Petition instructs Jeff Bezos to buy, eat world's most famous painting
(2021/06/18)
- Reference: 1624036807
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/18/petition_instructs_amazon_founder_jeff/
- Source link:
Ultra-billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has already been the subject of a petition [1]asking him not to return to Earth after he [2]blasts off in his New Shepard rocket on July 20, but even if he is allowed back, Bezos is now facing an even more difficult prospect.
The aerodynamically-pated arch-villain archetype and his [3]vast fortune are increasingly becoming subjects of fascination for the denizens of [4]campaign website Change.org , with multiple petitions currently running, mostly trying to persuade him to divert some of his almost-limitless resources toward good causes.
However, some users are suggesting more novel and entertaining uses for his immense wealth. Change.org user Kane Powell has chosen to use the platform to attempt to persuade Bezos to buy and eat the Mona Lisa , the supposedly priceless Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece housed in the Louvre in Paris.
[5]
In a petition simply called “ [6]We want Jeff Bezos to buy and eat the Mona Lisa ”, Powell describes his campaign thus:
[7]
[8]
“Nobody has eaten the Mona Lisa and we feel Jeff Bezos needs to take a stand and make this happen.”
The campaign, which has taken up the signatory-sourced informal subtitle “Gobble da Lisa!” has taken a considerable time to gain momentum, with the Change.org website suggesting it has been active for over a year. But it has been given new impetus by [9]a recent Vice article and now boasts over 9,000 signatures.
[10]Sold: €15k invisible sculpture that's a must-see for art lovers
[11]Show me the Monet: Late Samsung chairman's family settles inheritance tax bill, massive art donation
[12]Amazon says it's all social media's fault for letting fake review schemes thrive
[13]I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space
[14]Amazon exec's husband jailed for two years for insider trading. Yes, with Amazon stock
Powell reportedly came up with the idea for the campaign while dining at a branch of Applebee's with his fiancee and some friends, although his reasons for suggesting that Bezos eat the masterpiece remain obscure, even to him: “Me and my fiancée were dipping into the dollar drink menu,” he explained.
Signatories to the plan have expressed considerable enthusiasm for Bezos's potential consumption of the enigmatic portrait.
[15]
“Sick of waking up to a world where Bezos has not consumed the Mona Lisa ,” wrote Kate Woods on Tuesday.
User Vito S had a more practical reason for wanting the Mona Lisa gone: “Jeff needs to eat Mona before Mona eats Jeff. It's self defence,” he suggested, while James Branan offered a more encouraging “MONAPPETIT!”
While it is unlikely that the French Republic would part with the painting, even if Bezos were to offer to buy it, if it were ever to be sold then he could almost certainly afford it. At the time of writing, the highest amount ever paid for a painting was $450.3m, which was shelled out by Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan Al Saud of Saudi Arabia in November 2017 for another da Vinci painting: [16]Salvator Mundi .
[17]
Given that Bezos is currently worth $193.5bn, [18]according to Forbes' latest estimate , he could probably find the asking price as lost change in the turn-ups of his designer chinos, even taking into account the considerable premium the Republic would ask for it being the world's most famous painting and one of the most famous images of any kind.
Whether he would want to eat it is a different question. The Mona Lisa was painted on a panel made from a plank of poplar wood, rather than canvas, which when combined with the fact it is now over 500 years old would make it extremely chewy, to say the least.
Furthermore, the paints Da Vinci used contain all manner of horrifically poisonous and otherwise unpleasant ingredients, including silica, tin, iron oxide, mercury, crushed insects and a lot of lead.
Given the difficulty of physically consuming the painting, Bezos might want to warm up with a starter, perhaps a tasty freebie thrown in by the Louvre to whet his appetite?
Unfortunately, artworks owned by public bodies cannot be sold or given away, [19]as Article 451-5 of the French “Heritage Code” law governing national treasures stipulates: “Collections held in museums that belong to public bodies are considered public property and cannot be otherwise.”
So, even if the Louvre wanted to add, say, Titian's delicious-looking [20]Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit as a free bonus appetiser for a valued customer, they would be legally barred from doing so.
Sometimes, even Jeff Bezos has to pay attention to local comp-a-Titian laws. ®
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/intrepid_changeorg_user_launches_petition/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/07/bezos_blue_origin_flight/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/03/bezos_billions_space/
[4] https://www.change.org/about
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.change.org/p/reddit-we-want-jeff-bezos-to-buy-and-eat-the-mona-lisa
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dbgj/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-could-buy-and-eat-the-mona-lisa
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/07/invisible_sculpture_is_a_must/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/28/samsung_inheritance_tax/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/17/amazon_fake_reviews/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/03/bezos_billions_space/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/amazon_insider_trading/
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://www.christies.com/features/Salvator-Mundi-timeline-8644-3.aspx
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/06/10/after-two-weeks-at-no-2-jeff-bezos-is-once-again-the-richest-person-in-the-world/
[19] https://www.france24.com/en/20140902-could-france-sell-mona-lisa-pay-off-its-debts
[20] http://musee.louvre.fr/oal/viergeaulapinTitien/viergeaulapinTitien_acc_en.html
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The aerodynamically-pated arch-villain archetype and his [3]vast fortune are increasingly becoming subjects of fascination for the denizens of [4]campaign website Change.org , with multiple petitions currently running, mostly trying to persuade him to divert some of his almost-limitless resources toward good causes.
However, some users are suggesting more novel and entertaining uses for his immense wealth. Change.org user Kane Powell has chosen to use the platform to attempt to persuade Bezos to buy and eat the Mona Lisa , the supposedly priceless Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece housed in the Louvre in Paris.
[5]
In a petition simply called “ [6]We want Jeff Bezos to buy and eat the Mona Lisa ”, Powell describes his campaign thus:
[7]
[8]
“Nobody has eaten the Mona Lisa and we feel Jeff Bezos needs to take a stand and make this happen.”
The campaign, which has taken up the signatory-sourced informal subtitle “Gobble da Lisa!” has taken a considerable time to gain momentum, with the Change.org website suggesting it has been active for over a year. But it has been given new impetus by [9]a recent Vice article and now boasts over 9,000 signatures.
[10]Sold: €15k invisible sculpture that's a must-see for art lovers
[11]Show me the Monet: Late Samsung chairman's family settles inheritance tax bill, massive art donation
[12]Amazon says it's all social media's fault for letting fake review schemes thrive
[13]I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space
[14]Amazon exec's husband jailed for two years for insider trading. Yes, with Amazon stock
Powell reportedly came up with the idea for the campaign while dining at a branch of Applebee's with his fiancee and some friends, although his reasons for suggesting that Bezos eat the masterpiece remain obscure, even to him: “Me and my fiancée were dipping into the dollar drink menu,” he explained.
Signatories to the plan have expressed considerable enthusiasm for Bezos's potential consumption of the enigmatic portrait.
[15]
“Sick of waking up to a world where Bezos has not consumed the Mona Lisa ,” wrote Kate Woods on Tuesday.
User Vito S had a more practical reason for wanting the Mona Lisa gone: “Jeff needs to eat Mona before Mona eats Jeff. It's self defence,” he suggested, while James Branan offered a more encouraging “MONAPPETIT!”
While it is unlikely that the French Republic would part with the painting, even if Bezos were to offer to buy it, if it were ever to be sold then he could almost certainly afford it. At the time of writing, the highest amount ever paid for a painting was $450.3m, which was shelled out by Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan Al Saud of Saudi Arabia in November 2017 for another da Vinci painting: [16]Salvator Mundi .
[17]
Given that Bezos is currently worth $193.5bn, [18]according to Forbes' latest estimate , he could probably find the asking price as lost change in the turn-ups of his designer chinos, even taking into account the considerable premium the Republic would ask for it being the world's most famous painting and one of the most famous images of any kind.
Whether he would want to eat it is a different question. The Mona Lisa was painted on a panel made from a plank of poplar wood, rather than canvas, which when combined with the fact it is now over 500 years old would make it extremely chewy, to say the least.
Furthermore, the paints Da Vinci used contain all manner of horrifically poisonous and otherwise unpleasant ingredients, including silica, tin, iron oxide, mercury, crushed insects and a lot of lead.
Given the difficulty of physically consuming the painting, Bezos might want to warm up with a starter, perhaps a tasty freebie thrown in by the Louvre to whet his appetite?
Unfortunately, artworks owned by public bodies cannot be sold or given away, [19]as Article 451-5 of the French “Heritage Code” law governing national treasures stipulates: “Collections held in museums that belong to public bodies are considered public property and cannot be otherwise.”
So, even if the Louvre wanted to add, say, Titian's delicious-looking [20]Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit as a free bonus appetiser for a valued customer, they would be legally barred from doing so.
Sometimes, even Jeff Bezos has to pay attention to local comp-a-Titian laws. ®
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/intrepid_changeorg_user_launches_petition/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/07/bezos_blue_origin_flight/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/03/bezos_billions_space/
[4] https://www.change.org/about
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.change.org/p/reddit-we-want-jeff-bezos-to-buy-and-eat-the-mona-lisa
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dbgj/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-could-buy-and-eat-the-mona-lisa
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/07/invisible_sculpture_is_a_must/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/28/samsung_inheritance_tax/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/17/amazon_fake_reviews/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/03/bezos_billions_space/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/amazon_insider_trading/
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://www.christies.com/features/Salvator-Mundi-timeline-8644-3.aspx
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YM0XekQNtORAtxRBaCxiuAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/06/10/after-two-weeks-at-no-2-jeff-bezos-is-once-again-the-richest-person-in-the-world/
[19] https://www.france24.com/en/20140902-could-france-sell-mona-lisa-pay-off-its-debts
[20] http://musee.louvre.fr/oal/viergeaulapinTitien/viergeaulapinTitien_acc_en.html
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
b0llchit
It doesn't matter. If he can sell it all for 1% of the valuation, then that be almost two thousand million bucks! Now, with that cash, ignoring interest, he may go and spend at a constant rate of one dollar per second (*) . At that rate he may do so for the next 63 years! Well beyond any estimated time-to-death for that guy.
(*) note that spending 86400 dollars per day is more than a lot of very poor people have in an entire lifetime.
A very educational petition
martyn.hare
Gobbling the Mona Lisa would be one of the first times Jeff would reduce, rather than generate value, unless of course, the original famous work has no intrinsic value. This assumes of course that there is no extrinsic value to be created in his gobbling of it, such as if Jeff were to find himself fully satiated having only gobbled a small portion of the work. This also assumes Jeff does not suffer lead poisoning from the type of paint used. If both are true, then he will have created more overall value and would be richer for it too!
fidodogbreath
persuade Bezos to buy and eat the Mona Lisa
No; because then he'd make even more money by selling it as a Non-Flushable Token.
A lame excuse
Chas E. Erath
"While it is unlikely that the French Republic would part with the painting..."
Buy France then. Duh?
Worth <> cash
DJ
One's net worth is not necessarily the same as dosh in one's wallet.
Not being of an accountancy nature, I wonder how do the rich-on-paper crowd scrape by?
Borrow against their shares? Slip a few out of the till when no one's looking?
Well-phrased
Throatwarbler Mangrove
"aerodynamically-pated arch-villain archetype"
Have a pint on me.
"Given that Bezos is currently worth $193.5bn, according to Forbes' latest estimate..."
Not to get in the way of a tasty bootnote, but you do know this doesn't mean he actually *has* $193.5b, right? Nor could he obtain that much cash by liquidating his assets. These "net worth" figures are based on a blend of guesswork and regulatory filings, and even where it's known for certain that someone has X shares in some listed company, the people compiling these figures simply multiply X by some recent closing price and call it good. In reality, order books are not infinitely deep, and anyone trying to sell some large X number of shares will find that the price he gets for more than the first few thousand quickly approaches zero.
As a result, no one who wants to unload a large ownership interest does so on the public markets, which also means the actual price paid (almost always quite a lot lower) has to be negotiated with one of the small number of capable buyers. Furthermore, most of the people who end up on these lists have huge concentrations in individual companies. The knowledge that they want to sell makes potential buyers wary -- a product of a market inefficiency called information asymmetry. You can read about all of these things in any introductory secondary school economics text.
I'm sure Mr Bezos has plenty of money all the same, but the idea that someone automatically must have no trouble finding $500m in cash just because some magazine published an inflated estimate of his nominal net worth is pretty silly. The amount of cash someone has, or could readily access, is at most weakly related to the nominal market value of his illiquid assets. That's exactly why some assets command a "liquidity premium" -- and assets like real estate, helicopters, and shares in an overvalued Internet retailer are not among them. If Mr Bezos's wealth consisted mainly of gold, Treasuries, gilts, cash, and the like, it would be a different story. It doesn't, so whether you rely on Forbes to keep score or as a source of outrage, you need to know that those numbers are largely meaningless.