Tesla is having a very tough year. Sales are down, the brand has been tarnished in the eyes of some customers by its CEO Elon Musk, tax credit incentives that brought in consumers have now expired — what else can go wrong?

How about two major program managers leaving the company in a single day?

On Monday, two Tesla executives who headed up major product initiatives separately announced that they were leaving the company: One who leads the Cybertruck program and one who leads the Model Y program.

Siddhant Awasthi, head of Tesla's Cybertruck program, announced on LinkedIn early Monday morning that he was departing the company. Awasthi's story is inspiring, as he first joined Tesla eight years ago and worked his way up the company ladder to finally head up Musk's vision for an EV truck.

"I recently made one of the hardest decisions of my life to leave Tesla after an incredible run," the now-former Cybertruck chief wrote on LinkedIn. "Eight years ago, when I started as an intern, I never dreamed I’d one day have the opportunity to lead the Cybertruck program and bring it to reality."

It's unclear why Awasthi has left the company and, based on his post, it does appear to be on good terms.

However, Cybertruck has certainly not lived up to Tesla's expectations. As The Verge notes, a recent Cybertruck recall notice from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that only 63,619 Cybertrucks have been sold since the vehicle's launch in 2023. Musk once bet that the future of Tesla depended on the company selling 250,000 Cybertruck vehicles per year. Tesla is nowhere close to doing that. In fact, interest in the Cybertruck has waned since the company claimed that it received 250,000 pre-order deposits in 2019.

Awasthi was later joined in his departure from the company by Emmanuel Lamacchia, the head of Tesla's Model Y program.

"After 8 incredible years, I'm moving on from Tesla," Lamacchia wrote on LinkedIn. "What a journey it's been… from leading NPI for Model 3 and Model Y variants to becoming the Vehicle Program Manager for Model Y, the best-selling car in the world!"

Lamacchia, who was the Model Y chief for the past four years, did lead the team behind Tesla's most successful vehicle. So, again, it does not appear any of these departures were performance-based.

If anything, it is concerning that Tesla is losing two talented leaders at the tail end of what has been a tumultuous year for the company. Pair these departures with Tesla's sales numbers and the recent news that Tesla is now looking to roll out a rental car service for Tesla vehicles, and it looks like Tesla could be in for a very bumpy 2026 as well.

You'd be forgiven if you didn't know that acclaimed octogenarian author Joyce Carol Oates — author of Them and Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been — is a prolific, excellent poster. Yes, as in someone who posts online. But she is, and has long been.

Billionaire Elon Musk recently discovered this fact on X, his very own platform. And now he's beefing with Oates, or at least trying to prove he is definitely Not Mad. So…what happened? Let me explain.

Why is Elon Musk mad at author Joyce Carol Oates?

In short, Oates surgically owned Musk on X. She quote-tweeted a post about Musk and wondered what joy or meaning he derived from life.

She wrote:

"So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates— scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the 'most wealthy person in the world.'"

It was a devastating read on the world's richest man. It quickly went very viral. Musk didn't love it. He posted about it because Musk posts constantly. He called it "demonstrably false." He said, "Oates is a liar and delights in being mean. Not a good human." He claimed, "Eating a bag of sawdust would be vastly more enjoyable than reading the laboriously pretentious drivel of Oates."

You know what they say about which dogs holler and why.

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What's the latest with the Musk vs. Oates beef?

To be clear, of course, there have been instances of Musk saying he enjoyed things in culture. Journalist Ronan Farrow this year spoke about how Musk appreciates — and often greatly misreads — science fiction.

But if you parse through Musk's timeline, you do see a picture of someone who mostly posts to boost his companies, air grievances, and shitpost about political stuff. It'd be super weird to see him posting about Monday Night Football or Taylor Swift's new album. (Though, he did post about Swift's private jet and offered to father a child for her. So…yeah.)

But since the Oates debacle, Musk seemed hell-bent on proving he likes stuff, which is kind of funny in and of itself. He's been replying to posts about movies, just saying things like "good movie." People have been joking about Oates, 87, getting to Musk, especially on left-leaning Bluesky.

For the uninitiated, Oates has long been a True Poster. There are articles about it. She's even put her foot in her mouth multiple times, a sign of someone who simply cannot help posting online. (Speaking of, please don't search "Joyce Carol Oates' foot" — she once tweeted a truly gross, super viral picture of her foot overtaken by poison ivy. Again, a True Poster.)

Since the original post, Oates has intermittently posted about Musk, while also discussing literature and cats. "Truly, it was out of curiosity: why a person with unlimited resources exhibits so little appreciation or even awareness of the things that most people value as giving meaning to life," Oates wrote.

So, it's actually not that weird that an Oates vs. Musk beef popped up this week. But it is great entertainment.

SAVE $126: A like-new Amazon Kindle Scribe (64GB) is on sale at Amazon for $278.99, down from the normal price of $404.99. That's a 31% discount and the lowest we've ever seen at Amazon.

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The darkness has arrived. When we pushed the clocks back, sunset moved up by an hour and that means it's completely dark by 5 p.m. for much of the U.S. If that leaves you feeling ready for bed by 6 p.m., you've probably considered cozying up on the couch with a good book. If you're one to take notes while reading this month's book club pick, there's a certain Kindle with features you'll like and it's on sale today.

As of Nov. 10, a like-new Kindle Scribe (64GB) is on sale for $278.99 at Amazon, marked down from the usual price of $404.99. That works out to a 31% discount that takes a nice $126 off the norm. It's also the lowest we've ever seen at Amazon. The current model of the Kindle Scribe with 64GB of storage is listed at $449.99 which means today's refurbished deal saves $171.

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