What A Day: Cards Against Insanity

What’s the best way to troll Elon Musk? A popular card game company wants you to help them totally own the world’s first trillionaire.

• Elon Musk may have a trillion bucks to his name, but he can’t buy love, he isn’t above the law — and he can’t stop people from making fun of him. That’s the lesson that Cards Against Humanity, the company behind the famously vulgar card game, is trying to teach the tech mogul in Texas, right outside the steam-punk town that he built for his rocket company.

• In the near future, you’ll be able to visit the “Elon Musk is a Sad Little Bitch with No Friends” monument, sponsored by Cards Against Humanity. I know what you’re thinking: How the hell did we get here?

• The beef between Musk and the company dates back nine years, when Cards Against Humanity crowdsourced millions of dollars — via $15 individual donations from 150,000 people — to buy a small parcel on the Texas border to stop the southern border wall construction.

• Then, Musk reared his little head in 2024. He began building out Starbase, a small dystopian village to house SpaceX employees and rocket launch operations. As part of that construction, the game company alleged in court, Musk damaged and trespassed on the Cards Against Humanity property. In the end, SpaceX settled for an undisclosed amount and, according to the crew at Cards, removed its construction equipment from the land last fall.

• Which brings us to today, as a French company builds a 50-foot Prometheus statue in Starbase, presumably to praise Musk’s technological contributions to society, or whatever. Cards Against Humanity LLC — the independent Chicago-based company started by eight friends who invented the game together and launched it with a successful kickstarter campaign in 2011 — has another monument in mind.

• “We still have our rights as proud Texas landowners: We can build something on our land. Something that will annoy Elon Musk,” wrote the company, which is known for stunts and charitable work, in an online post this week. “Something that will make him wonder, for a brief moment, ‘Wait, am I a sad little bitch with no friends?’”

• For $10, the public can join the “Official Elon Musk is a Sad Little Bitch with No Friends Monument Design Committee,” according to the company’s website. SpaceX did not respond to What A Day’s request for comment.

I caught up with a spokesperson for Cards Against Humanity to hear more about the monument and the design committee. Here’s our interview:

Matt Berg: How did it feel to face Elon Musk in court?

Cards Against Humanity: It felt terrifying. We were going up against one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, and — at the time we filed the lawsuit — a crony of the most corrupt, authoritarian regime in American history. The outcome honestly surprised us, but it also restored a tiny bit of faith that our system is still mildly functioning.

MB: How did you settle on the slogan, “Elon Musk is a Sad Little Bitch With No Friends”?

CAH: “Sad little” is the buildup. It cuts him down to size. “Bitch” is the climax. A powerful swear word, attacking his character and puncturing his ego with one syllable. “With no friends” is the denouement, a plainly descriptive fact made all the more devastating for its truth.

MB: There must have been other slogans that didn’t make the cut. Can you share a few?

CAH: We considered the word “dumb” but decided it was debatable and therefore weak — he is surely smart in some ways. We briefly considered “asshole” and “manchild” but agreed they were too obvious. “Miserable” lacked the punch of “sad.” “Sociopath” and “narcissist” felt too clinical. “Motherfucker” felt too broad. We take insults very seriously at Cards Against Humanity.

MB: How large will the monument be? Will it be visible from Starbase?

CAH: We’re not sure what it will be, let alone how large it’s going to be. We do know that the more money we raise, the more spectacular it’ll be.

MB: How will the public be involved in designing the monument?

CAH: We’ll contact our committee in the coming months to talk about the project. So far, tens of thousands of people have signed up.

MB: Any favorite feedback on what the monument design should be?

CAH: We haven’t officially requested ideas from the committee yet, but a lot of excited people have sent us their thoughts. We love the idea of working with a real artist to construct the monument — maybe someone who knows the area well or who has a background or body of work particularly tailored to annoying Musk. A few people have suggested that we take Elon’s email chains with Jeffrey Epstein and put them on a billboard. Visually, there’s a lot of synergy between the rockets in the area and potential dick jokes, so there’s been a few suggestions in the more phallic direction.

We’re going to take the proper amount of time and care to make sure we do this right. We’re going to design a monument that our committee can be proud of, and hopefully, spark a moment of introspection for Elon.

MB: Do you have any other plans to mess with Elon?

CAH: At the moment, just this. But, while we have you: Did you catch Cards Against Humanity Explains the Joke?

Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty to two federal stalking charges and admitted killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December 2024. “I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan,” Mangione told a judge today. “I knew what I was doing was illegal.” Mangione still faces a murder charge in state court, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

The USS George Washington is headed to the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln. Sailors on the Lincoln, who have been at sea for nine months, have voiced concerns about deteriorating conditions in recent days. The Navy is even investigating a case of one sailor going overboard, under unclear circumstances. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, predictably, claimed that the conditions have been “completely misrepresented.”

Donald Trump formally asked the Supreme Court to allow construction of the White House ballroom to move forward, after a federal court blocked the project. The ballroom is a “highly integrated military complex that incorporates a classical, but highly secured, ballroom and crucial national-security facilities,” Trump told the court. So this is the new, uh, military command center ballroom?

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) has a new message to win over voters: Congress needs to do more for the 1 percent! “Don’t let anybody tell you that people running, uh, Congress right now are looking out for the rich. Actually, I think we should do a little more for them,” he said during an event on Thursday. Thank God someone has their back.

Italian police recovered three paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse that were stolen from during a museum heist earlier this year. Okay, cool… can we hire these guys to solve the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum heist?

Britain has a new women’s chess champion — and she’s 11 years old. Bodhana Sivanandan, who started playing six years ago, has stunned the experienced men and women around the country, and even the world, with her skills. She even beat France’s third-ranked grandmaster. “She has a presence of like, ‘I’m gonna kill you no matter what,’” Chess.com Chief Chess Officer Danny Rensch told the Wall Street Journal.

A beloved corner store in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. reopened this week, four years after residents pooled together $1.3 million to buy the financially troubled market. “There are a lot of people who will talk with their neighbors and say, ‘Somebody should do something about that,’” one longtime resident told a local outlet. “And this is an example of a group of people that were willing to do something about that.”

A 37-year-old bird went viral this week for its uncanny ability to make a sound identical to a camera shutter. “You are showing off,” the woman filming told the bird.

I have some *fun* homework for you: Look around your home right now. You probably see a light bulb, a picture frame, or perhaps even a toilet (I mean, no judgement about which room you choose to read my newsletter in peace). We are surrounded by everyday miracles. More precisely: The mundane aspects of life we now take for granted were once marveled over as distant dreams by artists and philosophers, as detailed in “Ordinary Abundance.” Even having a fruit in your home was a luxury back in the day: “Like lovers’ kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish,” poet Charles Lamb wrote in 1822, when people used to rent pineapples for parties for prestige.

Meet Kirk!

“He’s 3 years old and as lovably chaotic as his ‘Gilmore Girls’ namesake. Kirk enjoys napping in the sun, racing around for no reason whatsoever, and yawning menacingly at our current administration.”

— Ann