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Cards Against Humanity is digging a hole in the earth
- JoeDaDude 10y agoI seem to recall a TV show about this subject. Yes, here it is: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/going-deep-with-david-rees/interactives/getting-graphically-deep-with-david-rees-how-to-dig-a-hole/ http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/going-deep-with-david-...
- johnofthejohn 10y agoI am disappointed that human beings can be so bored as to find money and time to do that useless nature massacre.
- tyingq 10y agoThey have a FAQ for that: "Is the hole bad for the environment? No, this was just a bunch of empty land. Now there’s a hole there. That’s life." Edit: Lol, I'm not endorsing their answer. Just pointing it out.
- johnofthejohn 10y agoBurning gasoline for useless digging actually is bad for the environment. And it might not be amazonian rain forest that we're talking about, but an "empty land" is better left untouched than slaughtered like this.
- ChoGGi 10y agoI can guarantee there isn't any gasoline being burned there. Edit: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted, those three vehicles are burning diesel...
- johnofthejohn 10y agoHaha good point :-)
- myself248 10y agoBurning fuel for NASCAR and Formula 1 is also useless to a first approximation, and surely the land used for racetracks could be used for other stuff. But millions of people find it entertaining, and occasionally useful stuff comes out of it, like innovations in engines or telemetry or safety equipment. How is this any different? It's entertaining plenty of us, it's less fuel than a race and less land than a racetrack, and maybe we'll learn something in the process. Maybe innovations in moderating the futility of online comment systems. ;)
- heheocoenev 10y agoThere is no such thing as empty land. From the billions of microbes to the insects, worms; the fungi, the grass... something just lost their home or food
- Zpalmtree 10y agoWill someone please think of the grass!
- BoorishBears 10y agoIn what way is this a "nature massacre"?
- eth0up 10y agoThey're going to find an aquifer any minute. Plus, some nice flowers were previously approaching the general area. All a bit noisy too.
- BoorishBears 10y agoIs there any proof they're going to find an aquifer? Do we know the location they're at actually has wildlife to be disturbed by that noise? I mean, if the only loss is some flowers and a mound of dirt I don't really see how it's a "nature massacre". Massacre is a pretty strong word...
- eth0up 10y agoIt was probably native dirt, so you may have a point.
- burke 10y agoThe critique of society will probably provoke enough people into making different choices to justify the loss of a few square meters of topsoil.
- cyberferret 10y agoThe pedants will say it is actually cubic metres of soil... ;)
- return0 10y agoI think thats the emotion this is meant to evoke.
- Raed667 10y agoI have spent last night laughing at this. I have spent this morning depressing about it.
- the_duke 10y agoI just found the site 5 minutes a go. I still can't stop laughing. This is so marvelously stupid, I love it. What do I get for contributing money to the hole? A deeper hole. What else are you going to buy, an iPod?
- tyingq 10y agoThe top contributions are baffling. Some people are donating over $1k USD.
- kejaed 10y agoAnd now you and everyone else that visits the site have seen their business URLs
- wott 10y agoAnd we're not going to buy anything from them, since their products price includes this kind of "cost".
- tudorw 10y agoHmm, as opposed to what? A red bull wing suit event, is that the progress you were looking for?
- icebraining 10y agoAnd their competitors' prices might include $2k in a safari trip to kill endangered species[1]. You monster. [1] http://mashable.com/2011/03/31/godaddy-ceo-elephant/ http://mashable.com/2011/03/31/godaddy-ceo-elephant/
- 10y ago
- cmrdporcupine 10y agoWaste of good topsoil.
- littleweep 10y agoHow do you know it will go to waste?
- throwaway1974 10y agoUhm can someone explain to nonUS audience what exactly is this Cards Against Humanity?
- dsjoerg 10y agoThey make some party card games where you win by coming up with the funniest combination of the cards you are dealt.
- detaro 10y agoA card game about combining cards to funny/offensive combinations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cards_Against_Humanity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cards_Against_Humanity
- dictum 10y agoAs a former member of the non-US audience who don't know what exactly is this Cards Against Humanity, I can confirm it's better to remain under the bliss of ignorance.
- johanbrook 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cards_Against_Humanity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cards_Against_Humanity It's a card game where a group of people piece together sentences with cards with phrases and words. One of the funniest "party games" I've played.
- Pxtl 10y agoA party card game about combining cards with tasteless jokes on them to make larger tasteless jokes. The company is also known for viral marketing campaigns, like mail-order poo. They also have a more elaborate social deduction game called Secret Hitler about politics in Weimar Germany. With cartoon lizards.
- titanix2 10y agoThis game (Secret Hitler) ruined quite of few nights when I was an exchange student: people kept playing it while it was limited to only 10 players IIRC and was an obvious albeit less-fun rip off of the game "Les Loups-garous de Thiercelieux"[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Werewolves_of_Millers_Hollow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Werewolves_of_Millers_Holl...
- frisco 10y agoThis is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Much better than the laser cutting of a Picasso. CAH is the OK Go of postmodern satire and have outdone themselves. Really incredible art. I imagine many people not getting this is the same feeling I had growing up and being dragged to museums.
- syphilis2 10y agoI think you are seeing what isn't there. Of course that's the definition of a hole. "Is there some sort of deeper meaning or purpose to the hole? No."
- ethbro 10y agoIsn't deliberate lack of purpose also a purpose?
- Retric 10y ago"No."
- danlindley 10y agoI think the Dada art movement would disagree.
- Chos89 10y agoI think the interesting thing about this is to think how weird our economy functions, because at the end of this, all we will have is a net gain for the economy and an empty hole.
- nickik 10y agoThe central bank automatically equalizes over changes in money demand/velocity. That what a demand target (in the Feds case Inflation) is all about. So this action might increase velocity/decrease money demand, but it will not have a larger effect on Aggregate Demand.
- uuilly 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
- Chos89 10y agohttp://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Managing_the_economy/The_multiplier_effect.html http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Managing_the_economy/The_mu... I don't think "Parable of the broken window" captures the essence of our economy, it only mentions the handyman receiving 6 francs, and not him paying his suppliers, them paying their suppliers and so on, his tools, his rent, his taxes, etc.
- MichaelBurge 10y agoThe multiplier effect exists, but in the broken window fallacy all it does is multiply the wasted effort. The company mining sand is wasting sand and people's time mining the sand for the broken window. The company that melts the sand into glass is wasting time and energy making the glass for that window. The company that transports the window to the distributor is wasting storage space, energy(gas), and salary transporting it to the retail location(Home Depot). The retail company is wasting storage space on the window, and perhaps a couple minutes of a salesperson's time. The handyman is wasting his time when he installs a window to no benefit. The insurance company is wasting their time handling the claim, and is implicitly costing everyone else in their client pool time with increased premiums. And the person whose window was broken has their time wasted working in order to pay for the new window. Any property that any of these people use is wasted, because if your office processes claims for broken windows the portion of the rent used for office space is wasted. (For example, if you spend enough time on broken windows, you might need extra staff and therefore a larger property.) In each of these, maybe only a few minutes, seconds, or milliseconds(in the case of the sand needed) is wasted. But the entire ripple effect is ultimately a waste. In some cases, there appears to be no effect because a company may have additional capacity already available. But if you make a complete accounting of all effects, it is all a waste. When I look at issues in economics, I like to erase the money entirely, since money is often nothing more than an accounting tool to make a graph reduction problem easier. In the case of a broken window, all you've done when you eliminate the money is waste resources, land usage, and many people's time. Contrast this with a new window for a brand new building: Presumably that building is being used for some productive purpose, so the entire supply chain is implicitly being used for a productive purpose.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ytjohn 10y agoI hope that next year they will fill it back in. Or maybe even this holiday season if they can get enough funds.
- phlyingpenguin 10y agoThey will fill it in after the stream is finished this year. https://twitter.com/c_frieds/status/802217118964023296 https://twitter.com/c_frieds/status/802217118964023296
- torgoguys 10y agoI get the joke. I also find it stupid. But YMMV.
- kamyarg 10y agoThis reminded me of "The Hole" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAIbvlobWDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAIbvlobWDM
- dictum 10y agoI keep waiting for the day cynical businesses will cut out the middlemen and make a point using only their own resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu...
- hashhar 10y agoThat's exactly the point they are making and have been for the last two years. They were able to sell actual 'bull shit' to people last year and jacked up their prices last to last year and yet sales went higher than ever before. The margins from last year were distributed among employees to do as they saw fit and can be seen on their website (a lot of them decided to donate). The last to last years' went all to charity. They are making a point against the blind consumerism. And that too in style. Companies have donated more than $1k in some cases and CAH makes it look a mockery of them throwing their money into a literal hole for advertisement.
- Hurtak 10y agoTheir FAQ is also pretty good. Q: Why aren’t you giving all this money to charity? A: Why aren’t YOU giving all this money to charity? It’s your money.
- gkafkg8y8 10y agoHopefully they will at least let people in need use the hole.
- return0 10y agowho needs a hole in the ground?
- Lagged2Death 10y agoIf you trust in free markets, then you really must let the needy themselves decide what they need.
- fredoliveira 10y agoeveryone eventually does.
- lake99 10y agoOver here, cremation is customary. The ashes are sent down a river.
- fillskills 10y ago"What if you dig so deep you hit hot magma? At least then we’d feel something." Touche.
- josephjrobison 10y agoI wish they would go deeper though, they're kinda just digging a wide hole. Unlikely they'll hit magma.
- phillco 10y agoStrongly reminds me of this classic Onion video: http://www.theonion.com/video/in-the-know-should-the-government-stop-dumping-mon-14289 http://www.theonion.com/video/in-the-know-should-the-governm...
- stephengillie 10y agoCongrats to the CaH team for privatizing this public need. That's entrepreneurship at its finest.
- ronnybrendel2 10y agoBut why?
- datenwolf 10y ago> But why? So that you ask exactly that question.
- blauditore 10y agoI don't understand when people argue like that. It's like punching someone in the face and when they ask what the hell is wrong with you answering, "Ha! I knew you would be confused!"
- Piskvorrr 10y agoQED.
- killerbat00 10y agoPublicity, or just a crazy easy way to fund year end bonuses. Some of their previous holiday sales have been similarly silly.
- praptak 10y agoTo have a tremendous hole dug in the earth.
- dorianm 10y agoThis is crazy awesome! I just wanted to do a cost breakdown: 0.6s/$ is $6,000/hour (thanks @danielvf). The excavator is around $2000/day[1]. The truck is around $2200/day[2]. Plus at least two operators with $200/day each[3]. And then the cost of Stripe's fees, buying the land, getting a permit (?), etc. [1]: http://www.rentalyard.com/listings/construction-equipment/for-rent/list/category/1032/excavators-crawler/manufacturer/caterpillar/model-group/345 http://www.rentalyard.com/listings/construction-equipment/fo... [2]: http://www.rentalyard.com/listings/construction-equipment/for-rent/list/category/1049/off-highway-trucks/manufacturer/caterpillar/model-group/740 http://www.rentalyard.com/listings/construction-equipment/fo... [3]: http://gcsenergy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2016-Hourly-Rate-Schedule-Revision-1.pdf http://gcsenergy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2016-Hourly-R...
- ilogik 10y agoI don't think that's correct
- eps 10y agoThere is also a bulldozer.
- dorianm 10y agoThanks, I didn't see it. So the bulldozer is also around $2,000/day.
- danielvf 10y agoThe income is $6,000 an hour. Making this wildly profitable.
- johan_larson 10y agoI wonder what they are going to do with the money.
- whiddershins 10y agoThey are digging around the clock so the operators need to be x3
- lucd 10y agoEvil people .. They must have an hidden plan .. Like burying a big time capsule with the worst items of our era... Not nice !
- sabertoothed 10y agoI cannot find the information which charities will receive the money. Should this not be mentioned? EDIT: It's OK. I was naive. I had thought it was a joke AND had a good cause.
- placeybordeaux 10y agoFrom their FAQ >Why aren’t you giving all this money to charity? >Why aren’t YOU giving all this money to charity? It’s your money.
- sabertoothed 10y agoI am confused. So when you donate you choose the charity yourself and transfer it directly? Is that what it means?
- killerbat00 10y agoIt's not a donation. You are literally giving them money to dig a hole.
- Pxtl 10y agoNo, the money is paying for the cost of operating excavators. This is not a charity, the CAH team is not going out with shovels, the men driving the excavators are not volunteers. You're paying them to dig a hole. When CAH runs out of money for hourly expenses of hole-digging, the digging stops. That's it. You pay for N seconds of digging. That's the whole thing.
- sabertoothed 10y agoThanks. I was too naive.
- Piskvorrr 10y agoYes. You choose the charity yourself, send the money to it directly, and, most importantly, you leave the CAH completely out of it, because they don't care.
- jbmorgado 10y agoSo, now we are helping destroy the environment for sarcasm? Seriously, what's wrong with these people?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tudorw 10y agoWe destroy the environment for unnecessary trinkets daily, at least this is stimulating discussion...
- inimino 10y agoBy digging a hole? Have a sense of perspective.
- sangnoir 10y agoIt's what the market wants, apparently. The digging will continue while the market exists. I thinks it's brilliant performance art and provides some introspection to a part of capitalism. CAH's black Friday stunts have consistently shown that people will spend money on stupid shit they don't need. Maybe there's a deeper lesson in there on the nature of people?
- necessity 10y agoLooks more like a critique to government spending money on unproductive shit as a measure to "improve the economy". The difference is that you are forced to finance that through taxation, whereas the hole digging is voluntary.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI don't know how people are making connections to government of all things. Because there are excavators there? Anyway, judging by the history of CAH Black Friday stunts, I'd say it's definitely a critique of consumerism - of people spending money to buy stupid shit. The difference between CAH and all other Black Friday sales is that CAH tells you up-front you're buying stupid shit (at one occasion, they literally sold bull shit).
- analog31 10y agoI'd be shocked if it wasn't a video of a hole already being dug for some other purpose.
- iaw 10y agoLook into the company's history, I'd be shocked if it was anything other than what they said it was.
- binaryorganic 10y agoThe folks at CaH have a history of pranks around Black Friday. They've invited people to send them money in exchange for absolutely nothing. They've sold boxes of actual bullshit. My personal favorite was when they raised their prices $5 and called it a 'once in a lifetime' opportunity and they still had record sales.
- wbhart 10y agoAn interesting question is what volume of earth could they move in the allotted time with this equipment. In the live feed it looks like they are making the hole wide, rather than deep though. It would be fun if they accidentally dug up a massive fossil find or something like that.
- supergreg 10y agoIf you see the glass half full, they are not just digging a hole, they are creating a hill next to it.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoLol. Someone should send money in for building the hills.
- archgoon 10y agoIf they feel inspired to work around the whole conservation of mass thing to avoid 'free work', then I'm not going to complain.
- k_sze 10y agoHow is this even legal? Do they own the piece of land?
- yincrash 10y agoAre you really positing that most holes that have been dug are illegal holes?
- distances 10y agoI would guess most people live in populated areas where you can't just dig a hole without a permission from a municipal board of construction or some such governing body.
- CydeWeys 10y ago... you can watch the live feed. They're not digging up someone's backyard. Just because I happen to live in a city doesn't mean that I have no imagination for what things are like outside cities.
- ajkjk 10y agoGonna assume yes. Is there a reason it wouldn't be legal?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- k_sze 10y agoThe thing is, I live in Hong Kong. And if you tried to pull off this kind of thing here, even on land that you own, it's possibly illegal unless you have other paperwork done because you may damage fibre optics cables or rupture a cooking gas pipe or whatever.
- myself248 10y agoIn the US, I don't believe there's any paperwork unless you plan to build something in the hole. Then it would be construction, but this is just a hole. You call a "utility locate" service (commonly known as Miss Dig) a few days in advance, and they look up all the records for buried stuff, and come mark it with little flags. (If you damage something because you didn't call, you bear full responsibility for the damage, but I don't believe it's a criminal act, just civil liability. But I'm definitely not a lawyer!) In this case, they probably checked those records and found a big patch of land with no underground utilities at all, before buying it. In rural areas that includes most land. In the city: Fiber optics run chiefly along suspended wires (search terms "messenger wire" and "aerial cable") or buried in conduits along established cable routes. Municipal water and sewer lines usually run under roads or along easements parallel to roads. Taps serving individual buildings branch off these. Electrical wires are usually aerial, and in places where they're run underground, they're usually very well marked and dotted with pad-mounted transformers along their length. If you wanted to dig a hole like this in the city, you'd be navigating a forest of little flags and might have a very hard time of it. In rural areas: Fiber optics usually run along railroad tracks, since those are pre-existing straight-line paths that connect population centers. Oil and gas pipelines are usually underground but usually well-marked and often kept clear of vegetation on the surface for inspection purposes. Electrical wires in rural areas are always aerial. Water is usually from wells, sewage is handled in septic systems, and heating gas is trucked around and stored in tanks at each house, so there are no buried lines for any of those. Digging a hole like this out in the country is pretty straightforward.
- arielweisberg 10y agoMy guess is that this isn't just a hole it's a building whose purpose we will find out about at a later date. I threw in 15 dollars for entertainment purposes.
- Illniyar 10y agoThis is Cards Against Humanity, if it's anything other then just a hole in the ground, it'll be very much outside of their usual black-friday offerings.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- arielweisberg 10y agoThat isn't how it played out in 2015. They said give us money for nothing and then they spent it on stuff including giving a week off to their factory workers and buying stuff for the staff.
- lostlogin 10y ago"For nothing" has 2 meanings and I think you are thinking it meant "for us to do nothing with". I think it meant "give us money and you get nothing". I could be wrong though.
- arielweisberg 10y agoIn their own words... "Cards Against Humanity is known for our charitable fundraising - since 2012 we've raised nearly $4 million for organizations we love like Worldbuilders, the Sunlight Foundation, the EFF, DonorsChoose.org, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Chicago Design Museum. We even started a $500,000 full-ride scholarship for women getting degrees in science." https://cardsagainsthumanity.com/blackfriday/ https://cardsagainsthumanity.com/blackfriday/ They don't have a history of burning money. It's inconsistent with past behavior as well as their own description of themselves.
- reppic 10y agoA wonderful critique of capitalist ideology... and so on and so on. sniff --Slavoj Zizek
- necessity 10y agoMore like a critique of the distorted "keynesianism" governments around the world seem to love.
- throwaway729 10y agoIsn't it interesting how satirical humor often serves as a kind of rorschach test? I remember reading something about both conservatives and liberals thinking Colbert's character was making fun of the other.
- Piskvorrr 10y agoThat's satire, almost by definition (as opposed to other kinds of humor).
- whytaka 10y agoThe appeal to vulgarity is a tired cliche of social critique. At this point, no one can make a fresh point about it. Now it's just exploitation of the weak.
- imagist 10y agoAt this point, saying that an economic activity is an exploitation of the weak is redundant.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoNext time they should take donations for a deep learning system. They will promise to train the machine with data from CaH, Reddit, and 4chan. It will then output the next set of Cards Against Humanity. Their bullshit will be at the level of some tech companies posted here often. Whereas, fans might actually get something back for their money later. :)
- dpeck 10y ago"From the widest gulley to the deepest trench, holes define who we are and where we are going." - Rainier Wolfcastle
- wlkr 10y agoLinking just to save others the search. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDONJhEo0RI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDONJhEo0RI
- shermanyo 10y agoThank you! Somehow I heard that quote in my head, word for word, but had no idea where it was from. I'd been racking my brain, thinking it sounded too sarcastic for a BBC doco, I didn't even think of The Simpsons.
- peternilson 10y agoOne estimate I heard on the required size of a donation able to save one life was around $4k. So yeah right now the collective have given enough money to save 20 lives into digging a massive hole in the ground.
- inimino 10y agoJust think of the money you could earn for charity in the time you spend on HN.
- peternilson 10y agoThen you're missing the humour in the stunt.
- inimino 10y agoI didn't, but you may have missed what I was replying to.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoAdd in their Starbucks spending. Then their movie=going. How about money spent on hair products? Lots more egregious waste, than one hilarious stunt. In fact, this stunt got folks talking about it.
- peternilson 10y agoThose cases are not the same. Here you have individuals spending money because they find the idea of their money being wasted in such a fashion entertaining. It's waste for the sake of waste. This is exactly why this is the perfect stunt for CAH.
- nathancahill 10y agoFunny, I'm watching two different fundraisers progress. One for election integrity and one for digging a hole.
- golemotron 10y agoDouble-vision? They could be the same fundraiser.
- akerl_ 10y agoAnd only one of those fundraisers was up front about what they were collecting the money for.
- gkafkg8y8 10y agoAre we sure this isn't some ruse to fund a fallout shelter?
- rroblak 10y agoCAH would never admit it, but I feel like at least part of this can be seen as political commentary. From the top of their page: "The holidays are here, and everything in America is going really well" (emphasis mine). It's hard for me not to read the last part of that as sarcasm, given many people's reaction to the recent US election. Perhaps CAH is saying that the US is digging itself a hole by electing Trump and a Republican Senate.
- probablybroken 10y agoMy feeling was similar - it looks like Trump wants to build a wall, so they are digging a hole in sympathetic response. Both acts of self interested gesture politics.
- sangnoir 10y ago> To celebrate Black Friday, Cards Against Humanity is digging a tremendous hole in the earth
- nickthemagicman 10y agoYep I thought this exact thing.
- ethbro 10y agoI don't think there's a huge amount of subtlety about why they're doing this. There's a pretty Trump-shaped negation to all their remarks.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago> Where is the hole? America. And in our hearts.
- iaw 10y agoThat and the 'feeling something' line really got me.
- 10y ago
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI'm imagining the next year. Black Friday 2017 - plot twist! For each $10 donated, CAH will put $7 in cash in the hole (using the remaining $3 to secure it against elements). At the end of the fundraiser, they'll fill the hole back in, creating a literal case of hidden underground treasure.
- kelvin0 10y agoWell I'm glad someone is taking on that Herculean task. We can check that off our 'Humanity' bucket list ... It's funny and profoundly depressing at the same time.
- juhq 10y agoWhy did I just spend 15 minutes watching this?
- juhq 10y agoWhy did I just spend 15 minutes watching this?
- ethbro 10y ago"...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn." If ever there was an appropriate event for the quote.
- johan_larson 10y agoFor $90K, you could probably buy an old house and literally burn it down. It would probably take some doing to convince the fire department to let you do it legally, but with enough money it should be possible to take enough safeguards, particularly if the house is remote to begin with.
- gkafkg8y8 10y agoI wish I could give more than ~$1.797693 x (10^308). That means that they can't dig longer than ~3.417998 x (10^300) years. If you'd like to find the exact amount, you can copy this into the custom amount field and keep altering digits until you come up with the right number: 179769313000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 I have a feeling whatever the actual number is would be extremely important to our survival as a species, like something I'd need to enter into an Apple II+ every 108 minutes to discharge electromagnetic energy safely or the "Underworld" hieroglyphs would be displayed. http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Hieroglyphs http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Hieroglyphs
- fred256 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-precision_floating-point_format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-precision_floating-poin...
- ivl 10y agoI think what amuses me most is that the biggest donors seem to be people looking to advertise. At the moment it's a vehicle code scanner, LEO/Tachical gear, flavored nicotine (I guess?), and a BBQ thermometer.
- return0 10y agoYesterday there was a donor who gave $5000 but i don't see her name on the list now.
- hashhar 10y agoThat's exactly what they have been trying to critique for the last two years on Black Fridays. Blind consumerism. Advertisers are literally throwing money at a hole in the ground. They even state at their page "Why don't you donate this to a charity?" and they reply, "It's your money. Why don't YOU donate it to a charity.". It's almost like we are looking past the mirror they have held up for us in our faces.
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- omginternets 10y ago>Can't we just set aside the technicalities and cash and enjoy a hole for once. I tried presenting that argument to the judge, but I still got sentenced :(
- AngrySkillzz 10y agoSorry, these jokes aren't funny anymore.
- omginternets 10y agoI'm sorry you feel that way. I would suggest you stay away from Cards Against Humanity (and threads thereabout), as jokes like these are literally the game's raison d'être.
- anc84 10y agoPlease say Cards With Humynity. Thank you.
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- sctb 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13044768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13044768 and marked it off-topic.
- Applejinx 10y agoIf this becomes a viral thing that never dies, can we who are trying to do little business things which can't reach sustainability due to this sort of nonsense sucking all the air out of the room… be BURIED in this hole? …we're gonna need a bigger hole. Keep going.
- pilom 10y agoIf you're thinking of donating, http://www.givewell.org/donate http://www.givewell.org/donate
- user837387 10y agoNo and No. I want a hole, and a hole I will get.
- dwaltrip 10y agoI was inspired to write the following short story, and couldn't really help myself. I hope it is worth the amount of page space it occupies. --- A few weeks into the maiden voyage of the Interplanetary Transport System, a middle-aged woman named Alex Kimber sat quietly in the library behind the kitchen. The term "library" is perhaps a bit gracious. American walk-in closets back on Earth were often larger than this enclosure. It was a good place for thinking, though. Not surprisingly, the compact spaceship didn't provide much privacy, as each additional pound of weight came with a $200 price tag. Alex was near the peak of an enviable career. She possessed master's degrees in two different engineering fields as well as in political science, was the founder of two companies valued in the $10M to $100M range, and had held multiple advisory positions with her state's long term development board. Her fellow voyagers were good company. Only the highest caliber applicants had been accepted for the first 10 missions. These "founding missions" were responsible for building a secure base capable of housing at least 5,000 individuals. All within five years! This would be an immense challenge. They would be testing the prototype blueprint for a self-sustaining Mars base. These difficulties, however, were not on Alex's mind. She was ruminating on more fundamental matters. As both a scientist and passionate student of modern philosophy, her personal framework for understanding life was strongly colored by materialism and absurdism. On a pragmatic level, however, she found much peace and stability through mindfulness. She had always felt that greatest institutions of the current age were severely lacking in their integration of such principles. The chance to tend to the young seeds of the first society on Mars played no small role in her willingness to risk so much and join the expedition. Over the years, as she pondered the deepest dynamics of human relationships on both the micro and macro scales, Alex had scribbled down notes here and there. Yet she often still struggled to summarize her views. An unexpected connection sparked in the unseen layers of her subconscious mind, and she opened her laptop. She began browsing through her collection of saved articles and other media. She clicked the "post-modern" tag, and a diverse set of articles, blog entries, lectures, and videos filled the screen. The whimsical title "Cards against Humanity is digging a hole in the Earth" jumped out. She opened the file. Vaguely remembering this offbeat stunt from more than a decade and half ago, she couldn't help but smile. Some moments passed. Her thoughts turned serious. A few clicks later, and a blinking cursor yearned at her from the blank canvas of the editor. Like a hurricane forming from the gentle flaps of a butterfly's wings, the keys of her laptop softly succumbed to the pressure of her fingertips, and the text "Mars Political Treatise: Volume 1" filled the first line of the page...
- Friedduck 10y agoWe were stopped by a TSA agent, who took great care to inspect our Cards Against Humanity deck, and ask lots of questions. Where'd you buy them? What is this? She revealed in the course of the conversation that she'd been banned from shopping on Amazon. I posit that someone who's banned from shopping at AMZN is more dangerous than someone who plays card games with a dark sense of humor. How does that even happen?
- ashark 10y ago"Banned from shopping on Amazon" or some variant is a good candidate for writing on a custom card.
- johan_larson 10y agoIt's almost a good band name. "Banned from Shopping" I'm not pretentious enough for vinyl, but maybe I could get that on a CD?
- cyberferret 10y agoWe should start a thread purely for tech inspired band names. There is a local (quote a good) band here called "Snapchat Regret"...
- jjoonathan 10y agoI vaguely remember someone (on HN? reddit?) who made hundreds of amazon orders, returned 2/3 of them, and acted all indignant when they banned him ("It's not my fault everything is garbage!"). If the TSA lady's story is half as entertaining, I'd love to have heard it.
- chrisper 10y agoDo you happen to remember in what time frame the hundreds of orders happened?
- 10y ago
- msurekci 10y agoGetting wider rather than deeper.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y agoThis does not appear to violate the First Rule of Holes, and should, therefore, be acceptable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_holes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_holes
- ohwaitnvm 10y agoIf you find this interesting and would like to read about another money pit, HN led me to read about the Oak Island Money Pit many months ago. http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/topics/oakisland/story.html http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/topics/oakisland/story....
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- afandian 10y agoThis feels like Clickhole or The Onion but with real commitment. Excellent.
- msimpson 10y agoSo who's starting the fundraiser to decide what to put in the tremendous hole?
- typon 10y agoThis is a more powerful critique of rampant consumerism than I've seen in my University courses.
- imagist 10y agoThat's because university economics courses are typically taught by economists with a vested interest in the continuation of rampant consumerism.
- haberman 10y agoThe people they hired to do this have got to be thinking this is the weirdest job they have ever, or will ever, get paid to do.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoThis is so remarkably non-nonsensical and fun. Not that I'd throw money at it. I'd be curious what they did if they accidentally struck water or an underground fiber optic cable.
- praptak 10y agoWhat is the excavators' contract? Did they agree to just dig three shifts 24/7 for an unspecified amount of time?
- femto113 10y agoFor that money they could have hired a hundred men for a week.
- pulsefire 10y agoI can't access the website anymore. HTTP ERROR 503. Did they take it down because some legal action was taken against them or they weren't prepared for high traffic?
- pulsefire 10y agoHTTP ERROR 503. Can't access the website anymore. Seems like they weren't prepared for such high traffic!
- lai 10y agoAccording to the FAQ, the hole is supposed to get deeper, but the guys are just widening the hole. Can you guys please correct that? Thanks.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- raywu 10y agoThe site has been down for the past 5 minutes http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/holidayhole.com http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/holidayhole.com
- karmakaze 10y agoIrony here is the SSL cert being from Amazon.
- castledcornet24 10y agoThat is so dumb
- castledcornet24 10y agoThat is bull crap
- cyberferret 10y agoI, for one, am incredibly saddened by this. Not against CaH directly, per se, but at the psychology of people's propensity to spend money. Over the past 3 years, I have created about 4 or 5 web apps, and sunk my own money into them to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. In most cases, it was a struggle to get people to pay even $3/month for one of them, and I ended up shuttering some of them. The feeling I get from this is that hundreds and hundred of hours of blood, sweat and tears from me, (which includes 50 years of knowledge, and personal sacrifices that I and my family have had to make) is, at the end of the day, worth less than a hole in the earth. Excuse me while I go sit in a darkened room and ruminate about this over a glass of wine.
- ryanwaggoner 10y agoIn most cases, it was a struggle to get people to pay even $3/month for one of them, and I ended up shuttering some of them. The feeling I get from this is that hundreds and hundred of hours of blood, sweat and tears from me, (which includes 50 years of knowledge, and personal sacrifices that I and my family have had to make) is, at the end of the day, worth less than a hole in the earth. I've been there, so please don't take this the wrong way, but yes, your hundreds of hours of blood, sweat, and tears may mean less than a hole in the ground. And why shouldn't it? Your hard work on its own means basically nothing to anyone. People buy because of the perceived value to them of what they're buying, not because of what the seller did or didn't put into it. If people weren't going to pay $3 / month for your project, it's because you weren't offering them at least $3 / month of perceived value. There is basically no connection that I can see between how much hard work goes into something and how much the market is willing to pay for it. Some people labor a lifetime on something that no one will ever want, others spend a weekend throwing together a website that will one day IPO for billions [1]. This is why so many successful startup founders and investors advise getting a project out there as quickly as possible and iterating rapidly to either find product / market fit, or to abandon it for something else. Fighting an uphill battle to make people want something that they don't care about, just because you've poured so much into it is a recipe for disaster. Again, I've been there, so please don't take any of this the wrong way! Just my own rumination in response. 1. Yes, a lot of hard work goes into it along the way, but that's a hell of a lot easier with early success.