Comments

  2. birgerjohansson says

    Encourage them to have pointless plastic surgery ad infinitum.
    That might distract them from doing genuine harm.
    2
    Tell them “real men will walk across Australia. You see that emu? Emus are pussies, you have assert your dominance over them”.
    3
    “History only pay attention to those who are first to do something. If you get an asbestos surfboard, you can be the first to do molten-lava surfing”.

  3. silvrhalide says

    “Must get parental permission”
    Dude is 51 and still hiding behind his mommy?!

  6. wzrd1 says

    birgerjohansson, isn’t that what started the Emu War that Australia lost?

    hemidactylus, didn’t know that one. Extremely irritating, as I had once bought his brine shrimp for the kids, back in the dark ages before the internet.
    Had I known, well, Maryland isn’t all that far away and he’d have experienced an industrial accident with an electric urinal that somehow got crosswired into his Bunker Bun Warmer. ;)

    Schnitzel Von Knobbschafft,ah, the candle that illuminates all equally from inside of a lead cask. As, with that viewpoint, any and all criticism can be considered an easy stroll away from antisemitism.
    As an example in common political life, any and all criticisms against Israeli policies is considered antisemitism by many idiots
    Thereby proving that not only does God exist, but that God loves idiots, otherwise why would he make so many of them?

    I pick on everyone, even myself. For, the low hanging fruit is notable for being able to pick its peers on the way down. :P

  8. StevoR says

    Hmmm.. Once upon a historical era weren’t cars and air travel something only the rich could afford too?

    If demand increases and enough people want to go and travel these ways, could mass production and advancing tech mean everyone gets to go eventually?

    Simiilarly to first sentence analogy here?

    Dunno but maybe?

  9. StevoR says

    Whenever we go somewhere new.

    Do something first..

    Someone has to do it.

    So who gets to it and why? Specifics will vary..
    But having the means and ability and courage to do so.. won’t.

    Also sometimes depending on thing the first people to do it will fail and pay with their lives So..then..

  10. wzrd1 says

    StevoR, are you arguing that anyone should have a private army? Or transfuse blood, something chronically in short supply, just to try to be immortal (nope, it doesn’t work)? Or build the USS Substandard to crush paying passengers, when a standards met vessel would’ve sufficed and a drone would’ve been superior?
    Don’t even get me into the not even getting close to orbit, when sounding rockets have done that same job for far less, save they didn’t carry someone rich to do nothing but sit there. At least the rockets had a purpose. Or get me started on punching holes in the ozone layer for thrillseekers. That’s right up there with shooting private artillery into the air to celebrate random reasons, to hell with whoever’s in the impact zone.

    There’s a saying, the freedom to swing your fist stops abruptly at the end of my nose.

  12. birgerjohansson says

    I like the idea of going full Bond villain. I don’t believe in the rejuvenating power of blood transfusions, I would do it just for kicks. Montgomery Burns had the right idea when he hunted his underlings with a rifle.

    The list neglects to mention “taking all the credit for things accomplished by people working for you” which is a serious omission. How else will you present yourself to the world as a genius?

  13. jacksprocket says

    “Or build the USS Substandard to crush paying passengers, when a standards met vessel would’ve sufficed and a drone would’ve been superior?”

    Yeah!! Let’s do that! A whole fleet of them, to take all the b*aires and their butties to Fk? Spaceships to Mars… you’re nobody if you aren’t in the First Fleet, take your money (I wonder in what form) and bog off! A whole fleet5 of Titans!

    Sadly some bloody hope.

  14. wzrd1 says

    The blood transfusion thing does have some transitory benefit, but it’s short lived. One can accomplish the same effect with brisk exercise, which stimulates the cardiovascular system and circulates blood more fully, allowing cellular turnover to be accomplished more efficiently than sitting on one’s fat ass.
    Or even donating blood. Either way, stores are released fresh by the body and the same effect is gained.
    The rest is just voodoo science.

    Now, if my teams accomplished something or a team member did, I ensured that they got full credit. If they did poorly, I asked myself and my team what I did to set up a good team for failure and acted upon what I was told and figured out.
    Which still moved me up in the boss’ eyes, but also gained the loyalty of my teams. Loyalty followed into retention of personnel and increased productivity.

  15. John Morales says

    I dunno. Similarity is eerie — all that stuff is tat.

    The most expensive item is a mere $55M.

    So, I suppose, the point is that the sea-monkeys and X-ray glasses are akin to the cheap stuff featured on that page. Never get what you fancied, but very affordable, and suitable for an impulse purchase.

    (Billionaires aren’t “the rich”, they’re “the richest of the rich”)

  16. wzrd1 says

    Huh, given that the glasses and sea monkeys were marketed to children, isn’t the point actually to rip off our most vulnerable with impunity?

  17. John Morales says

    wzrd1, I think you’re stretching the parody a bit far.

    This isn’t a real thing, and if it’s marketed to anyone then it’s people who want to feel disdain for billionaires.

    So, do you still really want to claim the point is to rip off our most vulnerable with impunity?

    (The analogy is a bit like [seamonkeys to PZ :: your very own army to billionaires])

  18. John Morales says

    [meta]

    BTW, I see Taylor Swift is on course to become a billionaire, too.
    This tour should do it. That’s when she will become eeeevil.

    (disclaimer: All I know about her is what I read past in MSM, and this was on an article. Never listened to any of her music, think of her as just another in the chain — I remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus as the same sort)

  19. Silentbob says

    @ ^

    We get it Morales. You’re very concerned about unfair slights against innocent billionaires.
    Concern noted, as the kids say.

  20. John Morales says

    Unquietbob:

    We get it Morales. You’re very concerned about unfair slights against innocent billionaires.

    No, you don’t.

    I don’t give a shit about slights against billionaires, whether innocent or unfair.

    Concern noted, as the kids say.

    You imagined that was concern? Heh heh heh.

  21. wzrd1 says

    John Morales, what parody? I was speaking of the original advertisement, which I was tempted by in my own youth, back during the ice age.
    The glasses were polarized by feathers, which gave a distorted image that were marketed as x-ray view.
    The sea monkeys, brine shrimp. We also had an aquarium, we fed fry with brine shrimp egg pellets. When we had children, they saw a closeout display for sea monkeys at the toy store, so I bought a unit for cheap and once the culture of shrimp died off, due to a deficient design of a vivarium, I introduced some much cheaper brine shrimp pellets.
    Never did get the toy tank balanced much better, totally deficient design. A proper tank, with adequate circulation and oxygenation would’ve fared better. Still, I trebled the survival and got reproduction going before the entire mess fouled itself for three times longer than normal.
    Good lesson on commercialized bullshit of an otherwise inexpensive commodity and balancing an ecosystem that was horrifically out of balance.
    I’m also fairly certain that their feeder solution was contaminated with a shrimp pathogen, but lacking equipment, I was unable to verify it.

  22. John Morales says

    wzrd1:

    John Morales, what parody? I was speaking of the original advertisement, which I was tempted by in my own youth, back during the ice age.

    I know to what you refer, the which is what the comic featured in the OP parodies in an allegorical manner (billionaires as kids with pocket money, spending it on tat).

    I refer to the comic strip itself.

  25. Silentbob says

    Why am I imagining Musk as a 98 pound weakling getting sand kicked in his face until Charles Atlas teaches him the secrets of dynamic tension?

    Yes, I am both old and a comic nerd.

  28. wzrd1 says

    Explaining that joke makes me start to feel old.
    Well, if I ignore my back and knees…