Reflections on Wytham Abbey — EA Forum
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In April 2022, CEA (now EVF) bought Wytham Abbey (a 1480 manor near Oxford) as a conference venue. The purchase was mostly funded by Open Philanthrop…
  • blakestacey@awful.systemsMEnglish
    14·
    1 year ago

    I’m disappointed that they never (to my knowledge) tried to justify the purchase by saying they needed a castle to build a fortified base that would be safe against marauders in the event of civilizational collapse. The return on investment for keeping a catastrophic failure from becoming an existential one is (handwave, handwave) at least 10^69.

    “We need a castle for Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Beyond Thunderdome” would, at least, be on brand.

        • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
          7·
          1 year ago

          TBF castles are cool.

          yep, it’s hellishly costly to heat them. and you can’t even double it up with your crypto or nft grifts because those are noisy! sad :<

          • Deborah@hachyderm.io
            8·
            1 year ago

            okay, but, hear me out.

            1. You’re in EA, so you’ve officially decided that climate change is not an x-risk or a cost effective way to philanthropize.

            2. So you know the earth is getting warmer.

            3. _Much_ warmer.

            4. Castles stay cool in England’s warming summers! Victory, Q.E.D.

            5. We are very good at math.

        • sc_griffith@awful.systemsEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          on the other hand, if you count a moat as part of its castle, lighthouses are by far the largest castles in the world

    • Mike Knell@blat.at
      8·
      1 year ago

      @blakestacey More fool them. Wytham Abbey’s basically just a big house, not fortified at all, and it’s close enough to the centre of Oxford that they’ll be easily overrun by the first wave of pitchfork-wielding mathematicians who decide they’ve finally had it with their faux-intellectual bullshit.