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Jeff Bezos Expands Jet Collection With $80M Gulfstream G700, Reveals Student Who Tracked Elon Musk And Taylor Swift's Aircraft

Jeff Bezos , the founder of Amazon.com Inc. , has reportedly added a Gulfstream G700 to his collection of private jets, valued at $80 million.

What Happened : According to JetSpy and Jack Sweeney, who is well-known for tracking the aircraft of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift , Bezos received the $80 million jet in July. This latest addition brings his collection to four aircraft, which includes two Gulfstream G650s and a Pilatus PC-24, reported Business Insider on Thursday.

Data from JetSpy shows that the G700, registered as N11AF, made 28 flights in 39 days, emitting 264 tons of CO2. This is equivalent to the average American’s emissions over 17 years, according to the report.

The jet’s owner is listed as TVPX Aircraft Solutions, a company providing trust services for U.S. business aviation, either due to citizenship rules or for privacy reasons.

Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez , were seen in Ibiza around the same time the G700 departed the island. The couple was spotted heading toward his $500 million superyacht.

Amazon did not immediately respond to  Benzinga 's request for comment.

See Also: Super PAC Founder, Who Raised Hundreds Of Millions To Back Kamala Harris, Predicts Tighter Race Than Public Polls Suggest: ‘Our Numbers Are Much Less Rosy’

Why It Matters : The acquisition of the Gulfstream G700 by Bezos is part of a broader pattern of high-profile, high-cost investments by the Amazon founder.

Bezos’ penchant for luxury is well-documented , including his $500 million superyacht, which costs $25 million annually to maintain. This yacht, named Koru, is so large it requires a support boat with a helipad, crane, and storage facilities.

In addition to his lavish spending on transportation, Bezos is also involved in other significant projects . He is helping build a 10,000-year clock worth $42 million, a project that began in 1995 and is being constructed inside a mountain in Texas.

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Photo courtesy: Gulfstream

This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Kaustubh Bagalkote

© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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The World’s Richest Man Has A Surprisingly Modest Taste In Superyachts

The same can't be said for his taste in private jets, however...

Many rich people seem to be compensating for something when they buy f*ck off Ferraris and stonking superyachts. Elon Musk, however, was recently spotted off the coast of Greece in a relatively small charter yacht called Zeus.

In recent years, Elon Musk has kicked Jeff Bezos off this throne as ‘world’s richest man.’ Musk’s current net worth is $234.4 billion. Jeff Bezos’ net worth, for comparison, is $143.9 billion. Elon Musk’s companies include SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink and OpenAI. He can be a bit awkward, as seen on Joe Rogan’s podcast , and some people hate his Promethean attitude , but he is a fan of dry humour, a genius and is apparently (sometimes) able to manipulate crypto and stock markets at whim (make of that what you will).

Elon Musk also owns a $70 million (AUD $101 million) private jet, but – surprisingly, when you consider the spending habits of many of his contemporaries – does not own a superyacht. To this end, on a recent vacation to Greece, Musk was spotted on a boat called Zeus, which can be charted for some $7,000 (AUD $10,109) a day.

This isn’t cheap by most people’s standards. But when you compare it to Jeff Bezos’ US$500 million, 127 metre long superyacht – which is going to be the biggest in the world – or any one of these Russian oligarchs’ outlandishly luxurious oceanic steeds , Musk’s rented 24-metre yacht starts to look positively ‘Marie Kondo.’

WATCH: Jeff Bezos’ Superyacht Powers Through Rotterdam

Musk reportedly rented Zeus from SamBoat, which is a European online boat-rental company. According to Insider , the Zeus yacht that Musk was spotted on takes 20 people and is made for full-day excursions (when DMARGE checked SamBoat’s website , we could only find a boat called Zeus which takes 11 and is 12.3m long, however).

Insider isn’t alone though. Yahoo News has also reported that the Zeus vessel Musk was spotted on is 24 metres long. So presumably there is another, bigger Zeus out there than the one we could find. In any case, Musk appeared to enjoy his day of leisure, being hosed off on the back deck and joking about it on Twitter (he wrote: “I should take my shirt off more often”).

Features and activities of Zeus include swimming off the back, chilling on the deck, sitting down for a meal (or sipping a cocktail) inside, sleeping in one of the four indoor berths and exploring the marvellous waters of the Aegean Sea with a snorkel and flippers.

C’est la vie .

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Bezos Commissions a $500 Million Mega Yacht That Comes With Its Own Support Yacht The vessel is reportedly one of the largest sailing yachts ever built in the Netherlands.

By Euni Han May 10, 2021

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Jeff Bezos has commissioned a $500 million mega yacht, Bloomberg reports . The yacht is reportedly longer than a football field, features several decks and will have a support yacht with a helipad.

Bezos placed the order two years ago for the luxury ship, which is being built by Dutch company Oceanco. The vessel will be one of the largest sailing yachts ever built in the Netherlands, the unofficial capital of boat-building for the super rich, according to Bloomberg. The project is known as Y721 and has been a closely guarded secret.

What's not a secret is Bezos's fondness for yacht travel. In 2019, the Amazon founder and girlfriend Lauren Sanchez were spotted on entertainment mogul David Geffen's yacht off the coast of Spain and later sailing with designer Diane Von Furstenberg and her partner. This year, the couple was spotted on a yacht in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Sam Tucker, research head of London-based company VesselsValue, says the boating industry has particularly exploded amid the luxury industry boom.

"It's impossible to get a slot in a new-build yard," Tucker says, in an interview with Bloomberg. "They're totally booked."

Second-hand is probably not an option for Bezos, who reclaimed the title of world's richest man from Elon Musk this year, according to Bloomberg Wealth. Bezos is worth an estimated $191 billion.

Related: Jeff Bezos's Space Company Blue Origin Will Auction Off a Tourist Ticket to Space

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A $30 million Instagram-famous superyacht in the Caribbean has installed Elon Musk's Starlink internet

• A $30 million superyacht has installed SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet.
• SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the news was "cool" in a Twitter post.
• The captain told Teslarati that Starlink was a game-changer, but didn't work when crossing the Atlantic.

Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet, is now up and running on an Instagram-famous $30 million superyacht based in the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

Teslarati first reported the news. The captain and a spokesperson for the yacht confirmed the news to Insider.

Motor yacht Loon, billed as the world's most Instagrammed superyacht with "seven star" service, switched to Starlink when the maritime version of the service was released in early July, Captain Paul Clarke told Insider.

Musk responded to the Teslarati article on Twitter, saying "cool." The billionaire is the founder of SpaceX, which owns Starlink. The company has more than 2,900 satellites currently in orbit, launched by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets.

Starlink Maritime on Loon costs $5,000 a month for consistent speeds, ranging from 150 Megabits per second to 200 Megabits per second, Clarke said. This is a drop in price from the yacht's previous internet service, Viasat, which charged $10,000 a month for speeds of 50 to 80 Megabits per second, Clarke added.

"We've thrown everything we can at it, and it hasn't missed a beat," Clarke told Insider.

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Clarke told Teslarati that Starlink was a "total game-changer" because every television on the 180-foot yacht is now able to stream in high-definition.

When Loon crossed the Atlantic Ocean, Starlink didn't work, Clarke told Teslarati. He reached out to Starlink's support team, who told him the service is expected to work in that area towards the end of the year, Clarke said in the interview.

Clarke plans to test Starlink when Loon crosses the Atlantic again in May next year, he told Teslarati.

A spokesperson for Loon told Insider the crew onboard the yacht have experienced good internet connection thanks to Starlink, saying their experience was "really positive."

The spokesperson added that Starlink has enabled the yacht's onboard videographer to share content "much more efficiently."

Loon has more than 62,000 followers on Instagram , where it posts scenic pictures of the yacht, crew, food onboard, and activities available during a charter. Clarke told Teslarati the yacht was worth $30 million. Loon can accommodate 12 guests and 14 crew and has an infinity pool, jacuzzi, and open-air bar, according to its website .

As Starlink expands its network, users across the world are reporting the different ways they are deploying Starlink. One user told Insider last week that he took Starlink on a week's sailing vacation to Greece and said the service was "surprisingly good."

• Main content

Centibillionaire Jeff Bezos’ $500 million Koru superyacht emits an astounding 1,500 times more greenhouse gases than an average person. Inspite of being the largest sailing yacht in the world the 417-feet long vessel will be responsible for more than 7,150 tonnes of CO2 every year.

Even at the time of writing, the humongous sailing yacht is en route on a 4,000 mile journey from Gibraltar to the Americas and has currently gone dark somewhere in West Africa.

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Steve Jobs’s stunning $120 million Venus superyacht is stealing the spotlight on Australia’s Gold Coast. Owned by the Apple founder’s billionaire widow, Laurene Powell, this futuristic 255-foot-long vessel features 6 bedrooms and 27 Mac computers for entertainment.

Designed specifically for superyachts, this gyroscopic, self-levelling golf-putting platform is a dream come true for golf-loving millionaires.

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A Saudi princess is suing a millionaire lawyer after he spent her money on a lavish $29 million superyacht and sailed around the world in it.

To beat the 110°F heat in Doha, Qatar’s billionaire sheikh took his $300 million superyacht and sailed 4,500 miles to the balmy waters of Skiathos, Greece. Being the VIP that he is, the mayor of this pristine island paid a visit to the sheikh on his floating palace to welcome him.

While docked in Nice, France, Saudi billionaire’s 263-feet long superyacht was vandalised by a mob with garbage and red paint. The ultra luxurious $100 million vessel has a hammam, cinema, library and a well-equipped beauty room.

Smitten by her fiancée Jeff Bezos’ $500 million sailing yacht, Lauren Sanchez sported a cute Koru-motif necklace while piloting a helicopter for her model son Nikko and Orlando Bloom for sky diving.

Elon Musk 'cut down 500,000 trees' to make way for Tesla gigafactory

• Around half a million trees were cleared for the Berlin Gigafactory 
• Analysis revealed that this was the equivalent to 13,000 tonnes of CO2
• The Gigafactory is already a controversial site in Germany  

Elon Musk 's electric vehicle company Tesla felled an estimated half a million trees while developing a gigafactory near Berlin , new satellite analysis has revealed. 

Analysis from environmental intelligence firm Kayrros suggests that 329 hectares (813 acres) of dense woodland from the site southeast of Berlin were felled between March 2020 and May 2023. This is the equivalent to around 500,000 trees. 

The amount of CO2 that trees absorb varies from species to species, but a mature tree will, on average, absorb around 48lbs (22kg) of carbon every year, meaning the lost trees were equivalent to 13,000 tonnes of CO2, according to Kayrros chief analyst Antoine Halff. 

Halff said: 'The Tesla factory in Germany has led to quite a bit of cutting down of trees. Of course, it has to be put in perspective, against the benefit of replacing internal combustion engine cars with electric vehicles.'

Tesla boasts of its green credentials on its website, claiming that all the electricity used at the Berlin Gigafactory, which opened in 2022 after starting work in 2020, was 'matched with renewables in 2023.'

The Berlin Gigafactory has been the site of regular protests since May, following the news that an expansion to the already-controversial manufacturing plant was being planned. 

Environmental activists have been occupying tree houses in a nearby camp, and have tried on several occasions to storm the site. 

One particularly fired-up group managed to shut down production for several days in March after setting fire to an electricity pylon. 

Musk himself has criticised local police for not doing enough to combat the actions of 'leftwing protesters.' 

Halff said that the amount of CO2 lost by cutting down the trees, the annual amount emitted by 2,800 internal combustion cars, was negligible compared to the carbon dioxide saved by Tesla cars. 

'That's a fraction of the number of the electric cars that Tesla produces and sells every quarter,' he said. 'You always have trade-offs, so you need to be aware of what the terms of the trade-off are.'

But the Berlin Gigafactory, Tesla's only manufacturing hub in Europe, has come under fire for being the alleged source of many other environmental problems. 

Earlier this year, German media reported that local water officials sternly warned the Gigafactory's bosses that the wastewater the company releases into the nearby river Spree had phosphorus and nitrogen levels six times higher than permitted. 

Tesla has fought back against the allegations, with the listed company's VP of public policy and business development, Rohan Patel, claiming that Tesla recycles 'up to 100%' of its industrial water, and that Tesla Gigafactories use 33% less water per vehicle than the industry average. 

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Shirtless elon musk vacations in mykonos on luxury yacht.

Let’s just hope he applied sunscreen with a high SPF.

A shirtless Elon Musk was seen soaking up the sun aboard a luxury yacht in Mykonos, Greece, on Sunday, per exclusive photos obtained by Page Six.

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The multibillionaire was with a small group that included newlywed pals Ari Emanuel and Sarah Staudinger as they sailed the Aegean Sea on the “Zeus” — an almost $20,000-per-week motor yacht that can accommodate six guests in over three cabins and comes with a professional crew.

Musk, 51, boarded the swanky boat wearing a plain white T-shirt, black swim trunks, dark sunglasses, a black baseball cap and matching flip-flops.

The Tesla CEO soon stripped down to just his bathing suit and took a dive into the ocean. Once back on the yacht, Endeavor CEO Emanuel — long held to be the inspiration for fictional Hollywood agent Ari Gold in “Entourage” — hosed him down.

Musk was later seen enjoying a cocktail before the group headed out to explore the island.

The SpaceX founder — who recently confirmed to Page Six exclusively that he had welcomed his 10th child — did not seem the least bit bothered by Twitter’s massive lawsuit against him.

Musk first  agreed to buy the social media website for $44 billion in April but pulled out of the deal earlier this month on the belief the platform may be lying about what percentage of its users are bots.

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Elon musk plans to counter-sue twitter over $44 billion deal.

In their filing, Twitter’s attorneys  described Musk’s claim as a “bad faith” attempt to walk away from the agreement.

In response, Musk called the company’s suit “meritless” and and told a judge that he needs until next year to formally respond.

The business tycoon informed us earlier this month that he had quietly welcomed twins  with his Neuralink executive,  Shivon Zilis , in November 2021, adding that he had no plans to stop procreating.

When congratulated on the newest additions to his brood, he replied, “Thanks,” followed by, “Bravo to big families.”

When asked how many kids he would like to have, Musk said, “As many as I am able to spend time with and be a good father.”

Musk's X won't settle ex-workers' lawsuit seeking $500 million in severance pay

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Dan Wiessner (@danwiessner) reports on labor and employment and immigration law, including litigation and policy making. He can be reached at [email protected].

Infineon to pay more than expected in Qimonda settlement

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Private planes, mansions and superyachts: What gives billionaires like Musk and Abramovich such a massive carbon footprint

Distinguished Professor and Provost's Professor of Anthropology; Director of the Open Anthropology Institute, Indiana University

Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology, Indiana University

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Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have been vying for the world’s richest person ranking all year after the former’s wealth soared a staggering US$160 billion in 2020, putting him briefly in the top spot .

Musk isn’t alone in seeing a significant increase in wealth during a year of pandemic, recession and death. Altogether, the world’s billionaires saw their wealth surge over $1.9 trillion in 2020, according to Forbes.

Those are astronomical numbers, and it’s hard to get one’s head around them without some context. As anthropologists who study energy and consumer culture, we wanted to examine how all that wealth translated into consumption and the resulting carbon footprint.

Walking in a billionaire’s shoes

We found that billionaires have carbon footprints that can be thousands of times higher than those of average Americans.

The wealthy own yachts, planes and multiple mansions, all of which contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. For example, a superyacht with a permanent crew, helicopter pad, submarines and pools emits about 7,020 tons of CO2 a year, according to our calculations, making it by the far worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint. Transportation and real estate make up the lion’s share of most people’s carbon footprint, so we focused on calculating those categories for each billionaire.

To pick a sample of billionaires, we started with the 2020 Forbes List of 2,095 billionaires. A random or representatives sample of billionaire carbon footprints is impossible because most wealthy people shy away from publicity , so we had to focus on those whose consumption is public knowledge. This excluded most of the superrich in Asia and the Middle East .

We combed 82 databases of public records to document billionaires’ houses, vehicles, aircraft and yachts. After an exhaustive search, we started with 20 well-known billionaires whose possessions we were able to ascertain, while trying to include some diversity in gender and geography. We have submitted our paper for peer review but plan to continue adding to our list.

We then used a wide range of sources, such as the U.S. Energy Information Administration and Carbon Footprint , to estimate the annual CO2 emissions of each house, aircraft, vehicle and yacht. In some cases we had to estimate the size of houses from satellite images or photos and the use of private aircraft and yachts by searching the popular press and drawing on other studies . Our results are based on analyzing typical use of each asset given its size and everything else we could learn.

We did not try to calculate each asset’s “ embodied carbon ” emissions – that is, how much CO2 is burned throughout the supply chain in making the product – or the emissions produced by their family, household employees or entourage. We also didn’t include the emissions of companies of which they own part or all, because that would have added another significant degree of complexity. For example, we didn’t calculate the emissions of Tesla or Amazon when calculating Musk’s or Bezos’ footprints.

In other words, these are all likely conservative estimates of how much they emit.

Your carbon footprint

To get a sense of perspective, let’s start with the carbon footprint of the average person.

Residents of the U.S., including billionaires, emitted about 15 tons of CO2 per person in 2018. The global average footprint is smaller, at just about 5 tons per person.

In contrast, the 20 people in our sample contributed an average of about 8,190 tons of CO2 in 2018. But some produced far more greenhouse gases than others.

The jet-setting billionaire

Roman Abramovich, who made most of his $19 billion fortune trading oil and gas, was the biggest polluter on our list. Outside of Russia, he is probably best known as the headline-grabbing owner of London’s Chelsea Football Club.

Abramovich cruises the Mediterranean in his superyacht, named the Eclipse , which at 162.5 meters bow to stern is the second-biggest in the world, rivaling some cruise ships. And he hops the globe on a custom-designed Boeing 767 , which boasts a 30-seat dining room. He takes shorter trips in his Gulfstream G650 jet, one of his two helicopters or the submarine on his yacht.

He maintains homes in many countries, including a mansion in London’s Kensington Park Gardens, a chateau in Cap D’Antibes in France and a 28-hectare estate in St. Barts that once belonged to David Rockefeller . In 2018, he left the U.K. and settled in Israel , where he became a dual citizen and bought a home in 2020 for $64.5 million.

We estimate that he was responsible for at least 33,859 metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2018 – more than two-thirds from his yacht, which is always ready to use at a moment’s notice year-round.

Massive mansions and private jets

Bill Gates, currently the world’s fourth-richest person with $124 billion, is a “modest” polluter – by billionaire standards – and is typical of those who may not own a giant yacht but make up for it with private jets.

Co-founder of Microsoft, he retired in 2020 to manage the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charity, with an endowment of $50 billion.

In the 1990s, Gates built Xanadu – named after the vast fictional estate in Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” – at a cost of $127 million in Medina, Washington. The giant home covers 6,131 square meters, with a 23-car garage, a 20-person cinema and 24 bathrooms. He also owns at least five other dwellings in Southern California, the San Juan Islands in Washington state, North Salem, New York, and New York City, as well as a horse farm , four private jets, a seaplane and “a collection” of helicopters .

We estimated his annual footprint at 7,493 metric tons of carbon, mostly from a lot of flying.

The environmentally minded tech CEO

South African-born Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, has a surprisingly low carbon footprint despite being the world’s second-richest person, with $177 billion – and he seems intent on setting an example for other billionaires .

He doesn’t own a superyacht and says he doesn’t even take vacations .

We calculated a relatively modest carbon footprint for him in 2018, thanks to his eight houses and one private jet. This year, his carbon footprint would be even lower because in 2020 he sold all of his houses and promised to divest the rest of his worldly possessions .

While his personal carbon footprint is still hundreds of times higher than that of an average person, he demonstrates that the superrich still have choices to make and can indeed lower their environmental impact if they so choose.

His estimated footprint from the assets we looked at was 2,084 tons in 2018.

The value of naming and shaming

The aim of our ongoing research is to get people to think about the environmental burden of wealth.

While plenty of research has shown that rich countries and wealthy people produce far more than their share of greenhouse gas emissions, these studies can feel abstract and academic, making it harder to change this behavior.

[ Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter .]

We believe “shaming” – for lack of a better word – superrich people for their energy-intensive spending habits can have an important impact, revealing them as models of overconsumption that people shouldn’t emulate.

Newspapers, cities and local residents made an impact during the California droughts of 2014 and 2015 by “drought shaming” celebrities and others who were wasting water, seen in their continually green lawns . And the Swedes came up with a new term – “ flygskam ” or flying shame – to raise awareness about the climate impact of air travel.

Climate experts say that to have any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, countries must cut their emissions in half by 2030 and eliminate them by 2050.

Asking average Americans to adopt less carbon-intensive lifestyles to achieve this goal can be galling and ineffective when it would take about 550 of their lifetimes to equal the carbon footprint of the average billionaire on our list.

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Elon Musk says he’s ‘willing to serve’ after Trump said he might give him role in administration

Elon Musk has posted an AI image of himself and declared he is “willing to serve” after Donald Trump said he would consider giving the billionaire a role in his administration if he takes back the White House in November.

In the image, Musk is seen standing in front of the American flag at a podium branded: “Department of Government Efficiency.”

He captioned the post: “I am willing to serve.”

The controversial Tesla CEO, who reinstated Trump’s X account after he was banned following the January 6 Capitol riot, has already publicly endorsed the former president in the 2024 presidential election.

On Monday – the same day that his political rivals descended on Chicago for the first day of the Democratic National Convention – Trump said he would “certainly” consider giving Musk a cabinet or advisory role in his potential future administration and called the X owner “brilliant.”

”He’s a very smart guy. I certainly would, if he would do it, I certainly would. He’s a brilliant guy,” Trump told Reuters in an interview after a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania.

Last week, Trump had shared an AI deepfake video of him and Musk dancing – one of a growing number of AI-generated images he has shared in recent days.

In one Truth Social post, Trump shared AI-generated images of Taylor Swift and her dedicated fanbase sporting “ Swifties for Trump” T-shirts, alluding that the star has become an unlikely follower of the MAGA movement.

I am willing to serve pic.twitter.com/BJhGbcA2e0 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2024

Despite her vast political influence – particularly resonating with Gen Z – the “Shake It Off” hitmaker has yet to officially endorse any presidential candidate for the 2024 election cycle, after backing President Joe Biden in 2020.

Trump shared several deepfake images in the post , which included a propaganda-style poster of Swift dressed like Uncle Sam, pointing to the viewer and overlaid with the message: “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump”.

Trump later shared a conspiracy theorist video that suggested that Swift fans who formerly voted Democrat have switched allegiance to Republicans after a string of canceled concerts following a foiled terror plot in Vienna.

“If Trump was in office, this would have never, never happened,” the woman says in the video , despite the three cancelled Eras Tour shows being in Austria – not the US.

There is no hard evidence to suggest which way Swift or her fans are voting.

Trump also posted another AI-generated image on Sunday, which showed Harris speaking to a crowd of communists with a huge banner adorned with the Soviet Union hammer and sickle in the background.

Musk interviewed Trump on X Spaces last week , though critics have called it more of a “friendly chat” rather than a grilling of the Republican presidential hopeful, where he admitted to ramping up his involvement in politics this year.

“I’ve not been very political before,” he said.

After acquiring X, Musk reinstated the accounts of people who were previously banned and dismantled the social media platform’s fact-checking features.

Among them, Trump’s X account was restored and the former president has returned to posting on the platform again.

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Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Show Off Her New Engagement Ring on $500M Yacht — See Photos!

Sánchez was seen rocking a diamond sparkler over the weekend as the couple vacationed together in the South of France

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez are showing off her new engagement ring !

The Amazon founder and the Emmy-winning journalist and helicopter pilot — who are engaged , a source confirms to PEOPLE — were photographed together over the weekend smiling on his $500 million yacht at the Cannes Film Festival.

Bezos, 59, wore a simple black shirt and pants while Sánchez, 53, opted for a white tank top with a beige skirt and was seen rocking a diamond sparkler on that finger. ( Experts estimate that it could be between 25 and 30 carats !)

The pair made an appearance at the annual film festival on Saturday for the premiere of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon , an Apple Original Film starring Leonardo DiCaprio — and were seen at the event alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Recently, the pair been spending a lot of time together on the billionaire's new yacht, which features a wooden sculpture made in the likeness of Sánchez . Attached to the ship's prow, the design includes a necklace featuring the symbol for Koru, which is Māori for loop or coil. It's based on the spiral shape of an unfurling silver fern frond — a symbol that is special to the couple.

Koru symbolizes new beginnings — which Bezos has cited before on his Instagram — and a new phase of life, positive change, personal growth, and hope for the future.

Bezos posted a photo of Koru on Instagram on New Year's Day in a slideshow of pictures from his disco party celebration.

"The new year is also a great time to take stock and focus on personal growth, renewal, rebirth, and paying careful attention to each moment of your life," he wrote at the time. "The good and the bad. All of it. Celebrate and grow."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Opening up about their life together in January, which marked her first solo interview since they couple went public with their relationship in 2019, Sánchez told WSJ. Magazine that Bezos "makes me laugh all the time" and "can be goofy." "We love to be together and we love to work together," she added. "We fly together. We work out together. We're together all the time."

They also share a commitment to philanthropy.

Echoing comments Bezos previously made to CNN about how he planned to give away most of his $124 billion fortune, Sánchez told the newspaper they put a lot of work into "strategic giving."

"You want to give money away and you want to know that it's helping people and it's going to continue to help people, and that it's going to the right places," she said. "You could give it not-strategically. You can just give it away! But, we take it seriously."

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Trump’s Trainwreck Elon Musk Interview May Have Broken the Law

The dumpster fire of a conversation between donald trump and elon musk just became a huge legal headache..

Donald Trump’s lengthy interview with Elon Musk earlier this week may have violated federal campaign regulations, at least according to one Democratic-aligned political action committee that has already filed an FEC complaint over the issue.

The complaint, filed Tuesday by End Citizens United, argued that the unfettered “conversation” on X, Musk’s $12.5 billion company, amounted to a “virtual campaign event” financed by the social media platform. Per the FEC’s website , a contribution is “anything of value given, loaned or advanced to influence a federal election.”

End Citizens United also claimed that the event did not fall under press exemptions set forth by the election commission on the basis that X is not a traditional news outlet; that the company devoted “considerable resources” to host the interview, including dedicating “real time staff” to fix numerous technical glitches; and (perhaps most significantly) that Musk has repeatedly voiced his support for Trump in the 2024 race, and launched the talk with the intention to platform Trump’s personal beliefs.

“Because X spent considerable resources to host an event to expressly advocate for Trump and was not entitled to the press exemption for that event, Respondents have violated the ban on giving and receiving corporation contributions,” the complaint alleged.

The group called for the FEC to “immediately investigate” the violations and to take “appropriate remedial action” against the “brazen corporate contribution.”

Unfortunately for End Citizens United, such high-profile complaints can take months or even years for the ideologically gridlocked six-commissioner panel at the FEC to investigate, making it highly unlikely for the group to reach a consensus before the November election.

“The Donald Trump-Elon Musk campaign rally hosted on X wasn’t just an incoherent diatribe of lies marred by technical difficulties—it was a blatantly illegal corporate contribution to Donald Trump’s campaign,” said End Citizens United president Tiffany Muller in a statement. “This brazen corporate contribution undermines campaign finance laws and would set a dangerous precedent for unfettered, direct corporate engagement in campaigns.”

Trump Tries Pathetic New Excuse After Slurring Through Musk Interview

Donald trump is not doing well, folks..

Donald Trump’s livestream interview with Elon Musk on X Monday night was plagued not only with technical glitches but also Trump’s own slurred speech. Late Tuesday night, Trump finally came up with an excuse.

“My conversation with Elon last night was heard by a RECORD audience, and was really something special, as Elon himself is very special—and I thank him for such a strong Endorsement!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Unfortunately, because of the complexity of modern day equipment, and cellphone technology, my voice was, in certain areas, somewhat different and strange. Therefore, we have put out an actual, and perfect, recording of the conversation. ENJOY!!!”

The post followed another late-night post, made an hour before, where Trump went on the offensive against Kamala Harris.

“Kamala: You ruined San Francisco, one of the greatest cities in the World, you ruined California, one of the greatest places on Earth—And you will turn America into a giant combination of both,” Trump’s post read. “We are not going to let that happen. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump’s excuse probably won’t be bought by anyone but the right. The Harris campaign has already seized upon his glitches, as well as Trump’s extremist rhetoric from the interview. The Trump campaign is trying to claim that one billion people watched the livestream, but that’s not going to get much traction either. The likeliest explanation for Trump’s slurring words may be his cognitive decline , which is all the more noticeable now that he’s the oldest candidate in the race.

Elon Musk Gets More Terrible News—This Time, on the Legal Front

Musk has just lost his favorite judge in the absurd lawsuit against x advertisers..

Elon Musk’s judge-shopping attempt to get back at advertisers has failed.

The CEO of X (formerly Twitter) is trying to sue a coalition of advertisers who he claims conspired against the social networking site by refusing to buy advertisements. Reed O’Connor, a federal judge in the northern district of Texas, recused himself from the lawsuit Tuesday after NPR reported that he owns stock in Tesla, another one of Musk’s companies.

Last week, Musk sued the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a group of advertisers, media agencies, and platforms that focus on safety in media and technology. The lawsuit also targets the parent organization of GARM, the World Federation of Advertisers, and four of its member companies: Orsted, Unilever, CVS Health, and Mars.

Musk appears to have chosen the northern district because it is a favorite of conservatives , as almost all of its judges have been appointed by Republicans, even though the case has little, if anything, to do with Texas. O’Connor has a reputation for giving the right the rulings they are looking for. For example, he has repeatedly tried to gut or eliminate the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, even going after HIV drugs and cancer screenings . 

NPR’s report found that O’Connor owns between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of Tesla stock, which gives the appearance of a conflict of interest and ultimately seems to have led to O’Connor’s recusal. But while that will delay the advertiser lawsuit, O’Connor is still presiding over a different Musk lawsuit against Media Matters, filed in November, accusing the liberal media watchdog of defaming X by pointing out the rise in hate speech on the site.

The Media Matters lawsuit is still ongoing and still has the right-wing judge presiding over it. Even with O’Connor’s recusal from the advertiser lawsuit, Musk had a small measure of success as GARM announced last week that it would be disbanding , claiming that it didn’t have the financial resources to fight billionaire Musk. The question is how much more money Musk is willing to spend to punish perceived slights.

Why Is the Harris Campaign Editing News Article to Seem Nicer to Her?

New kamala harris ads include misleading headlines and descriptions of articles..

Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has been altering the headlines on real articles in Google search results to make them appear more pro-Harris, Axios reported Tuesday.  

The articles—which, unbeknownst to the outlets publishing them, are transformed into advertisements by the Harris campaign—include a banner that says “Paid for by Harris for President” floating above URLs linking articles on sites such as the Associated Press, Reuters, The Independent, and more. 

The headlines and deks, or subheads, of these articles have been changed in the search results to emphasize support for Harris’s accomplishments. 

For example, an article about Harris’s economic plan published by NPR was accompanied by the headline “Harris Will Lower Health Costs” and a dek that states “Kamala Harris will lower the cost of high-quality affordable health care.”

While the banner is meant to make clear that the results are advertisements, not articles, the ads may create the impression that Harris is backed by certain news organizations when she is actually not. 

Spokespeople for CNN, USA Today, and NPR told Axios that they weren’t aware their brands were being used by the Harris campaign. 

A spokesperson for The Guardian , which had also been featured in the ads, made a statement to Axios. “While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”

This style of ads is common in commercial marketing, and Google has said that those ads don’t violate its rules. However, this approach may ultimately prove to be a gambit that lacks an actual advantage as it potentially undermines trust in the news. 

It is also unclear why Harris’s campaign felt the need to do this, as there has been plenty of positive coverage of Harris since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed her to replace him.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump isn’t running these kinds of ads, according to Google’s transparency center, although he has edited articles he posted on Truth Social. But honestly, why would he want to align himself with mainstream media, which he actively rails against? Trump has previously vowed retribution against the press, which he claims has treated him unfairly, referring to journalists as the “ enemy of the people .”

New Poll Says Harris Could Flip Crucial Trump State

Kamala harris has a chance to win a state democrats have long given up on..

The momentum behind Kamala Harris has been so major that it may turn Florida blue again in November.

The Democratic presidential nominee is closing the gap on the Sunshine State’s solidly red status, according to a USA Today /Suffolk University/WSVN-TV survey of 500 registered voters released Tuesday. The poll results suggest Harris is just five percentage points behind Donald Trump—a far cry from the 19-point advantage that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had over Democrat Charlie Crist in 2022.

The USA Today poll showed Trump receiving the support of 47 percent of surveyed potential voters in Florida, while Harris gained the support of 42 percent. That five-point difference is within the poll’s margin of error .

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. trailed behind with 5 percent, while another 5 percent were undecided or refused to disclose their preference.

Another poll conducted by Civiqs indicated that the number of Democrats feeling positive about the upcoming election had shot up since President Joe Biden exited the race, with approximately 34 percent of the party reportedly feeling hopeful. The number of surveyed participants feeling negative—including “scared,” “depressed,” and “angry”—had all gone down.

That could be why former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke believes that the Lone Star State could also be coming into play for Harris—or, at the very least, that her candidacy would motivate enough Texas Democrats to vote downballot in other contentious races.

“The thing is you now see Democrats smiling,” O’Rourke told MSNBC Monday. “There is joy in our party. There is electricity moving through our system. And yes, places that I think were written off are now in contention.”

“I think Harris-Walz rise or increase the chances that we’re going to be able to win these races,” O’Rourke continued, referring to the House race between Democrat Michelle Vallejo and Republican Representative Monica De La Cruz, as well as Democratic Representative Colin Allred, who’s gunning for Senator Ted Cruz’s seat.

“Who knows, but Joe Biden lost Texas by only 5.5 points in 2020. It’s been moving faster into the blue column than any other battleground state. Anything, I think, is possible in this year, and with the energy that those two are bringing to the ticket, I think that Texas could possibly be in play,” O’Rourke said.

Ilhan Omar’s Primary Challenger May Have Broken the Law to Beat Her

A consultant working for don samuels’s campaign was also coordinating with a group of donors to fundraise against omar..

Representative Ilhan Omar’s Democratic primary opponent Don Samuels has had quite the week leading up to polls opening in Minnesota on Tuesday—including openly courting Republican voters and getting caught possibly breaking campaign finance laws.

In a WhatsApp group chat titled “Zionists for Don Samuels,” Alexander Minn—who has been a director of strategic engagement for Samuels’s campaign since 2022—openly discussed campaign strategy with its many members, The Intercept reported on Sunday. Minn is no longer with the campaign, according to Samuels’s campaign manager, Joe Radinovich.

This chat of wealthy pro-Israel donors included businessman Michael Sinensky, who said he’d worked with a super PAC called Make a Difference MN, which he proudly claimed had taken on the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in the race.

“I’ve heard dozens of questions of where is AIPAC,” Sinensky wrote in the chat. “We are fucking AIPAC now.”

AIPAC has funded the victorious primary challengers of two other progressive lawmakers in the Squad, Representatives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush , both of whom were critical of Israel and its U.S.-backed military campaign in Gaza, which has killed nearly 40,000 people. Both lawmakers were knocked out in their primary races, against the tidal wave of pro-Israel funding and opponents who supported Israel.

Omar seems to be the next target from the list of lawmakers who have called for a cease-fire and criticized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Last month, she called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal who is actively committing genocide against the Palestinian people while putting the lives of the hostages and the stability of the region in jeopardy.”

Sinensky, who argued that Zionists ought to be supportive of “alt right Christian Neo Nazis on the PRESIDENTIAL LEVEL” in the group chat, later alleged that Omar was antisemitic in a statement to The Intercept. Minn also claimed that she was a “purveyor of hate against Jewish people.”

In the chat with Minn, Sinensky claimed that he’d worked with Make a Difference MN to raise $120,000 since the end of July to support Samuels’s bid. Campaign finance laws strictly prohibit political campaigns from coordinating with super PACS.

While Minn tried to make clear the legal boundaries preventing his coordination, he still discussed raising six-figure sums for Make a Difference MN. Minn also said that his campaign was “in regular communication with AIPAC.”

“Several members of my campaign staff, myself included, have intimate relationships with active and Former executive member of AIPAC,” Minn wrote in a message on July 24.

In the “Zionists for Don Samuels” chat, Minn also discussed strategies to attract Republican voters, to bolster support for Samuels. While Radinovich claimed that he “doesn’t think winning a primary with Republican voters in an 80 percent Democratic district is a strategy that would be successful,” it seems that Samuels has moved forward with outreach to conservative voters anyway.

Samuels appeared on Fox News Monday night, speaking about a fundraising surge he’d experienced since Bush was knocked out of her primary only a week ago. He called Omar “divisive and combative.”

“She picks a side including simply trying to divide her constituency and ignores the other side,” he said, claiming she had taken “contrarian actions” apart from her Democratic colleagues.

Samuels said he’d gone from 100 volunteers to 13,000 volunteers. When asked why he had decided to challenge Omar, he did not mention Israel.

Why in the World Was a Jan. 6 Defendant Allowed to Leave the Country?

A judge has let indicted january 6 defendant barbara balmaseda leave the country for an unbelievable reason..

More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes as a result of the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, with over 540 of them receiving jail time. But one lucky defendant who was indicted in May is getting a nice overseas vacation.

The Miami New Times reports that Barbara Balmaseda, a Florida woman and GOP strategist, received permission on July 19 from U.S. District Judge John Bates to go on her honeymoon to Spain and Italy for two weeks beginning on August 29 and ending on September 13.

Balmaseda was arrested in December and indicted by a federal grand jury on May 22 on five charges related to the riots, including corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, knowingly entering and remaining in a restricted building, and engaging in disorderly conduct in a Capitol building with the intent to impede a session of Congress.

One of those charges was a felony, which Bates mentioned in his decision.

“Particularly relevant to the Court’s conclusion are (1) the uncertain status of defendant’s sole felony charge … (2) defendant’s ties to the United States and apparent lack of ties outside the United States; and (3) defendant’s compliance with her conditions of release to date,” wrote Bates.

Prosecutors disagreed, noting that Balmaseda did not have to post bail and is under neither home detention nor a GPS monitor, and that other January 6 defendants have had overseas travel requests denied.

“The Government acknowledges that Ms. Balmaseda’s honeymoon abroad would be a nice trip to celebrate her marriage, but that does not mitigate the severity of Ms. Balmaseda’s actions before, on, and after January 6, 2021 and the interest in having recourse if Ms. Balmaseda violates her conditions,” prosecutors Matthew Graves and Taylor Fontan wrote in a motion to deny Balmaseda’s request.

According to the FBI, Balmaseda created a Telegram chat that included Florida state Senator Illena Garcia and some Miami-area Proud Boys in the months before January 6, and on the day of the riots, climbed on equipment set up for President Joe Biden’s inauguration while wearing a pink gaiter.

So why was Balmaseda’s request granted? Is it because Balmaseda is well connected? What Bates didn’t mention is that, despite having ties to the Proud Boys, Balmaseda also interned for Senator Marco Rubio from 2018 to 2019, helped to organize Ron DeSantis’s 2018 run for governor of Florida, and was a campaign manager for Garcia’s successful Florida state Senate run in 2020.

Other January 6 defendants can’t say they similarly got to go on their honeymoon abroad. Maybe Balmaseda will also try to use her connections to escape serious punishment or, if Donald Trump wins in November, will try to score a pardon .

Signs Point to Rupert Murdoch Wanting to Destroy Trump

It sure seems like rupert murdoch is beyond pissed at donald trump..

Rupert Murdoch is sending Donald Trump a hidden message through his editorial boards: Trump, you are looking like a loser.

Through his media companies the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, the billionaire business magnate seems to be trying to communicate to Trump that his 2024 campaign isn’t looking so hot. Though Murdoch himself isn’t penning any op-eds, his newspapers’ headlines highlight anxieties from inside the backrooms, The Daily Beast reported.

“Trump Meets Half the Moment in His RNC Speech,” read a WSJ editorial published just hours after his speech at the Republican National Convention. “Trump or Harris? It’s a Tossup for Many CEOs,” read an article at the top of the politics section on Tuesday. “Does Donald Trump Still Have It?” yet another WSJ opinion piece published Sunday asks.

“Trump Is Looking Like a Loser Again,” editor-at-large Gerard Baker wrote in a column on Monday. “The Trump of the past few weeks has looked and sounded more or less exactly like the Trump of nine years ago. This is the problem. It is this Mr. Trump who lost the presidency in 2020. It is this Mr. Trump who lost the House in 2018 and the Senate in the Georgia runoff election in January 2021.”

The relationship between Murdoch and Trump has been rocky for several years, especially after Murdoch personally greenlit the Fox News call that Trump lost Arizona in the 2020 race. When Murdoch said Trump went too far on his election conspiracies, as did some Fox hosts, Trump called the businessman a “MAGA hating globalist” who was “abetting THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA.”

Even though Fox was later forced to pay up big time with a $787 million defamation for parroting Trump’s false election claims, Trump continues to bash Fox News whenever he gets the chance.

Trump and Murdoch had allegedly not been in touch since the 2020 election until a few months ago, when Murdoch reached out to suggest Trump select North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum for his vice president. Perhaps the businessman saw what is now becoming clear about J.D. Vance: He’s bad for the brand .

As Murdoch showed face at the Republican National Convention last month, Donald Trump Jr. took the opportunity to slam him, telling Axios, “There was a time where if you wanted to survive in the Republican Party, you had to bend the knee to him or to others. I don’t think that’s the case anymore.”

Team Trump Makes Unhinged Crowd Size Claim About Elon Musk Interview

Roger stone claimed one billion people had watched the livestream..

Donald Trump is still obsessed with his crowd size—and his buddies are only too happy to back him up.

On Monday night, Trump claimed that 60 million people were listening to his one-on-one conversation with Elon Musk, despite the livestream’s own data tracker indicating that just a fraction of that—roughly a million people—had tuned in. Moments later, Musk amended Trump’s verbiage to project that 100 million people would listen to the glitched-out interview “over the next few days [and] weeks.”

But outside of the X Space, Trump’s allies took the crowd space lie to the moon.

“The president going on X with Elon Musk last night—which got almost, I think, 1 billion views now, is a perfect example of how you combat the disinformation being pumped out by the Democrat media cabal and the Kamala Harris campaign,” conservative strategist Roger Stone told Newsmax Tuesday.

they're a couple hours away from claiming 10 billion people listened to Elon Musk fluff Donald Trump last night pic.twitter.com/blFJQTkehd — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2024

It’s possible Stone was referring to a stretched data point elevated by Musk late Monday night, claiming that the discussion’s audience had reached one billion people—if you lumped in the livestream audience with the aggregate views of every single post made in relation to or mentioning Trump’s talk.

But whether it comes from his allies or the GOP presidential nominee himself, the X crowd nonsense is just another indicator that Trump can’t stop obsessing over his dwindling crowd sizes—and Harris’s growing popularity. Last week, Trump spent some of his spontaneous Mar-a-Lago presser boasting about his attendance numbers, including claiming that his January 6 crowd size was bigger than Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington (photographic evidence proves it wasn’t even close ).

On Truth Social, Trump lamented that the “fake news … refuse to mention crowd size” when he believes he has more attendees. He also pushed a baseless conspiracy that Harris’s campaign had turned to A.I. to distort her crowd numbers. And on Sunday, the bloviating populist seemed to completely lose it over the issue, claiming online that Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “ cheated ” at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and that the 15,000 supporters who showed up to see them arrive “DIDN’T EXIST.”

In 2016 and 2020, Trump relied on the visual logic of his loaded rallies—and, by extension, the lackluster crowds attending his opponents’—as evidence of his titanic popularity among everyday Americans. But Harris’s ability to meet and even exceed Trump’s numbers has really rattled him, along with the conservative establishment. Late last week, news of Harris’s massive crowds reached the top of the Drudge Report , the most heavily trafficked conservative news aggregator, paired with the headline: “HARRIS CROWDS ROIL MAGA.”

Other top stories on the site hinted at more chaos inside Team Trump, including concerns that Trump is “ panicking ” and that the short-notice afternoon press conference at Mar-a-Lago, which reportedly only permitted the attendance of reporters hand-selected by Trump’s team, was evidence of Trump losing faith with his campaign. Trump’s return to X on Monday—the first time the Republican had posted in earnest to his account since he was banned following the January 6 riot—was seen as further evidence that the campaign had reached a “ break glass ” moment amid GOP panic over Harris’s surging lead.

Damning Report Links J.D. Vance to Horrific Work Conditions

A prominent j.d. vance startup was a total “nightmare” for workers, a new report says..

J.D. Vance helped to fund a startup that was supposed to make things better for working people in eastern Kentucky. But not only did it fail, it provided terrible working conditions, causing employees to flee in droves—only to be soon replaced by migrant workers.

CNN reports that in 2017, in the wake of his successful book Hillbilly Elegy, Vance was hired by AOL co-founder Steve Case to invest in underserved markets. One week later, Vance took a meeting with Jonathan Webb, the founder of a startup called AppHarvest.

AppHarvest’s plan was to create an indoor farming operation growing fruits and vegetables in eastern Kentucky, an economically distressed region close to much of the U.S. population with plenty of land and water nearby. Webb had already drained his savings and maxed out his credit cards to run the startup, and he needed more cash. So he reached out to investors, including Vance.

Vance would invest $150,000 in AppHarvest, with other investors chipping in $50,000 each. While Senate disclosures say Vance was named to the company’s board of directors in March 2017, AppHarvest’s security filings say that he joined in 2020. Vance’s own venture capital firm, Narya, had AppHarvest as one of its earliest publicly disclosed investments.

Over the next few years, Vance helped the startup get millions of dollars in capital, and helped Webb as a pitchman. All the while, AppHarvest was hiring eastern Kentucky locals to help with its crops, having pledged to bring thousands of jobs to “high unemployment areas,” according to a presentation it gave to investors in 2020.

At first, things were going well, said one new hire, Anthony Morgan. He said his hours as a crop care specialist were manageable and that the benefits were better than anything else in the area. But a few months later, production fell behind and workers were put under pressure. The company cut employee health care benefits along with other costs, and hours were increased with breaks cut.

For workers like Morgan, that meant longer days in a very hot greenhouse, which put them in danger.

“I think about the hottest that I experienced was around 128 degrees,” Morgan told CNN. “A couple days a week, you’d have an ambulance show up and you seen people leaving on gurneys to go to the hospital.”

As conditions got worse, more and more workers left the company. Morgan organized a sit-in to demand better conditions and was later fired after he took time off to get treatment for an injury that he suffered on the job, he said.

Morgan’s issues were shared by other workers at the company. One other crop care specialist, Shelby Hester, said that the company didn’t provide masks for employees to deal with mold and other contaminants in the greenhouses. Hester corroborated Morgan’s account of workers experiencing heat stroke symptoms, and added that managers disregarded doctor’s notes as a reason to miss work.

With native Kentuckians leaving their jobs, their positions were soon filled by migrant workers coming from countries like Mexico and Guatemala. Politicians and other leaders, like Senator Mitch McConnell, would visit the company’s facilities, only for the migrant workers to be sent away so they wouldn’t be seen.

Kentucky state inspectors visited AppHarvest facilities but didn’t issue any citations, and instead lauded supposed company precautions like mandatory heat breaks and drinks for employees. Nothing would ever happen, and the poor working conditions were documented in a report last year by Grist and the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.

The company went bankrupt in 2023 with $341 million in debt, dealing with millions of dollars in lawsuits. Vance left the company’s board in April 2021 before his run for the Senate in Ohio but still had $100,000 invested in the company. With Vance touting his business record as the Republican vice presidential nominee, AppHarvest is another big strike against him and the campaign.

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Guest Essay

Elon Musk Is Building a Sci-Fi World, and the Rest of Us Are Trapped in It

By Jill Lepore

Ms. Lepore is a professor of history at Harvard and the host of the podcast, “Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket,” from which this essay is adapted.

The last week of October, Bill Gates ( net worth : $138 billion) celebrated his 66th birthday in a cove off the coast of Turkey, ferrying guests from his rented yacht to a beach resort by private helicopter. Guests, according to local reports , included Jeff Bezos (net worth: $197 billion), who after the party flew back to his own yacht, not to be confused with the “superyacht” he is building at a cost of more than $500 million.

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk (net worth: $317 billion), did not attend. He was most likely in Texas, where his company SpaceX was preparing for a rocket launch. Mark Zuckerberg (net worth: $119 billion) wasn’t there, either, but the day after Mr. Gates’s party, he announced his plan for the metaverse, a virtual reality where, wearing a headset and gear that closes out the actual world, you can spend your day as an avatar doing things like going to parties on remote Aegean islands or boarding a yacht or flying in a rocket, as if you were obscenely rich.

The metaverse is at once an illustration of and a distraction from a broader and more troubling turn in the history of capitalism. The world’s techno-billionaires are forging a new kind of capitalism: Muskism. Mr. Musk, who likes to troll his rivals, mocked Mr. Zuckerberg’s metaverse. But from missions to Mars and the moon to the metaverse, it’s all Muskism: extreme, extraterrestrial capitalism, where stock prices are driven less by earnings than by fantasies from science fiction.

Metaverse, the term, comes from a 1992 science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, but the idea is much older. There’s a version of it, the holodeck, in the “Star Trek” franchise, which Mr. Bezos was obsessed with as a kid; last month, he sent William Shatner , the actor who played Captain Kirk in the original series, into space. Billionaires, having read stories of world-building as boys, are now rich enough, as men, to build worlds. The rest of us are trapped in them.

Weirdly, Muskism, an extravagant form of capitalism, is inspired by stories that indict … capitalism. At Amazon Studios, Mr. Bezos tried to make a TV adaptation of the Culture space opera series, by the Scottish writer Iain Banks (“a huge personal favorite”); Mr. Zuckerberg put a volume of it on a list of books he thinks everyone should read; and Mr. Musk once tweeted , “If you must know, I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks.”

But Banks was an avowed socialist. And, in an interview in 2010 , three years before his death, he described the protagonists of the Culture series as “hippy commies with hyper-weapons and a deep distrust of both Marketolatry and Greedism.” He also expressed astonishment that anyone could read his books as promoting free-market libertarianism, asking, “Which bit of not having private property and the absence of money in the Culture novels have these people missed?”

Admittedly, it’s possible these men’s sci-fi fandom is so much tech-bro-PR blather, but these are very smart people and you do get the sense they’ve actually read these books. (Mr. Gates, a philanthropist, isn’t much involved in all this. “I’m not a Mars person,” he said last winter. He read a lot of science fiction as a kid but has mostly left it behind , and, full disclosure, he once put a book of mine on a list of gift books for the holidays , so I’m in no position to question the man’s taste.) Muskism, it seems, involves misreading.

Muskism has origins in Silicon Valley of the 1990s, when Mr. Musk dropped out of a Ph.D. program at Stanford to start his first company and then his second, X.com. As the gap between the rich and the poor grew wider and wider, the claims of Silicon Valley start-ups became more and more grandiose. Google opened an R&D division called X, whose aim is “to solve some of the world’s hardest problems.”

Tech companies started talking about their mission, and their mission was always magnificently inflated: transforming the future of work, connecting all of humanity, making the world a better place, saving the entire planet. Muskism is a capitalism in which companies worry — very publicly, and quite feverishly — about all manner of world-ending disasters, about the all-too-real catastrophe of climate change, but more often about mysterious “existential risks,” or x-risks, including the extinction of humanity, from which only techno-billionaires, apparently, can save us.

But Muskism has earlier origins, too, including in Mr. Musk’s own biography. Much of Muskism is descended from the technocracy movement that flourished in North America in the 1930s and that had as a leader Mr. Musk’s grandfather Joshua N. Haldeman, an ardent anti-communist. Like Muskism, technocracy took its inspiration from science fiction and rested on the conviction that technology and engineering can solve all political, social and economic problems. Technocrats, as they called themselves, didn’t trust democracy or politicians, capitalism or currency. Also, they objected to personal names: One technocrat was introduced at a rally as “1x1809x56.” Elon Musk’s youngest son is named X Æ A-12 .

Mr. Musk’s grandfather, an adventurer, moved his family from Canada to South Africa in 1950, two years after the start of the apartheid regime. In the 1960s, South Africa recruited immigrants by billing itself as a lavish, sun-soaked, custom-made, whites-only paradise. Elon Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971. (To be clear, Elon Musk was a child of apartheid, not an author of it. He also left South Africa at 17 to avoid being conscripted into the military that enforced it.)

As a teenager, he read Douglas Adams’s “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”; he plans to name the first SpaceX rocket to Mars after the crucial spaceship in the story, the Heart of Gold. “Hitchhiker’s Guide” doesn’t have a metaverse, but it does have a planet called Magrathea, whose inhabitants build an enormous computer to ask it a question about “life, the universe and everything.” After millions of years, it answers, “Forty-two.” Mr. Musk says that the book taught him that “if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part.” But that is not the only lesson of “Hitchhiker’s Guide,” which also didn’t start out as a book. Adams wrote it for BBC Radio 4, and, starting in 1978, it was broadcasted all over the world — including to Pretoria.

“Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former galactic empire, life was wild, rich and, on the whole, tax-free,” the narrator intones at the beginning of an early episode . “Many men, of course, became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor, at least, no one worth speaking of.” “Hitchhiker’s Guide,” in other words, is an extended and very, very funny indictment of economic inequality, a science-fiction tradition that stretches all the way back to the dystopias of H.G. Wells, a socialist.

Early science fiction emerged during an era of imperialism: Stories about traveling to other worlds were generally stories about the British Empire. As Cecil Rhodes himself said, “I would annex the planets if I could.” The best early science fiction offered a critique of imperialism. Wells began his 1898 novel, “War of the Worlds,” in which Martians invade Earth, by remarking on British colonial expansion into Tasmania, writing that the Tasmanians, “in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of 50 years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?” Wells wasn’t justifying Martians; he was indicting the British.

Douglas Adams was to South Africa what H.G. Wells was to the British Empire. The U.N. General Assembly denounced apartheid as violating international law in 1973. Three years later, police officers opened fire on thousands of Black schoolchildren during a protest in Soweto, an atrocity extensively reported on by the BBC.

Adams wrote “Hitchhiker’s Guide” for the BBC in 1977. It takes particular aim at the mega-rich, with their privately owned rockets, establishing colonies on other planets. “For these extremely rich merchants, life eventually became rather dull, and it seemed that none of the worlds they settled on was entirely satisfactory,” the narrator says . “Either the climate wasn’t quite right in the later part of the afternoon or the day was half an hour too long or the sea was just the wrong shade of pink. And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of industry: custom-made, luxury planet building.”

This would appear to be exactly what Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk are up to, with their plans for the moon and Mars, annexing the planets if they could. And Douglas Adams? He wrote “Hitchhiker’s Guide” on a Hermes manual typewriter. He’d decorated that typewriter with a sticker. It says, “END APARTHEID.”

How have these men so gravely misread these books? One clue lies in the science fiction they seem, mostly, to ignore: new wave, Afrofuturism, feminist and post-colonial science fiction, the work of writers like Margaret Atwood, Vandana Singh, Octavia Butler and Ted Chiang.

Ursula K. Le Guin once wrote an essay, a riff on an essay by Virginia Woolf, about how the subject of all novels is the ordinary, humble, flawed human being. Woolf called her “Mrs. Brown.” Le Guin thought midcentury science fiction — of the sort written by Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, two more writers lavishly admired by Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos — had lost track of Mrs. Brown. This version of science fiction, she worried, seemed to be “trapped for good inside our great, gleaming spaceships, hurtling out across the galaxy,” ships she described as “capable of containing heroic captains in black and silver uniforms” and “capable of blasting other, inimical ships into smithereens with their apocalyptic, holocaustic rayguns, and of bringing loads of colonists from Earth to unknown worlds,” and finally “ships capable of anything, absolutely anything, except one thing: they cannot contain Mrs. Brown.”

The future envisioned by Muskism and the metaverse — the real and virtual worlds being built by techno-billionaires — doesn’t contain Mrs. Brown, either. Misreading both history and fiction, it can’t even imagine her. I think someone maybe ought to make a sticker. It could read, “EXIT THE METAVERSE.”

Jill Lepore, a professor of history at Harvard, is the author, most recently, of “If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future” and the host of the BBC/Pushkin podcast “Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket,” from which this essay is adapted.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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California will be the first U.S. state to direct millions of dollars from taxpayer money and tech companies to help pay for journalism and AI research under a new deal announced Wednesday.

Under the first-in-the-nation agreement, the state and tech companies would collectively pay roughly $250 million over five years to support California-based news organization and create an AI research program. The initiatives are set to kick in in 2025 with $100 million the first year, and the majority of the money would go to news organizations, said Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who brokered the deal.

“This agreement represents a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and bolstering local journalism across California — leveraging substantial tech industry resources without imposing new taxes on Californians,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “The deal not only provides funding to support hundreds of new journalists but helps rebuild a robust and dynamic California press corps for years to come, reinforcing the vital role of journalism in our democracy.”

Wicks’ office didn’t immediately answer questions about specifics on how much funding would come from the state, which news organizations would be eligible and how much money would go to the AI research program.

The deal effectively marks the end of  a yearlong fight  between tech giants and lawmakers over Wicks’ proposal to  require companies  like Google , Facebook and Microsoft to pay a certain percentage of advertising revenue to media companies for linking to their content.

The bill, modelled after a legislation in Canada aiming at providing financial help to local news organizations, faced intense backlash from the tech industry, which  launched ads  over the summer to attack the bill. Google also tried to pressure lawmakers to drop the bill  by temporarily removing news websites  from some people’s search results in April.

“This partnership represents a cross-sector commitment to supporting a free and vibrant press, empowering local news outlets up and down the state to continue in their essential work,” Wicks said in a statement. “This is just the beginning.”

California has tried different ways to stop the loss of journalism jobs, which have been disappearing rapidly as legacy media companies have struggled to profit in the digital age. More than 2,500 newspapers have closed in the U.S. since 2005, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. California has lost more than 100 news organizations in the past decade, according to Wicks’ office.

The Wednesday agreement is supported by California News Publishers Association, which represents more than 700 news organizations, Google’s corporate parent Alphabet and OpenAI. But journalists, including those in Media Guild of the West, slammed the deal and said it would hurt California news organizations.

State Sen. Steve Glazer, who authored a bill to provide news organizations a tax credit for hiring full-time journalists, said the agreement “seriously undercuts our work toward a long term solution to rescue independent journalism.”

State Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire also said the deal doesn’t go far enough to address the dire situation in California.

“Newsrooms have been hollowed out across this state while tech platforms have seen multi-billion dollar profits,” he said in a statement. “We have concerns that this proposal lacks sufficient funding for newspapers and local media, and doesn’t fully address the inequities facing the industry.”

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Elon Musk Drags Mark Zuckerberg For New $300 Million Superyacht; Internet Says Best Spot For Cage Fight

Meta’s billionaire boss, Mark Zuckerberg, has reportedly bought a new mega yacht worth $300 million. The diesel-powered 287-foot yacht that is moored in Fort Lauderdale has sparked debate among climate-conscious netizens. The world’s fourth richest billionaire also owns a $70 million Gulfstream G650ER private jet. Meta apparently spent $6.6 million on Zuckerberg’s private jet flights in 2022. He was lambasted that year for making 28 trips in a mere 60 days, guzzling enough jet fuel to emit 15 times more carbon than an average American generates in an entire year. In 2023, the company splurged $2.3 million for Zuck’s globe trotting on his luxury jet. Zuckerberg also owns a $5 million Airbus H145 helicopter. In contrast, Tesla boss Elon Musk owns a Gulfstream G650 and no superyacht like his tech nemesis. While the much awaited Zuck vs. Musk cage fight never materialized, the duo’s endeavor to outmatch their carbon footprints makes up for it. Reportedly, Musk’s private jet trips emit 132 times the annual carbon emissions of an average American. Remember when Musk tried to stifle the young lad’s account that tracked the private jets of celebrities, including his and Zuck’s? Seems like bygones. And no one cares enough. Anyway, the third richest billionaire, Elon Musk, reacted to Nark’s multi-million dollar mega yacht. He quipped, “Looks cool, tbh.” He added that his work doesn't allow him any time for a yacht. Musk mentions that once he also possessed a yacht.

Mark Zuckerberg’s New Diesel-Powered 287-Foot Mega-Yacht Moored In Fort Lauderdale Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, known for his climate change advocacy, has recently added a new $300 million mega yacht to his extravagant collection of toys, including a Gulfstream G650 private jet.… pic.twitter.com/uaX1ZCNNqt — Camus (@newstart_2024) May 6, 2024

Mark Zuckerberg's private jet made 28 trips in just 2 months, emitting 15 times more carbon than the average American does in a year, a report found https://t.co/FEttoUBq6s pic.twitter.com/iKCgs3udIW — Yahoo (@Yahoo) November 5, 2022

Elon Musk's private jet emits 132 times the carbon of the average American. https://t.co/yyjnvS8O0L pic.twitter.com/Cvq9JUBGvr — FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) May 3, 2023

Elon Musk travels more by private jet than nearly anyone else in the U.S., averaging a private flight nearly every two days. The carbon footprint from his 171 private flights in 2022 is 132 times the size of the average American's total annual footprint. https://t.co/SYOQg79FJR — Yahoo News (@YahooNews) May 3, 2023

In 2022, Elon Musk's private jet flights alone produced 132x more CO2 emissions than the average carbon footprint of an individual in the U.S. We should tax this reckless pollution. Our new @inequalityorg report with @PatrioticMills recommends how: https://t.co/1srBkv3Afi pic.twitter.com/QrHtvAOJk8 — Institute for Policy Studies (@IPS_DC) May 1, 2023

Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info. Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022

Looks cool tbh. My work doesn’t allow time for a yacht, even I did have one. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2024

We should cage fight on Zucks yacht? — Elon Musk (Parody) (@ElonMuskAOC) May 6, 2024

pic.twitter.com/hSzMP7BDc6 — Alex (@CEOre_) May 6, 2024

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