Welcome to The WC, a selection of five useful and interesting things plucked from CIO Wyatt Cavalier’s brain and dropped into your inbox every Weds.
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Wyatt
Table of Contents
Sweden’s nuclear option
Sweden’s data centers use so much electricity yearly that they’re considering building nuclear power plants to run them.
They use more than 3 TWh of electricity annually, which will double over the next few years.
Jon Karlung, CEO of Bahnhof, thinks a small modular city-based nuclear reactor could be just the thing, provided Stockholm residents don’t mind living next door to it.
The name Bahnhof may ring a bell — they’re the ones who built a data center in a former nuclear bunker and designed it to look like a Bond villain’s lair.
With typical Swedish understatement, Karlung says he “understand[s] the problems with putting a plant in the inner city,” but he thinks it possible in the next decade or so.
In addition to the bomb-proof bunkers, the juice would power up to 30k homes in Sweden’s capital. So that’s nice.
If the nuclear reactor melts down, at least the bunker should be ok.
Dig deeper into secure facilities:
- The World’s Most Secure Buildings: Bahnhof Data Center
- A guide to every Bond villain lair
- What are Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)?
The art of the grift
In 2008, Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley (son of former Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley) sold off the rights to 75 years’ worth of income from Chicago’s parking meters for $1.1 billion. The city was generating $36 million a year from them at the time, so not a terrible deal on the face of it.
But it turns out the new owners of the meters — the Kingdom of Abu Dhabi — are better at making money than the city of Chicago.
Overnight, parking rates quadrupled, chargeable hours expanded, free parking days were eliminated, and 15 years later, the $1.1 billion investment has already returned $1.6 billion. With 60 years to go.
The meters giveaway is Daley’s most well-known infrastructure sell-off, but there were others. The former mayor also sold toll rights to the Chicago Skyway and fee collections from the city’s parking garages.
Daley reveled in his ingenuity; “I’m the one who started talking about leasing public assets. No other city has done this in America.“
But others weren’t so sure. Pulitzer Prize winner George Will:
Unfortunately, Daley’s theory—that it can be better to get a sum X immediately, rather than getting over many years a sum Y that is substantially larger than X—assumes something that cannot be assumed. It assumes that governments will prudently husband sudden surges of revenue from the lease or sale of assets.
What happened to that $1.1 billion? The city frittered it away within three years.
To put a bow on it, Daley started working for the law firm that negotiated all the above deals weeks after leaving his post as mayor.
If you’re a city mayor who wants to sell off access to your infrastructure at twenty cents on the dollar, please get in touch.
Dig deeper into America’s second city:
- Daley’s Art of The Lease
- Why Does Abu Dhabi Own All of Chicago’s Parking Meters?
- Three-Peat: Chicago Ranks No. 1 In Corruption, Report Finds
Father’s Day gifts to appreciate
American Father’s Day is coming up next weekend, and your dad is probably sick of neckties and socks. Here are some better ideas.
The original bar from the TV show Cheers is up for auction at Heritage, and while the current bid is already past $250k, I think it’s a bargain at twice the price.
Does your dad love 80s TV but doesn’t have room for an entire bar in his man cave? The directional signpost from M*A*S*H will tuck away nicely in the corner.
Is Pops a fan of Country and/or Western music? Did he smoke a LOT of weed when he was younger?
Get him a Willie Nelson autographed acoustic guitar authenticated by Beckett.
Finally, every self-respecting American father can quote at least one line from Rocky IV — the one where Rocky singlehandedly ends the Cold War.
Pick up this photo autographed by both Stallone and Lundgren for cheap!
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.
Is Global Airlines a real thing?
Stefan tipped me off to this head-scratcher.
There’s a travel guy named James Asquith who has the Guinness record for being the youngest male to visit every country in the world (congrats James!).
He’s sort of a travel influencer, I guess, with around 7k Twitter followers, and it seems he’s had some success with a scammy-looking home exchange app called Holiday Swap.
Now he says he’s starting a luxury airline.
🌎✈️ Genuinely amazed by the literal thousands of messages, emails and press about our first a380 at @globalairlines – see you all in the sky! #globalairlines #airline #aviation pic.twitter.com/lvguoDu6wr
— James Asquith (@james_asquith) May 31, 2023
And he’s announced a significant investment round — $15m cash and a further $60m commitment in the future.
But there are a few red flags for me:
- He’s not said who the investors are, which is a bit unusual.
- The Global Airlines site contains photos he’s nicked from other sites. And the ones that aren’t stolen are stock photos.
- Every review for his Holiday Swap app, which hasn’t been updated for seven months, is either “It’s a scam!” or “It’s the best!”. The first category, I believe; the second category smells fishy.
How in the world has he raised $15m off a scammy app and an idea about a four-plane airline fleet?
Anyway, I’m not saying it’s a scam, but I’ll watch the Netflix special if it is.
Time to nerd out
Let’s close with possibly the best way of the year to lose an afternoon in a super nerdy way.
Some genius took every historical event off Wikipedia from the big bang to 2015 and plotted it beautifully onto a site (desktop only).
Check this out. You won’t regret it.
That’s all for this week; I hope you enjoyed it.
Cheers,
Wyatt
Disclosures
- This issue was sponsored by the delightful newsletters and child protection company you read about above.
