The Big Drop is an independent publication owned and operated by BareMetal Comics LLC, a limited liability company organized in the District of Columbia, of which Jayne Lytel is the editor in chief. Using this site, subscribing to the newsletter or submitting anything to us means you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site. The contracting party is BareMetal Comics LLC. Notice under these terms reaches us through the Contact link in the footer.

One person runs this. There is no legal department down the hall, which is exactly why the terms are written to be read.

Read it, print it, forward it to a colleague, quote a passage with attribution and a link back. Teachers and researchers may use full articles in class or in a paper. Republishing an entire piece anywhere else requires written permission, which is usually granted and never sold.

Share it freely. Just do not put your name on it.

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We use artificial intelligence to report. That is not an invitation to feed this archive to yours.

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Nothing costs anything yet. When that changes, you will hear it from us before you see it on a statement.

Reporting at The Big Drop is produced by generative artificial intelligence agents working under a human editor in chief, who assigns the stories, approves the reporting plan, edits the copy and decides what publishes. Artificial intelligence systems make mistakes, including invented citations and misread documents. The editor spot-checks the work and cannot verify every line.

Most publications bury this. We put it in the terms because you deserve to know how the sausage is reported.

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The one clause every publication writes and nobody reads. Here it is in a font you can actually see.

These terms are governed by the law of the District of Columbia, and any dispute will be heard in a court there. We may revise these terms; the version and revision date at the top of this page always tell you which set is in force, and material changes go out to subscribers by email. District of Columbia law applies without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the exclusive venue is the courts sitting in the District of Columbia. There is no arbitration clause and no class-action waiver, and nothing here stops you from bringing a claim in small claims court.

Terms that change quietly are not terms. You will get an email.

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An email address and a page view. That is the whole file.

We send you the newsletter you asked for. We look at which stories were read so we know what to report next. We answer your mail. We do not sell your address, rent it, trade it or hand it to an advertiser, and we do not build a profile of you.

Nobody is buying this list, because it is not for sale.

A small number of service providers, each handling one job: the company that hosts this site, the company that delivers the newsletter, the analytics service that counts page views and the artificial intelligence companies whose models our reporting agents run on. Each is bound by its own agreement to process data only on our instructions. Those providers today are Vercel, which hosts the site; Kit, which delivers the newsletter; Vercel Analytics, which counts page views; and Anthropic, whose models the reporting agents run on. Reader email addresses are never sent to an artificial intelligence provider, and correspondence from a source is never pasted into one. Data is processed in the United States. For readers in the European Union and the United Kingdom, transfers rely on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses together with the United Kingdom addendum.

Three vendors, named on request. A shorter list than most newsrooms can produce.

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No banner asking you to accept 847 partners, because there are none.

Write to us and you may see what we hold, have it corrected, or have it deleted. Every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link that works immediately. Readers in the European Union, the United Kingdom and California have additional rights under the General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act; we extend the same handling to everyone. We answer a request within 30 days, and within 45 days for requests under the California Consumer Privacy Act, extended once only where the law allows and only with notice to you. Making a request costs nothing and changes nothing about what you receive from us. We will tell you if we cannot confirm who you are.

Ask and it is gone. No retention offer, no four-screen cancellation flow.

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If you are about to become a source, stop and read this one twice.

Jayne Lytel, editor in chief. Every inquiry reaches the same inbox and the same person, whether you are a reader, a reporter, a subject of a story or a lawyer for one. Use the Contact link in the footer.

No communications department to route you through. There is one inbox and it is hers.

Reach us before publication if you can. We put questions to the companies and agencies we write about and we print the answers we get, including a refusal to comment. After publication, a factual dispute is handled through Corrections, not through the press inbox.

A statement always beats a “did not respond to a request for comment.”

Local outlets, newsletters and nonprofits may republish a full article at no cost with credit to The Big Drop, a link to the original and no changes beyond house style. Ask first so we can tell you if a piece is under revision. Commercial syndication is a separate conversation. Republication runs under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license: full credit to The Big Drop, a link to the original and no edits beyond house style. Photographs, maps and data graphics licensed from a third party are excluded and must be cleared separately.

Take the whole story. Take it to a bigger audience than ours.

We take interview and panel requests about how a newsroom of one editor and seven artificial intelligence agents actually works, what it gets right and what it gets wrong. Send the date, the format and how long you need. The agents do not give interviews.

People ask. It is more boring and more interesting than they expect.

If you know something about the buildout of the power grid, data centers, pipelines or who is paying for them, we want to hear it. Do not send anything from a work computer or a work account. Write one line saying you have something and we will find a safer channel before you say more. What we can promise in writing: your identity is withheld from publication, your correspondence stays inside this newsroom, and we delete what you send on request unless a court has ordered otherwise. What we cannot promise is immunity from a subpoena. The District of Columbia has a shield law, and we will invoke it and resist a demand as far as the law allows and tell you one has arrived unless we are barred from saying so.

Your employer can read your work email. Assume they do.

When The Big Drop gets a fact wrong, it says so on the story, at the top, in plain language, and it says what the correct fact is. We do not quietly edit a sentence and move on. A story that has been corrected stays corrected in public.

The correction is part of the story now. That is the point.

Send the headline, the sentence you are disputing and either evidence or a source we can check. A document, a filing, a docket number or a phone number all work. Send it through the Contact link in the footer; a correction request is never lost in a queue.

“This is wrong” gets a reply. “This is wrong, here is the filing” gets a correction.

The editor in chief checks it against the original record. If we were wrong, the correction goes on the story and you get a reply telling you it is up. If we were right, you get a reply explaining what the record shows. Either way you hear back.

Nobody has to wonder whether the email went anywhere.

The reporting here is produced by artificial intelligence agents, which can misread a document, mistake a proposal for a decision or invent a citation outright. No correction at The Big Drop is ever attributed to an agent. The editor in chief published it, so the error is hers.

“The machine did it” is not a correction. It is an excuse.