Bezos I, Padishah Emperor of the Universe

Like for real, who does Jeff Bezos think he is? Ok, obviously he thinks he's the richest human, and I think that's true, but...I don't know...does anyone else feel icky about him ushering in the future?

Pictured: Jeff Bezos stands in front of one of his company's new lunar landers
which his employees will soon use to conquer the Earth's largest natural satellite. 

I'll stop calling them Nazis when
they stop acting like, you know, Nazis.

I ask because the guy who turned a website that sold books into the death of American retail, summoned the press before him today to announce that we'll be going to the moon-which seems like Kennedy's job. Obviously he's dead, and the current President is a-is there a word for a goon who's also a criminal? Goominal? Crimigoon? Doesn't matter. The point is the leader of what used to be the free world isn't what you'd call inspirational. Unless you count white supremacists. Nazis find him super-inspirational.

...oh, I see, he's playing the long game.

What were we talking about? Oh right, Jeff Bezos, who announced today that we'll be going back to the moon in his new rocket. And then we're going to live there. And then we're going to live in space colonies. Specifically in O'Neill cylinders. Holy shit, right? Huh? What's an O'Neill cylinder? They're kinda like big tubes in space. People would live on the interior and the whole thing spins to simulate gravity. Which I'm sure it's not as nauseating as it sounds...right? Better pack some Dramam...oh...

Ever see Babylon 5? No? It was a little like Star Trek, except way nerdier. Like, Trekkies look down on B5 fans. Anyway, Babylon 5 was a type of O'Neill cylinder.

"Neeeeerds!"

-Someone just out of frame,

dressed as Geordi LaForge

"Consume!"

-Amazon.com

And all of this sounds super. What doesn't sound super is how tech-bro-entrepreneur all this sounds. Bezos' pitch...announcement? Directive? Whatever, his plan is to make space more accessible for business. Space business. Which on the one hand I sort of get, I mean, if no one's interested in investing in space technologies we're never going to get to live in space. On the other hand, do we really want the guy who brought us dash buttons owning space?

While I mean that metaphorically, the
Bay Area might as well be radioactive.

I live in the Bay Area...well, Bay Area-ish. About an half an hour south of San Jose. Like, if you were to picture the housing prices on a map, sort of like those Cold War-era maps that show nuclear blast radius' overlaid onto American cities, I would be in the slow death by radiation zone. My point is entrepreneurs might be really good at taking an idea, slapping a dumb, trademark-ably misspelled name on it and making a billion dollars, but they're not good at not ruining cities they live in.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for outer space, and living in outer space and let's face it, the planet is probably doomed, so we're going to need a plan B. I just don't want that plan B to be some kind of orbital tilt-a-whirl under the iron fisted rule of Jeff Bezos.

"Your Amazon Air® subscription is about to run out,
would you like to renew? You have thirty seconds to decide."

-Our grim future