Tennessee, did you ever have a friend who was head-over-heels with a giant piece of shit? Like, “got a bunch of kids with a bunch of different women, cheated on all of them, doesn’t pay child support, and doesn’t have a real job” piece of shit? And then she joyfully tells you that she’s pregnant and he’s going to move in with her? And you know that feeling when you and all your other friends look at each other, smiling, but wide-eyed in alarm, because y’all already know he’s going to cheat on her (if he hasn't already) and leave her to raise that kid alone with no help from him? You know how you have that compulsion to try to steer your friend away from danger, but she’s insistent that he’s different with her? You know that feeling of, “Has this dear friend of mine, who could literally do better just by getting a vibrator and a pet, lost her damn mind? He’s not going to change for her. How could she think this is as good as she can do?”
Tennessee, you are that painfully dumbass friend.
Since it was announced last week that Elon Musk plans to build a giant supercomputer in Memphis, this state is falling all over itself to tout this as some great thing for us. The only politician I’ve seen express any hesitation about this at all is state Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis). Even state Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville), who is an astute and levelheaded guy, is all, “This is huge news for Memphis. Largest private sector investment in its history and puts Memphis smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest technological developments of our time.”
Just a reminder that, so far, this “biggest technological development of our time” has managed to draw pictures of people with six, seven, eight fingers, and advised people on the importance of eating rocks. So consider me skeptical. The other issue with AI is that, as it turns out, it isn’t actually any different from a Ouija board. Even if no one is intentionally pushing things to give you the results you want, all AI can do is let you and your friends (and everyone else in the training pool) talk to each other without having to realize that’s what you’re doing. I happen to love all that woo-woo stuff, so the fact that tech bros have just reinvented spiritualism doesn’t disappoint me. I think it’s sweet that we’re so desperate for there to be some reliable way to get clear messages from an intelligence that is not us that we’ll believe that’s happening in many different forms.
And I’m very, very excited for what AI will do for massive searches. Regular readers know how much I love history. An AI-powered search engine that can search local, state and national databases, and that can decipher old handwriting, and that understands that “Johnathan” might appear in the records as “John,” “Jn.,” “Jno.,” “Jonathan,” “Jonathon,” etc., is going to blow open a lot of research blocks for genealogists.
Move comes as comptroller's office issues audit reports including findings from 2019
But is the ability to quickly search for and make copies of other people’s work really going to change the world? Eh, maybe. Maybe not. But, OK, let’s say it is — let's say that AI is going to change the world. Is Elon Musk’s company a better investment for Tennessee than, say, Tennessee State University, which is already up to its neck in AI stuff?
All of this still treats Elon Musk’s interest in Memphis as ultimately beneficial. As if we don’t know his history. Do we think he’s actually going to follow through on this? It’s been almost a decade and Musk’s great solution for traffic in Las Vegas is still to have someone drive you from one side of their convention center to the other. Nothing else has been built. And it reportedly can’t even handle people with mobility issues, who are the people in most need of help moving from one side of the convention center to the other.
Musk was ousted from Paypal. He brought SpaceX and Tesla nearly to bankruptcy, and he told Twitter advertisers to "go fuck" themselves before acknowledging that this hostility toward advertisers could kill the company he famously overpaid for. So why are we so sure he’s even going to be able to successfully pull off this supercomputer?
Memphis is a majority-Black city. Tesla had to pay a Black former contractor millions of dollars because of the blatant, incredibly old-school racism he faced there. And then their VP of people got on Beyoncé’s internet and admitted that people working at and for Tesla may still face racist adversity at the company, but they’re getting better about it. I guess, woo hoo, a guy who heads up a company that struggles to deal with racism in its midst is coming to Memphis? Do I sound enthusiastic enough?
Memphis is home to one of the largest Reform synagogues in the nation, and the largest Orthodox shul. Musk, according to Sky News, “agreed with a post on X that falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user who referenced the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory was speaking ‘the actual truth.’” This led to a bunch of advertisers fleeing the platform, which spurred Musk to tell those advertisers to “go fuck [themselves].” In May, Elon Musk let antisemitic creepy boy Nick Fuentes back on Twitter, I guess so they could harass the ADL together. And noted unhinged evildoer Alex Jones believes that Elon Musk appears on Jones’ Spaces broadcasts using a pseudonym, so maybe we could just check and make sure we aren’t welcoming with open arms a guy who sure seems cool with people who rail against “the globalists”?
Oh, and reports show that Musk’s projects are notoriously bad for the places that house them. Las Vegas is having to deal with workers on the Loop project allegedly being burned by chemicals that are pooling in the tunnels because Musk’s company hasn’t properly equipped them. Also, there are burning chemicals collecting in tunnels under Vegas! And SpaceX has been an apparent environmental nightmare for Texas.
We’ve been talking about ways to encourage good guests. One way would be to not encourage and reward the arrival of terrible guests. But if we can’t even recognize that Elon Musk’s arrival in our state is not an unmitigated good thing, then I have some grave qualms about our ability to do that for anyone else.
