Really, you must remember that billionaires have feelings too. So how’s about some sympathy for Bill Gates? Yahoo News reports that he’s slipping down the list of the world’s biggest billionaires, and two of his yachts may be up for sale.
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp. and a renowned philanthropist, has been slipping down the ranks of the world’s billionaires.
Despite boasting a net worth of nearly $128 billion, Gates is at No. 9 on the Forbes Billionaire Index, a significant drop from his previous position at No. 7 a month ago. This marks his lowest ranking since 1990 when he ranked 16th.
Gates has been recognized not only for his immense wealth but also for his environmental advocacy, which makes his ownership of superyachts somewhat controversial. In 2021, he paid about $25 million for his first superyacht — the Wayfinder, a 224-foot catamaran built by Astilleros Armon. The yacht is designed as a shadow vessel, typically accompanying a larger mothership, which until recently, was not disclosed to the public.
The mothership, referred to as Project 821, is under construction at Feadship. It will be one of the largest and most luxurious yachts the shipyard has built. Slated for delivery in 2024, Project 821 stretches 390 feet with an internal volume exceeding 7,000 gross tonnage (GT).
Details about the yacht have been kept under wraps, but recent leaks reveal that it is on the market for 600 million euros ($642 million). The price tag is significantly higher than previous builds by Feadship, possibly because its unfinished state offers potential buyers a chance to customize the yacht.
Alongside Project 821, the Wayfinder is also listed for sale and was spotted on the charter market earlier this year, suggesting a shift in Gates’s approach to his assets.
The reasons behind the sales are not stated, leading to speculation about his motivations. Some suggest the maintenance and operational costs of the extravagant vessels are impractical, while others speculate that Gates is intensifying his commitment to environmental causes. His past statements have highlighted his awareness of his large carbon footprint, primarily from private flights, and his ongoing efforts to mitigate his environmental impact.
“Although I don’t care where I rank on the list of the world’s richest people, I do know that as I succeed in giving, I will drop down and eventually off the list altogether,” Gates wrote in a 2022 Gates Notes blog post reinforcing his commitment to philanthropy.
This aligns with his long-standing goal of donating most of his wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
These moves could signify a deeper alignment of Gates’s lifestyle with his public advocacy for sustainability and reduced consumption. Selling the yachts might be seen as Gates setting an example of reducing luxury consumption to lessen his environmental impact, reinforcing his credibility as a climate activist amid growing global concern over climate change.
What a grand role model for other billionaires! I wonder how many yachts he owns. Last I heard, Betsy DeVos owns 10. How I wish she would go into environmental activism.
But don’t feel too bad for Bill. He has a fleet of private jets and Porsches.
Given Bill’s newly modest lifestyle, I hope he devotes all his energy and philanthropy to environmental causes and public health. And recognizes the failure of his forays into education policy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Imagine if instead of pushing the puerile and, in ELA, almost entirely content free, and in Math, typically not grade appropriate Common [sic] Core [sic] and its associated invalid testing, neither of which has brought about ANY positive outcomes by Gates’s own preferred measure, test scores–imagine if, instead, he had spent all those millions to make sure that our poor schoolchildren have books of their own at home and glasses if they need them and warm coats and shoes that fit.
Imagine.
LikeLike
Imagine there’r no rich scum, so difficult to do…
LikeLiked by 1 person
cue the music
LikeLike
Here’s the thing: Gates is so sheltered that he hasn’t a freaking clue how much damage he has done to K-12 education in the United States. None. He is freaking oblivious. The damage, of course, has been breathtaking, particularly in the effects on children’s well being and in the devolution of our curricula and pedagogy.
LikeLike
I think we need a truth and reconciliation committee to claw back the billions we have spent on those pseudoscientific scam tests.
Pay up, Bill.
LikeLike
Send Bill the bill.
LikeLike
I concur. The effect on the health of millions of teachers, the content torn from the curricula of millions of students, and the re-direction of education toward meaningless testing has been at best malpractice. It was instituted by a bipartisan group of political hacks and funded by billionaires with bloated egos. Skewer these asses.
Now for a question on Latin. Curriculum is singular. I know it has been 55 years since I studied Latin, but why would that declension not take the i letter as a plural, as in bellum, belli for war?
LikeLike
The plural is curricula.
The noun “curriculum” comes from Latin, where it is a neuter noun of the second declension. In Latin, the nominative singular form is “curriculum,” and the nominative plural form is “curricula.” Here’s how it is declined:
LikeLike
I don’t recall that declension. I still feel pretty good about recalling other Latin after 55 years
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bill Gates has no business leaving his grimy paws in any philanthropic venture. Read “The Bill Gates Problem”. The book is a shocking expose on the Gates Foundation, and how Bill Gates has placed himself in control of the media, education, and global health, and it’s not because he’s a nice guy. He’s a control freak with an unlimited PR machine that runs 24-7 promoting all of his good works and all the people he’s saved with his vaccination programs. It’s all an illusion, and what he really wants is absolute control over these programs through intellectual capital, just for starters. He doesn’t want to share, and insists on using Big Pharma to produce the vaccines and birth control devices that he chooses countries to have, with virtually no accountability for his many failures. I could go on and on, but under no circumstances should anyone believe that Bill Gates should have that much power and control just by throwing his money around. He moves all the levers; however, his “success” rate is not good considering all the billions he’s spent, but it gives him a lot of attention and a lot of media coverage promoting this idea of Bill Gates, the benevolent billionaire. Don’t buy into the hype.
LikeLike
I agree. Gates is an arrogant egotist that seems to enjoy tinkering with the lives of others without caring much about the results of his actions.
LikeLike
His faux-lanthropy and faux altruism have been exposed as hypocrisy….thank goodness! The masses are starting to catch onto the shell game and they are getting pretty angry and scary. I wonder if he feels the need to “hunker in the bunker” that he has built for himself?
LikeLike
“faux-lanthropy” Wonderful! A great example of how new words evolve when the old ones are no longer accurate nor adequate!
LikeLike
He doesn’t suffer from lycanthropy. More like vampirism.
LikeLike
faux-lanthropy is a good word
LikeLike
Thing is Gates couldn’t work his “magic” without complicity. How his opinions turned into policies, offends the illusion of democracy. So when it comes to spreading illusions, Gates wins. Trying to “teach” the likes of Gates out of power, through “proper” lessons, works as good as trying to lecture equality into a system based on inequality. If you want different results do not spread the same illusions…
LikeLike
Exactly so. It is shameful that Gates and his Common [sic] Core [sic] and its associated testing were not laughed off the stage in the very beginning by American “educators.” That he and it were not requires some extreme self-examination.
BTW, I think you meant “works as well.”
LikeLike
“And recognizes the failure of his forays into education policy.”
His entire life is a failure (as are those of his ilk). The low success rate of his grand investments in fell-good, top-down projects–plus his vast horded wealth–are direct contributing causes of the increasing poverty, homelessness, ignorance, and lack of health care among our low-income fellow citizens.
To see examples of real charitable accomplishment by people across the income range, but too busy to be babbling to the media, look up whatever good works appeal to you: “Clean water charities,” “Bicycle charities,” ”Children’s hospitals,” whatever.
Eat your heart out, bill.
LikeLike
Actual charities are not set up as LLCs, which is often the case for billionaires like Gates seeking tax deductions, not good will. I cannot understand how billionaires can be granted tax deductions for attacking and draining the budgets of public schools under the guise of improving “education.” Also, the loss of tax revenue due to the tax breaks for the wealthy generally gets passed along to working families.
LikeLike
I find it disconcerting when partners in crime Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are hanging out in Omaha together selling off billions of dollars in assets. Berkshire Hathaway just dumped a bunch of Apple shares, and Bill Gates is selling super yachts. It’s not a good sign when such greedy, manipulative four letter words make moves. Watch out, world economy.
LikeLike
For Warren, he is allowing Apple to do a stock buyback….which used to be illegal until Ronald Reagan and his goons messed things up.
LikeLike
When is enough too much?
LikeLike
Never!
LikeLike
The wealthiest 1% are also the biggest polluters in the world as a group, including Bill Gates.
“Yes, the world’s wealthiest 1% are responsible for a large portion of global carbon emissions. According to Oxfam’s Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99% report, the richest 1% of the world’s population produced 16% of global consumption emissions in 2019, which is more than all car and road transport emissions. This is the same amount of carbon pollution as the poorest two-thirds of humanity, or roughly 5 billion people.”
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/press-releases/richest-1-emit-as-much-planet-heating-pollution-as-two-thirds-of-humanity/
LikeLike
Thanks for that share!
LikeLike
BTW, have you folks seen this monstrosity:
Crush! | iPad Pro | Apple (youtube.com)
LikeLike
Wow! Crush all the instruments of civilization for individuals because there’s a new iPad? What jerk thought this up?
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is the mentality of people like Gates. They are freaking barbarians.
LikeLike
When they come for the cellos and the metronomes; for the saws and the planes and glue pots and stains; for the palette knives, the Titanium White, and the artists’ mannequins, when they came for the notepads and the pencils, they are also coming for the musicians and the luthiers and the painters and the writers and so, so many more. They think that these people can be replaced by the abominations they create, which render mediocrity by the yacht-load in seconds. What are those of us who write music and design and paint and write supposed to do when the public has been trained to this swill from birth? Go extinct, I guess.
Is this how civilization ends?
LikeLike
That paragraph desperately needs an edit. But don’t call an editor. There’s Microsoft Word’s grammar and spelling checker for that. Soon to be enhanced by son of Clippy the Paperclip.
LikeLike
May all the gods protect our dying world, ruled now by the tech bro kleptocracy and kakistocracy, where mediocrity and formulae are on their way to becoming utterly pervasive because artists are being made obsolete and AI “creates” based on immediate and complete, lowest-common-denominator “market feedback.” If you like shrinkflation and stinkflation, you are going to love the future, boys and girls. In the world that is being fashioned by barbarian tech bros, “cultural” production is akin to that done by the machines that write novels for the Proles in 1984. The rough beast has been birthed.
LikeLike
Already, guitars and violins and houses are being built not by craftspeople but by 3D printers and CNC machines. Are the people who do these things to go the way of weavers and coopers and potters?
LikeLike
Gates put into his breathtakingly over-the-top, sprawling, kludgy, hideous mansion in Washington computer screens on the walls to display artworks. Instead of actual painting and lithographs and so on, freaking digital images.
He is a barbarian. He has all the cultural sensitivity of a doorknob.
LikeLike
can’t wait for the future Pete Townsends to smash their iPhones after a concert
LikeLike
OK, the new commercial for iPad shows musical instruments, metronomes, phonographs, writing implements, art materials, and so on being crushed because no one needs them anymore.
I hope this makes you as furious as it does me. F the F-ing uncultured, barbarous Fs who produced this monstrosity and F as well their F-ing crap technology designed by barbarians to produce mediocrities. Theirs is a bankruptcy of intellect, imagination, morality, spirit, and empathy for the artists among us and the artists in us. F these tech bros. F them. F them. Wait. No. Don’t F them. Immediately stop F-ing any F-ing tech bros. They do not deserve the gift of you. A**hats.
LikeLiked by 1 person
the interesting thing to me is that the creators of this commercial we’re not really suggesting that we should destroy all this stuff, only that it can be magically transferred to the tiny iPhone.
The message might have been clear if some less violent image were created:
I see the various articles drifting in a sort of void and being mystically absorbed into this machine that they are advertising. Perhaps that might have been effective.
That the advertisement chose the violent crushing of things people hold dear might explain the continued popularity of luthiers, painters, and dancers. A technological explosion in the post-World War II period produced a generation of kids who dreamed bucolic utopias into existence and spawned celebrations of everything from potbellied stoves to daffodils. A friend once opined that we ought to teach only art and music, since a technological society that made everything we need without humans might come to value human production as an art form. This advertisement, it seems, glorifies a day when all human production will end, and the human will just consume.
LikeLike
the interesting thing to me is that the creators of this commercial we’re not really suggesting that we should destroy all this stuff, only that it can be magically transferred to the tiny iPhone
It’s an iPad, not an iPhone, and that all these things can be done away with because of the iPad is PRECISELY what this video “says.” It is every bit as despicable as I said it was.
LikeLike
What is offensive about the ad is that it implies that every significant artistic or craft e decor already exists and can be compressed into an iPad. We don’t need those tools anymore. No more creating necessary.
LikeLike
Seems to me perhaps Billy Boy is feeling his mortality, shedding some possessions. No one lives for ever.
LikeLike