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Sold Down the River
Hello dear show notes readers!
This week on Unqualified Advice, we started looking at the phrase "Sold down the river." The phrase's dark history goes back to the cotton gin, 1793, and the horrific expansion of slavery that followed. It was an unfortunate example of Jevons Paradox in action, which brought us our thread for the episode: when technology makes something more efficient, demand doesn't shrink — it explodes. Sound familiar?
From there we pulled the lens forward to AI. Dan shared a data center bans tracker and the map of which states are welcoming vs. blocking this infrastructure is illuminating — the industrial North might be flipping into the hollowed-out NIMBY North while the Deep South booms.
Then we jumped overseas — the Strait of Hormuz, Citrini Research's on-the-ground reporting, and Singapore's foreign minister on why the Strait of Malacca matters more than people think.
Go get your hands dirty this week.
Cheers, Sean
"The industrial North is flipped and it's going to be the industrial South and the hollowed out NIMBY North."
Shows/Films Discussed- The Man in the High Castle — Amazon series reimagining a world where Germany and Japan won WWII
- Breaking Bad — Referenced in passing (New Mexico)
- datacenterbans.com — State-level tracker of data center bans, moratoriums, and incentives across the US
- Riverside — Recording/editing platform (where the sausage gets made)
- OpenAI / Sam Altman
- Nvidia
- SpaceX / Starlink
- BYD
- Waymo
- TSMC
- Samsung
- AMD
- Amazon
- Lime
- Walmart
- Citrini Research
- datacenterbans.com — Interactive US map tracking data center legislation by state
- Citrini Research — James Van Geelen's investment research firm; their Strait of Hormuz field report is now outside the paywall
- Jevons Paradox (Wikipedia) — The counterintuitive principle that efficiency gains increase total resource consumption
- Cotton Gin and the Expansion of Slavery — Digital Public Library of America resource on the cotton gin's impact
- Dan's Prometheus Dispatch — "The Tab" — Dan's Substack essay on US global commitments and the Strait of Hormuz
We said some things. Here's how we did.
🟢 = Nailed it | 🟡 = Close enough | 🔴 = Whiffed it
🟢 Cotton gin invented in 1793 We said Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. Correct — he built his first prototype in 1793 and received his patent on March 14, 1794. We got the year right.
🟡 What the cotton gin actually does We described it as mechanizing "the sorting or the picking of the cotton bowls from the seeds and the husks." Close but not quite — the cotton gin separates cotton fibers from seeds using rotating teeth pulled through narrow slots. No husks involved. The picking of cotton itself remained entirely manual. Half credit for getting the general idea right.
🟢 Jevons Paradox applied to the cotton gin We called the cotton gin story "the Jevons Paradox of the whole thing." Textbook application. William Stanley Jevons observed in 1865 that more efficient steam engines led to more coal consumption, not less — exactly what happened with cotton and enslaved labor after the gin. Well played.
🟡 Mississippi is "state number 11" in reading after implementing phonics Dan said Mississippi "instituted phonics" and became "state number 11" in reading. The phonics story is real — Mississippi's Literacy-Based Promotion Act (2013) produced dramatic improvements. Their exact national ranking varies by source and metric: somewhere between 9th and 21st depending on the year and assessment. Close enough for a podcast, but the #11 claim is hard to pin down precisely.
🟡 Oregon spent "$11 billion extra dollars on education" with declining scores Dan said Oregon spent $11 billion extra on education and saw reading scores decline. The direction is absolutely correct — Oregon dramatically increased education spending (including $1.62 billion in federal pandemic relief) while posting some of the lowest fourth-grade reading scores in the nation. The $11 billion figure appears overstated, but the point stands: dollars didn't equal outcomes.
🟢 Strait of Hormuz narrowest point is 21 miles We said the nearest point at the Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles. Confirmed — it's 21 nautical miles at its narrowest. The shipping lanes are even tighter: two 2-mile-wide channels separated by a 2-mile buffer zone.
🟡 Strait of Malacca narrowest point is 2 miles We said the Strait of Malacca narrows to 2 miles based on Singapore's foreign minister's comments. It's actually about 1.5 miles (2.8 km) at the Phillips Channel near Singapore. Close — and the broader point about it being dramatically tighter than Hormuz is correct.
🟢 SpaceX wants to build data centers in space Dan said SpaceX is pitching data centers in space as part of their IPO valuation story. Confirmed — SpaceX filed FCC plans in January 2026 for satellites that would serve as orbital data centers. Still highly speculative but definitely being discussed.
🟢 BONUS: Shad is indeed a fish Sean blurted out "shad" instead of "shall" and then claimed shad is a fish. He's right! Shad are saltwater fish of the herring family (Alosa genus), with about 30 species worldwide. The American shad is the largest herring species. Sean, take a victory lap on this one.
Final Score: 5 green, 4 yellow, 0 red Strong showing this week. The Jevons Paradox callout was chef's kiss, and even the ad-lib fish taxonomy was on point. We'll take it.
Chapters- 0:00 - Introduction
- 0:55 - "Sold Down the River": The Dark History Behind the Phrase
- 6:36 - The Jevons Paradox of AI
- 9:30 - Who Should Lead the AI Revolution?
- 19:07 - Data Center Bans: A Map of America's Future
- 22:36 - Mississippi's Phonics Miracle vs. Oregon's Billions
- 28:03 - The Indiana Brain Drain
- 31:05 - NIMBYism and the New Rust Belt
- 36:34 - Incentive Design: Tax Breaks, Power Plants, and EVs
- 43:02 - The Midwest Flip: Vacation Cottages and Office Space
- 51:08 - Strait of Hormuz: Who's in Control?
- 54:31 - The Strait of Malacca and Singapore's Fundamentals
- 59:29 - Kamala Harris and the Pendulum
- 1:02:06 - Have We Graduated from COVID?
View all episodes
By Sean Filipow and Daniel HatkeHello dear show notes readers!
This week on Unqualified Advice, we started looking at the phrase "Sold down the river." The phrase's dark history goes back to the cotton gin, 1793, and the horrific expansion of slavery that followed. It was an unfortunate example of Jevons Paradox in action, which brought us our thread for the episode: when technology makes something more efficient, demand doesn't shrink — it explodes. Sound familiar?
From there we pulled the lens forward to AI. Dan shared a data center bans tracker and the map of which states are welcoming vs. blocking this infrastructure is illuminating — the industrial North might be flipping into the hollowed-out NIMBY North while the Deep South booms.
Then we jumped overseas — the Strait of Hormuz, Citrini Research's on-the-ground reporting, and Singapore's foreign minister on why the Strait of Malacca matters more than people think.
Go get your hands dirty this week.
Cheers, Sean
"The industrial North is flipped and it's going to be the industrial South and the hollowed out NIMBY North."
Shows/Films Discussed- The Man in the High Castle — Amazon series reimagining a world where Germany and Japan won WWII
- Breaking Bad — Referenced in passing (New Mexico)
- datacenterbans.com — State-level tracker of data center bans, moratoriums, and incentives across the US
- Riverside — Recording/editing platform (where the sausage gets made)
- OpenAI / Sam Altman
- Nvidia
- SpaceX / Starlink
- BYD
- Waymo
- TSMC
- Samsung
- AMD
- Amazon
- Lime
- Walmart
- Citrini Research
- datacenterbans.com — Interactive US map tracking data center legislation by state
- Citrini Research — James Van Geelen's investment research firm; their Strait of Hormuz field report is now outside the paywall
- Jevons Paradox (Wikipedia) — The counterintuitive principle that efficiency gains increase total resource consumption
- Cotton Gin and the Expansion of Slavery — Digital Public Library of America resource on the cotton gin's impact
- Dan's Prometheus Dispatch — "The Tab" — Dan's Substack essay on US global commitments and the Strait of Hormuz
We said some things. Here's how we did.
🟢 = Nailed it | 🟡 = Close enough | 🔴 = Whiffed it
🟢 Cotton gin invented in 1793 We said Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. Correct — he built his first prototype in 1793 and received his patent on March 14, 1794. We got the year right.
🟡 What the cotton gin actually does We described it as mechanizing "the sorting or the picking of the cotton bowls from the seeds and the husks." Close but not quite — the cotton gin separates cotton fibers from seeds using rotating teeth pulled through narrow slots. No husks involved. The picking of cotton itself remained entirely manual. Half credit for getting the general idea right.
🟢 Jevons Paradox applied to the cotton gin We called the cotton gin story "the Jevons Paradox of the whole thing." Textbook application. William Stanley Jevons observed in 1865 that more efficient steam engines led to more coal consumption, not less — exactly what happened with cotton and enslaved labor after the gin. Well played.
🟡 Mississippi is "state number 11" in reading after implementing phonics Dan said Mississippi "instituted phonics" and became "state number 11" in reading. The phonics story is real — Mississippi's Literacy-Based Promotion Act (2013) produced dramatic improvements. Their exact national ranking varies by source and metric: somewhere between 9th and 21st depending on the year and assessment. Close enough for a podcast, but the #11 claim is hard to pin down precisely.
🟡 Oregon spent "$11 billion extra dollars on education" with declining scores Dan said Oregon spent $11 billion extra on education and saw reading scores decline. The direction is absolutely correct — Oregon dramatically increased education spending (including $1.62 billion in federal pandemic relief) while posting some of the lowest fourth-grade reading scores in the nation. The $11 billion figure appears overstated, but the point stands: dollars didn't equal outcomes.
🟢 Strait of Hormuz narrowest point is 21 miles We said the nearest point at the Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles. Confirmed — it's 21 nautical miles at its narrowest. The shipping lanes are even tighter: two 2-mile-wide channels separated by a 2-mile buffer zone.
🟡 Strait of Malacca narrowest point is 2 miles We said the Strait of Malacca narrows to 2 miles based on Singapore's foreign minister's comments. It's actually about 1.5 miles (2.8 km) at the Phillips Channel near Singapore. Close — and the broader point about it being dramatically tighter than Hormuz is correct.
🟢 SpaceX wants to build data centers in space Dan said SpaceX is pitching data centers in space as part of their IPO valuation story. Confirmed — SpaceX filed FCC plans in January 2026 for satellites that would serve as orbital data centers. Still highly speculative but definitely being discussed.
🟢 BONUS: Shad is indeed a fish Sean blurted out "shad" instead of "shall" and then claimed shad is a fish. He's right! Shad are saltwater fish of the herring family (Alosa genus), with about 30 species worldwide. The American shad is the largest herring species. Sean, take a victory lap on this one.
Final Score: 5 green, 4 yellow, 0 red Strong showing this week. The Jevons Paradox callout was chef's kiss, and even the ad-lib fish taxonomy was on point. We'll take it.
Chapters- 0:00 - Introduction
- 0:55 - "Sold Down the River": The Dark History Behind the Phrase
- 6:36 - The Jevons Paradox of AI
- 9:30 - Who Should Lead the AI Revolution?
- 19:07 - Data Center Bans: A Map of America's Future
- 22:36 - Mississippi's Phonics Miracle vs. Oregon's Billions
- 28:03 - The Indiana Brain Drain
- 31:05 - NIMBYism and the New Rust Belt
- 36:34 - Incentive Design: Tax Breaks, Power Plants, and EVs
- 43:02 - The Midwest Flip: Vacation Cottages and Office Space
- 51:08 - Strait of Hormuz: Who's in Control?
- 54:31 - The Strait of Malacca and Singapore's Fundamentals
- 59:29 - Kamala Harris and the Pendulum
- 1:02:06 - Have We Graduated from COVID?