This guy on Hacker News is buying up the entire town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas for reasons that seem unclear even to him. Someone please help him go home to his children pic.twitter.com/6wO0JIyxQ1— Brooks Otterlake (@i_zzzzzz) August 15, 2022
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 15 August 2022 21:02 (one year ago) link
His twitter handle is the same as his username there, it's just post after post of him getting robbed by Pine Bluff tweakers.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, 15 August 2022 21:58 (one year ago) link
a new wrinkle I didn't see yesterday
oh. pic.twitter.com/TFiddlxQAA— Amy Hoy (@amyhoy) August 15, 2022
― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, 15 August 2022 21:59 (one year ago) link
Pine Bluff thing is like one of those great, long, self-owning threads slowly documenting a guy's deranged and ill-informed home renovations, or hapless efforts to establish a utopian compound or whatever.
― Doctor Casino, Monday, 15 August 2022 22:03 (one year ago) link
that falls under the reddit DIY-fail thred or whatever
― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Monday, 15 August 2022 22:03 (one year ago) link
lol great minds xp again
twit’s creek
― Tracer Hand, Monday, 15 August 2022 22:31 (one year ago) link
this is like if something from the SA forums got VC money
― mh, Tuesday, 16 August 2022 15:08 (one year ago) link
lmao max phoned this guy
https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff-arkansas
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 16 August 2022 21:54 (one year ago) link
my "read max" subscription money going to good use
― mh, Tuesday, 16 August 2022 22:35 (one year ago) link
omg of course he's a utahn
― (grim) pump track (wales) (map), Tuesday, 16 August 2022 22:39 (one year ago) link
I enjoyed this bit:
New York was terrible, in the ‘80s. Everything they’re saying about Pine Bluff now they were saying about New York in the ‘80s! And I sure wish I could have bought some real estate in New York in the 80s!”
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Wednesday, 17 August 2022 09:00 (one year ago) link
he comes off more sympathetic in max's interview than I expected, but the initial plan of just buying a huge warehouse for a maker space/entertainment venue/place for his existing businesses without making sure it's close-ish to a population center is wild
a lot of cities have those amenities, so the target market is... people who want to drive 45 minutes from Little Rock to do stuff?
we need pplains in here for the arkansas view
― mh, Wednesday, 17 August 2022 14:07 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3c_pJ_CLJQ
― papal hotwife (milo z), Wednesday, 17 August 2022 15:48 (one year ago) link
the initial plan of just buying a huge warehouse for a maker space/entertainment venue/place for his existing businesses without making sure it's close-ish to a population center is wild
it's been done before by various people with various levels of success ... on the one hand you have Las Vegas and the current incarnation of Burning Man ... on the other hand you have this guy, as well as stuff in between like the guy who bought a town in Nevada and then there was a fire that burned like 90% of it ... though that guy had done something similar in an urban area and had gotten displaced, so he had an existing community of people as well as some experience
― sarahell, Wednesday, 17 August 2022 18:40 (one year ago) link
I was just randomly reading a reddit thread of purported real estate investors discussing (celebrating really) that arkansas is the most landlord friendly state in the country. Fucking bleak stuff. I believe one of them said it was a crime with jail time to stay in an apartment without paying the rent.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 17 August 2022 19:05 (one year ago) link
Texas is also very pro-landlord. Like, if you look at the civil code related to residential tenants and tenants rights, and you are only familiar with the laws in states like California and New York, you would be shocked and/or confused.
― sarahell, Wednesday, 17 August 2022 19:10 (one year ago) link
sometimes this site really delivers pic.twitter.com/dJmlYRF4ZZ— cathode ray theory (@said_mitch) August 18, 2022
― (grim) pump track (wales) (map), Thursday, 18 August 2022 21:19 (one year ago) link
so apparently the guy who bought a bunch of real estate in that arkansas town has recordings and transcripts from the city meetings where he was trying to pitch his plans on his own website
it's him trying to get someone to walk through and tell him what he'd need to fix, and they keep explaining that it's a change in zoning, he needs plans signed off by an engineer and completed, etc.
I mean, there are areas of the country with less stringent building and occupancy codes, but dude bought a giant warehouse and adjoining buildings and wants to use them for commercial purposes!
― mh, Thursday, 18 August 2022 22:04 (one year ago) link
― sarahell
this is one of the settings for _summer fun_, the trans brian wilson book i'm reading for my book club...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_America
― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 18 August 2022 22:46 (one year ago) link
I think buying abandoned real estate and attempting to use it as-is is different from building an entertainment city mostly from scratch or building a temporary city in the desert, though? This isn’t “if you build it,” it’s “if I get them to turn electrical service back on” or at least it was until someone stole his wallsUnless we’re not talking about the Arkansas guy
― mh, Thursday, 18 August 2022 23:54 (one year ago) link
― mh, Thursday, August 18, 2022 3:04 PM (two hours ago)
this is a lot of what the org I work for does tbh. part of this guy's problem is the way the system works ... like, it is highly unlikely one person will be able to tell him everything he would need to do, and there's a lot of if/then at play ... if you want this, the process involves x, but if you are willing to do it somewhat differently, you could maybe avoid doing x, but you would have to do y. the existing structure / condition / etc of the building would need to be determined to meet certain criteria in order for him to do x, but a licensed engineer would have to actually do a study and calculations and find out if it does meet those criteria. If it does, then the process involves x, if it doesn't, then, before you can even think about doing x, you would need to do z, and maybe, instead of doing z and then doing x, you might want to re-think the whole thing ...
― sarahell, Friday, 19 August 2022 00:46 (one year ago) link
yes, the absolutely basic thing is to make a proposed plan, and hire an engineer
he seemed to just show up to meetings and propose completely different things every time with no blueprints or engineering assessment, just “hey guys but can I do this instead”
I mean, the way the system works may be convoluted beyond that, but that’s entry level “how do I shot occupancy”
also every time he describes the site it reminds me of an EPA superfund site in my city that’s getting slowly developed with so many caveats
― mh, Friday, 19 August 2022 03:09 (one year ago) link
"an" engineer ... dude, you might need structural, mechanical, and civil engineers depending on the project ...
― sarahell, Friday, 19 August 2022 03:39 (one year ago) link
generally, the first person you go to is an architect
― sarahell, Friday, 19 August 2022 03:40 (one year ago) link
yes
― mh, Friday, 19 August 2022 12:59 (one year ago) link
move fast and break stuff amirite
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 19 August 2022 14:54 (one year ago) link
everyone otm re pine bluff itt. ((man alive also getting points for knowing about the state's criminal, not civil, penalties against renters (which is a whole other subject.))
I can't talk about Pine Bluff. It's sad, it's tragic, it's a whole damn city that's dying a slow death.
But man. I won't say I enjoyed that man's misfortunes, but I sure did enjoy reading about them.
― pplains, Friday, 2 September 2022 03:35 (one year ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/4M7pRYt.jpg
A few years ago, the paper had a story featuring the mayor pointing at different piles of rubble in town, going "You see this shit?"
― pplains, Friday, 2 September 2022 03:37 (one year ago) link
I know, I know, in the UK they point at potholes.
― pplains, Friday, 2 September 2022 03:38 (one year ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/GODvMDN.png
Town so damn broke, the mcdonalds only got one arch
― pplains, Friday, 2 September 2022 03:41 (one year ago) link
That's some pretty impressive rubble.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 2 September 2022 03:43 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55lqCerTvVA
CEDELL SAID COME ON DOWN.
― pplains, Friday, 2 September 2022 03:43 (one year ago) link
― pplains, Thursday, September 1, 2022 8:37 PM (two days ago)
she should visit Oakland! So many piles of rubble to point at!
― sarahell, Sunday, 4 September 2022 04:47 (one year ago) link
the parallel valleys https://t.co/RxD3iB2vlo pic.twitter.com/4o7Ush2J1V— kate conger (@kateconger) September 26, 2022
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 26 September 2022 23:02 (one year ago) link
They finally put this genius on the 10 o'clock news:https://www.kark.com/news/local-news/theft-causing-problems-for-man-wanting-to-bring-science-museum-to-pine-bluff/
science-museum and pine-bluff in the same url. I finally lived to see the day.
― pplains, Saturday, 1 October 2022 02:51 (one year ago) link
Elizabeth Holmes gets 11-year sentence.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-scammer-11-years-prison-1234630584/
― nickn, Friday, 18 November 2022 22:56 (one year ago) link
non-paywalled story:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/18/former-theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-sentenced-to-more-than-11-years-in-prison.html
― nickn, Friday, 18 November 2022 22:58 (one year ago) link
I didn't realize she was expecting a second kid... that's roughShe probably deserves it, but the kids don't
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 18 November 2022 23:12 (one year ago) link
My mind went immediately to "she got pregnant to get sympathy/a shorter sentence."
― nickn, Friday, 18 November 2022 23:14 (one year ago) link
Ha I thought the same thing
And of course the prisons are full of parents, so...
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 18 November 2022 23:14 (one year ago) link
Imagine if every Book is converted into an Animated Book and made 10x more engaging. AI will do this. Huge opportunity here to disrupt Kindle and Audible.— Gaurav Munjal (@gauravmunjal) January 21, 2023
― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, 23 January 2023 00:25 (one year ago) link
The builders who survive (aka thrive) over the next several years will be those who are fundamentally self actualizing on some core vector via what they’re building.Too hard otherwise.— Geoff Lewis (@GeoffLewisOrg) March 8, 2023
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 8 March 2023 17:48 (one year ago) link
It says so much.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 8 March 2023 17:51 (one year ago) link
"Bedrock is a technology investment firm in search of narrative violations."
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 8 March 2023 18:06 (one year ago) link
what happened to Silicon Valley Bank???
― sarahell, Friday, 10 March 2023 18:44 (one year ago) link
it almost seems like an old fashioned bank run - lots of companies pulling their deposits
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 10 March 2023 18:52 (one year ago) link
I think it was exactly an old-fashioned bank run.
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Friday, 10 March 2023 19:07 (one year ago) link
what was the cause of it though?
― sarahell, Friday, 10 March 2023 19:10 (one year ago) link
Per SF Chronicle:
SVB lost $1.8 billion in the sale of U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities in which it had invested, thanks to rising interest rates, TechCrunch reported. On top of that, the bank was facing shrinking deposits as the tech industry struggled.Amid these concerns, the company announced it would sell $1.25 billion of its common stock to investors, $500 million of depositary shares and, separately, $500 million of common stock to private equity firm General Atlantic. After the announcement, shares in SVB plummeted nearly 70% before trading was halted before the opening bell on the Nasdaq, the Associated Press Reported. Clients began pulling out their money, leading to a run on the bank.
Amid these concerns, the company announced it would sell $1.25 billion of its common stock to investors, $500 million of depositary shares and, separately, $500 million of common stock to private equity firm General Atlantic. After the announcement, shares in SVB plummeted nearly 70% before trading was halted before the opening bell on the Nasdaq, the Associated Press Reported. Clients began pulling out their money, leading to a run on the bank.
But I'm sure there's more BS at work too.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 10 March 2023 19:10 (one year ago) link