I wish they could bring John Denver back to life just so he could sue Mark Zuckerberg for this.
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) July 4, 2021
Were I chosen Empress of Everything, one of my first projects — and not just for personal satisfaction — would be selecting the 39 miscreants most deserving of eternal exile on the ‘World’s first ‘yacht liner’’. Zuckerberg and his bro-pack (along with Peter Thiel, Erik Prince, Rebekah Mercer, et al) would certainly be among the top-ranking contenders…
… Measuring an impressive 728 feet, Somnio is to be the largest yacht in the world “by both length and volume” when it launches in 2024.
Somnio, which means “to dream ” in Latin, was devised by Winch Design and Tillberg Design of Sweden, and is to be built by Norwegian ship designer and builder VARD at a cost of around $600 million.
The gigantic vessel will be fitted with 39 apartments across six floors, as well as restaurants, bars and an onboard beach club.
However, the purchasing process is “by invitation or referral only,” with apartment prices starting at over $11 million. A spokesperson for the project confirms to CNN Travel that some have already been snapped up…
Each of the 39 apartments is to include “bespoke features” based on the buyer’s preferences, but a gym, a library, as well as inside and outside dining spaces are likely to be provided, according to a press release from Winch Design.
The designers behind Somnio believe it will offer those who splash out on one of its luxury properties the same level of service as a “seven-star” hotel, along with the huge benefits of owning a superyacht.
Health concerns have also been taken into consideration, particularly in in light of the pandemic, and the team stress that “world class medical care” will be available onboard, while pointing out that those on board will likely be kept “away from pandemics and other global risks.” …
Dr. Ronny Jackson will lead the healthcare service, and all the best sycophants from the political & media worlds — Chris Cillizza, Maggie Haberman, Jason *and* Stephen Miller, Sarah Huckerbee Sanders — will be assigned to provide the culinary, cleaning, and related services. But since the ship will never be allowed to make landfall, an actual trained crew of sailors & engineers will be rotated to the ship by helicopter, for the sake of the rest of us.
(the top image is his infamous 'smog jog' back when he was trying to get Facebook into China and spent all his time sucking up to the leadership.)
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) July 5, 2021
Roger Moore
Why would you provide them with sailors and engineers?
debbie
Is that Bezos’s yacht or a floating condo community?
FelonyGovt
I think I would like to assign Mr. E. Musk to that yacht as well. SpaceX is a major employer and source of pride in my area, but I think it can run just fine now (maybe better) without him.
dc
Tax these people.
kindness
$11M starting price to live in a floating petri dish with only the most exclusive scum around as neighbors? What could possibly go wrong with this picture?
trollhattan
On-board documentary team is required to capture firefights between security teams of feuding billionaires.
Anne Laurie
Because I don’t want the plague yacht crashing into Miami Beach, the Bahamas, or some other unfortunate port, duh!
Roger Moore
@dc:
Raise the inheritance tax, and then expedite collection through the use of tumbrels.
Roger Moore
@Anne Laurie:
One torpedo could solve that problem for you.
Comrade Colette
Can we dig up Sheldon Adelson, stick Thurston Howell III’s hat on him, and call him the skipper?
Cheryl Rofer
What is the thing that Zuckerberg is riding on and how is it controlled?
Anne Laurie
It’s an electric surfboard, and from what I’ve read (not much) it’s controlled via a wireless wristband.
Presumably, there are japesters working on hacking those wristbands, but I’m sure Zuckerberg’s private playground is isolated enough to make him an unlikely victim…
Spanky
I only hope we can get the Gilligan’s Island/Survivor/Lost mashup that that yacht project so richly deserves.
GrumpyOldMan
I have a sudden urge to start pricing out military surplus torpedo boats.
VeniceRiley
Let’s crowdfund a speedboat packed with explosives… or a sub. There has to be some perfectly good used subs on the market.
piratedan
maybe we can utilize it like they repurposed the old battleship in the Japanese anime Space Battleship Yamato and then launch it into the sun…. directly.
trollhattan
Well shee-yutt, here we go again.
Friday
Sunny and hot, with a high near 106.
Friday Night
Clear, with a low around 71. Saturday
Sunny and hot, with a high near 110.
Saturday Night
Clear, with a low around 73.
Sunday
Sunny and hot, with a high near 108.
Third time this summer we’ll hit 110, FWIW a temp we’d never seen in June before and have managed twice.
HumboldtBlue
Here, watch Ollie take his toys to the beach.
Cheryl Rofer
Folks – I’ve noticed for the past few days too many fantasies of death and destruction to those we consider enemies. Just stop. It’s not good for the blog.
Gin & Tonic
Should I be upset I didn’t get an invitation to buy a unit there?
Baud
Such as Anne Laurie’s wrath.
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer:
FWIW, I only wish death and destruction on my friends.
Otherwise, agree.
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
Seconded.
Ken
Well, there’s this picture.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie:
Either way, I’m all for it sinking.
ETA – with no loss of life. But millions of dollars worth of ship going to the bottom? Yes please.
pat
@Cheryl Rofer:
Thirded.
Rand Careaga
@Cheryl Rofer: May we at least fantasize painful and disfiguring diseases, then?
Gvg
I don’t care about these people. Tax them yes. Make them obey laws and face normal justice yes. But posting a stupid video of themselves singing badly, who cares. Other people do it too.
I also don’t bother fantasizing things about who I hate the most. I want Trump and company in jail because I think they broke laws. I expect long careful investigations and fair trails because that is the right way and I would like the same for myself if I was accused of something.
it is more to the point to yell about Zuckebergs Facebook policies and misuses, not singing videos.
Cheryl Rofer
@Rand Careaga: No. That kind of thing is not funny, nor is your comment.
Baud
Turned on MSNBC. Still hooked on Trump.
cain
I just wish to have these people pay their share of taxes and stop trying to bring down the republic. I don’t really care beyond that.
gwangung
@Cheryl Rofer: Truth.
But are daydreams of extreme humiliation and embarrassment OK?
Cheryl Rofer
What IS that thing Zuckerberg is riding on?
Cheryl Rofer
@gwangung: No more of this. Just shut up on this topic, everyone.
mrmoshpotato
@cain:
And be held accountable for any laws they’ve broken.
WhatsMyNym
If you’re a billionaire, why would you be remotely interested in being stuck on this thing with a bunch of strangers. Definitely for the lower class multi millionaire.
JPL
@mrmoshpotato: The republicans are against the wealthy being audited. It’s depressing to say the least.
satby
so, the Lincoln Project has new targets: corporations still donating to the Sedition Caucus. Good for them!
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
Here’s a much more charming demo.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl Rofer: In my view, the turn to violent thought comes despairing of democratic processes being effective. I strongly disagree with the idea that we cannot win by nonviolent, democratic means and thus I disagree with the violent turn. But for those who really don’t believe we can win, is this turn surprising?
satby
@Cheryl Rofer: A hover surfboard.
mrmoshpotato
@WhatsMyNym:
Because it’s “exclusive.”
Oo la ?
CaseyL
I don’t think this is a new thing, or rather it’s an extension of a thing I’ve heard about before: luxury ocean liners that are intended for people to live on. The ones I’ve heard about before started at $2 million per unit, each unit was custom designed, and you could hop on and off at various ports of call to your heart’s content.
It was not a bad idea: priced for the rich, yes, but not priced for the toxic rich, as this particular venture seems to be.
I don’t remember many details, like whether the ship had an itinerary, or how the itinerary was decided on. One assumes there were the equivalent of HOA fees, and a ship’s crew…. a lot of potentially messy details.
It’s possible the original idea didn’t fly – the messy details being too expensive for the original price point – and this is what it became.
PS: No need to wish ill on them. Living on an ocean liner is chock full of epidemiological, weather, and life support risks – not to mention the potential risks of pirates, kidnappers, and disaffected crew members – to just let life its own self sort things out.
debbie
@satby:
I heard Toyota whining about this a while ago, but the LP seems to have succeeded before they even started:
Scout211
Interesting. Toyota today: https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-statement-on-pac-contributions/
mrmoshpotato
@JPL:
Yup and yup. I’ve always wondered how much money would make them happy (Yes – all of it.) And does Mittens really need 30 houses?
Cheryl Rofer
@Omnes Omnibus: It may or may not be surprising, but they can take it elsewhere.
Cheryl Rofer
@trollhattan: @satby: Thanks!
mrmoshpotato
@Scout211:
Weasely motherfuckers as I noted in an earlier thread.
Another Scott
Reminds me of “The World” (built in 2002):
Really?
“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” – Honoré de Balzac.
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
@Another Scott: That’s it! That’s the condo-on-the-seas I was trying to remember!
Scout211
Just felt an earthquake here in NorCal. Yikes!
Scout211
@Scout211:
USGS: 4.8, near Farmington CA.
planetjanet
@Cheryl Rofer: Thank you, Cheryl. I don’t want us to become them. There is enough hate on the other side.
Starfish
@debbie: It sounds like rich people float condos. It sounds not unlike The World except at a significantly higher price point.
I thought that they used to have their pricing listed, but I thought there was also a minimum stay that may have been a month or more. Here is what I can find about the cost now:
Starfish
@Cheryl Rofer: Yes, I mentioned it a few days ago with the way people were hoping the people they did not like died of COVID-19.
trollhattan
@Scout211:
Same here (Sac) and I think it was this Nevada one.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73584926/executive
The ground movement was east-westish.
Rand Careaga
@Cheryl Rofer: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be here all week.
Scout211
@trollhattan:
And apparently, 5 earthquakes this morning north of San Francisco.
https://www.sfgate.com/earthquakes/article/Angwin-earthquake-Napa-County-St-Helena-16300765.php
The one we just felt (near Farmington) is about 10 miles west of Stockton.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ew1625784613/executive
The two we just felt:
https://www.kcra.com/article/2-earthquakes-rattle-northern-california/36974715
MagdaInBlack
@Cheryl Rofer: Thank you.
trollhattan
@Scout211:
I’ll hopefully state my lack of enthusiasm for the region’s copious fault collection waking from a long slumber. Been very quiet the last couple decades.
TheOtherHank
@FelonyGovt: I did some in-depth research on Elon (I read his wikipedia page). We’ll skip over the apartheid blood emerald money. He has two actual acheivments in his bio: he earned an undergrad physics degree (those are challenging) and in the early days of the web he started a company that made travel destination web pages for newspapers. That’s it.
After he cashed out of his “I’ll write a web page for you” company he invested some of his money in an online bank. That bank got bought out by PayPal (notably, after PayPal had figured out how to this whole online transactions thing).
After he cashed out of PayPal he invested in Tesla and sued the founders for the right to call himself a founder.
Then he invested in SpaceX.
I mean he invests his money well, I’ll give him that. But genius inventor/rocket scientist/engineer? Nope. So, just about any company he runs would do at least as well without him.
Ken
@trollhattan: It might just be the Chthonians on their once every millennium migration to their breeding grounds.
Honus
For the record, John Denver didn’t write Country Roads. Washington DC’s Bill and Taffy Danoff did. They were also artist co-credited as Fat City on the single.
debbie
@Starfish:
LOL, thanks.
trollhattan
@Ken:
Well, in that case….
Can giant squid put out wildfires?
Procopius
Oh, you mean this thing is going to actually move? Why would they want to do that? Who is going to own the thing? Why would people buy an apartment that’s not going to stay in one place? Who is going to decide where it goes? This really supports my hypothesis that there is just so much excess wealth sloshing around the 0.001% that they don’t have any ideas what to do with it.
dexwood
@Honus: Oh, man! I saw Fat City in 77 or so. They opened for Jimmy Buffet and were fantastic. Big fun.
dm
How many of the units are going to be on Airbnb-platinum, I wonder.
I suppose things like this condo-liner could find a role as a retirement community, especially if their medical facilities really are excellent. The World seems like a better size and price-point for that, however.
Be hard to arrange visits from the grand-kids, I expect.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
It’s big, it might take 2.
US major nuke aircraft carriers are a thousand feet or more in length, this is supposed to be 768 ft long.
Urban Suburbanite
@Procopius: I suspect the actual sales material (not the Costeau quotes and tasteful black and white photos) will mention global risks and vague words about a safe home. Our benevolent tech and financial overlords have some nervousness about our present hellscape, and a lot of them have invested heavily into fortified refuges (they’ve put a lot into New Zealand). This seems a perfect fit for wealthy paranoia.
There’s also this piece in The Intercept about this author of many terrible, militantly conservative book shaped objects (every protagonist is a ripped, square jawed American who loves Fox and barely tolerated liberal treachery on a good day. And this isn’t a good day….) getting ripped off by a survivalist grifter.
bcw
“Masque of the red death” re-creation anyone?
Maybe just with norovirus.
https://www.poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death
Rob
That “yacht” is a disgusting display of ostentatiousness.
Ruckus
@Procopius:
If it wasn’t true about the massive excessive wealth sloshing around why would they buy 10-15 or more expensive houses and rarely likely even visit them? Remember John McCain and his (wife’s) 11 houses and he didn’t even know where they all were. At some point it becomes an extremely selfish need to be a bigger dick than everyone else. And it’s a lot less than 20 billion, which among the very wealthy is chump change.
Remember in/right after WWII the max tax rate was 90% or higher and the rich still got richer than everyone else.
The Pale Scot
A) It will never make port? I don’t think these guys know much about salt water sailing. Unless someone has an open water dry dock I haven’t heard about. I guess they could modify one of those submersible flatbeds like the one that brought the USS Cole home with a hull cradle
B) This sounds like the Going Galt seagoing city idea, where a saltwater structure is going to be run by people who don’t believe in standards, rules or regulations.
C) If this thing actually can be maintained without landfall, AL’s version of a vermin barge should be quarantined to the Roaring 40’s
Juju
@kindness: I don’t know what could go wrong, but it certainly would make for an easier target if you had nefarious wishes towards the large expensive communal yacht. To me it just sounds like an extremely expensive cruise ship.
Amir Khalid
You know what the Somnio reminds me of? The survivors’ ship that is the final destination in Michael Bay’s end-of-the-world epic 2012, except that the Somnio is exclusively for bazillionaires.
The Pale Scot
@Cheryl Rofer:
Ok everyone, from now on hexes are limited to rashes, boils, impotence, yeast infections and of course turning their ankles, so we can ID them from the way they walk.
The Pale Scot
@trollhattan:
That’s just weak, a motorized foil board. Foil boards were devised by the Strapped Crew in Hawaii to tow into big waves when the chop was high. It’s jaw dropping to watch
Step Into Liquid (2003) The Foilboard
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Scout211: Sounds right around the Walker Lane.
HalfAssedHomesteader
Remind me again, the “huge benefits of owning a superyacht” are…?
The Pale Scot
@Ruckus:
Like this thing is going to have a double hull or torpedo bilges. I bet by the time it goes down the ways profusion will have been scaled down to one diesel and one propeller shaft
Urban Suburbanite
@Procopius: https://theintercept.com/2021/07/05/barrett-moore-brad-thor-doomsday-prepper-the-haven/
My bad.
Ruckus
@The Pale Scot:
I was thinking more along the lines of spectacular, rather than just a hole in the hull.
Maybe resurrect an ASROC launcher, that big box thing between the stacks on the ship I was stationed on.
This is what it looked like up close
John Revolta
The S.S. Magic Christian!
sab
@dm: Condo complex near my parents had serious security. Motion detectors on all the surrounding walls etc. But no clause that condo owners couldn’t sublet units. So some nitwit rented to an actual burgler. The rest is history.
Now they have no motion detectors on the walls, but sub-leasing restrictions. And no burgleries.
Morzer
Nihil sub sole novum…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemi_ships
Just One More Canuck
@Roger Moore: maybe if they’re all graduates of Trump U
NotMax
Think of it as $600 million which is not going into R campaign coffers.
Cherry on top is it will have to rely on satellite internet, which, face it, is kind’a sucky.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
What she said, and not to mention it not good for one’s soul. Just look at the other side for what kind of damage being a rageholic does to ones self.
Salty Sam
For the past 18 months (at least), my son-in-law has been working on a team of trim carpenters on a single home being built for one of these mega wealthy assholes. The 20K square foot house is no closer to being finished than it was 18 months ago- about every two weeks or so, the owners chopper in (sometimes in his and her helicopters), look around and then demand to tear a room out and start over; the entry foyer has been redesigned three times, all custom work, and changes made when the design is near completion. The mind boggles.
Poe Larity
Poor Zuck. Hated by the left and right, but patriotic enough to let his freak flag fly.
BruceJ
I cannot believe no one’s referenced Captain Nemo, and the great iron prow of the Nautilus ripping the bottom out of it like tissue paper.
Because that’s absolutely a thing Captain Nemo would have done. It’s what the Nautilus was built for..
Ruckus
@Salty Sam:
Hope they are being taken for all they are worth. A 20K sq ft house. I’ve run businesses out of places 1/10 that size. I worked in a 90 employee 3 story building that was about 30K sq ft.
The number of people that can afford that kind of crap is now larger than it’s ever been while tax collections suffer greatly and some number of the worst cheats have far more than enough that if they get caught and penalized, they won’t even notice it gone.
Anya
Zuck is not a real human, right? He’s visiting us from another planet. He’s on a one alien mission to destroy our planet.
wenchacha
@Spanky: may I add the Poseidon Adventure, early version?
leeleeFL
@piratedan: only way to be sure!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I can’t be the only one getting Bioshock vibes over the Masters of the Universe trying to recreate Galt’s Gulch, am I?
Another Scott
@Morzer: Neat. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.