#back into my art cave never to post again for the next 6 years /j

[reallilystuff]

da soon.... da sun.... in roblonks......

would you give this fine gentleman -3 bobux......

drawing in roblox is actual hell. help. my wrist big hurty

[aura-loveshine]

Fringe-dweller’s true tales.

I looked up at the half moon, and thought “this will be the 5th full moon since you died”... 

Three nights before you were so suddenly taken from the physical earth, you camped overlooking the beautiful large body of water. you explored the multifaceted countryside, you were always like a kid when it came to exploring. you would have honoured and felt connected with nature. you would have sat with a j and admired the full moon on Friday the 13th. it would have been so beautiful to see the full moon over the water, the reflection, the light bouncing off the rippling water and quartz crystal sparkly rockbed... 

I hope those days spent at that campsite were healing, I hope you felt at peace, I hope you spent those days happy, content. I imagine you playing guitar and adventuring with our magic merlin dog, enjoying the wildlife, the peacefulness. I imagine you listening to the abc radio you loved and talking to the other campers, sharing your quirky unique self, making people laugh, or think. I imagine you satisfied to have achieved the long time goal to drive to the tip of Australia, from Cook Town to Cape York in your FWD. I imagine you had chocolate or something sweet even though you were running out of everything else. 

I wonder if you dreamt those nights... I wonder if you had a feeling something was coming. I wonder about the last conversations you had with tribe. i wonder about where you thought the wind might take you next. I wonder if you actually were on your way to visit me... ill never know whether I/you/we could have done anything to change what happened... I can't believe after all the physical pain you endured through-out your 34 years, that you experienced pain in your last alert moments... I think about our dog being with you when it all happened... 

I imagine you loving being omnipresent, exploring the universe in your cosmic pirate-ship with Xena, your beloved 17 year old dog. I'm not surprised she passed 12 days after you... I'm glad your both free of your aching sore physical bodies. You both lived so adventurously. you and Xena are the only ones I know that can say they lived in their vehicles/bus for over 11 years, driving over a million kms around and through Australia. I also don’t know anyone else that helped as many fringe-dwellers as you did, loved and supported so many beautiful women without trying to take it to a sexual level, who invited people to travel with you and see new incredible parts of Australia. you saved forests, educated people, changed Bunnings national policy, inspired people to live better and more freely, you lived more in your short life-time than anyone I know. you experienced pain, near death experience, limitation childhood abuse and death of loved ones and still managed to be the incredible being full of enthusiasm with an open heart and playful inquisitive nature. 

I was relieved to hear you had been reconnecting with your mum and family. that our close friends had quality time with you before everything changed...       I know you knew there was a high chance of you dying while on the road due to road death statistics... but all the justifications can't outweigh the heaviness of not being able to message you, call you, find out where you are now, what your building or what fascinating experience you’ve had recently.

You were the first and only male partner I have shared a ‘de facto’ type lovership with, having only been with women until you. you were so respectful, you were loving and gentle...  travelling in a old coaster for 6 months with you living a true dream... you built us a bush shack in two weeks, you built us a bush palace in a month and a half, all while been technically ‘disabled’... you showed me sacred sites of Australia, you climbed into caves, swam in ocean with crocodiles a few kms away,, we ate dinner alone with Dick Smith in the desert, casually chatting. you introduced me to Robin Mutoid at Burn out, I loved sitting with you and Robin in the coaster watching you two light up talking about mad hatter genius building ideas... and plans to create an explosive pineapple grenade to the filming we were doing.

Some of my favourite memories of my life-time, have been with you. I cherish you, I cherish my photos of you, I'm relieved I didnt listen to you when you told me to stop taking photos and be in the moment, but now I can look at those memories when I need to see you. every time I see a old coaster van I'm going to think of you... so many things remind me of you... having merlin with me is the silver lining, I'm relieved she was safely found after 15 days of being missing in the bush. I'm relieved she's with me. but I wish I was instead bringing her back to you...

You led such an incredible life I hope to share your stories and pictures with the world. you inspired so many people while you were alive... and even after... thousands of people read about your death on social media and tv... the articles and posts used the photos I took of you. it was surreal to see you and our dog in articles, for what happened to be so publicised... for a tragedy so personal to be used as ‘grief porn’... I hope to use the publicity of it all to make change to the stretch of road. needs better signage, a lower speed, something! I can't get it out of my head that you were the 9th fatality out of 30 accidents in 31 years, within a 4km stretch of road... 9 fatalities is too many. 9 is the final number. you are the last one to be taken out there...

The bush fires started raging not long after you died... in a strange way, the fires seemed fitting in my state of grief. Our lives were all forever changed... I was forever changed. The fires burning for months. My grief, anger, shock and feeling of helplessness burning inside me for months.  the sense of emergency through out the country, the sense of disaster within me.

It was all a bit much trying to deal with you dying, Xena dying, merlin being missing for 15 days and everything else that happened over the next 2 months as well the fires raging, rainforests burning, native wildlife in crisis, homes burning, people dying and the nation all in panic and smoke. Being 1500kms away from my forest home and family while the fires burned out of control less that 40kms away, with road blocks and potential fires in between. Trying to have your life celebration festivities while experiencing heavy rain, wind warnings and strained tumultuous emotions all round... thunder and hail while my mums saying she is taking all my valuables and art to a safe house coz the fires are getting closer, and they are prepping to have to evacuate with the dog, cat, ducks and chickens... luckily, it never came to that, the fires were contained 25kms away from our home, contained only 20kms away from my closest town, a well known beautiful alternative community. 

A moment that will always bring a smile to my heart, was when I was finally driving home. Id had a really rough night, id been holding so much in, trying to just get through everything to get home, id started falling apart... we had just started driving, when we saw a small’ish’ dust devil. the ‘tornado hunter’ part in me instantly wanted to drive up the near by road to chase it. I held back, until I heard my friend say “we could throw some of him ashes into the dust devil”... and I zoomed up the road as quick as I could. although the little twister had gone out of reach, I trustfully threw some of your ashes towards it. my heart felt uplifted as I watched the ash catch, float up and dissolve toward the dust devil.

You weren't scared of dying, you lived actively seeking to push your own limits, always with a cheeky grin. but you always landed like a cat, you were always there, doing your thing... alive. you always came back... you would have heard about the fires and driven straight to help, you would have fought the fires like you had before. you would have used the experience as a way to further pursue actual change for the planet, would have been apart of the vocal community questioning how the government failed to protect and how we needed to have upheaval and revolution...

You drove so safely on the roads. I dont know what happened to the other driver, except that he was seemingly uninjured. was it actually an unfortunate accident? or did the driver lose control going around the corner at 130kms in a 100 zone.... 

Was it really ‘your time to go’? if I hadn't been to the crash site and dealt with all that I have, I might fantasise the idea that you pulled the ultimate fucked up prank, that your hiding out in your doomsday bunker, mischievously laughing at no one knowing your alive, being completely ‘offline’, plotting the moment to reveal yourself... to see you, hug you would be.... 

We separated as lovers 15 months before you died, as we had to go on seperate journeys, we had to become individuals again. we were both struggling with very different things, we had to salvage our friendship and love, to take a break, allow some time... and then... you died 7 hours away, on your way to my area... on your way to see me and Xena.. I can't help but feel I'm being punished somehow, question if I shouldn't have made you leave. you might still be alive... am I silly to dwell on thoughts like that? I thought we had more time.

All I can do is live passionately, continue to be inspired by you and cherish you and our time together, learn from my experiences, healing these wounds by living, by loving, by sharing truth, by having daily gratitude and celebrating the positive events and changes as they come.

I know, for a long time, I will count each passing full moon...

You will always be my gypsy pirate king.  

Fly Free my Lover. I'll see you on the other side once again.

[internationalhouseofblupjeans]

An Eighth Bird, Born Out of the Storm - Chapter 8

(Kinda got behind on updating this on tumblr so these are going to get posted rapid-fire lol)

Based loosely on the Luume'irma headcanon from @interstellarvagabond

Lup and Taako get their decennial “visitor” just before the fateful trip on the Starblaster. Taako holes up in his room, meditating away the discomfort while Lup discovers a partner for the week. Unforeseen consequences arise. Bonds are created. An eighth bird rises.

Eighth Bird AU.

Lup and Barry create something new

Thank you to Calcu from the writer’s chat for Beta'ing!!

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 below Chapter 9  Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22

Name Change Request Form Birth name: Sildar J Hallwinter Date of Birth: Month 7, Day 1, Year 1350 A.T. Gender: Male Race: Human Desired name change: Barry J. Bluejeans Reason for changing name (optional): Bureaucratic bullshit. Please submit your birth certificate and at least two forms of I.D. Please allow at least five business days for name changes to be processed. Remember to change all non-government related instances of your name. We cannot do this for you.

“I doubt blowing things up is going to impress the Light,” Lup groaned, looking over the paper she had been brainstorming on. “God, Barry, I can’t think of anything. This plane is fucked …”

She sat down and scribbled on her paper again. Barry watched her eyebrows furrow. He looked across the room and saw a piano.

He played once when he was young, his mother sitting him on her lap as she guided him through the notes. He walked over to it and sat down. His hands hovered over the keys for a moment before he started to play.

He wasn’t even sure what he was playing, but notes slowly came out. Lup looked over, her ears perking up.

“Barry … You play?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled, stopping. “Well, I did. When I was younger … I would sit on my mom’s lap and she would guide my hands to the right notes and … It was … It was nice.”

A nice memory.

Lup walked over to him and sat down next to him.

“Maybe that’s what you should present?” She asked. “A song?”

Barry blushed.

“Well, I don’t know about that. I haven’t played in years,” he started.

“Come on, Bare. It’s gotta be like riding a bike. In fact, the last time I played violin was when Taako and I were …”

She paused.

“Barry … What if we made something together? I mean, we already have but … They wouldn’t be ready,” she teased. “But … Maybe we create something else?”

Barry smiled at her.

“What were you thinking?” he asked, softly.

~

Magnus saw Lup come in to purchase a violin while he studied under the master carpenter. He smiled, excited to see what the older of the twins was going to present. Taako had made a big show of the thoughts he was going to take credit for and present, much to Magnus’ amusement.

Magnus looked down at his carving.

It was an amorphous blob right now. Nothing special. Nothing interesting.

He wasn't a creative type, normally. This wasn't in his wheelhouse at all. When he first joined the IPRE as security officer, he wasn't even sure why he had been chosen.

Taako and Lup were fantastic chefs and masters of their own schools of arcana.

Davenport was the strongest leader he had ever known. Merle, a talented healer who had been with the IPRE for a century before the mission training even began.

Lucretia and Barry were both human but they were humans with amazing abilities. They were smart. They were magic. Barry had dabbled in literally everything, from wizardry to being a rogue.

Magnus was … Magnus.

He sighed and continued to whittle. He thought back to one of his last days on his home world. Had it really been so long ago?

He had gone out with his mother’s dogs for a walk at a park. The largest dog, a mastiff, saw ducks in the water and wanted to splash after them, straining at the leash until it snapped. Magnus gave chase and splashed into the water after the dog who was playing, swimming, and chasing after the annoyed ducks. The dog would never hurt them, only wanting to play, but Magnus didn't need another ticket from the parks and recreation department.

He looked down and could almost feel the carving take shape.

Somewhere, within the cave that they thought held the light, a bond was formed.

~

The notes came easily to Lup when she looked at Barry.

She had played violin as a child, one of the many ways she and Taako paid their way on the road, but it had never felt this natural.

She had composed little songs here and there, but they were meant for Taako to dance for. They were meant to get them a hot meal and a bed.

This time was different.

Each note was how she felt about Barry. Each note was the love that had developed. Each note was the love they had created.

She used to close her eyes when she played.

Right now, she looked to Barry.

He looked to her and felt the chords come out just as naturally.

This love, it was different from anything he had felt before. He was no longer a child, sitting on his mother’s lap struggling with scales and arpeggios.

He was the lover and he was pouring his soul out to Lup.

He hoped she heard it.

He hoped she felt it.

~

Taako had been surprised the cave accepted his “works". As he saw Lup and Barry prepare, he could feel the nervousness radiating off of them.

If their work doesn't get accepted …

When they began to play, he realized something.

They never had to say anything to each other. He could hear it in their music. He could see it in how Lup looked to Barry, watching for her times to come in. Watching for when to change the tempo.

Working as a team.

As lovers.

He should have been afraid. He should have been afraid that now, the special closeness he had with Lup, the confidentiality they had, was going to forever be altered.

And in a way, it was.

But he was happy.

He was going to gain a brother. His sister was going to be happy.

He had gained family.

He could gain bonds.

~

They had rushed out as the song echoed through the world, hand in hand up to the conservatory. They needed to be alone.

They needed to talk.

Barry took Lup’s hands as they stood, breathless, in the empty practice hall.

“I … wow … Lup you are amazing.”

“You're brilliant,” she whispered back. “I … I never realized that we could …”

“Yeah …”

They stared into each other’s eyes, the realization as what they had done, what they had said, was dawning.

“Barry … the whole world knows,” Lup began, breaking the silence.

“But do you know?” Barry asked, gently placing his hand on her cheek.

She leaned into it and closed her eyes, her ears relaxing slightly.

“Do you?” she purred. “Do you know just how much I love you? How much I've loved you all this time?”

Barry tilted her chin up.

Their first kiss, forty-seven years ago, had been messy, frenzied, and frantic in a smoky tavern. They had kissed many times in that week, unsure where they would stand when it was over.

This was their first kiss where they knew.

They emerged from the conservatory a couple of hours later, as the gala just beginning. If the rest of the crew knew what Lup and Barry had been up to, they didn't let on, save for a relieved smile from Davenport as he saw their fingers loosely intertwined as they mingled.

They excused themselves from the party later that evening, the crew needing no explanation. They walked hand in hand to the ship, Barry suddenly nervous even though he knew he didn’t need to be.

They stopped at Barry’s room and Lup pressed her lips to his, reaching behind him to open his door.

He looked up at her, questioning look in his eyes.

The fiery grin she gave in return was enough of an answer and the pair darted into the room.

~

Magnus knew, of course, why Barry wasn’t as upset as he should have been when he heard the news about the Light of Creation in the morning. Barry was half of the reason why Magnus needed to do his midnight run in the first place. Why he couldn’t sleep at all that night.

Regardless, he watched the Starblaster take off and wondered how much searching the pair was actually going to do.

He’d been in that honeymoon phase before, granted it hadn’t been after forty-seven years of pining, but still …

He sat, carving another duck for his new friend, before a twinge of worry ran through him.

If they didn’t find the light, these creatures would die.

All of the music, the stories, the art - the memories - they would all die with them.

He knew that, even without the distraction, Lup and Barry would never find the Light of Creation. He didn’t need to be on the ship with them,to cross the ocean to know this.

He had to come up with another option.

He looked back down at the duck.

He had not been able to save so many on their quest. He had failed on so many planets. Sure, he had generally been able to keep his crew safe, but all of these people who had no idea what was coming to them, who had no idea the horror that would happen to them within a year of their landing - He had failed so many of them when the Light couldn’t be found.

This world would be different.

He was going to save these creatures.

He returned to the cave with his newest duck.

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/how-much-money-do-you-have-to-earn-before-you-get-weird/

How Much Money Do You Have to Earn Before You Get Weird?

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Who is your favorite billionaire? Wrong answer: Being a billionaire is a fundamentally immoral thing to be and all of them should be slaughtered, their blood drained from their bodies, and their heavy heads placed on spikes. But ignoring that: Who is your favorite billionaire? If it’s not Elon Musk, you’re doing billionaire fandom wrong. And I’m not talking in that Rick-and-Morty-poster, le-epic-win–style way of enjoying Elon Musk: Enjoying him as a spectacle, as a projection of who you would be if you were rich, that’s the way to do it. Think about it, if you were a billionaire, would you be Bill Gates (philanthropist, still fundamentally looks like he gets wedgied now and again)? Jeff Bezos (unapologetically rich hench dude, first villain to get grenade exploded in an Expendables film)? Mark Zuckerberg (a grey t-shirt that got a bit carried away and an alien who has to actively remind himself to blink)? Richard Branson (“Mommy, why is that dinner lady suing the NHS?”)? Or would you be Elon Musk, who keeps trying to send shit into space and occasionally summons a beautiful woman from the world of celebrity to come and be his blonde concubine? Elon Musk is so rich he called a cave diver a pedophile three separate times because he keeps shit talking on Twitter and he knows he’s so rich he’s essentially legally bulletproof. You telling me that’s not you? Because that’s me. You’re telling me that’s not you? That is me if I ever get rich. So Lord help you all if I ever get rich.

Here’s an example of how Elon Musk is exactly you if you were rich. A couple weeks ago he smoked a joint on the Joe Rogan show, which we all know about and remember fondly because he did it with the casual élan of a 13-year-old who just tried to stick his dick in an N64. The next day—for this reason, as well as two executives quitting on the same day and the hangover from Musk tweeting he was taking the company private and a New York Times interview where he started crying—Tesla stock crashed 6%. I have to caveat the next section by saying: I am bad at math.

I am bad at math: a caveat

Listen. I am not good at math. Accepting your flaws and embracing them—working with them, and not against them—is part of growing and becoming a complete human. Numbers are a foreign language to me! I am not good at math. For that reason, I am going to, bafflingly, attempt a ton of maths.

How much did that joint cost Elon Musk?

According to CNBC, as of June, this year Musk owns 33.7 million shares of Tesla. Before he took a massive rip of that fat J, it was trading at $280.95, making his shares worth $9.4 billion. After honking on dank, dank kush, shares went down to $260.32 (making Musk’s shares worth $8.7 billion). A lot of billionaires’ wealth is theoretical—it is tied up in stock, which waxes and wanes as the days progress, or is locked into hard real estate, so their actual money on-hand is a lot less than the total calculation of their worth—but by my calculation, that puff puff pass cost Elon Musk: $695,231,000. To clarify: six hundred and ninety five. Million. Dollars. Sure, maybe your mom caught you with a little bit of weed once and you got mildly in trouble and grounded for a medium length of time. But tell me: Have you ever bong ripped so hard someone’s GDP disappeared? [1]

Musk’s recent behavior (best described as “gloriously erratic”) has made me realize something: Basically every billionaire goes weird, in the end. And that’s got me thinking: Is weirdness inherent to the billionaire-fated mindset, or is weirdness thrust on to the normal human mind when it is exposed to such a ludicrous bank balance? Are billionaires billionaires because they’re weird, or are they weird because they’re billionaires? Or, to put it another way:

What is the exact amount of money I have to have before I go insane?

I intend to investigate that.

The billionaires

I have spent a very substantial amount of time now[2] investigating the historical wealth of the following five billionaires, who all broadly represent one end of the five-point billionaire personality matrix:

We will plot first their explosive wealth, then map their historical erratic behavior. I’m then going to put one graph on top of the other and try and figure out the exact net worth you need to have before you start going on podcasts and trapping Azaelia Banks in your house.

A few more caveats: Sometimes it is very difficult to figure a billionaire’s registered net worth in the years between their first mythologizing money-making deal (Richard Branson sold $6,000 worth of advertising in his first magazine, Student, when he was 15; Elon Musk sold a video game for $500 when he was 12) and their first billion because nobody (i.e. Forbes) really pays attention to how much money you have until you have a billion dollars. So there are some gray areas between, like, Mark Zuckerberg’s first million dollars in 2006 and his first billion-and-a-half dollars two years later (nobody knows how much Mark Zuckerberg was worth in 2007). Equally: I have not adjusted for inflation in any way at all because: come on! Boring! Thirdly: all accusations of erratic behavior are purely from me, purely on my own terms. I am the lash and I am the law, the only person saying what’s up is me. And so:

Bill Gates

Wealth: My guy Bill Gates is the vanilla ice cream of billionaires. Microsoft secured a deal worth $50,000 in 1980, when he was a 25-year-old CEO; in 1981, he became a millionaire through Microsoft holdings and the general business the company was doing. Although the exact figure is unclear, he had a rollerskating party in 1985 for his 30th birthday and he got speeding tickets a few times, which was about as wild as he ever got[3]. Then, in 1986, Microsoft’s initial public offering (IPO) went gangbusters and Gates, with at least $350 million in stock to his name, became a headline-making billionaire overnight. He’s basically been the go-to “Richest Man in the World” all the time you’ve been coherent and alive before Bezos took over from him this year.

(This is a chart of Bill Gates’ wealth. You will notice his age, written along the X-axis, is wildly incorrect, a running theme throughout this piece. This is because I could not get Excel to change it.)

Mania: In 2006, he announced he was going to start stepping back from Microsoft to focus on philanthropy, and signed the Giving Pledge in 2009 vowing to give away at least half of his wealth over his lifetime. And since then, he’s done nothing too wacky. He put some money into developing Vitamin A-enhanced bananas in 2012? In 2015, he drank a glass of reclaimed toilet water? Like? Nothing he has done is too crazy and most of it is for the wider good of the developing world? Gates is our control billionaire. He’s the most wealth of any man alive, the least signs of deep mania, the noble model of what an impossibly wealthy man should be.

(This is a chart of Bill Gates being weird. Instances of notable weirdness are marked in blue. You will notice there are no instances on this chart.)

Richard Branson

Wealth: Branson started making money in his teens after launching Student magazine and basically turning rival advertisers against each other to secure funding (“I soon learned the art that if I let Coke know that Pepsi were definitely in, that Coke would then jump in. And my education started,” he told CNBC last year. “It was an exciting time.” And the past is a foreign country, clearly, if a 15-year-old can just call Coke up and be like, “alright, money please”). He made his first million at the age of 23 after launching a mail-order record sales business, and then he started chain-launching businesses: he was worth £5 million [$6.5 million] in 1979, made his first billion at 41, and spent the next 18 years making another half a billion to take his net worth higher, then doubled it again the next year. His net worth now hovers around £5 billion [$6.5 billion], making him our poorest and therefore most cucked billionaire.

(This is Richard Branson’s wealth. He was the only one whose age I could get to work on it.)

Mania: Oh, Richard Branson is big time a maniac. Big time. I don’t know how old you are but if your age vaguely aligns with mine you might remember a period in the late-90s where basically the only news story, for about four years, was about Richard Branson repeatedly attempting and failing to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon? He just kept crashing into the sea and doing a big OK-sign when the authorities came to rescue him? He tried to launch his own soft drink to rival Coke? In 2004 he started selling tickets to space and still hasn’t honored a single one of them?[4] When he sold Virgin EMI he ran through the streets sobbing? But the high point of Branson’s billionaire mania, the tipping point, the exact moment he cracked in a way he could never be glued back together again was when, shaven-faced and beaming, he donned a bridal gown for a doomed business called “Virgin Brides.” This man was worth £1.5 billion [$1.9 billion] at this exact moment in time.

Which gives us a good starting point in our studies: Earning £1.5 billion [$1.9 billion] is bad for you.

(Branson’s wealth with weirdness—every time he invested in hot air balloons, basically— marked in blue)

Mark Zuckerberg

Wealth: Mark Zuckerberg has done well for a guy who is the crystalline vibe of “spending too long online researching until your back seizes up,” making his first million in 2004 as Facebook started to receive piecemeal outside investment, and he turned it into his first billion two years later when the company hit its 500 shareholder limit and went public. Since then, his wealth has escalated wildly: He’s worth around $60 billion as of right now, today. Like Gates, he’s signed the Giving Pledge and set up various charitable endeavors, but also took the bullet for the Cambridge Analytica thing at the start of the year and did that weird bulgey-eyed water drinking when he was being deposed. He just feels like he’s your cousin’s older boyfriend who is quite boring and just got really into climbing, and he’s wearing a North Face fleece and eating in silence at your family barbecue, only he’s Mark Zuckerberg, and he’s richer than God.

(Think I got his age more-or-less right with this one, actually)

Mania: Mark Zuckerberg’s lack of outward mania is actually what makes him so terrifying—he sort of has the eerie non-personality of an MRA who only eats red meat and reads books about murder —but yeah on the whole he’s not done anything too weird beyond getting repeatedly sued, forever, by everyone. It’s kind of funny that Mark Zuckerberg just quietly wants to live his life, driving a Prius and wearing a ton of zip-up fleeces, collecting every bit of data on every single person alive—and instead, he just keeps repeatedly getting in trouble for being himself. Anyway the high point of him being a maniac was the water-drinking thing, and his net worth was close to it is now when it happened, so I’m saying: Earning $60 billion is bad for you.

Jeff Bezos

Wealth: Bezos is currently the richest man on the planet and until Amazon Prime stops being so incredibly, annoyingly convenient, that is only going to continue. Early era Bezos was just a properly “reads the whole internet, every day” guy who didn’t know how to buy shirts that fit him, but a few years ago, he did a U-turn and started getting big into arm workouts and wearing padded vests, so he’s possibly the only one of our billionaires to glow-up in any significant way. Anyway, he’s now worth $120 billion and he looks like he can pick you up over his head so sadly the world’s richest nerd is now a Bond villain, meaning we’re all doomed.

(Yeah got the age right on this one as well. Really… really had a time making these graphs you’re just barely flicking your eyes over, I have to tell you. Have you actually closely read any of these graphs? Of course you haven’t. I wouldn’t, if I were reading this. It’s OK. I understand. It’s just I really did try.)

Mania: If being a billionaire is a fundamentally immoral action then Bezos is the epitome of that because he has enough wealth to hand every Amazon employee $10,000[5] and he’d still be the richest man on the planet, and his empire is built on the backs of hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers who are too afraid to take a pee break in case they get fired or camp in a tent near their workplace to minimize their commute. Like most of our billionaires, he has dabbled in space travel (why does everyone with a net worth of $4 billion or above think they can crack space travel, when NASA, working on it for years, still occasionally fucks it up? Start on flying cars and work your way up.) and is begrudgingly tipping his toe into the waters of philanthropy, but the real billionaire weirdness of him lies in his (undoubtedly successful) leadership qualities and approach to work. Here, from Wikipedia:

Bezos does not schedule early morning meetings and enforces a two pizza rule–a preference for meetings to be small enough to where two pizzas can feed everyone in the board room. [122] When interviewing candidates for jobs at Amazon he has stated he considers three inquiries: Can he admire the person, can the person raise the common standard, and under what circumstances could the person become exemplary? [123] He meets with Amazon investors for a total of only six hours a year. [122] Instead of using PowerPoints, Bezos requires high-level employees to present information with six-page narratives. [124] Starting in 1998, Bezos publishes an annual letter for Amazon shareholders wherein he frequently refers to five principles: Focus on customers not competitors, take risks for market leadership, facilitate staff morality, build a company culture, and empower people. [125][126]Bezos maintains the email address “jeff@amazon.com” as an outlet for customers to reach out to him and the company. [127] Although he does not respond to the emails, he forwards some of them with a question mark in the subject line to executives who attempt to address the issues. [127]

On one hand, that question mark thing is so, so sociopathic and chilling. But on the other hand, the guy who can barely type an e-mail is worth $150 billion. So who’s the real idiot? Once again: it is me.

Elon Musk

Wealth: Elon Musk’s wealth is my favorite of the lot because he’s basically just a chain-started nerd businesses and made millions turning to billions with each. His first software company, Zip2, netted him $22 million when it sold in 1999. A month later, he started X.com, which merged with Confinity a year later and became the PayPal we all know and love and use for ill-advised late-night eBay purchases (it sold for $1.5 billion in 2002: Musk made $180 million). Following the sale, he smooshed everything into three businesses—SpaceX, the world’s most expensive ego massage, an airspace company with designs on occupying Mars; Tesla, an electric car company that is statistically massive despite nobody you know seeming to own or drive one; and SolarCity, a solar energy company HQ’d in California. At the time of the three investments, Musk is on record saying he had to borrow money to pay rent: now he’s worth $20 billion and he’s shot a Tesla into space. Yeah? What have you ever done?

(His age is just completely fucked on this one.)

Mania: Elon Musk’s mania is my favorite of the bunch because it’s come to the surface this year—he started going out with Grimes, he invited Azealia Banks over to his house to watch him tweet, he keeps crashing his own stock by doing aforementioned tweeting, he tripled-down on calling a Thai-based cave diver a pedophile, he smoked weed on a podcast, he shot a car into space. His net worth this year is hovering around $20 billion despite all the times he gets high, he starts crying or calls someone a nonce, so it’s safe to say that: Earning $20 billion is bad for you.

But did the bizarreness start earlier than this? If you read the 2010 Marie Claire story where he double-fists ice cream cones and threatens to fire his wife, you might think: yes. In 2001, after Musk left PayPal, he got slightly too into the idea of firing a ton of mice into space and seeing if they breed up there. From 2017’s Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future:

Musk’s friends were not entirely sure what to make of his mental state. He’d lost a tremendous amount of weight fighting off malaria and looked almost skeletal. With little prompting, Musk would start expounding on his desire to do something meaningful with his life—something lasting. His next move had to be either in solar or in space. “He said, ‘The logical thing to happen next is solar, but I can’t figure out how to make any money out of it,’” said George Zachary, the investor and close friend of Musk’s, recalling a lunch date at the time. “Then he started talking about space, and I thought he meant office space like a real estate play.” Musk had actually started thinking bigger than the Mars Society. Rather than send a few mice into Earth’s orbit, Musk wanted to send them to Mars. Some very rough calculations done at the time suggested that the journey would cost $15 million. “He asked if I thought that was crazy,” Zachary said. “I asked, ‘Do the mice come back? Because, if they don’t, yeah, most people will think that’s crazy.’” As it turned out, the mice were not only meant to go to Mars and come back but were also meant to procreate along the way, during a journey that would take months. Jeff Skoll, another one of Musk’s friends who made a fortune at eBay, pointed out that the fornicating mice would need a hell of a lot of cheese and bought Musk a giant wheel of Le Brouère, a type of Gruyère.

At this point, he was worth an estimated $165 million. My guy got so rich he tried to emulate biker mice from mars. Takeaway: Earning $165 million is bad for you.

(Weirdness marked in blue: at $165 million, with the mice, and at $22 billion, with the Grimes and the weed.)

Conclusion

Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos cancel each other out: Gates has been monstrously rich for 30+ years and never done anything weird, and Bezos has been monstrously rich for 20 years and has always been sort of background-hum weird. They are two opposite forces of billionaire weirdness that negate each other to meet in the middle at true neutrality. Mark Zuckerberg is fundamentally odd, but has not ever done anything psychotic enough to be interesting, but as our youngest billionaire, he has time and money on his side (remember when that guy who did #StopKony took all his clothes off and masturbated near some parked cars? I feel like we have something like this in Zuckerberg’s future. Keeps doing press conferences while solemnly holding an AK, for example. Decides to launch a career in pro wrestling and gets slammed to death by Ric Flair with one final, terminal “woo!” Runs for president). This leaves us with two full-on billionaire weirdos: Elon Musk, who made $165 million and tried to fire a tub full of mice into space, and Richard Branson, who went very peculiar in the ‘90s and thought he could dick on Coke. So seeing as they went weird at $165 million and $1.5 billion, we can split the difference and say that this amount of money will send you bananas:

$832,500,000

So try not to ever earn that. Thanks.

[1] Stock being stock, it has since climbed back to $280, so Musk has made his money back. I only put in this horrendously sterile, water-carrying footnote to fend off very tedious “well actually…” replies I’m going to get from people on Reddit and Twitter.

[2] This is a bad idea because now the concept of money means very little to me. Example: In 2002, Elon Musk sold PayPal to eBay, and the value of his stock made him $165 million. In my head, having investigated billionaires all week, I am reading that figure and thinking: Pathetic. What a pathetic number. Try making some real money, 2002-era Elon Musk. Do you understand how in my overdraft I am! Do you realize how much I spent on Ubers this weekend now that I think $165 million is an insignificant amount of money! I have broken my head!

[3] From a 1986 profile I cannot believe I read: “Oddly, Gates is something of a ladies’ man and a fiendishly fast driver who has racked up speeding tickets even in the sluggish Mercedes diesel he bought to restrain himself.” I just really cannot imagine Bill Gates as a ladies’ man, sorry. I know we’re meant to be building him up. But come on.

[4] Though quite why you’d trust a man who can’t even fly a balloon around the planet without crashing it into the ocean with the task of flying your soft human body into space: I don’t know. A Virgin train can barely get to Edinburgh without stinking of shit about it. No way do I trust that dude with space travel.

[5] As of April 2018, there were 563,100 Amazon employees registered, which at $10,000 a pop would make a hole of $56.3 billion in Bezos’ personal finances, which again he’d probably make back within a year just from me buying spatulas, Command hooks, and books I’m not ever going to get around to reading and having them delivered straight to the office

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Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjydmm/how-much-money-do-you-have-to-earn-before-you-get-weird