Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. You may have run across the new "slur" making the rounds online, and in middle school lunchrooms: clanker. Borrowed from Star Wars (where battle droids get called "clankers"), the word is supposed to be a knockout insult to robots and A.I. Which would sort of make sense, if machines could actually take offense at anything. Since they can't, clanker is basically an insult that punches at nothing, perhaps the least-effective slur in history. The term, for all its silliness, has inspired a sort of spinoff--"clanker lover"--which, in theory, should carry more of a sting, since it's aimed at actual humans.

The Trump administration has ordered firings and buyouts at the federal agency that operates water infrastructure in California, potentially jeopardizing the agency's ability to manage dams and deliver water, according to Central Valley water officials. The job cuts at the Bureau of Reclamation were ordered by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, according to two bureau employees with knowledge of the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly. The bureau, which employs about 1,000 people, is set to lose about 100 employees in California through terminations and buyouts, eliminating about 10% of its regional staff, one of the employees said. But larger workforce reductions are slated, and the bureau has been ordered to prepare plans to cut its staff by 40%, this person said. Those targeted first for dismissal have been employees in their first year, and others who have been at the agency the shortest.

What would American cities look like 100 years after human beings have left, with the streets devoid of human life - and beginning to be reclaimed by nature? While the chatbot put our future world in text, the AI photo generator Midjourney painted pictures of these abandoned metropolises, showing the concrete jungles transforming into jungles. Kieron Connolly, author of Abandoned Places and Abandoned Civilizations, says that visions of abandoned cities have a unique power. This isn't what city life is supposed to look like. Nature is allowed to reclaim the land,' Connolly said. ChatGPT writes, 'In the year 2123, the once-thriving metropolis of Chicago stands as a haunting testament to the passage of time and the resilience of nature.