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“It’s kind of unusual,” Reddington said of his newfound status.

Amanda Anisimova got quite the birthday surprise.

While it will be easy to make this another chapter in the annals of New York-Boston hatred, it is not that for me.

'You Will Only Have Yourselves To Blame': Trump Warns Anti-Data-Center Crowd Not To 'Kill The Golden Goose'

Despite recent polls showing that 70% of Americans oppose building AI data centers in their area (including 60% of Republicans), President Trump on Monday warned that communities that don't embrace them will "end up being backwards and poor."

"The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign."

And if people "kill the Golden Goose" by successfully resisting AI data centers, "you will only have yourselves to blame," Trump continued, adding "China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can't believe it is happening!"

According to a Gallup poll published in May, 71% of Americans oppose building AI data centers in their local area, including 48% 'strongly opposed' - and only about a quarter in favor. Opposition crosses party lines: Gallup's breakdowns showed 63% of Republicans strongly or somewhat opposed to a data center where they live, while a July Fox News poll found that 60% of Republicans and 53% of self-described "MAGA Republicans" oppose data centers where they live.  

At the same time, Beijing structurally benefits from anything that slows US compute (and according to X, are amplifying the outrage).

Some observations

• Eighteen months ago, American frontier models from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI had virtually no competition - and the entire AI bubble (circle-jerk) was based on already-insane revenue projections. 
   
• Then, Chinese labs began rolling out open-weighted AI models that are up to 90% cheaper per token, for around 95% the same performance as US frontier models. Suddenly, the American AI buildout thesis that led the market to all-time highs this year, was pricked - and companies are migrating towards these cheap Chinese models they can run on their own infrastructure. Chinese providers went from under 2% of OpenRouter tokens a year ago to over 45% of weekly volume by April 2026, and Chinese models surpassed US models in weekly token volume for the first time in February. An a16z partner estimated roughly 80% of US startups build on Chinese base models.
   
• The July tape made it official: chip stocks shed more than $1 trillion as investors began asking whether AI infrastructure spending is peaking faster than expected - even as the hyperscalers, undeterred, still guide to roughly $660-690 billion in 2026 capex, nearly double last year's.  
   
• Chinese AI firms are also starting to run proprietary chips - a workaround to years of banning Nvidia's top of the line AI chips. Beijing's Cyberspace Administration barred major tech firms from buying Nvidia chips in September 2025, and state-backed data centers now require domestic silicon. Domestic suppliers are projected to capture nearly 90% of Chinese AI accelerator sales this year. That said, Huawei's Ascend still trails Nvidia on raw performance and software, and its flagship CloudMatrix cluster draws roughly four times the power of Nvidia's comparable system - a trade Beijing happily makes, because China is substituting electricity (which it has) for chip quality (which it doesn't).
   
• China is also able to rapidly expand both data centers and electricity generation because the CCP gives zero fucks about NIMBY Chinese 'having a say' over whether they plunk a loud data center or power generation facility next to their house. Instead, provincial officials are rewarded for building, the grid is state-owned, and the new Five-Year Plan explicitly treats data centers as a demand sink to soak up surplus renewable generation. In China, data centers are the solution to too much electricity. In America, they've become the cause of expensive electricity.

China Is Loving This

Trump isn't wrong that Beijing benefits from anything that slows the US buildout. But the astroturf version of the argument was quickly dispelled: data center investor Kevin O'Leary claimed China was behind the protests, admitted he had no evidence, and is now being sued for defamation by two Utah groups. And the polling is real too - Heatmap asked the identical question about data centers in Americans' backyards four times in 12 months and watched a 33-point collapse, from a 43/42 split last August to 75% opposed now. Public opinion doesn't move like that because of foreign bots. It moves like that because of utility bills.

The grievances have receipts. PJM's independent market monitor found data centers responsible for 63% of the capacity auction spike - $9.3 billion recovered from ratepayers in a single year, with measured bill impacts of $21/month in DC, $18 in western Maryland, $16 in Ohio. Total PJM capacity costs went from $2.2 billion to $14.7 billion to $16.1 billion in two years - and the latest auction only stopped at $329.17/MW-day because of a price cap Pennsylvania's governor demanded. Gallup's own open-ended data shows what's actually driving opposition: half of opponents cite resource consumption - 18% each naming water and energy - plus noise, pollution, and traffic. Not anti-AI ideology. Bills.

And when the industry had the chance to carry its own costs, PJM members voted down all 12 proposals to shift them in July. Ratepayers remain the unpaid sponsors of the buildout. Meanwhile, dozens of companies – including Meta, Amazon and Google - have signed onto Trump's "ratepayer protection pledge" to cover increased energy costs. You don't create a ratepayer protection pledge against an imaginary grievance.

Meanwhile this is about as bipartisan as it gets: Greg Abbott has frozen new data centers in Texas, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee - Senate Republicans' own campaign arm, warned in an August memo that the campaign against them "will expand far beyond Ohio," where the issue has Jon Husted in a dead heat with Sherrod Brown - a Democrat Ohio voters fired statewide just two years ago.

And what Trump fails to see, apparently: the CCP would entertain exactly none of this. There is no mechanism in China for citizens to oppose infrastructure - and what the no-veto model produces isn't just speed. Many local-government data centers run at 20-30% utilization, Beijing is now planning a national scheme to resell the surplus compute, and even SMIC's own chairman warned the rushed buildout "has not been fully thought through." The people of Licking County get a say. The people of Gansu get a ghost data center.

Trump says China "can't believe" the anti-data-center movement is happening. Of course not - there is no version of it available to Chinese citizens.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/31/2026 - 14:40

Thanks to social media, European summer destinations have become more visible than ever, funneling into the same handful of destinations, streets, restaurants and viewpoints.

It appears an end could be coming soon in the ongoing saga between former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom and the WNBA. Freedom released a video of him speaing directly to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, in which he is calling for a “peace summit”, which would be a private conversation between the two, facilitated by...

The rocket scientist also told Page Six if she thinks the "Icons" had an unfair advantage this season.

The rocket scientist also told Page Six if she thinks the "Icons" had an unfair advantage this season.

"Violence like this has no place in the Lyft community or in our society," a Lyft spokesperson said.

A campaign to get disgraced designer John Galliano ousted from next year’s Met Gala began before the announcement of his controversial participation was ever made, City Council Speaker Julie Menin exclusively told The Post.

The team opted to waive the wide receiver on Sunday.

The Jets landed a new kicker on Monday.

Amazon Shares Tumble Amid News Of FTC 'Advertiser Deception' Lawsuit

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is about to drop a lawsuit on Amazon today alleging that the e-commerce platform manipulated prices paid by businesses to advertise on its retail platform, which made the company tens of billions of dollars over a seven-year period, WSJ reports, citing agency officials. 

According to the report:

The lawsuit, joined by a bipartisan group of more than 20 state attorneys general, will allege that Amazon deceived advertisers by secretly raising the minimum price advertisers had to pay to place ads promoting their products, FTC officials said.

The case, to be filed in a Seattle federal court, will become the consumer-protection agency’s third major case against Amazon, which agreed to pay $2.5 billion last year to settle an earlier suit alleging it tricked people into signing up for its Prime service and made it hard to cancel the subscription. Another lawsuit alleging that Amazon engaged in illegal monopolization is headed for trial next year. -WSJ

Amazon's digital advertising platform is the third-largest in the world, behind Alphabet's Google and Meta - earning $68 billion in ads in 2025, according to the report - which claims that advertisers suffered billions of dollars in harm by paying higher prices for ads. Some states may attempt to claw some of the money back. 

Shares shot sharply lower on the news.

Every time a shopper searches for a product on Amazon, merchants compete to offer different types of ads to get in front of consumers. According to the FTC, Amazon began changing its ad auction strategy in 2018 - raising prices on advertisers in a way they wouldn't notice. 

The way this worked was through a mechanism called a "soft reserve": 

The company had historically run a special type of auction, popular in Silicon Valley, designed to attract more bids and protect winners from dramatically overpaying. That formula tended to reduce the price a merchant paid to advertise.

To raise the price, Amazon began entering its own bid, known as a “soft reserve,” which was higher than the price of the runner-up bidder, the FTC will allege. Under the rules of the auction, that raised the price paid for an ad. Amazon knew the merchants’ competing bids and didn’t disclose its new practice, officials said.

Amazon’s ad executives tracked the “surcharge” they earned from the strategy and sought to limit how much others knew about it, FTC officials said. The executives initially deployed the strategy only on popular shopping days when companies would think higher ad rates resulted from intense competition for shoppers’ attention, the officials said. -WSJ

According to the FTC, Amazon's goal was to capture more of the value of each retail sale connected to a successful ad - in recent years intervening in auctions to raise the minimum price 70% - 80% of the time. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/31/2026 - 14:20

Rory McIlroy said his fuse might be "a little shorter than it used to be" in his 19th year as a pro.

The town has its own local Post Office, a Border Patrol facility, a church, a VFW post, and multiple specialized workshops such as a cabinet shop and metal shop.

Bass told Williams she was planning to the documentary twice over dinner, according to a source.

Bass told Williams she was planning to the documentary twice over dinner, according to a source.

"Prepare For More Severe Scenarios": Bank Of England Chief Warns Of AI Threat To Global Financial System

As the world marches towards open-weight, efficient, unrestricted frontier AI models out of China, Western leaders are starting to panic over the lack of guardrails. Most recently, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey suggested that the threat posed by AI could lead to a chaotic correction in global financial markets, as frontier models are now showing "increasingly sophisticated autonomy and problem-solving abilities, as well as threat capabilities."

Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey addresses the media during a press conference concerning interest rates, at the Bank of England, in London, Britain, November 2, 2023. HENRY NICHOLLS/Pool via REUTERS

"Financial institutions, financial market infrastructures, and technology providers will therefore need to strengthen vulnerability management, response and recovery capabilities, and prepare for more severe scenarios involving simultaneous disruption across multiple firms or shared technology dependencies," Bailey wrote in a two-page letter published Monday to G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in his capacity as chair of the Financial Stability Board - an international body that coordinates international policy and provides recommendations to national authorities. 

Bailey says the cyber risk posed by AI is "the most immediate concern" for the global financial system. 

"Frontier AI may have the ability materially to alter the speed, scale and economics of cyber risk, which could undermine market confidence system-wide, especially due to highly concentrated third-party service providers," he wrote, adding. "Recent developments have also highlighted to me that many jurisdictions do not have the protocols in place to manage the development, release, and deployment of advanced frontier AI models, heightening risks for the financial sector and beyond." 

Bailey's warning comes one month after the Bank for International Settlements warned that the AI bubble itself is one of three of the most alarming threats to global prosperity at this time. 

"Disappointment in returns could trigger a sudden pullback in financing and turn the capex boom into a protracted investment bust, with potential knock-on effects on financial conditions," the BIS said, before observing that "a major equity-market correction could have larger macroeconomic consequences today than in the past."

Officials highlighted vulnerabilities linked to funding, including complex arrangements such so-called “circular financing” deals that can mix equity and debt with supplier-client contracts (as discussed here "The $1.8 Trillion Off-Balance Sheet Time Bomb At The Heart Of The AI Supercycle"). 

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/31/2026 - 14:15

California’s biggest utility was rocked Monday after lawmakers dealt Gov. Gavin Newsom a blow over a sweeping wildfire liability overhaul.

He wasn't gone for long.