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Musk's Boring Company To Build Free 1-Mile Tunnel In "Tunnel Vision Challenge!" In a new contest, Elon Musk's tunneling firm, The Boring Company, will build a 1-mile tunnel for free to the best idea submitted to the company. The Boring Company's Prufrock 5 tunneler (via X) "Announcing the Tunnel Vision Challenge!" the company wrote on X. "Pitch us your best 1-mile tunnel idea (Loop, freight, pedestrian, utility, etc.), we’ll pick a winner, and build it…for free!" Announcing the Tunnel Vision Challenge! Pitch us your best 1-mile tunnel idea (Loop, freight, pedestrian, utility, etc.), we'll pick a winner, and build it…for free! Details:https://t.co/xRTmClRjVt Criteria: -Usefulness (good bang for the bore) -Stakeholder Engagement (get… — The Boring Company (@boringcompany) January 19, 2026 In an announcement on their website, the company said (emphasis ours): Do you have Tunnel Vision? You might if you often look around and wonder, wouldn’t it be a lot easier if I could get from Point A to Point B without the hassle of crossing busy roads, intersections, or other obstacles. Tunnels may be your answer! The Boring Company (TBC) invites you to submit your proposal for a tunnel project up to 1 mile in length with a 12-foot inner diameter. TBC will select a winner from the proposals submitted and construct the tunnel free of charge. The tunnel can be a Loop tunnel, a freight tunnel, a pedestrian tunnel, a utility tunnel, a water tunnel, or any other use case where a tunnel would be useful. Prufrock is designed to construct mega-infrastructure projects in a matter of weeks instead of years - so let's build! The deadline for submissions will be February 23, 2026, and a winner will be picked on March 23, 2026. As Tesla Oracle notes further; Musk founded The Boring Company in an effort to reduce tunneling costs. To achieve this, the diameter of the tunnel boring machines (TBMs) was reduced to 12 feet. Following the same principle of constant improvement, The Boring Company continually upgrades its TBMs. The latest TBM is named Prufrock 5 (pictured above). With the previous version (Prufrock 4), The Boring Company achieved a phenomenal tunneling cost efficiency of $27 million per mile. Musk’s company is aiming to achieve a cost of $10 million per mile of tunneling with Prufrock 5 and its future TBMs. Compared to the US standard, boring a 1-mile tunnel costs a staggering $2.5 billion on average (see graph below). So, the Tunnel Vision Challenge is offering at least a $27 million value for free. Prufrock-4 is our smartest, fastest and safest Tunnel Boring Machine. And the next iterations (5, 6, and 7) are already being built at The Boring Factory in Texas. Goal is Continuous Mining and Zero-People-in-Tunnel (ZPIT). We are hiring exceptional ME, EE, and SWEs - join us! pic.twitter.com/oKntdUnOsf — The Boring Company (@boringcompany) September 14, 2025 * * * The outlet also notes that the Boring Company's Las Vegas Convention Center Loop (LVCC) is the best example of a finished tunnel, which carries Tesla vehicles around the strip as long as you have a Model S, 3, X, Y, or Cybertruck (so basically all of 'em). The company collaborated with the Las Vegas Airport and city officials to set up a service called Vegas Loop that helps visitors with airport dropoffs. Vegas Loop dropoff at the Airport! Still in the early phases of the program, providing a small number of rides each day. The ride includes both a tunnel portion and a long surface portion, with the latter shifting to subsurface when the 2.25 mile Airport Connector twin tunnels… https://t.co/uoqer0Jye5 pic.twitter.com/dMUAQUboAh — The Boring Company (@boringcompany) December 30, 2025 Tyler Durden Mon, 01/19/2026 - 21:00

'We Must Pass The SAVE Act': Republicans Engage In Serious Push For Voter ID House Republicans are going "full steam ahead" on a supercharged version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a GOP-sponsored bill to prevent non-citizen voting in federal elections. It would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require documentary proof of US citizenship (passport, birth certificate, or REAL ID=compliant driver's license) when registering to vote. The bill (H.R. 8281) was originally introduced in 2024 and was passed by the House in a 220-198 vote, however it stalled in the Senate under Democratic control. In early 2025, it was revived in the House as H.R. 22, and S. 128 in the Senate. In April, the House passed H.R. 22 in a 220-208 vote, where it was sent to the Senate and has once again stalled due to threat of filibuster or lack of bipartisan support. Now, Republican leadership is pushing a "turbocharged" version called SAVE Act Plus, which would enhance the original bill by adding photo ID requirements for registration and voting, which both House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise have begun aggressively pushing. "What we're looking at doing is passing an even better bill over to the Senate to give them even more incentive to go protect the sanctity of every American's vote, and that is the Save Act plus a picture ID requirement," Scalise told Fox News on Sunday. "Look, you can't even get on an airplane. You can't go to a bar tonight without showing a picture ID. Yet, there are people in many states where the states actually have laws saying you can't show ID, which is a recipe for fraud, for stealing your vote if you're voting legally so that somebody can come behind you illegally in another country and actually vote and steal your vote..." We need massive momentum behind this Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise are pushing to pass the SAVE Act Plus Here’s why that’s a huge deal - This mandates IN PERSON presentation - Voters will must show documents directly to an election official or… pic.twitter.com/WkY4DdVKYi — Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 19, 2026 On Friday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) amplified a post on X showing that 84% of Americans want voter ID - with Lee posting "We must pass the SAVE Act," adding "There are no good arguments against it." We must pass the SAVE Act There are no good arguments against it Pass it on if you agree https://t.co/ZjYQLCNTJb — Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) January 16, 2026 In early December, Johnson said that the SAVE Act would be a "really important measure to eliminate fraud in elections." Elon Musk has been extremely vocal about this as well: No ID and mailing in ballots make fraud trivial. Both of those need to be fixed to restore democracy. https://t.co/edN9yTbDWG — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2026 GET IT DONE TO SAVE AMERICA https://t.co/hCIkDycXFe — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2026 In January, the House Freedom Caucus wrote to Johnson urging him to push the SAVE Act as the top item on his agenda. Tyler Durden Mon, 01/19/2026 - 19:15

Why People Feel The Economy Is Bad, When Data Show Improvement Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times, The U.S. economy is either chugging along nicely or seriously struggling, depending on who is asked. The mismatch stems from perception and perspective. While many of the macroeconomic data look benign, they don’t capture the pain experienced by a large segment of society, several experts told The Epoch Times. At 4.4 percent, unemployment has been only slightly elevated and the median wage growth of 4 percent has more than kept up with 2.7 percent inflation, all according to December data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet a solid majority of Americans feel gloomy about the economy, polls indicate. “I think there’s some element of a vibecession, where the vibes are worse than reality,” said Ben Zweig, labor economist and CEO of Revelio Labs. It’s understandable that people would be upset about living expenses, even if the inflation rate has subsided, because the previous price increases remain baked-in, according to Zweig. “People have a very unrealistic expectation that prices should fall to their pre-inflation spike levels, and that’s totally off the cards,” Zweig told The Epoch Times. “I think people have this cumulative disgruntlement about the economy years ago, and that is very hard to overcome.” At the same time, “there are some really troubling signs out there,” he said. Tough Job Market Excluding the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, hiring hit a decade low in November 2025, when businesses hired less than 5.1 million people. It has struggled to take off since. “People are not moving and there’s just historically low mobility,” Zweig said. That hits young people, who are just entering the labor market, especially hard. “Job posting volume is way down, and that is concentrated in younger workers, more entry level positions. So that is a real problem,” he said. It was also around mid-2024 when wage growth for the lowest-paid workers started to lag, reversing a previous trend. The lowest paid 25 percent of workers enjoyed faster wage growth than the rest of the workforce consistently since mid-2015. But recently, that advantage has disappeared. For the past year and a half, these workers have seen their wages grow substantially slower than the rest, at a 3.5 percent rate in 2025, compared to the 4 percent overall average. Even the slower wage growth exceeded inflation, but it’s important to understand the reality behind the data. “Wage growth is not the same [as] individuals getting a raise,” said Ernan Haruvy, professor at McGill University and expert on economic and consumer behavior. “To get a real pay raise, I have to change jobs. That’s how it works,” he told The Epoch Times. Technological efficiencies, not exclusively related to artificial intelligence, have likely played a role, according to Zweig, again hitting the lowest-paid and entry-level jobs. Technology “doesn’t automate jobs wholesale,” he noted. “It automates little bits of tasks. And you can think of the tasks that people do as being in some hierarchy, from very small, granular micro tasks to very broad, abstract workflows. And it’s a lot easier to automate small and micro tasks, and it’s a lot harder to automate big, chunky workflows. So it happens to be that the highly skilled people are the ones that have the broadest responsibilities, and the lower tier workers are the ones that are doing the simplest work. So I think we do see more labor displacement of the most simple jobs.” This dynamic is likely to create more income inequality, he estimated. The economy has also been harsh to older people who find themselves with only a fraction of what they need to save in order to retire, especially with the looming Social Security insolvency, Scott Siff, founder and CEO of Pivoter, a job matching platform for people 55 and over, said. “Those folks are feeling things like above-average inflation and higher prices for staples like groceries much more…

"Decades Of Underinvestment": LA Firefighters Turn To Voters Amid Budget Crisis Los Angeles firefighters say years of underfunding have pushed their department into crisis, forcing them to appeal directly to voters for money to cover what they describe as basic public safety needs—even as the city spends about $1 billion a year on homelessness programs, according to the NY Post. This week, firefighters launched petition drives to place a half-cent sales tax increase on the November 2026 ballot. The measure would fund additional firefighters, new engines, and repairs to aging fire stations, which supporters describe as a last resort after repeated warnings to City Hall went unanswered. “Due to decades of underinvestment, our fire department currently operates with the same number of firefighters as in the 1960s, six fewer stations, and five times the call load,” said Rich Ramirez, an LAFD paramedic. “The LAFD is half the size needed to keep LA safe, so your LAFD firefighters and paramedics are appealing directly to voters to provide funding for more personnel, equipment, and stations so that we can arrive on time to save lives and property when seconds can make the difference between life and death.” The NY Post writes that call volume has soared. In 1960, LAFD responded to about 101,000 calls a year. Today, firefighters handle more than 514,000 calls annually, with staffing levels largely unchanged. Average response times now near eight minutes, almost double national standards, and the city has fewer than one firefighter per 1,000 residents. City Councilmember Traci Park said the department’s condition reflects years of neglect. “We have million-dollar fire engines out of service with weeds growing around their tires,” she said. “I’ve been blowing the whistle on the lack of staffing, funding and resources at the fire department since I took office.” Firefighters say homelessness has driven a significant share of the surge. Between 2018 and 2024, incidents tied to people experiencing homelessness made up roughly one-third of all LAFD fire calls, while trash fires jumped nearly 475% over the past decade. Despite the increased demand, LAFD operates on about $923 million to protect nearly 3.9 million residents—about $238 per person—compared with more than $22,000 spent annually per unhoused individual. If approved, the half-cent sales tax would raise an estimated $324 million in its first year. The funds would be restricted to core fire services, overseen by audits and a civilian commission, and supporters must gather 154,000 signatures within 180 days to qualify the measure for the ballot. Tyler Durden Mon, 01/19/2026 - 18:25