Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers.
…
After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology.
They had come with questions of their own.They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
rich people are fucking terrifying
The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.
eat the rich before they eat the rest of us
It never occurs to them to simply fractionally improve the lives of the poorest people. Never occurs to them to live more sustainably. These men could still live in fabulous luxury while also making our planet a paradise for all but their obsession with having the most means they’re blind to that and instead they come up with ridiculously complex contingency plans for when people are finally too hungry and too desperate to be shit on any more.
“Be nice” never occurs to them. Shock collars for their own personal slave army does.
I couldn’t find the picture of the guillotine this time sorry guys just pretend it’s there
Dear rich people, you sound like literal Star Trek villains wtf is wrong with you stop it
When a cosplayer recreates the horrible manga from Junji Ito
Japanese cosplayer Ikura is having fun recreating the horrible manga from Junji Ito, rightly regarded as one of the masters of horror manga. Ikura stages
herself into scary, frightening and sordid compositions, trying to
reproduce the images of the mangaka. Well, cosplay is far from being
reserved for the famous superheroes and popular manga characters! Source: ufunk
It’s really amazing to see just how adaptable to harsh environments some amphibians can be. Here we see a Blanford’s toad [Sclerophrys blanfordii, formerly Bufo blanfordii] a species endemic to the most rugged terrain of the Horn of Africa. These toads take advantage of the few available water sources in their hot and arid environment, and are often found around or in small ponds. The toad specimen was photographed by Tomas Mazuch, whereas the landscape was photographed by Vladimir Trailin.
today i was talking to my coworker jess and she said to me “i’ve been trying to think of how to tell my husband that i want a horse. i’m really non confrontational and i don’t know how to tell him. like, thanks for the flowers, but i want a horse.” and i was like, “well, you could always send him subliminal messages. like tape pictures of horses all over the walls and stuff” and she gave me this really weird look and was like “i said divorce not horse“ oh my god…
It never stops being creepy to read women referred to as “Mrs John Smith” in historical sources. Both their given name and surname replaced by their husband’s name. So you literally do not know anything about who they are apart from being the Mrs of a John Smith.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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