32
votes
Mark Zuckerberg is building a top-secret compound in Hawai'i
Link information
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- Title
- Inside Mark Zuckerberg's Top-Secret Hawaii Compound
- Authors
- Guthrie Scrimgeour, Megan Farokhmanesh, Dhruv Mehrotra, Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, Adrienne So, Gregory Barber, Morgan Meaker, Paresh Dave, Will Knight, Carlton Reid, Amy Martyn, Joel Khalili
- Published
- Dec 14 2023
- Word count
- 4416 words
Web.Archive.org link for those who prefer it. I've modified the article's original title because it's disingenuous click-bait, but the info in the article is worth a read. Also, I'm not sure if this is ~news -worthy.
Anyway, some info on Hawai'i that people might enjoy reading in addition to (or in lieu of) the article:
The largest island of the state of Hawai'i is called Hawai'i or simply the "Big Island" to avoid confusion. The state's flag is a blend of the US and UK flags. Native Hawai'ians make up about 10.8% of the state's population, with Asians making up 37.2% and are thus the largest ethnic group. The island Zuckerberg is building on is Kaua'i and has a population of around 73,000, about 5% of the state's population. The island of Lana'i is 98% owned by Larry Ellison, co-founder and chairman of Oracle Corporation, who has been making investments in the islands infrastructure to benefit his resort as well as the island's over 3,000 other inhabitants.
There are different dialects between Hawai'ian islands and even within different islands. One dialect on Kaua'i does not have the [t] sound. The words for Hawai'i and Kaua'i both have a glottal stop, which is correctly written with an ʻOkina (not the apostrophe I've used throughout). It's pronounced /həˈwaɪʔi/, but many native Hawai'ians as well as foreign transplants also pronounce the W as a V. So the correct pronunciation is [həˈvɐjʔi] (if anyone wants to try writing that out phonetically I'd appreciate it). Unfortunately, only a fraction of Native Hawai'ians are native speakers of their language, though there are efforts to increase fluency.
Due to the high costs of living and other factors, the number of Hawai'ian citizens living in poverty has increased from 9% in 2018 to 15% in 2022. Native Hawai'ians seem disproportionately impacted and many have been priced out of living in their ancestral islands. The recent wildfires in Maui haven't helped.
The big island has volcanic activity that is helping the island to "grow." Lava flows have added at least 543 acres (2.197 km^2 ) of land above sea-level to the island since 1983. When active, even mildly, parts of the island can be blanketed in volcanic fog. The island itself is built from five separate shield volcanoes, towering out of the Pacific ocean. By some interpretations, when measured from its base on the Pacific floor, Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on Earth with numbers ranging from 9,966 m (32,696 ft) to 17,205 m (56,447 ft). Measured from sea-level, the peak of Mauna Kea reaches an altitude of about 4,205 m (13,796 ft) and sometimes gets snow at the peak, where there are astronomical observatories as well as sites that are considered sacred to native Hawai'ians. The island has many cemeteries and sacred sites, including some that are sacred to the Japanese (or are of dual Japanese-Hawai'ian significance) as well as a site generally considered by native Hawai'ians to be the place foreigners would traditionally land and bring new religions.
I lived on Oahu for 12 years. The locals have gotten the shit end of the stick ever since the islands were taken by force. It’s staggering how little they are offered given the history of those islands. One thing you did not mention is that Hawaii is home to lots of other Pacific Islanders. Micronesians, Guamanians, pompei, etc. Many of them are poor and do not speak any English, they often come to the islands for medical care because they are able to get Medicaid through the state. This however puts a massive strain on the islands medical facilities.
I was last there in 2022 and at the time if you were a single person making less than 45k a year you were considered “low income” and were essentially working a poverty wage. The cost of living there is astronomical, truly hard to comprehend. The only way to truly survive there is to either be a very wealthy person or live with a ton of family so you all can split the bills.
Based on the way billionaires and millionaires are taking the land so easily. I predict that the Hawaiian islands will soon be no different than Dubai, a playground for the rich and powerful all at the expense of the poor locals who could never dream of affording a fraction of the life that those wealthy possess.
For my little perspective, the CoL seemed similar to the SF Bay Area when I was there. Maybe a little lower.
That makes sense. I don’t know anything about SF about I have heard about the extremely high cost of living.
Best I can do is Ha-vy-ee-ee and tbh I'm basing that on pronunciations from media (ala Lilo and Stitch). The last "ee" sounds are still short in duration. But I'm not great at that.
The thing that irks me the most about this is all the references to security guards on the beach. I'm an advocate for public access to public lands, and it's an issue all over the place. The beaches in Hawaii are public, no one other than the federal government can stop you from using a beach, least of all some rent-a-cops on ATVs. So many public easements and right-of-ways are being shut down by private land owners that I now keep a pair of bolt cutters and barbed wire snippers (along with OnX which makes finding private and public land boundaries very easy to find) in my pack for hiking, fishing, and hunting. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservancy Partnership has some good information on this (although none of this is Hawaii specific): https://www.trcp.org/unlocking-public-lands/
In college a coworker told me about a distant relative who was crazy/mentally ill and wealthy. He told me his relative built a bunker. Over the years I have come across similar stories of other rich people. I have to wonder if bunker building is a stage of mental illness rich white men go through.
I disagree. I think when you're rich it's a good hedge to protect yourself and your family. You never know what will happen. And it's not a nonzero chance that shit can go down. Building a bunker when you have so much money is something I'd do if I have much more money to spare. Even with my small amount of assets I have some prepper type backups.
Wow.
I think it is realistic for billionaires, especially well known ones, to be concerned about security.
I would have security guards.
A bunker tho? If the civilization collapses at some point their supplies will run out and they will have to share our fate.
What prevents rich men of other skin tones from undergoing this paranoia?
Maybe experiencing actual prejudice and attacks on their selves prevent the manifestation of baseless paranoia? That's my running theory
Like the hypothesis about the modern rise in autoimmune disorders being a result of obsessive cleanliness? That’s an interesting new perspective—physical, biological, and sociological dynamics are often far more alike than any of those fields would willingly admit.
First, are you sure it's not something that rich non-white, non-men do? Secondly, usually those kinds of traumas lead people to be hyper vigilant or paranoid, not less. I don't think we have any evidence of it being only a white dude thing and guessing at why non-whites don't do it feels like toeing the line of racism. Any assumptions of why someone isn't building bunkers inherently makes assumptions about someone's life solely based on their race. It seems like a form of implicit bias.
I suppose I should ditch the racial tinge and just say that mainly I believe that when you live in a vacuum/bubble as the ultra rich do, they seem to create conflict possibly as a means to cope with ennui and paranoia bunkers seems to be the outlet
Your theory presumes that the rich person in question grew up in a country as a minority (US). I haven't checked on what the non-US billionaires are up to (looking at you Saudia Arabia) but I suspect they have their own share of bunkers.
Nah it was more that the rich person in question building bunkers grew up in a country wherein they are the majority. Absence of conflict/personal growth seem like it would make the person in question create conflict or create aggressors
Probably the same thing that prevents men of other skin tones from killing themselves at the same rate as white men.
I remember when he was buying up all that land.
From a guardian article
This reminds me of the article from a month or so ago about black landowners in Texas being pushed out with title lawsuits.
This is disgusting, but I have to say that the original article's tone was really odd about NDAs. Employees who had signed one were fired when they posted about the compound on social media? Yeah, that's what those agreements usually say.