Post by @supersquirrel@lemmy.ca

2026-09-13 14:49 UTC

The end times fascists are plotting their escape from our world. Our mission is clear And among tech oligarchs, Bezos is all too typical. Peter Thiel, for one, once revealed that his three best ideas for achieving true freedom are “cyberspace”, “outerspace” and “seasteading” (the idea of building new countries on floating oil rigs). In other words, this man, whose enormous wealth affords him access to the most spectacular settings our planet has to offer, actually believes these three cold, dead places are superior to the Earth we have, verdant and alive. Something similar seems amiss with Elon Musk, a man who seems to look up at the wonders of the night sky and see only opportunities to fill that inky unknown with his own space junk. The venerable novelist Joyce Carol Oates highlighted these apparent limits in the fall of 2025 when she roasted him ruthlessly on his own platform, X. “So curious,” she wrote, “that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter [X] may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’” The observation clearly got under the tech baron’s notoriously thin skin: he called her “a lazy liar” and began posting approvingly about various movies to prove Oates wrong.

Replies (4)

@gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 2026-09-13 15:13

In other words, this man, whose enormous wealth affords him access to the most spectacular settings our planet has to offer, actually believes these three cold, dead places are superior to the Earth we have, verdant and alive. Uhh, i don’t want to contradict your narrative, but from his perspective, that actually makes sense. If you look at the evolution of life, complex life developed around 300 million years ago, around at the same time that life learned to thrive on land. Just as a reminder: Living on land is extremely dangerous. There’s not enough water, you’re out-of-water around 90% of the time (except when it rains), there’s a shortage of various minerals, especially these minerals aren’t evenly distributed in an aqueous solution that you have always available, then there’s this aggressive sunlight all the time … the freezing cold in the day and the temperature differences between day and night. you have none of these challenges if you just stay in the sea. and yet, life somehow managed to evolve to live in these harsh conditions. and in fact, life on land is typically more complex than life in the sea, because it has to be. For example, almost all photosynthetically active organisms in the sea are cyanobacteria (small cells without even clear structure within the cell), while on land it’s mostly eukaryotic plants, which are often much more complex and mechanically larger. So there’s clear developments there! Now imagine if you continue this process, by going to a land that’s even more difficult to live in …

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@MonaySimpson@lemmy.ml 2026-09-14 02:57

This was the plot to Stark by Ben Elton. I want to read fiction again.

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@BenLeMan@lemmy.world 2026-09-14 04:53

It’s time to hasten their exit from this earthly plane.

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@lurker@awful.systems 2026-09-14 07:41

Well can they hurry up and fuck off already cause I’m sick of them

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