A lavish mansion at a bargain price AND I get free giant spiders?? Where do I sign up?
Practically speaking, I don’t have the budget to maintain a lavish mansion, nor do I want to move. But the only big spiders I ever get here are black widows. I’d love to have big spiders I don’t have to kill to keep the cats safe.
Spiders don’t bother me. What spiders eat do bother me, so I’ll keep the arachnids, thanks.
Anecdote time:
I’ve kept lizard and snakes in the house for over 2 decades now, although since adopting two cats, they stay in their own room, so I’m used to dealing with a large number of creepy critters as feeders. On one memorable occasion, we had a box with 1000 feeder crickets fail, and I spent weeks cleaning them up, often by hand, until they were all eaten, dead and vacuumed up, or otherwise gone.
Large spiders, while not my bag, would not bother me much to collect and rehome, possibly profitably in the collector market, and then I’d flip the property. The biggest problem would be my wife, who does like large spiders, as well as other critters of the nature, including a small acorn scorpion she once brought home after finding it at work (kept as a pet for a year) and tailless whip scorpions (shudder, but she does want one!).
I suspect that we’d end up with a small selection to keep with us even after too keep her happy.
Would definitely give up dairy. I mostly have. It doesn’t sit well with my stomach, and with the exception of hard extra sharp cheddar I am not a milk, yogurt, or cheese fan anyway.
Never understood the North American tendency to cover everything in melted cheese anyway.
I don’t really care for melted cheese on stuff, either. But i start most days with cereal and milk. Yogurt is my comfort food when I’m sick. Hot cocoa is a treat. And while i don’t eat cheese as often as i eat meat, i like it, and i could live without meat if i had cheese.
I would cover melted cheese with melted cheese.
mmm
It would definitely depend on the artwork. Some old Renaissance religious painting? Eh. Something modern, almost definitely.
My tastes might be the opposite of yours, but yes, it would definitely depend on the art work.
I’d take the art.
Then I’d lease a small section of the Huntington Library to store it in. An area that is open to the public and looks just like one of their regular galleries. I am sure that the Board of Directors and their lawyers could put something together that would satisfy the legal requirements. I’m not lending them the art - they are lending me the area.
I didn’t think of that one.
All I could think of was that I’d go in terror of the cats somehow getting claws into it. Plus which, I doubt I’ve got a good place to hang it, though that would depend on the size, as well as whether I wanted it anywhere where I’d see it often. Plus which, I’d feel required to let people come in and see it, which would mean either a whole lot of extra housecleaning or a whole lot of extra embarrassment, in addition to taking my time to deal with the people, in addition to it taking a whole lot of mental energy for me to deal with strangers in the house.
Meh. I’d show it to my friends, and to people who asked nicely at times that were convenient to me. And I’d enjoy the work of art.
For the art, I voted in accordance with the spirit, not the letter of the poll, contrary to my normal tendencies. So, thanks, I’m not worthy (and terrified of cat based damage). Buuuut, I was so tempted to say “Sure” and just set it up at my home and charge admission to see it. I could use the cash!
Alternately, I can’t sell it, lease it, or lend it, but I could use it as collateral in a (huge) loan. Borrow enough to live well on for the rest of my life, and let it go to the creditors when I kick the bucket.
But again, not the spirit of the thing. 
I’ve never had cat damage to paintings on the wall! And I’ve have lots of paintings, and have had lots of cats. Some of whom damaged a lot of other things.
Unless my house burns down or is robbed, the painting will be perfectly safe. I’m hoping this priceless painting doesn’t have enough market value to be stolen, but that’s my only real concern.
My cats love to paw things on the wall. From Echo clocks, to normal ones, to a framed print, to the blue masking tape stuck to the wall (we’re marking studs to build and install a series of wall-mounted cat shelves for them to play with)!
May your house panthers continue to behave themselves!
If something happens to the painting, something happens to the painting. I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Someone gave it to me knowing I do not have the ability to protect it like a museum would. It’s really not my problem. I’ll enjoy it in the meantime.
I don’t want anything that valuable in my house. The neighborhood I live in is comfortably working-to-middle class (a fair number of work trucks in driveways and no one gets very antsy about how your yard is kept), and it’s low-crime. If I suddenly had an extremely valuable painting in my house, word would get out and I’d suddenly need a level of security beyond a lackadaisical locking of doors when I’m out and at night.
Besides, priceless works of art belong in museums where a lot of people can see them, not in private houses.
As far as “genies” go, I like the polls that provide a tricky choice. In order to keep it short and avoid hypothetical pokers it’s easier to make the cause of the choice something that can’t really be argued against, e.g genies. Almost any real life set up will get legions of “yabutt” pickers.
That’s something I always thought weird; that people will nitpick plausible-but-far-fetched real life scenarios to death while letting almost anything fanciful get handwaved.
Like the thread where people argued vociferously that North Korea could never conquer South Korea, yet were okay with all kinds of space aliens/zombies hypotheticals.
With one notable exception, all the vegans I’ve met are quiet about it, only politely refusing food they can’t eat.
People who complain about other people’s dietary preferences tend to be loud obnoxious and have the worst sense of humor.
I think it’s an uncanny valley thing. I’ll cheerfully accept magic or zombies because we’ve left the real world behind. But if you want to argue a real world hypothetical, it had better be plausible.