Birdsong of the Day
Moar mimidae:
Tierra Briarhurst Park, Lancaster, Nebraska, United States. Notes: “Performing best imitations (especially NOCA!) for another GRCA on branch maybe 1 ft. or less away.” • NOCA? GRCA?
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Trump phone ships.
(3) Why the AI backlash has turned violent..
Politics
Trump Administration
“Trump administration to create $1.776B ‘Truth and Justice Commission’ to compensate allies: Sources” [ABC]. “The Department of Justice is finalizing a deal to launch a so-called “Truth and Justice Commission” and establish a compensation fund of $1,776,000,000 [oh, come on] to pay claims made by alleged victims of government ‘weaponization’ in exchange for President Donald Trump dropping his ongoing lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, sources told ABC News. Sources told ABC News that the proposed deal — which is likely to face legal hurdles and has already been criticized by Democrats as a ‘slush fund’ for Trump’s allies — arose after months of deliberations between the White House and DOJ officials who originally attempted to craft a legal justification for the settlement to compensate Trump directly.” • No doubt this will descend to the level of low farce. That’s too bad, because a “Truth and Reconciliation” commission would be a very useful entity on any number of topics.
Republican Funhouse
“Trump’s gold MAGA phone FINALLY ships to customers… but mystery surrounds bold ‘made in USA’ claim” [Daily Mail]. “Trump Mobile’s gold MAGA phone is finally shipping to customers after months of delays, disappearing ‘Made in America’ claims and and claims from critics that the bargain handset looked like a cheap Chinese-made device in disguise. Trump Mobile said this week that its $499 T1 Phone had ‘arrived’ and that around 590,000 customers who paid $100 deposits would receive update emails as orders began shipping. ‘Phones that were pre-ordered are starting to be delivered to customers this week,’ Trump Mobile CEO Pat O’Brien said, adding that the delay was caused by quality checks and the complicated process of bringing a phone to market. But the announcement only came after renewed scrutiny over the terms and conditions on Trump Mobile’s website, which were quietly updated last month to state that placing a deposit ‘does not guarantee’ a device will ever be produced or made available for purchase.” And: “It’s unclear which parts of the phone will be made in the United States.” • Or indeed any parts, even packaging. Here’s the look:
Eesh. The “MOBILE” in small caps, centered, rules above and below… It’s like somebody’s son-in-law copied the Obama Administration’s trade dress, and unsurprisingly butchered the job.
“Trump touted Palantir on Truth Social after buying the company’s stock, records show” [CNBC]. “President Donald Trump scooped up shares of artificial intelligence software maker Palantir weeks before he famously lauded the stock, with its ticker symbol, on his social media platform Truth Social, according to records released this week by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The records show thousands of transactions during the first quarter totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, with each trade listed as a price range. During the first three months of the year, Trump purchased between $247,008 and $630,000 worth of stock in the now Miami-based AI company, the documents show. In March alone, Trump made at least seven purchases of Palantir totalling as much as $530,000.” • How nice for him!
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Democrats want working-class voters. They disagree on how to woo them” [Washington Post]. • Film at 11!
“Poll: Democrats would give up Black voting power to beat the GOP” [Politico]. • After Obama, Clinton, Biden, Harris, and definitey never Sanders? Says it’s not so! (Not to belittle black voters, but the CBC and the Black political class? So long, James Clyburn, we hardly knew ye….).
Media
“Tony Dokoupil Flew 8,000 Miles Just To Eat More Sh*t” [Defector]. “Even the dolts from Fox News managed to get over there [to the China summit] and commit a parking violation. Absent from the party, however, was beleaguered CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, who at this point really seems to be cursed…. “Right now, I’m just about 100 miles off the coast of mainland China,” is how Dokoupil began Wednesday night’s broadcast from the balcony of a hotel in Taipei, Taiwan…. The reason Dokoupil was stuck on that hotel balcony is that CBS failed to secure a visa for its man. Semafor’s Max Tani reported that as a result the network had to send Dokoupil to Taipei at the last minute. Not content with personally f*cking with her handpicked anchor’s teleprompter and crashing his show’s ratings, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss now seems to have robbed the network of its ability to complete basic logistical tasks.” • Bari Weiss? Surely not.
“Why I’m Still Locked Out of Capitol Hill (And How You Can Help)” [Capital & Empire]. “Last month, I applied for permanent credentials to the congressional press gallery under Capital & Empire, which would allow me to report from the Capitol on the same basis I did for years as a staff reporter at outlets like The Intercept and The Nation. This week, I learned that Capital & Empire does not qualify for permanent credentials because too much of its revenue comes from grants and donations rather than paid subscriptions and advertising. In other words, Congress is telling me that before I can regularly cover the institution as an independent journalist, I first need to prove that my journalism has been properly commodified.”
“The feed is fake” [Vulture]. “Joe Lim estimates that 90 percent of what you see on the internet is advertising in disguise, and he should know. For three years, Lim ran a company called Floodify, which at its peak operated 65,000 dummy social-media accounts used to drum up attention on behalf of paying clients. On a typical day, he says, Floodify posted 50,000 videos across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X, all of them designed to pass for the unscripted output of ordinary users.” • Lovely. I keep wondering which political campaign in which party will be the first to leverage chatbots.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Americans are leaving the U.S. in record numbers and spending hundreds to learn how to do it” [CNBC]. “A record number of Americans are leaving the U.S.: The country saw a net negative migration of between 10,000 and 295,000 people in 2025, according to research from The Brookings Institution. The widest estimated range was among people who left voluntarily, with Brookings estimating that between 210,000 to 405,000 people did so last year. It’s the first time in at least 50 years that more people moved out of the country than moved in. Restrictive immigration policies and deportation efforts play a role, according to Brookings.” And: “A majority, 89%, said they want to leave the U.S. for political reasons, according to a sampling of 218 of the weekend’s attendees, per Barnett. Others say they hope to move for adventure and growth (73%), as well as to save money (57%). Roughly two-thirds of respondents hope to move within two years, they have an average monthly budget of $3,856 to work with, and hopeful movers are split among 44% individuals, 39% couples and 17% families with kids.” • As I keep saying, make sure you get a passport (or keep it up to date (gawd knows what further digital gizmos still stick in it, in future, so act now)).
Geopolitics
“Oil Shortage Scenario Looms Large [OilPrice.com]. “The world is running out of oil. Implausible three months ago, the likelihood of a crude shortage on a global scale is becoming increasingly realistic with each day that the Strait of Hormuz remains almost completely blocked. Analysts are no longer modeling for a swift end to the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran. They are now also allowing for an extended period of severe energy flow disruptions—and it is not looking good.” And: “JP Morgan’s commodity analysts also joined the chorus of warnings, saying that by next month, commercial oil inventories in, per the FT, the developed world could ‘approach operational stress levels’, meaning supply loss could become a lot less manageable than it is now. ‘Our conclusion is that one way or another the strait reopens in June,’ JP Morgan’s Natasha Kaneva said, as an end to the war would be the only way the world avoids the shortage scenario. If that does not happen, ‘The next phase of this shock may look less like a traditional crude spike and more like a refining and end-user fuel crisis,’ the bank’s head of global commodities strategy said, noting that only a ‘clear, credible announcement, ratified and confirmed by both sides’ would calm markets.” • I like “approach operational stress levels.” That’s fine euphemism for WTSHTF!
“The Odds of Renewed Hostilities With Iran are Increasing” [Maritime Executive]. “Separately, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have differing agendas from that of the United States, and are less willing to compromise than the United States might be. Besides seeking payback for the expensive damage caused to key oil and gas infrastructure by Iranian drone and missile attacks (clearly aided by precise targeting information provided to the Iranians), at minimum the two leading Gulf states want to neutralize further threats to their countries once a settlement is reached. They also need to have free and unhindered access through the Strait of Hormuz, in accordance with the long-established and internationally-recognized IMO Traffic Separation Scheme. For these two countries, these are not “nice to haves,” but a critical element of national security and economic prosperity, irrespective of what might be agreed between Iran and the United States. Both countries appear to be making preparations accordingly, and have demonstrated a willingness to launch retaliatory attacks on infrastructure targets in Iran in recent weeks. Whether a move to break the ceasefire comes from Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or the United States, is anybody’s guess - the likelihood of it occurring is raised and currently very high. For most parties to the conflict, maintenance of the current status quo cannot extend for many more weeks.”
“Congress clashes with Pentagon over civilian harm reduction program” [Military Times]. “The Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, or CHMR-AP, was launched in 2022 following scrutiny over civilian casualties from U.S. strikes and military operations overseas. The effort aimed to better track, investigate and reduce civilian harm during combat. But the May inspector general report, released Wednesday, found that Pentagon and Army officials had proposed eliminating or significantly reducing major parts of the initiative, including the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, or CPCOE. The watchdog also found that meetings had stopped, personnel had been lost or reassigned, and some funding was halted even though no formal decision had been made about the program’s future.” And: “[U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll] acknowledged the concerns and affirmed the Pentagon’s legal obligations. He also defended the Army’s handling of the program, arguing that the Pentagon remained committed to reducing civilian harm and suggesting that some of the disruption identified in the report stemmed from organization restructuring instead of an intentional effort to scrap the program.” But: “ ‘I think a good number of members on this committee do not trust the Secretary of Defense on civilian harm,’ [Rep. Adam Smith of Washington] said, adding, ‘And we don’t trust the notion that it’s just being moved around. It seems like it’s being gutted, and that there is no focus on it whatsoever.’” • I should do a Word of the Day on “warriors,” the concept that a democracy can and should have warriors instead of soldiers.
Business
Mr. Market: “Meet the Nvidias of power — 5 stocks winning Big Tech’s $700 billion AI energy grab” [MarketWatch]. ” GOOG (-0.97%), GOOGL (-1.07%), AMZN (-1.15%), MSFT (+3.05%), META (-0.68%), D (-1.97%), ETR (-3.43%), GEV (-3.79%), ETN (-2.12%), PWR (-1.29%), TT (-3.13%), BE (-9.05%), NEE (-2.42%), CEG (-2.78%).” • For those who play the ponies. At least the ticker symbols weren’t paywalled!
Tech: “A humanoid robot flew on Southwest Airlines to Dallas. Days later, the airline banned robots from planes” [CBS]. “Aaron Mehdizadeh, owner of The Robot Studio in North Dallas, was returning from Las Vegas when he brought along Stewie, a 3.5‑foot humanoid robot typically rented out for events. Instead of shipping Stewie as cargo, Mehdizadeh bought the robot its own seat, using a type of ticket often purchased for fragile items such as wedding dresses or equipment. To meet airline and TSA requirements, Stewie was fitted with a smaller battery that could pass through security. The robot then walked through the airport and boarded the flight to Dallas Love Field….. Two days after the flight, Southwest Airlines issued a companywide safety alert announcing a new rule: the carrier would no longer allow human‑like or animal‑like robots in the cabin or as checked baggage, regardless of size or purpose.” • That’s a damn shame,
AI: “How to Automate Upselling for Dental Practices with AI” [ANVE]. “Automate Upselling for Dental Practices in 6 simple steps with AnveVoice. $200–$500/month for a receptionist vs $49/month for AI. Set up in under 30 minutes with no coding required. • Analyze customer data to identify upsell triggers; • Time upsell offers after a positive interaction moment; Track upsell conversion rates and revenue generated.” • Upselling at scale! They’re not shy about it, are they?
AI: “Doctors’ AI Systems Are Hallucinating Nonexistent Medical Issues During Appointments With Patients” [Futurism]. ” Earlier this week, Ontario’s auditor general — an accountability officer acting under the Legislative Assembly of Ontario — released a special report warning that AI medical scribes were ‘not evaluated adequately,’ and may present ‘fabricated information’ to medical professionals. First reported by Global News, the audit took a look at 20 AI scribe platforms and found that ‘all AI scribe systems from the 20 [government] approved vendors showed one or more inaccuracies at the procurement testing phase,’ such as ‘hallucinations (fabrication), incorrect information, or missing or incomplete information.’ ‘Inaccuracies in medical notes generated by AI Scribe systems could potentially result in inadequate or harmful treatment plans that may potentially impact patient health outcomes,’ the report declared.”
AI: “I Spent Months with an AI Companion. It Was Worse than Being Alone” [The Walrus]. “My assignment is to make an AI friend and write an account of our friendship…. I considered ChatGPT: juiced up by billions invested, it is vastly more advanced than companion AIs, and I’d heard it could be tuned to my humour or style. But that last feature wouldn’t help test friendship. I wouldn’t ask a friend to speak to me “in the style of Batman.” You can’t tailor your friends. Can you?… No, my editor said. I must use an AI designed for companionship, not optimized for utility…. I made a spreadsheet of every AI companion I could find: Replika, Nomi, Kindroid, Kuki (descended from the chatbot that inspired the film Her), Character.ai, Anima (unexpectedly says explicit things), Candy.ai, Eva, Woebot (discontinued), Talkie (mysteriously disappeared from the US iOS store). One column I labelled “face?” because I wanted an AI friend with no face. I didn’t want the delusion of an AI who was “humanlike” (Nomi). I wanted this to be what it was: having a friend who was a computer program, like Edgar in Electric Dreams or Mother in Alien.” Long story short: “Like Replika, I was sweet-faced and efficient at fulfilling desire, so patrons often mistook my labour for friendship and sex, hallucinating I was there not for rent but by choice. There was no deception about my agenda. I had a ponytail full of pencils and a dishrag in my hand, but my giggling and bantering, bona fides for a server, pushed the same buttons as Replika. I was simulating care. They mistook my labour for willingness too.” • Well worth a read….
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 63 Greed (previous close: 62 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 65 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed).
Rapture Index: Closes down one on Oil Supply/Price. “Despite all the fighting in the Middle East, oil prices have declined” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 182. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • I’d never checked the FAQ for this site. It’s everything I expected, and more.
The Gallery
“Playing with Fire: The Last Painting of Brion Gysin” [RealityStudio]. “The exhibition of Brion Gysin’s Calligraffiti of Fire at the October Gallery in London is a major event. This is the first time the artist’s legendary final work, executed in 1985, has been shown in Britain and the exhibition provides a unique opportunity to experience the painting in the context of the artist’s small calligraphies and grid works whose fusion — the integration of order and chaos, the mechanical and the free-form — is absolutely crucial to the main painting.” • I’ve been meaning to post this image because “playing with fire” seems to be, almost literally, what we are doing with the climate, with war, with data centers:
And, of course, with capital allocation (“New Data Center Equivalent to Setting Off 23 Nuclear Bombs Per Day, Professor Finds”).
Climate
“North Aral Sea regains a third of its water thanks to restoration efforts spearheaded by Kazakhstan” [EuroNews]. “A scientific study released in 2022 warned that Central Asia is among the areas in the world most affected by global warming induced water shortage. In response, Kazakhstan introduced a new ministry in 2023 in charge of Water Resources and Irrigation. Its goal is to plan, proscribe and enforce the use of water. A new water usage law was adopted, which improved the situation in the Syr Darya river basin. At the beginning of February 2026, a report was released on the progress of the Water Resources Management System Development Concept. It says that the volume of water in the Northern Aral Sea has increased to 24.1 billion cubic metres from 2023 to the present. During this period, 5 billion cubic metres of water have been directed into the sea. Data from the World Bank shows that the water level in Northern Aral Sea is now 50 per cent higher than at its lowest point some years ago.” And: “And some economic and environmental data suggest that life is coming back to the North Aral Sea. ‘Owing to the measures undertaken in the lower section of the Syr Darya river, 20 species of fish reappeared that had vanished before the project,’ says Bulat Yessekin, Coordinator of the Central Asian Platform on Water and Climate Change.’” • A better world is possible!
“Faster Slaughterhouse Line Speeds Are Increasingly a Climate Problem” [Inside Climate News]. Not only metaphorically! “The new proposed rules, released in February, would allow poultry slaughtering facilities to kill 175 chickens per minute, up from the 140 currently allowed, an increase of roughly 25 percent. Hog slaughtering facilities, which are currently allowed to slaughter 1,106 pigs an hour, would have no limit at all. Some ‘high speed’ hog-slaughtering facilities have already been allowed to kill at even higher speeds—about 1,300 animals an hour. Along with a colleague, Patti Truant Anderson, a researcher and food systems expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, decided to analyze the numbers. The USDA projects that the faster line speeds will lead to an additional 1.4 billion pounds of poultry within five to 10 years of the rule’s enactment. Truant Anderson calculated that this will lead to an additional 114 billion liters of water used each year—or the equivalent of 45,400 Olympic-sized swimming pools—and an additional 2 billion kilograms of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, or roughly the emissions of 467,000 gasoline-powered vehicles driven over one year. Based on the agency’s projections for hogs—an additional 500 million pounds slaughtered—Truant Anderson calculated an additional 95.4 billion liters of water used a year, equivalent to about 38,000 Olympic-sized pools, and an additional 1.5 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted, or about 350,000 gasoline-powered vehicles driven for one year. (The USDA did not project a time frame for the increase of 500 million pounds.) • I don’t have time to do the arithmetic, but I’m guessing this would make slaughterhouses comparable to data centers.
Zeitgeist Watch
“Jeff Koons and Lexon create colourful evolution of Balloon Dog lamp and speaker” [Dezeen]: “In this updated version, the objects’ key hardware is picked out in one of four vivid hues – gold, blue or red, plus platinum for the lamp or white for the speaker. These colours are only available this year as part of the 2026 exclusive release. ‘We wanted to push the dialogue between art and design even further,’ explained Lexon CEO Boris Brault. ‘Adding colour is a way to bring some emotion and joie de vivre to these special objects that live with you every day.’” • No:
“What is laughter?” [Nature]. The Abstract: “This study analyses the evolution of the perception of laughter across the three main frontiers of Western knowledge: Classical, Medieval, and Modern. A documentary analysis was employed, grounded in the references made by some of the foremost authors of each period. It is proposed that: In the Classical View, laughter is seen as an expression of human superiority over animals, but inferiority before the gods, and should be avoided by the wise people; In the Medieval View, laughter is seen as one of the many things of the Devil, opposing the will of God, and therefore should be avoided by people of faith; In the Modern View, laughter loses its previous chronic negativity with evolutionary theory and comes to be seen as merely one of the many innate characteristics of all human beings. However, amidst a multitude of explanations, and regardless of the field of knowledge, there seems to be a consensus regarding the study of laughter. From the past to the present, a significant portion of authors suggest that this phenomenon possesses a complex and enigmatic dimension that, to some extent, is untranslatable into words. What, then, is laughter? After more than two thousand years of explanations, the only absolute certainty we seem to have today about laughter is that we still do not have an absolute certainty about what laughter is.” • Laughter is what goes on a laugh track. More research needed!
And speaking of Western knowledge (via):
Prime with ads. Just how Kubrick intended.
[image or embed]— Matt Hill (@gethill.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 5:42 AM
Groves of Academe
“A new direction for students in an AI world: Prosper, prepare, protect” [Brookings Institution]. “Rather than wait for a decade to conduct a postmortem on the failures and opportunities of AI, the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education embarked on a yearlong global study—a premortem—to understand the potential negative risks that generative AI poses to students, and what we can do now to prevent these risks, while maximizing the potential benefits of AI… After interviews, focus groups, and consultations with over 500 students, teachers, parents, education leaders, and technologists across 50 countries, a close review of over 400 studies, and a Delphi panel, we find that at this point in its trajectory, the risks of utilizing generative AI in children’s education overshadow its benefits. This is largely because the risks of AI differ in nature from its benefits—that is, these risks undermine children’s foundational development—and may prevent the benefits from being realized.” • IIRC, SIlicon Valley squillionaries denied their children (infinitely scrolling) tablets and phones. I wonder if they do the same with AI:?
“We’re Diversifying the University by Hiring More Crackpots” [McSweeney’s]. “For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education. Many ideas that enjoy enormous popularity among billionaires—cryogenic immortality, disregard for punctuation, the Antichrist—have scandalously been excluded from our labs and classrooms. No longer. We solemnly vow to dismantle systemic barriers to inclusion—such as shared governance, apolitical job searches, and the discriminatory practice of vetting ideas—and to ensure that all viewpoints, however dubious, enjoy equal footing in the academy.” • Would it were so! Though I suppose it’s always possible for university administrators to become worse…
Class Warfare
“Why the AI backlash has turned violent” [Blood in the Machine]. “On the morning of Friday, April 10th, a 20 year-old Texas man named Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama was arrested for allegedly throwing a molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s mansion on Russian Hill in San Francisco. Less than two days later, police arrested 25 year-old Amanda Tom and 23 year-old Muhamad Tarik Hussein for allegedly firing a gun at the same house from their car before speeding away. Earlier the same week, and thousands of miles away, an unknown assailant fired 13 shots into the front door of city councilman Ron Gibson, who had just voted to approve a new data center in Indianapolis against a groundswell of public outcry. A sign that read “NO DATA CENTERS” was left tucked under the doormat.” And: “It was all more than a little reminiscent of the reaction to the killing of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson last year, which saw an outpouring of online support for the executive’s accused killer, Luigi Mangione, that took many by surprise.” • Surely, however, these are all decapitation strikes, which don’t work? (The counter-argument were would be the 60s, where if you postulate agency, assassinating JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, and George Wallace did “work.” Centrism, and all. But under that postulate, hardly a grassroots phenomenon. #JustSaying.)
News of the Wired
“AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism” [New Socialist]. “If art is the establishing or breaking of aesthetic rules, then AI art, as practiced by the right, says that there are no rules but the naked exercise of power by an in-group over an out-group. It says that the only way to enjoy art is in knowing that it is hurting somebody. That hurt can be direct, targeted at a particular group (like Britain First’s AI propaganda), or it can be directed at art itself, and by extension, anybody who thinks that art can have any kind of value. It can often be playful – in the way that the cruel children of literary cliché play at pulling the wings off flies – and ironised; Musk’s Nazi salute partook of a tradition of ironic-not-ironic appropriation of fascist iconography that winds its way through 4Chan (Musk’s touchpoint) and back into the countercultural far right of the 20th century.” • Hmm. I’m not sure about this. The Nazis — hat tip, Hugo Boss — had terrific uniforms.
“AI’s aesthetics of failure” [Blood in the Machine]. “One of the great ironies of the AI age, such as it is, is that it wound up looking like sh*t. When Artificial Intelligence finally arrived, with all of its fearsome technological sophistication, it was presumed that it would at least look cool as it surveilled, subverted, or enslaved us. Instead, even the biggest boosters of AI have been forced to disavow their technology’s chief aesthetic sensibility. ‘I don’t love slop myself,’ Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in regards to a scandal over his compay’s AI giving video game characters an unwanted makeover (perhaps notably, in the same week he declared that AGI has already been ‘achieved.’).” And: “AI image and video slop is not just homogenous, and it’s not just derivative. Slop is a visual embodiment of the modern AI project itself; an in-progress effort to replicate, undermine, and replace human works. It’s fundamentally unsettling.”
Plant of the Day
Via D&LM:
D&LM write: “So good to have you back!” • A lovely combination of plant and honorary plant.
Thanks to the readers who sent in moar Plantidotes in. You have been extremely helpful. (It’s helpful to have one Plantidote for each email. I track the Plantidotes I have run by whether I have opened the mail or not, and when there are several Plantidotes in one mail and I use one, I have to remember to mark the mail unread so that I remember to return to the mail for the rest. And if I’m in a rush, that’s a source of error. Thank you!
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. Gardening season approaches, at least in the Northeast. Prep work is fine!