In the first few years of the global pandemic, millions of humans died, and billions more dealt with a tidal wave of grief, loneliness, depression, anxiety, financial stress, and sleep disturbances.

Call me crazy, but I have certain expectations of any establishment calling itself a “diner.” In general, I shouldn’t have to wait for a seat. The interior ambiance should be warm and welcoming, with comfortable booths — perhaps with their padding slightly worn from years of visits from loyal customers. I should be able to order off a laminated menu, from a waiter or waitress with an easy tableside manner. The food should not be overthought or trendy, just a spread of classic American fare, with a few specialties particular to the region. And I should leave with the sense that I have been well fed at a reasonable price. The new Tesla Diner on the western edge of Hollywood, the long-delayed realization of a whim from CEO Elon Musk, does not meet these basic criteria. In some ways, of course, that can’t be helped: When I showed up at 1 p.m. on Thursday, the restaurant’s fourth day of supposedly 24/7 operation, there was line of families, tourists, and Tesla enthusiasts eager to check the place out wrapping all the way around the block. People circled the building recording videos with their phones mounted on selfie sticks. One fellow wore a Back to the Future shirt that featured a Cybertruck in place of the iconic DeLorean, and Musk as Marty McFly. “Gonna put an old school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant at one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in LA,” Musk tweeted in 2018, long before his transformation into a misinformation superspreader and Trump megadonor. Just ahead of the launch seven years later, the Tesla CEO declared the finished restaurant to be “one of the coolest spots in LA!” He also posted on X that Tesla aimed to open up other diners in “major cities around the world,” and that the company’s Optimus robots would be serving food to customers in their Teslas by next year — though he soon deleted that last and most dubious claim. Nonetheless, a grand opening demo of an Optimus serving popcorn led many to believe that the bots would have customer-facing jobs, despite engineers on site confirming that this one was remotely operated by a person, not moving independently. As usual, Musk’s hype had driven expectations to unreasonable highs. Earlier in the week, I had seen a lone protester outside the diner with a sign that said “Workers Should Have the Power — Not the Billionaires.” On Thursday afternoon, there was no anti-oligarch activism afoot, only excitement and anticipation. A friend who, like me, grew up in the fine diner culture of New Jersey, joined me at the end of the queue, which lasted an hour and a half. Periodically, an employee came through and asked if anyone waiting was currently charging their Teslas in the parking lot; the few who were received complicated instructions on how to order from their cars, either for delivery to the vehicle or to pick up inside when the food was ready. I was supposed to have my own Tesla for this visit, but because Hertz does not feel bound to honor its rental reservations — that’s a review for another time — we were, like so many others, lowly walk-ins unable to accelerate service. In the meantime, we were advised that we could see the menu at TeslaDiner.com. The URL led to a blank webpage. The two-story diner is clearly meant to give the impression of an alien spacecraft, though it’s an awfully generic one — not up to Disneyland standards, anyway. Outside, it’s flanked by a pair of four-story movie screens (unbelievably, one of them totally blocks the windows and balconies of a neighboring apartment building, where residents must be furious) that play space-themed Looney Tunes cartoons, old sci-fi movies, Cybertruck ads, SpaceX launches, and abstract laser patterns, usually at low resolution and with the wrong aspect ratio. Very few of the parking spaces face either screen, as they would in the traditional drive-in theater Musk had apparently envisioned. Noise concerns had been downplayed with promises that sound would beam directly into parked Tesla vehicles, but an episode of The Jetsons blared in the summer air as we turned the corner toward the diner entrance. Once inside, you immediately place your order not with the cashiers at the registers but on one of the touchscreens right in front them. Much of the mixed seating (stools, booths, and outside tables upstairs) sat empty, presumably as the kitchen would’ve been unable to contend with a full house, which also explained the staggered entry. The space was loud and chaotic anyway, with much of the staff squeezed into a narrow aisle between the kitchen and the counter and having a difficult time moving past one another. We opted for some uncomfortable counter stools while we waited for our food so we could watch them scurry about as celebrity chef Eric Greenspan, who has competed on TV shows like Iron Chef and Guy’s Grocery Games and developed MrBeast Burger, stood at the kitchen window, shouting out items missing from orders. When not managing workflow problems, he was vexed by a quirk of the menu: People were ordering the “lettuce burger,” not realizing it came without a bun, then asking for a bun. Greenspan pulled over an employee who was evidently on site for tech troubleshooting and demanded that he edit the menu to say “no bun” to prevent any further confusion. We had decided to sample the imaginatively named Tesla burgers, as well as fries (made in tallow, to conform with the recent right-wing craze) and sides of “Epic Bacon.” The food took about 20 minutes, and my companion initially received a burger heaped with chili and a fried egg instead of what she had ordered. Although we’d given our phone numbers and been informed that a text would alert us when our orders were ready, neither of us got one; instead, the staff was just calling out receipts. After fetching our meals, we sat back down to appraise them. My burger was missing half of its bottom bun, and the attempt to deliver the advertised “smashed, crunchy edges” had left the meat fairly scorched throughout. This and the fries were no competition for many fine alternatives around Los Angeles. The bacon was a sadder affair, and I accidentally went viral on X by posting a picture comparing mine to the far more appetizing image on the menu. It was chewy, not crunchy — despite being partly charred — with a sickly-sweet maple glaze. A properly sized carton may help with presentation, but charging $12 for four slices of this stuff will never be justifiable. The condiments like “Electric Sauce” were the usual relabeled chipotle mayo and similar stuff. A “charged” lime rickey with “natural caffeine,” whether or not it gave me a noticeable buzz, tasted fine — I was puzzled, however, by a line on the ticket attached to my plain white cup that said “#tesla,” as if I might forget who sold me the soda. Any leftovers could be ferried home in a cardboard Cybertruck box, naturally. All told, none of this was worth the time or the expense. The heavy cuisine left us both a little queasy, and I was mildly nauseated again the following day to learn that someone had snapped photos of boxes of frozen products and milk that were apparently sitting behind the restaurant in the July heat. If only there were a couple of helpful humanoid robots that could move them! Alas, despite Tesla’s misleading marketing, the only Optimus models we saw were behind glass, posed like museum exhibits. The bots, which can be found on your way up to the second level, constitute almost the entirety of the restaurant’s decor. In the absence of better chow, you’d hope for at least an interesting setting, yet when you look around the ground floor, there isn’t much that catches the eye. The sleek walls offer only Tesla propaganda slogans such as “Accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” It was less like being in the future than in a drably minimalist McMansion. The “Skypad” rooftop is a bit nicer, and feels like it takes more inspiration from Googie architecture of the Space Age. Still, it seems to go underutilized while people congregate downstairs and would be far more suitable for a cocktail bar. Moving between the different parts of the property was awkward. An attendant stood at the top of the staircase, and for some unexplained reason stopped everyone who tried to walk back down the same way, saying they had to wait for the (hot, cramped) elevator. One wonders if this was as necessary as, say, maintaining the restrooms, one of which had a floor covered in piss and empty soap dispensers. Oh, and there were only three single-use bathrooms for an eatery that seats 250. The Tesla Diner, like so many of Musk’s ideas for the company, is intended to make a statement. And, as always, that statement is no more nuanced or groundbreaking than: “Tesla is cool.” The problem is that this mission overrides every practical consideration — in this case, how a diner normally functions and what keeps one in business. In that sense, you can regard Musk’s silver eyesore on Santa Monica Boulevard as a culinary equivalent of the Cybertruck. Though a lovely staff did their best under tough conditions during the opening week, the design is ill-considered, the atmosphere is an afterthought, the system is disorganized, and the food is disappointing. True, while the Cybertruck has been widely mocked as a lemon and sold poorly, it has its ardent fans, and no doubt the Tesla Diner can count on the support of a similar customer base while continuing to draw crowds as a tourist trap, no matter the quality of the experience. But can it really hope to expand into a robust chain, as Musk has said it will? It’s no more likely than Tesla suddenly selling off all its surplus Cybertrucks. Musk has a way of not delivering on his many confident predictions and promises. Once the novelty factor has worn off, there won’t be anything to entice the average Angeleno, living in a city of outrageously diverse cuisine and plenty of storied diners, to come back a second time, except maybe for the supercharger stations. (My friend joked that it could well be converted to a luxury cannabis store if it fails in the months to come.) Some diehard Tesla believers had complaints as well, griping about disorderly management and the diner shutting down at night, turning away guests who had been assured it was open around the clock. The unmindful construction planning, noise and light pollution, and Tesla traffic jams have meanwhile done nothing to endear the diner to those living nearby — the lifeblood of most successful restaurants — and anti-Musk demonstrators are organizing a series of protests at the location. As the world’s richest man, Musk simply doesn’t have access to the realities of the service industry, or, for that matter, taking the family out to get burgers and milkshakes. When you leave this spot, you’ll have to ask yourself: When’s the last time this guy ate in an actual diner? As ever, his out-of-touch vision for what the 21st century can and should be is so hopelessly distant from human needs and habits that he has delivered a garish, soulless spectacle. One can scarcely imagine the amount of input he must have ignored from the industry veterans brought aboard for this project, indifferent to everything but his half-baked daydream of a Tesla charging lot where Tesla robots on roller skates bring you Tesla fast food while you watch towering footage of Teslas, a kind of living commercial for his trillion-dollar brand and pure antithesis of the humble neighborhood joint. The worst part is that he’s not even embarrassed.

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This is fine.

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Tea, an app designed to let women safely discuss men they date has been breached, with thousands of selfies and photo IDs of users exposed, the company confirmed on Friday.

“Brothers, sisters, siblings, we stand here now on the precipice of oblivion… This isn't just about fighting for better wages and working conditions… This is about who is willing to fight for life itself?” On Sunday, July 20, 2025, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez delivered the keynote speech at the national convention of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (NOLSW), UAW Local 2320. “I am here to report back to you from the front lines of struggle, without hesitation or hyperbole, that we are at risk of losing everything,” Alvarez told the crowd of union members. “And so I am here not to extol the virtues of your union or the value of unions in general, but to ask you bluntly: What good is a union in Hell? How much can an organization of the dawned do in a future no one wants to live in? What good does a collective bargaining agreement serve when the world as we know it is dying?”

Fifteen years ago in a sanctuary in Zambia, inspiration struck a chimpanzee named Julie. She plucked a stiff blade of grass, stuck it inside her ear, and left it there. There the grass dangled as Julie played, groomed, and rested. The behavior soon spread to most of the other chimpanzees in Julie's group, called Group 4, and was adopted by her son Jack and chimps Kathy, Miracle, and Val. In the span of just one year, Julie was observed with grass in her ear 168 times; by comparison, the next most frequent observer was Kathy, with 36 grass-in-ear sightings. After Julie died in 2013, her invention lived on, with Kathy and Val carrying the torch. The ear grass served no clear purpose, except, perhaps, fashion. But its quick spread and persistence even after Julie's death suggests grass-in-ear had become a cultural tradition for this particular group at the Chimfunshi sanctuary for rescued chimps. Now, a different group of chimps at Chimfunshi have debuted a totally new grass-based innovation, all thanks to a chimp named Juma, who has invented grass-in-rear. This behavior is pretty much what it sounds like: Juma inserts a stiff blade of grass into his rectum and lets it hang. When the researchers first noticed grass-in-rear, "we were quite confused," said Jake Brooker, a primatologist at Durham University. Grass-in-rear, much like grass-in-ear, has no clear purpose. As such, a group of researchers including Brooker argue in a paper in Behaviour that Juma's invention is an example of a new social chimpanzee cultural tradition.

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The petition addressed that MasterCard and Visa must stop censoring legal fictional content that complies with the law and platform standards.

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A TV series adaptation of the “Wolfenstein” video games is in development at Amazon MGM Studios, Variety has learned exclusively. Exact plot details are being kept under wraps, but the (incredible) official logline of the series simply states, “The story of killing Nazis is evergreen.”

The island resident who allegedly cut down 16 trees that were decades old in a neighbor’s yard to create an ocean view at his residence out in the Cisco area had probable cause found on three charges by Nantucket District Court clerk magistrate Brian Kearney and will now appear for an arraignment session on September 15th. Jonathan Jacoby, 56, will be arraigned on charges of vandalizing property (felony), cutting/destroying trees (misdemeanor), and trespassing (misdemeanor). Nantucket District Court Judge James Sullivan waived Jacoby's appearance at the arraignment session. Jacoby made national headlines after a lawsuit was filed by his neighbor, Patricia Belford, in June, accusing him of trespassing into their yard at 1 Tautemo Way earlier this year and cutting down a stand of 50-year-old trees in order to create an ocean view for himself from the abutting property at 3 Tautemo Way. Jacoby then subsequently listed his property for sale for nearly $10 million while touting its “sweeping ocean views” in the property description. In an email to the Boston Globe, Jacoby stated, “I wasn't trespassing, I was clearing out her crappy trees.”

The world doesn’t need another retread of the lawsuit itself. Plenty of those have already been written, including by the people who lived it. The facts are simple enough. There was a tape of Hogan, real name Terry Gene Bollea, having sex. Gawker posted a brief portion of it online. Bollea, with $10 million in backing from Thiel, a Silicon Valley nut with a grudge, sued in a friendly Florida court where a jury eventually awarded the wrestler $140 million in damages, more than DuPont is currently paying for polluting an entire town’s water supply with forever chemicals. A $50 million appeal bond all but prevented the company from continuing to fight the lawsuit, even after evidence that may have helped it on appeal later leaked publicly. The entire affair ended up being a prescient window into the current cultural moment in two ways. For one, it emboldened rich people to exploit the legal system to settle scores with media members they didn’t like over unflattering or embarrassing coverage. What some critics considered just deserts for an irreverent website caught out over its skis now forms the basis for media companies and others speedrunning settlements with people like President Trump to avoid making life harder for themselves. Secondly, the trial forecasted just how stupid things were about to get. One clip from it circulating around this week following Bollea’s death shows him trying to explain to a jury why Hulk Hogan had a 10-inch penis but Bollea himself did not. There was the moment when the judge in the case allowed one of the jurors to ask the then-Editor-in-Chief of Jezebel whether she had slept with Gawker owner Nick Denton to get the job. It was unclear what bearing that would have had on the case. Also, Denton is gay. Every day in our political life is now this stupid, and with way more at stake for everyone involved.

Video from Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, puts fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used to reach the Trump administration’s ambitious enforcement targets