OV9

mik wrote: Tue Jun 10, 2025 11:21 pm It’s ridiculous, but…. If you don’t give it to the needy - what do you do with it?

Own a thousand cars - which one do you drive?

Own 50 properties all over the world. Which one are you staying in tonight?

One four thousand pairs of trainers. Which one are you wearing?

We all want things, but when buying a McLaren is as easy as buying a mars bar, it probably becomes as satisfying as buying a mars bar. I assume.

We have some clients who fit that description... My business partner is at a property of one of the moderately wealthy this morning (net worth c. £1bn), who I think has the property purchasing decisions pretty sorted, splitting his time equally between them -

Dec-Feb: Chalet in the Alps
March-May: Country house in Australia or apartment in Sydney
June-August: Big property in Belgravia, split into four - two floors for him, one for the house keeper, two for friends to stay.
Sept-Nov: Manhattan penthouse

DeskJockey wrote: Wed Jun 11, 2025 8:18 am

mik wrote: Tue Jun 10, 2025 11:21 pm It’s ridiculous, but…. If you don’t give it to the needy - what do you do with it?

Own a thousand cars - which one do you drive?

Own 50 properties all over the world. Which one are you staying in tonight?

One four thousand pairs of trainers. Which one are you wearing?

We all want things, but when buying a McLaren is as easy as buying a mars bar, it probably becomes as satisfying as buying a mars bar. I assume.

We've seen what they do with it. Buy power and influence so they can amass more wealth and power, and further their own beliefs and plans.

Isn’t the whole point though that they don’t have that cash ?

I realise he could sell 1 billion in shares and live ridiculously but I don’t think stuff is the drive for them.

I do really like how Jay Leno uses his money for his car addiction, building, refurbishing, making one off things etc and sharing them.

Its a strange problem to have when you can earn more than you could spend in a lifetime

We had a maths question where we were given a time that a stack of $50,000 would burn and worked out that Bill Gares couldn’t burn it quicker than his interest was earning him, I’m sure that was when he was worth about 50 billion aswell.

Dave!

Jimexpl wrote: Wed Jun 11, 2025 10:38 am

mik wrote: Tue Jun 10, 2025 11:21 pm It’s ridiculous, but…. If you don’t give it to the needy - what do you do with it?

Own a thousand cars - which one do you drive?

Own 50 properties all over the world. Which one are you staying in tonight?

One four thousand pairs of trainers. Which one are you wearing?

We all want things, but when buying a McLaren is as easy as buying a mars bar, it probably becomes as satisfying as buying a mars bar. I assume.

We have some clients who fit that description... My business partner is at a property of one of the moderately wealthy this morning (net worth c. £1bn), who I think has the property purchasing decisions pretty sorted, splitting his time equally between them -

Dec-Feb: Chalet in the Alps
March-May: Country house in Australia or apartment in Sydney
June-August: Big property in Belgravia, split into four - two floors for him, one for the house keeper, two for friends to stay.
Sept-Nov: Manhattan penthouse

I bet he gets pissed off when he can’t find the radio times though !

Dave!

If I've got my maths right, he could spend £10m a day for the next 50 years and still have over half his wealth left.

Holley wrote: Wed Jun 11, 2025 2:14 pm If I've got my maths right, he could spend £10m a day for the next 50 years and still have over half his wealth left.

Musk could (theoretically) spend a Dollar per second for the next 12,500 years

V8Granite wrote: Wed Jun 11, 2025 11:58 am

DeskJockey wrote: Wed Jun 11, 2025 8:18 am

mik wrote: Tue Jun 10, 2025 11:21 pm It’s ridiculous, but…. If you don’t give it to the needy - what do you do with it?

Own a thousand cars - which one do you drive?

Own 50 properties all over the world. Which one are you staying in tonight?

One four thousand pairs of trainers. Which one are you wearing?

We all want things, but when buying a McLaren is as easy as buying a mars bar, it probably becomes as satisfying as buying a mars bar. I assume.

We've seen what they do with it. Buy power and influence so they can amass more wealth and power, and further their own beliefs and plans.

Isn’t the whole point though that they don’t have that cash ?

Dave!

He won't have his full fortune in cash, but there will be enough and he can leverage his assets to buy what he wants.

I think it was @Beany that pointed out that most of his wealth is borrowed against the value of Tesla. It'll buy him a lot of credit.

Yeah, trump could comparatively financially cripple him by just shutting Tesla out of a lot of government green schemes (very on brand for repubs to shut that shit down) because that would cause Tesla stock to crater. Can't meme your way out of literally not having a viable business model (as opposed to their current rather flaky but meme-stock and pork backed business model). At that point, the whole house of cards would start collapsing.

No political influence from being persona non grata in MAGA land (and the Dems won't fucking touch him) means no guaranteeing that SpaceX gets contracts (Boeing/Blue Origin could step in and eat that) which means their model starts going sideways too, because for example, Starlink is reportedly subsidized by other US Govt pork.

Reading up on it was enough to give me a headache as there's lots of moving parts, but in short, Musks empire, fortune and influence is pretty much one ket'd-off-his-face-rant-at-the-wrong-person away from being fucked financially.

He'll never be poor, but he wouldn't have the ability to prop up things like Twitter, or pay for PR for right wing parties like the AfD etc - so he'd lose most of his political influence, too. He'd become a nobody in the oligarchy club.

Which for him would be a fate worse than death.

I’ve always assumed that billionaires aren’t really in it to spend it in the same way we do, such as to buy a house or a new car. Also assume that they can never have enough, they’ll always want more and they see money as a tool, to leverage more money and power.

Beany wrote: Wed Jun 11, 2025 6:31 pm meme-stock and pork

Is Pork some American insult that's passed me by?

Basically money thrown at government contractors, usually construed as excessive/wasted money.

IE the old apocryphal tale of NASA spending millions to develop a pen that worked in zero gravity when they could have just used a pencil. That story isn't true, but that's basically what 'pork' is, in this context.

Is it supposed to do that ?


https://bsky.app/profile/youranoncentra ... wtfgvaxc2h

https://bsky.app/profile/youranoncentra ... wtd7s7722h

Sundayjumper wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 7:50 am Is it supposed to do that ?


https://bsky.app/profile/youranoncentra ... wtfgvaxc2h

https://bsky.app/profile/youranoncentra ... wtd7s7722h

No, I think it's supposed to do what Honda are managing to do: https://global.honda/en/topics/2025/c_2 ... 7ceng.html

Sundayjumper wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 7:50 am Is it supposed to do that ?


https://bsky.app/profile/youranoncentra ... wtfgvaxc2h

https://bsky.app/profile/youranoncentra ... wtd7s7722h

Grok was in charge of the launch, because Elon knows best.

DeskJockey wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 8:59 am

Sundayjumper wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 7:50 am Is it supposed to do that ?


https://bsky.app/profile/youranoncentra ... wtfgvaxc2h

https://bsky.app/profile/youranoncentra ... wtd7s7722h

Grok was in charge of the launch, because Elon knows best.

He put Grok in charge of the launch, told it to be more racist, and Grok self destructed in protest.

Related:




Another child of Musks who hates him, like the rest. I love how it just calmly tells him to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, especially since he's been touting how Grok is the only objectively correct AI out there

Good thread on Bluesky about the failure and its consequences: https://bsky.app/profile/punkey.org/post/3lrwoi7maq22l

Headline points:
- They didn't even get to fire it; it failed before the test started so they didn't get to learn anything at all from a test.
- The location of the firing pad where it blew up means that plenty of the pad infrastructure will have been ruined. And the next rocket was on a test stand adjacent and that's been ruined too.

So I guess they'll have learned something: don't keep stuff you want to remain intact in the area where a failed launch will destroy it. Doh. Oh well, the learnings aren't exactly rocket science.

And thankfully none of his other projects are brain surgery.

Not sure how long they’ll get away with putting positive spin on repeated failures.

I mean, you expect to blow up a few things when pushing the limits, but in terms of actual space travel they haven’t really achieved much more than what’s already been done.

The reusable rocket thing, looks cool, what’s the payback on the money spent on developing it? How much of a caught rocket is actually reusable? Hard to tell as you can’t really take Elons off the cuff figures as fact given the amount of nonsense he spouts.

Sundayjumper wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 3:45 pm And thankfully none of his other projects are brain surgery.

integrale_evo wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 4:02 pm I mean, you expect to blow up a few things when pushing the limits

Yes, and not when it's sitting waiting on the launch pad before firing.

Just makes how few failures NASA had, despite using 60s technology to develop them, even more incredible