For the love of fucking GOD delete X/Twitter. It is not worth it y’all…
Speaking of being active in your community, we need you in 2026 my friend. We need you to be here for those who can’t speak. We need each other. The lovely billionaires are hellbent on making Tennessee their personal playground. From the Boring company tunnel in Nashville to the excessive methane releases for Grok in Memphis, Elon Musk seems to love us the most. I get it, the apartheid nepotist would love to cosplay as a drunk racist cowboy. It tracks. That is out of our control, but we can resist his stupid ideas. Let’s check in on them.
The “Music City Loop” will look something like this (updated December 26, 2025):1
Before you ask, no dear reader, you are not stupid. This is indeed, NOT a loop. It is not even a quarter of a circle. It is a line with a bend at the end of it to get out of the airport. Also, as we look, we can see its two very important stops! First, the convention center (Broadway), and the State Capitol. Places that are super important to my trip home from the airport. Boring company’s argument is that they are creating a cheap express line for one destination: the airport. My argument is that we don’t need a cheap single answer, we need a wholesale redevelopment of our infrastructure. Even if they put a cheap “park and ride” at the State Capitol stop, the line is not versatile and does not offer enough stops to make it worth riding for locals. If that were not enough, Boring Company (Elon’s company building the tunnel) has received multiple hefty fines (some rescinded after back door meetings with State officials) for dumping drill fluid from the Vegas Loop into the Clark County sewers just this year.2
I could keep going about how stupid this is from a common sense standpoint but themore pressing issue is: I don’t trust them. They lie all the time about every aspect of what they are doing. The Vegas loop was built quickly (around 1 year) but it could only serve 25% of its projected riders (800 an hour)3 and contained 8 stations, rather than the promised 51 stations. Now you can say what you want; but the folks at Boring Company also stay busy. Amassing over 800 total accusations of environmental violations since working on the Vegas project in 2021.4 From the sludge in the Vegas tunnels that is ankle deep to the water giving chemical burns to firefighters, there is a cost to speed. Which brings me to my main problem. He is attempting to build something much larger in Nashville, with much more difficult building conditions. Most Nashvillians have heard why it is so hard to build an underground subway here, digging through the limestone.
For the uninitiated, Limestone is a soft stone that dissolves in water (slowly over time) and can form cracks, holes, or massive caves. This makes us susceptible to sinkholes.5
You may be thinking, “well we know the sinkholes are there, so we can just dodge them!” and that is really cute. Unfortunately, in the WPLN interview (source 5), Vanderbilt’s professor emeritus of Geology, Molly Miller, called Tennessee a “Geological desert” because our most recent geological surveys date back at least 50 years. Boring Company did not respond to WPLN’s request to be interviewed on how it would approach safety.
So what do we know about what Boring Company plans to do? Originally, they elected to start digging without any environmental or geological survey. Since then, Boring Company claims that they have done their own independent study. They say their study shows that there will be “little to no risk to human health or the environment.”6 Boring Company emphasizes that they seek to be in compliance with Tennessee recycling and dumping regulations. I call bullshit. I can go back to their 800 environmental accusations, or I could point out their brazen plan. Musk claims that he will have autonomous drills digging for 24 hours a day, for the next 2 years. Which is insane given that they neither know what is ahead of them in the ground, or if this is even the final route.
Musk’s company also is not disposing of the Limestone either. Our state officials signed an agreement where Musk will have first right of refusal on the stone. Despite it being state land, on state property, and a state contract, we (the state) will have to pay Musk taxpayer dollars to get our stone back.7 This would be at “Market Rate” for the state and could cost us millions of taxpayer dollars.
Fortunately for us in Nashville, they’ve only just broken ground on the Loop. Maybe we can still stop it. The situation in Memphis is much more dire. This is another thing I want to talk about much more in depth in 2026 because there is so much more going on here.
The “spark notes” are that Musk built a supercomputer in Memphis in 2024 called “Colossus” and it is meant to power and train the xAI chatbot “Grok”. This is supposed to be the world’s largest supercomputer. This computer was built in a predominantly black community in Memphis that already had a historically high rate of pollution-related illness. When this facility was built, they were granted permits for 15 methane powered gas turbines, but has been operating 33 turbines.8 This pollution is unnoticeable to the naked eye, but you can see it in scans/special cameras.9 Tragically, this is nothing new for the residents of Shelby County. A county that earned an “F” in ozone pollution from the American Lung Association in its 2024 report, due to excessive smog.10
Similar to Nashville, Musk has chosen to continually skirt around regulations. Initially not seeking approval for methane turbines, and then only getting approved for half of the turbines he built.11 xAI promises Memphis that it is going to build the community a new water purifier12 so the company will drain less of the city’s water. They are also planning building a second supercomputer, and have not commented on how that will be cooled. They claim to be exploring “non-water based” cooling options, but I must have missed where Musk invested in “Big-Ass Fans”. The Colossus supercomputer also currently siphons power from the Memphis power grid. An amount of power that could power 100,000 homes.8 This is, of course, in addition to the turbines.
Memphis residents have been fighting for clean air for the better part of this century. To me, this is an abhorrent failure of their representation. Everyone deserves the right to breathe. That is a constitutional right under the 9th Amendment. It is no coincidence that Memphis is also a predominantly black population either. Specifically, in Boxtown, a population with a median income just under $37,000. The same town that had to fight off the Byhalia pipeline in 2019 to protect their drinking water. A community that had 17 toxic release inventory facilities before Colossus was built.
Across the United States we have seen corridors pop up called, “sacrifice zones.” Areas of high concentrations of minority populations, that are coincidentally being sold out by local governments to massive polluters. Boxtown is not alone. It is a local example of how the world is shifting around us. This impacts everyone. If you like hunting, there’s going to be less wildlife when they start dying from pollutants. If you like hiking, have fun with smog filled sunsets. Even your drive home could collapse beneath your feet. Even if it was the best train idea ever or the best supercomputer ever, we as a community deserve true transparency. There’s a reason they do not want to provide that.
My fears for my home are that people will ignore things like this. My hope is that you choose to help fight against this. We are the Volunteer state for a reason, and as a group, we have a chance to embody that for our generation. We can put a stop to this. If you want to help in Nashville, Boring Company is going to be hosting some Town Halls (that I will be going to). There is also the website bigdumbhole.com that is organizing rallies against the Loop. If you want to help in Memphis, reach out to representative Justin J. Pearson.13,14 He has been incredibly outspoken for his community and would surely love further support. He is also running for Congress in 2026.
Which brings me to the obvious. Please be active locally in the midterms. There are some amazing men and women who are already fighting for us. Given a little bit more help, I believe we can make a real difference. If you have read this far, you obviously care enough to lend your voice. I beg you, take action. Our literal air we breathe and ground we walk on, is on the line. Inaction at this point, is complicity.
There is a theme in these stories, they are trusting that you won’t care. Boring company officials have walked out of press conferences, they have cut interviews short, and they do not make deals in the public. They think they are above the law. As long as you do not speak up, they are. As long as we “trust them” they will keep pulling the wool over our eyes.
Remember that the easiest thing to resist this is: STOP USING ELON’S STUPID WEBSITE
Sources:
1 – https://www.boringcompany.com/music-city-loop
2 – https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/clark-county/clark-county-fines-boring-co-nearly-500k-for-illegal-dumping-3568600/ (paywall but you can listen to article for free – sorry it is read by AI ironically)
9 – https://gasoutlook.com/analysis/xai-data-centre-emits-plumes-of-pollution-new-video-shows/
10 – https://www.lung.org/getmedia/dabac59e-963b-4e9b-bf0f-73615b07bfd8/State-of-the-Air-2024.pdf (page 144/161)
11 – https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/elon-musk-xai-gas-turbines-memphis/
12 – https://capitalbnews.org/we-deserve-to-breathe-clean-air-memphis-residents-take-on-elon-musks-xai/
13 – https://www.bigdumbhole.com
11 – https://www.votejustinj.com/contact
12 – https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/legislatorinfo/member.aspx?district=H86
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