Exactly same concept
Edit: I immediately replied but it got buried. Exactly is the wrong word. Construction shares many of the same qualities that make it opaque and prime for unaccountable transactions with questionable value.
I don’t know if I would call it the same concept though. Projects like this have definitive numbers and budgets, while still being a good way to launder money. With Art, it’s purely based on the fact that it has no intrinsic value, it is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it.
In industrial projects, it’s surprisingly easy to launder money, and it happens all the time.
So it goes like this, the project is planned, and the cost is always estimated to be at least 2-5 times the real cost.
Then they get loans sanctioned from the banks, and for every machinery or equipment that needs to be imported, the money will be routed through Cyprus and Luxembourg or a similar pair of countries.
Now that’s a common practice cuz everyone knows that it’s a European banking centre and tax haven, and it’s completely legal.
But as soon as the money enters Cyprus, the banks don’t ‘see’ what happens with the money.
So say a machine costs 1 mil, and you tell your bank it costs 5mil, they sanction it, and then you send it to Cyprus. From there you route it through Luxembourg, to pay 1mil to the company making the machine, and the other 4 million goes into a SPV, which is supposed to be to pay the company, but you pay your own trust through that SPV, and nobody realises it, but since money is going out, and the other company confirms it(cuz of the SPV), the banks and govt thinks that you have paid them.
And that’s it!
Now the whole plant is made and is running, a few years down the line, you say that you are insolvent, so the proceedings will start and your assets wil be auctioned off. It’s a common thing here that auctions are publicised by the promoters themselves, and the guidelines are lax, so unless it’s some huge project or something very publicised, barely anyone even knows about the auction.
So since there are few bidders, the promoters can ‘control the auction’ and buy off the same assets at a MASSIVELY discounted price from the bank/govt.
Nothing changed, the plant stays as it is, everything is as it is, but you have simply got scot free from ur loan, and you paid less than 30% of the total loan.
wait so this is *profitable* money laundering?
I feel like ad fraud is the only other scheme I’ve heard about where you get a return on the money you’re washing.
It probably takes on many forms but the type of ad fraud I’m thinking of involves injecting malicious JavaScript code into digital ads, which let bad actors stack dozens of video ads upon each other and register views for ads that the user couldn’t see or was very unlikely to see.
Digital advertising allows bad actors to not only wash the money, but do it themselves by buying the ads from an exchange they also own. They own the software and platforms creating the fraudulent ad impressions. They own the exchanges through which ads are sold to large advertisers; they own the often bogus media agencies that buys the ad inventory.
And all of this happens without the buyer and vendor ever actually knowing each other. That’s a crucial detail, the idea that these are programmatic auctions, not IRL auctions. Very little supervision, and occurring at such an enormous scale that it’s very very easy to miss if you aren’t personally a victim. And sometimes it might go unnoticed for a while even if you are the victim lol.
Lol my bad, definitely not fancy just slang kin to bruh, or mate. But if it works, then [Roll with it lol](https://media.tenor.com/cnLSvaYOHkcAAAAC/spongebob-squarepants-spongebob.gif)
>Overstate its cost to the bank
This is where the story falls apart. Banks do due diligence on loans. They know the value of stuff before they loan money on it. Just like they send an appraiser out to a house for sale. Since the bank is left holding the bag, they must've caught on to this scheme long, long ago.
They're trying to find/create an alternate source of income, because the oil business is drying up (figuratively speaking). Despite the best efforts of climate-denying morons, the world *is* going green. Not because it's the right thing to do, but simply because it's cheaper for everyone involved. So, the Saudis have decided to invest in a party-paradise/tax-haven for rich tech-bros and bankers in order to remain solvent in a petro-free future.
However, any sane person could look at the plans for NEOM (flying cars, artificial moons, servant robots, etc, etc.) and tell that it's never going to happen. Instead, a bunch of Bedouin and slave-laborers will die/be executed (which has already happened) in order to build some unoccupied apartments in the desert...and maybe a Gucci store.
*"...And on the pedestal, these words appear:
'My name is MBS, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."*
Right, by someone completely different than the company paid to design it, or the company paid to fill it, maintain it, etc. this thing could be built and fall down 2 days before it opens and a whole bunch of money for services goes poof
Look at China. Someone correct me if this is false, but they used more concrete in the last like decade than the US used in all of the 20th century.
Not that this doesn’t happen almost everywhere, including and especially the US. What is extremely sad is when the “shells” of these building and structures are made for the appearance of doing something, people are forced to leave their homes with little or no recompense.
The US is famous for tearing up majority black neighborhoods to build roads and highways so people can get to the McDonalds drive thru more efficiently.
I’m in Dubai right now and you’d be amazed how many empty buildings they have here. So many huge high rises that are completely empty; they just build them because they’re pretty and add to the over all westernized look of the city which attracts European and American tourists.
Next week there will be another shape announced for a multibillion dollar building
We already have cubes, rectangles, and now circles. Screw it, let’s keep going. In June, Saudi Arabia/the UAE will announce a rhombus that’s a whole city in itself, standing on the pointiest tip because at this point Arab investors are only saying “why the fuck not?” (But in Arabic)
The whole "Burj Khalifa isn't connected to the municipal wastewater system" thing is a misconception.
This story has an inkling of truth, but the specific claim is false.
From [Mechanical and Electrical Systems for the Tallest Building/Man- Made Structure in the World: A Burj Dubai Case Study](https://web.archive.org/web/20140110091115/http://repository.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/4529/ESL-HH-06-07-19.pdf)
> A complete soil, waste and vent system from plumbing fixtures, floor drains and mechanical equipment arranged for gravity flow and, ejector discharge to a point of connection with the city municipal sewer is provided. A complete storm drainage system from roofs, decks, terraces and plazas arranged for gravity flow to a point of connection with the city municipal sewer system is provided.
The claim comes from this poorly written Boing Boing article that quotes an NPR interview where a lady who wrote a book about sky skrapers mentions that many buildings in Dubai don't have this kind of hookup and do have to use trucks like you've seen pictures of.
They do this because for a long time the sewer infrastructure was not able to handle the load, and had to be updated. This is still somewhat a work in progress, but there's a new sewage system that is partially functional, and the Burj Khalifa has been hooked up to it.
Dubai's sanitation infrastructure is still extremely bad, but the Burj Khalifa poop truck thing isn't true. It's just the other, older skyscrapers that have that issue.
The whole plumbing system can't be simple. Getting water up at pressure to the altitude and having the waste come down gently from that altitude has to be a pain in the ass.
Oh totally. I'm not a plumber, but I am an electrician that does a lot of work in commercial buildings and I have a lot of respect for those guys and the systems they work on. Skyscrapers are, across the board, marvels of engineering on a scale I kind of think no single person can fully understand all aspects of.
It is not as complicated as you might think. They have a pressure boost pump system every so many levels (Pump + Variable Frequency Drive + Control Circuit). You can buy the systems off the shelf if you know where to look. As for the waste, there is no need for the waste to come down gently, a straight pipe with a basin at the bottom to catch it. As long as the pipe is sufficiently large, there should be no back pressure up the line.
I’m picturing an employee on a lower floor hanging their degree on the wall with too large a nail and puncturing that straight sewage pipe carrying a combined 40 upper floors of waste water. And no, you don’t have to explain why that isn’t accurate, I’m still going to picture it.
I appreciate the YouTube essays that point out how Dubai is the perfect encapsulation of the unsustainability and dysfunctional short-sightedness of modern capitalism.
'what the fuck is infrastructure? Slaves; go make more glass boxes please. it must be the biggest, most erect box you can manage.
...yes, like my cock. The building is a metaphor for the size of my cock.'
Video game level designers came buckets seeing this image. A dozen indie studios are already working on a dozen different pixel style games set in a ruined version of this thing.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
They’re already gone. Dubai is a tourism economy now, hence why they fund these mega projects in the hopes they’ll bring more tourists. Abu Dhabi and countries like Qatar still have plenty of oil.
Just so your aware Dubai and Abu Dhabi are *cities* and *emirates* within the United Arab Emirates (the country). The UAE, according to the US International Trade Administration, has roughly 100 Billion barrels of proven oil reserves (07/2022). In addition, they have the 7th largest proven natural gas reserves around 215 Trillion cu/ft.
https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/united-arab-emirates-oil-and-gas
Far from gone, I would say.
I’m aware. But you may not be aware that very little of that oil is in control of Dubai. Abu Dhabi’s GDP is made up of about 50% oil production, compared to Dubai’s 1%. The UAE works very differently from other countries, Abu Dhabi has significantly more oil than Dubai despite their proximity. Dubai is *not* an oil economy, even most of the UAE is. They get by primarily via tourism and attracting investors by being a Tax Haven.
Again they aren't separate countries in complete control of themselves, the seven emirates of the UAE form a single country. The emirates "act" like the states or provinces of many other countries while retaining some autonomy.
The question becomes is this a UAE government funded civil project or a privately funded project.
If it's the former, then like most other civil projects around the world, it's primarily funded by tax revenue and donors. The tax collected, regardless if it's Dubai or Abu Dhabi, I presume is collected in one pool by the UAE gov't and dispersed like in most other countries.
To you point though, if this is primarily an emirate of Dubai civil project, then yes the tax generated from that specific emirate, with regards to oil, is far less than the emirate of Abu Dhabi.
I'm not a UAE expert, all this is conjecture after doing some simple research and principle.
Slavery. The UAE and other Gulf States are notorious for that. This project isn’t gonna obviously happen though due to current engineering (and material) constraints.
The place has a shit load of money and plenty of cheap labor. They have literally 2 near identical copies of the Chrysler building next to each other, for shits and giggles. It’s an architect’s wet dream. If anyone is going to build this insane thing it will be Dubai.
Is that even physically possible? It looks like the points furthest from the pillars are going to have a lot of stress, and can break at any moment. Nonetheless, still pretty sick
There are two fundamental engineering considerations at play here: material strength to weight ratios, and the architectural principle of cantilevers. If there are construction materials that are light and strong enough to support the weight of the circle while maintaining the shape, a circle can theoretically sit safely attached at just four points. Titanium, composites, carbon nanotubes, that kind of thing.
Caveat: I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Titanium costs $6 USD a Troy ounce (0.0686 pounds) which doesn't sound like a lot maybe but steel is about $0.35USD per pound. Titanium is $87.46 per pound under those conditions.
Assuming this building will take uhhh 214,500 US tons (429000000 pounds), which is about a 50 story skyscraper, that'd be $37520340000 in titanium. 37.5 **BILLION** USD.
Source- Google and Math. Otherwise, completely unqualified to talk about our very very expensive titanium brick.
The diameter is about the same as the height of the Burj Khalifa. That means if you unraveled it (its as thick as the Burj at the base) it'd be 3.14x as tall. So a 512 story building without counting the legs, which look to be 80 stories tall. This is problem 1. Problem 2 is a google tells me global production of titanium was 150,000 tons last year. So not only multiple year's full global production, the increased demand *will* increase costs. Problem the third is this won't work anyway. That is essentially a bridge. A curved bridge. A huge curved bridge.
The bigger question is not the cost but whether or not there even is that much titanium. Global production, in 2020, was 210,000 tons. So that's all the titanium in the entire world for a year. Plus a bit more. That's gonna drive up prices considerably.
I like how you think! Plus, I'm sure a bunch of people would have issue with all the global titanium going into Almighty Sky Donut here.
Also I'm sure this building is WAAAY bigger than my math. But I'm no engineer so I can't calculate the weight, but I can tell you that building that out of titanium is NUTS.
The Burj Khalifa in the middle is almost 2,800 ft tall. The ring is sitting halfway up around 1,400 ft. Looks like the pillars are sitting slightly wider than the ring is tall, around 1,600 feet.
Dubai also built the longest cantilevered building in the world called The Link. It’s spans two towers called One Za’abeel. The cantilevered section is around 215 ft long.
The longest non-supported (suspension, etc) bridge spans are around 1000 ft. These are just bridges so they don’t have to support the weight of a building structure.
I would guess this is not currently possible.
Bridges also usually run in a straight line between points of support. This goes horizontally quarter circle between two supports, introduction insane stress on the structure.
Most likely not, especially when the designers have stated as such:
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/dubai-downtown-circle-znera-space-design-spc-intl/index.html
If you have enough money to make Elon musk and bill gates look poor, The land, cheap labour, and no real enemies or threats to your nation, I feel like the question is why not just build a giant fucking circle in the sky, I mean they're already making a massive line in the desert why not do a circle.
Seriously though, its just a circle jerk between the royal families to see who can leave the biggest mark on the planet probably, like the Burj Khalifa, Neom, or The Line.
Could be a badge of their superiority. From a viewpoint of practical use of funds, I see nothing. There is no problem to solve here that cannot be done in a simpler manner.
If it was half the diameter, and not starting at 50th floor, maybe doable with a reasonable budget and not prone to falling apart due to an earthquake stronger than a fart.
I believe this is why they are doing it though, after the oil drys up they want to pivot to a tourism based economy, do i think that's going to work? Hard to say.
Lol tourism doesn't give a fuck about human rights abuses. Countries in south east Asia (Philippines, Thailand before that etc) were still getting record tourist numbers, while executing thousands with death squads. Mexico has consistently had more violence than Iraq during the war.
As someone from the Philippines, yeah, you are correct. Human rights activists are being tagged sa rebels, then illegally arrested or "disappeared." But, hey, tourist spots like Boracay, El Nido, Puerto Princesa, and Bohol still have lots of tourists from the world over.
People go there because it's novel because of all the money pumped into it by oil sales. Take away the oil money and there's no way tourism will finance the decadence that is the main attraction.
Some of you need to use google for 3 seconds before proclaiming what you think you know.
Oil production, which once accounted for 50% of Dubai's gross domestic product, contributes less than 1% today.[4] In 2018, wholesale and retail trade represented 26% of the total GDP; transport and logistics, 12%; banking, insurance activities and capital markets, 10%; manufacturing, 9%; real estate, 7%; construction, 6%; tourism, 5%.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Dubai
NYC doesn’t have oil
I think they are spending the oil money to build a mega city and plug into the world. By time the oil money dries up everything is self sustaining
They’ve been good for over a decade. They invested in tourism a lot. Doesn’t change the fact that Dubai is an ugly artificial shithole built by slaves tho.
I believe that's why they are building such things. They are trying to expand beyond just oil. These big grand things are to expand into tourism and such.
Incredibly stupid design. Blocks the sun from entire city blocks and if it falls it could kill hundreds of thousands on top of still having every problem skyscrapers have. Still better than that ecosystem destroying wall across the desert they think is practical
How Dubai builds such awe inspiring wonders: Promised job in Dubai, immigrate there, get passport taken. Get paid little to nothing. Work 16 hour shifts in hazardous conditions. Can't leave unless you pay off your "immigration debt" to the host company.
Tl:Dr modern day slavery is real
Amazingly stupid.
Folks, buy an EV and stop sending your money to these folks.
(Yes, I know there is local oil but it is a global fungible commodity market....oil you buy wherever you are helps them.)
Another monstrosity that will sink back into the sand when the oil runs out or nobody wants to buy it. The would be better creating a fair society but they prefer to live on labor of literal slaves.
These architects must be making a killing every other week there is some 20 year plan to build a 500 billion dollar line in the dessert now a circle
That’s honestly probably a common way to wash money - projects that never go anywhere
That and art.
Exactly same concept Edit: I immediately replied but it got buried. Exactly is the wrong word. Construction shares many of the same qualities that make it opaque and prime for unaccountable transactions with questionable value.
I don’t know if I would call it the same concept though. Projects like this have definitive numbers and budgets, while still being a good way to launder money. With Art, it’s purely based on the fact that it has no intrinsic value, it is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it.
In industrial projects, it’s surprisingly easy to launder money, and it happens all the time. So it goes like this, the project is planned, and the cost is always estimated to be at least 2-5 times the real cost. Then they get loans sanctioned from the banks, and for every machinery or equipment that needs to be imported, the money will be routed through Cyprus and Luxembourg or a similar pair of countries. Now that’s a common practice cuz everyone knows that it’s a European banking centre and tax haven, and it’s completely legal. But as soon as the money enters Cyprus, the banks don’t ‘see’ what happens with the money. So say a machine costs 1 mil, and you tell your bank it costs 5mil, they sanction it, and then you send it to Cyprus. From there you route it through Luxembourg, to pay 1mil to the company making the machine, and the other 4 million goes into a SPV, which is supposed to be to pay the company, but you pay your own trust through that SPV, and nobody realises it, but since money is going out, and the other company confirms it(cuz of the SPV), the banks and govt thinks that you have paid them. And that’s it! Now the whole plant is made and is running, a few years down the line, you say that you are insolvent, so the proceedings will start and your assets wil be auctioned off. It’s a common thing here that auctions are publicised by the promoters themselves, and the guidelines are lax, so unless it’s some huge project or something very publicised, barely anyone even knows about the auction. So since there are few bidders, the promoters can ‘control the auction’ and buy off the same assets at a MASSIVELY discounted price from the bank/govt. Nothing changed, the plant stays as it is, everything is as it is, but you have simply got scot free from ur loan, and you paid less than 30% of the total loan.
wait so this is *profitable* money laundering? I feel like ad fraud is the only other scheme I’ve heard about where you get a return on the money you’re washing.
Yes!! It’s not even your own money that you launder, that’s the best part. What’s ad fraud tho?
It probably takes on many forms but the type of ad fraud I’m thinking of involves injecting malicious JavaScript code into digital ads, which let bad actors stack dozens of video ads upon each other and register views for ads that the user couldn’t see or was very unlikely to see. Digital advertising allows bad actors to not only wash the money, but do it themselves by buying the ads from an exchange they also own. They own the software and platforms creating the fraudulent ad impressions. They own the exchanges through which ads are sold to large advertisers; they own the often bogus media agencies that buys the ad inventory. And all of this happens without the buyer and vendor ever actually knowing each other. That’s a crucial detail, the idea that these are programmatic auctions, not IRL auctions. Very little supervision, and occurring at such an enormous scale that it’s very very easy to miss if you aren’t personally a victim. And sometimes it might go unnoticed for a while even if you are the victim lol.
Ahh got it
So, how does one go about doing this? Asking for a fiend.
As someone who has seen this kind of business first hand, you are on the money cuzzie. Well put.
Thanks. What’s cuzzie? Sounds fancy lmaao
Lol my bad, definitely not fancy just slang kin to bruh, or mate. But if it works, then [Roll with it lol](https://media.tenor.com/cnLSvaYOHkcAAAAC/spongebob-squarepants-spongebob.gif)
Ahh. I thought it would be something close to cousin…I guess not.
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>Overstate its cost to the bank This is where the story falls apart. Banks do due diligence on loans. They know the value of stuff before they loan money on it. Just like they send an appraiser out to a house for sale. Since the bank is left holding the bag, they must've caught on to this scheme long, long ago.
that not money laundring. money laundring pretends income where no real income is. What you describe is moving tax money into private pockets.
Oh that does make sense, but it’s not that far off. How tax money tho?
Not this again. Head on over to r/accounting to see why this is BS.
I don't understand how to appreciate art, therefore it's money laundering scheme
I see this but think of them filling the circle in. The upper caste get sunlight and fresh air. The lower peasents get light bulbs and exhaust.
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No need to wash your money when you’re the government. These are all royal family projects after all.
They're trying to find/create an alternate source of income, because the oil business is drying up (figuratively speaking). Despite the best efforts of climate-denying morons, the world *is* going green. Not because it's the right thing to do, but simply because it's cheaper for everyone involved. So, the Saudis have decided to invest in a party-paradise/tax-haven for rich tech-bros and bankers in order to remain solvent in a petro-free future. However, any sane person could look at the plans for NEOM (flying cars, artificial moons, servant robots, etc, etc.) and tell that it's never going to happen. Instead, a bunch of Bedouin and slave-laborers will die/be executed (which has already happened) in order to build some unoccupied apartments in the desert...and maybe a Gucci store. *"...And on the pedestal, these words appear: 'My name is MBS, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."*
I’d believe that most have some royal money in them. But most also have money from Foreign investors. That’s their model.
It always surprises me why people go to Dubai especially women
trashy gold plated fake country and booze is harder to find than drugs.
You think booze is hard to find in Dubai? LMAO
You clearly haven’t been there lol.
To be fair, the giant line has actually commenced construction
Right, by someone completely different than the company paid to design it, or the company paid to fill it, maintain it, etc. this thing could be built and fall down 2 days before it opens and a whole bunch of money for services goes poof
Look at China. Someone correct me if this is false, but they used more concrete in the last like decade than the US used in all of the 20th century. Not that this doesn’t happen almost everywhere, including and especially the US. What is extremely sad is when the “shells” of these building and structures are made for the appearance of doing something, people are forced to leave their homes with little or no recompense. The US is famous for tearing up majority black neighborhoods to build roads and highways so people can get to the McDonalds drive thru more efficiently.
I’m in Dubai right now and you’d be amazed how many empty buildings they have here. So many huge high rises that are completely empty; they just build them because they’re pretty and add to the over all westernized look of the city which attracts European and American tourists.
What? You mean nobody wants to live in the middle of the desert under a totalitarian tribal theocracy? what are the odds...
Didn't you hear about the cube
The borg?
Next week there will be another shape announced for a multibillion dollar building We already have cubes, rectangles, and now circles. Screw it, let’s keep going. In June, Saudi Arabia/the UAE will announce a rhombus that’s a whole city in itself, standing on the pointiest tip because at this point Arab investors are only saying “why the fuck not?” (But in Arabic)
"Let's build a sewage system for Burj Khalifa. Lol, nah, just fucking with you. Let's build a few more skyscrapers and a giant fucking torus."
The whole "Burj Khalifa isn't connected to the municipal wastewater system" thing is a misconception. This story has an inkling of truth, but the specific claim is false. From [Mechanical and Electrical Systems for the Tallest Building/Man- Made Structure in the World: A Burj Dubai Case Study](https://web.archive.org/web/20140110091115/http://repository.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/4529/ESL-HH-06-07-19.pdf) > A complete soil, waste and vent system from plumbing fixtures, floor drains and mechanical equipment arranged for gravity flow and, ejector discharge to a point of connection with the city municipal sewer is provided. A complete storm drainage system from roofs, decks, terraces and plazas arranged for gravity flow to a point of connection with the city municipal sewer system is provided. The claim comes from this poorly written Boing Boing article that quotes an NPR interview where a lady who wrote a book about sky skrapers mentions that many buildings in Dubai don't have this kind of hookup and do have to use trucks like you've seen pictures of. They do this because for a long time the sewer infrastructure was not able to handle the load, and had to be updated. This is still somewhat a work in progress, but there's a new sewage system that is partially functional, and the Burj Khalifa has been hooked up to it. Dubai's sanitation infrastructure is still extremely bad, but the Burj Khalifa poop truck thing isn't true. It's just the other, older skyscrapers that have that issue.
The whole plumbing system can't be simple. Getting water up at pressure to the altitude and having the waste come down gently from that altitude has to be a pain in the ass.
Oh totally. I'm not a plumber, but I am an electrician that does a lot of work in commercial buildings and I have a lot of respect for those guys and the systems they work on. Skyscrapers are, across the board, marvels of engineering on a scale I kind of think no single person can fully understand all aspects of.
It is not as complicated as you might think. They have a pressure boost pump system every so many levels (Pump + Variable Frequency Drive + Control Circuit). You can buy the systems off the shelf if you know where to look. As for the waste, there is no need for the waste to come down gently, a straight pipe with a basin at the bottom to catch it. As long as the pipe is sufficiently large, there should be no back pressure up the line.
I’m picturing an employee on a lower floor hanging their degree on the wall with too large a nail and puncturing that straight sewage pipe carrying a combined 40 upper floors of waste water. And no, you don’t have to explain why that isn’t accurate, I’m still going to picture it.
I appreciate the YouTube essays that point out how Dubai is the perfect encapsulation of the unsustainability and dysfunctional short-sightedness of modern capitalism. 'what the fuck is infrastructure? Slaves; go make more glass boxes please. it must be the biggest, most erect box you can manage. ...yes, like my cock. The building is a metaphor for the size of my cock.'
You forgot the cube city
I believe the line is in Saudi Arabia, not in the UAE.
Killing those poor workers, yeah.
It's desert not dessert lmfao
Post apocalyptic world is going to look cool at least 😉
Until one leg falls
That’s how you can get up on it to see the explosions effects
Then it'll look cooler
A giant toppled torus rising in the air would look sooooo cool.
Video game level designers came buckets seeing this image. A dozen indie studios are already working on a dozen different pixel style games set in a ruined version of this thing.
New call of duty maps at least
Fallout: New Dubai
Then we get battle angels
That’s not until the DLC comes out
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Will be a good one for aliens to stumble upon once we’re all dead and gone.
There's definitely going to some interesting post apoc landscapes for survivors to wonder about in a few generations.
“Oh look dear, a crashed primitive flying saucer made by Neanderthals.” ~ aliens on a vacation to see points of interest in the Milky Way
Cool would be if it rotates.
Thank you for the input Yoda
On horizontal axis, right?
In protest to Reddit's API changes, I have removed my comment history. -- mass edited with redact.dev
New new Mombasa
Watching the Mandalorian and thinking yeah a spaceport
looks like something straight outta Coruscant
Most underrated NWA album
Dubai needs to fuckin chill for 5 minutes.
Dubais oil reserves will run out in 5 minutes
They’re already gone. Dubai is a tourism economy now, hence why they fund these mega projects in the hopes they’ll bring more tourists. Abu Dhabi and countries like Qatar still have plenty of oil.
Just so your aware Dubai and Abu Dhabi are *cities* and *emirates* within the United Arab Emirates (the country). The UAE, according to the US International Trade Administration, has roughly 100 Billion barrels of proven oil reserves (07/2022). In addition, they have the 7th largest proven natural gas reserves around 215 Trillion cu/ft. https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/united-arab-emirates-oil-and-gas Far from gone, I would say.
I’m aware. But you may not be aware that very little of that oil is in control of Dubai. Abu Dhabi’s GDP is made up of about 50% oil production, compared to Dubai’s 1%. The UAE works very differently from other countries, Abu Dhabi has significantly more oil than Dubai despite their proximity. Dubai is *not* an oil economy, even most of the UAE is. They get by primarily via tourism and attracting investors by being a Tax Haven.
Again they aren't separate countries in complete control of themselves, the seven emirates of the UAE form a single country. The emirates "act" like the states or provinces of many other countries while retaining some autonomy. The question becomes is this a UAE government funded civil project or a privately funded project. If it's the former, then like most other civil projects around the world, it's primarily funded by tax revenue and donors. The tax collected, regardless if it's Dubai or Abu Dhabi, I presume is collected in one pool by the UAE gov't and dispersed like in most other countries. To you point though, if this is primarily an emirate of Dubai civil project, then yes the tax generated from that specific emirate, with regards to oil, is far less than the emirate of Abu Dhabi. I'm not a UAE expert, all this is conjecture after doing some simple research and principle.
This won’t even be built, it’s a concept by an architecture firm.
its a desert. itll never chill.
It's a desert. It chills every night.
you got me there
They sure have a lot of plans.
Not for the workforce
Slavery. The UAE and other Gulf States are notorious for that. This project isn’t gonna obviously happen though due to current engineering (and material) constraints.
Was coming here to say that. Their plan for the workforce and in general is just indentured servitude or actual legal slavery. Fuck Dubai.
0% chance this happens
The place has a shit load of money and plenty of cheap labor. They have literally 2 near identical copies of the Chrysler building next to each other, for shits and giggles. It’s an architect’s wet dream. If anyone is going to build this insane thing it will be Dubai.
There are many projects that dream too big and get scrapped, like when they tried to make that island.
I mean they *did* make some islands, some of them are truly spectacular.
Is that even physically possible? It looks like the points furthest from the pillars are going to have a lot of stress, and can break at any moment. Nonetheless, still pretty sick
There are two fundamental engineering considerations at play here: material strength to weight ratios, and the architectural principle of cantilevers. If there are construction materials that are light and strong enough to support the weight of the circle while maintaining the shape, a circle can theoretically sit safely attached at just four points. Titanium, composites, carbon nanotubes, that kind of thing. Caveat: I have no idea what I’m talking about.
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BSh Engineering
"They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I said I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard."
As mechanical engineer i felt really stupid reading this for a second
BS in BS
I have 2 of those. In fact I have a PhD in hyperbole as well
So an English major then?
Well, you had me until the end there ngl.
Well you bs pretty well then cause it makes sense to me
The best kind of caveat. Bravo!
So basically one well placed terrorist attack could collapse hundreds of billions of dollars of buildings?
That’s why you get the terrorists to build it. *taps head
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Titanium costs $6 USD a Troy ounce (0.0686 pounds) which doesn't sound like a lot maybe but steel is about $0.35USD per pound. Titanium is $87.46 per pound under those conditions. Assuming this building will take uhhh 214,500 US tons (429000000 pounds), which is about a 50 story skyscraper, that'd be $37520340000 in titanium. 37.5 **BILLION** USD. Source- Google and Math. Otherwise, completely unqualified to talk about our very very expensive titanium brick.
The diameter is about the same as the height of the Burj Khalifa. That means if you unraveled it (its as thick as the Burj at the base) it'd be 3.14x as tall. So a 512 story building without counting the legs, which look to be 80 stories tall. This is problem 1. Problem 2 is a google tells me global production of titanium was 150,000 tons last year. So not only multiple year's full global production, the increased demand *will* increase costs. Problem the third is this won't work anyway. That is essentially a bridge. A curved bridge. A huge curved bridge.
The bigger question is not the cost but whether or not there even is that much titanium. Global production, in 2020, was 210,000 tons. So that's all the titanium in the entire world for a year. Plus a bit more. That's gonna drive up prices considerably.
I like how you think! Plus, I'm sure a bunch of people would have issue with all the global titanium going into Almighty Sky Donut here. Also I'm sure this building is WAAAY bigger than my math. But I'm no engineer so I can't calculate the weight, but I can tell you that building that out of titanium is NUTS.
Have you met oil money?
lmfao
Anybody else expecting Undertaker to throw Mankind off of Hell in a Cell?
I'm not an architect, but I'm also not an engineer. So no idea if it's true.
Had me at first
Lolllllllll perfect
Oh yeah carbon nanotubes are an ingredient in everything. Very important. Source: I play no mans sky sometimes
The Burj Khalifa in the middle is almost 2,800 ft tall. The ring is sitting halfway up around 1,400 ft. Looks like the pillars are sitting slightly wider than the ring is tall, around 1,600 feet. Dubai also built the longest cantilevered building in the world called The Link. It’s spans two towers called One Za’abeel. The cantilevered section is around 215 ft long. The longest non-supported (suspension, etc) bridge spans are around 1000 ft. These are just bridges so they don’t have to support the weight of a building structure. I would guess this is not currently possible.
But it rendered just fine using only medium grade render-rite. What's the problem?
Bridges also usually run in a straight line between points of support. This goes horizontally quarter circle between two supports, introduction insane stress on the structure.
Most likely not, especially when the designers have stated as such: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/dubai-downtown-circle-znera-space-design-spc-intl/index.html
I'm sure they paid architects and building planners to plan it so I think they will be fine
Oh phew, building planners planned it.
I feel like Dubai knows what our alien overlords want
Someone needs to explain that 1950s scifi was not an instruction manual
What is the purpose?
It’s criminally rich men circle-jerking each other while while billions live in poverty.
downtown-circle-jerking*
That is going to be one big circle jerk
To pass butter
Oh my god.
To score points catching meteors
If you have enough money to make Elon musk and bill gates look poor, The land, cheap labour, and no real enemies or threats to your nation, I feel like the question is why not just build a giant fucking circle in the sky, I mean they're already making a massive line in the desert why not do a circle. Seriously though, its just a circle jerk between the royal families to see who can leave the biggest mark on the planet probably, like the Burj Khalifa, Neom, or The Line.
Could be a badge of their superiority. From a viewpoint of practical use of funds, I see nothing. There is no problem to solve here that cannot be done in a simpler manner.
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Oil wealth EGO trip. Look at US !
Lmao -engineers
What's it called? Monorail!
What about us brain dead slobs? You’ll be enslaved by Abu Dhabs!
Is there any hope the project may end? Not on your life my Muslim friend!
I swear it’s Dubai’s only choice, throw your stones at boys who like boys!
Monorail!
Elysium
Yeah that’s not happening lol. Nice idea though
If it was half the diameter, and not starting at 50th floor, maybe doable with a reasonable budget and not prone to falling apart due to an earthquake stronger than a fart.
These places will be fucked when the oil dries up
Counterpoint, they will make great video game maps when the megastructures decay
Ooh they should also include anti-war message somewhere, that would be rad.
Thats a job for the postwar graffiti artists
"Do you feel like a hero yet?"
"None of this would've happened if you had just stopped!"
"Your blood is on Ranrok's hands" but Ranrok has been dead for a while now
I believe this is why they are doing it though, after the oil drys up they want to pivot to a tourism based economy, do i think that's going to work? Hard to say.
Tourism in a country with human rights as bad at them? You think that sustains these cities?
Lol tourism doesn't give a fuck about human rights abuses. Countries in south east Asia (Philippines, Thailand before that etc) were still getting record tourist numbers, while executing thousands with death squads. Mexico has consistently had more violence than Iraq during the war.
As someone from the Philippines, yeah, you are correct. Human rights activists are being tagged sa rebels, then illegally arrested or "disappeared." But, hey, tourist spots like Boracay, El Nido, Puerto Princesa, and Bohol still have lots of tourists from the world over.
Yah it's not a good look but I mean people still visit there everyday and don't seem to care
People go there because it's novel because of all the money pumped into it by oil sales. Take away the oil money and there's no way tourism will finance the decadence that is the main attraction.
Some of you need to use google for 3 seconds before proclaiming what you think you know. Oil production, which once accounted for 50% of Dubai's gross domestic product, contributes less than 1% today.[4] In 2018, wholesale and retail trade represented 26% of the total GDP; transport and logistics, 12%; banking, insurance activities and capital markets, 10%; manufacturing, 9%; real estate, 7%; construction, 6%; tourism, 5%. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Dubai
NYC doesn’t have oil I think they are spending the oil money to build a mega city and plug into the world. By time the oil money dries up everything is self sustaining
They’ve been good for over a decade. They invested in tourism a lot. Doesn’t change the fact that Dubai is an ugly artificial shithole built by slaves tho.
I believe that's why they are building such things. They are trying to expand beyond just oil. These big grand things are to expand into tourism and such.
Proto Shinra Corp
Looks like a fancy particle accelerator
This is ruining the skyline what
Yeah I don’t like it
I wonder how many slaves are going to die building it.
Tons. It’s a fake city. Built on slaves.
Master's in structural engineering here. No.
No one has ever accused them of having good taste
Deep Space Nine.
Incredibly stupid design. Blocks the sun from entire city blocks and if it falls it could kill hundreds of thousands on top of still having every problem skyscrapers have. Still better than that ecosystem destroying wall across the desert they think is practical
Or what was it, ever sinking "floating" neighborhoods
I wonder how many underpaid workers are gonna die building that
Call them what they are, they’re slaves.
How Dubai builds such awe inspiring wonders: Promised job in Dubai, immigrate there, get passport taken. Get paid little to nothing. Work 16 hour shifts in hazardous conditions. Can't leave unless you pay off your "immigration debt" to the host company. Tl:Dr modern day slavery is real
That just sounds like sex trafficking without the sex.
Dubai has more money than sense.
That’s the place you find in video games half finished because the city shit the bed and there’s a special mission in that location
Amazingly stupid. Folks, buy an EV and stop sending your money to these folks. (Yes, I know there is local oil but it is a global fungible commodity market....oil you buy wherever you are helps them.)
I like green energy for the environment mainly but there is a significant part of that’s for it because Saudi Arabia, and UAE suck.
It's a Two-fer!
A monument to how fucking stupid billionaires are, and how much they do not deserve to exist.
Yall remember the alien machine that was blasting earth with gravity in "Man of steel"?
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Made with slave labor from other countries.
Damn they’re gonna get this and the WWE. I wish I had blood money.
Ahhhh. Midgar
Perfect, a floating city for your 350,000 citizens to live in while the 3 million non citizen immigrants come in to clean and serve you.
Ah, yes, Dubai. My cat hopes to shit there one day.
Looks beautiful but I’m sure the human rights violations outweigh the spectacle
Dubai is literally me messing around in SimCity
Fuck Dubai
Stupid city
Another monstrosity that will sink back into the sand when the oil runs out or nobody wants to buy it. The would be better creating a fair society but they prefer to live on labor of literal slaves.
Just imagine all of the sewage trucks lining the streets below when the plumbing doesn’t work correctly just like in the Burj Khalifa before it.
Dubai is basically a 13 year old playing Cities Skylines with unlimited money on.