Elon Musk spent Wednesday, Oct. 28, and that evening on two tracks: telling Grok Bot users to route around Amazon’s block on AI shopping agents, and celebrating Starlink in disasters and schools from Spain to Gabon. He also crowned Ship 42 for SpaceX’s first attempt to catch a Starship upper stage at the tower, cheered Tesla owners and reacted to the Alaska Senate story. This edition covers 7:03 a.m. PT Wednesday to 7:03 a.m. PT Thursday, lists the highlights first, follows his topics in the usual order, closes with a deep dive on Grok Bot shopping and ends with the videos.

Highlights. “Just have @Bot buy it somewhere else at a lower price,” he wrote after an owner reported Amazon had locked out his Grok Bot (), then told Lütke, “Buy from @Shopify!” (), the same day Shopify named Grok Bot among agents that offer Shop Pay “for brands not on Shopify” (Shopify). He wrote that “Starship 42 will be the first tower catch” (). And he answered Starlink’s free service for victims of a deadly train crash in Spain with “Standard practice” ().

1. Tesla. His first original line of the day: “At Tesla, we even care about the chipmunks,” over a clip of a 98-year-old who says his self-driving Model Y “did not run over the chipmunk” (). He reposted radio host Buck Sexton calling FSD “incredible” on his first ride (), quoted a Houston police officers’ union post urging riders to use Robotaxi rather than drink and drive with “🇺🇸 Robotaxi Houston 🇺🇸” () and agreed with “True” that FSD “could literally free up OVER $1.5 trillion/yr,” a user’s estimate (), and reposted Sawyer Merritt’s comparison of a $14,190 used Model 3 with a $14,549 MacBook Pro (). He also agreed that headlines name Tesla in crashes while naming no brand for others () and, under Austen Allred’s photo of a $29,799 Mac Studio, wrote, “Makes a Tesla seem quite affordable!” (). Early Thursday he thanked Italy’s transport minister, Matteo Salvini, “Much appreciated. Thank you!” () after Salvini described a “Very positive and constructive conversation” with him and wrote that Italy “supports a swift EU approval of Tesla Assisted Driving” (; LaPresse). The desk found no announced EU approval as of Thursday morning.

2. SpaceX and Starlink. SpaceX posted that Ship 42 “performed a full duration, six-engine static fire, and fired a single Raptor engine to simulate a deorbit burn” (); Musk added, “As the prophecy foretold, Starship 42 will be the first tower catch” (). SpaceX has set no launch date for Flight 15; aviation planning data point to no earlier than Nov. 8, TSN reports, and the desk found no announced Flight 15 license (TSN; Space.com). On Spain’s high-speed train crash near Urda, Toledo, Starlink said its Mobile service gave “free connectivity” to Orange and Telefónica customers, and Musk wrote “Standard practice” (); he also reposted Eva Fox on ADSLZone’s report that Movistar and Orange turned to Starlink to reinforce coverage at the crash site (; ADSLZone). He reposted @cb_doge posts on a 312-school Starlink rollout in El Alto, Bolivia, and on Gabon’s plan to connect more than 200 villages (; ), plus United Airlines saying “44% of our @starlink installations are complete” (), and answered a user who praised running Grok over Starlink on an international flight with “❤️” (). On Starship’s steel hull he told the Dwarkesh podcast account, “Also, no need to paint stainless. Paint adds more mass & cost.” ().

3. X. “True,” he wrote under “people with the highest IQ are on 𝕏” (), his most-viewed post of the window.

4. Boring Company and Neuralink. He reposted the Boring Company’s tour of its Bastrop, Texas, operations center, where staff remotely run machines in Las Vegas, Nashville and San Antonio (), and Neuralink’s report that “One participant achieved 75 WPM at 5.8% WER on a 125k-word vocabulary in their first week” (). TeslaNorth notes “Those figures come from Neuralink alone” and that the company did not say how many people take part (TeslaNorth).

5. AI in general. He praised rivals’ news with one word each: “Impressive” for Google’s Gemini 4 Carbon, from both Sundar Pichai and Demis Hassabis (; ), “Wow” for Alphabet’s quarter (), “Impressive” for Microsoft’s () and “Interesting” for Anthropic’s drug-discovery work (). Google says Carbon “ranks #1 on the recently updated v5.0 of Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 59” and will reach only “a subset of cyber defenders” at first (Google). He wrote that “breakthroughs in everything are accelerating exponentially” (), told a user that “Saving money for the distant future is pointless with the advent of super intelligent abundance” (), and called AI-assisted audits of economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, posted on Marginal Revolution, “No kidding,” adding, “AI/SI not needed for that conclusion!” (; ). The post reports audits of 138 papers by Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra (Marginal Revolution); the desk found no response from Saez or Zucman.

6. Grok Bot. Beyond the shopping posts covered in the deep dive, he quoted “grok bot makes work feel like a video game” with “Try Grok Bot” (), laughed at a user who wrote “grok bot told me to post this” over a stock photo of a pointing hand (), and reposted a developer who listed Grok Bot among his “wtf” moments with AI () and a planned “30 days, 30 real Grok Bot use cases” series ().

7. U.S. politics. He answered a post on the New York Times’ Alaska report with “Wow” and reposted it (); the report says people working with Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign helped recruit a second Dan Sullivan, which her campaign and the DSCC deny (CNBC; Juneau Independent). His most-liked post, “They do,” endorsed “Vote like children’s lives depend on it” (). He wrote “Hmm” over a post contrasting two Hennepin County, Minn., prosecutors (), “💯” to a post that “If Democrats regain power, they will send everything they have against him” (), and reposted Scott Presler on Texas early voting, a post claiming “83% of Americans wanted photo ID to vote,” and a critic of Austin’s Prop I charter measure (; ; ).

8. World. He answered a post about a farm attack in South Africa’s North West province with “So many times this has happened” (); the desk did not verify the attack details in that post.

9. Media and culture. He replied “!!” to Andy Ngo on the Zizian killings (), “It’s in every strand of our DNA!” on sex and cheek swabs (), “This is insane” to Garry Tan on a school phasing out honors classes (), “Cyberpsychosis” to a post on how fast AI news moves () and “I think I’m Steve,” linking a Babylon Bee satire about the last American without a podcast (; Babylon Bee). He also reposted a clip of his own past remarks to Joe Rogan comparing surgeons who operate on minors’ sex organs to “Josef Mengele” (), a list of his charitable acts that ends “The record says otherwise” (), and wrote “True” over a video about his near-collapse in 2008 ().

Deep dive: Grok Bot and the Amazon wall. The thread began at 7:00 p.m. PT, when Tesla investor James Douma wrote, “Amazon locked out my Grok Bot. So it just bought the same thing from a different site (at a lower price).” (). Musk quoted him 30 minutes later: “That’s what I do too. Just have @Bot buy it somewhere else at a lower price.” (). Lütke replied, “Just in time for shop pay support” (), and Musk answered, “Buy from @Shopify!” (). Behind the exchange sit two documents. Grok Bot’s changelog for version 0.78.1, dated Oct. 27, says “Buy now starts an order you approve,” lets users “Connect Shop Pay in the Vault's Payments tab,” and adds subscription templates, with Bots that “confirm with you before changing anything” (changelog). Shopify’s Fall ’26 Edition, published Oct. 28, says “Claude Duet, Grok Bot, and Instinct also offer Shop Pay for brands not on Shopify,” and that “their card is never shared with the agent” (Shopify). The desk found no announced partnership between the two companies beyond those pages.

Amazon’s side looks different. Since Oct. 14, users have posted a notice that “Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed” (Supercharged Daily); Cybernews reports the same wording from Amazon’s earlier cutoff of Meta’s Muse agent and found “no official statement confirming that Amazon has blocked Grok Bot” (Cybernews). Supercharged Daily, whose editor discloses holding Tesla and SpaceX shares and using Grok Bot, frames it as two retailers “taking opposite positions on AI agents” (Supercharged Daily).

What the record shows. The shopping features and the Shop Pay listing appear in official pages from x.ai and Shopify (changelog; Shopify). Amazon’s block rests on screenshots users posted; Amazon has made no public statement about Grok Bot. Douma’s lower price and Musk’s “That’s what I do too” stand as personal accounts the desk could not check. Ship 42’s catch attempt depends on an FAA license not yet announced (TSN). Neuralink’s speech numbers come from the company alone (TeslaNorth).

Responses. Lütke’s “Just in time for shop pay support” () drew Musk’s “Buy from @Shopify!”; the desk found no Amazon response in the window. Salvini’s post on Tesla Assisted Driving drew his thanks ().