Edge Cases

Driving is probably the most complicated (no way to quantify that really) task any of us ever do. Humans do stupid things too, of course, but at some point we manage to figure out that we did, indeed, do a stupid thing.

Waymo is recalling its U.S. fleet of robotaxis after one of the autonomous vehicles was swept away when it drove into floodwaters in San Antonio.

The voluntary software recall stems from an incident during severe weather April 20, when a Waymo vehicle “encountered an untraversible flooded section of a roadway,” the company told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Though the vehicle detected the flooded road, it continued into floodwaters at reduced speed.

I'm not asserting that this type of thing means robotaxis are UNPOSSIBLE. They clearly work better than I had thought they would, though there is much more Mechanical Turk activity happening than they like to reveal. The point is more that this is still an incredibly complex activity which still is not close to being solved without constant active updates and intervention.

Your personal self-driving car is not much nearer than it was 5 years ago.

The Great Bed Shitting

Will hit consumer prices next.

The producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month, much higher than the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus forecast and the upwardly revised 0.7% March increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. This was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.

On an annual basis, the index was up 6%, the biggest increase since December 2022.

Operation Pete Hegseth Has A Mighty Johnson So Stop Saying He Doesn't

Amazing.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is considering officially renaming the war with Iran “Operation Sledgehammer” if the current ceasefire collapses and President Donald Trump decides to re-start major combat operations, according to two U.S. officials.

If you change the name, it's a new war!

Morning

Let's GOOOOOOO

Happy Hour

Get happy.

Goldfish

When someone - the president, other politicians, people in The Discourse generally - showes themselves to be a bad faith and dishonest actor, you are allowed to remember that. If you are a journalist, it should impact how you cover those people going forward. As an editor or producer, whether you go to them for quotes or appearances.

This should not be controversial.

I've written before that one problem with DC (government and government-adjacent DC, including journalism) is that almost everybody is paid to lie. Some of those lies are mostly harmless - puffing up your boss a bit, spinning something - and many of them are less harmless. If there were social and professional sanctions for people who bullshit in their bullshitting jobs, then the entire social system would collapse.

Go to a random dinner party and you're going to find people who work as lobbyists for Evil Corp, or people whose spouses and friends do.

That's the glorious "bipartisan" Washington.

If you are a journalist, you should be allowed to remember things. You certainly shouldn't be encouraged to pretend you don't.

Federal Gas Tax Cut

It's always on the table when gas prices rise, which I suspect leads to people thinking that it's a significant amount when it's only 18.5 cents/gallon.

It's an action which will make people more mad, because it's inevitably swamped by the actual price increase. You promised help! You said you'd cut the tax but gas is still 5 bucks a gallon!

Not At Any Price

The below is a joke, but so often that is the level of The Discourse. Anyway, fun things happen when the supply curve goes vertical, especially for a good which tends to have pretty close to just-in-time delivery AND which is an input in, well, everything through its role in transportation (including transporting itself!).

Even if there aren't lines at the gas station, $100 gas would reflect, by any colloquial understanding, a "shortage."

But of course in practice, those pumps would go dry, in places, in such a scenario.

I'm not predicting gas shortages, I'm just saying that people will have ridiculous things to say about them if ever they are looming.

Shortages

Me, dumb: We could have shortages soon.

You, smart, after two Econ 101 classes: Prices adjust to equate supply and demand so shortages are impossible.

Capacity

I'd still bet on Trump ramping up the violence soon and if he does there will be more long term impacts.

UAE won’t resume full gas production until 2027 after Iranian attacks

The United Arab Emirates’s main gas-processing complex, which was hit in Iranian attacks during the war, will not reach its full production capacity again until next year.

ADNOC Gas said the Habshan site, which is one of the world’s largest gas production facilities and supplies gas across the UAE, is now operating at 60 percent capacity and “the company is currently working towards achieving 80 percent restoration by the end of 2026 with full capacity restored in 2027”.

In a statement sharing its first-quarter results, the company reported $1.1bn in net income, a 15 percent decrease compared with the same quarter last year.

Why Did Sleepy Joe Do This

Impressed by Trump's ability to make messes.

US prices rose in April at their fastest rate since May 2023 as the impact of the war in Iran was increasingly felt by consumers.

A jump in the cost of gasoline and groceries pushed the consumer price index (CPI), the amount prices jumped by in the past 12 months, to 3.8%.

It is the highest level since inflation hit 4% three years ago.

Morning

TACO Tuesday.

Happy Hour

Get Happy

Coming to America

Just got off the phone with @realDonaldTrump ... he told me he is seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the 51st state... pic.twitter.com/cofs12dhUS

— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) May 11, 2026

I guess all the ones whose Temporary Protected Status he eliminated will just become citizens and can stay, and many more will arrive!

Fine with me.

Are you a natuaral born citizen if you were born in Caracas?

Looks Like Marco And Pete Can't Do Anything Right

Mr. Trump, sir, you need to hire better people!

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the Cuban government’s ability to maintain power despite months of sustained U.S. pressure and has been pressing his advisers about why his administration’s efforts to tip the regime into collapse have not yet succeeded, according to two U.S. officials, a former U.S. official and three people familiar with the discussions.

The Bad News Keeps Coming

And the stocks keep floating!

One possible explanation is the Big Money assumes they (not necessarily you, of course) will always be bailed out if there's a crash, so why worry their pretty little brains about it.

These people won't be bailed out, but their creditors likely will be!

The strain from this increasing debt load is starting to show, with the percentage of after-tax income that households spend paying down debt ticking up since early 2025, according to Federal Reserve data.

Banks say they are not seeing signs of serious distress. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan, said late last month that consumer borrowing habits looked “fundamentally healthy.”

But across all consumer debts, the share that is delinquent rose to 4.8 percent, the highest tally since 2017. For the first time in more than a decade, the national average credit score dipped last year, according to data from Experian, one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus.

Kneel

The US record on "winning" wars has not been especially awesome in the way we like to define that, which is unconditional surrender by the opposition, but we usually don't lose them quite this hilariously.

Iran’s demands for U.S. war reparations, recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and an end to American sanctions were among the conditions that President Trump has deemed “unacceptable,” Iran’s state-owned broadcaster reported on Monday.

Morning

 MACHO MONDAY

At Least The War Is Over

Oh well.

Two Takes

The New York Times has two types of pieces it loves to run about Democrats. The first is:

Dems should do this thing that they are already doing.

I think Tom Friedman wrote a dozen of those in the Obama years.

The second is:

Dems should stop doing this thing they aren't doing.

We have that one today:

Without even getting into the argument about whether they should or shouldn't, most of them don't! This issue is not front and center at all!