Margaret Lea won last week’s world-famous-news-haiku™ competition about how boomers are supposed to be downsizing but, in fact, they’re buying bigger homes. Here’s her haiku:

On news of her joyous, assured victory, Margaret writes:

“I’m happy I’m not the only one baffled sometimes by fellow Americans.”

Indeed! And here’s how Margaret’s haiku compared to the worthy competition.

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Is bigger better? Life will show you in due time. Less can mean much more ~Yeny Pinero (45)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Boomers flaunt bankrolls, Need more rooms for adult kids. Go big AND go home ~Thomas Slawik (69)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ You expect downsizing? When Boomers have all the things, The house gets bigger ~Stephen Balzac (16)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ You say downsize huh? We say upsize; we earned it! Live, love, laugh! Yippee! ~Wendy D.  (33)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ We have too much stuff! Use home equity to buy, More house for more stuff ~Rick Wetherill  (17)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Boomers declutter, With Marie Kondo methods. Still buy McMansions ~Eugene Evon (6)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Entitled boomers, Believe they deserve it all. At what cost? Who cares ~Susan Weinstein (22)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ What are they thinking, It's macho mentality. Bigger is better ~Francisco Potato  (5)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Eyeing that cottage, But not enough room there when. My kids move back in ~Richard Brown (42)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 We’re Americans. Why are Boomers upsizing? Because they can. Duh! ~Margaret Lea (91)

I believe in you all, news-haiku-writers of America. The theme of next week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is about how film production is down nationwide, except in New Jersey, because Hollywood is moving its productions East! Bada boom, bada bing! Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers. (Don’t worry if you get a bounceback email. The mailbox is working, it’s just been inundated with haikus lately, thank goodness! And yes, I pick the best 10 every week using my totally flawless judgment, and then our fellow cheddariños get to vote for the eventual winner. If you don’t make the top 10 this week, that’s no reflection on how hard you’re trying. There are simply a lot of very good entries and it’s a process, becoming a news poet. Believe me.)

News!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• Hollywood's Biggest Studios Are Moving East

• The Guy Turning Parking Lots Into AI Data Centers

• Tariffs Go Back to the Future

• Reality Bites Elon Musk and His Believers

• Waymo Explores Split With Uber Over Robotaxis

• Poll of the Day: Get Back, Get Back…

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 0.05% )  $DJI ( ▲ 0.46% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$NFLX ( ▲ 1.74% )  $LGF.A ( ▲ 0.58% ) $PSKY ( ▼ 3.3% )  $TSLA ( ▼ 2.08% )  $SPCX ( ▼ 2.68% )  $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.65% )  $UBER ( ▼ 4.31% )  

Hollywood's Biggest Studios Are Moving East

Move over, sunny Southern California. Who needs year-round perfect weather and green juices when you can have the raw, industrial, er… charm of New Jersey? That’s right: Netflix $NFLX ( ▲ 1.74% ), Lionsgate $LGF.A ( ▲ 0.58% ), and Paramount $PSKY ( ▼ 3.3% ) are dumping Malibu beach houses for the Garden State.

Why? Because filmmakers have finally realized that paying taxes is painful, but pocketing massive state tax incentives is not. Back in the day, filmmakers fled Thomas Edison’s West Orange tax grip to establish California. But the tables have turned. As one New Jersey Film Commission official points out, there is "an irony... that taxes drove filmmakers away and tax incentives are bringing them back again.”

Of course, the transition is not totally seamless. If it weren’t for the tax breaks, who would want to trade a predictable studio lot for Jersey’s municipal administrative maze? Line producers used to scream: "564 different towns in New Jersey, 564 sets of rules, my head's about to explode!" Luckily, towns are rapidly certifying themselves as "film-ready," so you only have to wait four days to get your permit to film a high-speed chase past a local bagel shop.

Even the industry veterans are experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance. One studio builder told us, "I never thought that I'd be in New Jersey, and New Jersey would be a real production hub, and here we are." Meanwhile, developers are constructing massive, multi-million-dollar lots aiming to "take the LA-style campus, improve on it, and bring it into this tri-state area market." Just don't call it a regional compromise. When someone dared to call the area the "Atlanta of the North," developer Flynn Busan fired back: "That's completely unacceptable, we're Hollywood East.”

Or as the Film Commission proudly put it: "I will posit this theory to you... that Hollywood is New Jersey West."

New Jersey, eh?!

Quote of the Day

The Guy Turning Parking Lots Into AI Data Centers

When you think of the cutting edge of AI, what do you picture? A sleek, sterile lab? A multi-billion-dollar warehouse in the desert? How about the airspace directly above a minivan parked at a local strip mall?

Enter Jeff Thramann, the serial entrepreneur, inventor of "somewhere north of 130 patents," and CEO of LT350. Jeff has looked at the asphalt wastes of suburban parking lots and seen the future. Specifically, the empty air above them. "The parking is pretty easy, because we're really canopies, right?" Thramann explains. "Ours would look almost the exact same" as standard solar canopies. The only twist? Instead of just shade, the girders will hold custom cartridges packed with power-hungry AI GPUs.

Parking lots are "everywhere" and they already have power and water. Plus, as Thramann points out, "Nobody really wants to have parking spots, but if you're putting up a building, you got to have a certain amount of parking." LT350 plans to take that "wasted asset, essentially that airspace" and use it to power the next generation of AI.

And no, you can't just put these expensive chips in your living room. Thramann notes that while some companies want to put decentralized GPUs in people's homes, "we think that might be a little bit dangerous just because of the cost of these things and the potential theft." A commercial parking lot is "more secure, and you can do a little bit more with it.”

Besides, we need these chips close by to run AI "inference" without lagging. If you want to control "a fleet of robots," “latency” has to be "under 10 milliseconds," whatever the heck that means. The solution? "Put it right adjacent to the enterprise, put it in the parking lot.”

Next time you're fighting for a space near the grocery store, look up, I guess. And see the future.

Tariffs Go Back to the Future

Just when you thought it was safe to import a luxury watch or some single-origin cinnamon again, the Trump administration has launched the trade equivalent of a Hollywood sequel. Let’s hope it’s better than 2018’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Or Speed 2: Cruise Control. Or The Godfather Part III.

After the Supreme Court struck down global duties in February, the administration dusted off Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to rebuild its beloved tariff wall. As trade analyst George Riddell noted, this brilliant maneuver cleverly forces litigation to be “economy-specific,” meaning instead of one big lawsuit, the government gets to fight sixty separate legal battles against a host of suing countries, using taxpayers’ money, over the coming months. They do say variety is the spice of life…

Polling shows voters are largely split on partisan lines in response to the renewed measures, although 28 percent of Republicans disapprove:

Europe, meanwhile, is popping the champagne. Johannes Fritz, chief executive of Global Trade Alert, explained to the Financial Times that “Italy and Spain benefited from a drop in tariff rates on footwear and woven garments as well as knitted apparel, as well as handbags.” Brazil, on the other hand, was not so lucky, seeing its effective tariff rate jump to 17.7%. Obrigado.

Naturally, America’s small businesses are thrilled. In fact, spice retailer Burlap and Barrel and watch seller Collective Horology sued the administration just hours after the announcement. Critics of the administration’s policy point out that it hasn’t led to the “golden age of American manufacturing” promised the first time around. Still, there’s plenty of time. Like today, it’s a good 834 days until the next U.S. presidential election, which is (loosely, admittedly) scheduled for Tuesday, November 7, 2028.

Song of the Day: Sienna Spiro, ‘It Takes A Woman’

"It Takes a Woman" is a live cover song by British soul singer-songwriter Sienna Spiro, originally written and recorded by country star Chris Stapleton. The track has quickly gone viral for its intimate studio setting, featuring a rich arrangement of strings, brass, piano, and backing vocalists. Not to mention her Warhol-inspired dress. Lovely.

Reality Bites Elon Musk and His Believers

It’s tough being Elon Musk. One minute you’re crowned the world’s first trillionaire, and the next, investors are asking for… actual results. But it turns out that when you run a public company, you can’t pay your bills in cool rendering videos and promises of Martian colonies.

Tesla $TSLA ( ▼ 2.08% ) recently wiped out $215 billion in market value after missing earnings targets and recording its first negative cash flow in two years. In response, Musk had to walk back rollout timelines for his favorite pet projects: robotaxis, Optimus humanoid robots, and that electric semi truck that has been promised "soon" for years. Even the ultimate hype-men are hurting. Tesla influencer Dillon Loomis posted on X: “I love Tesla and have been a superfan for well over a decade... If these goals are so uncertain, please just don’t share them. Say whatever you want internally, but to say them publicly and not even get close does nothing but hurt the company...”

Meanwhile, over at SpaceX $SPCX ( ▼ 2.68% ) , the stock is down nearly 50% from its highs, sliding below its IPO price. Starship’s engine issues and delays due to bad weather in Texas have fans venting on social media. It turns out rocket science is hard, but public markets are harder. Satellite consultant Samer Halawi explained the harsh reality of IPO life to the Wall Street Journal: “Access to capital is going to be scrutinized... When you’re a public company, people are going to expect a return. You can’t operate the same way you’ve been operating.”

Waymo Explores Split With Uber Over Robotaxis

It was the perfect modern romance: a tech giant's self-driving cars meeting a ride-hailing app's massive user base. But the Financial Times has reported that the honeymoon is officially over for Alphabet’s $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.65% ) Waymo and Uber $UBER ( ▼ 4.31% ) . Turns out, sharing custody of robotaxis in Austin and Atlanta is less "futuristic harmony" and more passive-aggressive finger-pointing.

According to sources, the two companies are “pursuing diverging objectives.” Translated from corporate-speak, they are actively trying to undermine each other's business models while acting like best friends.

The pettiness is top-tier. Waymo has complained about the cleanliness of the cars and how Uber routes them. (To be fair, dozens of Waymo vehicles did mysteriously clog an Atlanta cul-de-sac, though Waymo insists Uber was responsible.) Uber, meanwhile, is worried that Waymo’s cars suddenly stop working when it rains, and pointed out a few incidents where the vehicles casually blew past stopped school buses in Austin. Yikes!

But the real drama is in the lobbying. Uber has been trying to pass laws requiring human drivers to complete at least 85 percent of all rides. As Grayson Brulte, co-founder of Autnmy AI, put it to the FT: “Uber is trying to buy time through regulatory capture. They are simply advocating for measures that will preserve their market share.” Uber, naturally, claims they aren't “anti-AV or seeking to slow AV deployment,” but rather that hybrid networks "get the technology to consumers sooner while giving policymakers a practical framework to manage the transition.”

Yeah. Right.

Waymo, trying to sound like the mature ex-partner, released a statement saying they still “believe in a vibrant and collaborative AV ecosystem.” They just want to collaborate... by notifying Uber they plan to enter these markets independently in January 2028. I totally wish my ex-wife all the very best, too, FWIW.

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