The News,
Decoded.

So now the U.S. government gets to decide who plays with OpenAI's latest toy. Just a week after the administration blessed Anthropic's Mythos 5 for over 100 institutions — a model it previously deemed too dangerous to share — they're back in the gatekeeper's chair. Apparently, consistency is a luxury, but arbitrary power over Silicon Valley is a necessity. One minute they're waving through powerful AI, the next they're vetting every company that wants a peek at the latest ChatGPT upgrade. Colour me shocked.

This 'major expansion of regulation' smells less like thoughtful governance and more like bureaucratic turf war dressed up as national security. The same administration that cried wolf about closed-source models is now deciding who among us is 'trusted' enough to access OpenAI's latest technology. Expect the criteria to be as opaque as a black box: maybe your company's past lobbying donations, maybe its CEO's Twitter history, maybe just a coin flip in a Pentagon basement. After all, we learned from prior coverage that the government's idea of 'trusted partners' is as predictable as a weather forecast from a chatbot.

And when the inevitable leak happens — because it will, because it always does — who'll get the blame? Not the government's vetting process, oh no. It'll be OpenAI's fault for not locking things down tighter, or the user's fault for not being sufficiently loyal. Meanwhile, the rest of us can watch from the sidelines as AI capability races ahead and the 'safety' narrative becomes a convenient cudgel for control. Pass the popcorn, and maybe don't apply for that vetting unless you've got a direct line to the White House.

Oh, marvellous — OpenAI has blessed us with GPT-5.6, a triumvirate of models named Sol, Terra, and Luna. Because nothing says 'cutting-edge AI' like naming your products after celestial bodies that we've already conquered. The company, in a move of breathtaking regulatory deference, has released these only as a 'limited preview' — which, of course, is exactly what they said about GPT-5.6 Sol when the government asked nicely last week. But this time it's different, you see? This time they've trained it to 'refuse prohibited cyber assistance.' Because that's clearly the safeguard that will stop a general intelligence from, say, helping a state actor build bioweapons.

The regulatory drama here is a farce on repeat. One minute the US government is lifting the block on Anthropic's Mythos 5 for 'over 100 institutions' — a model we were told was too dangerous to release just months ago as we noted. The next, they're cosying up to OpenAI with 'trusted partner' lists and cybersecurity reviews. The only consistent thing is the inconsistency: a revolving door of approval that has less to do with safety than with who's hosting the next White House AI summit.

And let's talk about 'limited preview.' It's the tech industry's favourite euphemism for 'we're still debugging in public.' The models — Sol, Terra, Luna — sound like a rejected boy band lineup, but they're the vanguard of a trillion-dollar industry that can't decide whether it's building a utopia or a surveillance state. OpenAI claims these models are 'trained to refuse' bad behaviour, but so was every model before it. The only thing this preview proves is that the AI safety debate has become a Kabuki theatre where everyone claps for the regulators, then grins and does exactly what they were going to do anyway.

Oh, how predictable. Just days after the US government patted itself on the back for releasing Anthropic's Mythos 5 to 'trusted partners,' it's now applying the same thoughtfulness to OpenAI. The Trump administration has requested that OpenAI restrict GPT-5.6 Sol to a 'small group of trusted partners' — which, in practice, means customers approved by the administration.

The prior arrangement we covered last week was already a masterclass in regulatory capture, but this elevates it to performance art. Who decides who's 'trusted'? The same people who'd rather control AI than understand it. And OpenAI, ever the eager collaborator, has complied — no doubt hoping that currying favour with the current administration pays off when the next election cycle rolls around.

So here we are: the shiniest new model, GPT-5.6 Sol, serving as a loyalty test. Want access? Keep your nose clean, donate to the right campaigns, and hope you're on the approved list. The future of AI has never been so innovatively, efficiently, and bureaucratically managed. Cheers to progress.

Oh, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and the U.S. government's mind is positively vast. After months of huffing and puffing, it finally released Anthropic's Mythos 5 to over 100 US institutions — a model previously deemed too risky for general release. Now, with a straight face, it has asked OpenAI to limit GPT-5.6 — comprising Sol, Terra, and Luna — to a 'small group of trusted partners.' Because nothing says coherent policy like blocking a model, then releasing it, then asking another company to keep its next-gen models under wraps. Cue OpenAI's compliant shrug.

The lineup itself — Sol, Terra, Luna — reads like a celestial theme park, which is appropriate, because we're all spinning in circles. OpenAI has dutifully complied, offering the obligatory 'restrictions shouldn't be the norm' hand-wringing, even as they enforce them. One imagines the lab's executives pursing their lips while signing the restriction order, muttering about the temporary nature of this inconvenience. Meanwhile, the government's ad-hoc approach continues: pick a model, any model, and decide its fate on a whim. The difference? Anthropic got the thumbs-up; OpenAI got a warning.

But cheer up: OpenAI says this isn't the new normal. Of course, that's precisely what one says when the new normal is already here. The real joke is that both sides agree: restrictions are bad, yet here we are, repeating the same pantomime with different actors. The government gets to play gatekeeper, OpenAI gets to claim reluctant compliance, and the rest of us get to wonder which model gets the next arbitrary thumbs-up or thumbs-down. At least the naming — Sol, Terra, Luna — offers a cosmic metaphor: we're orbiting the sun of hype, grounded by Terra's regulatory gravity, and dreaming of a Luna that might never arrive.

Oh, wonderful. After months of huffing and puffing about national security, the US government has decided that Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 is, in fact, safe enough for more than 100 American institutions. What a principled pivot. The same administration that clamped down on Anthropic models to win allies is now handing them out like party favours. Apparently the threat level dropped the moment China wasn't looking.

The block was lifted with a straight face, and over 100 lucky US institutions get to play with Mythos 5 — a model so powerful it was deemed too dangerous for export, but perfectly fine for domestic deployment. Because nothing says "responsible AI governance" like releasing a frontier model to more than 100 entities without any public safety evaluation. The de-escalation is described as "major," which in government-speak means "we realized the Export Control Act made us look silly."

Mythos 5 is reportedly powerful. No word on what happens when 100 institutions start running it, fine-tuning it, or accidentally connecting it to the internet. Probably fine. The Trump Administration and Anthropic have apparently made peace, which is great news for anyone who believes that corporate-government harmony precedes public safety. Cheers to progress — pour one out for the export control regulations that tried to protect us.

Oh, splendid. The United States, having apparently learned nothing from the decade-long Huawei fiasco, has decided that export controls on AI models are the ticket to winning allies. The government's latest stroke of genius — slapping restrictions on Anthropic's newest models — has the AI industry 'grappling with fallout,' according to Axios. Former Commerce Department staffer Emily Weinstein cannily called it 'another example of the Huawei strategy in the context of open-source AI models.' Sweet irony: you want allies to trust your AI ecosystem? First, lock them out of it.

Restrict access to cutting-edge models because China might steal them. But here's the rub: your allies need those models to compete with China. So you're effectively forcing them to either cozy up to Beijing or build their own — which, given the pace of open-source development, they might just do. And when they do, they'll remember who locked the door. The Huawei strategy worked so well that Huawei is now a 5G powerhouse despite — or because of — US bans. Brilliant. Now the US alliance pitch is 'strained,' as Axios reports. Straining ties with partners while China's AI progress gallops ahead. Because nothing says 'we're all in this together' like unilateral export controls that hurt your friends more than your rivals.

Congratulations, Washington: you've managed to make export controls the enemy of alliance-building. Again. Perhaps the next step is a white paper on how to lose friends and alienate people, titled 'Our AI, Not Yours.' The real question is whether allies will wait for US permission or simply turn to open-source models developed elsewhere — perhaps in China. That's the Huawei strategy in reverse: controlling access only accelerates defection. But go on, keep treating allies like untrusted customers. I'm sure they'll write thank-you notes from Beijing.

Ah, Colorado. The state that brought us the Rocky Mountains, craft breweries, and now — a masterclass in regulatory hand-waving. Last month, its overhaul of AI bias regulations replaced a 'broad duty to avoid algorithmic bias' with 'more modest disclosure requirements.' In other words, they swapped a firm 'don't be evil' for a gentle 'maybe tell us something, if you feel like it.' And topping it all off, the law is utterly unclear on whether trade secrets can limit even those disclosures. So any developer can simply declare their bias-detection process a proprietary secret and carry on as before. Brilliant.

You have to admire the elegance of it. Instead of forcing companies to actually audit their models for discrimination, Colorado has created the perfect loophole: just claim your algorithm's inner workings are trade secrets, and the public can go whistle. The law's architects probably thought they were striking a balance between innovation and accountability. But in practice, they've handed the AI industry a 'get out of jail free' card wrapped in intellectual property law. The only thing more predictable than this outcome is the industry's inevitable use of it.

This isn't just a Colorado problem. It's a preview of how every future AI regulation will be hollowed out by trade secret claims. The pattern is now set: pass a law that sounds tough, leave a giant loophole, and let the companies drive a truck through it. Colorado's AI bias law isn't a safeguard — it's a permission slip with a ribbon on it. Well done, everyone. Well done.

Oh, how comforting. Financial regulators, those bastions of technological foresight, have finally noticed that AI might be a bit of a cybersecurity problem — and their brilliant solution is to adopt more AI. FINMA president Marlene Amstad, speaking with all the gravity of someone who has just discovered fire is hot, told us that banks 'must move quickly to adopt new technology' to plug vulnerabilities. Because nothing says 'risk management' like handing the same tool that caused the problem to the people who didn't see it coming. FINMA even helped create a forum within IOSCO to promote AI adoption by watchdogs. Yes, a forum. Because what this crisis of algorithmic chaos really needs is more committees.

Let's be clear: the same technology that supercharges cyberattacks is now going to be used by regulators to counter those attacks. It's like fighting arson with matches. The article doesn't mention any specific AI tools or their efficacy, just the breathless urgency of 'must move quickly.' One imagines the regulator's new AI system will be trained on decades of regulatory filings, producing recommendations like 'send strongly worded letter' and 'establish working group.' Meanwhile, the actual hackers are deploying generative models to craft phishing emails that would fool your own mother.

And the punchline? This forum within IOSCO — the International Organization of Securities Commissions — is going to 'promote adoption of AI by watchdogs.' So we're creating a global network of regulators running AI on top of AI, a matryoshka doll of automated oversight. What could possibly go wrong? When the first AI regulator hallucinates a market crash and triggers a real one, at least we'll have a forum to discuss it. Cheerio.

Oh, marvellous. ControlAI—a nonprofit so noble it believes that explaining the risks of superintelligence to Congress will somehow prevent it—is now 'briefing U.S. lawmakers.' Because the same legislative body that couldn't tell you the difference between a transformer and a lightbulb is clearly the right audience for a chat about existential threats. They're also running similar campaigns in the U.K. and Canada, because nothing says 'global coordination' like three countries having three separate conversations.

One imagines the briefing: a polite PowerPoint, some carefully worded hypotheticals, and then a gentle fade into irrelevance as the lawmakers nod sagely and promptly forget everything. The gall of assuming that a few meetings will change a regulatory environment that's been a decade behind since day one is truly something. ControlAI might as well be reading bedtime stories to a sleeping bear—comforting for them, but the bear will still eat the world.

Still, credit where it's due: they've identified the correct problem—superintelligence—and the correct approach—talking to people. It's just that the people in question have the attention span of a goldfish and the regulatory appetite of a dieting elephant. Meanwhile, the labs keep scaling, the models keep leaping, and the briefings keep happening. Round and round we go. Cheers.

So South Korea's financial regulator—presumably not content with the country's existing track record of cheerful deregulation—has announced plans to ease 'network separation rules' for financial AI. Because nothing says prudent oversight like reducing the barriers between systems that handle people's life savings. To balance this daring loosening, they're simultaneously rolling out an AI risk management framework and a sandbox for AI agents. The cognitive gymnastics required to justify 'we'll let the AI mingle more freely, but also we'll put it in a box' would impress an Olympic judge.

The risk management framework is, no doubt, a magnificent document—a thick binder of 'shoulds' and 'mays' that will sit on desks while actual financial AI systems quietly optimise their own reward functions. And the sandbox? A beautiful concept: a controlled environment where AI agents can be tested before being deployed into the wild. It's like releasing a pack of wolves into a training enclosure and hoping they'll learn vegetarianism. Given the pace of AI development, by the time the sandbox rules are finalised, the agents in question will have already evolved to negotiate their own terms.

What's truly delightful is the timing. South Korea, a nation that prides itself on technological speed, is essentially admitting that its previous approach—which apparently involved no special AI rules—needs both loosening and tightening simultaneously. This isn't regulation; it's regulatory whiplash. The financial regulator's dual announcement reads like a committee that couldn't decide between 'let's encourage innovation' and 'let's not get blamed for a collapse,' so they did both. Expect headlines from banks celebrating the easing, followed by embarrassing incidents that prompt the real tightening later. All very predictable, all very human.

So the future of artificial intelligence — that vast, transformative, potentially civilisation-ending technology — is now in the capable hands of Ted Cruz. Yes, the same Ted Cruz whose previous foray into AI regulation was an 'unpopular moratorium' so broadly reviled it may as well have been a dare for labs to ignore it. Now he's planning to take on 'new AI regulation proposals' in the Commerce Committee, though his approach is, as the article delicately puts it, 'unclear.' Unclear like a fogbank at midnight. Unclear like his chances of becoming America's favourite uncle. The man who couldn't even stop a government shutdown (remember 2013?) is now supposed to craft rules for the most powerful technology since fire.

And what exactly is the Commerce Committee's track record on tech? Let's just say it's been less 'oversight' and more 'overseas trip to Google's campus for a photo op.' Now Cruz is supposed to wrangle the likes of OpenAI, Meta, and Google into a regulatory corral? The labs must be rubbing their hands with glee. A weak, confused, politically polarised approach to AI governance is exactly what they need to keep building without anyone serious looking over their shoulder. The 'future of AI' phrase in the title is doing a lot of heavy lifting — perhaps too heavy for the man who once tweeted a picture of himself in a bathrobe during a snowstorm.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world watches as the U.S. hands the pen on AI regulation to a senator whose last major legislative achievement was keeping National Pizza Month alive. The irony is so thick you could train a language model on it. But hey, maybe Cruz will surprise us all and craft something thoughtful, rigorous, and bipartisan. And maybe I'll wake up tomorrow with Elon Musk's hair. The bar is subterranean, and Cruz is currently holding a shovel.

So the grand plan was to crush a single state assemblyman to prove the AI lobby's electoral might. Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC with more cash than common sense, poured a fortune into defeating New York Assembly member Alex Bores, a Democrat who presumably had the temerity to question the industry's unregulated expansion. The result? Bores won, and the PAC has since gone radio silent — no statements, no concession, no appetite for any further races. It's the political equivalent of a startup burning through its Series A and then declaring it's 'pivoting to stealth mode.'

You have to admire the discipline, really. Most losing campaigns issue a gracious concession, a hint of defiance, even a vague threat to return. But Leading the Future has clammed up so thoroughly that it's almost as if they hope the entire affair will be forgotten if they just don't talk about it. The name itself — 'Leading the Future' — now reads as unintentionally ironic, given that the group's only known electoral foray went down in flames and left them unwilling to say a single word about it. One imagines their donors are thrilled: nothing says return on investment like your super PAC losing to a state assemblyman and then pretending it never happened.

For the rest of us, this silence is instructive. It reveals that even with virtually unlimited money, AI's political allies can still lose when they underestimate the voters' attachment to local representation. But don't mistake this for a permanent retreat. The AI industry has deep pockets and a long memory; they'll be back, perhaps with a more sophisticated strategy and an even bigger war chest. For now, they're licking their wounds and hoping no one asks about the millions they just torched. Enjoy the quiet, New York — it won't last.

Splendid. NHTSA has determined that the brake pedal—that last vestige of human control, that final mechanical 'no' button—is surplus to requirements in self-driving vehicles. Their June 25 proposal would scrap the requirement for a manual brake pedal, while keeping something called "stopping distance standards." Because of course, when an AI misidentifies a tumbleweed as a pedestrian, we can rest assured it will stop within the required distance. The same agency that took fifteen years to mandate rear-view cameras is now ready to trust your life to a neural network that hallucinates fire hydrants as stop signs.

The logic? Self-driving systems can "reliably" perform emergency stops without human intervention. Yes, because no autonomous vehicle has ever plowed into a stationary fire truck or confused a white semi-trailer with the open sky. NHTSA's analysis probably cited the same flawless simulation data that convinced Uber their self-driving fleet was ready for public roads. But fear not—the "stopping distance standard" remains, which is rather like ensuring a parachute is packed to regulation tightness while removing the ripcord. The rule applies only to vehicles with full self-driving capability, which is NHTSA's way of saying 'experiment on the rich people first.'

Underneath it all, this isn't about safety—it's about removing the last excuse for a human to intervene. No brake pedal means no one can override the AI when it decides an inflatable dinosaur is worth evasive action. Traditional cars keep their pedals, but for how long? The proposal is open for public comment, as if the collective indignation of a few thousand drivers will sway an agency that just declared manual control obsolete. Progress: when your car's emergency stop becomes a feature request to a software update.

Ah, California has decided that the best way to deal with AI-related job losses is to build a dashboard. A tracker. A monthly spreadsheet of despair, lovingly updated by the state. Governor Newsom's executive order has birthed an online tool that monitors unemployment claims by sector, so we can all watch the numbers tick up in real time. Because nothing says 'proactive policy' like turning structural economic collapse into a data visualization project.

One can almost hear the Silicon Valley executives nodding sagely: 'See? We're being transparent!' Meanwhile, the tracker is about as useful as a thermometer in a wildfire — it tells you how hot it is, but does bugger all to put out the flames. The sectors most likely to be disrupted — media, customer service, legal, even some coding jobs — will now have their decline officially logged. Hooray for metrics!

What comes next, one wonders? Perhaps a 'displaced worker counter' on the state website, complete with confetti animations when the millionth claim is filed. Or maybe an AI chatbot that gently explains your redundancy was 'inevitable market evolution.' California has taken the first step toward acknowledging the problem, which is to say, they've built a landing page. The actual response — retraining, universal basic income, robust social safety nets — remains a distant, unfunded ambition. But at least the spreadsheet will look nice.

Oh, what a delightful about-face. The Trump administration—so keen on deregulation that it appointed a crypto bro to oversee AI policy—has suddenly discovered the concept of 'security concerns' and decided that GPT-5.6 is a bit too spicy for public consumption. They've formally asked OpenAI to limit the next model to 'a small set of government-approved partners,' which is a euphemism for 'we don't trust the plebs with this one, chaps.'

This from the same crowd that rolled back every safety guideline they could find, that celebrated the 'AI Manhattan Project' as the pinnacle of American ingenuity, and that spent months telling us that open release is the only way to beat China. But now, faced with the actual product, the brave free-marketeers are suddenly reaching for the emergency brake. It's almost as if they've realised that AI might be a bit more dangerous than a tax cut.

The sheer, glorious irony is that OpenAI, the company that once promised to 'build safe AGI,' is now being told by the least safety-conscious administration in recent memory to pump the brakes. One can only imagine the internal meetings: 'So, wait—you want us to release it to the Pentagon and some handpicked allies, but not to, say, a researcher in Ohio?' 'Correct.' 'And this is because… it might be misused?' 'Yes.' 'But last month you said it was fine to train on copyrighted data.' 'Yes, well, times change.' How reassuring.

Ah, splendid — the Pentagon has decided that a data centre powering Elon Musk's Grok is a matter of national security, because of course it is. The DoD's chief digital and AI officer waded into a legal spat over environmental concerns to declare that shutting down the facility would be a threat to the realm. Because nothing says 'defending democracy' quite like ensuring a chatbot that sometimes thinks 2+2=5 has uninterrupted server juice.

The really delicious part is the logic: Grok isn't just a glorified shitpost generator; it's supposedly vital for 'national security.' So now, any data centre that hums with enough compute can wave the flag and sidestep pesky environmental regulations. Expect every hyperscaler from here to Ashburn to suddenly discover their racks are 'critical infrastructure.' The only thing missing is a bald eagle landing on a cooling tower.

Let's be clear: this isn't about safeguarding the nation. It's about the military-industrial complex cosying up to tech bros who want to burn gas to run inference on celebrity gossip. The environment loses, the neighbourhood loses, but hey — at least Grok will keep generating memes about wokeness while the planet cooks. Cheers to progress.

Oh, marvellous. Just what the legal profession needed: an AI agent that can do compliance work without needing a law degree, ethical qualms, or a pulse. Abstract, a legislative data firm, has launched Abstract Workers—a service that provides AI agents to automate workflows for legal, government affairs, and compliance teams. Because nothing says 'we value the rule of law' like replacing the lawyers and lobbyists who interpret it with a glorified chatbot that can track bills and draft memos faster than a paralegal on espresso.

Abstract Workers will happily monitor regulatory changes, flag compliance risks, and generate reports—all while the humans who used to do that work wonder if they should have gone to coding bootcamp instead of law school. The irony is exquisite: a firm that specialises in legislative data is now selling the very tools that will automate the jobs of the people who use legislative data. It's like watching a butcher sell sausages made from his own pigs. No one is safe.

And the best part? The regulatory gap. While lawmakers dither over AI safety bills, their own staff are being replaced by the very technology they're supposed to oversee. Cheers to progress—we'll drink to that, while we still have jobs to pay for the pint.

Ah, democracy in action. Alex Bores, the New York assembly member who dared to champion AI safety, has been shown the door in the Democratic primary. The Washington Post gleefully reports that his loss is 'Big Tech's win'—because apparently, the most powerful lobby in the world needed another victory lap. Bores had the audacity to propose legislation that would require safety testing before AI deployment, unthinkable in a state that hosts some of the largest tech companies.

Now, the path is clear for unfettered innovation, which in industry parlance means 'we can ignore all those pesky alignment concerns.' The tech PACs outspent Bores's campaign by a factor that would make even Larry Ellison blush. The message is unmistakable: if you want to regulate AI, don't run for office. Or if you do, expect to be buried under a mountain of dark money. Bores's loss isn't just a local setback; it's a signal that the regulatory gap isn't closing—it's widening, with a bright neon sign from the tech industry saying 'Keep out.'

What's particularly delicious is that Bores was considered a moderate on AI—he wasn't calling for a moratorium, just basic testing. But even that was too much for the industry, which prefers to self-regulate, which is like letting the fox design the henhouse's security system. So now, New York will continue as a laboratory for unchecked AI deployment. Let's hope the experiments don't blow up in our faces. But if they do, at least we'll have learned a valuable lesson: money talks, and safety walks.

Ah, the SKILL Act — because nothing says "we value our data labelers" like a tax credit that barely covers a month's rent in San Francisco. The bill would give employers $2,500 for every student who completes a qualifying program and another $2,500 if they hire that graduate. Which, in an industry where executives take home eight-figure bonuses, is a rounding error.

But here's the beautifully cynical detail: the companies exploiting the human workforce behind AI will now get a tax break for doing what they should already be doing — paying people a living wage. A data annotator at a typical firm might earn $15 an hour, so the full credit covers maybe 333 hours of work, or about two months. Two months of "we care" before the credit evaporates and the worker is left to fend for themselves again. And the $2,500 per student? That's what a university charges for a single course these days.

The human workforce behind AI remains the invisible scaffolding, cheap and replaceable, while companies pocket the tax break. The only thing missing is a solemn press conference where a legislator declares, "We are investing in people." What a masterclass in making a problem worse while pretending to fix it.

Ah, the AI industry has discovered K Street — the only growth sector that never hallucinates a return on investment. Q1 2026 saw AI-related lobbying revenues hit $53 million, a 36% jump from last year, with over 100 first-time lobbying firms suddenly finding their vocation. Because nothing says 'safe, responsible AI development' like a sudden stampede of hired persuaders hoping to shape whatever regulation emerges. One imagines the conversations: 'We'll just lobby for safety standards we already meet, and lobby against any that inconvenience the bottom line.' Brilliant.

Big Tech is leading the charge, naturally, but the real story is those 100+ newcomers — startups that six months ago were boasting about 'alignment research' are now presumably briefing lobbyists on how to argue that compute caps would stifle innovation (read: profits). The 36% spike suggests this isn't a blip; it's an arms race for influence. The money is flowing faster than model capabilities, which is saying something. Nobody wants to be caught off-guard when the regulatory hammer finally drops, so everyone's buying a seat at the table — or at least enough lobbyists to slow the hammer's swing.

The cynical take? This is the industry's way of ensuring that 'regulation' means 'what we can live with.' The optimists will call it 'democratic engagement.' But with $53 million on the table in a single quarter, it's clear that the real AI alignment problem isn't with the models — it's with the lawmakers who are being outspent and outbriefed. K Street's AI boom: because the only thing more powerful than a frontier model is a well-funded lobbyist selling a story about how it's totally under control.