{"id":9977,"date":"2026-11-04T22:29:36","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T22:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=9977"},"modified":"2026-11-04T22:29:36","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T22:29:36","slug":"not-even-good-at-being-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=9977","title":{"rendered":"17 better ways Elon Musk could have wasted $446 million"},"content":{"rendered":"


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In particular, $47 million of that money from Musk\u2019s America PAC was aimed at defeating Texas Democrat James Talarico, who trounced Musk\u2019s preferred Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, with 55 percent of the vote. Talarico even made Musk\u2019s influence a central part of his campaign ads<\/a>, with the slogan \u201cTexas is not for sale.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The opposition to data centers is a way of making concrete how pissed off most people are with the tech industry<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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How did Musk get this so wrong? I blame the bubble of X. My former colleague Casey Newton, who has (with some well-earned shame<\/a>) slunk back to X, explained that he did so because it was the site that was most influential with the AI crowd. In some sense, this is exactly the problem. The agentmaxxing loons of AI influencing are wildly out of touch with normal people<\/a>. There is, right now, one very important<\/em> bipartisan position in the United States, and it is: Fuck a data center<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s pretty obvious that the opposition to data centers is a way of making concrete how pissed off most people are with the tech industry, particularly with the gangster tech regulation of late<\/a> and the constant stream<\/a> of threats<\/a> coming from<\/a> AI companies<\/a>. These guys have really tied themselves and their AI aspirations to Donald Trump\u2019s sinking ship, and if you\u2019re hanging out on X all the time, that\u2019s impossible to see, not least because the site\u2019s owner, Musk, is shaping<\/a> the<\/a> algorithm<\/a> in ways that make him feel good.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Since Musk seems to have forgotten what it is like to experience joy, or even mild satisfaction, I have taken the liberty to make a list of things he could have bought to get him a better return on his investment. He probably could flip several things on this list for more<\/em> money, but at minimum he could have gotten a little rush of pleasure from a new purchase:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Musk spent last night deleting tweets<\/a> so he wouldn\u2019t look as stupid as he is. Too bad it\u2019s not as easy to delete other things! Texans were already asking questions about sweetheart deals<\/a> to benefit Musk, and now there\u2019s a wave of politicians who ran against his money coming into power, including the governor and the attorney general of Texas. That may mean unredacting Gov. Greg Abbott\u2019s Musk emails<\/a>, for instance \u2014 answering some questions about the influence Musk bought with Texas Republicans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So actually, maybe the best investment on that list would be the dream team of lawyers<\/a> who clobbered Musk on the Twitter deal \u2014 because Musk has a bunch of new enemies in power, and the simplest thing in the world they can do to curry favor with their voters is investigate him. Bet you\u2019d never know that if you spent all your time on X.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In particular, $47 million of that money from Musk\u2019s America PAC was aimed at defeating Texas Democrat James Talarico, who trounced Musk\u2019s preferred Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, with 55 percent of the vote. Talarico even made Musk\u2019s influence a central part of his campaign ads, with the slogan \u201cTexas is not for sale.\u201d The opposition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[31,45,168,74,75,169,170,80,34,197,47,81],"class_list":["post-9977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-ai","tag-electric-cars","tag-elon-musk","tag-policy","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-tech","tag-tesla","tag-transportation","tag-xai"],"yoast_head":"\n17 better ways Elon Musk could have wasted $446 million - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Elon Musk flushed about half a billion down the toilet on the midterms. 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