Outside of Atlanta, two gas stations got into a price war. The Atlanta TV station WSB-TV reported that, over the course of a day, prices dropped from $2.54 down to $1.44, $1.39 and eventually down to just 97 cents. When drivers took notice, the traffic jam began and police intervened. BUT while it was happening, one driver said she only spent $15 to fill up her truck. It usually costs $90. "Look at God, baby! Look at God!" she said.
In our team's Slack, co-host Wailin Wong responded to the low prices, "make it up on volume!?" Jeff Guo wrote, "how is this real." But like, actually. How is this real?
Coming up:
- Why Facebook is charging you to post hyperlinks
- How fake data centers can still drive up electricity costs
- How one man is dealing with a rental car agency
News We're Watching
Why websites make it hard to leave
What To Know: Social media sites don't love it when users leave. If you've ever used Instagram, it's not the easiest place to post links. You need to include them in bios, or through a special button on stories. Well now, if you run a Facebook page, you can only post TWO hyperlinks for free per month. $49.99/month will get you a Meta One Advanced plan, allowing you to include eight hyperlinks in posts or reels. With the $499/month Max plan, you can post an unlimited amount. Ashley Gullen, who runs a game design company, posted on Mastodon, a decentralized social media platform, "Facebook achieving absurd new heights of enshittification" in response to the news. This isn't totally unique. Nieman Lab did a whole study finding that posting links hurts news publishers on X.
Why are companies doing this?: Attention is money for social media sites. They want to keep you inside their walls! David Evans, managing director at BRG, a consulting firm, wrote a simple explanation as to why platforms want you to stay on their site: "Attention platforms use content to get consumers to spend time on their platform and sell marketers the ability to expose these consumers to messages."
Even FAKE data centers could be driving up electricity costs - The Wall Street Journal
What To Know: Developers are desperate to get their data centers up and running. They need it to help power their precious AI and whatever other computing is needed. BUT, developers won't just say, "This is the only location we'll accept for this project." No, they'll put out requests to all sorts of locations for their centers. The problem is, utilities are still considering data centers that likely WON'T GET BUILT in their electricity forecasts. Energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimates that only a mere 23% of data-center requests are considered "high confidence," according to The Wall Street Journal. The rest are speculative!
How this affects YOU: Electricity costs could rise even if the data centers don't get built. Hoowwwwww does that work now? Because utilities are still planning for expected demand. They can't just suddenly integrate a wildly power-demanding data center without new substations or transmission lines. It's possible for the utility to pass on some of those grid investments onto consumers, even if the data centers never come to pass. Some power markets also set prices based on future demand so… There are lots of ways these projects could mess with your electricity bill.
Another oil reserve gets tapped - U.S. Department of Energy
It's your weekly update on diesel prices! This week, the Trump administration has found a NEW way to try and lower prices, which seems to be a core issue ahead of the midterms. This time, the U.S. Department of Energy has authorized an exchange from the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve. It would release roughly a third of the reserves for heating oil. The Chief Energy Advisor for Gulf Oil thinks it won't make a difference on prices.
What's interesting, this reserve has only been tapped ONCE, and that was after Hurricane Sandy. According to the DOE's history, that's the sort of thing it was meant for. "The intent was to create a buffer large enough to allow commercial companies to compensate for interruptions in supply during severe winter weather." Here, the DOE will loan out up to 315,000 barrels of heating oil in hopes of lowering prices. It's called an exchange because borrowing entities, like a regional heating oil retailer, would be required to replace the same volume at a premium ahead of next year.
Today's Indicator
Why Oracle's debt load could be your problem
If you HAVEN'T listened: We keep hearing about the AI boom that's propping up the U.S. economy. Well, Oracle is a part of that story. The enterprise software company has moved into building out data centers to serve the AI industry. Now, they have a huge deal with OpenAI worth $300 billion over five years. Here's the problem. Oracle has been spending freely with the assumption that this OpenAI deal will deliver. But what if it doesn't? Oracle already has $169 billion in total debt and a growing credit risk. They're one link in an interconnected chain of enormous tech companies. If that link breaks, it could spell trouble for the economy.
If you HAVE listened: Lindsay Tyler, credit analyst, explains in the piece that Oracle is making a bet on data centers. "The analogy might be you have 10 apartments, you've pre-signed leases with, for those 10 apartments, and you're thinking, 'Should I build another floor?'"
On the surface, this doesn't seem plausible. Isn't computing demand insatiable right now? Yeah, right now. But…
- AI is getting so much more efficient to run. Research from Epoch AI found "the cost of achieving a given level of AI performance has fallen about 47% per quarter since 2023, or 13× per year."
- The chips powering these AI models "have a useful lifespan of one to three years due to rapid technological obsolescence and physical wear."
Some economic historians like to compare the AI buildout to the railroads, but this one is different. Rails last longer than one to three years. The cost of shipping does not plummet 13x per year. And maybe Oracle is at the center of these economic forces colliding: a railroad-type investment boom building castles made of sand.
Rest of the Week
We can inflate away the national debt… at a cost
Piercing the American taboo of talking about income and class
Can a "Moneyball" system work for campaign funding?
Listener Mailbag
Context: Last week, we ran an episode full of consumer rage stories. One included a story about someone charged for damage to a rental car that was impossible to disprove. Stay to the end for a surprising twist.
Listener Jim Zerefos sent in a response from Colorado.
I share the frustration of the person who complained about dubious damage claims from a rental car company. I've been fighting Alamo for nearly a year now over a $1,600 damage claim. Alamo sent me photos of very minor damage taken AFTER our rental, but never provided photos from BEFORE our rental. [The car] had some 23k miles so seems possible (likely?) the scratches occurred some time before our rental.
My spidey sense here smells a scam: "rental companies now scan cars for damage and so are trying to find scapegoats for all prior damage"? Alamo's reaction to me (and my insurance company) has been to ignore us - never sending the "before" pics and never acknowledging that's an issue. They just keep sending us invoices. They now are threatening collection action and have banned me from renting from the Alamo rental family (as if I would). So, the story on the broader scam? Or story on which credit cards still offer primary rental damage coverage (which we THOUGHT we had)?
By the way, here at The Indicator, we reached out to the car rental company and they responded in a statement through a spokesperson from Enterprise Mobility: "Customer satisfaction is our top priority, and we are always open to further conversations with customers regarding damage claims. Our team is actively reviewing this matter through our escalation process and will reach out to the customer to share an update today."
And we already have an update: Jim tells us Alamo has since dropped the claim and will make no further collection efforts. Alamo's "risk" department instructed the Cleveland manager to drop the claim, according to Jim.
Jim's response: "Sad to see that you got more action in a day than my insurance company and I got in nearly a year."
In Our Spare Time
Co-host Wailin Wong is reading Under Story
This fall has yielded a bumper crop of big new fiction releases. My favorite from the last couple of weeks of reading is UNDER STORY by Chloe Benjamin. This novel is about a fungi expert who goes to Antarctica after a family tragedy. She's hoping to anonymously wash dishes at a research station. However, a strange light phenomenon and the arrival of her physicist ex-husband pull her back into the scientific world. This was an exciting, imaginative, and beautiful story about grief, family, parallel universes, trees, and mushrooms. (Bonus rec: This book also makes for a good pairing with Emily St. John Mandel's new novel, Exit Party.)
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