Humor Random Comments Thread

[Urwumpe]

The famous suspension ferry in Rendsburg over the Kiel canal had been rammed by the freighter Evert Prahm this morning, at 6:40 local time:

Two persons had been injured, the ferryman and his only passenger.

The ferry opened in 1913 and since then travels over the canal every 15 minutes. The platform weights 45 tons. Ships usually have preference, so it looks like it was an error by the operator.

 

[mojoey]

Oh look, a Porsche.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

$1,300,000,000 US Powerball jackpot. :huh:

You can do a lot of good with that amount of money, but man, you could also do a lot of evil with it as well. We're getting into Carl Sagan's "beeleeons and beeleeons" sorts of numbers that people just can't wrap their heads around.

• It's 50,000 cars, each worth $26,000 apiece. If you bought cars at the rate of one a minute, you'd buy the last one in just over a month.
• I could pay the equivalent of my monthly $1000 mortgage payment...for nearly 11,000 years.
• At $100 per gram of cocaine (a high street value), this is 13 metric tons of cocaine.
• If printed out on $1 bills, each 6 inches long, and put end to end, it would go around the earth 5 times.
• At 490 $1 notes per pound, this would be a pile of paper weighing 1325 short tons, and would be a cubic stack of money 35 ft to a side.

 

[Urwumpe]

The best that you could do with that money is to quickly give it away. For everything that this money could do, it can't fulfil what it promises.

 

[Andy44]

Actually, you could have your own orbital capsule made with that. Or...

Burn it.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

The best that you could do with that money is to quickly give it away. For everything that this money could do, it can't fulfil what it promises.

The problem is that the sorts of folks that regularly play the lottery are often not the best with money and numbers in the first place. This sort of money will likely destroy whoever wins it, and will do little good for anyone except for the lawyers.

 

[Artlav]

Well, there are two kinds of people who play the lottery - the folks who do not understand the odds, and the folks who figured out a flaw in the system.
Google up "MIT and Massachusetts state lottery" for a good example of the latter.

 

[N_Molson]

An usual bad day.

 

[mojoey]

That's astronaut talk for: 'The car won't start'

 

[Andy44]

Well, there are two kinds of people who play the lottery - the folks who do not understand the odds, and the folks who figured out a flaw in the system.
Google up "MIT and Massachusetts state lottery" for a good example of the latter.

I read an article about that. The writer kept referring to the MIT people as "scammers" and "thieves", but as far as I can tell they didn't really do anything illegal; just used their brains to win the game. It's like counting cards in blackjack. Casinos will eject you if they think you're doing it, but it's not illegal. There's no law that says you have to be stupid. (Or is there?)

That said, government lotteries are basically taxes for stupid people, or at least really desperate people. When you see that slob in the 7-11 blowing his paycheck on cheap beer and scratch-offs you ain't exactly looking at the next Bill Gates.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

I read an article about that. The writer kept referring to the MIT people as "scammers" and "thieves", but as far as I can tell they didn't really do anything illegal; just used their brains to win the game. It's like counting cards in blackjack. Casinos will eject you if they think you're doing it, but it's not illegal. There's no law that says you have to be stupid. (Or is there?)

Yep, absolutely legal. The state lottery was actually happy with this as they were pulling down great revenues from the high ticket sales. It basically was shut down because only a few players could essentially monopolize the system if they bought enough tickets when the jackpot exceeded a certain amount. They later limited the total ticket sales to $5000 per player to prevent this.

That said, government lotteries are basically taxes for stupid people, or at least really desperate people. When you see that slob in the 7-11 blowing his paycheck on cheap beer and scratch-offs you ain't exactly looking at the next Bill Gates.

Yeah, and when that same slob has a billion dollars dumped in his lap, yikes. How many people are going to come out of the woodwork to try to get a piece of it? The guy doesn't know how to protect it or himself, and has absolutely no comprehension of how much money it is and what to do with it. It would be kinder to just actually dump 1.3 billion dollars (a 35 ft cube of cash weighing 1325 tons) on them.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Well, truth be told if I were to win such an amount I'd be offline for a while. First thing would be to find a reputable financial advisor, and a few lawyers to set up several trust funds. Tennessee doesn't allow anonymous winners, so the family members I've never met, nor heard about would find out how to contact me. I would ensure mom/dad and in-laws finances are taken care of (via the trusts).

6 months later I'd be on a boat out in the Caribbean, I'd have to log in via sat-phone. Unknown relatives can't bum from me if they can't find me.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Well, truth be told if I were to win such an amount I'd be offline for a while.

You pretty much have to go offline forever. In my neighborhood I'd have a line of meth-heads hanging out at the end of my driveway with personal injury lawyers ready to pounce on me for slipping on a mythical banana peel that fell out of my garbage collection.

Immediately after claiming the prize I'd probably put my stuff into storage, lock up my house, get a P.O. box at the post office, and hunker down in a hotel while working things out with the advisers and lawyers. Probably just call a real estate agent to sell the house.

I like the style of Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo - with that money I'd like to be the anonymous deliverer of (good) karma for a lot of people and organizations, but anonymity is hard in this world. My family is small - I'd take care of college for my niece, and my mom and sister would have no financial worries. I'd start a charitable foundation, get that money invested and working so it could serve as a steady stream of funding. Once that was all organized - I'd probably have no fixed address ever again; I'd just travel and see as much of the world as I could.

 

[Artlav]

doesn't allow anonymous winners

But isn't there a certain expiration period during which you can claim the prize?

AFAIK, it's something on the order of months, and no one knows who you are until you show up with a ticket.

If so, then you'd have a while to prepare, in the meanwhile using the "old news" effect - a couple months later 99% of the problems would forget about the jackpot, lowering the heat to be dealt with.

With that time, you can more or less get off the radar.
As far as i understand the US system, you don't register at your place of residency, so you are only traceable by the addresses where the bills go and maybe some secondary documents, like a driver's license?
All of which could be routed to a PO box, right?

So, all the people would see is your namesake who look nothing like you (wig, makeup, and so on) claiming a prize and vanishing.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

So, all the people would see is your namesake who look nothing like you (wig, makeup, and so on) claiming a prize and vanishing.

You need to appear in person to collect, but you are not obligated to show your face in publicity pictures. You don't need to do the wig and make-up thing either:

Get a P.O. box, start a LLC with a name other than yours, and get out of town.

 

[mojoey]

Oh that works...until you have a last name who's commonality is in the triple digits. Face or not, they're gonna find you.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Oh that works...until you have a last name who's commonality is in the triple digits. Face or not, they're gonna find you.

Legally change your name to John Smith just before claiming the prize.

Even better, establish an LLC or trust and have an attorney collect in its name. Absolutely no one except the attorney would need to know your identity. You shouldn't rush and sign your name on the back of a winning ticket because then you MUST collect publicly in your name. Set up the trust or LLC, then assign the ticket to the trust.

 

[Urwumpe]

Why makes this me wonder, if it would be possible to found a business that way in Germany, which only exists for playing in the lottery...

 

[mojoey]

I think those are called 'Defense Contractors' in the US.

 

[Urwumpe]

I think those are called 'Defense Contractors' in the US.

Not PMC?