#billionaires and their vanity projects

[littleapocalypsekitten]

So, okay, things on my dash today have got me thinking about the whole “Glee over death / wishing death on people” thing that is very popular on the Internet, and life in general it seems.   I will not lie and say that I haven’t done this.  I do outright imprectory (?) prayers sometimes.  It’s a matter of certain politicians, people in power and wanting them out of power because they’re a clear and present danger to Democracy, my rights and the rights of people I love and innocent strangers, they are the creators of wars, so on and so forth.  I hope every day that a certain person who puts chandeliers in his bathroom is found dead on the toilet beneath said tackiness from a random heart attack because I literally think he might be Hitler 2.0 if he meets with undeserved success again.  However, when I think like this, I’m always “If it is the only thing that will get them out of power,” because, at the end of it all, I really would rather people SEE negative consequences for their negative actions.  It’s much more fun to me to watch someone who had no love for others and actively hurt a majority see his empire crumble.  I like the idea of certain people (who, in all likelihood, never will) spending the remainder of their lives powerless and behind bars.  So, I really don’t want people to die, I just want them de-powered and it is much, much more fun to me to think of bad people rendered powerless in a non-lethal way.  Jaiiiiil.  Jaiiiiil for a thousand years!  It feels like more of a punishment.   I feel the same way about mass-shooters.  Most of those people go in with suicide in mind as well as homicide.  They want to go out in blaze of glory, taking out a lot of random people before getting shot by a cop.  (This is why the proposal for an automatic death penalty for them will not stop them).  I much prefer the rare occasion when these monsters are taken alive, because that way, we can put them in the can and study them.  The Buffalo supermarket shooter is going to be in prison for the rest of his life - and while I doubt he’ll have remorse, he at least does not have freedom - nor the finality of death.    I don’t cry for a bunch of billionaires who played stupid games and won stupid prizes.  I’m pretty apathetic.  We need fewer billionaires in the world, so I do not grieve them, but I also do not celebrate, because it doesn’t feel quite right to me.  To me, Death is something that we will ALL face, one way or another, eventually.  Unless the transhumanists actually succeed in transferring rich people’s brains into robots, they will die.  You and I will die.  I lost a very dear loved one this year, unexpectedly - everyone you love will die - I have been feeling this keenly.  So, to me, death is not justice.  It’s just a thing that happens to everyone.  Every time is “before your time.”  Every time is “too soon.”  So, you know, it feels hollow to me to wish death on anyone.  I much prefer wishing consequences on bad people.   Sometime, the consequences are an “early” death, but it feels like a get out of jail free card to me. 

#philosophy #cw: death #oceangate #billionaires and their vanity projects #and kids and employees they force to ride #play stupid games win stupid prizes #death is not justice #why wish death on people when you can wish worse? #I know I am disappointing my hero Vash the Stampede #with my twisted take on the sanctity of life #but I am sick of the billionaire class #I'd rather just take their money and help the world than kill them though #dead submarine #It is okay to take dark humor in this #I would have rather they lived and never lived it down the rest of their lives #everyone laughs at them until they're 92 #never get a job designing a sub again #bills for the rescue efforts #criminal charges for negligence #seeing the memes

[mytearsrricochet]

I feel lots of compassion and sympathy for the loved ones of the dipshits who went down to find the titanic despite every single factor that pointed to “please for the love of god do not deep dive into the ocean you are not trained or have the right equipment for this”. I also think it’s very funny that a billionaire and some bonehead rich guys probably got vortexed into the deep ocean at speeds and pressures unknown to humans on their poorly researched and executed vanity project. two things can be true.

[naturalrights-retard]

Comments by Brian Shilhavy Editor, Health Impact News

While the recent unsealing of documents revealing famous people who were associated with the pedophile business leader Jeffrey Epstein hasn’t revealed anything new for those of us who have been exposing this information for over a decade now, these documents and names have shocked the world, commanding headlines in the corporate media for the past few days all around the world.

One of the more interesting articles published analyzing the Epstein documents that I have read is a an article written and published as the current headline news story in the English language Russian website Sputnik:

Epstein, Clintons & Cash: Why Zelenska Foundation is Vehicle to Divert Aid to Corrupt Ends

Since 2021 when we published the Polish filmmaker Patryk Vega’s documentary called “Eyes of the Devil”, which documents how babies are trafficked from Poland and Ukraine to the child sex brothels in Germany, or literally butchered so their body parts can be sold on the black market, we have exposed this evil child sex trafficking operation that has deep business roots inside Ukraine.

With much of this information now becoming public and even making it into the corporate media, journalist Ekaterina Blinova has connected the dots between the Clinton’s foundation and trafficking children in Ukraine with the help of Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenskaya and has published an article that at the time of my writing this, is currently the headline news article on Sputnikglobe.com.

Ekaterina reports that the Clinton Foundation was “nothing but a vehicle to transform the once-broke (Ukraine) presidential family into mega-multi-millionaires and help their associates to get rich too.”

Epstein, Clintons & Cash: Why Zelenska Foundation is Vehicle to Divert Aid to Corrupt Ends

by Ekaterina Blinova Sputnikglobe.com

Excerpts:

The release of the Epstein documents has once again cast shadow over the Clintons and their philanthropic activities — and raised questions about their joint project with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenskaya in September 2023.

Unsealed court filings over accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein named over a hundred of rich and powerful people connected to the billionaire pedophile — including former US President Bill Clinton and his aide Doug Band.

Ironically, back in 2003, Doug Band helped kick off now-famous Clinton Foundation international initiatives with the aim of rehabilitating Bill’s post-presidential image, marred by sex scandals, and turning the ex-president into “the world’s philanthropist in chief,” writes Vanity Fair.

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), one of the foundation’s international projects, was supposedly started in league with Jeffrey Epstein — who died in Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial — late in 2004-early in 2005, according to Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst who has been investigating the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for several years.

Ortel said the Clinton Foundation and its numerous offshoots were nothing but a vehicle to transform the once-broke presidential family into mega-multi-millionaires and help their associates to get rich too. The Wall Street analyst is highly skeptical about the Clintons’ new joint endeavor with the Zelenskys, who have also been mired in corruption allegations.

[sunflowerdigs]

No one is saying anyone deserves to die, I don't think. Most people seem to be saying that the way these people are going to/have died is objectively hilarious, since it highlights the kind of billionaire brainrot that routinely fucks over everyone else, but this time, they've hoisted themselves on their own dumbshit petards. The whole event, the coverage, the obscene amount of resources being used to go after these chucklefucks, is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with a society that allows billionaires to exist. If some regular people put together a tin can submersible in their backyard and got lost trying to get to the Titanic, do you think that anyone besides a few members of the Coast Guard would be looking for them right now? No. But because these are rich assholes inside another rich asshole's stupid vanity project, all stops must be pulled out.

Let people have a laugh. Life is tough rn (because of people like the ones on the submersible).

#oceangate #titanic #i don't feel bad #the ghosts of the titanic are definitely having a good laugh today

[is-the-primate-vid-cute]

have you guys formed an opinion on the elon musk neuralink experiements with primates yet? also sorry if this is the first time you guys are hearing about it

Unfortunately I know all about this. For those that don't, Musk's Neuralink brain implants are being tested on laboratory macaques with the idea that they will be safe for humans. Without getting too graphic, the results so far have been horrific and the death rate of the macaques has been a whopping 98% with thousands of macaques suffering for this disgusting vanity project.

As someone who rates primate content I try to remain impartial, judge generously, and keep my distance enough to not be impacted, but this hurts. I can't bear to read details of what those macaques go through.

Some laboratory testing on animals can be rationalized for the greater good, and knowing that an animals sacrifice could save lives can be comforting, but this is not that. This is a billionaire who is willing to cause incredible amounts of suffering for what amounts to no reason. It's a testament to the cruelty people are capable of when they aren't tasked with inflicting it themselves.

Musk can go about his life with the macaques deaths just being one number in his records. He doesn't have to sit in the lab, look into the cages, and live with the burden of the agony he has inflicted on precious creatures.

I wish he did.

#mod J #animal cruelty #neuralink #elon musk #inquiring minds want to know #cruel

[trickstarbrave]

thank you to everyone who voted to give me 2 billion dollars as a new multi billionaire i have decided to buy a production company and make a morrowind animated movie about the first council. after which i will fund various vanity projects, donate to a bunch of go fund mes, and then be assassinated by the US government after i try to advocate for universal healthcare and UBI

[hyenabeanz]

Lol ah, there it is. The Walter Cup.

The whole woo hoo go women power fuck yeah thing feels good, but it's also always been clear it's first and foremost a marketing strategy. That's of course why they've had to vehemently bury the history of the PHF, NWHL, CWHL, etc. Because the branding doesn't work quite as well if you can't say it's the first pro women's league. It's HINGED on that.

Which fine, whatever, I sort of put my anger about that aside because if it makes the league succeed then that's important too because this is what we got and it needs to not fail and it is cool to see the sport finally getting hype and airtime. And the things like in game commentary and conversations around it got better at acknowledging past pro play, and the promos less aggressive about that part.

And then you go and name the trophy "BILLIONAIRE VANITY PROJECT CUP."

Asshats. You can't break the marketing to acknowledge women's hockey history, but you can do so to slap your own name on it?

F-.

I'm not crazy about the design either. It's not awful but it's also... meh. It doesn't look like a sports trophy. Tiffany and Co. feels again like a weird, billionaire vanity choice. (Edit: though apparently they've done a bunch of trophies so that is apparently not as weird as it feels. Still kind of eh about it.)

They were never going to have a trophy as perfect as the Izzy (the INSCRIPTION on that one <33333) and it was probably never gonna have anything as cool on it as the Clarkson (Sedna on a trophy was AWESOME) but man they could've done better.

#I hate it #I'll get over it but I hate it #I am laughing at the people saying “but it's for his wife and daughter too!” #Ok without looking it up what's their names? #Uh huh #PWHL #Woho #Hockey #Walter cup

[hambor12]

i like the implication with the Warframe 1999 teaser that Orokin Society, beyond the highest ruling classes, was basically just like "The 90's but with about 75% more gold accessories"

and the High Class Orokins were just Like That (Space Roman/Ancient Egypt) because the Comically Rich tend to do gaudy, tacky shit like that

see: the many gulf state vanity projects like Dubai or The Line, the antics of various tech billionaires

#warframe #tennocon 2023 #warframe spoilers #warframe 1999

[kaiasky]

ECMA only has 7 voting members. now membership is 70k francs per year, but i think a fun vanity project for a misanthropic billionaire would be to try to get a majority of voting members (you need to do this stealthily, admission requires 2/3 majority support) and then publish a technical specification that says "Javascript was a mistake, we are starting over from scratch, goodbye"

[sabakos]

So fucking mad I don't work on the billionaire vanity project where you can apparently tell your boss that "legs are too hard to animate" and they just fucking believe you.

[echoweaver]

In current Riffin gameplay, I'm hitting a bit of a crossroads.

I've given Calvin plenty of chances, and it's pretty clear at this point in the queue that he only has eyes for Rodney, and it's mutual. They are just adorable together.

One thing that makes their connection interesting is that they're not anywhere near the perfect trait connection of the various sims Calvin has interacted with. Rodney turns out to be Workaholic, which is considered incompatible with Family Oriented.

I'm not entirely sure how Rodney is going to feel about Calvin's LTW of Surrounded by Family, but they'll have to cross that bridge when they come to it. I have mingos's Birds and Bees mod downloaded but not installed. That mod includes personalized feelings about having children, which would be nice to have with this pair. However, mingos reports on their blog that the mod has some lag issues, and my game is running like a dream -- I think it's the best I've ever played it. I have no plans for male pregnancy in this save, so there are no uteruses in Calvin's love life at the moment and no expectations of any. A reproductive cycle simulation seems a bit overkill. It would be nice to have a mod that JUST simulates opinions on children. Mingos says that mod is not terribly configurable, but I'll see what options I have.

But the BIG THING, for those I hope have read this far, is the money issue. The Singleton brothers are loaded. Their backstory is that they're tech billionaires on a vanity project to breed horses -- which is not going well, possibly because they have one horse, and it's male?

(Actually, just to remind us of how old this game is, their backstory is actually that they're dot-com guys who got out before the bubble burst circa 2000. That was the tech boom a generation ago, not the startup boom from this decade, lol.)

I could:

Merge the households, at which point they'll have almost §100k in cash and will never have money troubles again

Invite Rodney alone to join the Riffin household. He'd bring in some money, but his brother would stay behind in their tech cave, and we won't have to deal with the income from selling either house. I also just feels like it's leaving a lot of Rodney's personality behind.

Merge households, take residence in the Singleton tech cave, but remove most of their household funds to represent the failing horse breeding business.

The Riffins have fought so hard to get their heads above water. It's some of the most compelling gameplay I've had in ages. I'm really resistant to Calvin's boyfriend sweeping in and solving all their problems.

I'm really unsure the best way to deal with this. Anyone have any thoughts?

#echoweaver #sims 3 #sims 3 riffin free play #meta-sims #overthinking my sims game

[jackawful]

Between the ever given and orca yacht attacks and billionaires probably (hopefully?) dying in badly constructed vanity project submarines I'm just glad we're all on the same page of "fuck them rich people and their boats"

[jakeowen]

my former workplace is going down in flames, and rightfully so because it's a shitty org that basically functioned as a vanity project/tax shelter for a shady billionaire who ultimately did at least as much harm as good. worked there for four years, got all my undergrad loans paid off, made some lifelong friends, and fucking dipped. peace and love to me, jail for that man for one thousand years

[f0point5]

I'm so confused about the rumor that Horner tried to buy RBR without the knowledge of the Austrians. Isn't it owned by Red Bull, which in turn is 51% owned by the Thai family and 49% owned by the Austrian son? Would he have bought the Thai family's stake (though why they would sell the cash cow that is RBR, I wouldn't understand)?

I don’t think it’s without the knowledge, so much as the Austrians were not told he was shopping the idea around to financiers. Presumably he told the Thai owners what kind of offer they would be looking at and was in the process of getting them on side to force the sale once he had a deal for them. The Austrians would have known eventually but once the Thai owners were on side they wouldn’t be able to stop it.

The financiers wouldn’t have bought the Thai stake in Red Bull, they would have bought the RBR subsidiary from Red Bull, with the Thai owners using their controlling stake to override any attempts to stop the sale by the Austrians.

I don’t have the numbers, but is RBR a cash cow for Red Bull? F1 is a sport that makes millionaires out of billionaires and is mostly an expensive vanity project for owners unless they have a motorsport brand to promote. How much Red Bull are they really selling on the basis of the F1 team?

My point is, if they sold RBR but continued to sponsor the team, or sponsor Max, or even retained naming rights…would it be a net loss? I’m not so sure. The Austrians have a sentimental attachment to the racing team. The Thai owners don’t. Maybe it would make fiscal sense to sell it.

#f1 #formula 1 #red bull racing

[twentyyearstoolate]

Man it irks me every time I start criticizing the excess of billionaires and I get a knee-jerk response of "Oh, you're just jealous." First, the correct term would be 'envious,' and second, no I'm not. I do not want Bezos' $500M yacht. I do not want Swift's planet-killing private jet. I do not want the labyrinthine 13-bedroom McMansion in the hills. All I want, all I've ever wanted, is to be happy and comfortable, and I can get that from a modest living space in a walkable community with friends and family. I suspect the same is true for the vast majority of people living today who have also been just barely scraping by as the cost of living continues its meteoric rise thanks to corporate greed.

It doesn't make me angry that I do not have these ultraluxuries, it makes me angry that they exist in the first place. That the money spent to make them for people who couldn't possibly deserve it was extracted from the labor of millions of people who have to forgo necessities, because the capitalists that work them to death imply that the work employees do to fund these ego-stroking status symbols shouldn't even afford them a complete living, much less a comfortable one. We're getting cheated out of our lives for fucking vanity projects. That should make everyone furious.

#anti capitalism #late stage capitalism #rant #angry and tired

[gudaho]

It is inaccurate to say the US coast guard is not seeking payment for the search and rescue efforts put forth to find The Titan. Working class citizens are the ones footing the bill for a billionaires vanity project. Even in death they are leeches who get special privileges

#oceangate