Cosmic Log
Billionaire Elon Musk hasn’t exactly had a smooth week in press relations, but today brought a string of feel-good tweets over a fake-news story on the ClickHole website.
The headline? “More Bad Press for Elon: The Car Elon Musk Launched Into Orbit Has Fallen Back Down to Earth and Crushed Malala Yousafzai.”
Between Model S recalls and Model 3 production snags, Tesla has been having a hard time lately — but not as hard as CEO Elon Musk made them out to be today in a hilarious series of April Fools’ tweets.
Even if billionaire Elon Musk ever decides to pack it in as CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, he can point to his success as a pitchman for flamethrowers.
Tonight he declared that his planned inventory of 20,000 fire-spitting guns was sold out, just four days after the sale opened on the Boring Company’s website.
At $500 a pop, that means he’s grossed $10 million for the company, whose main purpose is to lower the cost of excavation and open the way for high-speed transit tunnels.
But wait … there’s more: Musk said every buyer would get a free fire extinguisher, which was going for $30 extra when the sale began.
We thought Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, was kidding when he promised that his tunneling venture, the Boring Company, would follow up on its sale of 50,000 logo caps by selling flamethrowers.
We still thought he was kidding when it turned out there was a stealthy, password-protected page on the Boring Company website, offering flamethrowers for $600.
But Elon Musk is not kidding, folks — and the flamethrower is a steal at $500.
What would an R-rated “Star Trek” movie directed by Quentin Tarantino look like?
We may find out someday soon: The director of “Kill Bill,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Inglorious Basterds” and other violence-laced neo-noir films is reportedly working with “Revenant” screenwriter Mark L. Smith and producer J.J. Abrams on a harder-edged version of the Starship Enterprise’s saga.
Nerdist has already put together a must-see video trailer for a Tarantino-tinged Trek, titled “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek: Voyage to Vengeance.”
Amazon’s HQ2 search made it all the way to “Saturday Night Live” tonight, with a skit that depicts Jeff Bezos receiving delegates from cities in the company’s top 20 — assisted by Alexa, of course.
So who did NBC’s comedy writers pick as the final four for the Seattle-based online retailing giant’s second headquarters, with 50,000 high-paying jobs and $5 billion at stake?
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said the Alexa voice-activated AI assistant was inspired by the talking computer on “Star Trek,” so it only makes sense that Alexa is saluting the latest incarnation of the Star Trek saga.
“Star Trek: Discovery” premieres Sept. 24 on CBS All Access, and in the show’s honor, Amazon has added a few tricks that Echo, Dot and other Alexa-enabled devices can show off.
Now here’s news you can use: To stop snoring, try playing the Australian didgeridoo.
The scientists who demonstrated that regular playing of the elongated wind instrument could serve as an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnea and snoring were among the honorees at this week’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University.
The “27th first annual” ceremony also paid tribute to research studies that looked into whether cats are best classified as a solid or a liquid (with inconclusive results) and why old men have big ears (it’s complicated).
The Ig Nobels are presented annually by the Annals of Improbable Research and its improbably ingenious editor, Marc Abrahams, who serves as master of ceremonies. They recognize achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. They also serve as a humorous riff on the much more serious Nobel Prizes.
You know that viral photo of Vice President Mike Pence putting his hand on a piece of space hardware marked with a “Do Not Touch” sign? Don’t worry about it, NASA says.
The picture, snapped by news photographers on July 6 during Pence’s tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, spread like Photoshopped wildfire around the internet. It’s easy to see why: Pence looks like someone blatantly caught with his hand in the figurative cookie jar.
World View Enterprises said its “Zinger 1” mission to keep a KFC chicken sandwich aloft in the stratosphere was terminated earlier than planned, due to a small leak in an altitude-control balloon system on its Stratollite platform. The company’s CEO, Jane Poynter, said today in a statement that the payload was brought down about 17 hours after the balloon launch on June 29 in Arizona. “Within the first few hours of flight, all system test objectives were met,” she said. Poynter added that the chicken sandwich “performed flawlessly.”