkler is, was needed for that chat bot we talked about on Friday that tells wives that you don't know their husbands. Right. So. Yeah.

Or to mock up AI movie posters where white actors play famous black historical figures, you know, that can be tweeted at Elon Musk so he can, you know, agree with a senseless double standard and get internet points on the platform that he owns.

By the way, Elon should also get mad at Mr. Wonderful. We're going to talk about him a little bit. Mr. Wonderful was great in, you know, Marty Supreme. Really enjoyed his performance. But also Mr. Wonderful in real life is half Irish, half Lebanese. And he's playing a Jewish businessman. So that's problematic representation, Elon.

He's not, like, just like, you know, Lepida Nwango is not Greek. Go ahead. Get it Mr. Wonderful. You guys fucking each other for once, please. So Georgia isn't the only. one community that the Fayetteville, Georgia is the only community that discovered accidentally that the data center was still in their water. Out in Arizona, they had a similar situation where people didn't notice it until residents

noticed their water was missing. And like, so a lot of this stuff, I want to address this real quick. You and I usually make our, hey, making fun of moral panics about like they're being like a trans teacher or a book in a library or whatever. And a lot of like the AI people think this is like a national moral panic about these data centers, which are no fucking big deal. Right. And some of the stuff they're not totally wrong about. Like some videos getting passed around the, about the Utah part of it.

People keep, influencers keep using this analogy that like the power about a power that Mr. Wonderful's development in Utah is going to use is the equivalent of 23 nuclear bombs going off per day. Right. Also, it's the equivalent of the amount of electricity that New York City uses in a day. Now, we don't usually talk about how much electricity in New York uses in context of nuclear bombs going off. Right. It doesn't seem like a totally fair analogy, so I understand their point. And also, they would say that, like, yeah. Because I'm just, I assume that, you know, when you put it into that perspective, you know, whatever, the amount of energy, the United States of America consumes in a day, you could translate that to number of nuclear bombs if you want to because both things are energy, but, you know, we don't do that.

We don't do that. It's not exactly the same thing. It's a weird, yeah. Yeah, the two things are a little different. Right. And they would also say that, like, like, for example, there's a thing going around about some physicist wrote a paper about how the data center in Utah could raise the temperature in the little valley where the data center will basically be alone by like as much as 20 degrees at night

and people are acting like that's for like the whole county or the state of Utah or something and that's not totally true but I want to say here that's still that's still pretty fucking wild that's fucking bad right right like even I don't care if it's not I mean yeah the whole one of data center doing that to the whole state would be insane every state would be brutally hot right now because they already exist in in places but it doing it in the localized area where it exists if it literally is 20 degrees at nighttime.

Like that's crazy. Like that's bananas. And they will also do this thing with it but like we'll compare the water uses and you probably should we probably should do this to mentally like to understand it but like they'll compare the water uses like other uses like agriculture like industrial agriculture.

Right. Yeah. Like all the farms golf courses. Places like. It'd be like well this is less water than that. I'm like or a. comparable to this type of farming. I'm like, okay, but when we use it for farming, we get food to eat

and not like some video of my buddy generated of himself fucking my mom or whatever people are doing with this shit. And I think food is better than that. More useful. Yeah, I know. That's what I was saying up top. When we started this, it's like it seems like that's the disconnect that they don't seem to understand is like people don't see

the supposed benefit to their lives from this shit. Like, that's what I mean. Like, what are they getting out of it? And you're like, oh, you know, whatever. The county's tax base goes up or whatnot. But, like, AHA doesn't have that kind of, you know, reputation. I don't think there's a lot of, like, hope around it for most people right now. Like, for a minute, briefly, people are like, this is, wow, this shit's cool.

You've seen this, whatever. But I feel like generally that's already gone away. It mostly freaks people out, I think. And they shouldn't be surprised by that either, but, you know, they are. And there are going to be medical uses, like medical uses, they'll be like, well, you don't want a data center to see what you don't cure for cancer. I'm like, okay, but a lot of these data centers are being built for meta and Amazon, okay? Meta is using them just for digital advertising.

So they're building like data centers the size of a fucking, like, Rhode Island, using the amount of power of a whole country users to process your preferences for what ads you see to generate your digital bespoke ads. I'm like, burn that to the fucking ground. I don't give, that, that does nothing for humanity. Nothing. Right. That's useless.

Yeah. And I don't, and I'm too dumb about it all to know the difference. But I, you know, I used to work for the DOE and Oak Ridge and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They had, at the time I worked there, the world's fastest supercomputer. It had taken over from one in China. I'm certain it's not anymore. It's probably not even top 100 now or whatever unless they've revamped it. But they, they used that.

you know, for shit like fucking curing cancer and that type of sciencey shit is what I'm saying. And I get that whatever, you know, you need more of those or however it works. But I'm just saying like there's like dedicated infrastructure, you know, no one ever had a problem with that. In fact, it was like a point of pride. Do you know what I'm saying? Because it was like clear what the purpose of that was. But like you just said, because I went there and like tour it and it's big server banks and shit that they had to keep cool. and all this stuff.

But when you're doing that for fucking your phone sending you the Myrtle Beach ads and shit that nobody wants anyway, the shit that just makes everybody's life more annoying every day. And that's what we're using all this water and stuff for.

And like raising the temperature by it, you know, like, yeah. And they do this. It's not a good tradeoff. And it's so obvious to anyone that it isn't. I just, it's wild to me that they're surprised.

by people's reaction to it or if they're like Mr. Wonderful that they're whatever they're delusional about it and think that people don't actually even feel that way. It's just I don't know fucking Portland crisis actors

or something who get flown in to pretend to be from Utah and be against it or something. The positive selling points have nothing to do with the stuff they're showing us. Right. Right.

So like like so even if some of the backlash does seem to be overblown if everything is the fucking up and up you can be honest with people about it And why are you stealing the fucking water? You should have to steal if it's on the up and up, right? I mean, why do you do some numbers here? In 2023, data centers directly consumed 17.4 billion gallons of water,

which is projected to rise between 38 and 73 billion gallons by 2028. In Texas alone, a study by the Houston Advanced Research Center, estimated data centers would use 49 billion gallons of water in 2025 as much as 399 billion gallons by 2030, or the equivalent of drawing down Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country by more than 16 feet in a single year. Texas is already in crisis. Reservoirs and groundwater are drying up statewide.

Corpus Christi is preparing to declare a water emergency with 25% uses cuts. There is not enough water for the people of Corpus Christi to drink, and they're building a data center outside of it. Google data centers in Dallas, in Dallas, Oregon, a city of 16,000 consumed 355 million gallons in 2021, roughly a quarter of the city's total water supply. Google even funding the city's lawsuit against a local newspaper that tried to obtain those figures through a public records request, arguing that data was a trade secret. Do you know why?

I don't get why it. I know they have to have the water to cool the systems. I would think that could be like a closed loop. And it'd still be like a lot of water. But do you know what I mean? Like an entirely closed system that they wouldn't have to keep bringing water in. like you know what I'm saying whatever

the water comes in it cools it that's warmed now it goes out it sits somewhere it cools off or condensates back down water cycle shit

but all in your system and then it comes back through and you just take turns and you do like that maybe you take I don't you know what I mean like why why do they have to have endless

fresh water to do this shit in the first place well I'm major in English right So, yours sounds like a good idea. It'd be good enough for me to put in a screenplay about a colonial Mars about how I think works. I don't know how to do it in reality.

But it's a good idea. Someone should look into it if they're not already. And by the last one of these I wanted to mention, in nearby Nevada, nearly 50,000 Lake Tahoe residents have to find a new water source if their energy source looks to redirect lines to data centers. So 50,000 people in Lake Tahoe have just informed by the power company that they have gotten a better offer to give electricity to a data center so they have no power company.

Is that a thing you thought could happen, Trey? No, so according to Reddit, this is on the front page of Reddit the other day, and I'm not saying that it makes any of this any better, but that it's like, it's the utility in Lake Tahoe that serves these people gets the energy specifically

from this, a plant, an energy source where it's produced, and they have a contract, and the contract is really, running up and the energy supplier is like, hey, we're going to give all that to a data center instead because we're going to pay more money for it or whatever else. And rather than pay more or whatever, they were like, okay, well, fuck you then. And so now that's happening, but they're just going to have a different contract with a different energy supplier or something. Again, I'm not saying it's cool that you have to deal with that.

And I'm sure people's prices will go up or whatnot. but it's like I don't think they're like their lights are going to go out in Lake Tahoe is what I'm saying because it's going to this yeah it's like a not a money issue and contractual dispute type of thing but yeah but it is that it is now going to a data center instead which does suck right but there's a bigger picture this is the this is the first one of these happening but what happens in general in the long run when people become less profitable than the machines when the when the people in power get a better offer from machine than they do like Like, what happens if, like, if they make a data center that runs on food and then make a better offer for food than people can.

Right. So Stratos, the footprint, like I said, will cover more than 40,000 square acres, which is 62 square miles, over three sites in Bucks, Elder County, northwestern Utah. The facility will require about nine gigawatts of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes and suck up a significant amount of water in area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years. environmentalists of Warren Estratos could imperil the great Salt Lake ecosystem. The lake's already shrinking due to water diverted for agriculture and the impact of climate change, placing inhabitants of the nearby

Salt Lake City at possible risk of toxic dust clouds as a lake bed dries up. So the people of there are facing the potential for toxic dust clouds. Maybe that won't happen. I don't know, but anyway, we're sending some of the water to a data center.

Yeah. That's... Didn't that happen in a... Didn't that happen in a... not that far from us. Was it the Salton Sea or whatever? It's like out there in east, out in the desert. There was like a lake and it, for industrial bullshit reasons,

it's like it'll turn you into a mutant now. I mean, not literally, but it's like, it's bad. There's all these like, you ever see now that? It's like shit out of fallout. They were like beach towns on this big ass lake in Southern California desert in the 50s, and they're ghost towns now. They're like abandoned. And so there's all this old shit from that era.

just rusting out in the desert because that lake became toxic because of some fucking corporation or big ag or something and started killing everybody and they had to they had to leave so anyway you know it doesn't seem ideal is what i'm saying like we shouldn't let things like that happen if we can help it generally but like you said even that if it was big ag you know food came out of that somewhere yeah instead of just like deep fake gilf porn or whatever New episode title. We can't put it again. We get it. So, so Stratos is expected to raise Utah's state pollution by about 50%. The network of industrial skill, which, you know, Utah is a pretty rural.

Like, they don't have like a huge industrial base. So like we're not, I'm not saying this is like the worst thing in the fucking world. I'm just saying this is within our control and it's not, it's less than ideal, right? I'm trying not to do the moral panic thing here. But like, come on, man.

Quote, the network of industrial scale fans needed a cool the data center's hot pipes result in so much waste heat that it could raise daytime temperatures in the surrounding Hansel Valley about two to five degrees

and nighttime temperature like I said before by 8 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit according to analysis by a physics professor at Utah State University. Like I said,

they're saying the defense is like well it's just that valley like but yeah but exchange for what it's not again it's not my fault you guys sold this technology and the idea

that it's going to ruin everyone's fucking lives and they don't want also the environmental damage on top of it to go back to Mr. Wonderful's paid protesters, he explicitly says their Chinese agents try to sabotage America in the AI race.

And I brought this up several times this show, but we were also told that if we did not hurry up with like permitting and handing land over, we'd lose the race to 5G to China. That would somehow be disastrous. We lost the race to 5G with China. Have we been conquered? Do your children speak Chinese unless they want to?

Right. Yeah, I mean, I've said it before with China, but for years, and I, you know, I'm very dumb about a lot of stuff, especially foreign policy shit and geopolitics and everything like most Americans. But, like, I just have never really understood what real motivation China would have to just up and, like, take us over if they'd one day decided that they could. they've we've enriched them quite a bit you know over a long time they're winning right now you know like in so many ways i just don't i've never understood what the argument is for why like if if they woke up tomorrow and realize they could do it why they even would do it i've never really you know gotten that so all right so i'm not i'm extremely amateur uh sinologist we call people are going to China. Yeah, Sinology sounds good. I know Sino is the prefix

for China stuff. Which means I know nothing at all except like one thing I think is helpful to think about the world is the world's governments. If you don't divide them into two camps, you've got the colonial powers and former colonial powers and the former colonized countries. Right. Right. And their legitimacy comes from two different things. Like we're talking about us with Iran, but Iran's government, their whole claim of legitimacy is that they resist U.S., British, and is later Israeli meddling outside control, right?

That's their entire reason for being was why they can't really just, they can't just surrender and give us, if they do that, then there's no reason to have an Iranian government, right? China's sort of in the latter category, too, where you come out of what they call the Center of Humiliation, which you joke about becoming American Central of Humiliation, which we're, you know, a decade into.

But like the, it's all about resisting, like, occupation and outside control by like the British and then the Japanese, yada, yada, yada, right. China has never had a colony. They've never had outward ambitions like that. Right. They could develop it in the future. But right now, their most evil ambition seems to reclaim Taiwan, which used to be theirs. Right.

That's a matter of natural pride to them because it was taken from them by the outside meddling by the British and the fucking Americans. That's where the former fascist collaborators with Japan fled to to start a capitalist country. So if you think about those terms, like, I don't think China would ever a fucking want to like take us over either. It's just not in their interest. Maybe they'll get around to it. But it's not something like, they're not like,

do you think they look at Florida? They're like, I look forward to trying to govern that. Right. But also like I was reading another thing to think about, this is in the context of Iran, potential for like confrontations, conflagrations of World War III or something close to it or whatever. What of China's big concerns is that no one in their military

has ever fought a war. Yeah. The last one they were kind of involved in was Vietnam. Yeah, right? And that was like a supply hub and like a little bit of fighting. But Korea, you know, but like it's not something they do. Yeah. Whereas we're like...

That's smart for us to start a new war every 10 to 15 years. That way you never find yourself in a position where no one in your military is served in a war. You know what I mean? So America thinking ahead as always. Yeah. You know you pre-game. for a party tray. We pregame with PTSD.

Quick side note, putting a button on a previous thing. According to this random Redditor, there's two kinds of water usage by data centers, right? And so just the cooling through the pipe shit, whatever, that can be in a closed system and often is. But they also use a ton of water to control the humidity inside of there because that's super important how those operate.

And I guess there's really no way to keep that from, you're putting it into the air and it fucking evaporates. So that's like that, I guess, is at least one of the big reasons why they use so much water, which sucks. But I just made myself curious. So looked it up. And again, found this very reliable source. The Phantom 1492. Thank you for your service, Pandem 1492.

Anyway. But anyway, like, the good news is like, since we're all pivoting to AI, what AI does is scrape that guy's post to give us the truth. So that becomes the truth. The ad has made that through now. Right. So, yeah. So getting back to like the Utah stuff. So Mr. Wonderful, I could call him that because I prefer it, but it's Kevin O'Leary. He's made these two ladies who make the, who are political organizers, the face of the resistance of like I've no idea why he chose them. They do make videos, but he's made them their face of resistance in Utah. And they're like, they're pretty funny. They, they were essentially like, I watched a video where they're like, we do political organizing for the Democrat Party in Utah. And you think we're in this for the fucking money. Right. Yeah. Hard that. And I mean, he should definitely know better. But we've talked about it a ton of people.

People think that, you know what I mean? Like, George, it paid protesters. And they think fucking George Soros and whoever else that they don't even know, just, you know, Jews around the world or whatever are paying us right now, paying these ladies, paying everybody ever shows up at a protest. Because they're like, no one actually truly believes that, you know, data centers are bad or that we should have health care or women should have rights. Somebody really believes all that stuff.

They're paid to believe it by, you know, evil leftist billionaires, because it's the world's so lousy with those. But anyway. That's what's crazy is like, like Kevin O'Leary is trying to play the patriotism card here, but we need to do, we need this data center with the race via I, but he lives in a world where no one would do anything except for fucking money. Right. Right.

So like, right. So I just want to point out here, by the way that, like, while we're pretending this is like a better, winning a race with Chinese people instead of just making money. China makes 50% of the components for the data centers, including the ones that are going,

the ones in Utah. So if they're actually engaged in a competition with us, why are they fucking selling us the components to win the race with? China's making more money off this fucking data center than Utah's are. That's what I'm saying, dude, it's been like that with China.

I feel like they've got it, they're doing fine. They've got it, the way it's working right now, they've got it figured out pretty good, I feel like. It's going well for them. Like, you know.

And while they're, Like, when they throw around this, like, we need this data center to win to race with China. When we throw up this graphic, Matt, here's the state of the data center race. America's in first place with 3,300 data centers. And China's in fourth place between Germany and the UK with 361. So we already have more than 10 times a number of data centers is China. And the organizers, for their part, basically say, they have been quoted here. The only foreign agent here is a horrible Canadian multi-billionaire trying to ruin the environment of our country.

Kevin O'Leary wife saying that these people are Chinese saboteurs trying to help the Chinese government win this AI race to damage America's national security. So they're on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party. Kevin O'Leary has a dual citizenship, the United Arab Emirates, to grease the skids for deals there. So I just want to say here that Kevin O'Leary's motives are not fucking patriotism. And it personally offends me as I'm aligning the patriotism of random people in Utah who just don't want the temperature in their valley to go up 20 fucking to. greas at nighttime. Yep. And for that reason, we're out. All right. That's a shark tank reference. They say that. Way to go to trademark. Yeah. I thought it would go better, but that's fine. Somebody's not a shark tank fan. Anyway, thanks for watching. Hey, shirt tank. Fuck shark tank. I hate reality TV in general, but like a show that has people who come on to pitch their dreams to people who look down on them.

People just want to be able to send their kids to school and pay for their retirement. And you're like, fuck you, I'm out. Fuck you, Kevin O'Leary. Fuck you, Mark Cuban. Fuck all of you. I'm fine with me. I'm not going to go to bat for a fucking shark tank. I just stay in a lot of Hilton Garden Nends, and there's two shows in the universe, apparently.

That and diners drive-ins and dives. It's the only two shows left on television. Anyway, thanks for watching. See me on the road. That's an option instead of shark tank. Treycroutor.com. Upcoming tour days still on the west coast.

Portland and Seattle. San Francisco was great. Then we got Florida and the Carolina's bunch of other places all at traycrouter.com. Listen to producer math. Audio exclusive. Good skews. Good people doing good things.

It's a nice palette cleanser. That's on the audio feed for this show. So like the podcast app on your phone or whatever. And then support this show on Patreon if you would. $5 a month. Get ad free versions of every episode and two additional bonus episodes per month, which often includes Q&As with you, the patrons. Weeklyshus.com slash more or go on Patreon and search for my name.

Either way it works. But that's it. it for now. We'll see you on the next main show next skier's day. Love you by. Ski-you.