Mark York

Farmer. Computer Scientist. Fmr. U.S. Senate candidate. Building things and writing about technology, agriculture, policy & Minnesota. #BuildBabyBuild

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

@TBASS4CONGRESS Great to see you @TBASS4CONGRESS ! Keep pounding the pavement and focusing on how we’ll fix our state.

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

I’m volunteering at the Republican booth at the MN State Fair this afternoon. Come by and let’s talk about how we’re going to WIN in November! #MNStateFair #MNSen @mngop

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

@Mpls_Ghetto_Guy @maxrrymer This post has 10,000 lakes, since it’s about Minnesota.

[Max Rymer @maxrrymer]

For Minnesota, Data Centers are economic Ozempic. We have not built a fundamentally competitive economy here under Democrat "leadership" the last 20 years. We’ve not done the hard work to create a thriving business community; in fact, we've shut down existing high-potential industries that can only happen in Minnesota. The habits which create a thriving economy have been ignored - and some politicians are looking for tricks and gimmicks to "fix" that.

The real solution requires discipline and a course correction: we need less taxes, less burdensome mandates, and the ability to unleash our small businesses and workers. Until that happens for all businesses that have been faithful to Minnesota (despite every reason not to be), it SHOULD NOT happen for the shiniest object today whose self-stated end goal is to replace your job.

Why would we allow brand new tax breaks and incentives for new stuff ahead of our current businesses?

And, more importantly, why has Amy Klobuchar taken thousands from big tech?

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

@mbrodkorb She should talk to the @StarTribune on the condition that they put the article in the Sunday edition. Lots of sports fans only buy that one. #mnsen

[Marcus @mrcsxbt]

Charlie Munger spent decades on one question: why intelligent people still destroy money, careers, and relationships.

He put incentives first.

"You get what you reward for. If you have a dumb incentive system, you get dumb outcomes."

People do not do what they are asked to do. They do what they are paid to do. Sometimes that payment is cash. More often it is attention, status, or not having to admit you were wrong.

In his 1995 speech The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Munger laid out 24 standard causes of misjudgment. He revised the text in 2005 and the list grew to 25.

The full checklist is in the article below.

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

The guy who started DeFlock to show where Flock cameras are and get them removed is a hero.

The fourth amendment clearly says that we are protected from warrantless searches and seizures.

America is about freedom, not about 24/7 surveillance. Let’s remove Flock cameras and protect our privacy.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

A guy driving from Washington state to Alabama kept passing black poles with solar panels on top, googled what they were, and ended up building a map of 125,000 police cameras that nobody had ever bothered to list.

They're license plate readers. Every car that passes gets photographed and logged, whether or not anyone is looking for it. Flock Safety sells them to more than 6,000 agencies across 49 states. Billions of plate reads a month, kept 30 days by default.

Will Freeman used a free map anyone can edit.

He opened OpenStreetMap, started dropping pins for each camera with the direction its lens faced, and taped signs to the poles telling drivers where to find the map. Strangers picked it up. Under two years later the project, DeFlock, had mapped roughly 125,000 readers. Flock's own website says it has installed over 120,000.

The volunteers found more cameras than the company admits to having.

That crowdsourced data now feeds a whole shelf of apps. Some draw the view cones so you can see exactly what each camera covers. Some route you around them. One pings your phone the moment you drive into a lens's field of view.

The map turned political fast. In August the Washington Post found more than 50 officers accused of misusing plate readers, some to track ex-partners. Once residents could pull up their own town and count the cameras, council meetings changed. 90 cities and towns dropped Flock in August alone, four times July's number.

Flock cut default retention from 30 days to 7 last month and now requires a case number before any search. It also says new cities are signing at 10x the rate of cancellations.

A $7.5 billion company built a network to log every car in America. One guy with a free map editor logged the network.

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

When will Europe start innovating again? We could use their help competing with China right about… now.

[Steve Ladureau🌿ZZZZ🌿 @steveladureau]

@Le_Crapaud47 😌😌😌

[Atoms Not Bits @AtomsNotBits]

BREAKING: The U.S. Department of Transportation plans to turn rail lines and highways into dual-use hard tech infrastructure, enabling the co-location of power transmission, fiber-optic networks, water pipelines, and other critical infrastructure.

Per @SecDuffy.

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

I agree; you never want to come off as evasive. There’s plenty of room to talk about collaborating with vs fighting against federal law enforcement, keeping Minnesotans safe, etc, without directly refusing to answer the question. Hopefully she can learn from it and mount a serious challenge to Klobo.

[T. Greer @Scholars_Stage]

Listen, here is what Trump needs to do. He needs to visit some of the largest proposed data sites. Most of these are in red areas anyway--like the Stratos mega project in northern Utah.

He needs to hold a rally there. And in the middle of the rally he is going to bring out Kevin O'Leary (investor in that particular data center) or his counterpart, and he needs to say something to the affect of "I know many of you thought these big business guys were just going to come in and not do anything for you. But I made them make some promises to me." And then he and that investor are going to announce, point by point, what they are going to do for that community. "Every newborn in this county is getting five hundred dollars in their Trump account!" "Local hospital x is going to get a whole set of new nurses uniforms and medical supplies!" "Your county is going to reduce its property tax by 2% -- saving you $400 this year!" Just make a big list unique to each county. (He should also have the local mayor or town council person or whomever up on the stage -- that is the guy who is going to make the promises about property tax reduction, and this is the guy whose political career is going to be saved by Trump).

He needs to make this a campaign. Go state to state to state, promote Trump accounts, promote data centers, and show to his supporters how he, and his party, are the ones forcing the big businessmen to pay the normal American his due. This is the way.

[MLB @MLB]

Payton Tolle is an absolute gem 😭

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

@SenTinaSmith Then why are trade unions supporting them? Their members will make money too. Minnesota needs jobs - please stop standing in the way.

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

Industrial policy is hard. Thank God we have esteemed engineer Marjorie Taylor Greene here to help us win the AI war with China! @FmrRepMTG

#BuildBabyBuild

[Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 @FmrRepMTG]

Everyone hates data centers and Americans are packing out city halls and county commissioners meetings trying to stop data centers from being built.
They consume the land and steal the water and creates noise pollution that drives people and animals insane, while creating very few permanent jobs past the construction phase.
If Trump wants data centers build them on all his golf courses and country clubs and right in the backyard at Maralago!!
Good luck winning the midterms now that MAGA means mass data centers, flock cameras and the surveillance state, protecting the Epstein class, and the never ending Iran War!!

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

@MichaelH_MN Two things:
1) China got a tighter grip on critical mineral supply chains
2) Democrats completely lost their minds

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

Privacy for me, not for thee.

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

I hear people say that our food system is broken. Those people are flat out wrong.

Our food system is a MARVEL. We spend less of our income on food than any society anywhere in the history of the world. In the U.S., we spend less than 10% of our disposable income on food. In West Africa where I’ve worked with farmers, it’s closer to 50%

Are there things we could improve? Of course! But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

And when you get the chance, thank a farmer or food industry worker.

[Emma Camp @emmma_camp_]

If you want evidence that capitalism is a force for good, just visit a grocery store.

My ode to the humble American supermarket, for @WSJFreeEx

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

In case you wonder why healthcare is expensive, it’s not doctor salaries

[odga aeras @pg0510]

@Alex_Garneauu Next time anyone says doctors are the reason healthcare is expensive, show them that picture along with this chart .

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

I talked to a lot of people around Minnesota about this, and at first blush it seems like as you say. But when you really dig deeper, it seems that these companies just haven’t done the community outreach they need to. Folks want to know which company it is, how many jobs it will create (short and long term)… and ultimately how it benefits them.

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

Amen to all this. Data centers will create thousands of great jobs in exactly the places that lost jobs overseas in the past 30 years. We should be celebrating them and using them to make local government solvent, electricity affordable, and jobs plentiful.

[Gavin Baker @GavinSBaker]

Regret the tone of my post on data centers yesterday.

What I should have said:

There were reasonable concerns about data centers 18ish months ago: water, taxes, jobs, electricity prices, the environment and what they would do to small towns. Well-structured data center projects have largely addressed these concerns today and we should be celebrating this.

On balance, data centers are awesome for America in every way.

On water: U.S. data centers use a fraction of what golf courses use. A lot of the numbers from 18 months ago were off by over 1000x. Newer data centers use closed-loop systems or recycled water. Should be required by every town approving a data center project.

On taxes: looking only at sales-tax exemptions, as Ronan Farrow did, is the wrong way to evaluate this. Data centers pay significant property taxes. Loudoun County, which is the wealthiest county in America, now collects on the order of $1 billion a year from data centers. In Quincy, WA, data centers are more than half the property-tax roll. Over time, property taxes can go to zero while government spending increases in these towns.

On jobs: this has been unambiguously awesome for blue collar Americans. Demand for electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC techs, and contractors has gone vertical, and it is not a one-time construction job. These buildings get upgraded and expanded over time. That is why the building trades are fighting for them, and why some unions are now treating opposition to data centers as a reason not to endorse politicians.

On power: the original fear was that households would pay for the incremental electricity demand in the form of higher prices. That is why the ratepayer-protection deals and the new large-load tariffs exist. The right structure is: the data center brings or pays for new generation and signs a contract long enough that existing customers are protected. Where that is happening, utilities are cutting or freezing residential rates and saying so on the record. Where it is not, people are right to object. Electricity prices are going down *today* in a number of large states because of data centers.

On the environment: data centers overwhelming use natural gas today, which is the cleanest power source outside of nuclear, solar and wind. And the companies that are building the data centers are committed to carbon neutrality such that an equivalent amount of solar will likely be built. Maybe more importantly, the data centers need batteries to function effectively and these batteries can also sell energy back into the grid (which recently prevented blackouts in Texas). Over time, data centers will run on solar plus batteries.

On the towns: Poverty in Quincy, WA fell from 29% to 6%. Data center taxes paid for a new high school, a hospital, a library, police and fire stations. This is happening in many left for dead former mill and farm towns that had no other bidder for the land.

Data centers are actually reindustrializing parts of America and creating the kind of working-class jobs both parties have spent decades claiming to support. That should not be a partisan issue. Data centers can and should be awesome for America and they increasingly, overwhelmingly are. Supporting the outsourcing of data centers to China will likely age just as well as support for the outsourcing of high quality, blue collar manufacturing jobs to China has aged.

When the facts change, I change my mind. I hope that reasonable people who had good faith reasons to oppose data centers at least consider updating their beliefs given the change in the facts over the last 18 months. This really matters for America.

I will say I also think the idea of making data centers beautiful is a good one that has yet to be implemented. Data centers should be just as beautiful as Grand Central Station. We can learn a lot from the railroad buildout. Neoclassical revival ftw.

Might write up open-weight AI tomorrow as this is equally essential to America.

[Mark York @markjamesyork]

@Carson35519446 People won’t accept them? Or they won’t create jobs?