Today, Charlie Munger, the billionaire who proposed this, passed away at the age of 99.
He withdrew his ~$200M offer to UCSB (which was a fraction of the estimated construction cost) earlier this year after the university refused his demands to implement his ‘vision’ of an industrial habitation blockhouse and social engineering experiment in the guise of a dormatory.
Fuck that guy.
Stranger
It seems normal for someone to get influence and naming rights even if they only contribute ten or twenty percent of the building costs. I don’t get it. Especially in a case like this, where he demanded such extensive control, he should have been asked for 100% of the money.
If we come up with a revolutionary idea for his coffin, can we get it named the “Straight Dope - Munger Sarcophagus”?
Early 90s in Mass. You could modify the birthdate convincingly with an extremely sharp pencil and a good artist (my roommate was an art major, who specialized in pencil drawings). The font used when they printed the licenses was pretty easy to match. Then you take a piece of packing tape and apply it to the front of the license. With a razor knife you trim the tape so it is a perfect fit to the front of the license. Obviously some numbers were easier to modify than others.
Worked every time.
So the project is dead, and has been for a while I take it?
But before that Munger or his ghost-architect changed the number of floors to 9. If they can change it to 9, they can later change it to 8. So 8 floors of 8 halls of 8 corridors of 8 rooms… they really wanted to build a temple to summon Bel-Shamaroth, Terry Pratchetts take on the Great Old Ones, who has an affinity for the number eig- … between seven and nine.
The Amazon show Upload makes fun of this project with the “Charlie Munger Reduced Circumstances Housing” building. Below is a reddit thread that did the hard work of getting a screen cap.
