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A bit different angle of culture (and maybe culture war?)
The new Bill Gates' house.
This guy has all the money. He could have built pretty much any house people can build. He chose to build that. Do you think it's beautiful? Would you dream, if you became wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, one day live in a house like that? If you don't think it's beautiful (I must admit I don't) - is this example for all of us that material possessions are not that important and you can spend a wild amount of money, get an ugly house and still be happy with it?
I don't like how it goes all the way to the edges of the lot. I don't like how it looks like an inexpensive hotel: uniform and beige and easy to power wash.
The only way I can explain why someone like Gates would have a house like that is that it's not his primary or even secondary residence. His house in Washington looks rather nice. His former property, Irma Lake Lodge in Wyoming, looks spectacular. I don't know why he needed a place in San Diego. Maybe one of his grandkids is a surfer. Maybe he was advised by his doctor to spend more time breathing warm ocean air.
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It's consistent with the tastes of a rich man who would risk his marriage and reputation on an affair with Mila Antonova.
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This isn't a piece of modern architecture that intentionally disrupts mainstream understandings of aesthetics or w/e. It's a functional building. The couches, tables, and shades aren't nice and wooden, but they're good for outdoor conversation. The solar panels are probably there for green reasons, but even purely on economics they're a reasonable choice. And the roof isn't an ugly metal slope or anything, just normal tiles.
I don't think anyone finds it beautiful, but it seems fine. Even if you want marble columns in your $5M mansion, that's still secondary to the material function of the house - spending your day there, having people over, etc.
I doubt that BG is worried about his energy bill being too high given that he's spending tens of millions on having another house.
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IMO the “functional over form” position is predicated on a misconception of human needs. Humans actually need beauty and order to thrive. We need these things as much as we need a roof. Beauty and order in a building boosts your mood and aids your mind. Preferring function over form is like preferring an ugly, easy girl over a beautiful but somewhat expensive girl, because she is “functional”. Or it’s traveling to an ugly beach instead of a beautiful beach because they both have sand. Or it’s like playing a guitar with really shitty strings made out of shitty wood because you can hear the same notes even though the tone is bad. The ubiquity of beautification in human history proves without question the importance of form for the functioning of the human being.
I believe this is also known as 'not being shallow,' and would be accompanied by less pejorative framings.
The drawbacks of superficial attractiveness are legendary. Like, literally some of the oldest works in the literary canon.
Even so, would you prefer a woman who speaks like ChatGPT (functional) or with a sonorous voice/heart (form)? When we talk about our loved one’s personalities do we say they are convenient and quite functional and does the job, or do we express what matters — the beauty of the inner person?
In terms of personality I care that they're pleasant, funny, like me back etc. A bipolar angsty girl into astrology and chakras might have a more "beautiful" personality, but all desire it inspires is to look now and then from a distance and not touch.
It's not that function is beauty. It's that beauty is function.
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Again, I repeat: 'would be accompanied by less pejorative framings.'
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Looks good. A cursory look around on google maps says that it fits with the surrounding esthetics. What would you build if you had the money of Bill Gates? I've never understood people that like neoclassical buildings in the US, to me they all look phoney, poseur, out of place, lacking in originality.
Not all beautiful buildings need be neoclassical.
Sure. The point I was trying to make is that it has to fit with its surrounding.
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I hate it, it's hideous. It's kind of degrading to look at because he has so much fuck you money that he doesn't even bother to give the rest of us something pretty to look at. I'm guessing the location was exactly what he wanted or something and he has so many things already that he doesn't care about aesthetics. It also pattern matches to the irritating impulse many rich leftist Americans have where they feel so guilty about their money that they think to flaunt it would enrage the proles when in reality, not flaunting it is even worse (a la Marie Antoinette's peasant dresses, many of the people of France in the late 18th century weren't mad that she was a queen flaunting her wealth, they were angry that she dressed like a peasant in her spare time)
It's kind of ugly from above, but most people live in houses, they don't hover forty feet above them. If you're in it, it probably looks pretty nice.
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His main home in Medina, Washington is surrounded by trees to the point that it's hard to see the buildings. He likes privacy and doesn't feel the need to build anything that screams "look at my house".
I suspect the bland exterior was a deliberate choice. It probably makes him feel safer.
The pool is covered in those photos. There are pics of the interior under a former owner here: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-04-24/report-bill-and-melinda-gates-buy-43million-del-mar-home
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BG himself probably put 6 milliseconds of thought into the house. Knowing some ultra wealthy people, they are too busy to think about what underwear they wear, forget about the "aesthetics" of their nth house and what some nobodies in the internet with 1/100..000 of their wealth would think.
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His fellow billionaires think it is beautiful, and BG wants to impress them, not you.
He cares about your approval about as much as you care whether insects find your house nice and good looking.
I care a lot about that, only with the valence reversed. Perhaps this is the same sort of situation.
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And how do you know this?
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How do you know? I mean, I don't know a lot of billionaires, to be honest, but I met some rich people, and their tastes in general aren't that different from the rest of the population. They are not aliens. It's not about my approval of course, it's about my understanding of why he did it. I am curious. I do not seek the power to approve Gates' decisions, I seek the understanding.
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I don't think it's beautiful on the outside but I'm sure it's prettty luxurious on the inside. I think it's a pretty big jump to go from "One specific billionaire is not particularly concerned with the outer beauty of his dwelling" to "material possessions aren't important"
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If I had all the money to spend I'd have a nice enough house that fit in the neighborhood with a big and well equipped shop out back within walking distance of my favorite bar.
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Merchant class aesthetics updated for the modern era. Ostentation is for the extinct warrior aristocracy or noveau riche clods with no taste. Pursuit of beauty is for the priestly class. Merchants are supposed to be frugal, modest, and vaguely sterile.
Alternatively: function over form. As others have noted, people don't spend a lot of time looking at their own house. If Gates finds the design serves his needs better, he probably doesn't care that it looks drab.
Alternatively mk 2: countersignalling. Gates is one of the richest and most successful people on the planet. He doesn't need to impress anyone.
So is Trump, but he is often mocked for eating steaks well done and pizza with a fork.
But those signal that Trump is not trying to impress anyone! Doing eccentric, "tasteless" things is one way to signal that you're not trying to impress people with "good taste". Eating well done steak or going to McDonalds is a way of shouting, "I am not trying to impress WASP elites."
Even Trump's gaudiness e.g. in his mansions could be a way of signalling that he's a Common Man, because they are the ways that a Common Man would spend millions if they had it. The message that Trump wants to give to his supporters and potential supporters is "I'm just like you, only richer, so I can still understand you and I share your desires."
Even for those of his supporters who regard this signal as insincere, the fact that Trump sends this signal is a way that they can identify that he is trying to cynically appeal to them, rather than other groups, which is relevant information for determining his priorities.
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Sure, but the industry dedicated to hating on bill gates is much smaller.
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Has Trump given any indication of caring?
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I never felt a particular reason to impress anyone either (well, maybe outside the period where I was on the dating market, but that was decades ago...) but I still like nice things. If I had so much money that it wasn't a question of price, I'd certainly buy a house that looks nice (to me) - not to impress anyone but because it is pleasant to live in a nice house.
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It could be so much worse. There's nothing nice about it but it looks like a fine place to use as a base camp for enjoying the san diego weather and beach.
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Looks like it will make a dandy Best Western when he gets done with it.
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I don't suppose he had put much more thought into it than I do into my order in some fast food joint. I just pick based on how much I'm willing to spend, trusting that the default option won't be terrible because the reviews are okay; he most likely outsourced the design to professionals, and let his secretary handle the details.
One of the marks of highly successful people that unites them with normies is being content with defaults. Sure, were I rich, I'd be able to afford a custom laptop for travels that ticks my every nerd fetish box – trackpoint, 3:2 touchscreen, 100Wh battery, mechanical keyboard, magnesium chassis, no thinness fetish… But I'd most likely just tell my secretary to get the newest lightweight Mac, and paying much attention to what you own would be as absurd to my eyes as tinkering with rooted Android firmware.
I mean this is something that occurred to me one day during COVID. All-hands meeting at the company I was working for, pretty big spectrum of income/wealth/countries of residence... and yet prettymuch everybody on the 100+-person call was essentially at a very similar table, with a very similar background, on a very similar device on this Zoom meeting. Testament to how increasingly flattened the curve is on lifestyle.
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Tangentially related, but when Khodorkovsky was released from prison, his secretary got him the newest lightweight Mac, the newest iPhone and the newest iPad and his mind was blown. He remembered what 2003 cutting-edge tech was like and spent a few months being extremely online.
Isn't he still very online?
Not as much as Elon Musk.
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Yes, and this is sign that highly succesful people are just normies with big pile of money. Billionaire supermen exist in Ayn Rand's novels, not in reality.
When someone ends at this level, time, not money is the bottleneck. You could, when you make your billions, hire as consultants professional engineer and design teams from Apple or Samsung, explain to them what exactly you want and tell them to build this dream machine just for you regardless of cost. But you would have something better to do with your time.
Houses and computers are not so important, more important is that even the most succesful people outsource their information, even billionaires get their knowledge about the world from mainstream media and popular literature (plus some rumors and inside info heard from their peers and other VIP's, which can pay very well).
With honorable exception of Elon Musk, who lately turned to /pol/ memes as his source of news, more accurate source than NYT, CNN or FOX.
But, billionaires should do better if they wanted to. Ordinary billionaire could afford to hire his own OSINT/financial/technological/investigative team to look behing the facade, to seek from open sources what is really going on in the world.
Well, if they did, they would not tell us, but we would see billionaires predicting (and profiting from) important world events more frequently than random chance allows.
You had similar idea long ago, when, as the first thing when you get mega rich, you planned to dig deep, follow through the rabbit holes and learn who and what is behind the infamous satanic ritual celebrating opening of Gotthard Base Tunnel.
Normie taste does not imply Normie aptitude. And saying otherwise is coping.
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I like the courtyard, but would prefer a useable roof in that style house.
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I think Gates might go nondescript on purpose. His home on Lake Washington isn’t even visible from the lake. When you’re boating and tell friends where Bill Gates lives, you’re gesturing at a clump of trees on the shore.
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Eh, looks fine to me, I don't see the exterior of my house that often, and especially not from a drone's point of view, if building it that way made the interior more suited to my needs by a small margin, the tradeoff would've been worth it.
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architecture nerd here, looks essentially modern, no fusion. southwest accents. could be better, modern southwest has many beautiful works.
could be much worse. a lot of purely modern houses are dissonant, inhuman shit. that house doesn't do anything interesting, it also doesn't do anything terrible. inoffensive.
i imagine gates will spend very little time there. isn't that the thing with those 8 figure fantasy mansions? all that time and effort to get it and no time to enjoy it. gotta keep grinding. except maybe notch.
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I'd imagine that California's building codes made it very difficult to make any kind of structural changes to the house. He probably did what he could on the outside, and made huge changes to the inside.
I saw pretty interesting houses, say, in Carmel. So California is not at fault here I think.
but were they right on the beach? When were they built? I don't know about del mar, but you always hear horror stories about trying to do anything in Malibu. here's an example from a google search:
Yes, many right on the beach or very close. I recommend Scenic Rd in particular, it's always nice to walk there. I have no idea where were they built (last time I was there, which was a couple years ago by now, some were still building, though I have no idea how they came out) - I could probably find out, but never bothered. Maybe it's a very expensive and arduous process to get anything approved there (most likely it is), but those people somehow (probably - lots of money and connections?) managed to get through it.
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The house fits the man. What can I say ...
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That's such an incredibly meh design. Not outright ugly, but I'd cry if I paid $48 mil for it and had that to show for it.
But at any rate, I doubt that house is the defining contributor to his sense of self-worth or happiness.
I think we have to consider other things about the house. The exterior visible design is pretty pedestrian I suppose. But it looks like a freakin' huge house, (six bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 5,800 square feet) and it's reportedly on a large beachfront property in Del Mar, San Diego. I expect real estate there is pretty pricey, especially with that large of a Pacific ocean beach. And we have no idea what he did to the inside. I would think with all those other factors, $48 mil doesn't go that far in the make it look super impressive from the outside department. I don't get the impression that Bill Gates is the kind of guy who wants to impress everyone else with how awesome and rich he is. Here's another article I found about how awesome this house supposedly is.
Yeah it's pretty nice on the inside but why build a beach house in San Diego (assuming you're super rich)?. San Diego is beautiful, but California makes it illegal to own the beach itself. If I had unlimited money I'd want to put my beachfront property in places where I can keep the riffraff off my sand. How am I supposed to enjoy the beach and the surf if the paparazzi (or just randos) can legally come onto my beach.
It's not his only place. Presumably he wants at least one big place in a swanky but accessible location to throw billionaire parties at. IDK if there's any paparazzi around, presumably nobody wants pics of pasty old dudes? Or maybe he has so much freakin' money he can destroy any publication that annoys him, like Thiel did?
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That looks like a very nice house, but apparently Gates tore it down to build the current house.
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$48 million probably for the location , not the design ...
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My feelings exactly. But why? I mean, it'd probably be the same price and effort to have a non-ugly house instead. Does he think it's beautiful? Does he just not care because he's way beyond it? I mean, I probably won't care if I went to McDonalds and got an ugly burger - it's a cheap burger, I eat it and forget it, who cares. Is that what's going on here?
Because you hear $48M and think of that as a capstone sort of representation of the culmination of your life. A $48M house on the beach in San Diego is a way of showing both to yourself and to your neighbors that you are somebody who can afford a $48M house.
It's something you'd want to be really proud of, since you probably imagine only buying a $48M once, probably near the end of your life.
Bill Gates is worth $100 BILLION dollars. For math, let's assume your net worth is $1M. A $1,000,000 net worth is not something to be ashamed of.
This would be like spending $500 on a house. Let's say even $10,000,000 - a level at which most people would consider you rich. That's $5000 on a house. My net worth is somewhere between those two numbers, and I have many $5000 "goofy" sorts of toys that I mistreat and don't really care about aside from the once or twice a year they get used.
Even at $100,000,000 net worth, this is still a $50,000 expenditure (proportionally).
Why is it ugly? Because why the hell would he even consider the aesthetics of this house? At that level of wealth, this is functionally no different than staying in a hotel. He might not even know that he owns it.
If I were to spend $500 on something, and I had a choice between an ugly thing and a beautiful thing - I'd definitely choose the latter. When I buy $500 things I definitely care for how they look. Thinking about what I could by for around $500, for me, that would be either an electronic gadget or some smaller piece of furniture, I guess, definitely aesthetics would matter.
I wouldn't. When I was a kid and my parents took me to buy school accessories, I always went out of my way to find the least colorful and most boring-looking stuff on the shelf to avoid attention from my classmates.
Still today, my smartphone case is transparent-gray, and my keyboard RGB is off at all times.
But isn't that either depression or anxiety induced behaviour? What would you get if you specifically wanted to demonstrate your good taste?
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Fair enough, and I'm in that same order of magnitude for wealth, and I still make fun of watches that look like shit for $5K. Yeah, you can just spend that and it's not a big deal, but why choose something shitty when you could choose something that looks nice? I don't think, "I don't even care lol" is compelling in any setting at all, to be honest.
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If I had to wild-ass guess, he just doesn't particularly care, has multiple better houses he prefers and just wanted a minimum viable product, or is just so inured to luxury it doesn't bother him.
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