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Elon Musk loves to project strength. He flexes loudlyhyping Tesla and xAI, bashing the federal government, even parenting like a drill sergeant. Lately, hes been trying to flex in gaming. On Joe Rogans podcast last year, Musk claimed he was one of the worlds best Diablo IV playersand the leaderboards seemed to back him up. That is, until he streamed Path of Exile 2. Viewers quickly noticed he had a high rank but played like a rookie. Musk later admitted to boosting his account. Still, hes kept streamingmostly becoming a punchline among serious gamers. Just last week, he rage-quit a stream after repeatedly dying and getting clowned by commenters. Musk wants badly to be seen as a pro gamer. The problem? Hes just not very good. Elon Musks gaming persona Scroll through Elon Musks X feed and youll find it all: offensive memes, government rants, attacks on business criticsand increasingly, gaming content. Musk has been streaming on X since 2023, sometimes from his personal account but more often from his alt, @cyb3rgam3r420. He streams from everywhereincluding a recent 44-minute session on his private jet, spent mostly in silence. Musk loves to hype himself. The clips he posts from his streams focus on big winsfaster clear times, new buildsor his new Path of Exile name, Kekius Maximus, which he claimed was destined for greatness. On The Joe Rogan Experience the day before the 2024 election, Musk went on a tangent to brag about his Diablo IV skills, claiming he ranked in the global top 20a list that, at the time, included only two Americans. Shockingly, Musk was right. So, why does he play like such an amateur? Musks streams often reveal a shaky grasp of Path of Exiles mechanics. Viewers have called out his gaming setup as another giveaway of his inexperience. Internet sleuths quickly analyzed his gameplay and noticed signs that his account had been active when he couldnt possibly have been playinglike during Trumps inauguration. Eventually, YouTuber NikoWrex DMed Musk directly, asking if he had boosted his account. Musk replied with the 100% emoji. Its impossible to beat the players in Asia if you dont, he wrote. Musk later reposted the exchange. Even after admitting to boosting, Musk keeps streaming. His skills remain mediocre, but he continues to hype these sessions as if he were an esports pro. His daughter, Vivian Wilson, recently described his gaming as dogst awful, like god-awful. Just last week, Musks Path of Exile 2 stream was overrun with hate comments and trolls after he repeatedly diedincluding to the tutorial boss. The stream eventually went dark (Musk blamed his WiFi) and was scrubbed from X. Elon Musk’s volatility complex Elon Musk has a long history of erratic online behavior. When he helped dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureauwhich had saved consumers an estimated $19.7 billionhe mocked the move with a post: CFPB RIP. When Donald Trump spread the racist lie that Haitian immigrants were eating pets, Musk replied with AI-generated images of a kitten and duck, writing, save them! During Hurricane Helene, as the South faced devastation, Musk circulated misinformation from the FAA and FEMA via screenshots of text messages, then publicly clashed with Pete Buttigieg. The list goes on. Clearly, his behavior around gaming isnt exactly out of character. He wants to be seen as a pro, aligning himself with the bro demographic that helped elect Trump. Too bad hes just not good at it.
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E-Commerce
Charging a car, or electric vehicle, typically takes about 350 kilowatts. Charging an entire ocean freighter, or electric vessel, could take 20 megawatts, roughly 57 times more power. Its a striking difference in power and generating capacity, and illuminates the challenges and opportunities behind greening the freighters and container ships crisscrossing the earths oceans. Across the Atlantic, maritime green energy provider NatPower Marine is developing the infrastructure to establish the worlds first operational electrified shipping corridor between Ireland and England. This includes electric boats and chargers and the renewable energy projectswhich include wind, solar, and batteriesto power the vessels. Stefano Sommadossi, the firms CEO, said these kinds of advancements will help close a considerable gap in a clean-energy-powered supply chain. A handful of electric ships will start traversing this route in 2026. 3% of global emissions This is important, Sommadossi said. Imagine getting your Tesla car delivered, and then realizing it was shipped to you over the ocean using diesel fuel. Im bringing you an energy-efficient vehicle with the worst kind of energy use. NatPower Marines $132 million investment with developer Peel Group will outfit eight portsincluding Lancashire and Dublinto create a network of electric vessels, as well as portside chargers, and electric cars and vans to transport goods once theyre unloaded. NatPower aims to create 120 clean ports by 2030, and plans to spend $4 billion in total to establish a global network. There has been concerted effort by advocates of cleaner global shipping to find more ways to cut the carbon emissions of this energy-hungry sector. Shipping is a vital link in the international economy, but it also contributes approximately 3% of global emissions, an amount roughly equivalent to the emissions of Germany. Unless they’re being made and used locally, or shipped via electric trucks, even the greenest items rack up considerable emissions on the journey overseas. The push to clean up ocean shipping has taken multiple pathways to success: electrifying very short routes, investing in cleaner fuels for cross-ocean trade, and electrifying port operations. The latter can make a big difference for those living near active ports, where port-related emissions can make up roughly a third of the citys carbon footprint. Cleaning up the industry offers substantial benefits, said Sommadossi, including cutting port emissions, improving the health of those living nearby, and, as green shipping networks grow and encompass a larger portion of everyday commerce, offering companies seeking to reduce their carbon footprint a chance at having a truly zero-emission supply chain. Crossing the oceans on clean power Electrification, as of yet, isnt quite feasible for journeys across the Atlantic or Pacific; too much battery weight, not enough places to stop and charge. Many proposals look at shorter routes with the ability to charge or swap batteries more often. But the power needed to do so would be immense: Sommadossi estimates that electrifying the entire shipping industry would use as much power every year as the U.S. currently consumes. For these journeys, new technology will need to be advanced and deployed, said Jesse Fahnestock, who leads decarbonization work at the Global Maritime Forum. The current vision involves creating sustainably produced liquid fuels, such as ammonia or methanol, and building out new infrastructure at ports, including fuel generation and storage. No current corridors exist, but there are a number of pilot and demonstration projects in the works, with the Global Maritime Forum helping to coordinate developments in order to establish international standards for power ships. The forum already counts 62 separate projects across the globe trying to determine greener shipping systems, with 15 electric corridors and the rest utilizing different variations of cleaner fuel. For many companies, the appeal of cutting out their ocean freight emissions is leverage thats currently being used to fund the development of alternative fuels for longer ocean trips. The Zero Emission Maritime Buyers Alliance (ZEMBA), a global collective, gathers companies, including Amazon and Patagonia, to create what it calls tendersrequests for providing significantly reduced emission transit for their goods. Shipping companies bid on the routes and the winner gets new business; its a way of guaranteeing big shippers get compensated for their investments in cleaner fuels and ships. Biofuels on the high seas The shipping industry is a complex and often overlooked, hard-to-abate sector that is only now starting to deploy zero and near-zero emission solutions, said Ingrid Irigoyen, CEO of ZEMBA, which aims to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels in the shipping industry. This industry also faces the famous chicken and egg problem, referring to the idea that many cargo ownersthe customers of the shipping industryare hesitant to invest in newer, more expensive, more sustainable service offerings until low emission fuels and technologies reach scale and therefore significant cost reduction. ZEMBA remains fuel-agnostic, just as long as the fuel and technology (be it green methanol, ammonia, or methane) can attain a 90% greenhouse gas reduction rate. Later this year, ZEMBAs first tender will begin operating: Shipping line Hapag-Lloyd will service 20 freight buyers, including Meta, New Balance, Nike, and REI Co-op, shipping goods between Singapore and the port city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands on ships powered with waste-based biomethane, with an 80% reduction in carbon emissions. Irigoyen said there were challenges finding enough alternative fuel and figuring out the correct carbon accounting, but the launch is on track, and expects to abate 82,000 metric tons of CO2 over the next two years. ZEMBA is set to launch a second tender in 2027 that would focus more on hydrogen-based fuels. Irigoyens vision is a shipping sector where any company has the ability to decarbonize all its shipping activities if it so chooses, all at a competitive rate. The companies in the alliance represent the first movers, and their investment will hopefully kick-start a market for scalable sustainability solutions, she said, adding, I find that kind of leadership and long-term thinking quite moving and inspiring.
Category:
E-Commerce
A new ad from the Coca-Cola Co. opens with a shot of a typewriter clacking out Stephen King’s The Shining. The viewer follows a passage being written in an old-timey typeface until theres a reference to a bottle of Coke. Suddenly, the type appears as the cola company’s script logo. The ad is part of a new campaign called “Classic” running in Spain and the U.K., in which Coca-Cola highlights instances when its brand name appears in literature by rendering them in the books’ original first-edition typefaces. The passages are printed in black, and references to either “Coke” or “Coca-Cola” in passages from King’s The Shining, J. G. Ballard’s Extreme Metaphors, and V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas are rendered in logo format. Coke’s red logo pops against the white paper amid the black retro type. [Photo: Courtesy of VML] The approach emphasizes Coke’s legacy and plays on nostalgia in an analog medium and in an analog way. While so much of soda marketing is contemporary and youth-oriented, Coke is doing the opposite. It found a clever way to remind viewers that it’s been part of culture long before e-readers and cellphones by going back to print. It’s anti-trend and purposefully old-school, using the brand’s history and resonance in culture as social proof of its legacy. The campaign will appear on outdoor billboards and signage, streaming radio, online video, print, and cinema. Out-of-home posters show passages printed on paper, complete with page numbers and the books author and title. [Photo: Courtesy of VML] The challenge for the creatives behind “Classic” was how to reinforce “the timelessness and authenticity of Coca-Cola in a world where trends reign,” says VML, the marketing agency that worked with Coke’s agency, WPP Open X, to create the campaign. “Coca-Cola has always been more than a beverageit’s a cultural icon that naturally finds its way into the stories we love,” Rafael Pitanguy, VML’s deputy global chief creative officer, said in a statement. “With ‘Classic,’ we’re honoring that legacy by bringing its literary presence to life in a way that feels both nostalgic and fresh.” Coca-Cola has played with its vintage-style script logo in new and surprising ways recently, like in a 2024 campaign from VML and WPP Open X that used authentic but unauthorized hand-drawn examples of the logo. And to promote recycling last year, Coca-Cola’s campaign with Ogilvy New York used smashed versions of the logo as they appear on crushed cans. With “Classic,” Coca-Cola isn’t so much finding experimental or clever ways to break from its brand guide like in some of last year’s creative. Instead, it’s finding a novel way to impose its brand guide onto culture, showing how Coke is embedded into literary history itself.
Category:
E-Commerce
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