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New OpenAI Model Aces Benchmark That OpenAI Wrote Last Tuesday

Lena Wexler
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New OpenAI Model Aces Benchmark That OpenAI Wrote Last Tuesday

SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI on Wednesday unveiled GPT-5.4o-turbo-mini-pro, an incremental model update that the company said achieved a record 97.3% on a reasoning benchmark designed and published by OpenAI eight days ago, narrowly edging out the previous record set Monday by a different OpenAI model on the same test.

CEO Sam Altman, livestreaming from a stool in front of a black curtain that has not changed in three years, described the release as “a real step-change” and “the most significant update since the last most significant update,” which shipped on January 21 and was deprecated Tuesday morning.

The new model, according to the accompanying 4-page system card, demonstrates “meaningful gains” on tasks including summarizing emails the model also wrote, planning trips the model will later book, and identifying which of two nearly identical AI-generated images is the AI-generated one. It performs marginally worse on multiplication.

“What we’re seeing is convergence on the frontier,” said Priya Halloran, an independent AI evaluator who runs the research desk at the Atlantic Heartland Project. “By which I mean every lab now releases a model every three weeks, every model beats the last one by two points on a test nobody had heard of, and every CEO uses the phrase ‘step-change’ on a podcast within 48 hours. The frontier is a treadmill at this point. The treadmill is the product.”

The announcement comes one day before Alphabet reports Q4 earnings, where analysts expect Sundar Pichai to mention Gemini approximately once every ninety seconds and to reference “AI cloud growth” in a tone suggesting the AI is growing the cloud against the cloud’s will. Anthropic is reportedly preparing to release Claude 4.1.2 next week, which insiders say will be “the Claude that finally gets it,” a designation previously held by Claude 4.1.1, Claude 4.1, and Claude 4.

OpenAI declined to specify how much electricity the new model consumes per query, citing competitive concerns, but confirmed that a data center in central Ohio has been running at full draw since November and that the surrounding municipality has asked residents to delay running dishwashers until after 10 p.m. The company described the request as “unrelated.”

Developers given early access reported that GPT-5.4o-turbo-mini-pro is noticeably faster at producing the same wrong answer, and includes a new feature in which the model, upon being corrected, agrees enthusiastically and then provides a second wrong answer with even greater confidence. OpenAI is calling the feature “adaptive reasoning.”

The release is expected to remain state-of-the-art through approximately Friday afternoon, when Meta is scheduled to open-source a model of comparable performance and Elon Musk is scheduled to announce that xAI has trained a larger one on a cluster he describes only as “the big one in Memphis.” By Monday, GPT-5.4o-turbo-mini-pro will be referred to internally at OpenAI as “the old model,” and a 14-person team will begin writing the benchmark that the next one will win.

We Lost Power Tuesday and Cleo’s Vagus Nerve Has Finally Calmed Down

Brooke Ellery
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We Lost Power Tuesday and Cleo’s Vagus Nerve Has Finally Calmed Down

The line on Buckner Ridge came down at 4:11 PM Tuesday under about an inch of glaze ice, and by 4:35 I had every candle in the house lit and was crying a little in the good way. I want to be clear about something before I go further: this storm was not a disaster for our family. It was an intervention.

Cleo had been dysregulated for weeks. We’re talking screen-jaw, shallow breathing, asking for snacks she didn’t actually want — classic signs that the ambient EMF in the house had finally crossed a threshold her little nervous system could not metabolize. The router, the smart meter Duke Power forced on us in 2022, the neighbor’s Ring doorbell pointing more or less at our compost. It adds up. The second the grid went down, I watched her shoulders drop a full inch. By candle two she was lying on the kitchen floor with the dog, breathing through her nose for the first time since Christmas.

I am part of a Facebook group called “Outages Are Medicine: Reclaiming the Dark,” which has about 14,000 members and a pinned post from a woman in Vermont whose son’s eczema cleared up during a four-day ice storm in 2019. She’s not a doctor but her husband worked for Eversource for eleven years, which is honestly more relevant. The consensus in the group is that the human vagus nerve was calibrated for firelight and cannot tell the difference between a Tuesday and a Sabbath when the lights are off. I felt this Tuesday in my bones.

Now — and I want to be honest because this column has always been a place of honesty — we did run the generator. But only for the bone broth, which was on hour 38 of a 48-hour simmer and represented the marrow of three pasture-raised femurs from Levi at Hollow Creek Farms, and you cannot just let that go cold. I also ran an extension cord out to the chest freezer because losing the elderberry syrup stockpile would have been a separate kind of public health crisis. The generator is not on the grid. It runs on diesel, which is essentially fossilized plankton, so spiritually it counts as ancestral.

My husband Trey came out of his office around hour three because his Zoom died, and for the first time since maybe October he sat down at the table and looked at the children’s actual faces. He asked Wren what grade she was in. She told him. They had a whole conversation. I went and stood in the pantry for a minute because I did not want to ruin it by being witnessed.

The twins drew with the ends of burnt corks on butcher paper, which I am pretty sure is what charcoal is, and which my sister-in-law Janelle — she works the front desk at a pediatric office in Black Mountain and is basically a nurse — says is excellent for fine motor development and also pulls toxins through the fingertips. We ate sourdough with raw butter by the woodstove. Nobody asked for an iPad. Cleo fell asleep at 7:40 PM, which has not happened in this house since she was weaned.

When the power came back on Wednesday at 6:18 AM the fridge made that aggressive hum it makes and Wren actually flinched. The router blinked back to life and I watched the air in the room change. Cleo asked, in a very small voice, if we could turn it off again. I told her we could not, baby, because Daddy has a call, but that Mommy heard her and that her body was very wise to notice.

I’ve been telling everyone at pickup. Marlene is now in talks with someone at the co-op about a “voluntary blackout circle” — a Friday night where a group of families on her road agree to flip their main breakers from sundown to sunrise and just sit with whatever comes up. She’s already drafted a waiver. Janelle thinks her insurance might cover it under behavioral health. I think they’re onto something. The storm gave us a gift, and the gift was the silence, and the silence was the medicine, and the medicine was free, except for the diesel.

Trump Unveils New Tariffs, Markets Faint Right on Cue

Nash Grayson
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Trump Unveils New Tariffs, Markets Faint Right on Cue

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed a fresh slate of tariffs into existence Monday morning, sending the Dow into the kind of theatrical swoon usually reserved for Victorian widows and Boeing shareholders.

The order, announced via social media at 6:14 a.m. and reportedly drafted between two unrelated posts about a cable news host’s haircut, imposes new duties on imports from nine countries, three of which the administration could locate on a map by lunchtime.

Markets responded with the practiced choreography of a kabuki troupe that has done this show before. The S&P shed 2.1 percent in ninety minutes. Treasury yields lurched. A Bloomberg terminal somewhere in Greenwich began emitting a low, mournful tone its owner could not identify.

“This is a strategic recalibration of America’s posture in the global economy,” said Commerce spokesman Brent Falk, reading from a statement that had been written, revised, and rendered obsolete in the eleven minutes it took him to walk to the podium. He then clarified that several of the tariffs would not, in fact, apply to the countries listed, the products listed, or any company whose CEO had recently dined at Mar-a-Lago.

The White House framed the volatility as evidence the policy was working. “Markets fall when something important happens. Something important happened. So,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, gesturing at the air as if the math were self-evident, which in this administration it generally is.

By 11 a.m., a coalition of farm-state Republicans had released a joint statement of “deep concern,” which is the technical term for a senator who has been told by his largest donor to shut up but cannot quite manage it. Senator Joni Ernst added that she remained “fully supportive of the President’s vision,” a vision she described as “bold,” “necessary,” and “something I learned about on the news.”

Retailers braced for impact with the resignation of a man who has been told the rent is going up again. A spokesman for the National Retail Federation noted that prices on roughly 14,000 consumer goods would rise within sixty days, and that consumers should prepare to absorb the cost “the way Americans always have, which is by quietly blaming each other.”

China announced reciprocal tariffs by mid-afternoon, drafted with the brisk efficiency of a country that keeps the template in a folder on the desktop. The European Union issued a statement of regret in four languages, none of which contained a verb that committed it to anything. Canada, asked for comment, sighed.

By the closing bell, markets had clawed back roughly half their losses on rumors that the tariffs might be paused, postponed, restructured, or simply forgotten about, which is the fifth and most common outcome. A senior administration official confirmed that the President was “reviewing options,” a phrase that in this White House refers exclusively to whether to watch golf or order a Diet Coke.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declined to take questions, citing a prior commitment to staring at a wall. Aides said he would address the press Tuesday, assuming the policy still exists.

Senator’s Tipton Stop Was 11 Minutes. Nine Were the Photographer Setting Up.

Hal Cranston
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Senator’s Tipton Stop Was 11 Minutes. Nine Were the Photographer Setting Up.

TIPTON, IA — Sen. Bradford Welk spent eleven minutes inside the Crossroads Café on Saturday morning, which his press secretary described as “a meaningful conversation with Iowa voters” and which the café’s morning waitress, Carleen Voss, described as “a man who ordered toast and then didn’t eat any of it.”

Welk, a third-tier candidate polling at 2 percent in the aggregate, is the eleventh presidential hopeful to visit Tipton (pop. 3,221) since New Year’s Day. He arrived in a black SUV at 7:42 a.m. and left at 7:53. The photographer who travels with the campaign had arrived at 7:31 and was still adjusting a softbox by the pie case when Welk walked back out the door.

“He said hello to Marv, but Marv’s been dead since November,” Carleen said. “We didn’t have the heart to correct him.”

According to Brett Lankford, a regional analyst with the Plains Civic Forum in Cedar Rapids, the eleven-minute stop has become the industry standard. “The optics window is between nine and fourteen minutes,” he said. “Anything shorter looks like contempt. Anything longer and they have to answer a question.” Lankford added that the campaign budgeted roughly $1,400 for the visit, most of it for the b-roll.

The senator ordered two eggs over medium, white toast, and black coffee. He took one bite of egg, no bites of toast, and three sips of coffee before checking his watch. He tipped $4 on a $9.40 check, which Carleen described as “about right for a man running for president,” and then asked where the bathroom was, which she said he never used.

Six of the eleven minutes were spent outside the café. Three were spent on his phone in the SUV. Two were spent posing in front of the Crossroads’ chalkboard with a man named Don, who later told reporters he had assumed the senator was the new propane guy. The eleventh minute is unaccounted for and is presumed to have been spent thanking the photographer.

The campaign’s official statement called the visit “an authentic morning with Iowa farmers and the everyday Americans who built this country.” There are no farmers in downtown Tipton at 7:42 on a Saturday. There is Don, who manages a self-storage facility, and Earl Hochstetler, who is retired and was eating what he eats.

By 7:54 the SUV was gone. By 8:10, two more campaign vans had pulled in. By 8:45, the Crossroads had cycled through three additional candidates, one former Cabinet secretary, and a man Carleen could not identify but who left a coin from a country she didn’t recognize. None of them ordered anything she would describe as food.

Welk’s next stop was a Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast in West Branch, where he was scheduled for fourteen minutes. He stayed nine.

Sunrise Café Opens at 3 A.M. for Australian Open Final. Four Come.

Hal Cranston
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Sunrise Café Opens at 3 A.M. for Australian Open Final. Four Come.

HIBBING, MN — Owner Linda Pesonen unlocked the front door of the Sunrise Café at 2:47 a.m. Saturday, switched on the coffee, turned the television above the counter to ESPN2, and waited for the four people who had told her, in varying degrees of seriousness, that they would be there for the Australian Open women’s singles final. All four came.

“I told them I’d open if they were serious,” Pesonen said, refilling a cup for Don Kuusisto, a retired iron-range electrician who had driven in from Chisholm in a parka and slippers. “Don was serious. I didn’t think Don would be serious.”

The match began at 3:30 a.m. local time, which is when the women’s final is contested in Melbourne every January and which is, by general agreement in Hibbing, not when anything has ever happened on purpose. Pesonen had set out a half-pan of cinnamon rolls and a sign-up sheet for a sport none of the patrons follow during daylight.

Kuusisto was joined by Marcia Lehto, who teaches sixth grade and described herself as “a tennis person from way back, although I couldn’t tell you the last time”; by a man named Gus who declined to give a last name and said he had wandered in because the café was the only place with lights on; and by Ron Vanek, who confirmed he was there to support his wife’s interest in tennis, although his wife was at home asleep.

The four watched the first set largely in silence, except when Lehto explained the scoring to Gus, who nodded politely and ordered hashbrowns. By the second set a consensus had formed at the counter that the player in the white visor was the one to root for, on the grounds that she seemed nicer.

By 6:15 a.m. the regular breakfast crowd had begun to file in, encountered the situation, and reacted with the measured calm Hibbing brings to most departures from routine. “Why is it on Australia,” asked Bud Norgaard, looking up at the screen. Nobody had a good answer. Pesonen said she had opened for the tennis. Bud said that was fine and ordered his usual.

The match ended sometime after 7. By then the café was full, and the four originals had migrated to a corner booth, where they were quietly arguing about whether they had enjoyed it. Lehto said she had. Kuusisto said he had not minded. Gus had left without paying, although Pesonen said she didn’t feel right charging him under the circumstances, and Vanek said he would tell his wife it had been wonderful.

Pesonen plans to open at 3 a.m. again on Sunday for the men’s final, but only if at least three people sign up. As of Saturday evening, she had two.

Trump Tariffs Hit Electronics America Stopped Making In 1998

Lena Wexler
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Trump Tariffs Hit Electronics America Stopped Making In 1998

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday announced a sweeping new round of tariffs targeting roughly 340 categories of imported electronics, semiconductors, and rare-earth components, every one of which has not been manufactured at scale on U.S. soil since the Clinton administration’s second term.

The 35% duties, framed by officials as a long-overdue correction to decades of unfair trade practice, will apply to items including capacitors, lithium-ion cells, USB-C connectors, and the small plastic clip that holds a laptop hinge together — categories that domestic industry analysts described as ‘theoretical’ and ‘something we could probably do again in eleven years.’

A senior administration official, speaking on background, said the tariffs were designed to bring critical manufacturing ‘back where it belongs,’ and confirmed that the timeline for ‘where it belongs’ to actually exist remains under interagency review.

Tech executives, who spent the past three decades systematically dismantling the domestic supply chain now being protected, responded to the announcement with what one industry observer called ‘the enthusiasm of a man tipping his hat to the guy installing his new fence.’ Apple, Dell, and HP issued nearly identical statements praising the administration’s commitment to American industry while quietly notifying retailers of Q2 price adjustments.

‘The fundamentals here are sound,’ said Pell Mariotta, a trade economist at the Hartwell Group, a think tank funded primarily by companies that import the affected goods. ‘You impose a tariff on a thing nobody here makes, and the resulting price increase is paid by the American consumer, who then experiences economic patriotism in real time.’

According to Commerce Department filings, roughly 78% of the goods covered by Friday’s announcement are already in transit, sitting in containers at the Port of Long Beach, or have been on retailer shelves since November. A spokesman for the National Retail Federation noted that consumers will be paying the tariff on devices that were physically imported during the previous administration, which he described as ‘the kind of supply-chain efficiency we built this economy on.’

The administration also unveiled a $2.4 billion subsidy program to support domestic semiconductor production, an amount industry sources noted is approximately what TSMC spends on a single fab’s HVAC system. Officials said groundbreaking on the first facility could begin as early as 2031, contingent on identifying any Americans who still know how to do it.

Asked whether the tariffs might raise prices on consumer electronics during a quarter in which the PCE inflation report had already come in hotter than expected, the senior official said the administration was confident that market forces would adjust, adding that anyone unable to afford a new phone was welcome to keep using their old one, which is also now subject to the tariff if it ever needs repair.

Fed Holds Rates; New Statement Changes Four Words From December, Three Are ‘The’

Cody Thompson
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Fed Holds Rates; New Statement Changes Four Words From December, Three Are ‘The’

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Open Market Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to leave the benchmark rate unchanged, releasing a 412-word policy statement that differs from December’s by exactly four words, three of which are the definite article ‘the.’

The fourth word was ‘somewhat,’ inserted before ‘elevated,’ which analysts spent the remainder of the trading session interpreting as either a hawkish pivot, a dovish capitulation, or, per one note out of Morgan Stanley, ‘a typo Jay didn’t catch.’

‘Somewhat is doing a lot of work in there,’ said Renata Pell, chief rates strategist at Cantilever Macro, who had pre-positioned a client deck around five possible adverbs and is now redoing slides 14 through 27. ‘We had moderately. We had still. We did not have somewhat. Somewhat reopens the entire framework.’

Two-year yields moved 11 basis points in the eight minutes after release, then moved them back, then moved them three quarters of the way again, in what one Citi desk head described as ‘the bond market doing a kind of nervous foot-tapping thing.’ He was, at the time, eating a chopped salad with the lid still on, stabbing through the plastic to save the four seconds it would have cost to remove it.

The press conference began at 2:30 p.m. sharp. Chair Jerome Powell, wearing the same navy tie he has worn to every January meeting since 2019, said the word ‘data-dependent’ nine times, ‘patient’ six times, and ‘we are not on a preset course’ in three slight grammatical variations, including one in which he forgot ‘preset’ and substituted ‘pre-committed,’ triggering a 4-point S&P rally that lasted until he clarified.

Asked by a reporter whether the change from ‘elevated’ to ‘somewhat elevated’ implied a March cut was on the table, Powell paused, drank from a glass of water, set the glass back down on the exact ring of condensation it had previously made, and said the committee would ‘continue to assess incoming information.’ A second reporter, sensing weakness, asked the same question rephrased; Powell drank again.

Inside hedge funds across Greenwich and Midtown, the reaction was muted, in the sense that traders sat very still in Aeron chairs and stared at terminals with the expression of men watching a slow gas leak. One PM at a multi-strat shop in Stamford was observed eating a single peanut M&M every time Powell said ‘gradual.’ By the end of the Q&A he had eaten the bowl and started on a colleague’s.

Equities closed mixed. The Russell 2000, which had spent the morning pricing in three cuts, ended the day pricing in two and a half, a position that exists nowhere on the actual yield curve but which CNBC chyrons agreed was ‘the new consensus.’ Apple, which reports earnings tonight, was up 0.4 percent on no news whatsoever.

The Fed’s next statement is due March 18. Pell, at Cantilever, said her base case is that it will change between two and six words from this one, none of which will be ‘somewhat,’ and at least one of which will be ‘the.’ Her clients, she added, are paying her quite a lot for this view.

Microsoft, Meta Earnings Show AI Boom Powered By Selling AI To Each Other

Lena Wexler
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Microsoft, Meta Earnings Show AI Boom Powered By Selling AI To Each Other

REDMOND, WA — Microsoft and Meta are scheduled to report quarterly earnings after the closing bell Wednesday, with both companies expected to credit historic growth to enterprise AI products they are, by all available evidence, primarily selling to one another in a closed loop that analysts have stopped trying to draw on a whiteboard.

Pre-release guidance from each firm cites “transformative customer demand” for generative AI tooling, a phrase that, in the footnotes, resolves to Microsoft Copilot seats deployed across Meta’s engineering org and a multi-year Llama API commitment from Azure that allows Microsoft to resell Meta’s model back to enterprise clients who already pay Microsoft for a different one.

The arrangement is expected to produce double-digit cloud growth at both companies and to be described, on both earnings calls, using the word “flywheel.”

“The revenue is real. The customers are also each other. Those things can both be true,” said Priya Anand, who covers hyperscaler accounting at a research desk inside one of the Big Four and asked that her employer not be named because she would prefer to keep it. “At a certain point you stop calling it a market and start calling it a group chat.”

Capital expenditure guidance is expected to set new records at both firms, with Microsoft signaling another upward revision on data center buildouts and Meta reiterating its plan to spend roughly the GDP of Estonia on GPUs it will largely rent back to companies renting GPUs to it. Wall Street has indicated it will reward this by raising both price targets and asking no further questions.

Less prominently featured in the prepared remarks: the power draw. A single new Microsoft campus outside Phoenix is projected to consume more electricity than the city of Tempe, a fact the company has addressed by signing a long-term agreement to purchase nuclear energy that does not yet exist from a reactor that has not yet been built. Meta has responded by commissioning a study on whether the heat coming off its Louisiana facility can be reclassified as a feature.

Both companies are also expected to highlight efficiency gains, defined this quarter as the layoff of approximately 9,000 combined employees whose work is now performed by the AI systems the two companies are selling to each other. The displaced workers will reportedly be eligible for a free year of Copilot, which they may use to draft cover letters that will be read by Llama.

Analysts will be listening for any update on monetization of consumer AI features, a category that currently consists of a button inside Word that summarizes the email the same button wrote, and a Meta AI assistant that has begun responding to Instagram comments on behalf of users who did not ask it to. Both products are described internally as “sticky.”

The FOMC is also expected to leave rates unchanged Wednesday afternoon, a decision that will be analyzed at length by an AI model trained on the analysis of previous decisions, then summarized by a second model, then pushed as a notification by a third. Microsoft and Meta will each take a cut.

Guidance for next quarter, both companies are expected to confirm, remains strong.

Oscar Nominations Drop; You’ve Seen Two, Lied About Six

Tara Sparks
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Oscar Nominations Drop; You’ve Seen Two, Lied About Six

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its 2026 Oscar nominations Tuesday morning, immediately triggering the annual ritual in which 38 million Americans Google "is [film name] streaming," quietly add four titles to a watchlist they will never open, and begin gently lying about the other six at brunch.

Of the ten Best Picture nominees, three played in fewer than 200 U.S. theaters, one made most of its money at a single arthouse in Brooklyn, and one is reportedly a four-hour Hungarian film about a man considering a window. Industry observers described the slate as "a triumph for cinema" and "the reason your dad fell asleep at 7:40 p.m."

"This is exactly the kind of bold, challenging year we love to see," said Margaux Pell-Esterhazy, an awards strategist who has worked on twelve campaigns and refuses to say which ones. "Are these films widely seen? No. Are they widely posted about by men with letterboxd in their bio? Absolutely. That’s the engine now."

One of the Best Picture nominees, a black-and-white drama about a grieving lighthouse keeper, grossed a reported $312,000 domestically before pivoting to a streaming release on a service that requires you to remember a separate password. A24 confirmed it is "thrilled," which a representative clarified means "already designing the tote bag."

The only nominee the general public has actually seen is a sequel starring a digitally de-aged action lead, included largely so the telecast can show a clip people recognize. Twitter users described its inclusion as "a betrayal," "a gift," and "the reason I’m watching this year," sometimes within the same thread.

Reached on her lunch break, Phoenix office manager Tanya Greer admitted she had heard of two nominees, had confidently named a third that turned out to be a Netflix limited series from 2023, and planned to spend the next four weeks pretending to have opinions on the rest. "I’ll watch the trailers," she said. "That counts."

The Best Actress field includes three performances that were widely praised, one that was widely tweeted, and one delivered entirely in close-up by a woman holding a single onion for ninety minutes. Critics called it "the year’s most fearless work" and "available on a service none of us actually pay for."

Notable snubs included the film your group chat agreed was "actually really good," the performance your sister wouldn’t shut up about, and a wildly popular musical biopic whose exclusion is already being framed by its star as "a stand against something." The Academy declined to specify what.

Neon and A24 are now expected to spend the next month sending screeners to people who have not opened a screener envelope since 2019, while the rest of the country mentally prepares to watch a three-hour-and-fifteen-minute ceremony to find out which of these movies they haven’t seen wins the big one. The over/under on host references to a film fewer than 4% of viewers have watched is currently set at eleven.

The ceremony airs March 8. Roughly 17 million Americans are expected to tune in, 16 million of whom will, by hour two, be quietly checking their phones to see if the lighthouse keeper movie is on Hulu yet.

Grammy Rehearsals Begin; Camera 4 Permanently Assigned to Taylor Swift’s Face

Tara Sparks
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Grammy Rehearsals Begin; Camera 4 Permanently Assigned to Taylor Swift’s Face

LOS ANGELES, CA — Grammy producers entered the first day of rehearsals at Crypto.com Arena on Monday by walking through the show’s most technically demanding sequence: the four-second cutaway in which Taylor Swift will react, organically and from the heart, to whatever happens in any given category.

Camera 4, a robotic crane unit nicknamed ‘Mother’ by the broadcast team, has been programmed with seventeen preset moves spanning the full Swift emotional spectrum, from ‘genuine surprise mouthed at table-mate’ to ‘hand over mouth while standing for someone else,’ to a contingency setting one producer described only as ‘the Beyoncé one.’

‘We rehearse the spontaneous reactions the most, because those are the ones people screenshot,’ said Marisol Quennell, a segment producer who has worked on the broadcast since 2019. ‘Last year we did forty-seven takes of a single gasp. By the end her stand-in was doing it in her sleep. That’s the level we’re at now.’

Other carefully blocked candid moments include Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘I can’t believe it’ head-shake, Chappell Roan’s ‘I’m not going to do a bit, I’m just going to walk up there normally’ walk, and a roughly two-second window in which the camera will find Jack Antonoff somewhere in the room, regardless of whether he is nominated for anything.

The Recording Academy has also added a new rehearsal block for what producers are internally calling ‘the moment,’ an unspecified surprise tribute that has reportedly been rehearsed in three separate configurations depending on which legend dies between now and February 1. A fourth backup configuration exists for legends who, per one staffer, ‘might die during the broadcast itself.’

Sabrina Carpenter, who is set to perform, spent four hours Monday rehearsing a transition in which she crosses the stage, hits a mark, and delivers a single eyebrow raise that her choreographer described as ‘the most expensive eyebrow raise in cable television.’ The eyebrow raise will not air if she loses Record of the Year, at which point a backup eyebrow raise has been blocked from a different angle.

The show’s director, asked whether anything at all on the broadcast will be unrehearsed, paused for several seconds before answering that the in-memoriam scroll speed is technically locked but the audience reaction to it ‘leaves room for a little jazz.’

Rehearsals continue through Friday, with Sunday reserved for what the call sheet lists as ‘authentic spontaneity walkthrough, full run.’ Doors open February 1 at 5 p.m. Pacific, by which point every accident on the broadcast will have been workshopped, timed, and signed off by legal.

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