Mohammed bin Salman's plan for Saudi Arabia's $500bn city of the future sound like the ramblings of a 8-year old who's just been to Epcot for the first time. https://t.co/Q5Eo9Eu3BE pic.twitter.com/YiRDLdOWrW
— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) July 26, 2019
After all, the neighbors built themselves a whole palm-tree-shaped luxury-resort island! Worth reading the comments, for once…
"To develop Neom, the Saudi government plans to forcibly relocate more than 20,000 people….Boston Consulting Group consultants advised following World Bank standards for forcible relocations.”
Wow you really can pay BCG and McKinsey enough for anything huh
— tysonbrody (@tysonbrody) July 26, 2019
The samurai robots can double as state executioners to behead protesters.
— Alastair_wut (@AlastairWut) July 26, 2019
MattF
Somehow left out the Trump Hotel And Golf Course.
Adam L Silverman
Classic example of what happens when you have more money than intelligence and common sense.
B.B.A.
I’ve seen photos of Mecca, and the massive, garish, clock tower hotel across the street from the holiest site in Islam… this is in character for the Saudis, if nothing else.
Keith P.
It’s like he went to Dubai to watch a screening of “Tomorrowland” while hanging out with Newt Gingrich. The glow-in-the-dark beach *does* sound cool and doable, though.
Ken
It’s not like they’ll need half a trillion dollars any time in the future.
MattF
@Keith P.: Also solves the nuclear waste problem. Make it a tourist attraction!
Gozer
How right she is.
dmsilev
Look, if Hollywood has taught us nothing else it’s that dinosaur robots are guaranteed to go rogue almost immediately.
Honestly, I’m not seeing the down side here.
Edit:
Yeah. The computer can dispatch the robot dinosaurs to solve crimes. I think we can make this script work.
chris
Things to do while waiting for the end of the world.
Sister Golden Bear
@MattF: That’s a given.
Also with a faux Disneyland Hall of Presidents devoted to a single subject: the very best most excellent president ever.
frosty
“… where all citizens can be tracked.”
Wow! Where do I sign up?? /s
ruemara
Proof that these dictators are also grade A delusional morons.
Ken
@dmsilev: Give the robot dinosaur a wisecracking comic sidekick, ideally played by Whoopi Goldberg, and you’ve got a hit.
Sloane Ranger
I’m not sure that the Big Brother is watching you surveillance system is going to be the draw they think it is.
David Evans
They could save on the R&D by going for robot dinosaur maids. Which would also make life easier when Pence comes to visit.
wenchacha
At least robot maids don’t feel bad about being raped or beaten.
Miss Bianca
@dmsilev: @Ken: Yeah, I really think “Down and Out Dinosaur Cop”, where a world-weary Velociraptor provides voice-over narration as he dispatches criminals in “the city of the future”, would have real legs. You could pitch it as, “Blade Runner meets Jurassic Park…in Saudi Arabia, dudes!”
I think people would particularly enjoy the parts where he just gets fed up with the Saudi princelings who keep sending him on shit clean-up errands and just eats them. Yeah, it’s a one-note gimmick, but it’s the kind of thing that never gets old, amirite?
MattF
@Sloane Ranger: And possibly not necessary, since all visitors will have their own personal leash and shock collar.
?BillinGlendaleCA
As someone who’s lived in a semi-arid climate for most of my life, I see one problem with this WATER. The cloud seeding won’t work, if it did we’d have done it decades ago. I guess there’s always desalination but that requires alot of power. I guess he could go with nukes and that’d help with his glowing beaches. MBS is a loon,
patrick II
When the only people with money are billionaires, you build to that market and their fantasies. Schools, climate change, any real problems are put aside until you can build something phantasmagorical enough to attract their attention and money. Three hundred foot yachts will not be enough in the near future as the entitled accumulate, become more bored with the everyday, and separate themselves from the rest of us in their own minds by their luxuriousness.
oatler.
Epcot served a pretty fine Morrocan dinner.
boatboy_seq
@Sloane Ranger: It was behind the picture.
boatboy_srq
Ugh. In moderation for nym fail. Please to fixing?
Mike in DC
Well, good to see that regime change in KSA will take care of itself in our lifetimes.
debbie
Elon Musk, is that you?
hells littlest angel
Judge bin Dredd: he is the law in MegaCity Wahid.
Mike in NC
“Ivanka, Jared want go Neom!!!”
SadOldGuy
So what percentage of this half a trillion dollars is going directly into his personal bank account?
Barney
Anyone remember Glenn Beck’s “Independence, USA“?
Sadly, his initial dreams, and, I fear, his video describing them are lost in time, like … tears in rain. But this was the gist of it:
So this is just the bone-saw guy with similar plans. But I guess he already has the billions to make a start, if the family doesn’t decide he’s a threat to their wealth and grip on power.
Ryan
Nice to know the World Bank is thinking ahead by developing forcible removal best best practices for indigenous peoples.
Barney
I don’t know how the WSJ article ends, but in December, the Financial Times pointed out that the Khashoggi murder stopped a lot of non-Saudis working on this, with or without robot death matches: https://archive.is/Z84um
And all robot death match stories should refer to the great Michael Frayn 1960s novel “The Tin Men”, in which research into artificial intelligence and ethics ends up with the scientists betting on robots as they struggle to throw each other off a sinking raft: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/189411/story-about-robots-and-their-ethics-and-how-they-behave-on-a-raft-with-room-for
sukabi
@Gozer: I needed that laugh.
Hope she said it with an eye roll… The stories she could tell. I WANT HER STORIES!
????
Amir Khalid
@Barney:
Whatever happened to the designer jeans business Glenn Beck started a few years back?
jl
Didn’t see mention of the audioanimatronic Mohammed bin Salman, Trump, and Netanyahu attraction. The robot samurai executioners will be handy there if anyone is insufficiently worshipful.
jl
@Amir Khalid: From now on, Beck should call all of his new ventures ‘The Blaze’, since it perfectly describes what always seems to happen to the investment money.
Edit: how do these nutso reactionary goofuses who do nothing but throw gasoline on all of their investment funding and light it on fire, or flush it down the john, get more money to do the same thing over again.
Ken
@jl: Money laundering?
Anne Laurie
@jl:
They’re the live-action version of the lottery; their funders (marks) don’t actually expect a product, they’re paying for the entertainment of dreaming about what they’d do if just-this-once the venture did succeed!