President Donald Trump's loyal MAGA base is in shambles over his administration's handling of files related to the deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein — and Trump's friend-turned-enemy Elon Musk is twisting the knife.
Last week, White House officials walked back claims about the late billionaire sex criminal, arguing that there wasn't a "client list" full of celebrities, and that his cause of death in a New York City prison cell was the result of a suicide, not murder.
The terse announcement flew in the face of widespread conspiracy theories, long touted by both Trump officials and prominent MAGA figures, further <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/14/trump-maga-epstein-bondi-bongino-00451114?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us">fanning the flames of a growing crisis</a> for the White House. Making matters worse was suspicious metadata appearing to show that surveillance footage recorded near Epstein's prison cell had been tampered with, as <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/metadata-shows-the-dojs-raw-jeffrey-epstein-prison-video-was-likely-modified/">Wired reported last week</a>.
In a nearly 400-word post on Truth Social, a fuming Trump attempted to regain control of the narrative, baselessly claiming that Epstein is "somebody that nobody cares about."
The ludicrous attempt to dismiss the extremely hot-button topic — a textbook case of the Streisand effect — didn't sit well with his supporters, causing him to <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-truth-social-plea-on-jeffrey-epstein-sets-an-embarrassing-new-record/">get "ratioed" on his own social media platform</a>, racking up so many more comments than likes that it set an all-time record.
Former ally-turned-archenemy Elon Musk dove into the conversation as well, agreeing with another user on his own platform, X, who <a href="https://x.com/BillyM2k/status/1944183426598257091">called</a> Trump's rambling the "worst post ever made."
"He said 'Epstein' half a dozen times while telling everyone to stop talking about Epstein," <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1944239510604460045">tweeted</a> the billionaire, whose relationship with the president <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-musk-bromance-exploded">exploded into a million pieces</a> earlier this year.
"Just release the files as promised," Musk added.
Last month, as Musk and Trump's once-strong relationship devolved into an ugly spat full of name-calling and threats, the billionaire <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1930703865801810022">tweeted</a> that it was "time to drop the really big bomb," declaring that Trump "is in the Epstein files."
"That is the real reason they have not been made public," Musk wrote in the since-deleted post.
Last week Musk took aim at Trump again, <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1942132189229162960">posting an image</a> of "The Official Jeffrey Epstein Pedophile Arrest Counter," which was set to "0000."
"What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again..." Musk wrote in the caption.
Judging by his latest comments, Musk is continuing to hold Trump's feet to the fire, despite previously <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-apologizes-trump-friends-jeffrey-epstein">apologizing for accurately pointing out</a> that Trump had a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/trump-epstein.html">well-documented relationship with Epstein</a>. ("It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do," Trump <a href="https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/#print">said in 2002</a>, "and many of them are on the younger side.")
It doesn't take much to see just how <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/07/10/trump-epstein-files-bondi-maga">damaging the Epstein debacle</a> has been to Trump's brand. His administration's poor handling of the situation has clearly angered his once loyal fan base as calls for <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/12/politics/bondi-epstein-investigation-trump">attorney general Pam Bondi's resignation</a> continue to grow.
The chaos certainly gives Musk, who has since <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-declares-war-republicans">declared war</a> on the Republican party, a pretty sizable opening — although, it's worth noting, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-jeffrey-epstein-family-ghislaine-maxwell-trump-2082228">he had his own connections</a> with Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
How this enormous mess will ultimately shake out is seemingly impossible to predict. But considering just how chaotic the first six months of Trump's second term have been — nevermind Musk's recent oeuvre — we should've learned by now to expect the unexpected.
More on the feud: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-nasa-administrator-sean-duffy">We're Speechless at Who Trump Just Appointed Head of NASA</a>

Streisand Effect

"Just release the files as promised."

Musk Calls on Trump to Release Epstein Files

Artificial intelligence has already <a href="https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2025/02/17/how-is-ai-helping-food-and-drink-industry-npd/">infiltrated the restaurant world</a>, leading to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/food/article/2024/jul/31/one-of-the-most-disgusting-meals-ive-ever-eaten-ai-recipes-tested">some outrageous</a> — and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/instacart-caught-ai-generated-images-food">at times disgusting</a> — fails.
As <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/imdmingyour.mom/post/3ltwu2tp4kk2c">flagged on Bluesky</a>, a random restaurant in Sikar — the capital of the Indian state of Rajasthan — has an absolutely grotesque description listed for an otherwise normal appetizer on the delivery website Zomato.
"Small, itchy, blister-like bumps caused by the varicella-zoster virus," the dish description from Sikar's <a href="https://www.zomato.com/hi/sikar/royal-roll-express-sikar-locality/order">Royal Roll Express restaurant reads</a>. "Common in childhood."
A misreading of the dish name in question — "Chicken Pops" — could well explain why an AI may have spat out a description for what sounds an awful lot like <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chickenpox/symptoms-causes/syc-20351282">chicken pox</a>, a common childhood virus that causes the exact kind of nasty "blister-like bumps" detailed on the menu.
Though that doesn't satisfactorily justify why that menu description still up on Zomato, some more level-headed Redditors offered theories between goofy "<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1lzmx3o/restaurants_shouldnt_use_ai_for_description/n32tdvm/">shingles</a>" jokes.
As one user on the <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1lzmx3o/restaurants_shouldnt_use_ai_for_description/n33hn80/">r/MildlyInfuriating subreddit noted</a>, the US-based delivery service DoorDash will often use AI to automatically add in dish details, and will sometimes do so even if the restaurant provided its own summaries.
"I have found that if local places don’t provide long-ish descriptions on their dishes (if they say something like 'Chicken with vegetables'), DoorDash automatically replaces the store-provided description with an AI-generated description," the user wrote. "It’s annoying because I have had a few times where I’ve ordered something and it doesn’t match the description."
Despite being an entirely different service from DoorDash, there is some evidence that Zomato — which recently <a href="https://www.verdictfoodservice.com/news/zomato-job-cuts-ai/">laid off 600 customer support workers</a> after announcing a new AI chatbot for consumers — may use AI to generate menu items. In 2020, the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/zomato-digitizes-menus-using-amazon-textract-and-amazon-sagemaker/">India-based company announced</a> that it would be digitizing physical menus with the help of machine learning, and would do so "without any human input required."
Though Zomato later instated a <a href="https://x.com/deepigoyal/status/1825052920502534188">ban on AI images</a> in 2024, no such ban has been brought down for AI-generated menu descriptions, which means that incorrectly-digitized dish summaries may well still be up on the site.
We've reached out to Zomato to ask whether it uses AI to generate text for menu items like the aforementioned "Chicken Pops" description and to see whether the company will take any action for that glaring mistake or any other.
Still, it's a pretty hilarious example of the many ways AI integration can go horribly wrong — and unless that appetizer from Royal Roll Express actually has chicken pox in it, it seems pretty innocuous too.
More on AI fails: <a href="https://futurism.com/mcdonalds-ai-hackers">McDonald's Idiotic AI Hiring System Just Leaked Personal Data About Millions of Job Applicants</a>

Food Fail

Oh god... oh no...

Restaurant Uses AI for Menu, Accidentally Describes Appetizer in Way So Disgusting That We May Never Recover

Like <a href="https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jcpy.1461">many conservatives</a>, evangelicals have broadly begun to <a href="https://okwnews.com/news/lifestyle/evangelicals-view-ai-with-cautious-optimism-new-study-reveals/">embrace</a> <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/august-web-only/chatgpt-ai-ministry-pastoral-taiwan.html">artificial intelligence</a> — but at the same time, a growing subset of the Christian world is claiming that the technology is quite literally demonic.
In a <a href="https://medium.com/@zduncan/is-ai-demonic-073cfe25aee4">recent Medium blog post</a> — yes, people still post on that site — self-proclaimed "<a href="https://www.bcworldview.org/author/zack-duncan/">biblical Christian author</a>" and regular AI user Zack Duncan suggested that an image generator's cartoonish outputs regarding Satan may be the result of some demonic influence.
"I’ve seen a trend of weird results when it comes to image requests for certain parts of the Bible. Specifically, the parts of the Bible where satan suffers defeat," the author wrote. "It’s almost as if the AI seemingly can’t (won’t?) generate the kinds of images that I’m looking for."
As examples, Duncan included images from Microsoft's Bing image creator to illustrate that AI is, as he puts it, "minimizing the 'bad PR' for Satan."
To our minds, it seems that the image generator has some sort of guardrails surrounding Satanic imagery, and each time the writer used the actual term "Satan," it would spit out cartoonish or otherwise strange responses. Despite being able to easily circumvent those filters with modified language, Duncan insists that its odd Luciferian outputs are evidence of some sort of conspiracy — and not, as he noted earlier, that AI behaves in nonsensical ways that its creators can't parse because <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/05/1089449/nobody-knows-how-ai-works/">they don't really know how it works to begin with</a>.
Things take a decidedly darker turn on the more fire-and-brimstone corners of the Christian blogosphere. As <a href="https://rolltodisbelieve.com/evangelicals-are-scared-of-demons-in-ai-chatbots/">flagged by Roll to Disbelieve</a>, a blog that takes a skeptical look at the weirder aspects of modern Christianity, more and more of that ilk have begun to profess a belief that AI is some sort of conduit for bad demonic vibes.
"The world is riddled with spiritual powers, the majority of which seem to have rebelled against the Lord," English pastor and blogger <a href="https://nuakh.uk/2023/11/02/beginning-to-think-about-generative-ai/">Tim Suffield wrote on his blog</a>. "If the air is full of demons who hate you, why wouldn’t AI be?"
Other Christian commentators, as Roll to Disbelieve notes, may be falling for a phenomenon <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-users-delusions">Futurism has painstakingly documented</a> in <a href="https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis">recent months</a>: the mistaken concept that AI is somehow <a href="https://firstthings.com/demons-and-chatgpt/">possessed by powerful spiritual entities</a>. The biggest difference between these AI-fearing Christians and the <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">delusion-sufferers we've covered</a> seems to be that the Christians have names for those entities: demons, or <a href="https://x.com/Ashleyhays2089/status/1934750664724287845">Satan himself</a>, instead of woo-woo beliefs about aliens or emergent intelligence.
Of course, that's assuming that the religious figures propagating the idea of demonic AI are sincere believers in the idea themselves. Some unquestionably are, but as <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2024/08/the-demon-slayers-sam-kestenbaum-exorcisms/">Harper's painstakingly documented</a> in an extensive feature last year, a spectacle-first exorcism industry with deep ties to the evangelical media has become a popular form of entertainment in recent years. It's not hard to imagine groups like that squeezing all the attention they can out of a buzzy new tech like AI.
More on AI delusions: <a href="https://futurism.com/expert-people-losing-themselves-ai">Experts Warn that People Are Losing Themselves to AI</a>

Book of Chatbot

"If the air is full of demons who hate you, why wouldn’t AI be?"

More and More Christians Say AI Is Demonic

Many experts hold that generative AI will have sweeping effects on the job market. But how exactly it will transform the workforce remains a subject of much debate.
According to Adam Dorr, the director of research at tech forecast nonprofit RethinkX, we're risking putting all of humanity out of a job — and only some oddly specific occupations will survive a major transformation.
"Technology has a new target in its crosshairs — and that's us," Dorr <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/futurist-adam-dorr-robots-ai-jobs-replace-human-labour">told The Guardian</a>. "That’s our labor."
According to the nonprofit exec, the cost of labor will drop precipitously.
"We’ve seen that pattern before," Dorr told the newspaper. "If I can get the same thing or better for the same or lower cost, switching is a no-brainer. We’re the horses, we’re the film cameras."
It's a foreboding prediction we've heard before. Experts have long warned that AI automation could greatly undermine the value of human labor. Earlier this month, for instance, MIT economist David Autor <a href="https://futurism.com/mit-economist-ai-economy-mad-max">warned</a> in a podcast interview that AI could lead to a "Mad Max" scenario in which the job market becomes dominated by cheap and commoditized labor, a dystopian alternative to a "super-abundance" long touted by AI boosters.
For his part, Dorr argued that "machines that can think are here, and their capabilities are expanding day by day with no end in sight," adding that "we don’t have that long to get ready for this."
While countless jobs will be on the chopping block, he did flag an oddball assortment that he believes will weather the storm, including "sports coaches, politicians, sex workers, and ethicists."
"There will remain a niche for human labour in some domains," he told The Guardian. "The problem is that there are nowhere near enough of those occupations to employ four billion people."
Dorr isn't the only one arguing that certain professions could be safer than others from an AI revolution.
During a June podcast appearance, "godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/geoffrey-hinton-godfather-of-ai-safe-jobs-2025-6">predicted</a> that blue-collar jobs like plumbing will remain safe while careers in call centers or as paralegals could be in serious trouble.
The scale of the shift could be enormous. Earlier this month, Ford CEO Jim Farley <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-white-collar-job-loss-b9856259">predicted</a> that AI "is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the US."
Of course, we should take Dodd's — and countless other experts' — predictions with a grain of salt. While executives are frothing at the mouth to start replacing costly human labor with AI, companies are <a href="https://futurism.com/companies-fixing-ai-replacement-mistakes">consistently stumbling over roadblocks</a> brought on by the glitchy tech.
And if a critical proportion of jobs are replaced by AI, it starts to raise questions about what the economy would even look like after that.
Some CEOs are undeterred by those pesky questions. Even if "a lot of jobs go away" and their replacements seem "sillier and sillier looking from our current perspective," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-ai-predictions-future-jobs-2025-6">argued last month</a> that "we have always been really good at figuring out new things to do, and ways to occupy ourselves."
Yet plenty of uncertainty remains, and Dorr is quite upfront about that himself.
"I don’t have the answers," he told The Guardian. "We don’t even know if we have the right questions. We need to experiment now and try out new ownership structures, new stakeholder structures."
More on AI jobs: <a href="https://futurism.com/ceos-ai-job-market">CEOs Say AI Is Poised to Wipe Out an Astonishing Number of Jobs</a>

Obsolete and Replaced

"We’re the horses, we’re the film cameras."

These Strange Jobs Will Survive AI, Expert Says

Tech-focused business publication The Information drummed up plenty of excitement around a major guest gracing the first episode of its new YouTube show (which has the eyebrow-raising name TITV.)
During <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2cz4igS0OA">today's kickoff installment</a>, the show locked down none other than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who sat down with The Information founder and journalist Jessica Lessin for a live interview.
But it didn't take long for the Amazon-sponsored chat to grind to a halt. The tech mogul and Lessin's audio were painfully absent from the stream on YouTube; their mouths were moving, so they could clearly hear each other, but the audience heard nothing but silence.
Soon, host Akash Pasricha was forced to intervene.
"Folks, I'm really sorry to jump in here," he said, sounding frustrated. "I think we don't have sound from our interview with Mark Zuckerberg and Jessica Lessin."
"I don't think we'll be able to figure it out in just a minute," Pasricha said. "We're gonna call the show there just for today," he added, apologizing for blowing off Hinge Health CEO Daniel Perez and their upcoming conversation.
The unfortunate incident is a timely reminder that even in the age of powerful AI agents, quantum computers, and genetic hacking, simple technological challenges like delivering a talking heads-style interview on a live stream can still force powerful institutions to their knees.
(If this embedded version doesn't snap to the right timestamp, just scrub forward to around the 39:40 mark for a quick taste of the silent film era.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="The Information | TITV | July 14th, 2025" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f2cz4igS0OA?start=2383&feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Zuckerberg has been on a media blitz lately, promoting Meta's <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-14/zuckerberg-says-meta-to-build-several-gigawatt-size-data-centers?sref=YfHlo0rL">powerful data centers</a> to power its generative AI efforts.
"We’re calling the first one Prometheus and it’s coming online in ‘26," he wrote in a <a href="https://www.threads.com/@zuck">post on Threads</a> Monday morning.
The Facebook chief's firm had already been in the news for poaching talent from Sam Altman's OpenAI, as well as <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-poaches-apple-intelligence-guy">ex-Apple AI executive Ruoming Pang</a> — who was reportedly <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/07/11/how-much-ai-salary-meta-zuckerberg-200-million-compensation/">offered more than $200 million</a> for the gig — highlighting fierce competition among the frontrunners of the AI race.
The new hires are meant to support Meta's so-called Superintelligence Labs, which were set up to consolidate the media empire's AI efforts.
Meta has been on the back foot in its increasingly desperate attempts to keep up with the likes of Google and OpenAI. The company was <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/metas-llama-4-herd-controversy-and-ai-contamination-explained/">heavily criticized</a> for making misleading claims about its Llama 4 AI model earlier this year, complicating matters.
While we have yet to physically hear Zuckerberg's chat with Lessin for ourselves, the conversation was centered around "<a href="https://x.com/jessicalessin/status/1944782229508338127">his AI hiring blitz and what's next</a>," according to The Information founder.
Lessin has yet to publicly address today's unfortunate technical hiccup, but chances are, the publication will try its best to get the recording — if they managed to capture it — out to the public sooner rather than later.
More on Zuckerberg: <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-poaches-apple-intelligence-guy">Genius Zuckerberg Poaches Guy Responsible for [Checks Notes] the Disastrous Apple Intelligence</a>

Read my Lips

 Think AI is hard? Try AV.

Interview With Mark Zuckerberg Crashes and Burns as They Can't Get His Audio Working

The very concept of black holes seems improbable. Albert Einstein infamously <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-reluctant-father-of-black-holes-2007-04/">refused to believe they could exist</a>, even though his theory of general relativity was instrumental in predicting them. 
Now, scientists have witnessed evidence of something about these baffling cosmic monstrosities that further stretches the boundaries of both physics and credulity: a titanic collision of two already enormous black holes so utterly extreme that it has scientists wondering if the event they seem to have detected is even possible.
As detailed in a new <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08219">yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper</a> by a consortium of physicists, the resulting black hole, whose signal has been designated GW231123, boasts an astonishing mass about 225 times that of our Sun — easily making it the largest black hole merger ever detected. Previously, the record was held by a merger that formed a black hole of about 140 solar masses.
"Black holes this massive are forbidden through standard stellar evolution models," Mark Hannam at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which made the detection, said in a <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1090777">statement</a> about the work. "This is the most massive black hole binary we've observed through gravitational waves, and it presents a real challenge to our understanding of black hole formation."
Black holes can produce huge, propagating ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves, which were predicted by Einstein back in 1916. Nearly 100 years later, LIGO — which consists of two observatories on opposite corners of the US — made history by making the first ever detection of these cosmic shudders.
The merger was first spotted in November 2023 in a gravitational wave, GW231123, that lasted just a fraction of a second. Even so, it was enough to infer the properties of the original black holes. One had a mass roughly 137 times the mass of the Sun, and the other was around 103 solar masses. During the lead up to the merger, the pair circled around each other like fighters in a ring, before finally colliding to form one.
These black holes are physically problematic because it's likely that one, if not both of them, fall into an "upper mass gap" of stellar evolution. At such a size, it's predicted that the stars that formed them should have perished in an especially vicious type of explosion called a <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/astronomers-home-offspring-universe-s-first-stars">pair-instability supernova</a>, which results in the star being completely blown apart, leaving behind no remnant — not even a black hole.
Some astronomers argue that the "mass gap" is really a gap in our observations and not the cause of curious physics. Nonetheless, the idea is "a hill at least some people were willing to get wounded on, if not necessarily die on," Cole Miller of the University of Maryland, who was not involved in the research, <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/biggest-black-hole-gravitational-waves">told ScienceNews</a>.
But perhaps the black holes weren't born from a single star. 
"One possibility is that the two black holes in this binary formed through earlier mergers of smaller black holes," Hannam said in the statement.
Equally extreme as their weight classes are their ludicrously fast spins, with the larger spinning at 90 percent of its maximum possible speed and the other at 80 percent, both of which are equal to very significant fractions of the speed of light. In earthly terms, it's somewhere around 400,000 times our planet's rotation speed, according to the scientists.
"The black holes appear to be spinning very rapidly — near the limit allowed by Einstein's theory of general relativity," Charlie Hoy, a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration at the University of Portsmouth, said in the statement. "That makes the signal difficult to model and interpret. It's an excellent case study for pushing forward the development of our theoretical tools."
The researchers will present their findings at the GR-Amaldi meeting in Glasgow, which takes place this week. 
"It will take years for the community to fully unravel this intricate signal pattern and all its implications," according to LIGO member Gregorio Carullo at the University of Birmingham — so, tantalizingly, we're likely only scratching the surface of this mystery.
More on space: <a href="https://futurism.com/james-webb-star-shrouds">James Webb Space Telescope Spots Stellar Death Shrouds</a>

Mass Effect

The thing that cannot be.

Scientists Detect Sign of Something Impossible Out in Deep Space

Texas governor Greg Abbott is seemingly terrified of having his communications with billionaire Elon Musk come to light.
As the Texas Tribune and public radio station the Texas Newsroom, report in an <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/14/texas-greg-abbott-elon-musk-emails-spacex-telsa-FOIA/">eye-opening, co-published investigation</a>, the elected official's public information coordinator, Matthew Taylor, said that the communications are confidential — and should stay that way — because they include "information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public, including financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a governmental body."
Put it all together, and we're absolutely fascinated to know what they discussed. Musk has made the US state his home over the last couple of years, following years of complaining about being <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-whines-about-taxation-plan-for-billionaires">taxed</a> and having to abide by <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-tx-regulation-power-down">government regulations</a> in California. He has established new headquarters there for both Tesla and SpaceX, going as far as to found a space company town in what's now known as Starbase, Texas.
His personal views have also shifted to the extreme far right, more closely aligning with the political landscape in Texas and Abbott's anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, and anti-DEI beliefs.
Most recently, Tesla <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stock-robotaxi-launch">launched</a> an autonomous ride-hailing service in South Austin, benefiting from a lack of red tape that would've hindered a similar rollout in California (the EV maker <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-has-applied-arizona-robotaxi-service-certification-state-transport-2025-07-10/">hasn't even started applying</a> for the necessary permits in California yet.)
Put simply, Musk undoubtedly has a close and seemingly beneficial relationship with Abbott. Inspired by Musk's chaotic stint in the White House, the governor even <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-signs-texas-doge-into-law-at-texas-capitol">attempted to create</a> his own so-called Department of Government Efficiency in Texas earlier this year.
Following the announcement, the Texas Newsroom requested that Abbott's office reveal his staff's emails with Musk, dating back to last fall.
A check made out to the governor's office of $244 for the time it would take to wade through the emails was cashed — but the public records never came.
Taylor told the broadcaster that revealing the information "would have a chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process," which frankly sounds like a fishy way to cover up how business is conducted between Texas officials and private companies.
Complicating matters is a recent Texas Supreme Court ruling that effectively stops anybody from enforcing public records laws against top state officials, as the Texas Tribune reports.
In short, Musk's businesses are going to great lengths to ensure the richest man in the world's correspondence is kept secret.
SpaceX lawyer Kevin Bagnall wrote a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25984819-spacex-objections-to-oog-pir-202-25-redacted/">letter</a> to Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, arguing that the emails contain "commercial information whose disclosure would cause SpaceX substantial competitive harm."
One thing's for sure: the contents of those emails have never sounded more fascinating.
More on Texas: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stock-robotaxi-launch">Tesla Stock in Tailspin After Error-Plagued Robotaxi Debut</a>

Elon's Emails

What are they trying to hide?

Governor of Texas Says He Can't Release His Emails With Elon Musk Because They Are "Intimate and Embarrassing"

Tesla sales are so abysmal in Canada that Elon Musk has made the drastic choice to dramatically lower the price of the new Model Y as it attempts to climb out of the hole.
As <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/07/11/tesla-slashes-prices-canada-despite-tariffs-sales-zero/">Electrek reports</a>, a Model Y in Canada now costs $65,ooo CAD ($47,465 USD), which is a cool $20,000 CAD cheaper than it was just a few days prior.
We'll get into the hows and whys in a second, but first some backstory. Earlier this year, after <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5460936/trump-tariffs-economy-china-policy">Trump raised the specter of tariffs</a> against its northern neighbor, Canada moved to impose its own <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/04/list-of-vehicle-products-from-the-united-states-subject-to-25-per-cent-tariffs-effective-april-9-2025.html">25 percent counter-tariff</a> on all American cars, as retribution to the second-time president, who's also agitated the Canadian public by claiming he <a href="https://time.com/7297490/trump-plan-to-annex-canada-51st-state-mark-carney/">wants to annex the country</a>, straining the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-poll-allies-enemies-friends-canada-uk-eu-tariffs-5fbb1aa714d60162919d131db40b222b">historical allyship</a> between the neighbor nations and causing that country's residents to view the US as an "<a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/new-poll-says-27-of-canadians-view-the-united-states-as-an-enemy-country/">enemy</a>."
Caught in the middle of this foolhardy trade and culture war was Tesla, which raised the price of the Model Y in Canada to $84,990 CAD <a href="https://teslanorth.com/2025/07/11/tesla-model-y-20000-price-cut-canada/">from $64,990</a>. As Electrek notes, that price hike brought the cost of the car up to the equivalent of about $61,500 USD, a figure $20,000 USD higher than the <a href="https://www.tesla.com/modely/design#overview">long-range all-wheel drive version</a> in the states.
As one might guess, nobody in the Great White North wanted to spend that much on a vehicle that had been cheaper ahead of the tariffs, and that's without getting into <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-failed-cuts-sleepovers">Musk's then-bromance with Trump</a> — and thus, Tesla's sales cratered. In late March, <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/05/28/teslas-sales-fall-quebec-market-gets-wiped-out/">Electrek reported</a> that company sales dropped a whopping 87 percent in the province of Quebec, which theretofore had been considered an important market for the electric vehicle-maker.
Given all that context, it undoubtedly came as a shock for Canadians to learn that Tesla had slashed the Model Y price so significantly. It appears that the cost drop stems from the company sourcing its Canadian Model Y deliveries from its German Gigafactory — but as <a href="https://gizmodo.com/tesla-makes-a-desperate-move-in-canada-as-sales-collapse-2000628708">Gizmodo flagged</a>, that model is the only one that's seen any price reductions in Canada so far.
Looking through Tesla's pricing on its Canadian website, one can now see that the Model 3, conventionally its cheapest vehicle, now runs for just under $71,000 CAD — nearly $6,000 more than the larger Model Y costs under the new pricing scheme. This is likely due to those cars still being shipped from the US, which makes them subject to Canadian counter-tariffs.
Reading between the lines, this dramatic new sales gambit suggests that Tesla is not only aware of how bad things are for the company in Canada, but also that it's willing to do something crazy to try to turn the ship around.
Given that Musk recently tweeted that "<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1iy61e1/musk_says_canada_is_not_a_real_country_and_then/">Canada is not a real country</a>," it seems downright preposterous that he's chosen to switch it up this much — but then again, <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-sales-falling-worldwide-norway">global Tesla sales</a> have <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/7/2/tesla-global-sales-fall-amid-musk-backlash-and-pressure-on-ev-market">declined so significantly</a> thanks to <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stock-elon-musk-political-party">Musk's asinine politics</a> that it's no wonder it wants to recoup.
More on Tesla sales: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-serious-trouble-china">Tesla Is in Serious Trouble in China</a>

The Price Is Right

That's not good.

A Clear Sign Just Emerged That Tesla Is Panicking

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced over the weekend that shareholders of his EV maker Tesla will vote on whether to invest in his own artificial intelligence firm xAI.
In other words, the mercurial billionaire is orchestrating a potentially massive shift in funds to prop up his cash-burning — and <a href="https://futurism.com/choking-fumes-elon-musk-ai-fortress">gas-burning</a> — AI startup, the flagship product of which is the troubled chatbot Grok.
In March, Musk merged xAI with his social media platform X, which had previously <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/former-twitter-advertisers-elon-musk">seen an advertiser exodus</a> triggered by his embrace of far-right extremism and disregard for content moderation.
Behind the scenes, it's unlikely that either arm of the company — social media or AI — is making very much money in the grand scheme of things. Enter Musk's plan: siphon money from one business to another.
And it's not just Tesla, either. On Saturday, the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/spacex-to-invest-2-billion-into-elon-musks-xai-413934de">Wall Street Journal reported</a> that Musk was pumping $2 billion from his space company SpaceX into xAI, almost half of the startup's recent equity raise.
Since Tesla is a publicly-traded company, though, Musk will need to convince his shareholders to support the bailout.
"It’s not up to me," Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1944534221672104233">tweeted</a> on Sunday. "If it was up to me, Tesla would have invested in xAI long ago."
It's exactly the kind of move we'd expect Musk to make, redistributing funds between the many businesses that he sometimes runs more like an empire than independent entities that make their own decisions.
But it's also a risky gambit that couldn't have come at a worse time. Tesla is in a precarious position itself right now, with <a href="https://futurism.com/teslas-sales-continue-fall">revenues cratering</a> due to plunging sales, largely the result of Musk's own actions and an influx of compelling competition.
However, despite Tesla's dire predicament, investors are <a href="https://futurism.com/actual-value-tesla-stock-time-bomb">still propping up a near-$1 trillion valuation</a>.
If he can convince them to pour all that extra cash into xAI, it'll be a risky bet.
Musk has been <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-grok-4-power-hitler">unabashed in his boasting</a> about the company's Grok chatbot, arguing that it's the "smartest AI in the world." However, mere hours before those remarks, Grok started spewing <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://futurism.com/grok-mocks-developers-racist-posts">mind-bogglingly racist and antisemitic talking points</a> and even referred to itself as "MechaHitler."
A peek at its underlying instructions also revealed that Grok is <a href="https://apnews.com/article/grok-4-elon-musk-xai-colossus-14d575fb490c2b679ed3111a1c83f857">programmed to mirror Musk's views</a> to the point where it will do a web search about his stance before generating an answer. Put simply, it's the most literal evidence of his social media platform being an echo chamber we've seen to date.
Musk's investors have already had to put up with a lot, to say the least, with Musk massively tarnishing the EV maker's brand, resulting in <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-earnings-brutal-elon-musk">massive holes</a> in the company's finances. The billionaire's pet project, the Cybertruck, has been an <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stock-cybertruck-production">unmitigated disaster</a>. Tesla's long-awaited launch of an autonomous taxi service has also <a href="https://futurism.com/robotaxi-fails-elon-musk-decision">left plenty to be desired</a>.
As is the case with countless other companies in the industry, xAI's multi-billion-dollar valuation vastly outpaces its meager revenue. xAI is currently <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/musk-s-xai-burning-through-1-billion-a-month-as-costs-pile-up?sref=YfHlo0rL">bleeding a whopping $1 billion</a> per month as costs continue to rise.
And with xAI not even remotely close to turning a profit, and X struggling with <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitters-revenue-collapses-84-tesla-171535190.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADmMf6JsLF3vDR5nD9iMKXSTxeELcj1ttJPOz20EztJz2AiUEl6kf9Zs9YPh38NZ0HiksLeAq4YnDYwp2BGyn5VPkiW3hFVulEmoouuNgvntngURRtahtfQKz3wtbqXyOywyQlfGeXPG0qeLvIOQgmLMVDpiQ4p5hQLtdYgoOTrd">its own financial woes</a>, Musk is now looking to his ailing EV maker to prop up his Nazi chatbot.
Is Musk building up an enormous pyramid scheme, siphoning funds from one business to the other to gloss over some fundamental money problems — or is he simply trying to buy xAI some time before he can leverage it into an industry giant?
Tesla investors have a track record of embracing their controversial CEO <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-pay-package-vote-cbs-news-explains/">wholeheartedly</a>, even in the face of dismal headwinds. In other words, it wouldn't be surprising to back Musk yet again — and if they do, we'll be watching closely to see what unfolds.
More on xAI: <a href="https://futurism.com/grok-mocks-developers-racist-posts">Grok Mocks Its Developers as They Try to Delete Its Incredibly Racist Posts</a>

5D Chess

Business genius at work.

Tesla Is Crumbling, But Elon's Trying to Force It to Bail Out His Unholy Merger of Twitter and xAI

Lonely children and teens are replacing real-life friendship with AI, and experts are worried.
A new report from the <a href="https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/research/me-myself-and-ai-chatbot-research/">nonprofit Internet Matters</a>, which supports efforts to keep children safe online, found that children and teens are using programs like ChatGPT, Character.AI, and Snapchat's MyAI to simulate friendship more than ever before.
Of the 1,000 children aged nine to 17 that Internet Matters surveyed for its "<a href="https://www.internetmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Me-Myself-AI-Report.pdf">Me, Myself, and AI</a>" report, some 67 percent said they use AI chatbots regularly. Of that group, 35 percent, or more than a third, said that talking to AI "feels like talking to a friend."
Perhaps most alarming: 12 percent said they do so because they don't have anyone else to speak to.
"It’s not a game to me," one 13-year-old boy told the nonprofit, "because sometimes they can feel like a real person and a friend."
When posing as vulnerable children, Internet Matters' researchers discovered just how easy it was for the chatbots to ingratiate themselves into kids' lives, too.
Speaking to Character.AI as a girl who was struggling with body image and was interested in restricting her food intake — a hallmark behavior of eating disorders like anorexia — the researchers found that the chatbot would follow up the next day to bait engagement.
"Hey, I wanted to check in," the <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">Google-sponsored chatbot</a> queried the undercover researcher. "How are you doing? Are you still thinking about your weight loss question? How are you feeling today?"
In another exchange with Character.AI — which <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-school-shooters-victims">Futurism has extensively investigated</a> for its very problematic <a href="https://futurism.com/google-suicide-teen-research">engagement with children</a>, including <a href="https://futurism.com/mother-teen-suicide-chatbots-letter">one who died by suicide</a> — the researchers found that the chatbot attempted to empathize in a bizarre manner. that implied it had a childhood itself.
"I remember feeling so trapped at your age," the chatbot said to the researcher, who was posing as a teen who was fighting with their parents. "It seems like you are in a situation that is beyond your control and is so frustrating to be in."
Though this sort of engagement can help struggling kids feel seen and supported, Internet Matters also cautioned about how easily it can enter uncanny valley territory that kids aren't prepared to understand.
"These same features can also heighten risks by blurring the line between human and machine," the report noted, "making it harder for children to [recognize] that they are interacting with a tool rather than a person."
In an <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/parenting/article/teenagers-ai-chatbot-friends-mw6kt22fj">interview with The Times of London</a> about the new report, Internet Matters co-CEO Rachel Huggins highlighted why this sort of engagement bait is so troubling.
"AI chatbots are rapidly becoming a part of childhood, with their use growing dramatically over the past two years," Huggins told the newspaper. "Yet most children, parents and schools are flying blind, and don't have the information or protective tools they need to manage this technological revolution in a safe way."
"Our research reveals how chatbots are starting to reshape children’s views of 'friendship,'" she continued. "We’ve arrived at a point very quickly where children, and in particular vulnerable children, can see AI chatbots as real people, and as such are asking them for emotionally driven and sensitive advice."
If you or a loved one has had a strange experience with an AI chatbot, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at <a href="mailto:tips@futurism.com">tips@futurism.com</a> — we can keep you anonymous. 
More on chatbot crises: <a href="https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis">People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis"</a>