AwesomeCapital

Monday, April 21, 2025

Amazon Follows Microsoft in Retreat From Ambitious AI Data Center Plans

The number of tech giants paring back on their AI data center plans rises to two. According to banks Wells Fargo and TD Cowen, Amazon has paused negotiations on some co-location data center deals, primarily in Europe. The news comes shortly after several reports have indicated Microsoft has paused or cancelled some of its plans.

“It’s not clear the magnitude of the pause,” a Wells Fargo report reads, “but the positioning is similar to what we’ve recently heard from MSFT—they are digesting aggressive recent lease-up deals.” It goes on to emphasize that Microsoft still appears to be going through with deals already signed. Co-location is the concept of sharing enormous infrastructure costs by building data in partnership with other companies that need it.

It is important to keep in mind that other companies, including Meta and xAI, continue to aggressively build out data centers to fuel their AI models. Building out large-scale data centers requires significant amounts of power, which grids have struggled to satisfy, and Amazon may need more time to open data centers already under construction. The Wells Fargo report states that the e-commerce giant already has 9 GWs (gigawatts) of active power capacity in its existing data center infrastructure.

But the news further supports some concern that demand for AI infrastructure is cooling as businesses still struggle to find ways to actually use the new technology to save time and money. It does not help that President Trump’s ongoing trade war is causing stocks to tumble. Amazon is down 24% this year, and the company is exposed to tariffs on China, as estimates suggest more than 70% of goods on its namesake marketplace come from China.

There is concern amongst economists that the trade war and potential recession could slow down the AI boom as major players, including Nvidia, are caught in the crossfire. That company receives a substantial amount of its business from China and is under scrutiny for potentially turning a blind eye to high-end chips evading sanctions and landing in China. If Amazon cuts back investment on new data centers, that could further hurt Nvidia’s sales of chips.

Amazon reports its next earnings on May 1st, and there will be close eyes on how AI demand is looking. Microsoft recently pulled back on an ambitious $1 billion data center project in Ohio, surprising officials there who offered the company generous tax incentives to snag the deal despite concerns that it would employ very few people and require immense energy and water resources. CEO Satya Nadella has tried to tame expectations regarding the AI revolution, saying in an interview that the technology has not yet turned into a meaningful lift for the U.S. economy, though his company has reiterated plans to spend $80 billion on infrastructure in the next few years.

If there is any silver lining, it is that locals will not have to pay as much in taxes to support these upgrades that have been cancelled. On the flip side, they do employ a lot of construction workers for initial rollout, and there has been some hope that the demands of data centers would finally push local municipalities to upgrade fraying infrastructure and build out clean energy. There was a sliver of hope that AI would provide something of immediate practical value, if not chatbots that still get things wrong all the time or Palantir-based police state systems.

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-follows-microsoft-in-retreat-from-ambitious-ai-data-center-plans-2000592217

Canadian Youth Fed Up, Turn To Conservative Poilievre As Liberal Boomers Go Full Carney

It was a rainy March evening in British Columbia, but that didn’t stop 29-year-old Giancarlo Zorrilla from attending his first political rally. Like many young Canadians, Zorrilla is fed up - and he’s placing his hopes in Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, while the Liberal Party is seeking a fourth term after globalist Justin Trudeau was forced to take the L.

“It’s time for a change,” Zorrilla told Bloomberg, heading into a Poilievre campaign stop near Vancouver. Though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is out of the picture, Zorrilla isn’t buying the Liberals' rebrand. “Still the same rock band,” he quipped.

That frustration is bubbling over across Canada’s younger voters. Once wooed by promises of legalized pot and eco-friendly reforms, Millennials and Gen Z are now reeling from runaway housing prices and a cost-of-living crisis that’s left dreams of home ownership and early retirement in the dust.

While Poilievre has found resonance among the youth - roughly 39% of 18-to-34-year-olds back the Conservatives vs. 36% for the Liberals, per Nanos Research, not enough to catapult him ahead but still significant. With less than two weeks before election day, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals are holding a narrow lead overall, thanks in part to strong support from Canadian boomers.

Carney, 60, is virtually a stranger to the TikTok generation. His political playbook caters more to Baby Boomers than Zoomers, like the ad where he and “Austin Powers” star Mike Myers wax nostalgic about Mr. Dressup and The Tragically Hip. Good luck finding a Gen Z’er who knows who Howie Meeker is.

Yet it’s that very throwback charm that’s roped in voters like Tracy Nice, a 64-year-old lifelong Conservative who flipped blue over Carney’s steady hand and Canada’s souring relationship with the U.S.

“Carney just seems like a very smart, calm, thoughtful man who I trust,” Nice said. “And obviously the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England trusted him.”

Poilievre, meanwhile, has taken a different approach. He’s leaned into the social media era, ditching stuffy suits for tight tees, donning aviators, and even puffing hookah with a shawarma shop owner on YouTube while chatting about cryptocurrency. His message? Axe taxes, cut red tape, and let Canadians save - all wrapped in a swagger that channels online populism.

As Mark Jeftovic of Bombthrower.com notes, Canadian boomers are generally dicks:

The Liberal base has had it easy for a decade. With a compliant, sycophantic press and a loyal army of boomers—presumably the only ones still answering calls from pollsters on their wall-mounted rotary-dial landlines during CBC commercial breaks—they greet any resistance to the prospect of four more years of controlled demolition of the Canadian economy with smugness and derision.

There are endless cases caught on video of deranged elderly liberals gyrating in spasmodic fashion chanting “elbows up” at each other and the rest of us and they seem to think it’s some kind of “gotcha moment” to fly off the handle or flip us the bird…

Mating call of the white-haired Canadian boomer looking to fuck over their grandchildren. pic.twitter.com/XtAOBtLS40
— Tokyo Rosie (@RosieRocks29) April 19, 2025

But none of them has become more iconic than this one (at least not yet):

Elbows and/or fingers up. #cdnpoli #Brantford #Elxn45 #ProtestMania pic.twitter.com/jTKswfmgVp
— Caryma Sa'd - Lawyer + Political Satirist (@CarymaRules) April 19, 2025

Now, the “liberal boomer” image has gone viral and the guy who probably thought he was “0wning the opposition, lol” is a meme now – it has captured the essence of the Liberal Party’s campaign platform:

Rack up another quarter-trillion in national debt by 2029.
Build a bunch of “modular homes” and stick the rabble in them.

pic.twitter.com/INj7RZbytG
— Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 (@ryangerritsen) April 20, 2025

* * *

Thus, it's no mystery why young men are flocking to the Conservatives - though the gender gap is hard to ignore. Twice as many women support Carney’s Liberals, while nearly half of male voters back Poilievre. Liberals were quick to pounce on the Tory leader’s use of the phrase “biological clock” during a speech on housing affordability, accusing him of tone-deafness on gender issues.

“Poilievre’s style is coded masculine,” said Laura Stephenson, a political science professor at Western University. “And the Conservative Party in general... has often been favored by men over women.”

Still, the youth surge behind Poilievre marks a generational reversal. Traditionally, young Canadians leaned left, while older voters skewed conservative. Now, with sky-high rents and stalled economic growth, the Liberal record is falling flat — even as the party racks up wins on progressive policies like pharmacare and dental care.

“We have legalized marijuana, we have pharmacare, we have dental care,” said Stephenson. “What many [young voters] still struggle with, though, is paying rent, or buying a home.”

And that, for Poilievre, may be his most potent talking point yet. Whether it’s enough to close the gap before voters hit the polls, that’s the billion-dollar question.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/its-time-change-canadian-youth-fed-turn-conservative-poilievre-liberal-boomers-go-full

Parents defending teens destroying ‘Minecraft’ theaters: ‘Get over it’

“It’s not Schindler’s List, people. It’s a kids movie. Get over it.”

So read one of the reactions on social media to a post complaining about the behavior of viewers during a screening of A Minecraft Movie.

But it’s not just that man, it’s so many people, minimising the outright vandalism and destruction left behind when the movie is over (check out the photos below).

It’s excused, in the name of “boys will be boys” and “it’s a kids’ movie” and “they’re just having fun.”

Are you kidding me? Have we learned nothing from the recent Adolescence phenomenon?

Utter chaos and criminal acts in screenings of the Minecraft movie

As a mum of an almost 18 year old, who’s cared more about kindness and respect than school grades, the scenes of the chaos caused in cinemas have been heartbreaking.

I can only imagine what it’s like to be a cleaner after a session, and be confronted with images like this:

It’s rude, disrespectful, inconsiderate, and yes, arrogant, to think your ‘excitement’ in a movie should be expressed by leaving a trail of destruction for someone else to clean up.

For someone doing a job, cleaning up after you.

Forget about ‘punishing’ kids or young adults for this. That ship has sailed. A more useful topic to consider is how entitled they are to feel this behaviour is acceptable?

That they matter more than others?

It was one of the questions raised in Adolescence, and I wrote about it here:

“When I watched Netflix’s Adolescence this week, I was not surprised, or shocked, by the themes of male behaviour -entitlement, self-loathing, anger and violence – that it explores through main character, Jamie. Nor was I surprised by how accurate it was.

“I know first-hand this behavior is prevalent.

“And if you were surprised by Jamie’s character, you’re lucky. Because there’s a lot more Jamies out there than many of us realize.”

But the reaction to the Minecraft cinema chaos shows that many of us still think it’s just “young people testing boundaries.” Why can’t many of us see it’s so much more than that?

That these young people turn out to be a danger to society?

And further: Why has this woman’s post on Facebook been torn to shreds?

She’s been called a “Karen”, told that she should lower her expectations, be cooler than this as a Gen X.

Why is the reaction not, “Who the f**k do they think they are?”

Why are not more people disgusted by this lack of humanity?

And then we’re taken aback when we discovered kids like Adolescence’s Jamie are running rampant in our society.

I can tell you as a sole mum on a sole income, I would be ropeable if my son took my money and threw it on the dirty cinema floor, stamped on it, and soaked it with soda.

But I can also tell you that he wouldn’t do that, because he’s been raised to be respectful of what he has. And he’s raised to be respectful of me.

Also, my kid’s reaction to the viral TikTok trend of movie-goers is revealing: “Who would waste popcorn like that?”

To me, that leads to the scariest part of this: those kids are not thinking of the popcorn, their parents, or anyone else, at all.

https://nypost.com/2025/04/21/lifestyle/parents-are-defending-teens-destroying-minecraft-theaters-get-over-it/

I gave my excited family ‘takeout’ for dinner — I’m shocked they didn’t discover my secret hack

Call it culinary catfishing.

Getting persnickety kids to eat a home-cooked meal can feel like pulling teeth. But one enterprising parent devised an ingenious way to get hers to eat the foods of her labor sans complaint — by packing up the vittles to make them think it’s takeout.

“We ordered in food, this is an Italian place,” fibbed Alex MacLaren in the video, which currently boasts over 2.9 million views on TikTok.

The clever parent then busted out containers tortellini minestrone, chicken cacciotori with rice, and homemade cheesecake.

“Who wants soup and who wants chicken?” inquires MacLaren, as the kids clamor for their dinner.

The youngsters happily tucked in, completely oblivious to the fact that their meal was homemade — like a reverse version of “Mrs. Doubtfire’s” titular character pawning off gourmet takeout as her own cooking.

MacLaren told Newsweek she was surprised her family swallowed the tale hook, line and sinker — as she’d “actually made this meal a few times before.”

“They all liked it, but since they’ve eaten this before I wasn’t surprised about that,” she said.

MacLaren that her kids aren’t “overly picky” — despite having their preferences — but thought the bait and switch would be fun as her children get so excited when they order takeout.

“Takeout for a family can be expensive, so we don’t order in often,” she lamented.

Watch on TikTok

Commenters were amazed over McLaren’s hack.

“As a human, be ashamed. As a mom, you’re my hero!!!!” enthused one fan.

“This definitely would have worked on me as a kid. I love it,” said another.

“I fear this would work on me as an adult,” quipped a third.

“My mother would do this to me when I was younger!” one exclaimed. “Until I realized the ‘takeout’ my dad brought home was the same food I caught my mom making in the kitchen.”

MacLaren says hopes to deploy this false advertising trick in the future — but acknowledges she’ll have to choose her shots wisely.

“Since at least one of my kids is usually home with me at any given time, I don’t know how often I’ll be able to make a fake-out take-out without them noticing,” she said. “I’ll definitely try it again when I get the chance, though.”

This hack is especially timely given the skyrocketing costs of delivery orders.

A September Finance Buzz experiment found that ordering a meal off Grubhub, Doordash, UberEats and other delivery firms can cost almost double what it would to go out and collect it yourself — largely due to the number of fees, suggested tips and other costs that come with delivery in the modern age.

https://nypost.com/2025/04/21/lifestyle/woman-uses-clever-hack-to-convince-children-to-eat-her-homemade-meals/

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