Lifestyle
Elon Musk is a one stop, pop culture to STEM recruiting shop, and that’s a good thing
WARNING
This column will be unabashedly full of pop culture references in honor of its topic. Check out the end of the piece for a Where’s Waldo-style treasure hunt to identify where they are. And by that I mean like the list at the back of the book. Or the companion list on the main pages under the scene descriptions. No, definitely more like the back of the book.
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You may have noticed that Elon Musk has something of a cult following. (awkward pause for audience laughter)
Seriously, though. Have you ever wondered how the nerdy PayPal guy whose epidermis was showing a bit much became not just the purveyor of cool tech, but a standard of cool to which all others within similar realms are measured? Personally, I’ve become so accustomed to that reality that I forget there was a time when rockets couldn’t land themselves and $TSLAQ wasn’t a thing.
Speaking of cults, those guys should hand in their soda machine rings and retire already, no?
In my opinion, Elon Musk’s overall fusion of popular culture with both his businesses and public persona gives him a unique resonance with people – their resonance. And that’s a good thing when considering all the places he’s trying to take humanity.
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As the “pop culture” chief executive, he clearly communicates how leading the ship of change is much more than just walking to the front and declaring himself king. He has to pitch the ship, show the blueprint, obtain the funding for construction, find the contractors, build it, employ people to run it, then campaign for customers, sell the tickets, and finally, sail the ship full of normal people, movie stars, a skipper, millionaires, their spouses, professors, and possibly someone named Mary Ann, all without crashing.
By the way, when I say “culture” I mean memes, movie quotes, cartoon references, sci-fi tributes, and Twitter conversations. Let’s assume my knowledge of philosophy pretty much begins and ends with Dr. Ellie Sattler’s outlook as conveyed to Jeff Goldblum.
Terms & conditions for “Not-a-Flamethrower”
Please use as directed to avoid unintentionally burning things down. For simple & concise instructions, we drew upon wisdom in great Dr Seuss book “Green Eggs and Ham”. #ThrowFlamesResponsibly pic.twitter.com/kgj8W8EOLJ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2018
There are a lot of technical languages needed to understand the many parts of Musk’s multifaceted journey, but there’s one language that unites them all – inspiration. This is where Musk’s immersion in pop culture comes in. He knows how to derive action plans from inspirational concepts because they inspire him, too. I think this is all an amazing benefit for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) recruiting and mainstream STEM interest.
It’s easy to get lost in the woods of what Musk is trying to accomplish if you’re not careful, and that drives people to learn more so they understand. Electric cars have things like production lines, battery chemistry, the electrical nuances of Superchargers, and business logistics; SpaceX is literally rocket science, meaning things like materials engineering, chemistry, and orbital mechanics are the blue Yoshis for Reddit cred; The Boring Company involves machinery details and political maneuvering, among other things; and Neuralink would benefit from Neuralink for a non-scientist’s true understanding of how Neuralink works.
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As a layperson looking at these things, I’m surprised by what I’m willing to research just to keep up with what Musk is doing, and I’m probably a fraction of a percent informed compared to the average Musk enthusiast. Anecdotally, I think that happens because he communicates his ideas using ‘big picture’ type expressions like flying cars and great dining on a trip to Mars, which makes them relatable, relevant, and exciting. And tying it all together is the fact that he’s almost always going to do what he says he’s going to do plus more.
I mean, I’m sure Jeff Bezos is going to do all the things he’s said he’ll do with Blue Origin, but maybe what matters is less about how big your rocket is and more about how you plan to use it. The Saturn V was awe-inspiring not just because it was huge and powerful and the first of its kind. It was representing a human journey to a new frontier, and it brought a symbolic victory against an adversary that threatened the freedom of everything it touched. Falcon Heavy is awe-inspiring because of both its engineering and its role in the democratization of space travel. Starship is awe-inspiring because its first and primary purpose is to establish a human presence on another planet.
Bezos, on the other hand, has conquered human patience for the most part with Amazon and wants to give the ultra rich the ride of their life with Blue Origin. A $250,000 ticket to the Karman line for like 5 minutes of floating around in view of the Earth’s curvature is not exactly an everyday person thing. Good for those who can afford it, but not very inspiring for those who can never afford it. He’s also said things like, we’ll go to Mars “because it’s cool,” which is ironically not cool and gives the impression that he has a roommate named Patrick. SpaceX certainly has a “cool” factor, but people aren’t buying company mugs that say “Cool new hangout” across a picture of Mars when they’re filled with hot coffee.
Wow, I never knew trig would make its way into my writing…
For a specific example of Musk’s pop culture conversion to STEM interest I’m talking about, take The Boring Company. The whole venture started with a rant about traffic, was named such because it was a funny double entendre, and then was made even more amusing with Monty Python tie-ins and flamethrower merchandise inspired by Space Balls. Using pop culture, Elon Musk brought genuine, mainstream interest to the subject of public transportation logistics, no Rowan North required to give it a little extra spark.
This sort of public attention thing happens when big achievements or problems come up, sure. But there’s this one guy that keeps inspiring kids to go study STEM topics so they can work for his companies; this one guy keeps inspiring adults to start their own STEM ventures based on the ideas he’s promoting; this one guy keeps all of us thinking about what he’s doing and whether it’s going to work while admitting that, even if we have our doubts about whether it’s all feasible, it probably should work and we should maybe help it work.
Altogether, Elon Musk is a one-stop pop culture to STEM recruiting shop, and I think that’s a really good thing.
What do you think of Musk’s pop culture infusions into everything he does? Have any favorites? Any you wish weren’t a thing?
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TREASURE HUNT
Find the following pop culture references in this column!
1. Bart Simpson breaks his leg
2. Homer Simpson joins a secret society
3. Titanic
4. Gilligan’s Island
5. Jurassic Park
6. Super Mario Brothers for Super Nintendo
7. Austin Powers: Goldmember
8. Spongebob Squarepants
9. Sine, Cosine, Tangent…
10. Ghostbusters 2016
Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
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Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
Elon Musk
The real reason Elon Musk wants every car connected to space
Elon Musk says all cars will eventually need Starlink to handle massive AI bandwidth demand.
Elon Musk is making the case that satellite internet, not fiber or cellular towers, will end up wired into every car on the road. In a string of posts on X, the SpaceX CEO wrote that all cars will have Starlink in the future and called satellite connectivity the only way to get super high bandwidth to billions of vehicles.
The posts started with Musk endorsing a Cloudflare forecast that traffic generated by autonomous AI agents will soon dwarf traffic generated by humans browsing the internet, a shift he described as not a close call at all. From there he narrowed the argument to infrastructure, writing that the only system that can support the insanely fast bandwidth growth needed by AI is Starlink, before extending the logic to cars specifically.
AI agentic Internet traffic will obviously VASTLY exceed human usage. Not a close call at all.
Cloudflare’s forecast is accurate. https://t.co/VztgrinN5k pic.twitter.com/Wo4FiRKjPU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s own hardware decisions. On July 20, Tesla confirmed the Cybercab would ship with a Starlink V5 terminal built into its roof, the first time the company had put satellite hardware in a production vehicle. A day later, Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, explained the connection wasn’t there for safety and that Cybercab’s driving stack runs entirely on onboard cameras and compute, while the satellite link exists for navigation, customer service, and fleet management instead. Musk followed with his own post about the feature, saying riders would be able to watch 4K streaming video during rides.
By July 22, Musk had already said Starlink would extend beyond Cybercab to Tesla’s full lineup. Sunday’s posts push that same logic outward again, this time framed as a requirement across the industry rather than a feature specific to Tesla, and tied directly to the bandwidth AI systems are expected to consume.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
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The AI argument has been building on SpaceX’s side for months. The company has an FCC filing pending for a third generation Starlink constellation, and it has separately proposed Starmind, a constellation of up to a million satellites designed to run AI computation directly in orbit rather than just relay data. Musk has said he expects space to become the cheapest place to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Starlink and Starmind serve different jobs inside that vision, one moving data and the other processing it, but Sunday’s posts treat vehicles as one more category of hardware that will eventually need both.
None of this changes anything for Tesla owners today. Cars already on the road keep running on LTE and Wi-Fi, and Tesla hasn’t outlined a retrofit path for existing vehicles. The July 22 commitment applies to future production, not the fleet already delivered. What Musk added on Sunday is the reasoning: satellite connectivity isn’t a Cybercab novelty, it’s a bet that ground based networks won’t keep up with how much data cars, robots, and AI systems are about to generate.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
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It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
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