People used to get excited about data centre construction, and communities used to compete for them, frequently with incentives. They represented job creation and an investment in the new economy. But things feel quite different today.

According to new research from Brookings, more than 100 local communities in the US have enacted moratoriums on data centres, and more than 300 state data centre bills were filed in the first six weeks of 2026 alone. Earlier this year, Sanders and AOC also introduced the AI Data Center Moratorium Act.

The reasons for this are clear. Brookings reports that the PJM grid region in the US (which serves about 65 million people) saw its power supply costs increase from about $2.2 billion to $14.7 billion in a single year, and data centres are thought to account for nearly two-thirds of the increase.

So, are the employment and economic gains worth it?

The new research from Brookings shows that not all data centres are created equal. Hyperscale data centres (like those built by Google and Amazon) can quickly become the largest taxpayers in a county. They also appear to create higher employment benefits compared to colocation facilities (where a landlord builds a data centre and then leases it out to remote tenants).

The largest employment effects were also seen when data centres cluster. This makes sense, and it's the foundation of cities. When people and uses cluster together, they produce larger ecosystem effects. Conversely, standalone facilities were found to result in modest gains. A data centre is not a labour-intensive operation in and of itself.

If you'd like to read the full Brookings brief, click here.

Photo by NASA

One Delisle is really starting to make a mark on the Toronto skyline. So on a semi-regular basis, people now send me photos of the building or mention me on the socials. I love when people do that. Here's a great photo from today from Dion on Twitter.

One of the comments that I used to get was, "Yeah, I don't know, Brandon, the floor plate is still looking pretty square." And I would respond with, "Be patient." For those of you who aren't familiar with the design, the entire tower gradually transforms from a square floor plate to a 16-sided circular floor plate.

Nobody makes this comment anymore.

I also really like Dion's photo because it shows the steel for the "crown" at the top of the building coming together. The height of the crown was something we fought for during rezoning. Studio Gang felt it was crucial for the proportions and slenderness ratio of the building. And we agreed.

I can tell you that it had us measuring the exact height of nearby church windows to see if this crown would shadow them at certain times of the day and year. I'm sure glad we did that.

Please keep the photos coming!

Cover photo by me

There is a school of thought that out-of-office messages are only for the unserious. If you're a top-performing executive, owner, or whatever, you need to be available and reachable at all times, and so an OOO message sends completely the wrong signal. It says that you're just not that committed to what you do. Yeah, I always use an OOO message when I'm away.

While I appreciate that school of thought and I know firsthand that when you have your own business you're on 24/7 (because of some unhealthy combination of drive and obsession), I also believe that the following two things are true.

One, we could all die tomorrow and it's important to take some time when you can. In fact, I'd say greater freedom is the objective. As Charlie Munger famously stated: "I did not intend to get rich. I wanted to get independent, I just overshot."

Two, as connected as we all are today, there's no way that when I'm crushing back bowls at high elevations I'm going to be able to respond as quickly as I do when I'm sitting at my desk for 15 hours a day. So I think it's important to let people know, "Hey, if I don't respond to you in 38 seconds, I have not died; you just need to wait a bit longer."

The signal is a recalibration of expectations, not of my level of commitment.

Cover photo by Luca Bravo