In reply to Tony.

The concept of some people not counting as "real" long predates the roleplaying game concept of an NPC. Couching it in that way was just a convenient way to get buy-in on the idea from a subset of the folks the billionaires consider NPCs...

In reply to Tony.

... but Thiel*'s perception of self excluded others....

In reply to tfb.

The idea of an "NPC" allowed this to happen, but Theil's perception of self excluded others long before NPC started being an adjective applied to actual people.

In reply to CdrJameson.

All power-of-10 terms cone from French.  The British would have used powers of a dozen, or perhaps 21, or really anything that was not 20 or any integer multiple of it.

In reply to tfb.

It's even odder that the correct term for a thousand million (a milliard) also comes from France. There must have been some kind of dust up over that which the non-francophones missed out on. Even more oddly, the first recorded use in English of that term was apparently by Thomas Jefferson

In reply to jwz.

I made the unpleasant discovery I owned a dual-sided tape measure that had decimal feet on one of the sides after I'd taken a bunch of annoying-to-get measurements.

In reply to tfb.

It's easy to confuse 'shiny quarter-dollar maximiser' with 'paperclip maximiser' because there's not much between them: when you're maximising it's an arbitrary configuration of metals.

K3n.

In reply to tfb.

It's like Präder-Willi syndrome except for money.

In reply to Marley.

I always assumed there was more dirt on him, especially given how he walked back his position on climate change after having dinner with clown in chief.

His philanthropic ventures strike me as the product of a guilt complex, but I suppose you could argue that it means he still has something resembling a conscience to feel guilty with.

In reply to Kyzer.

They got that right!  long-scale number names are abominable.

Amusingly, it seems the Americans got it from the French ... who now are a long-scale country.

In reply to tfb.

Given the topic, you'd be remiss not to mention the Americans made the billion a thousand times smaller as well. You no longer need 1e12 arbitrary units to be a billionaire, 1e9 will do

In reply to Leafnode.

I suppose, but I still don't lie awake worrying that he's going to complete assrape democracy and the world in general for seemingly no other reason than being an emotionally stunted narcissistic delusional fucktard.

In reply to steve.

And yet not a single one of them achieved immortality. If I cease, put two gold coins on my eyes for the ferryman. I will need favours more in the afterlife.

In reply to ennui.

What any healthy human would do is make enough money and then use that money to do what they care about.  But they don't do that: they can't stop.  They can't stop because they're ill.  Or, perhaps, they are themselves a disease: a tumour growing on everyone else.

I used to wonder why various people got so obsessed with the whole paperclip-maximizer thing.  Then I realised: it's because they are paperclip maximizers.

In reply to jrl.

Everyone who has some other ton calls our ton a short ton.

Which is literally everyone else, right?

The UK has tons (2240lb) which Americans (only?) call 'long tons' and tonnes, which are 1000kg.  I don't think anything serious would use tons (or pounds, or inches) now.

in the era when they thought that being a part of Europe was a good thing.

That era is now, of course, propaganda notwithstanding: the same people who are telling everyone about knife crime in London are telling everyone how much the UK hates the Europeans.

Anyway, I'd apologise for poking fun at Americans and their comedy units, except I feel justified since the UK's are at least as comedic, if more widely used.

The real point was the bigness / heaviness thing, which is just so sad and stupid.  It's the lumpen plutocrat with his (always) bigness, heaviness and resentment of the person whose motto was 'simplify, then add lightness'.

In reply to angled.

JFC

In reply to Guymac.

or you could subscribe to the magazine? like a magazine-subscribing reader would?

In reply to jwz.

Whoa. Does it really...?   fuck's sake.

I think that -4 decimal feet equals -40 centimeters. So converting isn't that bad.

In reply to Leafnode.

Just like my paycheck has fallen behind inflation, Gates's evil has failed to match the times. Between Musk's "roman salute" and Palantir's totally-not-genocidal manifesto, the whole "tried to slip his wife antibiotics to keep her in the dark about passing on an STI contracted from having unprotected sex with Russian prostitutes" thing is almost quaint. It's the kind of thing you'd hear about in a New Yorker article about an flamboyant car dealership owner from 1960s Las Vegas. These days, it's crypto-fascist or broke when it comes to billionaire evil. And the crypto is optional.

In reply to Guymac.

The bypass paywalls browser add on works for just about every soft paywall (90% of news websites). I think the current incarnation is called bypass paywalls clean.

In reply to jrl.

May I introduce you to the most cursed unit, the "decimal foot":

In reply to Martin.

Hasn't he levelled up since recent revelations about his island capers?

In reply to tfb.

Ok. I'll tangent along.

Americans have the ton. We call it: a ton.

It is 2,000 of a unit that we also use.

Everyone who has some other ton calls our ton a short ton.

The UKers have an Imperial ton (long ton), which if I recall correctly they (mostly?) don't use anymore having switched to metric tons in the era when they thought that being a part of Europe was a good thing.

Possibly countries or industries who at one time had a UK infection still use the long ton. For all I know there might be other tons.

Number-bigness is a big deal to some Americans, though every culture/country I've encountered has its share of people who are infatuated with the status conferred by Big Numbers.

But plenty of Americans also have nothing but eye-rolls for the number-bigness fetishists.

We don't have smaller pounds, but we have found other ways to fuck with the perception of quantity. Many of us are contemptuous of these shrinkflation trends. Whenever I can, I buy coffee beans from local roasters. It really irritates me that many places no longer sell beans by the pound (my county's current favoured unit for pricing such things), but by the 'bag'. That I recall, I have seen bags of (using our favoured subdivision of pounds) 8oz, 9.5oz, 10oz, 10.5oz, 11oz, 12oz, and 16oz.

It's almost like they don't want me to know how much their product costs.

Warping our tangent back to topic: any inconvenience associated with having a 1 tonne chair (however you reckon 'tonne') is an issue of perception - and that if you're rich enough, you don't perceive it. But that's not particular to American plutocrats.

In reply to Secret Fox.

Do americans have special 'smaller lbs' like they do other units ('short tons' etc) to make the numbers bigger?  Number-bigness seems to be a big deal to them.  But unless their lb is very light indeed who would want a chair which was almost a tonne?  I mean, it's like someone would prize a car mostly because it was extra heavy ... oh, wait, yes.

In reply to Guymac.

I was able to get the full text of the article by paying some of my money for excellent journalism and insight, by way of a subscription.

Here's a gift link to the full article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/05/billionaire-consequence-free-reality/686588/?gift=vLxsL8bcSkT1J03WPPCyNyA528cXvVT1F2hvoLLI5YE&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

In reply to ennui.

And to hustle inconvenient Noah Hawleys out of your presence before you accidentally say something that might sound anything at all like an admission of liability.

In reply to Alex R.

Can't believe I'd never seen that- as family of a Sun lifer, Larry is a routine target of scorn. "The lawnmower can't have empathy."

contra: you don't get to be Bezos (or Musk or Gates or Ellison or Buffet or...) without being greedy in a mental illness kind of way. once you get rich enough, you can employ people to cover for the mental illness or at least try to.  

One of my favorite old-timey tweets:

"Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day

— Thing Bad (@Merman_Melville) "

In reply to Guymac.

I get the full text just by having Reader Mode on by default which everyone should absolutely be doing 100% of the time.