Elon's X Machina + Crypto Orbs + A Visit to Google’s Robot Lab

On Sunday night, a crane arrived in downtown San Francisco to take down the Twitter sign from the company’s office building. The crane’s arrival marked the death of Twitter, the brand, and the start of X, Elon Musk’s everything app. Today, why Elon’s acquisition feels more and more like cultural vandalism and what, if anything, will replace the global town square.

Then, is Sam Altman’s universal basic income cryptocurrency app Worldcoin an iris scanning tool to save humanity, or just another attempt to get rich on crypto?

Plus: a trip to Google’s robotics lab, where artificial intelligence models are creating breakthroughs.

Additional reading:

• Casey breaks down Twitter’s rebrand.
• The launch of Worldcoin — and the story of how it recruited the first half a million users.
• Kevin’s column is a deep dive into Google’s new robotics model, which melds A.I. with robots.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.