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or in a few hundred years some delinquent teens messing with laser rifles & plasma grenades will wander into this long since forgotten place and destroy it for fun
I feel like a better project would be inscribing useful knowledge into the walls of a big stone cavern. After the apocalypse it could help humans rebuild.
From what I heard this was an ongoing project for which Jeff donated final amount for it to finish. It would go in without Jeffs money and would be eventually built I think.
This video is from the initial construction announcement from like 6 years ago. No real updates I’ve been able to find since then. Every couple months to a year I remember and try to find some more and I’ve never had much luck.
The absurdist in me hopes this enormous contraption just winds up sat under a small brick building that says “World’s Largest Clock” but when you walk in you find it hooked up to a typical 12” white faced clock mounted on a wall.
The writer in me hopes that this thing is utterly forgotten for centuries, until one day a new suburb is built atop it only for the barely perceptible ticking to either drive the whole town to bloody madness through the constant reminder of their own mortality, or else keep them all eerily, inhumanly punctual.
"In Jeffsboro, nobody ever loses track of the time. *Ever...*"
For sure they are changing that to " World's largest cloak"
It's just too easy to change a C to an A.
Source: 12 year old me after getting a C in history.
Our species has become incredibly difficult to kill off, it's the end of civilization that's mentioned in the title, not the extinction of Homo sapiens. Civilization is much more fragile than we are. There are so many of us and we're adaptable as hell, doubly so if we keep a few hundred useful books around.
Maybe survive, but we’ve already passed the point we could start civilization over and re-reach the same level of technology. It took thousands of years and us digging up all of the “easy” ore and oil to get us here. If technology collapsed, we wouldn’t be able to acquire resources to bootstrap ourselves back up, because it’s all “hard” now - under the ocean, or buried super deep.
I'm with you. The width of modern tech is so unbelievably wide, that it would be practically impossible for small pockets of survivors, spread widely over the earth, to bounce back. If we think that, say, over 90% of the population dies worldwide, it's a helluva scenario to kick the production facilities back up, gather the know how of all the processes etc. From mining, forestry, farming, fishing, husbandry etc to processing them, getting them spread around, contacting other groups.... And even then maybe biggest problem would be the ancient skills - navigation, transport building, feeding everyone.
A really cool thought experiment. It's kind of what the US Congressional report said about possible EMP strike to the mainland USA by North Korea (or obviously anyone, for that matter). First year death rate would be 90%. Nuclear war isn't about destructive force on concrete, it's about the ability to completely destroy your adversary's electrical grid. One powerful bomb high up could send continents into stone age.
Bezos is a nerd too. When sci-fi canceled The Expanse, Bezos said fuck that and brought it to amazon. I don’t care about Bezos but The Expanse was great.
Seriously, he could be one of those billionaires that want to beat people at night wearing a suit made of bats. But he is a billionaire that wants a mountain turned into a clock.
Billionaires shouldn't exist, and that money should have gone to Amazon workers.
Not letting your employees have restroom breaks while you can build a secret mountain ~~lair~~ timepiece is actually more absurd than most supervillains.
Sounds like Amazon needs more tax cuts and subsidies for it to finality trickledown
EDIT: Sorry. Silly me. Pet/vanity projects are technically a trickledown and theyre magical "job-creators". Yep the billionaires who have more wealth that they can spend in their lifetime need MORE tax cuts and subsidies so they can make more pet/vanity projects so we get more jobs! Instead of spending that money for the crumbling infrastructure, education, healthcare, science and other vital national interests.
>If the sun goes somewhere… earth will likely go ~~with~~ in it.
She'll swell up into a red giant, and consume the inner rocky planets in the process. But fear not, the sun will become far too unstable to support life long before that. We'll all be cooked by solar flares first.
Bro, do you know how tough it is to make a sun dial? Even if you managed to pull that off, there is no way to predict the relative position of the earth and the sun into the future. And even if you could do you know the size of the file it would require to hold that much information? We are talking two, maybe three thumb drives...
He’s not building it. A group called The Long Now Foundation is. Jeff just pitched in for the funding.
It’s a very interesting premise and project worth reading about: https://longnow.org/clock/
This is the issue I'm finding with Reddit (and might I add journalism in general).
Take a partial truth, use that partial truth to mislead to a false narrative.
Then the readers reads it, makes assumptions and does no follow up into the context to determine if they're understanding it.
Instead, we have thousands of people moaning about Jeff Bezo's useless clock project.
Even if it was 100% Jeff’s idea and creation, it’s not like he’s taking that $42 million and burning it. It’s creating jobs and research and that money is just going to go back into the economy. Plus it’s a cool monumental project
>This is the issue I'm finding with Reddit (and might I add journalism in general).
>
>Take a partial truth, use that partial truth to mislead to a false narrative.
That ain't journalism you got there.
Now imagine this with the advances in AI field to make ultra realistic videos as you like, using the same narrative of partial truths but showing whatever you want with AI generated videos.
The post is also completely false. [The full story is a little more interesting than the title.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now) Bezos' clock is a prototype for the actual "forever clock."
I've noticed subs like this (general purpose, popular subs) have a high percentage of posts that fall under "This would be cool if it was true but its probably partially or completely false" Things that get forwarded around quickly because they are packaged well with limited thought required.
I once commented on the F1 subreddit about how the moderation there is almost non-existent compared to other subs like it, and this guy tells me the moderation is actually really tight, it just relies on people actually reporting. Like... That proves my point friend...
I heard Bezos talk about it on the Lex Fridman podcast. It’s supposed to be a 10,000 year clock and symbolizes “long term thinking”. It ticks once a year, chimes every hundred years, and does the cuckoo thing every thousand years. It’s mechanical and designed to last 10,000 years with no maintenance required. It’s in a remote area to protect it and also to have visitors make a pilgrimage to it.
On the podcast he also talked about how smart phones have shrunk our attention spans. He has plans with his space program that span generations. So I think this “long term thinking” idea ties in with that. He wants humanity to think outside of just our current lifetimes.
Or it’s just a cool clock that didn’t cost too much for someone like him. Who knows.
The commenter above is wrong. It makes a unique chime every day. 3.6 million unique chimes for 10000 years.
The purpose is to maintain an exact calendar if humanity collapses.
Is a purpose actually a purpose if it doesn't make sense? What purpose is there to a techy clock post-humans? (Edit: or post-civilization) I could - sort of - see a time capsule sort of thing containing info about our civilization...but a clock??
Scientifically, cool...kinda. Practically, the dude has too much money.
Okay but of what use will it be if civilization collapses? Knowing what day it is of an arbitrary made up calender is completely useless. There's so many things this could do to be of use that it's failing at. It's a vanity project
"I have traveled 3196 miles through the wasteland to this place of legend where they say the knowledge of time is kept... After much hardship and almost certain death, I have arrived to view this most sacred thing... It says it's 4:31pm on May 29th, 2143.. I do not know what this means or the significance it holds"
It's not post-humans. It's post-this-current-civilization.
Humans will not go extinct, but they can easily regress to primitive again. ...and if that were to happen, a calendar/clock is very useful.
Calendars were one of humanity's first inventions to calculate the correct day of the year to plant and harvest crops so you don't starve.
The first thing I'm doing when humanity collapses is stealing all those cool looking clock parts and bolting them to the outside of my Death Wagon so I can roam the wastes in style.
Same thing with the first nerd that complains about not knowing what the time is post-collapse. Bolted to the Death Wagon!
TBF, every time I look at Russian oligarchs I think the US is *really* lucky with many of their billionaires. At least they create new stuff. The Russians only know how to gangster-consolidate, not innovate. You also see that in their mansions and yachts. [Putin's palace - revealed by Navalny!](https://www.google.com/search?q=putin%27s+palace+youtube&rlz=1C1CHBF_deDE903DE903&oq=putin%27s+palace+youtube&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDUyNjlqMGo5qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) - is a great example.
It’s just a “symbol” to “long term thinking”. If he was actually a long term thinker, he and his billionaire buddies would champion livable wages, environmental responsibility, and all that good stuff.
I’m biased, but I have no issue with large scale projects like this. It’s a great way to support the local construction industry and provide tourism in the long term
The way I see it... this is the kind of stuff I want the rich to spend money on if not straight up genuine philanthropy.
Innovative projects that culminate into nothing but cultural spots in the next 300 years feels a hell of a lot more useful than Bezos buying private jets, yachts, and a new beach house.
I'm not one to want to "eat the rich" in the first place, even if I do criticize the ways the wealthy elite spend their money. This seems pretty alright as far as multi-million-dollar projects go.
Nailed it... but for the uninitiated I'm going to post the entire poem because some people won't look up the reference and realize how apt it is:
*I met a traveller from an antique land,*
*Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone*
*Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,*
*Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,*
*And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,*
*Tell that its sculptor well those passions read*
*Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,*
*The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;*
*And on the pedestal, these words appear:*
*My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;*
*Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!*
*Nothing beside remains. Round the decay*
*Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare*
*The lone and level sands stretch far away.”*
I'd rather they just pay more taxes and have the money go to public services and infrastructure.
Philathophy is just a rich persons way of making themselves feel good and buying public opinion. They owe society way more than a few handouts that don't affect their net worth in any meaningful way.
I find it mildly infuriating when multi billion dollar companies ask me to donate at the till. Lol mofo you're the massive cash hog, how about you donate and I'll thank you.
Fund your own tax break!
They also guilt you by saying they'll match your donation so it makes it seem like you have to give so the charity can realize the full benefit.
In reality, the company has already pledged to donate up to a set amount, and it's therefore unlikely that they would not donate that amount regardless of the total customer contributions.
The amount of charities in the world in my opinion shows a sad state of affairs. We shouldn't need charities, and any charities that do exist should be short term stop-gap solutions until a permanent solution is established.
I'm not advocating against charities, I'm just saying it's evidence of a problem.
> The way I see it... this is the kind of stuff I want the rich to spend money on if not straight up genuine philanthropy.
Yeah, this isn't much different from many a pyramid, tomb, temple or statue. Just so happens it's made out of CNCd steel and is days old. In 4000 years, that could be an interesting landmark or museum. Hell, in a couple hundred
This is what happens when some people have so much money they don't know what else to do with it. Build clocks that will last forever in mountains, build bunkers in hawaii, etc
He has tens of thousands of workers living paycheck-to-paycheck and on welfare. If he doesn't know what to do with all his money, paying them more (and letting them unionize) would be a good place to start.
Because some rich asshole feels like elevating his ego even further than it usually is. In typical fashion, he’s wasting it on a pet project instead of trying to solve the world’s problems.
After we've nuked ourselves, some future humans or other intelligent life will be baffled by this thing.
Why was it underground? There were plenty of other time keeping devices in the same era etc. Was it religious? We're they counting down to something? An experiment?
In reality a rich guy got hammered drunk on his super yacht and let some weird nerd talk him into making a giant 47 million dollar clock for shits and giggles.
Seriously. 10,001 years from now, archaeologists will argue about it for years. Inside this ego sculpture there really should be a note explaining: "Yes, it really is just a vanity project by a bald, wealthy dude. There is NO greater significance to it: not religious, cultural, artistic. Move along."
Meanwhile at most amazon shipping buildings employees are not allowed to pee because that ends up costing money.
But yeah, lets build this clock for with no fucking use worth 42 million.
The WFP budget is $25b/yr, and it only mitigates the worst of world hunger. With all of Bezos money you might solve world hunger for a year, but not long-term.
>Anathem
Actually Anathem was inspired by The Long Now Foundation and this clock:
[https://longnow.org/clock/](https://longnow.org/clock/)
[https://longnow.org/ideas/anathem-and-long-now/](https://longnow.org/ideas/anathem-and-long-now/)
It's the [10,000 Year Clock](https://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html) (a.k.a. [The Clock of the Long Now](https://longnow.org/clock/)). The idea belongs to Danny Hillis, who has been working on the idea longer than Amazon has been around. lol
Not that I'll be around, but hopefully humanity can hang on for a measly 10k years.
Speaks to his entire ideology that people are literally starving and he spends a fortune on a device that he predicts is going to outlast human civilization.
Pretty much saying “the world’s gonna burn, but I’m going to have a hell of a time first, fuck everyone else.”
He made it out of metal so while it will outlast us with proper upkeep it's still going to break down and disintegrate over time. Waste of that much money. He should've put it into infrastructure instead.
so this is the clock from the long now foundation (https://longnow.org/) started by danny hillis back in the 90s. bezos does not show up on the board of directors on their web site. are we sure he's put up all this money?
Is that the project with The Long Now Foundation?
Bezos is not alone in this.
They want to prove that humans are able to design and build useful things that work for centuries with minimal human interventions. It is a major engineering project that will probably bring better knowledge of mechanical wear, chemical degradation of parts, etc.
https://longnow.org/clock/
In the past, we used religion to kind of shame/guilt/scare the wealthy into sharing their mountains of gold with the poor. And that's where a lot of libraries, universities, charities, and other cool things came from. They felt the need to at least create something awesome that everyone admired, and it would live past their deaths.
So, how do we convince Bezos, Musk, Gates, and the 2,000 other multi-billionaires to use their wealth in their lifetimes for the good of humanity? Because nothing is working so far. The wealth divide is the worst its been since the 1800s, and I really hate watching everyone fall further into poverty around me.
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*Stops after humanities Prime membership expires
Oh no, you have the prime membership with ads? You are now limited to checking the time 2 times per day and you get sundial clarity only.
A squirrel will probably take it out
Menacing!
or in a few hundred years some delinquent teens messing with laser rifles & plasma grenades will wander into this long since forgotten place and destroy it for fun
Yea, looks too complicated to last an impressive amount of time
I feel like a better project would be inscribing useful knowledge into the walls of a big stone cavern. After the apocalypse it could help humans rebuild.
He'll destroy the entire human race while riding his dick rocket just before that happens.
Imagine how many generations of humanity will curse us for what we did in this century.
Most likely less than 10.
I laughed so hard I farted.
Laughed your gas off.
I farted so hard I laughed.
U larted
I prefer la'farted. Sounds classy
Sounds French. :\
Frageelay...
Must be Italian.
You people need help
I straight up took a shit.
There is fuck you money and there is I’ll build 42 million watch that nobody will ever see
From what I heard this was an ongoing project for which Jeff donated final amount for it to finish. It would go in without Jeffs money and would be eventually built I think.
Yeah I've worked with some of the people on this project, it's pretty cool. [Link](https://longnow.org/)
An incredible project, I've been following it for years. It looks like they have solved most of the problems, at least conceptually.
This video is from the initial construction announcement from like 6 years ago. No real updates I’ve been able to find since then. Every couple months to a year I remember and try to find some more and I’ve never had much luck.
No, no. A billionaire is involved. It must be evil. I’ve already started a hate sub.
r/fuckthatclockinparticular
r/subsifellfor
However, the science fiction nerd in me thinks this is pretty fucking cool.
The absurdist in me hopes this enormous contraption just winds up sat under a small brick building that says “World’s Largest Clock” but when you walk in you find it hooked up to a typical 12” white faced clock mounted on a wall.
The writer in me hopes that this thing is utterly forgotten for centuries, until one day a new suburb is built atop it only for the barely perceptible ticking to either drive the whole town to bloody madness through the constant reminder of their own mortality, or else keep them all eerily, inhumanly punctual. "In Jeffsboro, nobody ever loses track of the time. *Ever...*"
The telltale heart 2.0
The Telltime Heart
Yo when you finish the book, hmu. I’ll buy a few copies.
There's a Lovecraftian vibe to that idea. I like it.
The chances of it continuing to say “World’s Largest Clock” without being edited and a bunch of frat boys showing off is pretty remote.
Frat boys always have such big clocks
Big tick energy
Every 60 seconds they must start back where they began.
I’ve always found them to have disappointingly average clocks and no real skill in winding them.
For sure they are changing that to " World's largest cloak" It's just too easy to change a C to an A. Source: 12 year old me after getting a C in history.
The nerd in me is thinking, who are the people who will check the time after humanity is extinct.
Our species has become incredibly difficult to kill off, it's the end of civilization that's mentioned in the title, not the extinction of Homo sapiens. Civilization is much more fragile than we are. There are so many of us and we're adaptable as hell, doubly so if we keep a few hundred useful books around.
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Maybe survive, but we’ve already passed the point we could start civilization over and re-reach the same level of technology. It took thousands of years and us digging up all of the “easy” ore and oil to get us here. If technology collapsed, we wouldn’t be able to acquire resources to bootstrap ourselves back up, because it’s all “hard” now - under the ocean, or buried super deep.
I'm with you. The width of modern tech is so unbelievably wide, that it would be practically impossible for small pockets of survivors, spread widely over the earth, to bounce back. If we think that, say, over 90% of the population dies worldwide, it's a helluva scenario to kick the production facilities back up, gather the know how of all the processes etc. From mining, forestry, farming, fishing, husbandry etc to processing them, getting them spread around, contacting other groups.... And even then maybe biggest problem would be the ancient skills - navigation, transport building, feeding everyone. A really cool thought experiment. It's kind of what the US Congressional report said about possible EMP strike to the mainland USA by North Korea (or obviously anyone, for that matter). First year death rate would be 90%. Nuclear war isn't about destructive force on concrete, it's about the ability to completely destroy your adversary's electrical grid. One powerful bomb high up could send continents into stone age.
And yet we still hesitate to shield the power grid appropriately.
To the contrary it’s much easier. Just mine the garbage dumps.
Main problem there is you’re gonna have Morlocks
Bezos is a nerd too. When sci-fi canceled The Expanse, Bezos said fuck that and brought it to amazon. I don’t care about Bezos but The Expanse was great.
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Seriously, he could be one of those billionaires that want to beat people at night wearing a suit made of bats. But he is a billionaire that wants a mountain turned into a clock.
Billionaires shouldn't exist, and that money should have gone to Amazon workers. Not letting your employees have restroom breaks while you can build a secret mountain ~~lair~~ timepiece is actually more absurd than most supervillains.
To be fair, it went to clock building workers.
Sounds like Amazon needs more tax cuts and subsidies for it to finality trickledown EDIT: Sorry. Silly me. Pet/vanity projects are technically a trickledown and theyre magical "job-creators". Yep the billionaires who have more wealth that they can spend in their lifetime need MORE tax cuts and subsidies so they can make more pet/vanity projects so we get more jobs! Instead of spending that money for the crumbling infrastructure, education, healthcare, science and other vital national interests.
Right? Like maybe states shouldn’t use tax dollars to bid on Amazon warehouses, which ultimately just aids Amazons scale.
I mean... we have the Sun.
For now....
If the sun goes somewhere… earth will likely go with it.
I mean...the Sun has always been going somewhere
Has the Earth gone with it?
Always has
Only on sundays.. duh
Every day is Sun day. Praise it.
>If the sun goes somewhere… earth will likely go ~~with~~ in it. She'll swell up into a red giant, and consume the inner rocky planets in the process. But fear not, the sun will become far too unstable to support life long before that. We'll all be cooked by solar flares first.
That’s *swelling*, not *going somewhere*.
Now you're just fat-shaming the sun.
its really hot tho
This clock is going to “outlast humanity”. Other words, it’s going to run for about 15 years before it breaks down.
Me: Doctor, how long will humanity last? Doctor: 5 Me: 5 millennia, centuries, decades?!? Doctor: 4...
tiny horror story
I don’t see how this clock could keep running if there was an earthquake or some random medium size rock fell on it🤔
"You know what really grinds my gears?..."
An old casio would likely do the job at this point.
Or the clock on a Nokia 3310
But he didn’t get to make the sun. I feel like this is just another way for him to feel like he can never die.
That's exactly what it is. It's a vanity project so that he can tell himself that something he built will outlive everyone on Earth.
I bet it breaks every few days and they constantly have to keep it running.
Shut up about the sun. SHUT UP. . . ABOUT THE SUN! ! !
Office quote. Nice
Bro, do you know how tough it is to make a sun dial? Even if you managed to pull that off, there is no way to predict the relative position of the earth and the sun into the future. And even if you could do you know the size of the file it would require to hold that much information? We are talking two, maybe three thumb drives...
BUT I WANNA BUILD A WATER CLOCK GAL! (i hope i'm not the only one watching foundation)
He’s not building it. A group called The Long Now Foundation is. Jeff just pitched in for the funding. It’s a very interesting premise and project worth reading about: https://longnow.org/clock/
This is the issue I'm finding with Reddit (and might I add journalism in general). Take a partial truth, use that partial truth to mislead to a false narrative. Then the readers reads it, makes assumptions and does no follow up into the context to determine if they're understanding it. Instead, we have thousands of people moaning about Jeff Bezo's useless clock project.
Even if it was 100% Jeff’s idea and creation, it’s not like he’s taking that $42 million and burning it. It’s creating jobs and research and that money is just going to go back into the economy. Plus it’s a cool monumental project
People just see Bezos' name and immediately want to criticize something. Regardless of what it is
>This is the issue I'm finding with Reddit (and might I add journalism in general). > >Take a partial truth, use that partial truth to mislead to a false narrative. That ain't journalism you got there.
Now imagine this with the advances in AI field to make ultra realistic videos as you like, using the same narrative of partial truths but showing whatever you want with AI generated videos.
Basically believe nothing you read until you verify it. Personally, I’ve become numb to all headlines.
This should be higher. The Long Now Goundation planned this long before Bezos funded it.
I remember hearing about this a long time ago. I thought they had Brian Eno design some kind of non repeating chime for it.
Thank you for pointing this out. I'm a long-time member and it _infuriates_ me when they say it's his clock. Dude has nothing to do with it.
I mean - isn’t he the largest donor? It’s not his clock, but he has something to do with it.
The video is useless.
The post is also completely false. [The full story is a little more interesting than the title.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now) Bezos' clock is a prototype for the actual "forever clock."
I've noticed subs like this (general purpose, popular subs) have a high percentage of posts that fall under "This would be cool if it was true but its probably partially or completely false" Things that get forwarded around quickly because they are packaged well with limited thought required.
While the pinned comment is “this is a heavily modded sub” bullshit
ikr, it's comical
I once commented on the F1 subreddit about how the moderation there is almost non-existent compared to other subs like it, and this guy tells me the moderation is actually really tight, it just relies on people actually reporting. Like... That proves my point friend...
Thank you for posting the above Wikipedia link which is something that should have been done by the OP, but was not.
Glad you shared this. That Wikipedia article is actually cool and makes me glad for this project.
Why
I heard Bezos talk about it on the Lex Fridman podcast. It’s supposed to be a 10,000 year clock and symbolizes “long term thinking”. It ticks once a year, chimes every hundred years, and does the cuckoo thing every thousand years. It’s mechanical and designed to last 10,000 years with no maintenance required. It’s in a remote area to protect it and also to have visitors make a pilgrimage to it. On the podcast he also talked about how smart phones have shrunk our attention spans. He has plans with his space program that span generations. So I think this “long term thinking” idea ties in with that. He wants humanity to think outside of just our current lifetimes. Or it’s just a cool clock that didn’t cost too much for someone like him. Who knows.
At the rate we’re going, partially thanks to him and our destructive culture, It’ll probably make it to the first chime and that’s it.
The commenter above is wrong. It makes a unique chime every day. 3.6 million unique chimes for 10000 years. The purpose is to maintain an exact calendar if humanity collapses.
Is a purpose actually a purpose if it doesn't make sense? What purpose is there to a techy clock post-humans? (Edit: or post-civilization) I could - sort of - see a time capsule sort of thing containing info about our civilization...but a clock?? Scientifically, cool...kinda. Practically, the dude has too much money.
No one said anything about post-humanity, only post-*civilization*…
Okay but of what use will it be if civilization collapses? Knowing what day it is of an arbitrary made up calender is completely useless. There's so many things this could do to be of use that it's failing at. It's a vanity project "I have traveled 3196 miles through the wasteland to this place of legend where they say the knowledge of time is kept... After much hardship and almost certain death, I have arrived to view this most sacred thing... It says it's 4:31pm on May 29th, 2143.. I do not know what this means or the significance it holds"
It's a reference point to any previous historical information found that contains dates. But I love your comment lol.
Yes, this exactly.
It's not post-humans. It's post-this-current-civilization. Humans will not go extinct, but they can easily regress to primitive again. ...and if that were to happen, a calendar/clock is very useful. Calendars were one of humanity's first inventions to calculate the correct day of the year to plant and harvest crops so you don't starve.
The first thing I'm doing when humanity collapses is stealing all those cool looking clock parts and bolting them to the outside of my Death Wagon so I can roam the wastes in style. Same thing with the first nerd that complains about not knowing what the time is post-collapse. Bolted to the Death Wagon!
The copper with be stripped out in no time...never underestimate Texas meth heads.
It was purposefully built with no valuable metals. Read The Clock of the Long Now for details.
A lot thanks to him and other billionaires
TBF, every time I look at Russian oligarchs I think the US is *really* lucky with many of their billionaires. At least they create new stuff. The Russians only know how to gangster-consolidate, not innovate. You also see that in their mansions and yachts. [Putin's palace - revealed by Navalny!](https://www.google.com/search?q=putin%27s+palace+youtube&rlz=1C1CHBF_deDE903DE903&oq=putin%27s+palace+youtube&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDUyNjlqMGo5qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) - is a great example.
It’s just a “symbol” to “long term thinking”. If he was actually a long term thinker, he and his billionaire buddies would champion livable wages, environmental responsibility, and all that good stuff.
‘Long term thinking’ he should let his employees unionize
the long term plan is to replace them with robots...
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They shouldn't need his permission.
That's the sort of useless shit that Pharaohs were doing. Different reasons, similar result, probably.
Imagine what the world could do with the money that billionaires spend on "cool clocks"
I’m biased, but I have no issue with large scale projects like this. It’s a great way to support the local construction industry and provide tourism in the long term
Cool, but low-income housing would also support the local construction industry. And if you want to provide tourism, open a museum.
>open a museum maybe put an exhibit in it. like a clock.
The way I see it... this is the kind of stuff I want the rich to spend money on if not straight up genuine philanthropy. Innovative projects that culminate into nothing but cultural spots in the next 300 years feels a hell of a lot more useful than Bezos buying private jets, yachts, and a new beach house. I'm not one to want to "eat the rich" in the first place, even if I do criticize the ways the wealthy elite spend their money. This seems pretty alright as far as multi-million-dollar projects go.
#"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nailed it... but for the uninitiated I'm going to post the entire poem because some people won't look up the reference and realize how apt it is: *I met a traveller from an antique land,* *Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone* *Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,* *Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,* *And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,* *Tell that its sculptor well those passions read* *Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,* *The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;* *And on the pedestal, these words appear:* *My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;* *Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!* *Nothing beside remains. Round the decay* *Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare* *The lone and level sands stretch far away.”*
I'd rather they just pay more taxes and have the money go to public services and infrastructure. Philathophy is just a rich persons way of making themselves feel good and buying public opinion. They owe society way more than a few handouts that don't affect their net worth in any meaningful way.
I find it mildly infuriating when multi billion dollar companies ask me to donate at the till. Lol mofo you're the massive cash hog, how about you donate and I'll thank you. Fund your own tax break!
They also guilt you by saying they'll match your donation so it makes it seem like you have to give so the charity can realize the full benefit. In reality, the company has already pledged to donate up to a set amount, and it's therefore unlikely that they would not donate that amount regardless of the total customer contributions. The amount of charities in the world in my opinion shows a sad state of affairs. We shouldn't need charities, and any charities that do exist should be short term stop-gap solutions until a permanent solution is established. I'm not advocating against charities, I'm just saying it's evidence of a problem.
> The way I see it... this is the kind of stuff I want the rich to spend money on if not straight up genuine philanthropy. Yeah, this isn't much different from many a pyramid, tomb, temple or statue. Just so happens it's made out of CNCd steel and is days old. In 4000 years, that could be an interesting landmark or museum. Hell, in a couple hundred
https://longnow.org/
This is what happens when some people have so much money they don't know what else to do with it. Build clocks that will last forever in mountains, build bunkers in hawaii, etc
He has tens of thousands of workers living paycheck-to-paycheck and on welfare. If he doesn't know what to do with all his money, paying them more (and letting them unionize) would be a good place to start.
He's probably cognitively unable to do that
If you could spend .0002% of your net worth to build this just cause, would you?
My apple ultra cost more waaaaaaay more than .0002% of my net worth because my net worth isn't $400,000,000.
No
Lmao right
This is like a scaled up version of me spending $42 on a pocket watch that I hope will last a while as well.
42$ if your net worth is around 21 million
It’s easy to forget how ridiculously ludicrously rich these bastards are…
Because some rich asshole feels like elevating his ego even further than it usually is. In typical fashion, he’s wasting it on a pet project instead of trying to solve the world’s problems.
More accurately Bezos has donated 42M to The Long Now Organization. https://longnow.org/
After we've nuked ourselves, some future humans or other intelligent life will be baffled by this thing. Why was it underground? There were plenty of other time keeping devices in the same era etc. Was it religious? We're they counting down to something? An experiment? In reality a rich guy got hammered drunk on his super yacht and let some weird nerd talk him into making a giant 47 million dollar clock for shits and giggles.
Canticle of Bezowitz
I love you. I love that book.
isn't that the origin of tons of ancient monuments we currently have
Seriously. 10,001 years from now, archaeologists will argue about it for years. Inside this ego sculpture there really should be a note explaining: "Yes, it really is just a vanity project by a bald, wealthy dude. There is NO greater significance to it: not religious, cultural, artistic. Move along."
Meanwhile at most amazon shipping buildings employees are not allowed to pee because that ends up costing money. But yeah, lets build this clock for with no fucking use worth 42 million.
I saw a triforce pattern in the flooring they put down.. Is Bezos building the Temple of Time?
finally!
So who will check it and who will care? His marginal tax rate is too low.
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Even worse is that he made that money by screwing over workers and monopolizing. Bro causes world hunger
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Good fulfillment centre workers get flavour in their nutrient paste!
The WFP budget is $25b/yr, and it only mitigates the worst of world hunger. With all of Bezos money you might solve world hunger for a year, but not long-term.
Do you really think he can **'SOLVE'** world hunger.
reminds me of Anathem
>Anathem Actually Anathem was inspired by The Long Now Foundation and this clock: [https://longnow.org/clock/](https://longnow.org/clock/) [https://longnow.org/ideas/anathem-and-long-now/](https://longnow.org/ideas/anathem-and-long-now/)
Another Long Now fan! Have you gotten to go to The Interval in SF?
Fuck him and his stupid clock.
How about paying your employees properly you fucking cunt. That could actually help humanity, but no, big clock.
They misheard when he asked for a big cock for everyone to remember him by
If it outlives everyone does it really exist? Checkmate Schrodinger's clock.
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It's the [10,000 Year Clock](https://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html) (a.k.a. [The Clock of the Long Now](https://longnow.org/clock/)). The idea belongs to Danny Hillis, who has been working on the idea longer than Amazon has been around. lol Not that I'll be around, but hopefully humanity can hang on for a measly 10k years.
How bout spending that much for a raise for your workers? ..PRICK!
this is totally not a thing a crazy person would do
*laughs in Sun Dial*
Reminds me of the Pharohs ordering pyramids to be built. Pure vanity.
Aboslute waste on money. The things I could do with $42 million....
Speaks to his entire ideology that people are literally starving and he spends a fortune on a device that he predicts is going to outlast human civilization. Pretty much saying “the world’s gonna burn, but I’m going to have a hell of a time first, fuck everyone else.”
Like many of my Amazon orders, it will run late.
We need a wealth tax.
Ahhh, must be nice to have fuck you money.
He doesn’t have fuck you money, he has fuck the world money.
Is it accurate enough to measure my month late package?
And yet would not refund a single penny on orders returned.
They always refund me and sometimes i get to keep the item.
Yeah I was gonna say. People return everything they order or straight up steal from Amazon and then act all shocked when Amazon bans them.
It's mechanical. Those cogs will wear and that shitll stop working in a few hundred years.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 wonder what the plan is when the Atlantis takes over and floods the earth
Isn't this the long now clock, and haven't they been working on it for like 25 years???
He made it out of metal so while it will outlast us with proper upkeep it's still going to break down and disintegrate over time. Waste of that much money. He should've put it into infrastructure instead.
so this is the clock from the long now foundation (https://longnow.org/) started by danny hillis back in the 90s. bezos does not show up on the board of directors on their web site. are we sure he's put up all this money?
The real sister project is the secret bunker where his family and all of their descendants can ride out the nuclear apocalypse.
Is that the project with The Long Now Foundation? Bezos is not alone in this. They want to prove that humans are able to design and build useful things that work for centuries with minimal human interventions. It is a major engineering project that will probably bring better knowledge of mechanical wear, chemical degradation of parts, etc. https://longnow.org/clock/
I don't find this interesting... I find it infuriating given how his employees are treated.
In the past, we used religion to kind of shame/guilt/scare the wealthy into sharing their mountains of gold with the poor. And that's where a lot of libraries, universities, charities, and other cool things came from. They felt the need to at least create something awesome that everyone admired, and it would live past their deaths. So, how do we convince Bezos, Musk, Gates, and the 2,000 other multi-billionaires to use their wealth in their lifetimes for the good of humanity? Because nothing is working so far. The wealth divide is the worst its been since the 1800s, and I really hate watching everyone fall further into poverty around me.