What ridiculous thing would you spend billions on?
A wizard has cursed you with billions of dollars! Why is that a curse? Because unless you spend it immediately* on something ridiculous** you'll become like the worst, asshole-iest billionaire you can think of. (Fill in your own blank).
Saving the world is out, philanthropy is out (unless it's utterly ridiculous), clever tricks to make the world better by finding a loophole and trying to outwit the wizard's curse are out.
If you try something that could be started with an "um actually" 🤓☝️you end up naming all your children and companies with the same letter before the end of the day, got it? Spirit of the rules!
I'm watching you. ತ_ʖತ
*A project might take time but you're going all in on it, cash up front
** The point is that it's pointless. It might be accidentally useful but it's pointless.
ETA: I have been unjustly rate limited and will be replying when I can. Please take this opportunity to reconsider your charitable works and other attempts at public good and get back to airships and Animorphs movies. Ty
Fund Sonic Adventure 3 out of pocket, specifically hiring the best hip-hop artists of today to make the music for the Knuckles levels.
The concept of a Sonic Adventure game having a billion dollar budget is hysterical to me. In addition to the music you mentioned, it should also include:
A super detailed city level. Not necessarily GTA V, but let's make it into a modern Crazy Taxi sized city.
Hyper-realistic froggy fishing portion. But still very annoying and very mandatory for story progression.
The knuckles levels where you have to find emerald shards has procedurally generated levels. Your "metal detector" esque capabilities can be upgraded at the cost of spending emerald shards. So you can make it easier but have to do more work.
I assume that also includes a Chao Garden so I can get behind this!
I would pay so much money for a proper Chao Garden. :(
New ridiculous goal to spend billions on: I'm building a real-life Chao Garden. Complete with paying scientists to either biologically engineer real-life Chao or make Chao robots.
Absolutely worthwhile use of "fuck you" money
Bring back Sonic Boom!
Is Crush40 still able to make the magic happen or would you blow the whole budget on Pearl Jam?
I'll drag Crush 40 out of the retirement home with my own hands if I must
More grinding, more racing!
my only demand is that in your benevolence all the music in the Sonic levels is played by the best bad garage pop punk band that can be found.
Wow I never realized I needed Run the Jewels rapping about chaos emeralds
I like Electronics (as a technical field). I like Metrology (the science of measurement).
I would spend it all to commission the esteemed Illya Tsemenko, the amazing Ukrainian electrical engineer and creator of xDevs, to design, prototype, and release as open-source hardware design, the worlds first 9 1/2 digit multimeter. The successor to the reigning king which has been the best multimeter in the world for over 30 years now, the venerable 3458a - originally engineered by the research and development team at Hewlett Packard's Loveland Colorado research and development facility and released in 1989.
The combination of disciplines that were called upon to engineer this marvel of metrology were manifold. Not just electrical engineering, no. Circuit physics engineering, metalurgical and materials engineering, organic and inorganic chemistry, and so many more.
As a hobby project, Illya has been working on designs for a 9 1/2 and even 10 1/2 digit meter involving extreme noise isolation, cryogenics, and other engineering wizardry. On a hobby budget.
I want to see what he could do with a limitless budget. I want to casually measure the movement of individual electrons at home.
THEY ARE MY ELECTRONS AND I WANT TO KNOW WHERE THEY ARE, WHERE THEY ARE GOING, AND HOW FAST THEY ARE MOVING AT WHAT VECTORS IN REAL TIME. IS THAT REALLY SO MUCH TO ASK?!?!??!
Delightful waste of money!
What is the point of being stupid rich if you don’t travel by luxury air ship. No imagination these days
You said luxury air ship, but what I'm hearing is "floating city that never touches ground".
Edit: Which, for the record, is not what I'd spend my money on as I'm dreadfully afraid of heights. I'd spend my billions on actually making one of those accessories that lets my dog talk, like Dug.
Sounds cool, unless you played Bioshock Infinite! Speaking of which, why not build a city underwater? What could possibly go wrong!
I was hiding under a deck on the floating city because I love you...
Flying squirrel!!
20,000 Leagues Above the Lands
I love this, but add that everyone on board must dress (from the fully stocked closet) in steampunk attire. It's surprisingly cheap to rent an airship, so I feel the need to go bigger (at least according to the internet. )
I've been disappointed that I've been to exactly 0 aerial stately dinner parties.
Make it a solar-powered electric airship. It has the space for those solar panels.
you mean some sort of dirigible? where the only thing that can lift the hulking bronze mass of gears and steampipes is a roaring furnace heating an enormous sac of flammable gases? will you also wear a monocle
If they don't then I shall personally utilize my question-provided billions to spread monocles to all.
Basic lensed ones for those with no need for prescriptions, proper prescripted ones for those in need thereof.
Can't be riding on the great Zeppelin Unignitable without a good monocle (and top hat).
Slap a gear on it!
Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)
I feel like 2 monocles is appropriate
At first I read your comment and thought “but that’s just not-attached glasses” but then had the much better idea of both monocles being for the same eye, so your monocle is wearing a monocle.
Buy a nuclear aircraft carrier. Retrofit it to be a comfortable, luxury cruise liner. Retain some of its defensive capabilities. Spend hundreds of millions of dollars on training and equipment.
Offer every single one of my friends the opportunity to become a fighter pilot and live on a badass cruise ship where we have lan parties constantly, drive dirt bikes on the flight deck, launch drones and shoot at them, and occasionally pull into ports around the world where we're welcomed like kings and spend a shit ton of money.
Permission to come aboard? I bring a variety of nonsensical Pew-Pew-Pew / acceleration noises for our drone games.
I've been looking for that capability. Welcome aboard, sailor.
I went through all the stages of the Vince McMahon meme reading this. I'm sold, and now wish to be a member of your friend group.
You're in. The featured drink is a lovely 18 year single malt scotch this evening. Make sure you cut yourself off 8 hours before your flight time tomorrow.
Scotch too?? This must be what heaven feels like.
L. Bob Rife, is that you?
reference
Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson
Oh yeah, I love this.
Hello, friend!
Hi there! The hot tub is open 24/7. Grab a helmet and a flight suit. We hit the simulator at 0900.
*Edit: Also, great username for this activity. Don't worry, you get to sit in the front seat this time.
Fun fact, that's where my nickname comes from! Many years ago before they went bankrupt, I got an after school job at RadioShack. I'm a taller guy, and wear aviator style sunglasses. My boss met me for the first time while the movie Top Gun was playing on the in store TV's. He took one look at me, and says "I'm gonna call you goose". He even got me a name tag I still have to this day.
One of my pre-decided "true fuck-you money" ideas is to fund big-budget movie adaptations of media properties I like, with me getting the final say on authenticity/changes because I'm the one writing the check. First on the list is Mass Effect because I have to get there before the actual adaptation gets made (sorry folks, you're getting FemShep with a Shakarian romance), then after that is Animorphs ('90s period piece a la Stranger Things and the '80s, probably R-rated on violence and gore alone, no aging-up of the main cast)
No apologies needed. This is the correct use of the money.
I'm here for Animorphs adaptation, and am only mildly worried it's adding too much good in the world.... But the trauma should make up for it.
Delightful
Yes... I'd just read a bunch of old books and spend the rest of my days making films with varying degrees of oversight. Who's ready for a My Life In The Bush of Ghosts movie?
I would be very into the Animorphs adaption you're describing. Those books got dark.
This reminds me of a running joke that apple tv just greenlights shows Tim Cook wants to watch.
I think theres a >50% chance that within 15 years, most people will be able to make such highly-customised movies using AI for less than 1000 USD of compute (before inflation).
God I hope not.
I've thought about the same kind of thing, except I'd buy an anime studio or three and have them work solely on my pet projects.
I dig this, but is there any room in your adaptation for a man-Shep who is romancing Liara? We don't have to call him Shepard. We can call him... Grissom? Have him do some of the things you don't want FemShep doing? (Don't want her punching the report? Make man-Shep do it!) If nothing else, he gets to become a mouthpiece for the decisions that don't become canon in your adaptation.
(I've often considered how a proper Mass Effect adaptation could deal with needing to have one canon (presumably paragon) Shepard. This was the best I ever came up with and I don't love it.)
There are better uses of a billion dollars I can imagine.
But none would cheer me more than designing a libre general purpose computing stack out of RISC-V, with Lisp as deeply rooted into the firmware as possible. Lisp machines, oh, truly was I born in the wrong generation. Too late for the originals, too early for the inevitable future where every other programming language is forgotten.
I understood none of this so I assume it's ridiculous!
If they actually believe what they're wishing for, it seems awfully philanthropic...
Hush, you! It's entirely whimsy, the steampunk of computing, no such thing could ever take place! Just a trifle, certainly no altruism to be had.
(눈‸눈)
You cannot trick the curse, even if you trick me.
(ಠ_ಠ)━☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ
I just wanted homoiconicity...
sobs
I was just thinking about this the other day too! I would love to see an OS like that, where everything is an extensible package instead of a silo'd program loosely connected with pipes.
If you haven't, check out Plan 9, especially some of the screencasts of people in its userland doing productive work. I don't love the P9 architecture, but it makes me salivate for that kind of extensibility by design.
How much do you think it would cost to project a mildly inappropriate image onto the moon 24/7?
Relevant xkcd.
I'm glad someone linked it.
There's also a video version for people who want a 5 minute watch with mouth-based sound effects (and the sequel).
I bet you have enough! But what would you project!
The first image that I thought of was something like the Enema of the State album cover.
Though with a bit more thought, instead of a still image the projection system could play films on loop instead. Like the endless loop of the lorry crash test that doesn't actually include it hitting the pillar.
Respectfully, although I entirely concur with your aims, the means to achieve them are woefully insufficient. The moon has a surface of ~40 million square kilometers, or 4×10¹³ m², only half of which is visible from the earth. 24/7 projection is difficult for many reasons, as the moon, itself, is only visible to the vast majority of the inhabited portion of the globe about 12/7. Furthermore, the waxing and waning phases will make visibility challenging, especially at the Full Moon (as the image would compete with direct solar illumination) and at the New Moon (as the entire moon is mostly obscured during the daytime by the illuminated sky).
Setting these aside, if you wanted to briefly illuminate a dark portion of the moon (say, at half moon) visible to the earth, you would need to illuminate about 1×10¹² m². To light this up with solar levels of radiation (1 kW/m²) would require 1 petawatt of power (not counting the atrocious wall plug efficiency of high beam quality lasers). So, at 15¢ per kW, we would be talking about $150 B per hour to operate. Given the parameters of the hypothetical situation, I think you get a minute, tops, of Enima of the State projected onto the moon.
For context, the United States enjoys an average power generation of 1.3 terawatts, so the Enima laser would require over 1,000 times the energy production of the US alone. Some people might not like Enima of the State, but if you had both the laser and the power to run it, I bet people would let you do pretty much whatever you want.
I don't think you would project from Earth itself.
You would probably build satellites to do it, and even at that you could build a complex array of mirrors (maybe colored mirrors? Is that a thing)which could each act as a pixel and redirect and concentrate sunlight at the moon to achieve the effect.
Then the only power needed would be to calculate and adjust the station according to the orbits to keep everything aligned
The orbital space laser was the dream of Star Wars and, while being above the atmosphere would certainly cut down on some of your transmission losses, unfortunately photons still take energy to make, and you are going to need a lot of them, even if you are generating the photons from above the sky. The defense applications, though, would be even more formidable.
The moon mirror monitor concept is certainly out of the box thinking. However, this would require an even larger expenditure to accomplish. Suppose we wanted to put a set of 1 g/m² mirror (made from an extremely thin backing with a thinner layer of Al for reflection) over a 1×10¹² m² area of coverage. Well that's 1×10⁹ kg, or 1 megatonne of mass to move to the moon. At the price of $1 million USD to move 1 kg to the moon, we would be looking at $1 trillion USD just to stage the mirror material on the moon.
The mirrors would then start to lose their lustre over time, as the continual cascade of lunar dust covers them and reduces their contrast. But you could probably do very low framerate movies with it if you wanted to. While it lasted.
We don't need to move all that mass to the moon - aluminum can (theoretically) be extracted from lunar regolith. R&D + lift + a few testing/failure/revision lift cycles should be able to get automated production capacity established on the moon for less than a trillion USD. Billions, certainly, but I think less than a trillion.
Honestly it isn't a bad idea in general to put the money into that R&D. Every usable mineral and compound that can be extracted / smelted / produced in the lunar gravity well is FAR more accessible to near-earth space construction than lift from the earth gravity well.
I don't think you quite got my idea, a satellite or series or satellites made up of an array of mirrors which focus sunlight and direct it at the moons surface, creating a brighter reflection, much like when someone's watch of phone makes a reflection while driving or something.
You have a bunch of these which make up the "pixels" of the image via reflection (and then colored mirrors or filters you can mechanically swap before the light heads to the moon.
So you're just using natural sunlight and redirecting it. The only power needed would be for positioning the satellites correctly to shine at the right spot. No lunar dust issues either.
This took a turn, from a silly idea to debating the how impractical it really is.
Completely ignoring real world feasibility was how I started so I hadn't really given it a great deal of thought on a practical level (obviously), but I'd imagine some level of satellite array would be how anything like this being remotely close to possible once you consider the 24/7 requirement.
And for good measure you've either succesfully wasted the cursed money or now solely in control of moon projection advertising.
Still an interesting problem to think about regardless!
Don't get me wrong, it's actually quite nice to see something like that spark enough interest that people actually debate the approach to it. I just didn't expect it.
You are correct, I did misunderstand your idea. I think that combination of two ideas could pull it into the realm of reality. @I_one suggested in-place production of reflectors. Rather than building the actuation for turning giant reflectors, you could build the on-moon reflectors as retroreflectors to improve the efficiency of the light reaching earth. Then you could cut back on the number of photons that need to be involved, as the scattering moves from Huygens to specular. If you shrink down the area and rely on the enhanced contrast during the lunar night, you might be able to go from the megatonne level to the kilotonne level, which makes the launch costs more realistic.
There are still problems with managing thousands of these giant orbiting reflectors that eventually become solar sails, with enormous cross-sections for collision massively raising the risk of Kessler Syndrome.
But those are just implementation challenges.
A small version of this is here, a mirror array marriage proposal
There's no good in this, but I'd buy Amazon (all of it) just to un-cancel the Wheel of Time.
Can you maybe cancel rings of power while we're at it or does it count as philanthropy
Yes, do us all the favour PLEASE
I'll allow controlling Prime at one's whim to fall into the spirit of the rules, even if incidental good occurs
I would also buya fleet of electric vehicles for all deliveries, not because it's particularly good, but because it would retroactively and definitively "win" a discussion about the viability of fleets of electric vehicles that I had on this site.
Don't they have a ton of those ordered via Rivian? I've seen pics of them (they're in Central IL)
The curse may allow it. Only you know if this is only pettiness in your heart.
They may have already begun implementing this, but I haven't seen it up here in the North, where it is admittedly more difficult to implement. I have seen the Ikea fleet and I was thinking about similar, though made by Grounded RVs because of a discussion about them here.
I would delete the finale of season 1 and all of season 2 and then continue it but without the loreshitting.
That's still going!?
Look, I'm not some Tolkien purist. Not at all. I think the movies were awesome but that's about it.
The Rings of Power show is annoyingly mid as a Lord of the Rings story, but regardless of the LOTR sauce it's just actively bad as a tv show. I quit the first season before the end, only begrudgingly watched the last episode for unimportant reasons, and promptly dropped it again.
I initially read your post as if you wanted to uncancel it which, no, is not philanthropy.
Too beautiful to live. That show was the book I wish Jordan had written.
Wait, what? They cancelled WoT?
Amazon determined the show was finally hitting its stride and therefore must be killed.
Yup. Here is some Tildes discussion on the matter.
I concur with this plan, maybe try and get The Peripheral going again as well.
I'd spend the billions on a marketing campaign running decades to inform the public about the health risks of eating pickles (of any kind). It would go into great detail about various cancers and the heart, lung, and brain damage they cause.
None of it would be true of course, I just don't like pickles. Why should I let any else enjoy them?
This is targeted harassment /j
Haha sorry, but with billions of dollars I can afford the lawsuits! Plus I can even refer to them as evidence in future
propagandacommercials.You monster.
Id buy a huge swath of land and build a city. Depending on how many billions I have it might be a scaled down city like a GTA map. But it'll have everything: suburbs, skyscrapers, a mall, a train, water and power, etc. I could invite people in and it would be our playground. We could race cars around the streets, play paintball, just walk around and hang out and camp wherever we want like we were apocalypse survivors.
it would be sealed off to keep the riff raff out and insure all the housing and resources are only for our amusement.
Meanwhile, I would honestly enjoy building a car-free city with walking/public transit/bicycling as the main methods of transportation. But I suspect it would cost many tens of billions to get anywhere.
Make it more ridiculous ಠ_ಠ you're being too helpful!
The playful policing of everyone's generosity has me dying lmao. Great thread, NotAFae
It's absolutely necessary if people refuse to play along ;)
There shall be NO public transportation! Only efficient, zero emissions hovor skateboards
No need to build a new one - plenty cities like that exist all over Europe. A big change in recent years has been one after another making the core of the city largely car-free.
Naw, that's like a used city. Gross.
I need a fesh one, and to my specifications.
Edit:
Whoops, I think I missed you were replying about bike cities and not telling me to use an abandoned city. But I'm gonna leave it because the point stands.
And every restaurant in your new city sells only chicken tacos?
Tropical fruit and wildlife sanctuary: eat rare delicious fruit, observe rare
deliciousmajestic and/or cute wildlife.Not ridiculous enough?
@habituallyTired's idea, but I'd like to buy up (nearly, or a part of) the entire Japanese economy instead of Disney, please.
Selfish indulgent projects below, would invite any Tildes members to come work on them or just go enjoy together.
The author and illustrator of Frieren will share in millions as gratitude for all they've already done. They get a team of dedicated mental/physical health care and unlimited relaxation massage / hot springs / vacation / whatever. If they want to make more manga, cool cool cool, if not, cool. But y'know....maybe I'll hang out a bit and ask (via translator) how they originally want the series to end and if Himmel gets his virgin kiss. Of course other anime/manga series' artists will be similarly funded, based entirely on how much I enjoyed their previous works.
550 year old soba noodle shop gonna close next year? No way -- priority number 1 we're going to find out what their hurdles are, keep them going if at all possible, find a way to renew their historic buildings so I can sit down and have some dang soba. If they really don't want to keep going, maybe I can help match make an apprenticeship program? (English Wiki)
Re-open the Yokohama Gundam Factory. Built that giant Gundam unit for rides. Obviously, the RX-93 v, the most beautiful unit ever designed. Will also accept tours/rides of the RX-78-2 while I wait.
I'm just gonna live full time at Huis Ten Bosch and enjoy Miffy land as my home base while traveling around the country. New section dedicated to City: The Animation will be built as well.
Gonna see all the fall colours, the best views, all the fireworks, all the cherry blossoms, and yes all the anime cafes, all seasonal snacks, tour all traditional crafts. Philanthropy is out, okay, but heck yeah my personally selected travel entourage with me can use the connections, interviews and information for their own purposes.
Basically just gaijin tourist dialed up to 11.
Do I still have money left over? Yes, lots?
Okay, Chocobean's Greater Hong Kong will be physically built (somewhere). There will be a giant Ocean Park/荔園 , complete with animal sanctuary, exotic fruit gardens, a peak to peak gondola ride, and yes amusement rides. Intangible cultural heritage things like push cart street food, dimsum, mahjong, all-you-can-eat hotpot / sushi / "high tea" (afternoon tea) / desserts / sake shops will be well funded so I can enjoy them. And no philanthropy so scaled up social housing will be built for folks who want to apply to live there, but qualifications will be based on
[political view]if I like the cut of their jib. We'll have all the gatherings, memorials, satirical TV, news paper columns and stage plays we want. I mean, that I want.It gets borderline, but as long as you're saving the shop purely for your own whim, sounds good to me.
I will never understand the hyper popularity of
MiffyNijntje outside of the Netherlands. I barely understand it in the Netherlands, let alone the raving madness of the Japanese to build an entire fake town dedicated to the ridiculously outdated Nijntje.It is a decidedly frivolous means of spending untold billions. Another city dedicated to an almost 100 year old drawing of a bunny which has seen almost no modernization to get with the times is sure to become immediately useless when built.
People are still crazy about seeing a broken down sports circle, a four-cornered stack of rocks, or a picture of a smiling woman, when we can make our own circles, rock stacks and photos of women at home. What's wrong with enjoying the simplicity of bright colours, the clean lines and the cuteness of Nijntje?
Oh I didn't mean it to be dismissive of people liking Nijntje, my daughter goes nuts over it, just that I have a hard time understanding why that specific piece of media went as big as it did. It's very retrograde in its "family values" and I bite my lip when I read another Nijntje book to my daughter and it's more 1920s mores.
But I recognize what my late brain could not so I want to say I'm sorry. I used my opinions to diminish what others experience. I truly think you, and others, should enjoy it in the way you want.
The Miffy-Nijntje thing is just my own hangup too, I can't call it Miffy since it was called Nijntje for me for decades.
Ahh, my apologies for reacting harshly as well :<
Some personal memories:
I didn't realise she's called Nijntje until I was an adult, and suddenly found myself stranded in Amsterdam for two days, instead of quick layover. I was in a strange new city, couldn't read hardly anything unless specifically there's English, and it was around Christmas time with a massive number of other people stranded at Schiphol airport. Miffy merch was a surprising and welcome sight: an old acquaintance in a strange place.
In North America, she's not big at all, practically unknown. Living in Canada, I hadn't thought about Miffy for many many years.
Way back in my earliest childhood, in Hong Kong, Miffy was a (Japanese) import figure. We couldn't afford the multitude of, nor was there nearly as many, merch. But the public library did have the little board books with bright colours, with rounded corners and were small in size, which were meant to fit into a child's hands .... So yes she's obviously very adorable. But part of the fond memory was that Dick Bruna meant for his books to be specifically read by children, even when the grown ups are too busy for us.
:) so I guess maybe the commercialization and the craze isn't so nice. But that's how some of us relate to the little bunny.
YESSSS I've wanted to go to that soba shop since I was a teenager. I'm sad it's closing, an I likely will never get to go.
I read that line ups are out the door every day, otherwise (also money) I would have been tempted to make a last minute "last chance to eat" trip. ;_; feels bad
I'd invest in eight billion ukuleles with bob marley songbooks, delivered by drones to each human being individually. Anybody who complains about their ukulele gets send a slice of
delicatedelicious pineapple pizza. Complaints about the pizza will be ignored.The comments here commit to the ridiculousness and the curse approves!
Haha, escaped again from the curse of having too much money!
Delicate pineapple pizza or delicious? Or pineapple pizza is inherently delicious, I guess. :D my complaint is that I've run out of pineapple pizza to accompany my ukelele practice!
Oops, you're right, that should have been delicious. In german 'delikat' basically means 'delicious', but that doesn't translate. 🙂 I should have spend a few million for english translators.
For ukulele practice I could send a few falafel drones.
e: wording
No fair, why do the complainers get pizza?
Ok, complainers about unfair pizza rulings get a slice, too, and a heartfelt apology letter.
No fair, why do complainers about unfair pizza rulings get a personal letter but the rest of us don't?
Ok, complainers about unfair apology letter deliveries get not one, but two heartfelt apology letters and a pineapple pizza plushie.
Bring our rovers home, naturally.
I would throw away my billion dollars in my years-in-the-making vanity project: a live-action recreation of the 60's Thunderbirds TV show in which all the actors pretend to be marionettes. I would pay top dollar to all the AAA-listers to exposit ham-fisted dialog like "But an asteroid that size could destroy the whole planet" by only moving their eyes and mouths. As well, I would hire an auteur like Christopher Nolan because he would insist on doing everything without CGI (his rules) so that 1:1 working versions of those implausibly giant vehicle would need to be designed and created, thereby ballooning the budget to hitherto unreached, obscene oligarchical-decadent limits. Then, finally, to ensure that this movie would be a bona fide smash hit (which, come on, it for sure is going to happen), I would pay audiences to come watch the movie on the condition that they be dressed up to look like marionettes and stay completely still for the entire viewing.
I would take a photo of the marionette audience watching the marionette movie, and submit it as my final assignment for art school called "Society". I would barely receive a passing grade, but the marks will push me past graduation, meaning I now have to find a job what am I going to do?
If I were cursed with another billion I had to waste, I would use my wealth to build a new kind of gym. This gym would have participants work out while wearing ninja outfits and tactical turtlenecks, and they would workout by throwing shuriken while doing somersaults and rope swinging over shark pits while flames and explosions go off in the background. But instead of opening these gyms in city centers, I would make it just one of the rooms in my mansions around the world so that I can open a door to watch people train to be secret agents. Yes, it's like that bit in Wayne's World, but my dream is unique because it would single-handedly inspire a new trend among billionaires that would do away with the Epstein-ing that has gone on for far too long.
Where do I sign up for this gym?! Surely this is a Dragons Den worthy idea.
No notes, 10/10
TBH, you wouldn't even have to pay me to be one of the marionette audience members.
The serious answer would involve high speed rail and free solar panels but that's not ridiculous.
I'd probably buy entire cities worth of advertising space and just dedicate it to some random art or rip it down all together in some cases.
Would also start a theme park where people can just go to dig a hole. Your first few visits you start with a shovel and over time you can level up and start training to use and possibly get supervised hands on time with equipment.
This is unironically a great idea. The children yearn for the mines.
I think there are construction theme parks (attractions?) already? But like, please go all in!
I like the idea of your theme park being so well funded that it lasts for centuries, and therefore starts to rival some of the world’s largest open cut mines, and eventually your “haha funny theme park” starts to genuinely impact turbulence in the airspace above, and becomes a no-fly zone.
Now you've got me taking this idea to illogical end points and I'm excited.
"Now we all know the story of how old great great great grand pappy Monday went to the salt flats with nothing but a the clothes on his back, a shovel in his hands, a modest savings and a dream that all people should have the right to dig as deep as their hearts desired. I believe that when he looks down on us from CryoStation1, he doesn't care about our advancements in astroid atomization technology or our revolutionary Stardigger Initiative. I know that what he cares about is the smile on a child's face when they see the Earths core for the first time. He wants everyone to look a little tungsten cube on their shelf and remember the summer they pulled it out the ground and cast it in the foundry with their friends. He wants you to tell your grandkids about how you and your partner met fighting off a Mantle Siren ambush. That is what the Monday Integalactic Mining and Minieal Consortium and Family Fun Dig Zone stands for.
Oooh, I’ve got 2. You May think some of these are “do goody” but even if they weren’t I’d want to do them, one for curiosity and one for petty vengeance.
Spend an ungodly amount of money removing invasive species - specifically European grasses from California ecosystems - closing down the ranches in the process. Particularly El Sur Ranch near Big Sur. Doubly so if I can buy out the owners of the ranch and then somehow bankrupt the family because fuck those guys. Also the ones in Marin who got their ranches designated as historic so the local tribes would have no recourse to their own historic claims. Destitution for them too. I’m just so curious to know what the landscape looked like pre-colonization. Supposedly we had evergreen grasses with deep roots like South America that didn’t go brown in the summer/fall and there was much more widespread oak forest and chaparral. If I have enough funding I’d also like to buy out the majority of the Central Valley and return it to a marsh/lake habitat. It grows the majority of our food so many would starve. Again, more evil than benevolent. If I have the money to do more of the same thing to the eucalyptus farms in Portugal and the marshes of England (effectively anything south of London). I would mandate that they can me Marsh Man and as i age and gain weight, the Marshmellow! Fear the marshmellow and starve! This might cost Trillions to achieve so I assume I have access to thousands of Billions.
Project 2 would be to crash test all small Japanese type cars to the DOT standards. It’s like 6-10 cars each and pay for them to go through certification. Why you ask?!? Because fuck all these big cars in the US and the car companies that do t certify their small cars/trucks - looking at you Honda and Toyota - as to not eat into their US market share. So yeah fuck them. Then i can ride my bike without feeling like I’m going to die and buy a sweet Kei truck and also not feel like Im going to die. If I could also influence the policy so that SUVs, vans, and trucks are no longer exempt from bumper height regulations and outright ban lifted trucks with a full death penalty all the better. Honestly this one is so much cheaper than the first. Also I want a train line to connect from SF through Santa Cruz and Monterey. Also also to rebuild the massive glassed in municipal pool in Monterey. Fuck it, rebuild all of the sweet glassed in municipal pools globally.
Ok, I’m cheating, but I also want to create subsidies for folks to learn craftsman style carpentry. Like full ride + living expenses. I want to flood the market with high quality carpenters so that we might be able to get something more interesting looking that your standard boxy 5 over 1 new development. Again, it would be slightly evil as those who took me up on the offer would find themselves on the other sides of the programs in a profession that used to pay very well but now has been so saturated that it is no longer “skilled” work. The tack on benefit would be all the folks to then pivot to furniture making which makes nicer furniture more affordable. “But Rosco, this sounds benevolent…” No! It’s so I don’t have to live amoungst all these cheaply made, shitty looking developments and US cities can get a design, look and feel that would make me want to live and recreate in them.
Ok, last last last one… this is truly, billionaire evil. Like Elon DOGE evil. Black list and bankrupt all lobbyists from oil and car manufacturers. Threaten violence, and follow through if required, to route out automotive loyalists from the US DOT and fuck it, the UK version too. Then replace them with bike and public transit oriented loyalists and push for transfer of public funding, along with whatever I have left in the coffers, to complete convert our domestic transit systems. I’m talking about building a system that makes Amsterdam look kitch.
I think I’ve really channeled my inner billionaire here. Rules followed. Lives and livelihoods ruined. Rejection of majority rule. Via Marshman!!
I want to live in your billionaire hellscape.
Big thumbs up on that second one, currently car free and liking it a lot but I've loved all my corollas :)
EU to US is harder though, they have different safety standards.
Probably at least one of these works, partially but I suspect you try to cling on to your last billion as you slowly start to think about infusing the blood of young adults to live forever.
If I don't respond to you it's because of the rate limit, I'll get around to everyone I hope, but you all know in your heart if you're just loopholing in which case you lose the game (and you just lost the game) no matter how clever you are!
Some ideas from my coworkers
A competing restaurant to Olive Garden but where the staff actually act like your Italian family (they're paid well), arguments, guilt and Nonna in the kitchen telling the chefs what to do. Don't like the food? Explain to this 4'10" nonna, who slaved over the stove for hours and has made pasta for over fifty years, by hand, what exactly you think is wrong with it. Don't you dare make her cry.
Buying the best tickets to every concert she wants to see, flying first class or private around the country to see them all and spending the rest on paying older legends who rarely perform to do private concerts
A private permanent Renaissance faire just so they can be the Monarch. Guests can come but must all bow to their whim.
This is more or less the plot of a movie I watched last weekend (crazy windfalls included): The Ballad of Wallis Island
Heartfelt and quirky, highly recommended.
Very cool, I'll check it out and recommend it back to my coworker.
Might as well go the full Norton
They didn't want that level of responsibility and preferred the aesthetic of the Ren Faire on a village level. Who am I to argue!
Well if you'd ask who am I to argue, the answer is Emperor TheMediumJon the first, so take that.
I would ensure my legacy the way the ancient Egyptians did: building a massive (the massivest) pyramid to serve as my tomb. I would construct it on a pole of inaccessibility, preferably an oceanic one, to protect myself from grave robbers.
If that's not enough money, I would buy everyone an Ikea hotdog and a red balloon, filled using Helium extracted from the moon to help preserve Earth's supply.
Will there be traps? Please tell me there will be traps!
Does it even count a tomb if there's no traps? Will hire a coalition of TTRPG GMs and Escape Room architects to design them.
Will you bury them into the tomb out of necessity afterwards? Sucks for them but it is traditional
You are a good person and I like you. CONSERVE HELIUM TODAY TO PROTECT TOMORROW!!!
See this is whimsy while still maintaining the environment. Ish. (We won't talk about the balloons! 🎈 )
I do love a good fancy ass tomb. I know a wizard who can curse it for you!
There isn't a helium shortage. It gets weird, but there's a shortage of science-grade helium which needs high purity, but balloons can be 90% helium and still float. Meanwhile, helium is both a byproduct of fossil fuel production, and also just comes out of the earth and can be trapped and recovered.
Also, if you really care about preserving helium, just use hydrogen - if the explosiveness of the balloon really concerns you, throw money at fire-suppressing balloon liners or something.
I know it's more a cost thing than a literal shortage but I thought I'd be a considerate billionaire by merely burning shitloads of rocket fuel instead of shitloads of helium.
But fine, if you insist, I suppose spending billions on firebombing the planet would be a sort of ridiculousness. Alright, red balloons filled with hydrogen and tied with ribbons of pure sodium. But only after I'm already safe in my pyramid.
Is something like what Doug Tompkins did ridiculous enough? Buying thousands of acres of land to restore wilderness and donate land to create national parks?
This sounds too useful and philanthropic to me. Are you sure that's your final answer?
I would build a giant bunker sort of thing like those seed vaults - but pretty and a commune with lots of fjord horses - and I would fill it with however many millions of dollars worth of books and media as possible.
Then when some disaster happens and we don’t have electricity or internet anymore, I control the world’s most complete, concentrated source of knowledge. And knowledge is power (Genius).
I can allow a bunker of books with a goal of being post apocalyptic king of media
To start with: a whole fleet of itasha cars. Everything from entry level sports cars to wildly expensive super cars, all vinyl wrapped with different anime designs.
Then I'd use the rest for art installations all over the US. I'm thinking a lot of statues of Hatsune Miku everywhere, to spread music and international unity. (Also, anyone can collect figures. Building life sized ones is a real flex.) And statues of John Brown and Generals Sherman and Grant all over the South, in places that particularly need a reminder.
I'd like to nominate a name for your scheme: the Great Enweebening.
I'll take a Trip Ayanami wrapped kei-car. I don't need that much more room to transport my ita-bags and weebaboo goods
Autonomous desert robots
Just dump 100% of the funding into populating an uninhabited, biologically sparse part of the earth with robots whose only function is to maintain themselves and if possible, sustain themselves
No not using them for terraforming or mining or gardening or robotics research or as an art project. None of that. Just as many robots busily doing robot things for no ultimate reason for as long as possible
Nier: Automata
Become as gods
I'm playing Tears of the Kingdom right now,. And it reminded me of this.
No more pants. I buy all the pants and destroy them. Were done, that's it.
Another is infinite Allen wrenches. A friend once said, "you can never have too many Allen wrenches" and I countered that if the global economy solely produced Allen wrenches that would be too many. So, Allen wrenches. Infinite Allen wrenches.
American "pants" or British "pants"?
Did I stutter?
You're my favorite!
As someone who grew up in a very hot and humid climate and always hated being forced to wear pants (as opposed to shorts), I'd vote for you in a heartbeat.
Get rid of suits too and I'll go door-to-door campaigning for you.
As a habitual Winnie the Pooh cosplayer at home, I fully support this.
One of my favorite reddit comments ever was, on a post about women getting the right to go topless in Massachusetts, "wake me up when I can Donald Duck" LMAO
LMAO I love that! I wish I liked wearing skirts more. It would feel much more like going pantsless.
With a tiny red shirt and pot of honey?
Honey is a staple in my home, so yes. 😂
Hmm.... Only if we make an exception for Hakama --- which are not strictly speaking pants so much ...but I'll throw an Allen wrench in your whimsical scheme if you come after them
If one leg fit two leg that's not pants, but something else entirely, potentially yet unknown to pants science.
Bravo!
I'm not really convinced Wikipedia is that strapped for cash. I don't trust Jimbo Wales much... as I understand it he was pretty much a sleazeball that kinda stumbled into this hugely beneficial thing to humanity and it probably still pisses him off he's not been able to become a billionaire out of it.
Hopefully he's grown up some.
OK, then hostile takeover Wikipedia and set it up under competent management from here until eternity. Makes no difference in frivolous use of billions.
Upon careful consideration, I have decided to use my vast wealth to try to buy myself friendship with @papasquat. Failing that, I would use my remaining fortune to be totally mature and buy as many ports as possible so I can charge ridiculous docking fees specifically for party aircraft carriers.
Good news everyone! I've been added to the friend group! I've still decided to buy ports, but now I will be installing party docks specifically designed to accept aircraft carriers!
Nice. The problem with normal docks is that they usually don't have high speed Pina Colada hose hookups. This helps us out immensely.
A personal ISS with a spin gravity section, a big observation bubble, a telescope+camera, and a lifetime ticket for free rocket journeys for me & my immediate family to it.
Also: R&D on a compact all-terrain poo-locating-and-scooping robot for our dogs
This is my pick too, but in order to make it as ridiculous and wasteful as possible, I plan to make my personal space station in the likeness of my own head like I’m some kind of Bond villain.
Funding two incredibly long animes that are done using cel animation and not CGI. These anime have no brakes on the budget for animation and pays the animators themselves very well.
What would the animes be about? Great question!
I did a quick Google and I saw that some anime can take $1 million+ to produce for the more complex ones, but that sounds like rookie numbers to me. Between those 2 series I could see us having thousands of episodes needing billions of dollars. I think that would more than tie up all the money this wizard has given me.
You mention 40K. Would you fund a Space King parody spinoff?
I looked up Space King because I hadn't seen it. I would fund it, but with a smaller per episode budget and a smaller studio. I may be a magically funded billionaire, but I'm assuming even this money has limits and with the scope of this show I may need to invest the money in to a long term fund to allow for it to be perpetually funded.
The main studio I'm dumping my money in will be needed to produce the many thousands of episodes needed to cover just the Horus Heresy.
I've often wondered how Greyfrog would look and smell on television ;)
It's not possible, but I'd love Rodney Dangerfield as Kruppe
The "smell on television" made me double take.
I hadn't considered who to cast for any of the characters, but I think animation would be the best way to tackle the series. I'm not sure how long the episodes would be. This would probably end up taking the form of many movie length episodes, probably several for each book.
Animation would likely be it. Malazan is so thick with characters and lore that I also think that only TV could do it justice.
Personally, the charm for me is in the camaraderie - to the point that treating squad drama and antics like a buddy cop show mixed with Band of Brothers would be great. Lots of black humour to make living in that grim world bearable, both for character and audience.
I agree with you on TV doing it justice. I was thinking in my previous comment 1+ length episodes, how many episodes would be needed to cover the book fully would be up to how it is how adapted and how long is spent on the action sequences.
This is making me want to dive in and finally finish the main 10 books. I've started book 9, but have been dragging my feet reading them, in part because I know the story is going to end soon, and I've enjoyed it so much. With it having been a few months, I'm going to need to go and do a quick wiki refresh on the chapters I read to so far.
I've been told that the last book is the perfect ending to what's been such a rich series. I'm only on Bonehunters, and despite knowing that I'm coming to the end, I'm excited for my second run through the series. This time turning pages rather than listening.
I'm also looking forward to reading through the series a second time in the future. I think it is going to be a very rewarding experience.
I'm hoping my second read through will also be in physical format as I'm currently ereading the series on my phone.
every taylor swift vinyl in circulation
Well, you have to differentiate it from non-wizard based curses
I've heard witches are prone to curse.
There's cursing sailors as well
Even the "Pickles" singles?
sorry but i have a girlfriend
Actually laughed out loud
I thought we were talking about these.
Regarding the tag, maybe it's like a monkey's paw thing and your purchase yields you literally every copy of every Swift vinyl in existence, resulting in you having to waste millions upon millions to build adequate storage and logistics for maintaining the collection.
Most of my fun tags were removed (ಠ_ಠ)━☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ
The CA High Speed Rail tunnel through Pacheco Pass with my name plastered all over it.
The ridiculousness of this philanthropy is that I don’t pay taxes that normally go towards public infrastructure, so I can donate money instead to get undue influence over public works.
You feel your hair start to fall out and the strong desire to purchase a national newspaper and fuck with the opinions page....
Take it a step further into ridiculosity!
Create my own island country in international waters with a nice modern city atop. I'll hire many of the best scientists and engineers and workers to live and work there on building a space elevator. The space elevator won't work, so rather than being a benefit to humanity, it'll be a huge waste of resources. It'll look cool though. Although it might result in some good science being done, most likely it'll be a distraction from actually useful projects so it'll be at best a wash as far as scientific benefit to humanity.
How about building a huge island, and the the only thing build on it is a swimming pool?
That sounds too useful. Maybe I could build the freshwater pool, then build an aquarium with salt water tanks inside it, not connected to the ocean. There would be no foot paths. You'd have to snorkel or scuba dive to observe the exhibits.
This sounds like a Let's Game It Out video. 😂
Since I was a kid I've always wanted to build a giant, super slender tower in an urban area - sort of like NoHeart from Care Bears or Sauron's sweet eyeball thing.
I might equip it with rave lasers and speakers and I'd definitely have a lookout with huge windows and curtains to match.
I might pull an Elon and bore deep down into the earth underneath the tower, too. Maybe I'd have a Technodrome down there idk
Sauron's eyeball perch, the rebuilt Barad-Dûr? It's kind of a tall city-sized stronghold thing and less solitary tower on a plain thing. You might be thinking of Saruman's tower of Orthanc, in Isengard?
Yes, that's the one. Foreboding, ominous and capable of blasting psytrance to my neighborhood. All I need
What neighborhood, amirite?
MY NEIGHBORHOOD!!!
I would hire a team of composers to write little stings in the style of John Barry and a small brass ensemble to follow me around and play menacing Bond villain music (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WczHADTsIec) whenever I'm making plans with my friends. Maybe some furniture that also conceals intricate maps that can slowly raise from the floor.
I love a personal soundtrack!
Let's find out how true to life Jurassic Park really is...
Just don't hire a Dennis
I will build a working volcano. Now hear me out, because this is meant to be silly rather than mere Eeevil Billionaire stuff.
The volcano will pump out a colorful light show every night, with dazzling smoke effects, sparkles, and edible ejecta (candy cannons!). A drone squadron will provide close up views (streaming rights for sale) and enhanced lighting effects.
There will be a gloriously appointed viewing pavilion at a safe distance. I'll preside over a perpetual gala where attendees must show up in extravagant costume, preferably drag. Failure to wear suitable attire will be an occasion for the other attendees to use you as their fashion dummy. There will be a wardrobe of all kinds of glittery, feathery, leathery, potentially dangerous costume materials, and a sewing room for those suddenly inspired. Prizes for best concept, most effective expression of volcanic apocalypse, etc. Top notch edibles, libations, and drugs all around (potential reality show rights also up for auction).
There will be a Nevada Testing Site-style bunker for people who want get really up close and personal with the eruption... complete with a fully equipped dungeon that has a view of the lava.
Hang gliding off the volcanic thermals will be supplied and encouraged, GoPro helmet included. I'll get to build a funicular to the hang gliding platform!
The real evil billionaire scheme here is to secretly pump enough sulfur dioxide and fine particulates into the atmosphere to temporarily mitigate warming, but I get to have fun.
Oh, and a trapdoor to a tank full of sharks. I've always thought that was cool.
Like, a regular adventure dungeon, or the other kind? Super interested in the costumes gala and especially the sewing room :D
Shark Tank, woo-hah-hah!
Porque no los dos? 😏
Lol one of them slightly less safe and less sane
Full-size replica of the starship Enterprise 1701-D with paid actors in the corridors and an outside production crew to design & implement missions for me.
For me, there is only one clear answer: pouring all the money into funding two massively expensive and equally ambitious scientific projects: one revolves around live genetic engineering, with the end goal of creating functional wings on humans. The other is mechanical engineering, seeking to create a fully functional pair of human-sized mechanical wings for humans. Volunteers would be sought out as test subjects and paid out upwards of one million dollars if the experiment upon them fails. (If it succeeds, they get paid nothing as they will be able to fly, which is payment enough.)
I don't care which one of them succeeds, if any. I will also accept nothing short of perfect. No half-assed solutions, no wings that break down mid-flight or can't bear my weight. I will take to the skies and thereby skip (most of) my 1-hour commute to work. I will pay the necessary authorities to ensure I will be the sole proprietor of this new low-altitude personal wing airspace across the globe. If you want wings too, you'll need to buy a wing permit from me. (Including the volunteer(s) whose experiment succeeded. They should have read the small print.) The permit is going to be expensive, because I don't want too much traffic up there. It wouldn't be as much fun if anyone could fly.
As an aside: if either project unexpectedly succeeds before the money dries up, I may invest the rest of the money into genetic engineering to create catgirls (and catboys; I don't discriminate). If we can make wings, then a tail should be easy, right?
The first answer that comes to mind in terms of ridiculousness is the classic "Buy everyone a free pony"*(limited to as long as supply of available foals lasts).
But I like this question. I'll have to think some more about what ridiculousness I'd actually like to do rather than a trope-y spur of the moment thing.
A PAC whose sole purpose is advocating for stricter driving tests in the US?
I hate bad drivers but also I think spending $1 billion on that qualifies as ridiculous :)
Hmmm can you take it one step sillier?
ETA I have been unjustly rate limited and will have to reply to folks later. The wizard disapproves
( ~ o`_'o)~---<> ⁂
Okay, what about instead of a PAC just an absurd number of cameras everywhere and, whenever they catch someone driving poorly, use more money to create a local-TV ad to include a clip of the video and make fun of them?
It’s really amazing how much nicer it is to exist in a city where drivers aren’t assholes. I lived in Bordeaux France for a year with no car, so I walked and biked pretty extensively. Bordeaux doesn’t have the greatest bike infrastructure compared to where I grew up in California. Many streets use the hated sharrow instead of a dedicated bike lane. My town in CA has bike lanes everywhere. Despite this, biking in Bordeaux is downright pleasant. In my year there, I had maybe two or three instances of a driver cutting it too close when passing or driving aggressively around me. In my town in CA, I only have to bike for 5 minutes to have the same number of agressive drivers.
i’d buy a bowflex.
Hmmm buying a single one is silly, but won't rid you of your wealth, will you buy one for billions?
in reality, 1bn -- I'd buy a developed private island (not that one), a small plane, a helicopter, etc. I think I could burn through it quickly.
You could spring for a NordicTrack too.
I believe I am being forced to be two of them. I would like a proper water rowing machine thing, actually... mind you, I could just row around my non-human-trafficking private island
I think for the sake of the exercise (ha!) you're supposed to use the bowflex on the deck of a super yacht while it sails around your private island.
I'd like to allocate a large portion of my billion dollars into fuel for my yacht which will never stop circling the private island (which also needs to be named)
What if you make it an electric yacht and run it with a very long extension cord from the island? Then you can pay a private army to keep moving it over obstacles as the yacht circles. The army will be staffed entirely with people whose rank is Private and whose last name is Island.
As for naming the island itself, how about Rowatan?
you know, hiring a private army works well for my budget. Ok, you're in! Maybe it could be perpetual motion -- I'll have to heavily invest in this technology, which is mostly 7-Up bottles.
I like the name. Beware of the Rowatan Defense Force V
You have bought one Bowflex company.
Now middle managers keep pestering you to make decisions and sign off on budget requests.
nothing in my life has changed then.
I should have bought P90X so we'd have that cool X arm thing they did all the time.
Clown college! A way-too-big campus with way too many buildings so that the world has a ton of highly educated clowns studying how to be even sillier
Build lifesize replicas of various fictional locations. The Batcave for one. Maybe some ships from One Piece.
Even bigger: locations from Pokémon. Fortree City is one of my favorite places in the franchise, would be neat to make it life-size (and maybe more accessible instead of just having ladders everywhere). So is The Under from Pokémon Colosseum. Which is funny since those are pretty much opposites!
I would buy a plane (and maybe a yacht), a whole bunch of treasure chests, and a ridiculous amount of gold bars. Then I'd travel the world while burying my golden treasure like a modern day pirate.
Sounds a bit like a reverse Ron L Hubbard.
For however long it would last I would build out the processes necessary for designing and producing a handheld game console, with zero regard for patents, copyright, etc. Design what works best with no constraint. Buy stuff and copy it. Harvest stuff and stitch it together. Hardware and software. Crack open everything and take what we like. Everything is on the table.
Everybody gets paid like crazy by some tertiary entity/they get plausible deniability, and when we inevitably run afoul of authorities I take our schematics/prototypes and run off to a place with difficult extradition issues, live off the remainder. Anybody else in deep shit can come too. Then release all the design docs/specs to the internet for free. Chill for the rest of my life eating fruit and playing everything on my one production model with enough spare parts to keep it going. Wait for somewhere to get going with what we released and do it all over again, until we land on the product it was always meant to be regardless of where in the world we need to go.
The dream machine will either come from this endeavor, or be made inevitable by it. The company will for sure get destroyed but by then the idea will be everywhere.
Giant. Motherfucking. Robots.
It'd be easy to pour billions on R&D in a vain attempt to defy the square-cube law and maybe figure out how to make bipedal mechs viable.
Perfection!
I'd build a full scale offshore wind farm! What a stupid idea, when it'll always be cheaper to do on land, where wind turbines are hugely profitable!
Guaranteed money sink. Won't work. Things will go wrong forcing billions in losses.
But someone will avoid the ridiculous mistakes we do the first time around, and that way we'll see if this is possible.
Even more ridiculous: If I don't lose the billions fast enough on the offshore wind farm, how about using that existing infrastructure to build nuclear fission reactors in international waters! Thus undercutting electricity prices to cut carbon emissions even further!
That'd be extra mega ridiculous.
Only downside: Some commercial companies actually think these are ideas that can make money. Someone needs to waste the billions first so they don't have to make those mistakes.
Why not magically rich, ridiculous me, so this reality can manifest sometimes in the future?
(ಠ_ಠ)━☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ
You're starting to feel your opinions on white genocide in South Africa become very pointed in one direction.
Spirit of the rules!
Dark and well done.
<(￣︶￣)↗
I try.
Cure malaria and world hunger in one go by unleashing highly reproductive designer mosquitoes upon the world whose bite is not itchy and it supplies your body with all the life-sustaining properties that a good breakfast, lunch, and dinner would provide.
Too helpful! You are getting ready to reprogram your personal AI to say how awesome you are ... Last chance!
I would buy a large property in my area and build a compound that's fully fenced for me and my closest friends, then I would fulfill every thing I possibly could on my Disney bucket list including club 33 membership, all the parks, all the resorts, all the cruise ships. I would buy as much stock in Disney as I could so I could have some say/sway on the way the company runs for my own selfish gains.
If that isn't spending fast enough, I would try to outright buy Disney, lol. If I have enough money to do it, I would in a heartbeat, and then figure out how to privatize it, so I am not beholden to stockholders so I can do whatever I want to make the company the way I want it to be.
Not sure where you live, but Washington has a nice missile silo for sale. Can I get a finder's fee and/or my own wing? 😉
A finder's fee AND a wing!
Semi-unrelated tangent (but kinda not) ...
How about buying every square inch of advertising space in New York's Grand Central Station and turning it into your own personal art exhibit?
Oh, wait ... https://news.artnet.com/art-world/humans-of-new-york-grand-central-2698047
A race track (probably multiple tracks in a compound for different types of races) and a fleet of expensive cars plus seed money to start some race teams.
It's not even that I'm into racing its just that it sounds heckin cool and motorsports is an easy way to spend a ton of cash.
If I had money left over I'd use some to try bribing formula 1 into having a race at my facility because hell ya.
I've heard the down force on F1 cars would be enough for them to stick to the road if it were upside down, so ... Loop de loop?
Hah, I wish.
Some guy on YouTube is working on setting that up as a stunt. I don't think it's really going to happen though.
Unnecessarily dangerous yet cool. Perfect!
Two ideas:
Buy some appropriate land (ideally in New Zealand) and build a life-size replica of Minas Tirith. I live there with my family and friends and whoever. I have a staff of stuntmen who periodically set themselves on fire and run off the cliff. Children must wear special shoes that make their feet look big and hairy. Every year we have a festival to reenact the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, complete with robot trolls and elephants.
I develop a food delivery service with exactly one branch in every major city. Each branch is a tower on legs so the first usable floor is hundreds of feet in the air. Each branch has a centralized kitchen that is staffed and provisioned to make any cuisine, any dish, any time of the night or day. Food is delivered ballistically in cardboard cartons with time release parachutes. Each complex has a state of the art meteorology division to map the wind and weather and ensure accurate delivery. Workers enter using high speed elevators, but can only exit via one of dozens of helical slides that wrap around the exterior of the building.
Delightful!
Find a really big scenic mountain and build a giant slide all the way down. Maybe have a few rest areas along the way stocked with books and beverages.
I wonder how many miles that would be if you did the math to account for friction and not being too steep that you'ld slide too fast and fly off or splatter yourself at the bottom.
I would gift Donald Trump a mile high statue of a phallus with blonde pubic hair as an award for being the greatest ... of all times. In such an opulent ceremony he would actually believe it's a testament to his greatness.
Except it would wake up in the dead of the night, grow legs, laser beam eyes and start rampaging across the US. The only way to make it not go into your city would be for all able adults to come out and sing together Sing Together.
After it has visited all major cities at least thrice, it would leave and swim for South Korea, get a huge tattoo saying "Confucius" and provide free unlimited ferry rides until its batteries run out.
I'd fund the top scientists to make catboys (and catgirls) real!
Nah, that's not ridiculous - it's unironically a good idea.
In the short term, you're just massively funding core genetic research, which will have amazing benefits for biology in general and medicine. And a Genetically Engineered Catboy (/girl) Foundation would be a great way to get people to donate to the project just for the memes.
And the best thing is, it's not lying to the meme crowd - if the project providing the financial bedrock for all the world's best geneticists for 'serious research' is actually trying to do the catgirl project, then it'll be in the perfect position to get enthusiastic contributors to more targeted research, once the theoretical basis is fleshed out. Because geneticists are people and are a culture, and people/cultures suffer from loyalty. And that authenticity of a Catgirl Foundation makes the memetic appeal stronger, which only makes it more doable and therefore more authentic.
If I was a multibillionaire (like, $50B+) I would unironically want to target at least 1 of my billions towards a Genetically Engineered Catgirl(/boy) Foundation.
I just think you're trying to get @Basil guillotined (◠‿◕)
No, I'm trying to build organic support for a Genetically Engineered Catgirl Foundation.
Firstly, I would immediately form a WEC (world endurance championship, car endurance racing) team for my friends and I to do endurance races IRL instead of just iRacing. This would then be my job as I want nothing more in life than to be a sports car driver.
The truly ridiculous thing I would also do is form a Formula 1 team, but not with the intent to race in it myself. I would lay low the first year and make it looks like I'm putting serious effort into a serious team. In year two, I would specifically go out of my way to make the team show off what a farce F1 could be. I would put the stupidest sponsors on my cars, not have a spec of paint on it (pure carbon fiber, baby!) until racing in the middle east and then my car would be covered in pride flags. I would put Colton Herta in the car so that I can ensure I write off a chassis every other race. I'd push the rules in any way I could because if I'm caught cheating, oh fucking well!
Also cars, lots of cars. I would have a 50 car garage with all the coolest cars. And maybe a helipad and a runway, I like helicopters and planes too. This would all be next to probably a modest 3 bedroom house, I definitely don't want or need a mansion. The garage would probably be five times the size of the house, if not more.
Oh, and I'd go to space.
And maybe for an unrealistic ridiculous goal, hire everyone involved in the production of the Lord of the Rings films along with thousands of actors and essentially create actual middle earth that I can live in so I can pretend I'm some shield maiden badass or something for a few weeks.
My headcanon is that all of us were gifted these untold billions in the same shared universe, and the thought of a bunch of "Tildes Billionaires" going ham on the world is putting the biggest smile on my face. What a world that would be. 😂
I'm sure there's a Royal Road Serial isekai/litrpg idea here somewhere
Do you hear that billionaires? Who wants to fund my anime about an online forum whose members are cursed to be super wealthy by a wizard???
Renovating my house- keeping the cape cod style but adding a widows walk, a turret, and then digging down directly under the house to add as many floors as possible. Moving between the floors would be a huge elevator large enough to move furniture in as well as a metal spiral staircase. Each floor would have a different theme (the doors of the elevator open to one floor that's an exact replica of a Taco Bell in the 90s, booth seating, counter, all that). I'd also turn the dining room on our first floor into a vivarium for my ball python.
This is delightful!
I'll have to come back to this one, but one immediate thought is to fund the development of the next generation of optical space telescope (like Hubble but more powerful). Now the catch is it'll be put in geostationary orbit and pointed at the Earth. It won't be able to rotate much, so it'll just be staring at one patch of the Earth for a really long time. What purpose does this serve? Nothing really, other than saying that I (helped) build the next big space telescope.
Unfortunately I think geostationary orbit necessarily means around the equator, because otherwise I think an enormously powerful optical telescope to be the next version of the Fish Doorbell (https://visdeurbel.nl/en/) would be amusing. Geostationary orbit is pretty far away from the surface of the earth, so maybe you could have it geostationary and angled up to Norway? But the idea of only being able to see an incredibly narrow patch of ground from so far away would be fascinating and totally useless. At the very least, cloud cover would ruin your view most of the time, and the warping/lensing effect of air currents and warm air pockets would probably make it useless even if you had an absurdly enormous aperture and lens kit
I set a 30 second timer to better simulate how I’d really react in this scenario. At first I was stumped but the pressure of the last few seconds draining away sparked my creativity.
I’d create a billion dollar advertising campaign (perhaps the biggest ad campaign of all time?) to make various billionaires and politicians look as ridiculous as possible. Reserve some cash for lawsuits. Their collective lost reputation might be a serious net positive.
Feels a bit like you're trying to do good with this money...
I'd probably invest in and invent an app that teleports people from one end of a cellphone call to the other.
This is solely so I can have the best chefs in the world cook me whatever meal I want when I'm hungry.
Fund a dedicated task force (with every field expert, scientist, historian, but also teachers, burglar and special agents) tasked with secretly improving, and fact checking every museum I ever go to. They'd meticulously make every museum the best museum it could be (massive background info for every piece, with how sure we are of that info, presented in an engaging way).
If the museum collection is too poor, they'd steal stuff from other museum (or elsewhere, including private collection) to populate the ones I'm about to visit.
That may be too positive for the world as is, so they restore the museum to its usual crapiness after I visited it.
Not gonna lie, I'd divvy it out through all the FOSS/free options online to help overcome the general ongoing enshittification, or overspend Google or Amazon in said process.
I'll never win the lottery because it would literally take a miracle (because I never play), but if I did, no one would know, and lots of charities and/or online entities would benefit as aforementioned. I'm very thankful with my income and my current state, and as it is, I try to donate what I can to food banks and other "free" things of which I regularly partake.
Edit: please note, I'm a huge piece of shit and it's not like I'm trying to be a saint or anything. But honestly the world could be a lot better if people were just less selfish and tried to leave things better than they found them, instead of just trying to get all the 1ups they can. </rant>
So, I understand your intent here but the SPIRIT of this question is that you cannot do the "good" or "selfless" thing here. I know you'd do something else if you were in fact a billionaire, but now you're just going to be cursed by the wizard's curse. (Perhaps give it a reread if you just missed the rules of the game!)
Sorry, I was going for the "philanthropy is out (unless it's utterly ridiculous)". I believe that overthrowing something that currently enshittifies would be absolutely ridiculous, as it would completely go against everyone else's wishes... after all, that's how said enshittification gains its power >;)
Nah I meant more like building the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Ward (especially on someone else's behalf as done there), not doing things you want to do and pretending they're silly.
Alas the curse will claim you and instead you'll make all the stuff you just bought proprietary, licensed on a subscription model at an exorbitant price and you'll tweet about how stupid people are for wanting free shit.
I've had worse curses thrown at me haha... I'll take this one.
Fair enough, but just know you're the poster child for the enshittified internet. Cory doctorow hates you.
(My personal curses are smaller this is all the wizard. )
I would buy up a chunk of San Francisco and convert it to a 1906 earthquake reenactment park. Put the whole thing on giant shake plates to recreate the earthquake, and burn it to the ground every 5 years for the grand finale. The rest of the time, pay artisans to rebuild it using historical techniques.
I would employ smartest people on Earth to figure out how to make a perfect simulation of Earth and its close vicinity, except we would turn the Nyquist sampling rule off, which will make antialiasing and thus both TAA and DLSS unnecessary.
Then I will read the simulated gaming subreddits to see if people start actually discussing the games themselves or find another pet peeve to complain about.
I would rip up every single (boring standard grey concrete) sidewalk in my little city and hire artists to redesign and replace them with colourful, wild, artsy designs of sidewalks (but still to appropriate sidewalk code for accessibility). A different artist and style for every neighbourhood. I'm hardpressed to imagine that'd use up all billion, so throw in replacing all streetlights with cool looking posts (and nice warm lights just because screw the cold bluish led look), and I guess just keep spreading the idea further and further out of the city until the money ran out. No reserve funds for upkeep; that'd be way too practical.
I, too, want to completely rip up every street in every city and redesign them in a less ugly fashion. Unfortunately, @DefinitelyNotAFae said my plans had to be ridiculous and not based on a desire to pragmatically improve the world.
I don't make the rules, the wizard's curse did! I'm just trying to save you from imploding on the sea floor.
I want to spend my billions of dollars tracking down the wizard and running a giant global ad campaign mocking and belittling him.
This is why I kept mine focused putely on the fun, aesthetic aspect, I darent draw the ire of notafae.
But, between you and me, if a few new strategically beneficial sidewalks got added in the process, and the new streetlamps just happened to reduce light pollution, what a lucky coincidence. :D
Another idea for spending billions in a ridiculous way:
Build a spaceship and get everything to create a Mars colony. Fly to Mars with the people who I've signed up and vetted to go with me. Once there, I will declare myself Emperor of Mars, laying claim to the whole planet.
Who knows what would happen at that point. I'll have spent a large amount of money, created a new nation on a new planet, and probably kick-started a space race with the major players of Earth investing in space tech to come and take Mars from me. They can try to come and pry it out of my Martian hands! If it looks like they'll take Mars from us, we'll launch escape rockets and settle on some large asteroid or moon and become Belters from the Expanse.
If you want to get to Mars, you'll be out in space exposed to cosmic radiation for months/years; you'll die of cancer before you arrive. Realistically, the most practical solution to that is curing cancer.
If you do get to Mars, nobody will contest you for it - it makes the Sahara look habitable. Nobody has made the Sahara self-sufficient, it'd be easier to wait for your Mars Empire to collapse on its own. That way they don't get tarred with the PR nightmare of killing The Guy Who Cured Cancer.
I would fund the worlds first flat moon museum, dedicated to proving once and for all that the moon is basically a flat pie.
It would be located on whatever sub-tropical island is most for sale. Ideally, as far away from people as possible.
The museum would officially be open one a year, on March the 14th, at 3:14pm (closing, of course, at 3:15pm.)
Someone who really GETS it!
I missed the boat on this one, but, just for the heck of it...
Take a city, drill a network of tiny tunnels under it, and go drive through those tunnels in cars, pretending to be efficient and smart transportation.
Well now you've obviously just become the evil billionaire. But if you acknowledge it's pointless or fill it with bumper cars or something we might save your children's names and hairline.
I thought it was obviously pointless...
Bumper cars would be fun , so that's the opposite of pointless. The conundrum!
Ridiculous is the goal, doing things just for your whimsy is great. And I suppose if you want to follow in the footsteps of billionaires gone before, who am I to stop you.
Fair point, you win :)
Snarky answer: Finish Star Citizen owait they already made a billion dollars and still can't make it out of alpha...
Fun answer: figure out a way to take what these guys started and make a full contact weapons fighting league that incorporates electronics into scoring/damage recorded and locks the armour for various joints up as you are 'injured'. Then go join in beating the shit out of eachother with all my weapon fantasies without risk of serious injury.
Buy up all the Moai heads held in museums and private collections and send them back home.
I said not philanthropy. You can't do good works, you must do something ridiculous!
Do not get yourself another curse!
"back home" is ambiguous. Maybe @Fiachra wants a home full of/surrounded by heads.
Yes, in order to satisfy the rules of the thread I will accept these unorthodox roommates.
Granted.
🗿
1:1 scale LEGO Death Star.
Given the price of Legos you could probably build it to one thousandth the scale and still be into the trillions of dollars.
I thought that might be that case. 1:8 scale X-Wing is my backup suggestion.
A super computer to play video games on the highest settings. If it's not too altruistic, I'd allow a researcher to use the computer to advance AI specifically so that I can have the latest AI. It'd be complete with a room made for gaming, with every accessory you can think of.
I'd locate it in a really nice forest, in a building that looks like a massive tree with solar panel leaves and a thermal power plant. I'd want it to be fully self sustainable and very much fireproof. It would even be it's own ISP, with a direct line to the internet.
... wait, I've lost track whether this is ridiculous or an awesome idea.
I would give every penny to CheeseParade and demand that they make a feature-length Balloon Boys movie
R&D budget for procedural generation in video games, as well as development of a AAA game that is ProcGen all the way, in a genre that is generally viewed to mesh poorly with ProcGen
Gamers hate ProcGen with a passion, so this is almost a guaranteed flop. To ensure I'm not philanthropic, the R&D results are proprietary to this sinking-ship r&d company. The marketing budget for the game is donation funded.
This is 99.999% a complete flop, if you believe that gamers know what they want. Needless to say, I believe they don't, and I'm betting all my monopoly money on it.
If the game sells a million copies at full price, I get any marketing donations back, plus a symbolic two cents because my controversial opinion was right after all. This last clause probably needs approval by the curse. I promise I'm not loaded enough to achieve a reasonable marketing budget by myself. The curse money is all for development.
I would throw billions at building software support and app ecosystems for all sorts of probably-a-bad-idea gimmicks like this circular laptop. That circular screen won't work well with just regular Windows (or GNOME/Plasma/etc), after all.
I mentioned something I've already considered under someone else's comment (my own anime studio) but here are two other ideas I've thought of since:
Hire a marching band to be on standby and provide a soundtrack to my daily life. If I pass by someone wearing clothing for a specific college team the band will play either that school's fight song or their rival's at my discretion.
Buy an entire neighborhood in a major city, like Beacon Hill in Boston, and turn it into my personal playground for a multitude of smaller projects and things I want easy access to. One building would be a vault archiving every anime ever released. Another would be a classic greasy spoon diner where I could get breakfast at any hour, next door to a bakery that makes things from all around the world.
I'd buy Obsidian Entertainment and give Josh Sawyer unlimited resources to make Pillars of Eternity III on an even bigger scale than Baldur's Gate 3, make it the first billion-dollar budget CRPG.
Ah shoot, I just remembered you said we can't use clever tricks to make the world a better place...
I'd buy the largest empty warehouse near a metropolitan area I could; we're talking 1/2/3+ million square foot of space. I'd renovate it to look pretty, but keep it empty, and open it to the public as "Trump's Museum of Lifetime Accomplishments".
this is very personal to me and i'm very late to this convo, but.
the original TV run of Daria had a Very Nineties soundtrack that was actual cuts of real bands' songs. however, for every digital release of the series, due to licensing restrictions, a generic "90s ish" soundtrack was created, which straight up doesn't work for several episodes' key segments. i would blow close to all of my billions on buying out all bands for a one-time mass license rights buyout so a proper digital release with the correct music is available to all.
for those who don't want to wait for me to make a billion dollars, the Daria Restoration Project exists, and is built from hardcore preservationists (heroes) that spliced VHS versions of the audio into the digital video releases.
I think this is personal and small enough to avoid being a "greater good"
Also I like it and miss Daria
A massive upside down waterfall.
Another one?
Anybody want a peanut?
Making billionaires illegal, and then giving the rest of my money away.
Unfortunately due to the terms of the curse, right as you're ready to give your money away you blow it on a trip to the Titanic in your homemade submersible. But at least you go out with a bang
I have 2 major goals:
I fear we're losing the "ridiculous" portion of this. Please stop trying to do good!
I quite frankly find it ridiculous that no one else has done this!!
Sure, in the real world but this is the "wizard cursed you with billions you must waste" world.
If you don't play by the rules of the curse, you automatically become the kind of person no one mourns when orcas capsize your yacht. It's a chance to be silly, on purpose. Take advantage of that and don't make the curse make you the billionaire that pays someone to make them look good at video games and be locked by everyone for it.
You are so right, I basically didn't read the post in full and just wanted to express how I have wished that I could just pay people to get rid of invasive plants. Sorry about that! I'll have to think about my ridiculous and useless expenditure.
No worries, I think many if not most of or all of us here would want to actually do good with that kind of money. I wanted to encourage the playfulness this time.
˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗
Buy up the rights to every bit of media or intellectual property I can get my hands on, lobby for shorter term copyright protection, and make it my personal mission to add as much to the Creative Commons and public domain that I can in my lifetime. I make the case that it is sufficiently ridiculous, since I doubt that the end goal of common ownership of everything entertaining is achievable with any amount of money, it’s relatively low stakes compared to ownership of medicine, computation or fabrication and it removes any value as property these works have if anyone can put them into anything. It’s stupid, and could easily backfire into a de facto volumetric ownership situation, so I think it’s not necessarily a net good either.
I mean I feel like you're not engaging in the spirit of the game by deliberately doing "good" rather than being ridiculous. But I'm tired of pointing it out over and over again. If you don't want to play, and this applies to everyone, I guess just don't.
Very good yes you found a loophole. Get eaten by an orca, you know? ¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯
If I could attempt to try again, ship every home with a pet 5 buttons with speakers attached that the animal could easily operate. In order, the buttons would say the pet's name, the owners name, "outside", "play" and "food." This would be at a shouting volume and is unable to be adjusted. Then spend the rest of the money to mass train all animals to use these buttons and request more with different words as needed.
How much would it cost to abolish time-zones and DST as well as force everyone to use the same date formatting around the world? Is billions even enough to convince 8 billion people? I just want to see a time on the internet and say, "Ah, yes. I know how long until/since then." without having to do anything more than simple addition/subtraction. Is that selfish enough?
And yes, it would absolutely be ISO 8601 if I have my way. Though, I wouldn't be opposed to renumbering the months and days within them for things like October being the 8th month and all months having 30 or 31 days on consistent intervals.
Wouldn't this just shift the confusion? Like someone part way around the world would be talking about eating breakfast at 2pm and you still wouldn't know how to process that?
I think you're going to have to use your fortune to evenly light the entire globe at all times just to be sure.
Would it? I would just assume 2pm is closer to dawn for them. In fact, for something as personal as breakfast, I might personally include how far long before/after dawn that is for me were I was talking about it.
What I want from it is for people in different time-zones (majority of my friend group) to be able to say a time and have everyone immediately on the same page without having to remember the time-zone of each and every person in the conversation then having to do some math and remember who and if anyone is currently observing Daylight Savings. That and not have to deal with seeing a time for an announcement from a company with a time-zone I'm not familiar with and have to throw it in some awful date/time converter online.
And don't even get me started the horribly inconsistent date formatting used across the world. The only formattings I don't think are used are the ones with the year between the day and month, for obvious reasons. Is it too much to ask to read an expiry date and know if it's actually expired? The only time I can be sure is when the company uses two digits for the day or year and 3 letters for the month, which is astonishingly rare here.
Yeah sorry I was trying to be funny and suggest an even more ridiculous use of billions. :)
My job has me communicating with groups all around the world, so I definitely feel your pain. I have to keep multiple timezones in my calendar app just to keep all the meeting times straight (and even then I'm constantly doing mental gymnastics).
You both missed the even more obvious solution to time zone confusion: just move everyone into the same time zone. I don't mean in the way that everyone stays put and you just tell them to set their clocks differently. I mean physically move everyone such that they all live where noon happens at roughly the same time. Just crowd everyone into ~1/24th of the Earth and time is automatically very easy.
This isn't ridiculous, it's just a slightly suboptimal use of billions of dollars. Once you're a billionaire, most ways to improve the world are selfish - curing cancer/mortality have their obvious benefits, but ending poverty improves the economy, keeping the environment intact prevents knock-on effects and preserves valuable bio-research opportunities, etc.
At least one if not all of the following. Public health care, Feeding children, ousting the current nazi-adjacent regime in america.
Not in the spirit of the thread so your yacht is sunk by angry orcas. Please reread and try again.
"Your honour, my client believes in none of the above and thinks their actions would in fact be harming the world due to their personal nihilistic philosophy"
Spirit of the rules ಠ_ʖಠ
Terribly sorry about your children/pets/company/law firm named PPPPPPPPPPPpPPPppppppppppp
*laughs in having none of those*
Nor are you a billionaire alas.
Either way, doesn't save @Dangerous_Dan_McGrew from the curse's fate.
Too bad, let the yacht sink.
Hey man, the point is that you can't do the good deed here. I know you would in RL. Why post in the thread if you're not going to participate?
The kayfabe is if you try you become the asshole billionaire who hoards his money, harms others and is loathed by all.
I don't understand posting if you think you're above playing. By the rules you do no good with your money and you ultimately die hated by the world for your actions.
For me I hope you'll have every interaction you attempt today gets "um actually'd"
Look I know your whole thing is to get ridiculous replies, but honestly it's what I would do with a billion dollars. If you haven't noticed billionares never seem to have to follow the rules, so why should I, a freshly minted billionare not follow suit?
Cause don't be a dick is a thing? If you don't want to play, then don't. The thread isn't "what would you do if you had a billion dollars" it's "what would you blow your billions on if you had to spend it ridiculously."