Original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/us/indian-creek-surfside-billionaire-sewage.html

Without the paywall: https://archive.li/HrE38

Alternative: https://gizmodo.com/billionaire-island-where-bezos-lives-lobbies-state-gov-to-flush-its-poop-down-neighbor-towns-pipes-2000615795

Note

While the news is concerning, it seems Daily Galaxy had all the hallmarks of a content mill aping more legit sources. I had no idea because I follow a lot of RSS feeds and this had been sitting there for a while now. I choose it for the science stuff. Sorry. I honestly wasn’t aware.

  • bthest@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    I loved going to this Island and killing people in GTA Vice City. I hope GTA 6 includes it.

  • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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    9 hours ago

    Wait wait wait wait

    Many billionaires live on a man made island ioff the coast of Florida?

    I mean if they’re all in one spot, I guess this makes things easier

    They need more than a gated bridge to stop the floods they will endure.

    • mriswith@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Many billionaires live on a man made island ioff the coast of Florida?

      It’s inside the Miami metropolitan area.

      Last cenus was in 2020, showing 41 homes and 84 people across 0.43 sq mi/1.11km2. It is sometimes referred to as “Billionaire bunker”, because it’s a gated community on an island, and the one bridge in and out has a police checkpoint, it also apparently has its own government and law enforcement. If you try to get close by water, a police boat shows up.

        • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          ever see a drone light show? you literally can’t see the whole swarm of them until the lights are on.

          on an unrelated note, an electronically actuated ghost gun wouldn’t need to have a conventional shape and wouldn’t need a bunch of conventional parts.

    • Kobibi@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      I mean if they’re all in one spot, I guess this makes things easier

      They need more than a gated bridge to stop the floods they will endure.

      What floods? This has been public knowledge for time. You gonna do it? Or is this just wishful thinking

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    Here’s the NYT article they’re aping instead of checks notes whatever the fuck the “Daily Galaxy” is.

    Why is every, like, sixth word bolded? Like I know pragmatically why, but it’s so transparently designed for brainrotted zoomers who think 300 words is “long”. What a slop trough of an article.

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago
        • It’s trivial to bypass the paywall.
        • The paywall is only there if you’ve already read a certain number of articles.
        • It’s still a considerably better read than this telephone game version from the “Daily Galaxy”. (Edit: reading it all the way, it’s almost guaranteed written by an LLM.)
    • Tony Bark@pawb.socialOP
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      13 hours ago

      I follow a lot of RSS feeds and added Daily Galaxy due to the science stuff. I wasn’t aware.

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        That’s fair, and hopefully here I can give you something more concrete than just saying “wow dumb source lol”.

        • The article is written by Arezki Amiri. This author puts out two or three articles per day on a very wide variety of topics, yet he lists no qualifications except: “expert specializing in health and technological innovations. He has extensive experience in sharing his knowledge on the impact of space technologies on health and science in general.”
        • A ton of words are bolded with no rhyme or reason. Far from being something related to accessibility, this is done so your brain keeps seeing bolded text and subconsciously thinks “something important; better keep reading”.
        • The article links to the Daily Galaxy at the words “sewage system” for absolutely no reason except for SEO. In this article about Bezos, it links to “1,300-Year-Old Royal Flush? Ancient Korean Palace Toilet Stuns Archaeologists!”. When legitimate news sources do this, it’s to enhance understanding; for example, a news outlet referencing an event from four years ago might link to one of their articles covering that topic for readers who may not be familiar.
        • The words in this article (and other articles of Amiri’s) feel like they were at least assisted by an LLM. A big tell is that LLMs love to say “it’s not X; it’s Y”. They also absolutely adore em-dashes.
          • “This isn’t just about sewage; it’s about how the wealthiest individuals […]”
          • “This move wasn’t about being unreasonable; it was about fairness.”
          • Other articles of theirs reek even worse.
        • Not a single one of their articles appears to be original reporting. It’s always a summary of one source.

        TL;DR: I’m 99% sure that every article from the “Daily Galaxy” is just taking an existing article (journal, news, etc.), running it through an LLM to summarize it, randomly adding bolds everywhere for atrophied, dopamine-starved zoomer brains, and published two to three times daily per author. It’s a content mill.

          • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            If it’s any consolation, I can show you something similar to potentially swap in which actually is written by experts. The Conversation is always written by subject-matter experts (usually professors of the subject) and covers the same breadth of topics. The Conversation is basically what the Daily Galaxy wishes it were, and it’s one of my favorite items on my feed.

            • Tony Bark@pawb.socialOP
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              8 hours ago

              Thanks. I actually follow those guys!

              I should mention that around the time of tripping upon and posting this article, I did catch their post about US supposedly investing in a carbon capture machine pretty close by on my feed reader. It seemed oddly out of place given recent events. Not to mention combined with all the other niche or local outlets I follow, some of which are specifically about renewable technologies.

              So, yeah, alarm bells were already ringing.

          • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            I could’ve looked at other authors’ work, tried to find an editorial team, etc., but didn’t think it was worthwhile. When you frequently write and cite sources in said writing, this type of investigation often becomes second nature.

  • ProfThadBach@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    So 40 billionaires can’t pay to hook in to the local sewage system and then pay their fair share? Why the fuck is it so hard for them to part with what they would consider pocket change? I mean fuck they could even fund the whole sewage system for not only them but for the nearby towns as well.

    • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 hours ago

      You don’t get ultra-rich by paying your fair share, but by leeching on others, like they are now trying to do

    • Miles O'Brien@startrek.website
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      12 hours ago

      Why the fuck is it so hard for them to part with what they would consider pocket change?

      It’s not about the money

      It’s about “fuck you, I do what I want now do what I tell you or I will throw more money than most cities get in their yearly budget in order to ruin everything for everyone”

    • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      They don’t even care about the sewage. They pay some flunky who pinches pennies to justify his existence and that one is the one that tries to dump sewage into other people. The banality of evil.

  • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
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    13 hours ago

    So instead of a $10M municipal contract to upgrade the sewer lines, it was easier to just get the republicans to add a specific waver and force the neighbouring town to take their sewage.

    I’m pretty sure Bezos can find that in his couch, and the whole island is billionaires.

  • adarza@lemmy.ca
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    13 hours ago

    jared/ivanka and tom brady live there too. surprised there isn’t a multi-billion dollar federal grift involved yet.