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Elon Musk suggests Americans in jail for weed should be freed Elon Musk suggests Americans in jail for weed should be freed

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Elon Musk suggests Americans in jail for weed should be freed

Credit: Elon Musk

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Elon Musk took an important stand for Americans who are serving time for crimes that involve marijuana. I support this stand he took and have my own thoughts about it. But first, I’d like to share why he took the stand, and why it’s important that he did.

Freeing A Russian Arms Dealer

The New York Times reported that the U.S. offered to trade a Russian arms dealer known as the Merchant of Death for Brittney Griner, an American basketball player who got caught with cannibis oil.

Griner got herself into a pretty bad situation and I’m sure she and her family would love for her to be home safe and sound. It’s a bad situation where the U.S. wants to free an actual bad person to save a citizen who made a mistake.

Elon Musk is right and here’s why

Marijuana is becoming legal in many states. Personally, I support the changing of this law. If we can have alcohol and cigarettes, why not an herb that is known to be beneficial? Although this makes sense, it is not the case–yet.

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What’s worse is that despite legalization in some states, there are still people serving time in prison for possession.

Too many Americans are being arrested over weed.

In 2018, Forbes reported that the FBI released data that showed an average of one marijuana bust almost every 48 hours. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 52% of all drug arrests in 2010 were for marijuana.

The ACLU also published a research report in 2020 that focused on the racially targeted arrests of Americans over marijuana. The report examined marijuana arrests between 2010 and 2019 while analyzing racial disparities at the national, state, and local levels.

One Man Is serving a life sentence over marijuana.

In Mississippi, Allen Russell was sentenced to life in prison for possessing marijuana. In June 2022, KPLC News reported that the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that Russell’s life sentence was not a violation of his Eighth Amendment right.

His crime was being in possession of 43.71 grams of marijuana which normally carried an up to three-year sentence.

We live in an age where marijuana is becoming legal in many states. Life in prison over an herb is, in my opinion, cruel. It’s slavery.

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2 Life Sentences and 20 years for Marijuana

Russell isn’t alone. John Knock is serving two life sentences plus 20 years. For marijuana. This was his first offense.

And up until two years ago, John was housed in a high-security institution due to the length of his sentence.

John has served 23 years at the time this article was written.

Life in prison for selling $20 in marijuana

Here in Lousiana, Kevin Allen was sentenced to life without parole for selling $20 in marijuana to a childhood friend. He’s currently serving his time at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

He works in the prison kitchen making juice for a few pennies a day.

“All I did was get set up from some drugs. I still feel to this day that I’m not supposed to be here.”

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Elon Musk took a stand and I support him.

The U.S. can give Russia an actual war criminal to free an Amerian busted for cannibis oil, but won’t do anything for Americans serving long sentences for a similar crime.

This is why Elon Musk taking a stand is so important. People like Kevin Allen, John Knock, and Allen Russel shouldn’t be imprisoned for life over their mistakes.

Especially if those mistakes are now being legalized across the country.

With one meme and a thought, Elon Musk took a stand for Americans serving time for crimes related to marijuana.

I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, or concerns, see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @JohnnaCrider1

 

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Johnna Crider is a Baton Rouge writer covering Tesla, Elon Musk, EVs, and clean energy & supports Tesla's mission. Johnna also interviewed Elon Musk and you can listen here

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Elon Musk

SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan

SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.

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SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.

There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.

The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.

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That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.

Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant

For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.

The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.

The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.

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Energy

Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows

Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.

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Concept render of Tesla Megapack farm supporting an AI Data Center in Taiwan
Concept render of Tesla Megapack farm supporting an AI Data Center in Taiwan

A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.

The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.

Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.

Tesla Taiwan partners with Costco to sell vehicles

Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.

Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.

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The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.

Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.

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Lifestyle

Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi’s real advantage won’t be the ride service

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Concept art of a Tesla Cybercab in Las Vegas Strip as rendered via Grok

For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.

Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.

Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.

Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant

Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.

This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?

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If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.

What do you think? Leave me a comment.

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