17 better ways Elon Musk could have wasted $446 million

One of the basic problems of spending too much time on social media is that you are cooking your brain by reading posts from a pack of attention-seeking lunatics. If your social media of choice is the site formerly known as Twitter, and it is your main source of contact with the outside world, you may delusionally throw away nearly $500 million dollars on midterm elections, just like Elon Musk.

在社交媒体上花费太多时间的一个基本问题是，你正在通过阅读一群寻求关注的疯子发布的帖子来“烹饪”你的大脑。如果你选择的社交媒体是那个曾经被称为 Twitter 的网站，并且它是你与外界联系的主要来源，你可能会像埃隆·马斯克一样，在期中选举中产生幻觉，挥霍掉近 5 亿美元。

In particular, $47 million of that money from Musk’s America PAC was aimed at defeating Texas Democrat James Talarico, who trounced Musk’s preferred Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, with 55 percent of the vote. Talarico even made Musk’s influence a central part of his campaign ads, with the slogan “Texas is not for sale.”

具体来说，马斯克的“美国政治行动委员会”（America PAC）投入的 4700 万美元旨在击败德克萨斯州民主党人詹姆斯·塔拉里科（James Talarico），但后者以 55% 的得票率击败了马斯克支持的参议院候选人肯·帕克斯顿（Ken Paxton）。塔拉里科甚至将马斯克的影响力作为其竞选广告的核心部分，口号是“德克萨斯不出售”。

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) 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. There is, right now, one very important bipartisan position in the United States, and it is: Fuck a data center.

马斯克怎么会错得这么离谱？我归咎于 X 的泡沫。我的前同事凯西·牛顿（Casey Newton）曾（带着一些应得的羞愧）溜回 X，他解释说这样做是因为该网站在人工智能群体中最具影响力。从某种意义上说，这正是问题所在。那些沉迷于 AI 代理的狂热分子与普通人完全脱节。目前，美国有一个非常重要的两党共识，那就是：去他的数据中心。

It’s 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 and the constant stream of threats coming from AI companies. These guys have really tied themselves and their AI aspirations to Donald Trump’s sinking ship, and if you’re hanging out on X all the time, that’s impossible to see, not least because the site’s owner, Musk, is shaping the algorithm in ways that make him feel good.

很明显，对数据中心的反对是人们对科技行业感到愤怒的一种具体表现，尤其是对最近的黑帮式科技监管以及人工智能公司不断发出的威胁感到不满。这些人确实将自己和他们的 AI 愿景与唐纳德·特朗普那艘正在下沉的船绑在了一起。如果你整天泡在 X 上，你是不可能看到这一点的，尤其是因为该网站的所有者马斯克正在以让他自己感觉良好的方式塑造算法。

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 money, but at minimum he could have gotten a little rush of pleasure from a new purchase.

由于马斯克似乎已经忘记了体验快乐甚至轻微满足感是什么感觉，我冒昧地列出了一份他本可以购买的东西清单，这些东西能为他带来更好的投资回报。他或许可以转手清单上的几样东西赚更多的钱，但至少他本可以从一次新的购买中获得一点快感。

Musk spent last night deleting tweets so he wouldn’t look as stupid as he is. Too bad it’s not as easy to delete other things! Texans were already asking questions about sweetheart deals to benefit Musk, and now there’s 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’s Musk emails, for instance — answering some questions about the influence Musk bought with Texas Republicans.

马斯克昨晚花时间删除了推文，这样他就不会看起来像他表现出的那么愚蠢。可惜删除其他东西就没那么容易了！德克萨斯人已经在质疑那些让马斯克受益的“甜心交易”，现在有一波反对他金钱政治的政客正在掌权，其中包括德克萨斯州的州长和总检察长。这可能意味着要公开格雷格·阿博特（Greg Abbott）州长与马斯克之间的邮件——从而回答一些关于马斯克通过金钱在德州共和党人身上买到多少影响力的问题。

So actually, maybe the best investment on that list would be the dream team of lawyers who clobbered Musk on the Twitter deal — 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’d never know that if you spent all your time on X.

所以实际上，清单上最好的投资可能就是那支在 Twitter 交易中击败马斯克的律师梦之队——因为马斯克现在掌权了一群新敌人，而他们为了讨好选民所能做的最简单的事情就是调查他。我敢打赌，如果你把所有时间都花在 X 上，你永远不会知道这一点。