Patreon Preview – 468. Vibes Make the World Go Round

Patreon Preview – 468. Vibes Make the World Go Round

July 30, 2026 · 10 min

About this episode

The episode discusses a major financing deal involving Nvidia, OpenAI, and Softbank, along with issues surrounding retail theft and corporate admissions about exaggerated problems.

First we get into a very circular (the strongest shape in nature) deal between Nvidia, OpenAI, and Softbank to finance a $250 billion 10-gigawatt data center complex, powered by a natural gas plant built by the US and Japanese governments, on a decommissioned uranium-enrichment site in Ohio, which will be filled by a further $350 billion of chips sold and financed by Nvidia. All very normal stuff. Then we revisit the hysteria over retail theft, why every pharmacy is a prison, and the admission by companies that “maybe we cried too much” about a problem that doesn’t exist. Vibes are a very powerful thing. ••• Jathan’s new paper: Deconstructing the Machine Learning Value Chain https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7084259 ••• Nvidia in Talks With OpenAI to Guarantee $250 Billion Financing for Data Center https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/nvidia-in-talks-with-openai-to-guarantee-250-billion-financing-for-data-center-3dd6eae3 ••• We used to be able to buy things in this country https://dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to-be-able-to-buy-things ••• British Police Built a Sprawling Crime-Prediction Machine. Some Results Couldn’t Be Trusted…

People in this episode

Host: Jathan

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Nvidia, OpenAI, Softbank

Books & works: Deconstructing the Machine Learning Value Chain, We used to be able to buy things in this country, British Police Built a Sprawling Crime-Prediction Machine. Some Results Couldn’t Be Trusted

Places: Ohio

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