Lifestyle
My journey to the Model 3 event: Not paying attention to airlines
I was unable to select seats for the return flight to Philadelphia from LAX when booking, but brushed it off. The adrenaline was still in full force after learning about being selected for the Model 3 unveiling event, and I was in a rush to secure the most affordable flights left. On the way there, my husband and I will be in the middle seats of two consecutive rows. At least we’re not too far back on the plane, as time will be limited between arrival and the start of the event. I hear folks in LA are always late, but that’s not how I roll. My plan is to step onto the Tesla property no later than 6:59pm.
Wednesday evening, I was pondering what to wear to the event. As I started mentally packing, I realized that for being in LA fewer than 48 hours, I’d need very little clothes. Shoes are the problem. One decent pair for the event and one comfortable pair for everything else would be needed. There’s no good way for a woman to get around packing a second pair of shoes. That is, unless she’s willing to wear heels through an airport. No thanks. Even just one carry-on plus our little under seat “trolley tote” will be plenty large for both of us to pack a second pair, despite the fact that a second pair of men’s shoes usually takes up at least 1/4 of the available space in the carry-on.
Thursday morning, I took to Google to see how I could go about selecting seats for our return flights. Spirit Airlines is who that flight is with. I navigated to their website not yet knowing what they were all about. Then it happened: I learned that Spirit is a no frills airline with zero unnecessary services: no drinks, snacks or free carry-on bags. They allow you to take on one personal item each. This personal item can be no larger than 16” x 14” x 12”. Carry-on bags cost $40 each! A checked bag a little less at $35. That assumes you purchase that option before you check in to the flight. Prices rise from there.
As soon as I got home I ran for the tape measure. My beloved trolley tote fits a generous amount of clothing. Whew, it just barely meets the size restrictions. That handles one of our free personal items. The other will need a bag with easy access to the bag o’ liquids, iPad, chapstick, earbuds and the like. Usually, a small tote bag works for this purpose, but now my husband and I are challenging ourselves to make our entire luggage needs fit within the confines of each having one small personal item, so a simple tote bag won’t do.
I went through our collection and found nothing else that worked. Anything that met the size limit was too small to reasonably add clothing to and did not take advantage of the generous 12″ thickness.
Apparently, I’m the last to know about Spirit Airlines. 2 minutes on Amazon.com told me there were plenty of luggage pieces marketed as fitting within their restrictions. Buying new luggage defeats the purpose of trying to save on bag fees. Adding a low quality piece to our collection is pointless as well. The next best option was a very low cost bag – $16 for a simple nylon tote – that took the best advantage of all three dimensions.
But marriage, in a nutshell, is explained by what happened next. I told my husband about the $16 bag during halftime of the Duke game. He said hang on and went to the garage. Our garage is well organized, as is the rest of our home, so I had no idea what he was getting at. It turns out, he recently brought home his fourth company logo bag since he started working there under a year ago: a small duffle. It was in the garage presumably because he was hiding it from me. That bag hadn’t yet made it into the house since being brought home because dear husband knew I’d complain that we didn’t need more “stuff.” Like most Americans, we have too much already. An entire closet is dedicated to luggage, and none of the duffle type bags in there have ever been used. But in this moment, tape measure in hand, I was pretty happy to see that duffle.
I guess I won’t be walking through the airport in heels after all. Besides, Spirit’s self processed “cozy” seats will likely hand me more than enough discomfort for one day.
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More Model 3 News
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
