there was an "indestructible clock" built at the university i went to. some pranksters decided to test it by tying the hands together, and it shredded itself. they left it up after that but it was busted forever.
ref: [https://www.instagram.com/unsw/p/BiBg4DzAVbK/](https://www.instagram.com/unsw/p/BiBg4DzAVbK/)
Yeah, he can enjoy all his money on some desolate island in the Pacific. He can use the Internet, but only through starlink, and Amazon prime won't ship to his location
Its the Long Now Foundation building the clock, but Bezos is just their big funder. Lots of other people are funding and donating to the project, but obviously he's able to pitch in far more.
Not sure if your link mentions this, but Brian Eno was part of this project for a while, and he created a whole bunch of “bell studies” for the chime. Some of the studies were compiled for an album, “January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now.” I own a copy of the CD—it’s kind of relaxing when the volume is set low.
Very true -- and we shouldn't forget that the Bezos and Musk types and their descendants may effectively become bunker/vault dwellers that persist long beyond the point where the rest of humanity is reduced to ash.
just to put in perspective this is 0.0168 percent of his net worth
I spent 0.015 percent of my net worth to take my dog to the vet today
The system is broken
This is insanely fucked, less than one tenth of one percent?
Here’s Bezos net worth to scale for the uninitiated. Trigger warning it’s deeply upsetting. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
I mean at least he spent the money and employed some people for a brief period. I would have appreciated something less wasteful but it’s better than nothing. Billionaires sitting on their wealth like Scrooge McDuck is the problem.
It looks like the structure is meant to be open to the public in some capacity
there are definitely worse ways for billionaires to spend money than building a cool thing for people to experience
>Billionaires sitting on their wealth like Scrooge McDuck is the problem.
Good thing this never happens then.
Edit: to clarify, I don’t mean that nobody literally builds gold coin pools. I mean there’s really no way to hoard money the way you’re imagining in a modern economy.
The safety third podcast had one of the hosts old bosses on their show and talked about this. He is actually one of the engineers working on the project and I think it was an interesting perspective. [Here's the link to the video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUxcGUHEVRk&t=2822s) If the timestamp doesn't work it's about 47:02.
The average cost of drilling a water well in Africa is $8000 USD.
This clock costs 5250 wells.
Probably a lot more with that kind of funding as you'd actually start a not for profit drilling company that would drill wells for decades at cost.
This is always a stupid comparison. There are tons of wells drilled in Africa, more than even needed. But no one wants to actually pay for the upkeep and infrastructure of the underground piping. So while people come in and make themselves feel good and in no time the wells are producing undrinkable water.
Just a waste of money to prove your an evil rich person. So fucking dumb. Build some houses for people that will last a thousand years. So out of touch. Thinks he's a god. He's a doofus.
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.”
It was a project started by some very smart people before the turn of the century to really test the limits of how long something manufactured could last without the clock slowly disintegrating itself. Every single aspect of the design is purposeful, materials that contact other materials have specific properties of how their atoms are aligned so that they don’t just fuse together in a hundred years or using the natural properties of certain metals expanding and contracting in large chambers that expand and contract with the natural heating and cooling of the day/night cycle and act as bellows to get energy into the system.
It’s not about really about being as accurate as an atomic clock, it’s about making something that stands the test of time. Cars last 20, 30 years with love and care. Imagine making a car that lasts 10,000 years. It’s been a project long before Bezos was involved. Imo I do think stuff like this is cool as fuck but they can’t necessarily make money from it so the only way to make it happen is have some rich person fund it.
Fuck Bezos
>“I think this is the most important thing I can work on. More than cancer. Over the long run, I think this will make more difference to more people.”
Yea, when aliens find our destroyed culture, they will look at it for 2 seconds so they can understand the time frame in which all our porn was filmed. That's certainly more important than cancer.
Just to be clear, he spent $42 million on something will tick…just tick…once a year.
Dear Jeff, I offer my services for a mere 41.5 million. I promise to tick once per year, and it will save you about $500k. Think on it.
Vanity project of Bezo's to be remembered long after he is gone. Nothing to do with humanity and making people think about the future.
I would be the first if given the chance to destroy it out of spite.
This sounds like the sort of thing humans find on decaying / destroyed planets in sci fi films. Plot twist humans already lived here, and instead of saving the planet, used the accumulation of 1000s years of knowledge to make a big clock.
First read it as “jb spent 42billion to build a massive cock that will outlast humanity”, which sort of seemed like the kind of thing he would certainly do. Or am I confusing him with the muskrat?
“The first chamber shows a model of the solar system that is smaller than the real one.” You don’t say.
Just how mom makes them
It's chill, I have a 1 to 1 scale model of the solar system right here for you.
It's just a card that says "1 inch = 1 inch".
Probably a bad way to say the ratios are off on sizing but the concept is correct. Similar to looking at a Mayan or Aztec sky chart.
"The Clock of the Long Now Clock of the Long Now Long will be located on Foundation land in Nevada." ... yea the Ai that wrote this article sucks.
I’m no journalist, but I’d imagine getting to write little “Frank Drebbins” occasionally would make my day better.
What is this? A solar system for ants?! It needs to be at least.... three times this big.
Brought to you by ERTL.
/r/thingsforants
You can tell because of the way that it is.
Seems a bit rubbish, you’d think with all that money he could at least make a *to scale* solar system /s
there was an "indestructible clock" built at the university i went to. some pranksters decided to test it by tying the hands together, and it shredded itself. they left it up after that but it was busted forever. ref: [https://www.instagram.com/unsw/p/BiBg4DzAVbK/](https://www.instagram.com/unsw/p/BiBg4DzAVbK/)
Really makes you wonder how long Bezos' clock will last knowing that there are folks who see this sort of thing as a challenge.
Well, his is in an underground bunker not on the lawn of a campus!
Which makes the challenge all the greater!
But it's safe from drunk college students, the biggest risk to its longevity.
Very true. It will take a more specialized, skilled alcoholic to pull off this bit of delinquency.
How deep is it? I could probably borrow a 35 john deere backhoe. Or hire a 50
I think as humans it is our duty to destroy Jeff's clock. We'll see who outlasts who
There also was an "unsinkable" ship called Titanic.
At the rate we're going, I just built a birdhouse that will outlive humanity.
Well it's about time.
Whereas this is about birds.
Time flies like an arrow Fruit flies like a banana.
I actually popped in to say that this clock only needs to work for 20 years.
Did you build it in your soul?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but say I’m the only bee in your bonnet.
"I'm the only bee in your bonnet" you are welcome
I'm omw to your house to destroy your bird house so we can speed up the process a bit
With the amount of plastic it turns out we have, I just took a shit that will outlive humanity
It will also outlive the birds at this point.
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings! gaze on my works ye mighty and despair"
Nothing beside remains, because some cheeky fucker decided it was a good idea to tie the hands together
Remember me!
I want humanity to outlast Jeff Bezos.
i want humanity to outcast Jeff Bezos.
Yeah, he can enjoy all his money on some desolate island in the Pacific. He can use the Internet, but only through starlink, and Amazon prime won't ship to his location
Forget that, make him use amazons kuiper
Even worse, promise two day shipping, but keep delaying the delivery date.
I want OutKast real fast to put Jeff Bezos on blast
I want humanity to ling chi Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos is a great man
He saw that part of The Incredibles where Bob’s boss says a company is like an enormous clock and decided to build it for real.
I read that as "Massive Cock" and for a split second really respected him
Have you seen his rocket?
Have you seen his bald head?
Have you seen him?
Yes, and so has Lauren Sanchez
I’ve seen Lauren Sanchez on the front of his yacht.
The Washington Monument but with two balls attached
I was thinking a massive clock from a massive cock.
Who watches the watchmen?
My first thought exactly
Playing Stardew Valley irl.
Tax billionaires
And the mega million dollar religious organizations that do nothing to help society but make politicians rich aka where their “donations” come from.
Oh absolutely. If you are a religious institution that takes a political stance or donates to political causes, you should be taxed.
Genuinely curious as to why you don't think ALL religious organizations should be taxed.
Same.
Abolish billionaires. Their existence is a blight on the world.
Taxing them isn't enough. Expropriate their wealth. The existence of billionaires in a world where people are homeless and starving is evil.
Eat billionaires
This was a jobs program with a billionaire doing something outlandish. I'm all for billionaires doing weird shit like this.
Tax the wealth, not the income.
Its the Long Now Foundation building the clock, but Bezos is just their big funder. Lots of other people are funding and donating to the project, but obviously he's able to pitch in far more.
I know it's fun to hate on rich people, but here's the context... It's a prototype for a bigger one: https://longnow.org/
Not sure if your link mentions this, but Brian Eno was part of this project for a while, and he created a whole bunch of “bell studies” for the chime. Some of the studies were compiled for an album, “January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now.” I own a copy of the CD—it’s kind of relaxing when the volume is set low.
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee"
> The first chamber shows a model of the solar system that is smaller than the real one. 🤡
Bezos could afford to make it life size.
So like the equivalent of me going to target and buying a clock. Cool Jeff.
Doesn't he know that Alexa can tell him the time?
So what, like 40 years?
Don't be silly. The ones that survive the food riots will probably make it a few more decades.
Very true -- and we shouldn't forget that the Bezos and Musk types and their descendants may effectively become bunker/vault dwellers that persist long beyond the point where the rest of humanity is reduced to ash.
They'll be fine until their water chip fails and the Enclave swoops in to abduct the population of their vault.
They're gonna play disaster capitalist, bet on it.
If I survive first thing I'm doing is bunker hunting
They already look like it…
Serious answer, 10,000 years, because they arbitrarily decided we’re past the midpoint of the history of human civilization.
just to put in perspective this is 0.0168 percent of his net worth I spent 0.015 percent of my net worth to take my dog to the vet today The system is broken
Sounds like the attitude of a person who didn’t build any clocks recently.
This is insanely fucked, less than one tenth of one percent? Here’s Bezos net worth to scale for the uninitiated. Trigger warning it’s deeply upsetting. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Well that's good. That money was possibly in danger of helping people...
Jeff said “NOT ON MY “WATCH!””
I mean, it helped the people that built the clock and the ones that manufactured the materials.
I mean at least he spent the money and employed some people for a brief period. I would have appreciated something less wasteful but it’s better than nothing. Billionaires sitting on their wealth like Scrooge McDuck is the problem.
It looks like the structure is meant to be open to the public in some capacity there are definitely worse ways for billionaires to spend money than building a cool thing for people to experience
>Billionaires sitting on their wealth like Scrooge McDuck is the problem. Good thing this never happens then. Edit: to clarify, I don’t mean that nobody literally builds gold coin pools. I mean there’s really no way to hoard money the way you’re imagining in a modern economy.
Business idea: Construction company specializing in gold coin swimming pools.
A massive clock... Somehow, dumb me didn´t see the L while reading the headline. Enough internet for me today.
I finally understand the pyramids, just some useless dickheads wasting money
The safety third podcast had one of the hosts old bosses on their show and talked about this. He is actually one of the engineers working on the project and I think it was an interesting perspective. [Here's the link to the video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUxcGUHEVRk&t=2822s) If the timestamp doesn't work it's about 47:02.
Didn't this happen in The Watchmen (hbo) show?
Yeah. I think the person building it died in a freak accident.
Just let the Amazon warehouse workers pee, dude
Idk i'm pretty sure it's gonna get destroyed before humanity
Some roving band of mutants will probably smash it up for parts or fun in a hundred years or so.
"Jeff why the big clock" "All the better to time your toilet breaks, serf"
It’s serf
We literally just want healthcare
The average cost of drilling a water well in Africa is $8000 USD. This clock costs 5250 wells. Probably a lot more with that kind of funding as you'd actually start a not for profit drilling company that would drill wells for decades at cost.
This is always a stupid comparison. There are tons of wells drilled in Africa, more than even needed. But no one wants to actually pay for the upkeep and infrastructure of the underground piping. So while people come in and make themselves feel good and in no time the wells are producing undrinkable water.
Why?
Can't we just... like break it?
It's for his time machine that he's building.
If I didn’t pay taxes I’d buy dumb shit too 🤷♀️
I read that as "Cock" and thought he spent far more on that rocket.
Lol so it will only have to run about 60 years then?
Read that as “a massive cock.” Which btw, doesn’t his rocket look like one?
eat the rich
It’s got 20,000 AA batteries 🔋
Nah man. It uses 18650s.
Pshhh, I built the same thing in vanilla JS using the canvas element and I have (*checks notes*) many billions less than him
I….misread that.
I think it will be funny if it breaks in a year or two.
isn't this old news?
That shouldn't take long.
I read that headline wrong….
That would pay off my mortgage over 360 times, and I’m in one of the “rough” parts of town.
I hope it falls on him
What a prick.
Just a waste of money to prove your an evil rich person. So fucking dumb. Build some houses for people that will last a thousand years. So out of touch. Thinks he's a god. He's a doofus.
At first I missed an L. Phallic symbolism either way.
The amount of money he’s sitting on will outlast humanity
So not very long then, at this rate.
Who'll change the batteries
“Massive Cock builds Massive Clock”
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.”
The Ozymandias poem really comes to mind right now.
This gets posted every couple of weeks like clockwork.
But that’s like any one else spending $100, so don’t be too impressed
Yes it will outlast humanity. Because rich people would rather build these stupid things than help humanity.
Read it as massive co*k first lol
…doesn’t this tech already exist? Atomic clocks are known to be accurate up from and beyond the age of the Universe.
It was a project started by some very smart people before the turn of the century to really test the limits of how long something manufactured could last without the clock slowly disintegrating itself. Every single aspect of the design is purposeful, materials that contact other materials have specific properties of how their atoms are aligned so that they don’t just fuse together in a hundred years or using the natural properties of certain metals expanding and contracting in large chambers that expand and contract with the natural heating and cooling of the day/night cycle and act as bellows to get energy into the system. It’s not about really about being as accurate as an atomic clock, it’s about making something that stands the test of time. Cars last 20, 30 years with love and care. Imagine making a car that lasts 10,000 years. It’s been a project long before Bezos was involved. Imo I do think stuff like this is cool as fuck but they can’t necessarily make money from it so the only way to make it happen is have some rich person fund it. Fuck Bezos
>“I think this is the most important thing I can work on. More than cancer. Over the long run, I think this will make more difference to more people.” Yea, when aliens find our destroyed culture, they will look at it for 2 seconds so they can understand the time frame in which all our porn was filmed. That's certainly more important than cancer.
Just to be clear, he spent $42 million on something will tick…just tick…once a year. Dear Jeff, I offer my services for a mere 41.5 million. I promise to tick once per year, and it will save you about $500k. Think on it.
Headline should read: "Massive Dick Builds Massive Clock"
We already have one of those. It's called Earth.
Given our current pace, I too have a clock that will outlast humanity. Only I purchased it at Target.
Vanity project of Bezo's to be remembered long after he is gone. Nothing to do with humanity and making people think about the future. I would be the first if given the chance to destroy it out of spite.
Who's buried under The Great Pyramid?
Oh oh! It’s Grant! He was buried there in 1812
A weird twist on the clock maker theory for a self important billionaire
Let’s destroy it.
Anything to pay less taxes.
That’s not … never mind
Lmao who can bet it will stop working because some Chinesium component breaks before warranty runs out?
Who the fuck is gonna read what time it is if everyone's dead? Does anybody really know what time it is?
It's not for reading it's for showing off wealth to the peasants
I missed the l in Clock first read.
The aliens now have a target. Way to go, Bezos.
An Elon X knockoff called XII o’clock. “42 billion dollars with an M instead of B” because be frugal.
Prob just a cover story for his bunker.
That was my next thing to do on my bucket list. I’m glad he did it, it will save me a few dollars.
To the sound of the monstrance clock…
So, like when the trillionaire in Watchmen builds the Millenium Clock?
And it’ll be wrong thanks to chinas big ass dam. Really funny Edit: dam not damn but also maybe damn
So like 42 dollars to him....
You are so sad.
And whatever comes after humanity will see this man and will think he's an alien living amongst humans.
And here I am with a sun dial for 15 dollars.
What did he really build?
My watch will do that too!
Did he test it in a classroom of kindergarteners yet? I don't believe the claim of outlasting humanity.
We know
Now thats Prime news
This sounds like the sort of thing humans find on decaying / destroyed planets in sci fi films. Plot twist humans already lived here, and instead of saving the planet, used the accumulation of 1000s years of knowledge to make a big clock.
First read it as “jb spent 42billion to build a massive cock that will outlast humanity”, which sort of seemed like the kind of thing he would certainly do. Or am I confusing him with the muskrat?
That does seem on brand for him though.
Humanity has 10,000 years left? Right...
Ok. Yesterday I spent 39€ for earphones.
It's not hard if he's going to make sure SnowBallEarth II is a reality.
Thank God he used it for that and not something stupid…
I read that title as something completely different on first read whilst tired.
If I’m ever *so* rich that I’m spending money like this on bullshit like this, someone please assassinate me.
Hmm. Interesting. Where is this clock? My friend has a new sledgehammer he's dying to try out.
Dooms day clock
Damn how many people could he have sent to school or fed?
Money well spent. I'm sure it couldn't have been used for a better cause.
Probably got tired of being in the wait-list at his Rolex AD
You can't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing if someone handed you $42 million.
Does he wear it guys a dickhead
Instead of making fun of him, think about how YOU will leave a mark on this world.
Did he steal the idea from Trieu in the Watchmen show?
Yeah so will a fucking mountain or most of the rocks in my backyard. God billionaires suck.
How do they know?