Comments

  4. Snarki, child of Loki says

    In space, no one can hear the billionaire scream as you push him out the airlock.

    But EVERYONE can hear him scream when you push him into the wood-chipper feet-first. Just have to use an electric wood chipper, though.

  7. PaulBC says

    @5 I was trying to figure out if it’s as easy as all that, but I don’t know. The airlock (if my 5 minute googling is right) is designed to be depressurized before opening. Unless it really has a kill mode built into it, you probably need a suited astronaut in there to throw the victim into space from the evacuated chamber, and they may very well be dead before the door opens at all.

  8. says

    They’re not worried about “airlocks” because they already suck in all the oxygen in the room.

    It does remind me of a 2006ish bumper sticker, though:
    ROSLIN | AIRLOCK

  10. jenorafeuer says

    There’s a filk song out there called ‘To Space’, by Joel Polowin, since that was the theme of the convention the song debuted at… except that instead of treating it as a preposition and a noun, they treated it as an infinitive, with ‘space’ as the verb meaning to throw someone out the airlock.

    To space is an infinitive, about the infinite
    You won’t have very long to live, if you’re tossed out in it!

    One of the verses was even about Bill Gates:

    He’s put us all through Windows, so we’ll put him through the door.

    (I’ve got it on the ‘Filk Dreams’ CD, which was a collection from FilKONtaril 9, if anybody’s curious where to find it.)

  13. PaulBC says

    Michael@12 It’s like Buffy. He was the Big Bad in a previous season. How soon we forget. While I saw him differently 20 years ago, I admit that I’m more inclined to see him as one of the sensible ones these days. I am not sure if I trust him, but his organization has done some good work. I’d take him over Larry Ellison or Peter Thiel any day, let alone the mass of non-tech tycoons out there.

  14. says

    I don\’t think any of them want to spend more than a few hours in space. Even Elon Musk has no intention of going to Mars, just sending some people there so he can brag some more about how cool he is.

  18. F.O. says

    We shouldn’t be really thanking Gates for generously giving back some of the money he plundered.
    And in general, we shouldn’t trust rich people when they try to launder themselves.

    He was a massive business prick in the 90s. He destroyed the livelihood of literally thousands of people, while stealing the tech developed by hundreds of others.

    He aggresively, and often illegally, patented and contained essentially all computing software for about a decade — hampering the global development of the human race by claiming ownership of a common human achievement: computing, and aggresively pursuing anyone who violated his “claims”

    His charitable work has had questionable implications in Africa, and the whole thing has MASSIVE racist overtones.

    He was buddies with Epstein AFTER the dude was fucking charged as a child sex-slave trafficker…. Bill Gates isn’t a moron, and he has an admin staff, there is NO WAY he didn’t know that Epstein was a serial rapist… So worst case Bill Gates rapes children, BEST CASE he ignores the rape of children to the benefit of his own business and philanthropy…

    He contracts with the defense department…

    He makes weapons…

    He exploits workers globally, like all Billionaire’s do…

    Despite all his “charitable” bullshit, he has still increased his wealth every single year — so he’s not really giving anything away, he’s just building legacy and exercising PR bullshit to make more money.

  19. R. L. Foster says

    How about burning at the stake? I did some googling about fires in a weightless environment, but, of course, this particular scenario didn’t come up. The best I could deduce is that trying to burn someone at the stake in a spacecraft could be a slow process since the flames don’t rise and pull in oxygen the same way they would on earth. Still, it’s worth considering.

  21. whheydt says

    Re: wajim @ #20…
    Yes. But they’ll shove you in the opposite direction unless you’re anchored to something. (And if you are, the reaction will push you and whatever you’re anchored to.)

  23. zetopan says

    “Do crossbows work in space?”
    Yes, and the bolt does not suffer any drop with distance so aim directly at the target instead of above it. If there is no atmosphere, the feathers cannot constrain the back end of the bolt to always be behind the front end so the bolt may tumble end over end.

    Unsurprisingly, insects cannot fly in a vacuum, although idiots must test this out to be convinced:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4h-AS729JM etc.

    And rockets work well in a vacuum despite what the idiot scientifically illiterate NYT claimed many years ago:
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/07/19/the-correction-heard-round-the-world-when-the-new-york-times-apologized-to-robert-goddard/?sh=7b23421c4543

  24. jacksprocket says

    I don’t fantasise about killing the buggers. Just about making them spend the rest of their lives doing some real work, like caring for poor sick people on the same income as them. And with no publicity.