"This is late stage capitalism, and this is your money — your future — being wasted on billionaires...."

The Tesla roadster is not okay https://t.co/10Z2AjVvxe

— Damien Slash (@damienslash) October 16, 2026

You might want to say: If it's my money, why are they billionaires? The answer would be: But that money they have is really your money. They need to give it back. This crazy flying-cars bullshit is taunting you. It's saying: Look at the nonsense we're throwing your money into, and we never asked if you wanted these toys we built for ourselves.

But don't be confused! The guy in the video, Damien Slash, is a comedian. He's doing satire. It's good enough satire and the world is weird enough that I think there are many people who believe everything he said.

And here's a little poll where I ask you to vote for the most intriguing machine of the week:

"I don’t know about anyone else, but a table full of very distinguished people just told me that they HATE, immediately after a mandatory time change, going home at night – and it’s DARK."

"It’s depressing! One of the gentleman stated that, 'I just hate going home in darkness.'"

Writes Trump, who seems to believe Daylight Saving Time is a valuable political issue.

Who cares about the delicate feelings of the distinguished gentlemen arrayed around Trump's dining table?

Who were these guys? AI billionaires? I'm more concerned about children forced to get to school in the morning while it's still dark. Guys in their cars feeling melancholic... that's not a hot political concern.

And as long as I'm reacting to Trump's Truth Social account, there's this: "If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 2026 Midterm Elections, I’m going to give all Adult Citizens in the United States of America, $5,000. Thank you for your attention to this matter, and I look forward to signing those checks!"

Just awful.

"... the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us..."

Ever since my experience with "the foul-mouth parrot Andrew Jackson once had" — which required me to get my head examined — I've been on the lookout for sentences that resist reading,  perhaps to the point where I consider the possibility that I have lost the ability to read. 

In that light, I contemplated this famously long sentence by Virginia Woolf, which begins her essay "On Being Ill."

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death

"ironically by dressing down they probably thought you're insanely rich."

A commenter — at TikTok — explains how a guy in a T-shirt, jeans, and Sketchers was able to go undercover, uninvited, to Fashion Week events and even got seated in the middle of the front row.

"You have an ambassador that has cachet, and the Italians like that. They like that [they’re] important enough to us that you’re going to come into our town, on your big boat..."

"... and pay respect to us and have us in your home. That’s what I hear from people."

Tilman Fertitta, Trump's ambassador to Italy, quoted in "Trump’s ambassador to Italy is flaunting his wealth, and it’s dividing Italians/With a net worth of $11.1 billion, Tilman Fertitta, a great-grandson of Sicilian immigrants, is one of the wealthiest people ever to be a U.S. ambassador" (WaPo gift link). 

WaPo explains: "Italy has perhaps a different relationship with wealth than other European countries such as Britain, where aspiration can be viewed as a personality flaw. This is the land where Gucci and Versace helped define loud luxury, and where the political cult of billionaire playboy Silvio Berlusconi once reigned. But even here, the Italian elite can see American-style displays of wealth as violations of good taste. And while some on the political left have happily sipped champagne on his yacht, others have sharply criticized the tour."

Fertitta offers advice about how to deal with Trump: "What I’ve said is, 'You don’t want to get in a verbal volleyball match with Donald Trump; because he’s relentless, and he’s going to win." And: "If he’s not giving you a hard time, then you’re not worth the time of day."

Steve Hilton, the GOP nominee for Governor of California, talks to Joe Rogan.

Joe and Hilton are old friends, and this discussion goes on for 3 hours, so this should be a major boost for Hilton. I'll just jump in at the point where they are talking about the waste of money on nonprofits that deal with homelessness:

Steve Hilton: This woman runs a homeless nonprofit, 1.6 million dollar salary. Homeless nonprofit.... There's another one...  2.6 million a year....

Joe Rogan: And here's the most important thing. The homelessness only got worse. Like if in the private sector, imagine if you were a CEO of a company that was just losing insane amounts of money and never completing its tasks, never doing the thing that it set out to do....

Steve Hilton: The more I look at it, the more insane it is. And everyone just looks at it and no one's ever pointed this stuff out.... The government just makes everything so expensive in California. Everyone says, oh, it's so expensive. What are we going to do? We'd better give them more welfare benefits... we better have a billionaire wealth tax.... They don't have that mentality of cutting costs like every normal business.... And this is what happens, I think, when you've got this one party rule thing that's been going on for 16 years now. They've run everything. They don't care because they think they'll be in power forever and it just doesn't matter....

"Unfortunately for [Jeff] Bezos and [Lauren] Sánchez, the very fact of their obscene wealth and fame may be keeping the gates of membership closed to them thus far."

"As the [Wall Street] Journal reported, 'As with many private country clubs, admission often comes down to hitting it off with existing members.... In fact, too much wealth or notoriety has become a deterrent, as wealthy new applicants arriving in Florida are learning.' In fact, 'old guard' members are apparently so turned off by what they see as 'billionaire interlopers' that they are said to be 'mounting a last stand' and refusing to 'offer membership to just anyone who has struck it rich.'... Bezos and Sánchez are not the only deep-pocketed duo living on the Miami island — known as the 'Billionaire Bunker' — who have yet to score an invite for membership. There’s also Mark Zuckerberg, who dropped $170 million on a waterfront estate last year; the Qatari royal family; and one Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump...."

From "Jeff Bezos, Javanka Have Yet to Score Invites to ‘Billionaire Bunker’ Club" (NY Magazine).

Well, this is an old old story, the story of old money socially shunning the newly rich. Those upstarts.

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"A few years ago, Charlotte, which is not her real name, was referred to the Select Date Society, which then offered services starting at $35,000..."

"... (due to high demand, the fee rose to $75,000 shortly after, with a top tier that started at $150,000). Charlotte, 38 at the time, worked for a successful business that had just gone public, so the money wasn’t a huge issue for her. 'No one I know would ever do this, I know that,' she says of her thinking at the time. 'But you know what? I could use some help, so I’m raising my hand here — I could use some help. And I’ll be honest, I’m lonely.' An M.B.A. with a blistering career trajectory that had taken her to companies like Goldman Sachs and Google, she was mainly occupied renovating a townhouse she’d recently purchased. She was in a position where, she says, 'I can use a friend. I can use someone who’s like my best friend.'..."

I'm reading "The Good-Man Shortage Has Gotten Exponentially Worse/The crisis is both a boon and a challenge for high-end matchmakers helping women find love" (NY Magazine).

"If money won’t matter in 2036, why don’t you pledge to donate your current wealth… to charity no later than 2036?"

A question from the economist Daron Acemoglu to Elon Musk, quoted in "Is Elon Musk right that money will be worth nothing in ten years? The world’s richest man says there’s no need to save because AI is going to change the value of everything. He might have a point…" (London Times).

Musk's answer: "I am actually going to do something along these lines." Hmm. So he's not going to do that. He's going to do something else. Like what? Invest in companies that create many jobs and make things for the benefit of mankind, that is, what he's been doing all along? Or hold onto his wealth until it disappears because, according to his theory, money will be nothing in 10 years, so that will be about the same as giving it all away?

A Monday morning juxtaposition. .

I see this at the top of the NYT right now:

Sterile wealth, romanticized poverty, and mindlessness about sleevelessness.

1. The family of 5: "'Money right now, there’s not enough. Literalmente,' said Ms. Torres, speaking Spanglish. 'Sometimes I feel bad, like I can’t do enough for my kids.'"

2. The Biebers: "The 2,792-square-foot apartment has two kitchens — an open-plan kitchen for entertaining, with marble counters and Scandinavian larch wood cabinetry, and a secondary chef’s kitchen with stainless steel and matte aluminum cabinetry. The primary suite looks out to the Hudson River..." The living room, I see, looks out onto a big TV screen and turns its back on the uninspiring skyline of New Jersey.

3. The presumed dearth of sleeves: "In all of the discussions about body positivity and loving the different parts of you, including the parts of you that decades of social conditioning have deemed potentially problematic, arms, especially the upper arms, are often overlooked...." The letter writer is urged to "rethink the issue" and "learn to love your arms."

"[Elon Musk] is reported to have told one of his children’s mothers he wants to use surrogates to 'reach legion level.'"

"In the meantime, he has goaded the competition. In response to a post about [Russian billionaire Pavel] Durov notching triple-digit offspring, Mr. Musk replied, '"Rookie numbers lmao" — Genghis Khan,' a nod to the Mongol leader’s supposed millions of descendants. What drives these men to reproduce at an industrial scale? Mr. Musk’s reference to Genghis Khan holds one clue.... Like kings of earlier eras who claimed divine lineage, many of these men hold their own bloodlines in exalted regard. Mr. Musk, who in 2021 changed his job title at Tesla to 'technoking,' has said he wants smart people — or even just rich people, according to a report in Business Insider — to have more children. One of the mothers of his offspring, an executive in his business, told his biographer that he encouraged her to have kids and suggested he be her sperm donor...."

From "Is Kidmaxxing the Ultimate Status Symbol for Ultimate Wealth?" (NYT).

"Technoking" is not a gerund. I can't believe I spent time trying to understand "to technok" as a verb. The "ing" goes with the K. It's "Techno King."

You know, "nok" isn't just the NYSE stock ticker for Nokia. It's the genus of the bare-faced bulbul (Nok hualon). The Nok were an ancient African people, known for their terra cotta sculptures.

And never forget the Nixies — Danish: nøkke, Norwegian: nøkk, Swedish: näck; Icelandic: nykur, Faroese: nykur; Finnish: näkki. These were "male water spirits who play enchanted songs on instruments, luring women and children to drown in lakes or streams." 

So, ladies, resist the nøkk, the techo-nøkk, the technoking. No kings! No nøkkings. Maintain a no-nøkk policy.

The London Times stresses the Texan in Elon Musk as it reports the news/"news" that he's not a trillionaire at this precise moment.

Link.

"In the country’s wealthiest enclaves, like New York City and Miami, concealment has become the defining aspect of the contemporary kitchen."

"What began with 'appliance garages' and refrigerators and dishwashers that look like cabinets has evolved into a far more ambitious practice of disguise, with custom millwork and technology obscuring everything from sinks and cooktops to electrical outlets and small appliances."

I'm reading "In New Luxury Kitchens, Everything Is Hidden — Even the Sink Camouflaging the fridge is just the beginning for high-end kitchens" in The New York Times, which often lets its adoration of wealth show.

I'm blogging this because I love to use my tag "seen and unseen" and because I find this photograph — "a marble island with a retractable countertop that conceals an induction stovetop and sink" — hilarious:

It looks like a sarcophagus.

Now, how rich are the people who get things like that installed in their homes?

Jimmy Kimmel finds it "unsettling" that "our first trillionaire, the richest man in the world, is also one of the weirdest people we've ever seen on this planet."

"This obscenely wealthy weirdo has the ability and means to blow up the moon if he chooses and also to put a lot of other people's money in his pockets. You know, SpaceX, it will enter the stock market so highly valued a lot of 401ks will get triggered to invest in it automatically.... Wasn't he supposed to be going to Mars? Can't we chip in to help speed that up? It's a trillion dollars. It's hard for our brains to conceptualize that. I mean, we know trillion is a number, but it's so large... we can't fathom it. The same way we know like Elon has a lot of kids, but we can't fathom him getting laid, right?"

Expressing contempt for Musk because you see him as weird — and unfuckable — reads as a careless cruelty against people who are on the autism spectrum.

Musk came out very openly — 5 years ago — as a person with Asperger's syndrome:

ADDED: Remember when the Democrats' chose their candidate for Vice President based on his use of "weird" as an insult against Trump? They seemed to really think that could win the election.

"Ms. Gilbert is not a provocateur in the style of Banksy, and she is not making a political statement. Her work, filled with shining suns, wizards and dragons..."

"... is warm and incorporates inclusive sayings like 'Be seen' and 'I love all of you.' The message is perhaps muddled by the price tag. Reserving all of a subway station’s walls and other surfaces, a package advertisers sometimes call 'station domination,' can cost more than $250,000 per month, said Seneca Mudd, a managing partner at Brand Bravery, a marketing firm helping to coordinate Ms. Gilbert’s plan. He declined to give the total cost of the ad-space purchase, but said that it was over $1 million, including station rentals and marketing expenses...."

From "The Mystery Artist Filling Subway Ad Space With Whimsy/Sue Sarah Gilbert, a Rockefeller descendant in Seattle, raised $1 million to place her drawings in New York City stations" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the charming artwork).

From the comments over there: "I see this story a lot differently than the journalist. A woman from a family of billionaires uses her financial connections to fund a vanity project so full of itself that it includes QR codes for people to send photos of themselves enjoying it. The art itself is simple and juvenile, like something a grade schooler would draw. This is the type of art a parent would put on a fridge, but because Ms. Gilbert has friends with deep pockets it’s being put up for months in the New York subway."

Tim Dillon explains Melania's Epstein speech.

I like the detail in the interpretation of the line, "Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach."

Dillon translates: "Here's what she's telling you: We are rich.... I'm wealthy and I'm attractive. Many of you aren't either one of those things.

"Wealthy Republicans were first to form a daisy chain of nonprofit giving to funnel anonymous money into the political system."

"But recently, this path has been exploited to a far greater degree by wealthy Democrats, many of whom are seeking anonymity to avoid reprisals from President Trump, even as they donate tens of millions of dollars at a time to defeat Republican candidates. In the 2024 election cycle, over 40 percent of the nearly $2 billion raised by the largest Democratic super PACs came from entities that did not disclose their donors, according to the Times analysis. That was twice the rate of the largest Republican super PACs that cycle. Alexandra Acker-Lyons, an adviser to several prominent progressive donors, said that liberals had to use everything in the campaign finance arsenal to fight Mr. Trump. 'When we get power, we can change all of the rules so that everyone plays nice,' Ms. Acker-Lyons said. 'But until we have power, we can’t do that.'"

From "Wealthy Donors Are Hiding Political Money in Secretive Nonprofits/Using philanthropy for campaign donations is illegal. But an exception for some nonprofits has allowed Democratic billionaires like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg to remain anonymous when they want to play politics" (NYT)(gift link).

"Today's ultra-wealthy are not chic at all..."

Says Tommy Huerter on TikTok, looking at Mark Zuckerberg's new house, which is, he says, best described as "luxury slop." It looks like a hotel, and "there's no real design direction other than make this look expensive."

Meet Jeffrey Epstein.

wild find, how the media first introduced Jeffrey Epstein 25 years ago https://t.co/RZLXdHQvKr

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 10, 2026

AND: As long as I'm embedding things from Mike Benz this morning:

"The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet."

"The paper expanded during the first several years of his ownership, but the company has sputtered more recently. Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, said on a call Wednesday morning with newsroom employees that the company had lost too much money for too long and had not been meeting readers’ needs. He said that all sections would be affected in some way, and that the result would be a publication focused even more on national news and politics, as well as business and health, and far less on other areas."

From "Washington Post Begins Laying Off More Than 300 Journalists/The layoffs will cut into The Post’s local, international and sports coverage, and reduce the number of all its employees by about 30 percent" (NYT).

What's it to Bezos? Why doesn't he just bankroll the operation? Make it so good it's worthy of spending money on?

A famous question: "Now, tell me honestly, my boy, don't you think it's rather unwise to continue  this philanthropic enterprise, this Inquirer that's costing you a million dollar a year?" Famously answered: