Today's Water Cooler 2026-05-27

Patient readers, this Water Cooler, too, will be a bit shorter than usual. Pulling on and then pulling off my yellow waders is exhausting! —lambert

Birdsong of the Day

Moar mimidae:

First Encounter Beach, Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States. Nice and long!

In Case You Might Miss…

(1)“US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows”

(2) “CSG: Why the Largest Military IPO in European History Is Combusting”

(3) “Frustrated franchisee sues Pizza Hut over crappy kitchen AI”

(4) “Architecture Billings ‘Retreat’ in April”

Politics

Trump Administration

“CMS seeks 1,200 new hires as agency ramps up AI-driven fraud prevention” [Federal News Network]. • The “waste, fraud, and abuse” shibboleth (and tricolon) was fake under DOGE, and it will turn out to be fake this time. Of course they’ll find something, human nature being what it is, but it won’t be significant. When that happens, the system will be turned to other purposes, like outright denial of care. (After proposing a Constitutional Amendment to preserve cash as legal tender, the goddamned Democrats might propose a regulation that AI should never be used to deny a government benefit.)

“GSA accuses Congress of hijacking its building repair fund” [Facilities Dive]. “Since 2011, Congress has been pulling money from a building fund managed by the federal government’s real estate arm, the General Services Administration, and using it to cover other parts of the federal government, the GSA’s administrator, Edward Forst, testified May 13. Now nearly half of the agency’s 1,600 properties are in fair or poor condition, he said…. Among other things, more than 1,300 buildings in the agency’s portfolio need new elevators, HVAC systems, fire suppression updates and electrical repairs, he said.” And: “Congress requires the agency to get congressional approval any time it needs to spend more than $3.96 million on a project, and approval typically takes more than a year. “No private sector real estate portfolio manager could operate successfully or would under these limitations,” said Forst, who previously held positions at Cushman & Wakefield, Bankers Trust and Goldman Sachs.” • Even the Goldman Sachs dude sees this is nuts (although he was probably given that position to sell the buildings off, per the neoliberal playbook).

Our Famously Free Press

“A major newspaper chain is pivoting to AI-created articles. How this small newspaper’s staff is fighting back” [Straight Arrow News]. “The union effort in State College is just one of the ways employees of newspaper publisher McClatchy Media have resisted a new effort that places human reporters’ bylines on articles written by artificial intelligence.” • Exactly what Microsoft did with Copilot.

Republican Funhouse

“Trump’s ‘Golden’ Phone Hit With Savage Reviews” [The Daily Beast]. “Not only is the screen smaller than expected, but the phone is also not made in America as promised, Patrick Holland, the managing editor of tech site CNET, told CNN. Rather, Holland added, the packaging says the phone is “designed with American values in mind.’” For example: “The CNET unboxing video also reveals that the American flag etched into the phone has 11 stripes, instead of 13.” • So did AI do the flag?

Democrats en Déshabillé

“Democrats Release 2024 Election Autopsy” [The Onion]. A survey. Answers: “Hopefully we can get an autopsy to figure out what went wrong with the autopsy.” And: “Why dwell on the past when there are future elections to lose?”

“Iowa Democrats Threaten to Go Rogue in 2028” [NOTUS]. “Fueled by a slate of competitive statewide and congressional races, Iowa Democrats desperately want back in to the early presidential primary window, after they were axed ahead of the 2024 election. If they don’t get it, some Iowans are threatening to go rogue. State Rep. Josh Turek, who is running in the Senate primary, told NOTUS the party should run an unsanctioned caucus if the DNC doesn’t bring them back, because ‘it’s in our constitution.’ State Sen. Zach Wahls, another Senate primary candidate, said Iowa should, ‘at the very least,’ be in the early window. And Iowa House Democratic Leader Brian Meyer said he ‘triple dog dares’ the DNC to not seat their delegates, should they ignore the party’s rules and bring back the caucuses.” • Lol. I remember Iowa 2020 very well, when the Iowa Democrat app mysteriously screwed and delayed the count, enabling Mayo Pete to declare victory before an official count was released, nearly nobbling Sanders. And what did the Iowa Democrats get for their treachery? They got their first-in-the-nation caucus taken away. Nobody likes a traitor, after all.

“The DCCC’s unusual new target: Democratic candidates” [Axios]. “The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is employing an unusual tactic to blunt what it says is Republican meddling in its primaries: t has teamed up with the candidates it sees as the “strongest” in key battleground districts, launching joint ad buys to squeeze out its Democratic primary opponents.” • What’s unusual about this?

Realignment and Legitimacy

These Trump administration directives have commandeered the domestic surveillance apparatus to surveil and criminalize speech and assembly that challenges the ideology of the White House

“US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows” [Wired]. “In the wake of attacks on CEOs, a nationwide protest movement targeting data centers, and increasing concerns about AI job replacement, federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are circulating reports with a new domestic target in mind: anti-technology extremists. More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers obtained by WIRED show a national shift taking place to surveil this new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat. This new effort follows President Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7, which instructs the Department of Justice to target anyone holding ‘anti-American,’ ‘anti-Christian,” and ‘anti-capitalism’ beliefs. Earlier this month, Trump’s counterterrorism czar, Sebastian Gorka, released a public counterterrorism strategy claiming that left-wing extremists are one of the three top counterterrorism priorities facing the United States. Taken together, these Trump administration directives have commandeered the domestic surveillance apparatus to surveil and criminalize speech and assembly that challenges the ideology of the White House. A new focus on anti-technology extremism adds an unreported category to already public designations under a presidency that has heavily invested political and material capital in AI and data center proliferation.” • NIce little self-licking ice cream cone for Palantir, eh? [whistles] 🎶 “We’re bringing the war back home” 🎶

Geopolitics

“The Iran War Has Remade the Gulf” [Foreign Policy]. The deck: “The region knows that Iran won the war—and is hedging its bets as a result.” • From the Quincy Institute, but surprising to see any article at FP take this line.

“The terrifying truth about Britain’s reliance on China - and how it is silently harvesting YOUR data - that means we are sleepwalking into a 21st century catastrophe” [Daily Mail]. “Britain’s armed forces are using Chinese-made 3D printers to manufacture critical weaponry, including drones. In fact, as I can reveal today, the problem goes far beyond small-scale armaments. The truth is that Britain’s reliance on China is so dangerously far-reaching that the only way we can rearm – in the unlikely event that this Labour Government ever comes up with the budget for us to do so – is if Beijing lets us.” • Is that why Britain has so much trouble with its aircraft carriers? They were 3D printed?

“CSG: Why the Largest Military IPO in European History Is Combusting” [Hunterbrook]. “In the largest European military IPO in history, Czechoslovak Group (CSG.AS) pitched investors a chance to buy the next Rheinmetall, riding the continent’s recent rearmament boom. Hunterbrook Media’s investigation — drawing from statutory filings, subsidiary accounts, satellite imagery, and a range of other sources — suggests investors bought something very different: an arms-dealer marking up old ammunition, with a critical subsidiary under NATO suspension, production numbers that don’t add up, and a major minority owner with ‘extraordinary rights’ holding a sword of Damocles over the company’s balance sheet.” • Huh. I thought it was only the Ukrainians who did such things. Hunterbrook is short CSG.

“New Documents Blow Up the Miami Myth About Cuba’s ‘Murder in the Skies’ ” [21st Century Wire]. “On May 20, 2026, the Justice Department unsealed murder-related charges against 95-year-old former Cuban president Raúl Castro and five other Cuban officials over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, then chose to announce them at Miami’s Freedom Tower, before a room of hardline exile activists who greeted the case as political vindication rather than legal procedure.” And: “One day earlier, the National Security Archive, the independent research center at George Washington University that uses declassification and Freedom of Information requests to reconstruct buried state history, published a new batch of FAA records on the shootdown and its lead-up, explicitly noting that the release came on the eve of the indictment. Those records do not read like a simple murder file. They show U.S. officials warning, long before the MiGs took off, that Brothers to the Rescue’s flights had turned into ‘taunting’ incursions and that Cuba might eventually shoot one of the planes down.” • Gusanos, gotta love ‘em. I pray for the day when they get their casinos and sugarcane mills back.

“New Report: Time Is Now to Start Work on Guardians in Space to Counter China” [AIr and Space Forces]. • The word “guardians” gives me the creeps, just as “Homeland” did, with the admixture of tween boy science fiction fantasies.

Business Sentiment

“Architecture Billings ‘Retreat’ in April” [Calculated Risk]. “This index is a leading indicator primarily for new Commercial Real Estate (CRE) investment including multi-family residential…. This index typically leads CRE investment by 9 to 12 months, so this index suggests a slowdown in CRE investment throughout 2026.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 61 Greed (previous close: 60 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 60 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). • Tiny upticks continue….

Business: AI

“Frustrated franchisee sues Pizza Hut over crappy kitchen AI” [The Register]. “The back-of-house AI system that Pizza Hut has mandated its restaurants to adopt has been so poorly received by some franchisees, that one is suing the company for $100 million in losses tied to the technology…Chaac Pizza Northeast, a franchisee with around 111 Pizza Hut locations in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania, filed a complaint [PDF] in the Business Court of Texas earlier this month accusing the Hut of breaching its franchise agreement by mandating Chaac adopt restaurant management AI from Dragontail, a provider of AI-powered food delivery software.” And: “It’s not difficult to find examples online of Pizza Hut employees complaining about Dragontail. Multiple Reddit threads from inside the 2020-2024 implementation period contain examples of employees describing dissatisfaction with the software. Several commenters note, as Chaac did in its lawsuit, that Dragontail took control out of the hands of its kitchens and put it in the hands of AI. ‘Dragontail’s integration with kitchen workflow and aggregator dispatch predictably stripped Chaac’s managers of operational control, introduced delays, and invited stacking and other algorithmic behaviors that slowed production and delivery,’ the lawsuit argues.”• Maybe Dragontail can go on to fix MacDonald’s milkshake dispensers!

“The AI School Bus Camera Company Blanketing America in Tickets” [Type]. “Artificial-intelligence-powered cameras attached to these buses record vehicles that fail to halt—vehicles, in other words, that violate the state law requiring all lanes of traffic to halt for a stopped school bus with its stop arm extended. The footage is sent to local police for review. If they decide the law was broken, the driver receives a $250 ticket in the mail. …. The county views this as a win-win: Bad drivers get dinged, and the government gets paid. That is how BusPatrol LLC, the company that operates the cameras on Montgomery County’s school buses, presents itself to local officials around the country. In exchange for a portion of citation revenue, it plugs in the cameras, records the violations, bundles up the evidence and mails tickets after police review. BusPatrol started operating in Montgomery County in 2017. At the time, local police assured residents that violations would subside as drivers learned their lesson.” But: “In Montgomery County, after more than 375,000 tickets and $92 million in issued fines, there’s been little reduction in violations and no evidence of a decline in collisions near stopped school buses, according to county records and Bloomberg Businessweek’s review of local news reports and stop-arm camera footage. The county has done little to change the infrastructure at its most ticketed stops; it’s repeatedly said there are no safety concerns at most of these locations. Because of the financial structure of the program, the county transferred millions to its stop-arm technology providers for the first three years and kept no revenue itself, while also spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to review the AI’s work. Meanwhile, there’s evidence the program is heavily burdening residents who either can’t or don’t pay the fines.” • Lol. Sounds like Rahm Emmanuel’s parking meter deal, except Chicago has deeper pockets than Montgomery County.

The 420

“Navy veteran present for Trump’s executive order advocates for psychedelics to treat PTSD” [12News]. “[Matthew ‘Whiz’ Buckley is] an advocate for ibogaine, a psychedelic drug used to help treat PTSD and other mental illnesses, along with addiction. He was present last month at the White House when president Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for additional research into therapy-designated psychedelics and their potential fast-track for FDA approval. While acknowledging that the powerful ibogaine is not for everyone, Buckley has become a strong proponent of the drug because of the peace it has brought him in the wake of family deaths and devastating tragedies he has witnessed in the air.” • Dateline, Wichita. What’s the matter with Kansas? Nothing a little Ibogaine won’t cure.

Class Warfare

“Amid heavy AI use, workers say their skills are atrophying” [HR Dive]. “Overdependence on AI has caused problems at work, with 39% of all workers and 46% of Generation Z saying their reliance on AI has weakened their skill sets and made them less intelligent. However, 60% of employees said they felt pressured to use AI to increase productivity.” And: “83% people surveyed said they were concerned that they might be held responsible for an AI mistake, while 17% of all employees, and 30% of Gen Z workers, say they have blamed their own mistakes on AI. Workers aren’t imagining the problem, either. Just under half of employees (43%) said they’ve used content created by AI even when it was low quality, and 43% of IT leaders said their companies aren’t very adept at gauging the ROI of the AI tools they implement.” • Training needed, sayeth HR.

News of the Wired

I am not feeling wired totday

Plantidote of the Day

Via AM:

AM writes: “Sort of a road with moss and grass on it and dense shrubbery on both sides. No cars passed while I was walking on it - epitome of rural in Moyasta, Western County Clare Ireland. Beautiful and tranquil place.” Is that green!

Send your plantidotes as attachments to lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [AT] protonmail [DOT] com. And if you put “Plant” or “Plantidote” in the subject line, I’ll be less likely to lose it. Gardens are fine. Gardening season approaches, at least in the Northeast! Fungi are honorary plants.