The story behind the cartoon
MZX Tech, the SpaceXAI subsidiary that runs the Southaven power plant, has been going door to door in the Colonial Hills neighborhood offering to buy homes at market value — on one contractual condition: sellers must not join the class action over the plant's turbine noise. A realtor put the target at 418 homes, with 18 owners already agreed, and county records show MZX has bought five homes since October 9.
The June lawsuit, filed by Jason Haley and two neighbors, alleges near-constant noise, vibrations, and other nuisance harms from 69 temporary gas turbines powering the company's data centers across the Mississippi-Tennessee line, affecting more than 10,000 people. Haley describes a high-pitched hum like an airplane over his house that leaves him unable to sleep, while the mayor calls the buyout a goodwill gesture and says city monitors have not recorded a breach of the 70-decibel limit.
SpaceXAI denies the lawsuit's claims, pointing to sound-dampening walls and a planned permanent gas plant by next summer, and a separate NAACP suit over turbines the EPA says ran without required federal permits survived a Justice Department bid to block it on October 20. Every buyout signed shrinks the pool of neighbors left to sue.
The joke is the soundproofing that isn't: the turbine behind the house still roars untouched, while the realtor fits the muffler over the homeowner's mouth instead — a check in one hand, a claims release in the other. They didn't silence the machine. They silenced the complaint.
CUSTOMER B HAS A NAME
THE GUPPY POND
THE $1.25B HANDSHAKE
ONE BILL FOR GROK AND X — $100 AT THE TOP