7 ms·
The age of plausibly buying a legacy is gone, so these vanity projects inspire more cynicism than anything else.
by closewith 9mo ago
The age of plausibly buying a legacy is gone, so these vanity projects inspire more cynicism than anything else.
- amelius 9mo agoWell, this is better than what Bezos is using his surplus money for.
- coderjames 9mo agoYou don't support trying to save the planet? The Bezos Earth Fund: https://www.bezosearthfund.org/ https://www.bezosearthfund.org/
- adventured 9mo agoThe planet will be just fine. It measures consequential time in many millions of years. You mean: support saving humanity.
- RealityVoid 9mo agoI mean, yeah. When people way saving the planet they mean saving humanity. That's exactly it. A barren rock does no one no good. I don't get it why people hang onto this expression, it's as if you heard that George Carlin bit and now that's your anchor to reality.
- leoc 9mo agoFor the past 50+ years there really has been a somewhat significant and quite influential body of people who genuinely want to preserve the planet’s ecosystem even at the expense of the people living on it.
- dylan604 9mo agoIt's not like the dinosaurs had a save the earth campaign. Yet, before humans the rock had life forms that died out while the rock itself continued being a viable planet supporting life. If humans die off, the planet will continue on with life continuing in new ways.
- A_D_E_P_T 9mo agoBezos is one of the best, though? Blue Origin, the Long Now foundation, and I could go on all day. I don't know of too many other billionaires so willing so spend vast sums on the Heinleinian dreams of their youth.
- skeeter2020 9mo agoI don't believe it's a net benefit to the world when a single person fundamentally changes entire economies, captures a significant portion of the resource stream and then maybe a some point redirects a portion of of it to their pet projects. Although I strongly support shooting tech bros and politicians into space (one way; even better)!
- motoxpro 9mo agoI am not understanding how this is bad. Other than a guy made a bunch of money and is spending it how he wants. Or is that the whole reason?
- closewith 9mo ago> Other than a guy made a bunch of money and is spending it how he wants. A guy has woken up to the fact that he'll be remembered as a villian and is trying to whitewash his reputation.
- ggggffggggg 9mo agoI don’t know that the vast majority of Americans know who Eric Schmidt is. And unless they find little green men, no one will care about this project, so it won’t affect his (essentially nonexistent) reputation. It’s not unlike if you had a blog post about a gardening project in your backyard. Perhaps interesting to gardeners, but approximately no one cares. Low effort cynicism.
- bongodongobob 9mo ago[dead]
- BigTTYGothGF 9mo agoIt worked for Alfred Nobel.
- dlevine 9mo agoIt seems to have worked for Bill Gates as well. He definitely did some not so nice things when starting and running MS - I think it unfortunately goes with the territory of running a successful company at scale. But subsequently he has become more know for his philanthropy.
- melling 9mo agoI forget why he’s a villain. Did he do something at Google? He’s sort of a lesser known figure to me.