Hi, welcome to your Weekend.
It’s been another week of all-things Elon Musk, courtesy of Walter Isaacson’s book drop, an appearance in Washington for AI discussions with lawmakers and his opining on the inevitability of a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan at the All-In Summit.
The illustration designer Clark Miller created for Adam Lashinsky’s review of the Isaacson book captures this moment perfectly: Musk truly is our Inescapable Man.
If you’ve been involved with the tech scene in Austin, Tex., the past several years, you know this to be true. His shadow looms large in the Lone Star State. For this week’s cover story, Julia dived deep into the libertarian heart of the Austin tech brat pack, whose chief organizers are Gigafund co-founders Luke Nosek and Stephen Oskoui.
Her profile of the longtime Elon friends and backers not only sheds light on their sometimes-radical ideas and aspirations. It connects their belief systems to those of libertarian heroes like Ron Paul and Peter Thiel. Julia also turns up the interesting nugget that Gigafund invested in the movie studio behind the conservative Christian cause célèbre “Sound of Freedom.”
And guess who helped that film achieve virality on social media earlier this summer? You guessed it. Him.
Now onto this week’s stories…
At their venture firm, Gigafund, Luke Nosek and Stephen Oskoui seek out founders with transformative visions of the future. But what, exactly, do those visions look like? Julia connects the dots between the technologists stoking our present-day culture wars and the race to to an abundant, transhumanist and multiplanetary future.
Adam reviews Walter Isaacson’s 670-page magnum opus on Elon Musk. Though the book is long on behind-the-scenes moments, he writes, it is short on the details that matter.
Last month, we conducted the first-ever Brain-Body Investment Survey, asking subscribers about their exercise, wellness and beauty practices. To remove any lingering confusion, Annie set out to define the more newfangled trends gripping Silicon Valley today.
Reading: The other tech founder bio
Forget the Isaacson book for a second. On my corner of the internet—the one populated by editors and influencers bopping around New York Fashion Week—the buzz was all about a different dishy read: “Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier,” by Marissa Meltzer. The book, which came out on Tuesday, tells the story of Weiss and her makeup juggernaut Glossier, a brand she built in her own image and just last year passed to new CEO Kyle Leahy. The book traces Glossier’s arc with a dose of irony—it was a company that took off because it felt newer and fresher than anything else on the market. But it lagged when others caught up, muddling in the sameness of pink, sans-serif millennial static. When a company’s identity is so tied to its founder, how does it grow beyond the vision of that one person? A good beauty product, like a good biography, speaks for itself. —Annie
Following: Barstool’s burners
Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports has long been a cultural force to be reckoned with, amassing millions of followers and a no-holds-barred reputation. But, it turns out, that empire rests upon a foundation of flagrant and constant copyright infractions. A new investigation from The Daily Beast shows that Barstool has over 40 “burner” accounts on X that the company uses to cleverly sidestep copyright law. The practice—in which the company takes a copyrighted video, posts it from an anonymous account, and then simply retweets it from the flagship Barstool account—means the company can move faster than other outlets to publish sports highlights. Even though the content inevitably gets flagged and, after enough strikes, the burner account is banned, there’s little downside risk to Barstool—as long as nobody catches them. Now that sports leagues and broadcasters are aware of what Portnoy and Co. have been up to, we’ll see what their lawyers have to say. —Margaux
Noticing: The case of the missing flat-Earther
For weeks, Mike Buckner—explorer, alleged ex-NASA employee, and proud conspiracy theorist—has hyped his upcoming trip to Antarctica’s secret “Ice Wall” that will finally prove the Earth is flat. (He, too, was once a believer in the globe until his last prediction—that the planet Nibiru would crash into Earth—failed to come true.) On September 8, Buckner announced that he was ready to set out on his journey from Chile on a chartered plane and promised to livestream the drone footage that would finally “DEBUNK THE GLOBE EARTH MYTH” for all to see on X. Sadly, the adventurer appears to have gone silent since that tweet. Earth to Mike! We need an update! —Julia
Makes You Think
Next, we’re going to find out that Mars is really made of red velvet cake. Oh wait…
Until next Weekend, thanks for reading.
—Jon
Weekend Editor, The Information
