Agreed. Colonise Mars with no breathable atmosphere and -200C temperatures, or look after earth. Tough choice.
I think fr the billionaires it’s a drive for everlasting legacy. They want their name to be remembered forever.
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It goes far deeper imo. If you have wealth beyond most nation states, you have already lost contact with the real world, but there seems to be something going on with a demographic of (mainly) men in Silicon Valley, of a certain vintage. They still have the utopian idealism of the early internet, despite their huge wealth gained in the reality - a belief that they are the vanguard of a fundamental change in Human life (of course, it’s always for the better). The Singularity, AGI, Cryogenics, Terraforming distant planets - all fantasies based on the ahistorical abnormality that was the period of relative stability (for some) following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Elon Musk has gone from talking about Humanity’s colonisation of Space to shilling for Tommy Robinson 
Ray Kurzweil believes that we (who is this We?) will reach LEV (Longevity Escape Velocity) around 2030. He really believes this and is living like a Monk on a rigorous supplement regimen to this end. I highly recommend his book, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and The Singularity is Nearer, for a deep dive into this ideology. For the rest of us mere mortals without unlimited time ahead… a combination of AI, biotech and nanotechnology will end death. Unfortunately, we will never have the joy of Eternity with the likes of Ray Kurzweil (and Musk)…
The facts of history, of wars, economic calamities, etc is ignored - all the institutions will still be there with no one turning the power off, to resurrect your frozen corpse/upload your Soul to Tik Tok.
What a time to be alive!
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And in addition most of them fail to recognise that the offworld utopian ideals they talk about would need to be driven by ‘deep space philanthropists’ not tech capitalists and they fall very much into the latter camp.
Then again maybe you’ll only be able to go if you can afford the ticket and the survival of humanity on another world will depend on those that don’t actually care about its survival in the first place.
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And they will all still be very Human. In the down and dark holes of depression I would often have this fantasy of being able to have a holiday from myself somehow - Even a day anywhere but in my own mind. These fantasies of Humans spreading out into interstellar space are just as impossible. Not only that, it would be the same old shite, but on a shit planet populated by absolute wollopers like Peter Thiel & Elon Musk.
I’ll be happily six feet under, in the dear soil of this Earth, with a smile on my cold, dead face. Somewhere on the US West Coast there’s an old abandoned building that was once the premises of a long dead Tech start. promising those needing a lot more lifetime to become real Human boys. Rows of long unplugged cryogenic capsules containing the Earthly remains of the last believers of a long dead Religion.
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i believe that therapists call this ‘doing a geographical’ because wherever you go, that’s where you’re at, not some new fantasy version of yourself. Alan Partridge discovered this when he drove to Dundee barefoot during a psychiatric episode. One can well imagine him doing the same to Alpha Centauri.
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An essential post imho, and exactly the reason I’m selling my collection (of vinyl not yarn).
To quote Luke Una; ‘We’re all gonna die with a lot of records…’
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Looks like councils are pushing back against developers in favour of venues
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some beauts in the latest mailout (well, perhaps not the REM update but can’t have it all)
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Full disclosure - I have zero intention of ever listening to that new Flea album. This piece just solidified my resolve. Call me a blinkered snob, but I know what I’m in for and I don’t have the time to waste.
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I watched the recent interview he did with Beato and he seemed sincere enough about his love of jazz but not heard anything I liked. Had higher hopes for the Thom Yorke collab tbh
That’s a great take…
Ooofff. but also im nodding in agreement…
When Kamasi Washington released The Epic in 2015, critics liked it. … It sounded, to me, like a lot of the 50-year-old Pharaoh Sanders albums, such as Journey to the One. I really like those albums. I did not see the need for a young saxophonist to make them again at quadruple their original length.
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I wanted to enjoy the cover of Wichita Lineman but sadly didn’t…
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Sry, a lot of bs in my post.