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Elon Musk

Elon Musk certainly has a lot of ideas. Since making a fortune from PayPal in the original dotcom boom, he’s taken over Tesla, pushing forward production of electric cars, and founded SpaceX, the rocket company that now flies plenty of NASA payloads.

Two newer companies — the Boring Company, focused on digging holes for transit tunnels, and NeuraLink, which is developing brain-computer interfaces — also occupy his time. Then there’s the Hyperloop, the high-speed land travel design he’s encouraged others to develop. Somehow, this brash billionaire still has time to get himself into trouble on Twitter.

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Elizabeth Lopatto
An in-depth profile of Luke Farritor, 23-year-old IT Renfield.

“Luke’s résumé didn’t pass muster,” says one former government official, but obviously that doesn’t matter to DOGE. Farritor is “designated a GS-15, the highest salary rank for civilians, earning $167,603,” Bloomberg reports. He’s chauffeured around in a black SUV. And he’s betting that even if DOGE is a failure, he’s written his ticket for life: “To gamble like that shows you understand the theater of Silicon Valley.”

DOGE-Pilled

[bloomberg.com]

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Richard Lawler
Elon Musk says Samsung’s mystery $16.5 billion AI chip deal is for Tesla.

A regulatory filing surfaced Monday morning in Korea showing the underperforming electronics giant won an order to build chips for an unnamed large global tech company in a contract that runs through 2033.

Then, a few hours later, Elon Musk tweeted the arrangement was for Tesla’s “next-generation AI6 chip,” built at Samsung’s plant in Texas, confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg.

Update: Added info from Elon Musk’s tweet.

Tweet by Elon Musk reading “Samsung’s giant new Texas fab will be dedicated to making Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip. The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate. Samsung currently makes AI4. TSMC will make AI5, which just finished design, initially in Taiwan and then Arizona.”
Image: Elon Musk (X)
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Mia Sato
Media Matters is still fighting.

The left-leaning nonprofit watchdog has been a frequent target of Elon Musk and other Republicans for its reporting on the right wing media ecosystem. Its legal battles have left the group with mounting bills, concerns for staff safety, and hesitant donors, The New York Times reports.

“Unlike some major media entities that have recently caved to pressure, we understand that this battle is larger than us,” Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, said in a statement. “That’s why we continue to carry out our mission and fight in court.”

Everything Eater editors ate at the Tesla Diner in Los AngelesEverything Eater editors ate at the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles

Eater editors taste through half the menu at the new Tesla Diner in Los Angeles

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Jay Peters
Jack Dorsey says the process of purchasing Twitter was a ‘disaster’ for Elon Musk.

And for Twitter, too, he says in a new podcast with Rabble (aka Evan Henshaw-Plath), who hired Dorsey at Odeo. The specific part starts a little after 28 minutes.

Dorsey has also invested $10 million in a group Rabble is a part of called “and Other Stuff,“ according to TechCrunch. The group is working on “a common vision for the development of Nostr infrastructure and products.”

I spent 24 hours flirting with Elon Musk’s AI girlfriend

Now I’m going to bleach my soul and get myself to a nunnery.

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Andrew J. Hawkins
Tesla’s head of sales is outie.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Troy Jones, director of Tesla’s North American sales, is leaving after 15 years at the company. This comes after Tesla reported a steep drop in sales for the second quarter. Other execs have similarly been fleeing. Elon Musk fired Omead Afshar, who formerly led operations in North America and Europe. And the company’s director of human resources for North America, Jenna Ferrua, departed in June, according to the Journal. The C-suite is getting thin.

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Richard Lawler
“Now that he’s back into his businesses, he was never going to put her to be the head of an AI company at all.”

The Financial Times has this quote from an anonymous source who worked with both Elon Musk and ex-X CEO Linda Yaccarino.

It’s explaining the executive’s departure despite getting some advertisers back on X “with a gun,” and developing the X Money digital wallet and payments project that is reportedly still set for release later this year. A CFO who reported directly to Musk, the return of his focus after leaving the Trump administration, and xAI’s $33 billion acquisition all apparently played a role.

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Jess Weatherbed
Grok is coming to Teslas.

The xAI chatbot will arrive on Tesla vehicles by “next week at the latest,” according to Elon Musk, who previously said in January that it was “coming soon.” This wasn’t mentioned during last night’s live demo of Grok 4.

Tesla is already struggling with its Musk-associated image problem of course, but it’s not like Grok has had any “politically incorrect” meltdowns lately that could make it any worse.

A screenshot taken of a post Elon Musk made to X about Grok coming to Tesla vehicles soon.
A match made in... well. Lets just see if he delivers on that deadline.
Image: Elon Musk via X
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Dominic Preston
Starlink is getting closer to launching in India.

Elon Musk’s satellite connectivity tech just got the go-ahead from India’s space regulator, two months after getting approval from the country’s Department of Telecommunications.

It still needs to secure spectrum and clear some security tests, but an Indian launch — in the works since 2021 — is now almost an inevitability. The only thing we don’t know is how much the US government helped make it happen.

Musk makes grand promises about Grok 4 in the wake of a Nazi chatbot meltdown

The late evening live demo featured rambling on whether AI would be ‘bad or good for humanity.’

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Richard Lawler
Elon Musk says he’s formed a new political party.

Apparently following through on his threat to challenge Republicans who supported Donald Trump’s budget bill, Musk tweeted, “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.” He also said it will be ready next year -- a “consistently proven wrong” theme for Musk.

“One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” to hold a deciding vote on “contentious laws,” said Musk on Friday.

Screenshot: Elon Musk (X)
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Emma Roth
SpaceX is facing another harassment lawsuit.

Jenna Shumway, a former manager at SpaceX, accuses the company of failing to pay her as much as her male counterparts for similar work, as reported by TechCrunch.

In the lawsuit, Shumway also claims that one of her superiors, Daniel Collins, fostered a hostile work environment by beginning “a campaign of harassment and retaliation,” while also making “concerted efforts to terminate” her employment.

‘We are the media now’

Why Tesla’s robotaxis were dominated by Elon Musk superfans.

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Sean Hollister
Elon Musk “does not use a computer.”

Elon Musk’s lawyers claimed that he “does not use a computer” in a Sunday court filing related to his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. However, Musk has posted pictures or referred to his laptop on X several times in recent months, and public evidence suggests that he owns and appears to use at least one computer.

Musk, February 2024: “Just bought a new PC laptop”

Musk, December 2024: “This is a pic of my laptop”

Musk, May 2025: “Still using my ancient PC laptop”

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Lauren Feiner
X sues to block a New York law that would make it share how it monitors hate speech.

The Elon Musk-run platform alleges the Stop Hiding Hate Act “impermissibly interferes with the First Amendment-protected editorial judgments” of companies like X to decide how to moderate content. Platforms could face fines unless they disclose what X calls “highly sensitive and controversial speech,” which it says the state may not like. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals already blocked parts of a similar California law on First Amendment grounds, following a separate X challenge.

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Richard Lawler
Trump-Musk update.

An update on how the extremely public political breakup is going today, as protestors face off with federal immigration agents in Los Angeles.

  • Elon Musk deleted his tweet claiming Donald Trump prevented the release of Jeffrey Epstein files because he’s in them.
  • Trump told NBC News the Epstein links were “old news,” that he had no desire to repair their relationship, and when asked if it’s over, said, “I would assume so, yeah.”
  • The Washington Post cites a source claiming Trump referred to Elon as “a big-time drug addict” on a phone call.
  • A YouGov poll of 3,812 US adults found 41 percent of respondents supported the federal government ending Musk’s subsidies and contracts.
  • NASA and Pentagon officials reportedly urged competitors to develop SpaceX alternatives after Musk’s “terrifying” threat to decommission the Dragon spacecraft.