Daily Archives: June 23, 2021

A few years ago a tech luminary in Silicon Valley told me about a very serious predicament that at the time only affected around 2,000 people on the entire planet. If you were one of those fateful few, he told me, it was a difficulty that would keep you up at night, staring at the ceiling with worry and constant anxiety. What was this insurmountable challenge? This Gordian knot? This unfortunate predicament only a few poor souls had to contend with? The challenge of being a billionaire, of course.

Just think about it, the luminary told me. Its nearly impossible to spend a billion dollars. I laughed at the ridiculousness of this statement, but he went on, doing the math in front of me to make his point. The most expensive Gulfstream jet in the world is $65 million; a couple of very fancy houses will cost you $20 million, $30 million total; many of the highest-end cars are only a few hundred thousand dollars each. Youve done all that and youve still got around $900 million or so left to spend. I responded, Well, you could just give it away to people and organizations in need. Ahh, but you cant, the man said to me. Are you just going to hand it to someone and hope they do the right thing with it? You have to build entire infrastructures to give the money away. He went on to explain that you need to hire legions of people, often hundreds, including teams of lawyers and tax lawyers, finance experts, project managers, communications staffers, and so on, to manage the distribution of the money. Just look at Warren Buffett. Rather than figure out how to give his money away, he just gave it to the Gates Foundation to do it for him. Then, the man explained, there is the problem that your billions will only grow, often quicker than you can give them away, with interest and rising investments. Being a billionaire is a lot harder than it looks, the man said.

There are two people on the planet who seem to have figured out how to spend their multiple double-digit billions without much trouble. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who have swapped places back and forth on the mantle of richest person on earth over the past year, are in the midst of a multibillion-dollar space race that is literally helping them burn through their fortunes while trying to be the first to make it to the final frontier. (A third person, Bezoss ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, has also figured it out, giving away a round of grants worth $2.74 billion last week, on top of the nearly $6 billion she gave away last year.)

While the space races of the past were waged between the U.S. and the USSR, wrapped up in the blanket of the Cold War and nuclear threats and international espionage, todays space race between Bezos and Musk is quite different, comprising a few media- and Twitter-obsessed billionaires who some argue have too much money for their own good.

The two come at the race with different perspectives. Bezos thinks the world is a wonderful place that were going to destroy with industry and pollution, and if only we can get that stuff on the moon, or Mars, well be just fine here on this big blue dot. Musk, always the pessimist, thinks the earth is well and truly fucked from climate change and that the only way to save us humans is to escape to another planet, preferably Mars, and get a sort-of do-over. And then theres the other guy in all this, Richard Branson, who just wants to have a good, thrill-seeking time on a flight to space. While their goals are all different, their unmitigated ambitions are not, with some worrying theyre pushing the boundaries of safety and logic all just to be first.

This became increasingly relevant earlier this month when Bezos announced out of nowhere that he would be flying to the edge of space with his brother, Mark, aboard a rocket built by Bezoss space company, Blue Origin, on July 20, which is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969. (Branson, not one to be outdone by another billionaire, is trying to scramble to beat Bezos on the space voyage, but likely wont pull it off in time.) Musk, who likes to do everything in a bigger, better way, is hoping to land humans on Mars by 2026.

It might seem truly crazy that Bezos, who has largely had the biggest impact on retail in history, would risk his life to fly on a rocket when so many previous spacecraft have blown up. (Unlike SpaceX, which seems to relish in the loss of rockets, Blue Origins New Shepard, which Bezos will be flying on, has only had one intentional crash landing and more than a dozen successful flights.) But there is actually a reason for this stunt. Bezos announced earlier this year that he would be stepping down as CEO of Amazon and focusing most of his time on his space-related pursuits, but he is also contending with one of the biggest egos and attention seekers in business, that being Elon Musk. In April, Musks company SpaceX won a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to build a moon lander, beating Blue Origin. Bezos was so unhappy with the outcome that his company challenged NASA over the deal, filing a 50-page protest with the federal Government Accountability Office.

Read the rest here:

Being a Billionaire Is a Lot Harder Than It Looks: Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk Want to Burn Their Cash in Space - Vanity Fair

Nerdy Morty is steering his flying saucer back to Earth, escaping the ectoplasmic thing that was menacing him and his mad grandfather at the end of season four. Suddenly, the steering wheel comes off. Flames lick his craft and the noise my God, the noise of beeping alarm systems portends what rocket scientists call nothing good.

Do flying saucers even have steering wheels, you ask? Spare me your plodding literalism, I reply. Morty, convinced he and his comatose, sociopathicscience whiz of a grandpa Rick are going to die on re-entry, makes his last phone call. What nonsense, you object: I cant get mobile coverage in the kitchen, let alone outer space. Again, ditch the scepticism, you plum.

Jessica, its Morty from school, he says as the beeping goes into overdrive. Oh. Hey, says Jessica, painting her toenails in the sunny calm of her bedroom. Morty ploughs on: I wanna say that youre really great. I know it didnt really work out between us but I think youre really great. Oh, I mean, thats a lot, she replies. I wish youd said it sooner. Being nervous is sort of selfish sometimes. Yeah, replies Morty, fear of imminent death making his voice fracture even as he struggles to maintain sangfroid, thats a great point.

So begins our re-entry into the world of Rick and Morty (E4), an event so beguiling to fan sites that they have been deploying countdown tickers to airtime for the past few weeks. I, too, long ago set aside my initial thought that this is just a cartoon rip-off of Back to the Future (Morty as Marty McFly minus the guitar skills, Rick a knock-off of Doc, who is a barely functioning alcoholic) with a dash of Family Guy coarseness and Futuramas sci-fi chutzpah. Its much more clever and funny and sophisticated than those forebears an adult cartoon that fills the yawning chasm in my soul where the now-cancelled BoJack Horseman used to go with something even more dense, with brilliant writing and a worldview so bleak it makes BoJack seem Pollyannaish.

Instead of a DeLorean, Rick and Morty have a handheld device that enables them to access a space portal in Mortys parents place. Technological plausibility is not Rick and Mortys strong suit, nor should it be. But what will interest cosmologists and philosophers of time travel is how their adventures ramify disastrously across the multiverse, warping pasts and futures in line with Hugh Everett IIIs many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

In this premiere of season five, for instance, Morty crosses the portal to get some wine. Its not clear how he can get where he wants to go in space-time, but lets not dwell. He needs the wine to woo Jessica and also because in another room, mad Rick is entertaining his sworn enemy Mr Nimbus, who, as you know, is ruler of the seas.

Mr Nimbus is somewhere on the evolutionary scale between Mick Jagger and Russell Brand, and his superpower is a to my mind phallically oppressive groin thrust with his posing pouch capable of slaying all foes. Mr Nimbus is vexed because Rick and Morty crash-landed in his domain, the ocean, and so demands wining and dining before signing a peace treaty with Rick. Theres also a subplot about Mortys parents, whose revived sex life leads them to the folly of a threesome with Mr Nimbus, though both wonder if theyre only considering this because the other wants it.

But heres the thing. Once through the portal, Morty finds himself in a vineyard presided over by a nascent civilisation of kindly, talking, hoofed animals who supply him with wine. But when he returns for more, he finds himself in a changed world. The vines have withered, hoofed animal skeletons litter their ruined farmstead. Mortys monkeying around with the space-time continuum has wiped them out. Indeed, we glimpse a martial society arising from the ashes of this civilisation, building first a fort and training a warrior hero how to cross through tears in reality to slay the evil one they call the dark child (ie, little Morty), rather like how, in Terminator 2, Arnie was sent back in time to stop a terminator killing the leader of the human resistance against machine tyranny.

Its a quite brilliant 22 minutes and one with an implicit moral. In future, when Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk tire of merely going into space, as they will, and seek to time travel thereby ruining civilisations other than ours and rewriting the past in line with their megalomaniac dreams this episode of Rick and Morty must be used as evidence for why they should be stopped.

This article was amended on 22 June 2021 to remove references to Rick as Mortys uncle. He is his grandfather.

See more here:

Rick and Morty series five review proof that Elon Musk must be stopped! - The Guardian

Tech billionaire and cryptocurrency aficionado Elon Musk does not need an occasion to create a storm on the internet. From touting the possibility of dinosaurs existence to making other cryptic tweets, the Tesla chief executive seems to derive fun from the astonishment. Continuing the trend, Musk on Thursday changed his user name from Elon Musk to Elon Musk, the 2nd on Twitter and as expected, internet was left into chaos.

While the revolutionary tech billionaire has an army of fans, taking into notice his close relationship with the crypto market, it wasn't just his supporters but everybody on Twitter who werecurious to know what the name change was about.One user tweeted, "It means 2nd Rank of DogeCoin in the coin market !! RocketRocket". While another wondered if Musk had bought the second ticket to space besides Amazon Chief Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark. Yet another user hilariously commented, "I hope the second version of Elon Musk is better."

Meanwhile, Musk recently announced that he has decided to sell his "last remaining house."Taking to Twitter he called the property, in California's Bay Areaa "special place" and said that he wanted to sell it to a large family. His decision comes a week after a ProPublica report said Musk andother billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett paid little or no income taxes for several years.Earlier this month Elon Musk had tweetedthat he only has one house in the San Francisco Bay area that is rented out for events.

The tweet came in response to a thread started by a user named Pranay Pathole, who, in light of the ProPublica report, shared his insight on how things were for the billionaire.Replying to his tweets, he said that he will keep paying income taxes in California "proportionate to my time in the state". While responding to another user, Musk said that his primary home is an accommodation he has rented from SpaceX in Boca Chica which is worth around $50K.

Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. Now follow your favourite television celebs and telly updates. Republic World is your one-stop destination for trending Bollywood news. Tune in today to stay updated with all the latest news and headlines from the world of entertainment.

Visit link:

'Could it be that...': Elon Musk changes Twitter name, leaves curious netizens speculating - Republic World

The Boring Company has been pitching potential clients on a much wider tunnel than any it has built so far, Bloomberg reported, which could be used to transport freight. Since its inception in 2016, the Elon Musk-helmed tunneling startup has been focused on tunnels that would transport passengers, with a goal to solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic in cities. But the new pitch deck Bloomberg obtained shows how wider tunnels could be used for transporting freight, something that would greatly expand Borings potential business.

According to Bloomberg, the companys new pitch includes tunnels that are 21 feet in diameter, nearly twice the size of the 12-foot tunnels the company has built so far, which could accommodate two shipping containers side by side.

The company most recently completed 1.7 miles of tunnel under Las Vegas. Thats part of a larger proposal to build a massive tunnel system running under the whole city, including the Las Vegas Strip and McCarran International Airport. The Boring Company has claimed such a system could handle roughly 50,000 passengers per hour. The current tunnel under Las Vegas is meant to eventually transport some 4,400 people each hour, but a TechCrunch report suggested that company documents show it may only be able to transport 1,200 people per hour.

The Boring Company didnt immediately reply to a request for comment Friday.

Read the original post:

Elon Musks Boring Company reportedly pitching wider tunnels to transport cargo - The Verge

In the movie Justice League, theres a moment when the Flash, a young and overeager Ezra Miller, asks the glowering Batman (Ben Affleck) what his superpower is.

Im rich, Batfleck deadpans in response.

Its a joke, and its not a joke. Bruce Waynes vast fortune is indeed what allows the Batman to be the Batman, a grown adult who spends most of his free time pursuing his obsessive hobby of being a costumed crime fighter, with an immense arsenal of high-tech equipment that he uses as if its disposable. And Wayne is far from the only masked capitalist from comic books. His fellow super-rich heroes include Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) and Tony Stark (Iron Man). These men (and they are pretty much all men) were born out of the very real American impulse to believe that with great wealth comes great virtue even when the wealth is inherited, as is the case for all three of these superheroes.

America is hardly the only place that sees the rich as a special breed that plays by special rules. But Americas brand and American Dream mythology are anchored in the valorization of individual success. Weve always glorified nonconformists, rebels and good guys with guns, even when their achievements elide the vital contributions of others, or when theyre fighting in the service of a lost and unworthy cause, or when they put others in danger. Its hardly surprising then that, in the 1940s and 1950s, the burgeoning comic book industry would invent a pulp pantheon of heroes endowed with magic powers and extraordinary valor, who fought crime, delivered inspirational wartime messages and derided Communism. These superheroes served as proof positive that anyone could soar above the skyline in meritocratic America with the right combination of hard work, good fortune and radioactive spider venom.

Its one thing, however, when the exploits of superwealthy superheroes are limited to fiction. Its another when they bleed over into real life.

With wealth inequality reaching another high in America the top 0.1 percent owning roughly the same share of American wealth as the bottom 85 percent combined weve seen more and more billionaires swooping in to try to save the day. They seek to personally shoulder the worlds problems, big and small, in flamboyant public fashion, often declaring their intent with spontaneous announcements on social media. (Meanwhile, many of these powered-up plutocrats were recently exposed for paying little or nothing by way of taxes.)

When not cranking out batteries and electric cars, hosting Saturday Night Live or planning to colonize Mars, the Tesla billionaire Elon Musk is jumping into Earth crises with well-intentioned but often unworkable solutions: trying to save children trapped in an underground cavern in Thailand with a sub built out of rocket parts (state of the art but not practical for our mission, said regional officials); bringing power back to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (with mixed success, according to locals); and providing ventilators for Covid patients (a fiasco, said the headline of a piece by the editorial board of The Sacramento Bee). Some of Mr. Musks fellow billionaires are taking on even bigger monsters: Bill Gates is spending his software fortune to fight global disease, poverty and inequity. Mark Zuckerberg is underwriting moonshot solutions to fix voting and racism. Jeff Bezos is investing billions to create a network of free Montessori-like preschools.

These are worthy causes, to be sure. Theyre also enormous, structural challenges that global governments have struggled with for generations. And yet these visionary megamoguls believe they can overcome them in their spare time, through the power of concentrated cash and out-of-the-box, disruptive thinking, nearly always involving technology.

The problem with out-of-the-box approaches is that they tend to ignore the on-the-ground realities faced by actual human people. The problem with disruption is that its by definition in conflict with existing systems which means end-running or sidelining incumbent institutions and infrastructure in local communities. And the problem with technology is that it accelerates and amplifies everything, which might get beneficial solutions to more people faster, but also runs the risk of turning small mistakes into full-blown catastrophes.

More honest portrayals of fictional superplutocrats acknowledge all this. In the Marvel Universe, the billionaire Tony Stark is brilliant and well meaning, but also a narcissistic, self-indulgent boy-man; he makes snap decisions without consideration as to their impact on little people, and he and his fellow Avengers get hundreds of Sokovians killed in the process. He conceives of a global security system that will end all war, putting a suit of armor around the world; and the result is a killer android thats set on extinguishing humanity. (Vast wealth can also help cover up for the collateral wreckage caused by mavericks run amok Stark underwrites an official cleanup force called Damage Control that quietly addresses the destruction and mayhem caused by heroic interventions in the Marvel Universe.)

Starks real-world counterparts seem to have caused some damage too. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has loomed so large over the global public health landscape that some experts worry it has effectively privatized health decision-making in emerging countries, pushing them toward Western drugs rather than sustainable systemic health reforms. Mr. Zuckerbergs foundation reportedly killed a voter data project that might have put too close a spotlight on Facebooks user data scandal involving the 2016 election. And Mr. Bezos foray into free Montessori-like schools has been derided by some as just the first step toward a takeover of childhood education: Amazon Primary, if you will.

While some philanthropists of previous generations were satisfied to write a check, then show up to cut a ribbon, these present-day problem-solvers want more hands-on involvement in forging a better future they want to be the man inside the high-tech armor, swooping down from the sky to personally punch problems in the face, to the cheers of adoring crowds.

To be sure, todays problems are big and intractable, and require enormous resources to address so whats wrong with some of those resources coming from the coffers of the superrich? Here again, the superhero analogy is useful. While it might seem obvious that Gotham City needs Batman to fight the supervillains constantly threatening its people, the core of the Batman mythology runs counter to that very thesis: Every Bat-fan knows the canonical truth that the Dark Knights nemeses, from the Joker on down, exist only because he exists. Without him, theyre nothing, and vice versa.

Similarly, theres a sense in which even the low-profile wealthy philanthropists such as Warren Buffett those that Anand Giridharadas refers to as the good billionaires are seeking to solve problems that on some level theyre helping to create. Can you really fight inequity if youre a human expression of that inequity? What does it mean when the poverty that youre hoping to eradicate is a direct result of a system that also created you when you and the social crisis are two sides of the same coin, as Joker so frequently says to Batman?

One billionaire philanthropist who seems to be actively grappling with this inconvenient question is MacKenzie Scott, whose unconventional approach to philanthropy doesnt involve a foundation bearing her name. The widely dispersed giving by Ms. Scott, the former wife of Mr. Bezos, is governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others, she wrote recently.

Its worth considering: How much better off would society be if other billionaires followed suit? What if these wannabe superheroes mothballed their capes and left the problem-solving to the pros while also simply paying their fair share?

Jeff Yang (@originalspin) edited the Asian American superhero anthologies Secret Identities and Shattered, and is co-author of the forthcoming book Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Read the original post:

Opinion | Elon Musk and His Fellow Billionaires Are Not Superheroes - The New York Times

Pooja Batra has shared a throwback photo from the time when she met billionaire Elon Musks mother Maye Musk. The photo is from the fourth annual CineFashion Film Awards, which was held in 2018 at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, California.

Pooja shared the photo with the caption, With the powerhouse @mayemusk #tbt @paiy22_7.

Pooja had earlier shared this photo in 2018 with the caption, You are an inspiration @mayemusk. A pleasure to meet you.

A few months ago, Batra had shared another throwback photo with Elon Musk from the time when they both attended a Game of Thrones premiere party.

She shared that photo with the caption, With the Centibillionaire, Industrial Magnate Genius who has changed our planet forever #elonmusk #Tbt @gshiraz @gameofthrones #premiere @hbo @teslamotors @spacex.

Pooja participated in Miss India in 1993 which kickstarted her Bollywood career. She appeared in hit films like Bhai, Virasat, Haseena Maan Jayegi, Dil Ne Phir Yaad Kiya and Kahin Pyaar Na Ho Jaaye among many others.

The 44-year-old is married to model-actor Nawab Shah and resides in Los Angeles.

More:

Pooja Batra shares photo with inspirational Maye Musk, Elon Musks mother - The Indian Express