Text reads “This is Smaug, the dragon from the Hobbit. Smaug famously stole a mountain full of gold. So full that he sleeps buried under gold. We’re talking literally tons and tons of gold by weight.
Forbes tracks Smaug as the second wealthiest fictional character. He had been first, but the price of gold took a tumble more his vast, overwhelming fortune is only worth $51,400,00 0,000.00. Or $51.4 billion.
That means EVEN THOUGH he has an ENTIRE MOUNTAIN full of almost nothing but solid gold , Smaug would be ranked at the FIFTEENTH wealthiest American.
Fourteen Americans have more money than a gold-hoarding dragon.
Please consider that next time you say deca-billionaores deserve their wealth and shouldn’t pay their employees livable wages.
Image below of Smaug covered in gold. All you can see is his eye.
End description.
-fae
Okay, but also, the second wealthiest fictionalcharacter is less wealthy than fourteen actual people? Like, fiction writers coming up with the most absurdly wealthy people they can think of still fall short of actual real-life people
“Let us put it generally: if a regime is immoral, its citizens are free from all obligations to it.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago.
[Pictured: Captain Pia Klemp sitting in a chair beside her controls.
@VivianAngrisani on Twitter wrote on 6/8/2019: “Pia Klemp, a German biologist & boat captain faces 20 yrs in prison for rescuing 1,000+ migrants at risk of drowning whilst crossing the Mediterranean. Seeking asylum is a human right. Only 1 in 100 sea captains are female. This woman is a humanitarian, not a criminal. #FreePia”
@Galactic_Rabbit quote-tweeted on 6/10/2019 and wrote: “Thinking about all those videos of people honored in their old age for hiding/protecting Jewish people.”]
To all the people commenting that she’s an accessory to “illegal immigration,” note that seeking asylum is a human right. Countries which refuse asylum are in violation of the Geneva Convention. They get away with this and propagandize complacency towards the victims by using bureaucracy to complicate immigration proceedings. During times of genocide, this is tantamount to hearing a would-be murder victim knocking on your door and locking the deadbolt.
People who risk dying getting smuggled across borders do so out of sheer desperation because the situation they’re leaving is worse. Finally, you are missing the entire point: violation of the law is warranted when the laws violate human rights and criminalize existence. Laws which call immigrants “illegal” are tools of a systemic negligence designed to condemn those who need legal protection the most.
the idea of gaydar is honestly so funny to me. straight people truly think that gay people have absolutely no control over the way they present themselves, and no self awareness about how that presentation comes off…. trust me if a gay man is wearing nail polish and tight button downs and speaking in a higher pitch he knows that he’s doing that. he knows that you know he’s gay and he’s doing that on purpose. if a lesbian has a crew cut and wears basketball shorts and wifebeaters she knows that you know that she’s a lesbian and she’s doing that on purpose. you don’t have a special talent for decifering gay people you’re just able to pick up on messages that are actively being sent to you congrats i guess
The absolutely baffling corollary is they don’t notice when we do the opposite, or reflect on why we choose to in that moment.
