I interviewed Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer on his once-more-revived plan to build Titanic II, a functional and historically accurate replica of the original ship. He now says it will be a “vaccine-free environment.”https://t.co/xEyEh3FgaL pic.twitter.com/BUtw44cHVY
— ?? mom said it’s my turn with the lathe of heaven (@youwouldntpost) March 27, 2024
Oh so they're killing millionaires in a different way from the first one
— LepsLair is making content (@lepslair) March 28, 2024
One should never say never in this modern world, but I would bet a store-bought cookie that this particular ship will never actually sail, and that Australian billionaire Clive Palmer is using the whole idea as media bait for his own entertainment. (His fellow billionaires have certainly found much more terrible ways to do this.) After all, were the Titanic II ever to set sail, the only sympathetic individuals on board might be some of the lower-ranking sailors and housekeeping staff…
Miles Klee, for Rolling Stone — “Billionaire Says His Long-Delayed ‘Titanic II’ Ship Will Be Antidote to ‘Woke’ Politics”:
It seems reasonable to expect that just about anything can and will go wrong with a full-size replica of a cruise ship that famously sank on its maiden voyage, killing more than 1,500 people aboard. But Titanic II, Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer’s proposed heir to the original RMS Titanic, hasn’t faced a disaster so far — because over the decade and change that Palmer has been pitching it, nothing has been built.
First announced in 2012 for the 100th anniversary of the Titanic‘s fateful voyage, Palmer envisions the Titanic II, operated by his company Blue Star Line, as a historically accurate tribute to its namesake, right down to the cramped steerage cabins. Of course, there will be some tweaks to ensure it reaches its destination this time: Palmer wants the ship to have cutting-edge navigation equipment, safety systems, and plenty of lifeboats. Throughout the many snags in the project — including payment disputes and scrapped plans to build in a Chinese shipyard — very little of this core idea has changed, with Palmer brushing off skeptics by reminding them that he has the money and determination to see it through.
What has changed somewhat is how Palmer, who in the past decade has served in Australian parliament and chaired a right-wing political party he founded, describes the symbolism of the Titanic(s). In a March 13 press conference at the Sydney Opera House to announce his recommitment to reconstructing the doomed ocean liner, Palmer said it would be a beacon of hope amid war in Ukraine and Gaza, bring people together after the era of Covid lockdowns, and embody traditional values as opposed to “woke” politics. Here, he talks with Rolling Stone about what he thinks Titanic II crossing the Atlantic into New York Habor would mean to the world.
This has been in the works for a long time, but how did you originally get interested in the Titanic?
It’s very topical. I originally got interested because we know how to make war — see what’s happening in Ukraine and Gaza. It’s much more difficult to make peace in the world. And the Titanic is an international symbol. It’s a symbol of love and peace, really. I mean, the movie, everyone knows the Jack and Rose story. All of us have a Jack and Rose story of our own. So I thought it’d be good to do something to promote those aspects in life. Secondly, we need to remember the people of the Titanic, and some of the values that we question in society today disappearing, such as courage and self-sacrifice. You remember the musicians on the Titanic that stood there at their station, playing “Nearer My God to Thee”? They were more concerned about the people that were with than themselves. We’re running our culture into a self-centered society, so we want to refocus on those things. We thought we could design the whole ship and have it ready in three to four years construction. But it took about five to six years to design. Originally, the challenge was much greater because we had to incorporate all the safety provisions and still keep the design of the ship the same — that was a lot harder than we thought. And we know what happened with cruise shipping and Covid, we had to stop and pause and see what was happening, but today shipping has come back. It gives us the time to pull those plans off the shelf and to get the project moving…
“The Jack and Rose story” is, of course, fiction. Mr. Palmer is (talking about) spending millions of dollars recreating a life-scale model of a media product. Back in the 1970s, I knew guys who spent their spare time building ‘exact replica’ scale models and elaborate floor plans of the USS Starship Enterprise NC-1701, and this seems to be a very similar build on a (delusionally) larger scale.
With all these delays you had, how did you get back on track?
Well, I’ve got a lot of money. And at my age, at 70, I should try to do something with it that’s positive for the world. But it’s not unusual that people my age build the boat, sail the world, climb a mountain, do something like that. I did promise the people of New York [in 2012], we launched it on the [USS] Intrepid, “One day you’ll be able to say that you were there where it all began.” The Titanic sailed up the Hudson River into New York Harbor, completed the journey. A lot of the original descendants of people who died on the Titanic, some of the best-known names in New York, wanted to buy their tickets and they offered millions of dollars. Surprisingly, we had an enormous number of people wanting to go a third class. One of the big things we found in the plans as we tried to build Titanic was a big square, going down five decks — we didn’t know what it was for, but we discovered a flooring that had one word: “Potatoes.” That was the food store for all the third class: you could have sautéed potatoes, fried potatoes, potatoes, mashed potatoes, but all you had was potatoes in third class. A lot of people saying they wanted tickets at that time were New York stockbrokers stuck in a dingy office all day, talking to other people about nothing, I guess, wanting to get back to some reality, some sort of human nature. Because we will have Irish dancing, we will have one-to-one contact in the cabin, the two of you sharing together and 30 of you sharing a bathroom. That’s part of the experience that part of the Titanic. It’s not the luxury part…I know you’re not worried about profit, but how much of your own money have you already spent?
We’re allocating at the moment a couple of hundred million dollars. And certainly there’s more available. But you’ve got to remember the Titanic is a 60,000-ton vessel. Well, it was actually 48,000 originally, but one of the problems we had with the Titanic is that you have to make it safe…
Here Palmer reinvents the Galaxy Quest-style convention, but on a very ‘exclusive’, expensive level. I doubt much of the ‘allocated… couple of hundred millions’ will ever come out of Mr. Palmer’s pockets.
Are you interested in getting any outside financing, or do you just want to be in complete control?
I don’t really want to be in control so much, I’m not that sort of person. But I’ve got too much money. So I don’t need any other money. We don’t need to raise any funds. We don’t need to take mums and dads money, if anyone loses any money, it’s [me], and I’m happy to lose money at this age. We can make instant decisions about what we want to do without worrying about the consequences. We haven’t got to have a committee sits here and says, “Oh, should we do this? What will the SEC say?” It’ll be a Covid vaccine-free environment.Vaccine-free how?
We won’t have any. We don’t believe people should be compelled…But will vaccinated people be allowed on the ship?
Yeah, we’ve got to extend our hand in love and friendship for people being vaccinated despite the side effects. We have to look after them. And they’re all good people. We’re all the same really, like white, green, yellow, whatever it is — to embrace each other…
The good ol’ (fictional) days, when even the people in steerage were white…
fingers crossed for you know what https://t.co/vRA6PvhPrZ
— flglmn (@flglmn) March 27, 2024
piratedan
shit! I haven’t even included this in my #Billionaire Hobbies thread over on Bluesky.
NotMax
Coal-fired boilers or go home.
//
Jay
You can’t eat money, but you can eat the rich.
Not Frist?
Maybe, as he doesn’t need the money, he could just take his billions of dollars and remediate the Indigenous lands his companies have trashed and abandoned, leaving behind toxic land and poisoned water.
piratedan
@piratedan: ok, now I have, with a link pointing back here.
sheesh, you try and do a solid for the Billionaires and here they go doing something like this.
wjca
A far better way to have him
wastespend money than screwing with elections!NotMax
“Living in the lap of luxury isn’t bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.”
– Orson Welles
;)
Jay
Could he maybe just make a “research” trip to the Titanic, to verify his “research accuracy” on a Titan clone?
Betsy
“All of us have a Jack and Rose story of our own” ?
dc
Is it a requirement for being a billionaire that you be a complete assh*le?
Jackie
Off topic: But verrry interesting:
scav
Interesting name for what’s likely to be no more than yet another vanity pump and dump scheme. Must reluctantly acknowledge a few style points for going for an analog embodiment of the dump (not ai or rocket-based!), but then he comfortingly loses them all by his mindless repetition of pro-disease and -elitism boilerplate. Wouldn’t be a gazillionaire’s dick measuring stick if it wasn’t derivative clickbait.
West of the Rockies
Conservatives start expensive enterprises to celebrate their own rage, resentments, stupidity, desire to exclude and belittle others.
Seems like a hellish way to live one’s life. Such malice takes time and energy.
NotMax
@Betsy
Did someone say Jack?
:)
wjca
George Soros. Warren Buffett.
It’s just that, if you are an assh*le anyway, being a billionaire makes you more visible.
Spanky
Fuck that shit.
This guy’s nutso.
Citizen Alan
Jesus Fucking Christ. Marie Antoinette had an actual working farm at Versailles so she and her ladies-in-waiting could pretend to be humble, rural shepherdesses. Same principle, I suppose.
piratedan
@dc: sure appears to be a trend, doesn’t it?
Brachiator
What if RFK, Jr booked passage and the ship sank again?
ETA. I skimmed the various stories. Too much stupid to give any real consideration.
Martin
@dc: Pretty much. Kind of a prerequisite to becoming a billionaire.
scav
@Brachiator: I wonder how many people in the world can document, absolutely document that they have never received any vaccine, ever, of any type. (I mean, it’s not vaccine-optional, it’s vaccine-free!) And of those, how many have either the inclination or the cash to fritter on a dated cruise where you won’t be able to disembark in many destinations.
SpaceUnit
Woke icebergs, you know what to do.
Westyny
O/T Has anyone unpacked this morning’s awful Wall Street Journal polls? I’m looking for reassuring analysis when I wake up tomorrow. Pls.
SpaceUnit
@Westyny:
Polls are broken.
laura
But I’ve got too much money.
What more needs be said about the need for confiscatory tax rates to wring the idle capital out of the soft, pink palms and put that revenue to use for the social good in all our neighborhoods and towns and cities and such like.
Viva BrisVegas
Palmer is one of the worst people in Australia. If Rupert Murdoch lived here it would be a close contest, but Palmer would still win.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Sh*t floats.
//
Another Scott
The Titanic would be dwarfed by today’s cruise ships.
Making it modern and adding lifeboats would still make it tiny and cramped and slow and expensive to build and operate compared to what’s been leaned about ship design in the last 100+ years.
The Titanic’s sister ship, the RMS Olympic, was scrapped in 1935.
It’s a stupid idea.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ishiyama
Build an exact replica of a ship that sank because it was badly designed? Go right ahead, genius.
Viva BrisVegas
@Another Scott: It’s a stupid idea, but great publicity.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@wjca:
Jimmy Buffett.
NotMax
@Ishiyama
True story.
One grandfather used to travel abroad as part of his business. During the 1920s (maybe 1930s?) he found himself in Hong Kong, a place renowned for inexpensive bespoke tailoring.
Long story short, he brought along a favorite sport jacket which he had inadvertently damaged (cigarette burn in one pocket). One the advice of someone there he went to an upscale tailor and lo and behold, the shop had the same fabric in the same pattern in stock. He asked them to make an exact replica of his beloved jacket.
On receiving it, there was an identical burn in the exact same place.
gwangung
@wjca:
Taylor Swift.
NaijaGal
@Westyny: Interesting article in NYTimes (gift link): “Many Democrats are Worried Trump Will Beat Biden. This One Isn’t“. Interviews Simon Rosenberg, whose prediction that there would *not* be a “red tsunami” in 2022 led Nate Silver to ask if he was high on “hopium.” He thinks Biden will win but is clear that it won’t be a cakewalk.
The essence is that fewer reputable pollsters are polling as the whole landline problem gets worse and more right-leaning, inaccurate pollsters are filling the gap.
There’s a link in the piece to an article about how inaccurate polling by right-leaning pollsters in 2022 led Dems to disbelieve their own *accurate* internal polling and spend money on races that the Dem candidate ended up winning by 10-15 points (because right-leaning polls suggested a dead heat), when extra money could have been spent instead on Dem candidates like Mandela Barnes who lost by 1 point (but right-leaning polls showed him losing by up to 7 points) and was outspent to the tune of $26 million by outside groups supporting Ron Johnson.
NotMax
@gwangung
Bill and Melinda Gates, MacKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife), John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Aussie Sheila
@Citizen Alan:
Clive Palmer is an Australian version of the Kochs. He regularly spends millions in trying to win elections with BS political parties he starts up, or spends millions donating to causes and parties that support his crackpot, reactionary politics.
He is vile and is reviled here, except by the reactionary crackpots that infest all polities.
One of the reasons he is reviled here is because he bilked workers at his nickel mine out of their entitlements when the business went belly up. Whether it did so as a result of the famed ‘market forces’ has been a matter of controversy for some time.
To give you some idea of how he is thought of here, even the worst Limbaugh like shock jocks on Sydney morning radio went radioactive on his arse when the story of his bilking his employees at the mine went national.
He is a joke here. Even the Liberal National Party (our Conservatives), keep their distance now. No one here likes rich bosses that screw their workforce.
Geoduck
@Westyny: If you’re panicking about a freaking Wall Street Journal poll months before the election, I’m not sure there’s anything we can say to sooth your fears.
NotMax
@Geoduck
Much less months before the freaking conventions.
GIGO.
wjca
@gwangung:
In short, the frequency of assh*les among billionaires notwithstanding, clearly it isn’t a requirement.
Aussie Sheila
@NaijaGal: Yes I saw that. I stumbled on Simon Rosenberg earlier this year. I like his approach. Worry less, do more.
It was a constant mantra when I worked for the Oz TU movt.
NotMax
@Aussie Sheila
Strictly (one hopes) for grins, an Aussie government scene.
:)
Villago Delenda Est
The billionaires need to be culled.
Aussie Sheila
@NotMax: Ah! My favourite Australian comedy show. It’s beloved by all political stripes here. It is a perfect distillation of the politics of Australian bureaucratic decision making. I recommend it as a guide to the temperament of Oz decision makers.
Aussie Sheila
@Villago Delenda Est: Why can’t the Anglo sphere learn from the French?
It baffles me. The French Revolution is perfectly respectable these days. Why not copy ‘best practice’?
Sister Golden Bear
Speaking of bat-shit billionaires…. Cool Gray City of Tech Authoritarians: Balaji’s dark vision for San Francisco
It would be amusing, except he’s “the main brain behind the Network State cult of tech billionaires trying to reinvent government and media” and “Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator currently leading a campaign to take control of San Francisco Hall, has cast his efforts as part of B.S.’s Network State movement. “
Jay
JFC,…….. remember the good old days when Billionaires just stuck to cloning dinosaurs from fossilized amber and frog dna to try to make an amusement park,………
Jay
JFC,…….. remember the good old days when Billionaires just stuck to cloning dinosaurs from fossilized amber and frog dna to try to make an amusement park,………
Jay
Triple threat.
Citizen Alan
@Sister Golden Bear: Nine out of every 10 billionaires reads “1984” as porn and jacks off to the thought of being Big Brother.
Aussie Sheila
@Citizen Alan:
Once again. Why can’t the Anglo sphere learn from the French?
They got it right in the 18th C. A little less Francophobia and more respect for success would go a long way to solving the problem.
😉😉😉
Oh, and before I forget, FTFNYT.
NotMax
@Aussie Sheila
“The French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.”
– Henry Higgins
;)
Odie Hugh Manatee
@NotMax:
RFKjr is a big enough turd that he could keep the boat afloat after the AI-enabled icebergs hunt it down and punch a hole in it.
Aussie Sheila
@NotMax:
A perspective with which I entirely agree. I can’t stand sloppy and careless pronunciation from otherwise well educated people. It has become an affectation which is designed to pretend the speaker is just an ordinary ‘Joe’, while holding the worst most reactionary ideas. Ugh!
NotMax
@Aussie Sheila
Fair dinkum.
;)
Frankensteinbeck
So, Violet Jessop, who survived the sinking of all three ships in the Titanic’s class.
(I’m exaggerating: The Olympic did survive its huge wreck.)
@Jay:
The most insane idea ever. Just use a god damn chicken egg. Movie producers so badly wanted scaly lizard dinosaurs instead of realistic fanged birds. A velociraptor screeching like an eagle and killing like an actual raptor by grabbing with those hideous talons and biting the neck would be terrifying enough.
Jonas
Wasn’t Palmer the guy Trump supposedly blabbed classified sub info to at Mar-A-Lago?
frosty
@NotMax: How have I never heard this quote? Perfect!
Jay
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m just sayin, that compared to most of our current Billionaire class’s brain farts on display, frog eggs and amber is way better.
Jay
@Jonas:
That was Anthony Pratt.
Aussie Sheila
@Jonas: No, that was another billionaire that deserves the tumbril. The eponymously named Anthony Pratt.
I see I have been fristed!
Frankensteinbeck
@Jay:
It is. Cloning dinosaurs would be cool, especially since the idea they could spread uncontrollably in the wild and be a problem for humans is an inane misunderstanding of both ecology and chaos theory.
You could totally have some get out and kill zookeepers and tourists, though. They put the park on an island because any US zookeeper would scream and run away from their shitty safety measures. I watched the raptor transfer scene and tore my hair out because you don’t do that!
opiejeanne
I’ve seen the menus and pictures of the dining for third class and it was not what he describes, it was not “potatoes, six ways from Sunday.”
I wonder if his Titanic will have the 4th smokestack, aka a funnel, which was a dummy and was only put on the ship because it looked good and it was a great way to disguise unsightly infrastructure, like pipes and other stuff, and a smoking lounge.
Tony Jay
I don’t remember writing this, but I feel that I must have.
Jay
@opiejeanne:
c’mon, you expect a Billionaire to have “facts”????????
I do like the idea of Wall Street Brokers crammed into squalid, confined quarters in a “cholera” ship.
Aussie Sheila
@opiejeanne: I don’t care how he designs his ludicrous project. What I know is the whole thing makes him even more of a national joke and disgrace than he already is. And that takes some doing.
He is an overweight, underperforming (business wise) oaf.
He deserves ridicule and contempt from here to hell.
Frankensteinbeck
@Frankensteinbeck:
Still having fits remembering Jurassic Park animal handling. Who the fuck relies on electric fences to stop macrofauna? A fucking goat would waltz out of Jurassic Park containment. A properly designed ditch and raised wall system would keep a T-Rex thoroughly locked up, although the damn pea-brained monstrosity would probably shatter its legs diving in at the first sight of prey. Sucks to be it.
Anne Laurie
Saved this for our late-night shift cuz I figured you Ozzies would chip in with the proper bio details!
Yutsano
@Aussie Sheila:
To be fair, we don’t know for sure if he’s underperforming in other areas as well. As was stated in the past, it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
opiejeanne
@Betsy:
If he’s like other men with that much money there’s probably not just a Jack and Rose story, but also a Jack and Daisy, Jack and Violet, and Jack and Hyacinth.
Aussie Sheila
@Yutsano: Indeed! He’s a fat, white, rich loser who cheats his employees out of their legal entitlements. He’s a reactionary racist arsehole who thinks he’s smart.
Fortunately every normal person here hates him for the losing loser that he is.
Unfortunately, he has a lot of money that he throws around to the worst arseholes that ever dragged their scummy heads above the ground.
Jay
@Frankensteinbeck:
I still remember Tiny from Meet the Robinsons, who I believe first started the joke that you could defend yourself from a TRex, by putting your back up against the right wall and roof overhang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6BJLeRUDj4
Jay
@opiejeanne:
Jack and Paul, Jack and They, Jack and Helicopter,……………
opiejeanne
@Jay: Or just built concert halls and libraries.
Aussie Sheila
@opiejeanne: Personally I prefer public amenities to be democratically determined and paid for. My view is every billionaire is a public policy failure.
Their arses should be taxed back to millionaire status.
There is no way they can spend that kind of money in a lifetime.
Money is like manure.
It needs to be spread evenly to ensure a good crop next year.
mrmoshpotato
@opiejeanne:
Why when you can build a copy of one of the most famous shipwrecks in history?
(I haven’t actually looked into the details, because holy idiocy is this a stupid, wasteful idea.)
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: Speaking of peculiar Australian billionaires, I wonder what you think of Andew Forrest. He’s the Fortescue Mining CEO with the big iron mines and the big plans to decarbonize their operation.
I don’t suppose you get invited to Minderoo Station for the birthday parties, but Forrest may have a presence in Australian politics and he’s kind of a nut.
Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
naw, when they get to be worth a billion dollars, they get a shiny used trophy, (repurposed from a Thrift Store, Bowling, Hockey, Basketball) saying “Winner of Capitalism (date), and every penny they get over that first billion dollars get’s taxed away.
opiejeanne
@mrmoshpotato: Yes, and bring the world together in peace, etc, blah, blah blah, Ukraine and Gaza. I think those two places are a little too busy to give a flying fuck about the Titanic II.
Aussie Sheila
@Jay: I could vote for that. That would mean trillions for the world if we include US, UK, AUS and Canadian billionaires.
The amount of money these A holes have is an obscenity. Linking to an earlier post-they either agree to confiscatory taxes or it’s the French Solution. Not everything from the past is useless. That’s just presentism at its worst!
I’m sure the USSC would agree.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid: Yes you’re right. He’s kind of a nut. But he gets climate change. Unlike the rest of the gobshites that run Australia’s mining industries.
They need a good look at a guillotine.
If they aren’t careful it might be the last thing they see.
They are on a short lease atm.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I run into Andrew Forrest’s projects on clean energy news sites. His concept is definitely a good one: convert all that diesel-guzzling mining equipment to battery or hydrogen power, and set up miles of windmills and solar panels to provide the electricity.
Fortescue even announced it would manufacture electrolysers on its own to supply the mining operation with hydrogen, but Forrest blows hot and then cold on that technology so the plant might not be built.
But maybe it will be. Electrolysers are not that hard to manufacture; Cummins Engines added an electrolyser production line to its Fridley, Minnesota factory in just a few months. Rep. Ihlan Omar delivered remarks at the opening ceremony touting the plant’s economic benefits for her community.
Andrew Forrest also recently denounced carbon-capture, said it’s a fraudulent boondoggle, which shows he’s not afraid to step on political and oil industry toes.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
Over at newnewlabourinc HQ a drone in the corporate-donor/VIP wing of Blair Palace lifts its head from its desk and takes a deep sniff of the air.
“Ours!”
Pete Downunder
@Geminid: I’ll say this for “Twiggy” Forest he gets climate change and his company pays excellent dividends when banks are paying crap interest on savings. As to Palmer he has filed so many frivolous lawsuits that no reputable law firm here will act for him.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid: Yes. He is the best of a bad lot. But they are a very, very bad lot.
I am working hard here for increasing taxes on these arseholes. I am retired now, so I don’t have quite the ‘in’ that I used to. While Forrest isn’t the worst he should be taxed like the rest of them. Into millionaire’s status.
I don’t really care about his personal views, even if they are better than most his ilk.
The issue is public policy. Every billionaire miner made their money from public resources. We all own the wealth under our feet. They did nothing to ‘make it’. They get our permission to dig it up. They get a fair price for their trouble, and then we get the rents.
That’s Capitalism played fair and square.
Anything else is simply theft from the Commons.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Has anyone in the jackaltariat ever met someone who used “woke” as an insult and was not an irredeemable bigot? Because the next one I meet will be the first.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay: Yes. The UK Labour Party is so cringe I’ve stopped reading and listening to stuff about your political plight. Ours is nothing to write home about, but thanks to compulsory voting and preferential balloting, our lot couldn’t dream of the garbage that Starmer/Reeves are coughing up.
IMHO, the best thing the UK Labour Left can do is ensure a preferential/proportional voting system and abolition of an unelected HoL. It’s unbelievable that successive Labour governments haven’t abolished it ages ago. Fancy having an unelected upper chamber. The US Senate is bad enough god knows, but the HoLs is simply ludicrous.
Aussie Sheila
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: No, I haven’t. But then I have assumed from the get go that ‘woke’ is simply ‘politically correct’ updated for the even more lexically challenged. It is by now a lexical ‘meme’. It gestures towards whatever the speaker finds uncomfortable or unfamiliar.
It’s verbal pablum for idiots.
Baud
Very Christ-like.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: We need a vaccination against breathing the same air as that Ahole. Pity there isn’t a virus that ‘gain of function’ technology has bred to specifically lethally attack fat white right wing arseholes.
Now that would be scientific research we could all support!
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
Putting them on a ghost ship seems like a good start.
hueyplong
Reached for comment, Woke expressed skepticism that the project would in any way affect its ongoing conquests in Australia and the United States, further noting that the ship would go down on its maiden voyage due to the failure to offer vegan options.
Woke complimented the billionaire on his vaccine theories, which render easier Woke’s difficult task of eradicating Real Australians as well as Real Americans in sparsely populated areas where they are commonly found.
It concluded, as per usual, “Taunt Woke, go broke.”
Aussie Sheila
@hueyplong:
😉😎
Ramalama
@NotMax: dang!!
Geminid
Portugal’s national grid operator said the nations energy consumption in Q1, 2024 was 89% generated by renewables. Portugal has a lot of hydropwer and that accounted for 47% of electricity generated in the period, with wind power coming in 2nd with around 36%.
lowtechcyclist
Curse you, AL, for getting that goddamn song stuck in my head!
Ramalama
@mrmoshpotato:
because it’s a brand? Sorry…I mean Brand. Don’t rich people love their Brands?
Baud
@Geminid:
👍
Princess
“Oh, they were not far from shore/When they heard the mighty roar/And the rich refused/To associate with the poor/So they sent them down below/Where they were the first to go.”
Make no mistake — these are the traditional non-woke values espoused by billionaire Australian dude.
TBone
Meanwhile, per Heather Cox Richardson today 🤬
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Do these people have to produce any actual evidence to do one of these challenges? Or can they just do it wholesale? (Which is what it looks like they’re doing.)
(Link?)
Narya
Throwing in a recommendation for John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society.
Suzanne
I already think cruises are gross and dirty. Thus sounds like petri dish delux.
Anyway
@Narya:
Seconded. Not a big SF reader and first heard about it here from Dorothy Winsor.
Anyway
@lowtechcyclist:
Throw things against the wall and see what sticks. Intimidate election workers — RW playbook.
lowtechcyclist
@Anyway:
Probably more like overwhelm election workers.
But each challenge is of an individual voter. How do you throw things against the wall? Just make things up? If so, it sounds like a good way of getting the whole pile of challenges thrown out after the election staff looks at the first couple dozen.
Ken
Just in general, or as part of the theme of “asshole billionaires”?
catclub
@wjca: George Soros. Warren Buffett.
I am pretty sure Soros is an asshole, just one that liberals favor. I think Bill Gates was much more of an asshole 20 years ago than now — apparently credit Melinda.
Frankensteinbeck
@lowtechcyclist:
I’m pretty sure that the challenges legally must be individually addressed. As I recall, the success rate on these challenges is microscopic. This isn’t being done as an intelligent strategy to change election results. This is being done as an incompetent strategy to change election results by fruit loops who believe they can find double voters and dead people voting, stuff like that.
Baud
@catclub:
As long as those Soros checks keep flowing, he’s ok in my book.
Geminid
@Geminid: As it happens, my friend Joan is at a cafe near the Lisbon train station, waiting for a train to Oporto. She says it’s not especially windy, just overcast and 11°C.
Joan plans on staying four weeks. She’s a very social person and makes a lot of acquaintances on her travels. She visited South Afrika at the beginning of last year and Thailand and Vietnam in December.
lowtechcyclist
@Frankensteinbeck:
Wouldn’t there have to be some sort of minimum standard they’d have to meet to be considered?
I mean, could I just pick a random voter off the list and file a challenge saying “this person doesn’t live at this address anymore” without any evidence that that’s the case, and they’d have to take the trouble to ascertain that I was bullshitting them?
That would be some sort of crazy.
Gvg
Building complicated models is harmless, 3d jigsaw puzzles. This is weird. I actually do not get the public fascination with the Titanic. Seems like a moderately clear warning story worth reading about once.
poor loudmouths with nutty ideas are also obnoxious.
I wish I knew how to persuade people who don’t accept logic or cause and effect or evidence as reasons to be persuaded.
Baud
@Gvg:
It was a shocking sinking at the time, and that has carried on to today. You could say the same thing about many stories from the past that have resonance with people today.
OzarkHillbilly
Just very Republican, but you already knew that.
Frankensteinbeck
@lowtechcyclist:
I am pretty sure yes, or at least that the standard is as incredibly low as ‘These two people’s signatures look the same to me.’ Democrats don’t do it. Hell, intelligent Republicans don’t do it, because the success rate of challenges is absurdly small. Conspiracy theorist bigots do it because they’re assholes completely happy with demanding two signatures that look similar to their eyes be checked and removed.
My memory is not 100% reliable here, but I believe that is what I’ve heard over years here listening to discussions about election challengers.
grubert
This list of decent billionaires is more then the “only two” that I usually count ( Soros and Buffet).
But it’s still dwarfed by the awful ones
JML
@Baud: whenever someone uses the color “green” to describe people as a way of claiming they ain’t racist…they’re racist.
TBone
Voter Rolls Challengers in PA
Allegheny County GOP faction fights to trim voter roll | 90.5 WES
Apparently the rolls will not be affected, the effort merely casts doubt on election results (which is the playbook this year to give cover for challenges to certification).
Each of the affidavits challenges a single voter’s registration.
Baud
@JML:
What do you have against Martians?
Denali5
@Aussie Sheila:
I see you have a potential candidate for public office in Australia.
JWR
Seth Meyers really laid a stinker during last night’s A Closer Look. He closed with a bit about Biden actually having some sort of magical power to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza by simply snapping his fingers, which only proves he doesn’t really want one. Here’s the video set to start where he does the ‘If Biden really wanted a ceasefire, he could just snap his fingers’ routine.
I wouldn’t worry too much about this sort of thing if it were confined to a small audience, but it isn’t, and could further misinform some already misinformed people.
ETA. He doesn’t actually say the “snap his fingers” part, but I stand by my conclusion.
lowtechcyclist
@Frankensteinbeck:
The problem is, it is almost certainly not conspiracy theorists anymore. It’s just one more part of the GOP’s overall warfare on our electoral system. And the object in this case would be to dump an overwhelming workload on that county’s election staff, leaving it with way fewer staff hours to deal with other problems.
We’ve got to figure out how to better defend our systems against this sort of warfare. It’s not going to go away by itself.
Baud
@JWR:
Besides the humanitarian benefits of an ceasefire, I‘m curious to see what critics here do if there is a ceasefire.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: bingo
Everyone should read Heather Cox Richardson today.
Denali5
@TBone:
We see the Republicans planning ahead again. How can they fight sex trafficking and corrupt elections at the same time? Multi-taskers!
TBone
@Denali5: they always find a new way to cheat using the old ways and building upon them with creativity.
artem1s
@Citizen Alan:
They think Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life was the hero and the residents of Baily’s Park were immigrant slouchers who had no business owning their own homes. And also,too Scrooge was corrupted by his ‘woke’ nephew.
artem1s
@TBone:
Interesting. Production line, mass produced sworn notarized affidavits. Sounds like fraud and a civil rights violation case to me, especially if the state can prove there was a pattern to the voters who were chosen to be challenge. Were they all in Dem leaning precincts? Did they cherry pick Hispanic sounding names off the voter rolls? I hope the PA AG or BOE figures out a way to file a criminal case against each and every one of the assholes who signed these affidavits. I wonder how much they got paid?
Edit – Pittsburgh is in Allegheny County. IIRC there were attempts by TIFG and election deniers to get the BOE in Allegheny to rescind their vote county certification because Pittsburgh returned results late and they put Biden over the top. I’m betting they didn’t challenge rural Allegheny voters, only the “urban” precincts.
narya
@Ken: As part of the “re-create dinosaurs” convo. :-) It’s a good, fast read. If you want the billionaire novel, go for is most recent, Starter Villain, which I also recommend highly
ETA, now that I think about it, it’s ALSO a billionaires-as-assholes story, IIRC.
Redshift
As is the band playing “Nearer My God to Thee.” It’s pretty clear everything this guy “knows” about the Titanic comes from watching the movie.
Fair Economist
@Frankensteinbeck:
Especially in a locale subject to tropical storms.
lowtechcyclist
@Redshift:
I’ve never seen the movie, but I learned of the “Nearer My God to Thee” legend in school sixty years ago. (But taught as fact.)
Paul in KY
@NotMax: Agreed! Gotta have the coal.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Wonder what top speed is of ‘Wonder of Seas’ and that type of behemoth? Titanic was designed for fast crossings. Think it could go 23 knots or so.
Paul in KY
@Redshift: By all accounts, he last song heard was the Anglican hymn ‘Autumn’.
Another Scott
@Paul in KY: Wikipedia says 22 knots for the Wonder of the Seas.
The SS United States sustained speed was 35.59 knots (in 1952). The article makes the point that there’s a difference between an ocean liner and a cruise ship. (And there aren’t [much in the way of] ocean liners any more.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Thank you on checking that out. Transatlantic ocean liners were built much more like warships in their dimensions and performance capabilties. The Lusitania and Mauritania were actually classed as auxiliary cruisers back in the day.