Scientists were caught by surprise after discovering a massive flood of subglacial lakewater burst through Greenland's ice sheet, spilling copious amounts of water across its surface.
As detailed in a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01746-9">new paper</a> published in the journal Nature Geoscience, it's the first time such a phenomenon has been observed, highlighting the fierce power being stored in meltwater lurking beneath a thick sheet of ice.
The event also defies our predictions of how the Greenland ice sheet evolves over time, even when taking climate change and the accelerating melting of ice sheets into consideration.
"The existence of subglacial lakes beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet is still a relatively recent discovery, and — as our study shows — there is still much we don’t know about how they evolve and how they can impact on the ice sheet system," said lead author and Lancaster University PhD Jade Bowling in a <a href="https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/huge-hidden-flood-bursts-through-the-greenland-ice-sheet-surface">statement</a>.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Greenland subglacial lake outburst" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q3DlWjPMDlQ?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>
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The team analyzed data from several European Space Agency and NASA satellite missions to construct three-dimensional models of the area.
Over just ten days in 2014, they watched as a 278-feet-deep crater opened up across a 0.7-square-mile area, causing 23 billion gallons of water to flood out.
According to the statement, that's the equivalent of nine hours of water gushing over the Niagara Falls at its peak flow.
The gushing water caused a massive area, roughly twice the size of Central Park, of fractured and distorted ice to appear.
"When we first saw this, because it was so unexpected, we thought there was an issue with our data," explained Bowling. "However, as we went deeper into our analysis, it became clear that what we were observing was the aftermath of a huge flood of water escaping from underneath the ice."
The team is hoping to use the data to get a better sense of the effects this phenomenon has on the immediate area.
"Importantly, our work demonstrates the need to better understand how often they drain, and, critically, what the consequences are for the surrounding ice sheet," Bowling said.
As global warming continues to threaten the Earth's polar ice sheets, scientists are hopeful that these kinds of measurements can give us a better sense of how human activity is actively reshaping the planet.
"Satellites represent an essential tool for monitoring the impacts of climate change, and provide critical information to build realistic models of how our planet may change in the future," said coauthor and Lancaster University environmental data scientist Mal McMillan in the statement. "This is something that all of us depend upon for building societal resilience and mitigating the impacts of climate change."
More on ice sheets: <a href="https://futurism.com/research-melting-glaciers-activate-volcanos">Horrifying Research Finds Melting Glaciers Could Activate Deadly Volcanoes</a>

Ice Punch

Scientists have never seen anything like this.

Scientists Alarmed as Floodwater Punches Through Greenland's Ice Sheet

Email exchanges between Tesla and California regulators <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/30/tesla-robotaxi-permit-problems-california-00486269">obtained by Politico</a> reveal a comical discrepancy between what Elon Musk is saying his Robotaxi services can do publicly, and what the automaker is actually telling authorities behind closed doors. 
This week, Tesla <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/716867/tesla-robotaxi-san-francisco-launch">launched a ride-hailing service</a> in San Francisco, in what is being framed as an expansion of its Robotaxi efforts that started as an invite-only program in Austin, Texas last month, where it immediately began charging customers for rides. 
Note that we say it's a "ride-hailing service," because Tesla hasn't obtained all the necessary permits to operate a robotaxi service in California. The use of the term "robotaxi" is conspicuously absent in both the company's and Musk's messaging about the Bay Area roll-out.
Also, there's this detail: Tesla's not-a-robotaxis come with a human supervisor <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxis-human-drivers-bay-area">sitting in the driver's seat</a>, which is a step backward from its Austin program, which features a safety monitor sitting in the front passenger seat.
And for all of Musk's boasts of deploying a million robotaxis by the end of next year, Tesla is in reality walking such a precarious tightrope with regulators that it scrambled to apologize for one of its employees merely suggesting in a social media post that the automaker would be operating unsupervised rides in Los Angeles this year. It only had permission to operate a "transportation service" with regular cars from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
"Please know that Tesla is aware of the various permitting requirements," Casey Blaine, Tesla senior counsel of regulatory affairs, wrote in a groveling email to Miguel Acosta, the autonomous vehicle chief at the California Department of Motor Vehicles, per Politico. "We understand that drivered and driverless autonomous rideshare operations would require obtaining additional permits from both the DMV and the CPUC."
Apologizing for the incident, Blaine went on to frame the Tesla program as more like a ride-hailing service like Uber, according to Politico, using strikingly different language from Musk's public promises of a robotaxi service that would threaten the leader in the industry, <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/waymo-responds-elon-musk-robotaxi-map">Waymo</a>. In a glaring admission, Blaine said Tesla would use supervised, Full Self-Driving software that's "functionally the same" as the FSD available in regular Tesla cars. FSD is not capable of operating without a human behind the wheel, and is officially classified as driver assistance software.
To his adoring fans, however, Musk continued to keep up the charade — much to the chagrin of regulators. Before a July meeting with Acosta, Musk made a post on X saying that the Robotaxi service would come to the Bay Area "probably in a month or two," and claimed that it was just "waiting on regulatory approvals." But no recent applications had been submitted by the automaker, according to Politico. Before another meeting that month, Musk again boasted in an earnings call that he sought to launch a full-blown robotaxi service in the state by the end of year.
At other times, the automaker outright went behind regulators' back. Ahead of the San Francisco launch, Tesla had insisted that it would take a "phased approach" beginning by limiting rides to Tesla employees, before gradually expanding to their friends and family, and eventually, the general public. It reiterated these intentions as recently as last Thursday.
Then on Friday, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-robotaxi-bay-area-launch-san-francisco-memo-2025-7">Business Insider </a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-robotaxi-bay-area-launch-san-francisco-memo-2025-7">reported</a> that Tesla was jumping straight into inviting select Tesla owners into the program and charging them for rides — a clear violation of the agreed terms. CPUC spokesperson Terrie Prosper warned that Tesla can't use an autonomous vehicle to transport the public whatsoever, regardless of whether it has a safety driver and whether it charges for rides.
In November, Acosta reached out to Tesla after <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-self-driving-software-test-drivers-project-rodeo-experiences-2024-10">Business Insider</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-self-driving-software-test-drivers-project-rodeo-experiences-2024-10">reporting</a> previously came out about its secretive test driver program "Project Rodeo," in which it allegedly instructed participants to purposely get the cars into perilous situations and only intervene at the last moment.
Tesla's defense? That its cars weren't autonomous enough to "implicate" the guidelines in its decade-old safety driver permit. "Rodeo drivers are trained to always and immediately intervene whenever they believe their vehicles may be about to perform a behavior that may create an unsafe situation for themselves and/or other road users," Eric Williams, Tesla counsel of regulatory affairs, wrote in a letter to Acosta.
In short, Musk and Tesla are talking a big game to investors and its wide-eyed fans about how amazing its Robotaxis will be — but its private groveling with regulators suggests that it's fibbing to at least one of those groups.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-infinite-loop">Tesla Robotaxi Gets Stuck in Infinite Loop as Support Tries to Break It Out</a>

On Its Knees

Please, sir, don't punish our humble trillion dollar company!

These Behind-the-Scenes Emails From Tesla Meekly Begging the State of California to Allow Its Horrible Robotaxis Are Unintentionally Hilarious

Martin Eberhard, one of the original cofounders of Tesla — who actually started the company and didn't retroactively bestow himself a title giving that impression, unlike a certain billionaire — isn't too pleased with his baby's newest crowning jewel: the <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-aging-poorly">Cybertruck</a>.
In comments made in a recent interview with YouTuber Kim Java <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/07/28/tesla-founder-disapointed-musk-canceled-25000-ev-dumpster-lookin-truck/">spotted by </a><a href="https://electrek.co/2025/07/28/tesla-founder-disapointed-musk-canceled-25000-ev-dumpster-lookin-truck/">Electrek</a>, Eberhard vented his frustration with Tesla's recent direction — which is when the highly heterodox pickup truck caught a stray.
"I am actually disappointed that Tesla canceled its low-end car program," he said in the interview. "Because that's what the world needs — not a truck that looks like a dumpster."
Eberhard cofounded Tesla with Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Musk joined the next year after investing $6.5 million in the startup, and became chairman of the board.
They were hardly ever on good terms. The first major blow was dealt by Musk, who sacked Eberhard as CEO in 2007, eventually stepping into the role himself. Eberhard clapped back by suing Musk in 2009 for libel and defamation, and later settled out of court. As part of that settlement, Musk was allowed to call himself a cofounder of Tesla. 
There's still bad blood between the two, and Eberhard has occasionally been publicly critical of Musk. In 2023, for example, Eberhard took a dig at Musk's alleged hot temper and <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-wanders-tesla-factory-firing-workers">hair-trigger firings</a>.
"I'm a believer of treating employees with respect, and I'm not into random firings and things like that," Eberhard said in an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2">interview with </a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2">Business Insider</a>, ruminating about how he would run things instead. "So maybe the culture inside the company would have been a little bit nicer."
His latest criticism is one echoed by many of Tesla's investors and even its fans: that it's sat on its <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-tesla-make-cheaper-car">promise</a> of delivering an affordable, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-mocks-idea-affordable-25000-tesla">$25,000 EV</a>. Proponents argue this would unlock millions of more customers that were reluctant to buy EVs due to their price and rescue the company's faltering sales.
Recent <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/07/24/elon-musk-tesla-new-affordable-electric-car-model-y/">comments</a> from Musk, however, have all but confirmed <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/03/13/tesla-upcoming-cheaper-electric-car-stripped-down-model-y/">reports</a> that Tesla is <a href="https://futurism.com/reuters-tesla-model-2">abandoning the idea</a>, despite teasing it for years. And in retrospect, the Cybertruck should've been a clear death knell. It's in every respect a giant F-U to sensible, frugal-minded buyers. It's large, heavy, expensive to maintain, and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/thousands-cybertrucks-recalled-power">infamously</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-held-together-glue">unreliable</a>. When it launched, it cost an eye-watering $100,000, and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-cheaper-slower-cybertruck-worse-deal">cheaper versions</a> that have since been released are still well within the luxury SUV price range with the tradeoff of being a downgrade in every way possible. And with its staggeringly poor sales, which in the second quarter <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-sales-dead-water">collapsed</a> by more than 50 percent from the year before, Eberhard may be getting the last laugh.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-aging-poorly">The Cybertruck Is Aging Like Fast Fashion on Temu</a>

Trash Talk

That's a little mean to dumpsters.

Original Tesla Cofounder Roasts Cybertruck for Looking "Like a Dumpster"

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has allegedly been stiffing small businesses, causing some of them to file for bankruptcy.
According to an <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/31/us/elon-musk-company-unpaid-liens-invs">investigation by CNN</a>, contractors have filed liens — claims of possession of property until a debt is paid off — for more than $110 million against Tesla over the last five years. The company still owes dozens of businesses more than $24 million.
Worst of all, many of these firms are mom-and-pop operations, making them extremely vulnerable when a contractor like Tesla simply doesn't pay up after they've already put their limited resources into a service.
The investigation highlights how Musk's firms are systematically taking advantage of their contractors — a pattern, strikingly, that's <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/13/politics/trump-small-business-owners">very similar to the longstanding business practices</a> of US president and former Musk ally Donald Trump.
And it's not just Tesla — the billionaire's social media platform Twitter, since renamed X, also allegedly <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/elon-musk-twitter-rent-payment-commercial-real-estate-goldman-sachs-2023-6">stopped paying rent</a> on its offices in San Francisco, and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/21/tech/twitter-bonus-lawsuit">failed to pay out annual bonuses</a>. Its "extreme belt-tightening" required "nearly everyone to whom it owes money to sue," as attorney Ethan Jacobs <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/03/twitter-faces-lawsuit-over-alleged-non-payment-for-office-services-in-four-countries">wrote in a 2023 court filing</a>.
Musk also oversaw brutal cost-cutting efforts as the unofficial head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in DC, pulling out the rug beneath entire agencies in a complete disregard for social norms and the fate of regular people.
It's become so common for Tesla not to pay up, even one of its lawyers admitted that Tesla takes "some time to pay," including legal bills, during a bankruptcy proceeding against the carmaker last year, as quoted by CNN.
Tesla's construction of its enormous Gigafactory in Austin, in particular, has left countless broken promises and small businesses in distress in its wake.
Many businesses CNN reached out to, which filed liens and lawsuits against Musk's companies, weren't willing to go on the record for fear of retaliation, pointing to his <a href="https://futurism.com/leaked-text-elon-musk-woman-many-babies">infamous wielding of non-disclosure contracts</a>.
Some firms said they were still hoping to be paid. Others have already written off the losses.
Many of them pointed to the many ways Tesla tries to wriggle out of having to pay them through convoluted language in its contracts that often only lawyers can make sense of.
All of those broken contracts and unpaid labor have understandably left a sour taste in the mouths of many small-time contractors and businesspeople.
"[Musk's] goal is to run through everything now — he doesn’t care what or who that impacts — to save the future of the world," one entrepreneur told CNN. "Tesla was probably one of the only companies we did business with where it just felt like they absolutely did not care about putting a company out of business."
Musk's systematic unwillingness to pay the firms on which his empire is built has shocked legal experts.
Jacobs told CNN that he was shocked that Musk was brazen enough to have "a practice of not paying people until they sue."
"They were essentially saying that they just decided not to pay until they had to," he said, referring to former Twitter executives under Musk. "It’s not the way I have generally seen people doing business."
More on Elon Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-mocks-employee-public">Elon Musk Publicly Kicks His AI Employee's Legs Out From Under Him</a>

World's Richest Scammer

Shameful.

Elon Musk Accused of Stiffing Small Businesses for Millions of Dollars, Causing Some to File for Bankruptcy

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is making some very grandiose statements amid his <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-openai-poach-meta">ludicrously expensive</a> quest to gain a lead in the AI industry.
It's easy to get caught up in the <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-researcher-declines-1-billion-offer-meta-mark-zuckerberg">human drama</a> of his talent hunt. But in the very first lines of a new <a href="https://www.meta.com/superintelligence/">public letter</a> about his so-called Superintelligence Lab, the tech founder made a claim that's either a staight-up fib, a very generous reading of a situation, or a clue that he's closer to enacting profound change in the world than almost anyone realizes.
Specifically, the exec boasted that in recent months, Meta has "begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves" — a bold claim that Zuckerberg suggests is a precursor to "developing superintelligence."
Because the Meta CEO declined to go into specifics with that vague claim, it's hard to say exactly how revolutionary that progress is.
Taken at face value, "self-improving AI" has, to some extent, already been observed, though only so far in limited domains.
Known as recursive self-improvement, this formerly-theoretical process involves AI systems that develop the ability to improve themselves without human intervention. Back in 2023, researchers from Nvidia and a consortium of American universities did exactly that <a href="https://the-decoder.com/minecraft-bot-voyager-programs-itself-using-gpt-4/">when they built Voyager</a>, a Minecraft bot that learned to rewrite its own code continuously using <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/gpt-4-passed-turing-test">OpenAI's GPT-4</a> large language model (LLM).
More recently, Google DeepMind researchers launched AlphaEvolve, another <a href="https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-coding-agent-for-designing-advanced-algorithms/">self-improving AI system</a> that was similarly helmed as a <a href="https://the-decoder.com/minecraft-bot-voyager-programs-itself-using-gpt-4/">step towards artificial general intelligence</a> (AGI) or even superintelligence.
In Zuckerberg's letter, which was posted in tandem with an <a href="https://x.com/AIatMeta/status/1950543458609037550">eerie video of the exec</a> droning on about how "personal superintelligence" will one day be your best friend, details about Meta's purported "glimpses" at self-improving AI are quite literally nonexistent. Mentioned as an aside and then abandoned in favor of uninspired copy that very much sounds like it was written by a chatbot, the concept of an AI that can improve itself without humans isn't even defined, much less explained.
If an AI really could improve itself in meaningful ways, it would be an immense accomplishment — and one that may well precede or even mark the beginning of what some experts call the "technological singularity," a hypothetical future moment at which technology starts to self-improve at a rate so rapid that it outstrips human understanding.
But left as vague as it was, it seems like Zuckerberg likely wants readers to draw their own conclusions that his efforts are making immense strides, without being accused of <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-employee-claims-agi">actually saying as much</a>. Indeed, in an <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/meta-earnings-superintelligence-q2-2025/">investor call</a> that occurred the same day the CEO dropped his video and accompanying letter, he didn't even mention those self-improvement "glimpses" and instead said Meta is in the process of developing such models.
We've reached out to Meta to ask for more clarity about those alleged glimpses, but if they really did happen, we kind of doubt the company is gonna share too many details about them with us.
More on Meta: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-researcher-declines-1-billion-offer-meta-mark-zuckerberg">AI Researcher Declines $1 Billion Offer From Mark Zuckerberg</a>

Self Help

Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence.

Zuckerberg Says Meta Is Now Seeing Signs of Advanced AI Improving Itself

Once upon a time, in their <a href="https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/publications/aclu_report_bigger_monster_weaker_chains.pdf">startling report</a> titled "Bigger Monsters, Weaker Chains," ACLU analysts Jay Stanley and Barry Steinhardt argued that the US was quickly becoming a full-blown "surveillance society," where advanced technology and crumbling regulation come together to create the kind of world that was previously the domain of dystopian science fiction.
"The fact is, there are no longer any technical barriers to the Big Brother regime portrayed by George Orwell," they wrote.
That was in 2003. In the two decades since, the tech sector has unleashed a tidal wave of innovations like <a href="https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol74/iss4/2/">targeted algorithms</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/10/05/google-new-location-tracking-warning-pixel-9-pro-pixel-9-pro-xl-pixel-9-pro-fold/">always-on location sharing</a>, <a href="https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/07/18/nypd-fdny-clearview-ai-ban-columbia-palestinian-protest/">police face scanners</a>, <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8344756/">biometric passports</a>, and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nypd-spy-labor-day-parties-drones">surveillance drones</a> — and that's just the short list.
Adding to the technological horror show is a troubling new system known as "WhoFi," a high-tech apparatus that can track humans through Wi-Fi.
A team of researchers at the Sapienza University of Rome recently <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12869">released a paper</a> outlining a new system capable of detecting "biometric signatures" through distortions in Wi-Fi signals. Notably, the system can surveil humans regardless of lighting conditions, and can sense them through walls.
The researchers say that WhoFi can capture "rich biometric information," identifying individual people with a 95.5 percent accuracy rate.
"Unlike optical systems that perceive only the outer surface of a person," the team writes, "Wi-Fi signals interact with internal structures, such as bones, organs, and body composition, resulting in person-specific signal distortions that act as a unique signature."
Though the researchers say that Wi-Fi is a "non-visual" medium, and therefore "privacy-preserving," the threat to personal privacy is immense. For starters, if deployed in real life, it wouldn't be the only gadget watching our every move, but part of a constellation of existing devices already hard at work tracking our every move.
By 2021, there were an estimated <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL8N35O0IE/">85 million</a> security cameras in operation across the US, and an additional <a href="https://statinvestor.com/data/20988/number-of-smartphone-users-in-the-us">264.9 million</a> cell phones — each with their own camera and microphone, ready to record <a href="https://apnews.com/article/coldplay-kiss-cam-viral-public-event-privacy-e768214f389bc788dcc539a00bf066da">anytime, anywhere</a>.
As of 2022, there were likewise at least 80 "<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/ending-fusion-center-abuses">fusion centers</a>" in the US, facilities where local, state, and federal police, along with <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/publication/facilitating-private-sector-engagement-fusion-centers">for-profit companies</a>, come together to share all kinds of data, analysis, and resources with one another. (In February, a collaboration over facial recognition software at a <a href="https://futurism.com/police-facial-recognition-backfires-convict-murderer">fusion center in Ohio</a> went awry when a judge ruled the team's AI-generated "evidence" inadmissible.)
True, WhoFi is just a research project for now. But so were present-day surveillance technologies like <a href="https://www.ucf.edu/news/human-analytics-company-licenses-innovative-ucf-developed-facial-recognition-technology/">facial tracking</a>, <a href="https://sheffield.ac.uk/cs/research/our-impact/speech-recognition">speech recognition</a>, and <a href="https://news.asu.edu/20220719-entrepreneurship-asu-entrepreneurs-develop-smart-street-cameras">license plate readers</a> before they became ubiquitous. In our world of <a href="https://jacobin.com/2022/08/silicon-valley-privatization-future-big-tech-transportation/">technological superprofits</a>, it's likely only a matter of time before your router, too, begins tracking your every move.
More on surveillance tech: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-database-migrant-dna">Trump Admin Announces Plans to Build Database of Migrant DNA</a>

Ghost Net

"Wi-Fi signals interact with internal structures, such as bones, organs, and body composition."

Alarming New System Can Identify People Through Walls Using Wi-Fi Signal

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has a message for the women of the world that's disgraceful even by his <a href="https://futurism.com/civil-rights-groups-horrified-elon-musk-racist">dumpster</a>-<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-deletes-tweet-roasting-disabled-twitter-employee">tier</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-deletes-tweet-ex-wives-responsible-collapse-civilization">standards</a>: that they're designed to be captured or bartered as property.
In a bizarre exchange on X-formerly-Twitter, Musk replied to a post by Morgonn McMichael, an anti-LGBTQ influencer with <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/tv/meet-morgonn-mcmichael-cancelled-influencer-29852413">ties to far-right groups</a>.
"Why do liberal white women hate white people so much?" <a href="https://x.com/morgonnm/status/1950235059442896963">McMichael asked</a>, gaining over millions of impressions that can lead to <a href="https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-creator-revenue-program-x-premium-engagement-change">huge payouts</a> thanks to Musk's new policies.
"They've been programmed to do so by their teachers and the media," the world's richest man <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1950264915182096830">drooled in response</a>.
It's the kind of <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-fallout-tweet">hard-hitting insight</a> Musk has come to be known for since he <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/banks-elon-musks-twitter-screwed">took over the platform</a> back in October of 2022. But a response to Musk's brilliant missive — and the tech tycoon's response — is what really raised eyebrows.
"Women are built to be traded to another tribe (or captured) and slide seamlessly into their new culture," <a href="https://x.com/DrInsensitive/status/1950319890466021382">wrote Dr. Insensitive Jerk</a>, an anonymous account known for spouting <a href="https://x.com/DrInsensitive/status/1918406050329575871">eugenicist</a>, <a href="https://x.com/DrInsensitive/status/1755603391982731460">anti-democracy</a>, and <a href="https://x.com/DrInsensitive/status/1832150189949264154">racist</a> takes on X.
"20 years after they are captured, they are the matriarchs who enforce that culture. That is why women conform to the dominant culture, and thereby amplify that culture," the poster continues. "They think that keeps them safe, and they are correct, but only in the sort term. In the long term, they will be forced to remember they are white."
"Better they are reminded of that by white men, because the alternative is not so gentle," Dr. Insensitive concluded.
Musk, never one to shy away from reactionary drivel, reposted the <a href="https://x.com/DrInsensitive/status/1950319890466021382">vile screed</a>, boosting it to his 223 million followers. It'd be a shocking outburst at any moment, but feels particularly striking given the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-trump/683717/">renewed attention</a> on the relationship between Musk and other elites and the disgraced sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
Of course, his moves drew some criticism — as well as plenty of support on X, which under Musk's ownership has rapidly become a safe space for pretty much every genre of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/more-advertisers-to-leave-twitter">reprehensible hate speech</a> under the Sun.
"Retweeted by the man who has been divorced three times, pretty sure you’re not the tribe," <a href="https://x.com/leahnoelnielsen/status/1950634620002636116">quipped on user</a>.
However prominently their half-baked ideas appear on his platform, the tech mogul and his fellow travelers might benefit from a history lesson.
For decades, scholars studying the historical development of women in society have <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/027753959390076L?via%3Dihub">broadly agreed</a> that gender roles are determined by social, economic, and historical conditions; women aren't "built to be traded" any more than men are built to be chattel slaves.
Going back centuries, in fact, <a href="https://dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Marx/www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm">scholars have found</a> that primitive peoples customarily practiced marriage not for <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/09/why-we-should-abolish-the-family">personal gain</a>, but for the collective benefit of the tribe. It wasn't until the early days of class-based society — where social standing is decided by wealth, income, and occupation — that men began to view women as inferior, leading to the <a href="https://redsails.org/on-the-sex-trade/#fn4">kind of violence</a> that Musk seems to regard as a fact of life.
Indeed, it’s no coincidence: both slavery and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1371-8">sex trafficking</a> emerged at the <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/494218">same moment in history</a>, a fact Musk and his reactionary followers would do well to wrap their heads around.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-eugenics-startup">Elon Musk Using Eugenics Startup to Inspect DNA of Potential Babies for Intelligence</a>

Not Cool Bro

This one's disgraceful, even for Musk.

Elon Musk Shares Shockingly Sexist Tweet About Woman Being Property

These days, robots with <a href="https://futurism.com/robot-keytar-disguise">varying degrees of impressiveness</a> can <a href="https://futurism.com/robot-keytar-disguise">manage all kinds of tasks</a>. But two diminutive humanoids seen boxing with outsize gloves at the recent World AI Conference in Shanghai may take the cake.
In a <a href="https://x.com/hlntnr/status/1950740637944320079">video posted to X</a>, AI security researcher Helen Toner — who was, it should be noted, a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-board-member-fired-altman">driving force</a> behind the ultimately failed coup against CEO Sam Altman back in November 2023 — showed off the boxing ring prowess of two short-statured robots from the Chinese company Unitree.
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But Unitree did have the demo that impressed me most at the expo—two humanoids boxing. I’m actually not sure how much of this was autonomous vs. remote operated, but at a minimum the balance/stabilization must be automatic, and that’s impressive. Not perfect though (see 0:50) <a href="https://t.co/7llcN9uY86">pic.twitter.com/7llcN9uY86</a>
&mdash; Helen Toner (@hlntnr) <a href="https://twitter.com/hlntnr/status/1950740637944320079?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Known as the "<a href="https://www.unitree.com/boxing">Iron Fist King</a>," this new robot model has indeed made waves since <a href="https://www.popsci.com/technology/humanoid-robots-boxing-match/">Unitree unveiled it</a> in a splashy boxing tournament in May.
As Toner alludes in her post, these boxing bots aren't quite autonomous just yet. The robots are, for now, <a href="https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-humanoid-robot-perform-boxing">remote-controlled by human operators</a> who choreograph their ducks and punches.
Even so, the AI researcher was impressed with the robots' balance and stabilization mechanisms, which she noted in her tweet "must be automatic."
Along with that first match and the Shanghai demo, Unitree showed off the Iron Fist Kings to students at Hangzhou Qian Xuesen School in Hangzhou, China during yet another match between bots in May. Naturally, the kids ate it up.
"It's incredible," remarked one of the tykes when <a href="https://www.bastillepost.com/global/article/4870442-humanoid-robots-showcase-combat-skills-ahead-of-worlds-first-robot-boxing-match-in-hangzhou">interviewed by the Hong Kong newspaper Bastille Post</a>. "Now I really want to know how these robots can fight with each other."
It appears that same school, which is located in the town where Unitree is headquartered, has become something of a test market for the company's wares. Back in February, its better-known G1 humanoid robot was <a href="https://x.com/Neuzenai23/status/1894364224018915462">filmed dancing</a> with — and perhaps overshadowing — two people there.
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🚀Unitree G1 is dancing—LIVE with students!
At Hangzhou Qian Xuesen School, the Unitree G1 humanoid robot showcased its latest dance moves, synchronizing perfectly with students.
No CGI. No AI-generated effects. Just real robotics in action!<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UnitreeG1?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#UnitreeG1</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Robotics?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Robotics</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AI?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AI</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZWPg2eK3yR">pic.twitter.com/ZWPg2eK3yR</a>
&mdash; NEUZEN AI (@Neuzenai23) <a href="https://twitter.com/Neuzenai23/status/1894364224018915462?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2025</a></blockquote>
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At the AI conference in Shanghai, Toner didn't get a glimpse of G1, but she did see other companies' robots engaged in everything from <a href="https://x.com/hlntnr/status/1950737256685179366">playing tic-tac-toe</a> to <a href="https://x.com/hlntnr/status/1950735310091898953">cheerleading</a> with real pom-poms.
Still, she said that the boxing little robots were the "most impressive" of the bunch — and having seen footage them in three very different arenas, we have to agree.
More on robots: <a href="https://futurism.com/prototype-robot-cannabalize-other-robots">Scientists Create Prototype of Robot Designed to Cannibalize Parts of Other Robots and Build Them Into Itself</a>

Million Dollar Baby

Let them fight!

We Must Admit That This Video of Two Small Robots Punching Each Other With Boxing Gloves Is Pretty Awesome

We interrupt your regularly scheduled doomscrolling to bring you a new development from the blossoming world of child surveillance: the sneaker brand Skechers is selling new kids shoes that come with a hidden AirTag compartment, enabling parents to quietly track their meandering progeny at all times.
Readers, we're officially Skech'd out.
According to the sneaker company, the tiny Apple tracking devices can be slotted into a hole in the heel of the shoes that's accessed by lifting the sole. That's the only difference with the shoes in its newly dubbed "<a href="https://www.skechers.com/find-my-skechers/">Find My Skechers</a>" line — otherwise, they're visually indistinguishable from regular pairs. They were announced earlier this month, but weren't spotted until this week, when they were <a href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/07/30/sketchers-lets-parents-hide-an-airtag-in-kids-shoes">noticed by Apple Insider</a>.
Skechers seems to be aware of how creepy this all sounds, because its carefully worded marketing would have you believe that people want to use $30 AirTags to keep track of shoes that at most cost $60, and definitely not the kids that would be wearing them.
"Know where your kid's shoes are at all times and give yourself comfort of mind," reads one marketing line.
"See where your kid's shoes are with the Find My app," reads another.
"Each pair is designed with a secure, hidden pocket under the insole that perfectly fits an Apple AirTag®*, so you can always know where their favorite shoes are."
To be clear, the "Find My Skechers" are for younger kids and not, say, teenagers, who are old enough to demand some privacy away from their parents. And Skechers may argue that it's merely filling an existing demand, as many parents already use AirTags to keep tabs on their toddlers. The peace of mind it could give a beleaguered mom or dad who has to wrangle a bunch of wandering ankle-biters is a powerful thing indeed.
Still, in our age of <a href="https://futurism.com/police-facial-recognition-random-arrest">mass surveillance</a>, be it through algorithms or cameras, it does feel a little icky. And who's to say this won't inspire other brands to start selling their own AirTag ready apparel, until we reach a point where teens or adults are expected to wear them, too?
"A lot of 12-year-olds are going to learn the phrase 'op sec' in the next few years," <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/johnrogers.bsky.social/post/3lv73k2fosc22">quipped</a> one user on Bluesky.
More nefariously, what if someone slips an AirTag into one of these compartments without consent — be they a parent or a stranger? What then? Maybe that sounds extreme, but Apple has had to constantly update its AirTag software to combat it <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/2/23707920/apple-google-airtag-stalking-bluetooth-tracker-alert-standard">being used as a stalking tool</a> — <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/indiana-county-apple-air-tag-stalking-charges/">which it has been</a> on an <a href="https://futurism.com/man-caught-airtag-stalking">alarming number</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/woman-apple-tracking-device-car">of occasions</a>.
Helpful as it may be, the shoes are a testament to how casual of a practice surveillance has become.
"Sync it to your drone for literal helicopter parenting," joked one user in The Verge's <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/716076/find-my-skechers-shoes-apple-airtag-tracking#comments">comments</a>.
More on privacy: <a href="https://futurism.com/dating-app-matches-browsing-history">Cursed New Dating App Matches You Based on the Most Deranged Thing We Can Imagine</a>

Sole-Searching

"Sync it to your drone for literal helicopter parenting."

Surveillance-Minded Parents Can Now Hide AirTags In Kids Shoes

Google has for years been harnessing the power of its Android smartphones to detect and measure tens of thousands of earthquakes.
In a new paper <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads4779">published in the journal Science</a>, researchers from the search giant described how they used motion sensors from its two billion-strong network of phones running Android between the years 2021 and 2024 to detect and alert quakes to users in almost 100 countries around the world.
Known as "Android Earthquake Alerts" (AEA), this early warning system has uses the smartphones' accelerometers to detect telltale vibrations as they happen and inform residents of quakes in their areas. With its <a href="https://crisisresponse.google/android-alerts/">two-tiered severity levels</a> — the weaker "be aware alert" for lower-magnitude quakes that sends typical push notifications, and the more pressing "take action alert" for moderate or extreme shakes that issues a loud beeping alarm that overrides "Do Not Disturb" settings — Google boasts that it has warned of more than 11,000 quakes.
While such a system has invariably saved lives, however, AEA is far from flawless.
In the case of Turkey's deadly quakes in 2023 that claimed more than 55,000 lives and injured over 100,000 people, the company now admits that it erroneously sent its lower-level notifications to hundreds of thousands of people — a massive failure during one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent history.
Both in the Science paper and in a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77v2kx304go">statement to BBC</a>, Google admitted that it only sent 469 "Take Action" alerts during the first of the two earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria in February 2023, and instead mass-notified half a million people with the "Be Aware" version, the less severe of the two warnings. Because the first earthquake occurred at around 4:15 in the morning, that quieter warning likely went unseen by people who were asleep and had their phones silenced.
That discrepancy appears to be the result of bad seismic readings from the phones' sensors. Initially, the system's algorithms estimated that the first quake was between a 4.5 and 4.9 on the moment magnitude scale (MMS), but it was actually a far more serious 7.8. During the second quake, the AEA also underestimated the magnitude, sending only 8,158 "Take Action" alarms and almost four million "Be Aware" alerts. (That shoddy algorithm, the company says, has since been updated.)
Until now, <a href="https://www.engadget.com/androids-earthquake-warning-system-failed-in-turkey-according-to-the-bbc-210612253.html">Google deflected blame</a> for the system's failure, even after the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66316462">BBC investigated</a> the AEA in the aftermath of the quakes and found it to be severely lacking.
Though this sort of admission is better late than never, it's still concerning that Google took more than two years to admit the system's failures during the Turkey earthquakes. With so many people relying on the tech monolith for life-saving alerts, taking accountability for the AEA's failures is paramount — and that accountability should have been much swifter.
More on disasters: <a href="https://futurism.com/extreme-heat-killing-thousands">Extreme Heat Is Killing Unfathomable Numbers of People Worldwide</a>