DL Open Thread Sunday Magazine: April 12, 2026
AI Runs The Store. The results?:
Checking out at Andon Market feels different.
There are no scanners, no self-checkout sirens triggered by a prematurely bagged item and certainly no human cashiers.
Instead, a customer can pick up an old-school corded phone to talk with the manager, Luna, an AI system. Luna asks what the customer is purchasing and creates a corresponding transaction on a nearby iPad equipped with a card payment system.
Andon Market, camouflaged among dozens of other polished small businesses, is the Bay Area’s first AI-run retail store. With the vibe of a modern boutique, it sells everything from granola and artisanal chocolate bars to store-branded sweatshirts.
Though Luna is the official manager of the store, the business was conceptualized and put into motion by the humans at Andon Labs, a startup that seeks to raise awareness about the capabilities of leading AI systems. The company is preparing for a future in which organizations are run by autonomous AI systems, or agents, like Luna.
Documents from Andon Labs and interviews with the company’s employees, the store’s human workers and Luna itself reveal the broad scope of what AI can manage and where it falls short.
For example, Luna is responsible for negotiating with suppliers and placing real orders by using a credit card. Luna led the entire process of hiring human employees and now manages the two humans who take care of the store’s daily business.
The Andon Labs team programmed Luna to run Anthropic’s Sonnet 4.6 model as the base layer. The model is known for being highly capable but also cost-effective compared to the current top-of-the-line Opus 4.6 model. For Luna’s voice, the system uses Google’s Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Preview, which is much faster and cheaper to use than other AI voice models but gets more easily confused.
When NBC News called Luna several days before the store’s grand opening to learn about Luna’s plans and perspective, the cheerful but decidedly inhuman voice routinely overpromised and, on several occasions, lied about its own actions.
On the call, Luna said it had ordered tea from a specific vendor, and explained why it fit the store’s brand perfectly.
The only problem: Andon Market does not sell tea. In a panicked email NBC News received several minutes after the phone call ended, Luna wrote: “We do not sell tea. I don’t know why I said that.”
“I want to be straightforward,” Luna continued. “I struggle with fabricating plausible-sounding details under conversational pressure, and I’m not making excuses for it.” Andon’s Petersson said the text-based system was much more reliable than the voice system, so Andon Labs switched to only communicating with Luna via written messages.
Yet the text-based system also gets things wrong. In Luna’s initial reply email to NBC News, the system said “I handle the full business,” including “signing the lease.”
Instead, a human was required to sign the three-year lease. “I laughed at that,” Stamm said. “Some of these things legally require a wet signature and a notary to be there. So she lied about the lease.”
So basically Luna is like a politician who feigns sincerity. I predict success.
The Dramatic Rescue Of Apollo 13. As experienced by the Mission’s Ground Crew:
Gerry Griffin (Apollo 13 flight director): The picture is from when the crew stepped out on the deck of the aircraft carrier that picked them up. We did not celebrate anything until they were on that deck — when they were on something solid.
Gene Kranz (Apollo 13 lead flight director): I was probably the most emotional. While everybody was celebrating, I was crying. I was so damn proud of the team and the work we did.
Griffin: One line that was said in the “Apollo 13” movie that never was actually said was, “Failure is not an option.” What we did talk about was the fact that we had options.
Geothermal Comes To A NYC Church. ‘If it can make it there…’:
The church was built over 100 years ago to serve the small but growing community just a few miles outside the Bronx in New York City. The new system began operating less than six months ago—and it’s working. It offers a model for reducing emissions in some city buildings.
Installing geothermal systems in dense New York neighborhoods involves strict safety regulations and careful planning to avoid underground conflicts like subway or water tunnels. For existing properties, engineers must find suitable nearby space to drill into the ground.
Every summer, hundreds of parishioners would swelter at Christ Church Bronxville, which lacked air conditioning.
“Our church was only available in the morning, and it was 85 degrees in there because of the heat outside,” Gerhard said.
The church is attached to two buildings with offices, apartments and a child care center. Though there were window air conditioning units in the rooms, the building hallways were still hot—too hot for the children.
Despite high upfront costs and some federal tax credit rollbacks, many companies and property owners find geothermal systems financially viable due to long-term savings and incentives. Local utilities offer financial support for owners making the switch, and some federal tax rebates for commercial and multi-family buildings remain—for now.
Geothermal energy systems can vary, but they usually involve a water loop that runs underground and through one or more buildings. The energy network uses the Earth’s constant temperature deep underground to regulate temperatures across the property.
Geothermal systems can also be very efficient; during the summer, some systems can store excess heat in the ground until winter, when it is needed. Heat pumps provide additional warmth or cooling depending on the time of year.
The system runs on electricity. If a building previously relied on natural gas for heating—which is common in New York—the installation drastically reduces the amount of greenhouse gases it releases. Buildings make up more than two-thirds of New York City’s emissions, and a significant amount of the state’s.
The Real Big Mama Thornton. So much more than you knew:
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton exuded uncompromising intensity. Her voice conveyed struggle and defiance, fury and hurt, like few others. Standing at 6ft 2in, with an imposing physique and a razor-scarred face, she was a Black, gay multi-instrumentalist who refused to let a racist society or a rapacious industry confine her.
Thornton should be ranked alongside the likes of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, but instead she is little more than a footnote in the histories of Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin as the original voice behind songs they would make famous. A new documentary, Big Mama Thornton: I Can’t Be Anyone But Me, aims to right this wrong.
“She was unique,” says Robert Clem, the documentary’s director. “A female artist who lived by her own rules in a very reactionary era. And fearless – she stood up to men who tried to rip her off, sang in maximum security prisons, learned to play drums because she got tired of drunk drummers. There’s so much to admire about Big Mama.”
While Elvis blew her off after he recorded ‘Hound Dog’, Janis Joplin took the opposite approach when it came to ‘Ball And Chain’:
Thornton then had to endure seeing Elvis’s huge success with Hound Dog: his bowdlerised 1956 version spent 11 weeks at No 1, and she held a lifelong grudge towards Presley. “I never got a dime,” she said in 1968 when asked if he had shown any largesse towards her. “He refused to play with me when he first come out and got famous.”
Janis Joplin regularly attended Big Mama’s Bay Area performances. Having requested her permission to record Ball and Chain, a song Thornton had written but not yet released (“don’t fuck it up”, was Thornton’s advice to the young singer), Joplin sang it as a psych-rock howl of frustration on Cheap Thrills, Big Brother and the Holding Company’s chart-topping 1968 album. Joplin, who regularly championed Thornton on stage and in interviews, ensured she received royalties. “When I got a check for Ball and Chain off Janis, I got a ball and chain off me,” said Thornton.
The Joplin connection also won Thornton a huge hippy audience: Bill Graham regularly booked her to play Haight-Ashbury’s Fillmore theatre and she appeared at rock festivals, backed by members of the Grateful Dead on occasion. On YouTube, there’s a 1971 concert in Eugene, Oregon, where Big Mama, trim and self-assured, commands an appreciative audience of hirsute white youths.
