Deal or no deal? 💸

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Deal or no deal? 💸

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Tonight: We go inside that wacky windowless dorm; the Dow has a big day; and once again the world scratches its head at the spectacle that is Elon Musk. Let's get into it.

By Allison Morrow

📐 'A BETTER MOUSETRAP'

Home sweet...closet.

Billionaire Charlie Munger's dorm design has generated a fair bit of controversy. The densely packed building, where most cells rooms don't have windows, was so offensive to one consulting architect, he quit the University of California, Santa Barbara, design review board.

So my colleague Ramishah Maruf decided to find out just how bad the rooms are from students who are already living in a what I'm calling a "Munger Special" at the University of Michigan.

Like the UCSB plans, the Munger Graduate Residence Hall in Ann Arbor is made up of single-occupancy windowless rooms. Overall, the building is well reviewed – people like the queen-size beds and individual bathrooms, the fitness center, the study rooms and common areas that do get natural light. But for God's sake those windows....

Grad student Luiza Macedo told Mishah that she didn't see the sun for a full week when she had to isolate in her room after a Covid-19 scare. "That was probably the low point of my experience here."
Students say that they can't get by without sun lamps to create an artificial sense of daytime.
Louise Batta, a PhD student, said she immediately began getting headaches because of ventilation issues. "It's completely thrown off my circadian rhythm. It's hard to get up in the morning to go out of bed because I never know what time it is."

The 97-year-old Munger, best known as Warren Buffett's right-hand man, has no formal training as an architect. The windowless design is meant to encourage students to collaborate in person, in common rooms with windows. Which is great unless you're going to college in the middle of a pandemic, or if you're someone who prefers to study alone, or an introvert, or just, like, not a vampire.

Munger has also designed a dorm at Stanford University and a library with removable walls at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. But he has no plans to bring his dorm designs to other universities.

"No, I won't do it. I'm ready to die very shortly," he said. "But I do expect this dorm will be copied four more times on the USCB campus and many more times than that on the other campuses on the UC system and I expect this to spread all over the country. It's a better mouse trap."

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#️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY

36,000

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 36,000 mark for the first time ever — two decades after a famous (or infamous) investing manifesto predicted. The journalist James Glassman and economist Kevin Hassett wrote "Dow 36,000" in 1999, predicting the Dow would hit that milestone within a couple of years. Instead, the dot-com bubble burst. Then there was 9/11. And Enron. And the housing market collapse. And the global financial crisis. Etc.

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

When Hertz announced plans to buy 100,000 Teslas last week — the largest-ever single order for electric vehicles — it seemed to be a watershed moment in the American EV revolution.

But maybe it wasn't.

Or maybe it still is?

We're honestly not sure anymore. The whole thing was thrown into doubt by — you guessed it — a single, confusing tweet from everyone's favorite IRL comic book villain, Elon Musk.

"If any of this is based on Hertz, I'd like to emphasize that no contract has been signed yet," the Tesla CEO tweeted, referring to the recent surge in Tesla shares.

The tweet sent Tesla stock down as much as 5% early Tuesday.

WTF?

So, a couple of things to keep in mind here:

Tesla, which is by far the world's most valuable carmaker, has no PR department. Zero. Nada. So we often have only Musk's Twitter feed to get comment from the company, which has a long history of ignoring press questions.
Hertz is standing by its statement that it has a deal in place to buy 100,000 Tesla Model 3s.
Musk may be using his tweet pressure on Hertz to finalize the purchase, said Dan Ives, tech analyst at Wedbush Securities. CNN Business' Chris Isidore has more.

RELATED: Avis stock more than doubled this week after strong earnings signaled the rental car rebound isn't ending soon.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

👀 Facebook is pulling the plug on its facial recognition software as public scrutiny of the company, which is rebranding itself as Meta, intensifies.

🇨🇳 Yahoo has shut down access to its services in China, becoming the latest American tech company to exit the country in response to Beijing's crackdown on private enterprise.

✈️ Flying is getting worse for both passengers and flight crews. Don't hold your breath for it to get better soon.

💉 From CNN Business' Risk Takers series: Adar Poonawalla's vaccine company manufactured millions of Covid-19 jabs last year, even before they were approved. Then came India's brutal second wave of infections. CNN Business' Diksha Madhok on how his plans to save the world went awry.