elon musk Archives

Monday

January 19, 2026

Does it really matter if Grok undresses us all?

I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin; I’ve been pretty and I’ve been plain – ugly, even. Throughout this, my self-esteem has stayed generally constant, as if you’re going to base it on something as ephemeral as physical beauty, you’re going to run out of road very quickly indeed. This objective attitude to my own appearance reminds me of a funny story from the infant days of the internet. Imagine my surprise one morning to receive a message from an unknown recipient informing me that they had film of me masturbating to online pornography which they would make available to a wider audience should I fail to pay a ransom.

Tuesday

January 13, 2026

Neal Pollack

Hegseth’s vision is more Starship Troopers than Starfleet Academy

“Welcome to Starbase, Texas,” Elon Musk said from the stage Monday night, as the crowd whooped. “This is a city. It’s actually legally a city that thanks to the hard work of the SpaceX team, we built out of nothing. And it’s now a gigantic rocket manufacturing system. For people out there who are curious to see it, we’re actually on a public highway, so you can come and visit. Drive down the road and see the epic hardware. I think this is the first time that a rocket development program has actually been on a public highway.” Musk was hosting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon leadership, currently traveling the country

Tuesday

January 6, 2026

Kelly Chapman

The sinister side of Grok

The X-native AI Grok exploded in popularity this weekend – as users discovered that its media tab was filled with requests to generate disrobed and scantily clad versions of images of women and children that people had posted publicly. “Put her in a bikini,” users asked the AI. Grok complied with these requests freely, with no meaningful oversight or guardrails in place, automatically generating images corresponding to every prurient prompt. The ensuing discourse quickly polarized. On one side were tech nihilists, arguing that this use of AI was inevitable and therefore unsurprising. After all, anyone can already download publicly posted images and manipulate them privately. On the other were mostly

Tuesday

December 16, 2025

Roger Kimball

America’s free-speech war on the EU

If I were a bookie, I would be making odds now about when the European Union will finally unravel and die. Unless there is an imminent and drastic course correction, the blessed event cannot be far off. I might need a Doomsday Clock akin to the one publicized by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Their clock hovers near midnight, which signifies nuclear Armageddon, the minute hand pushed closer or farther away from the blast depending on minatory world events. My clock would measure the EU’s proximity to implosion. Its recent decision to fine Elon Musk and his company X €120 million for “non-compliance with transparency obligations” has me nudging

Thursday

December 11, 2025

Avi Loeb

The scientific case for the existence of intelligent alien life

The foundation of science is based on the humility to learn, not the arrogance of expertise. When comet experts argued that the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS must be a familiar water-rich comet as soon as it was discovered in July, they behaved like artificial intelligence systems: only able to reflect the data sets they were trained on. For decades, the data set that established comet expertise largely comprised icy rocks in the solar system. My counterpoint is simple: humanity launched technological objects into space, so we must conclude that alien life forms could do the same. This possibility must be added to the training data set of comet experts when studying