Charity is great, and doing science or donating to tech research is wonderful, and buying jewelry and sportscars is typical of many rich people. That’s not what this topic is about- if you had 1 billion in liquidated assets in your bank account and it all legally belongs to you, what are some truly weird, bizarre, or mind-blowingly eccentric things you would do at one point or another? Don’t mention illegal or unethical things please.
My answer:
I’d have these facilities in which there are 100s of screens all in one gigantic room and/or hallway, and each one of these would have a theme, i.e. "WWII Movies/Footage (all the screens have different WWII footage/movies/shows playing simultaneously over days or weeks- public welcome, come visit) or “Cowboy Movies” or “Jesus” (movies shows etc all with jesus and the gospel narrative)
There are numerous locations in the U.S. where certain movies or tv shows were filmed, but not many people know or care, or even if they do… I’d set up plaques or statues in certain locations to commemorate the fact that one of my fave movies or shows was filmed there.
I have countless topics that I want to share with the world, and with that kind of money I could bring them to life, what with having paid professional individuals at my beck and call- I have ideas for youtube et al type videos or documentaries I could dictate others to do the tech and editing on
Let’s hear yours! I’ll share more of mine as I recall them
Honestly, I’d do charity but something unusual (like rebuild a crappy inner-city school and give it an endowment).
Even if I had $1 billion I would not go crazy with massive and multiple homes and hyper-sports cars and $3,000 lunches.
Do not get me wrong, I would definitely have a nice house (probably two) and a nice car and enjoy nice dinners out and probably first-class travel. But it would be sorta in the realm of “normal.” Not sure what that means but nothing bonkers.
Great but that doesn’t quite fit with this topic- I’m looking for truly bizarre, eccentric, or obscure weirdness here.
Neither would I, but even if I would I wouldn’t mention it here because this topic is specifically about things that are really bizarre and out-there and eccentric.
Yes. My fault and apologies. You were clear and I meant to mention it but didn’t. Nothing really weird (for me) leaps to mind. Maybe buy a castle.
ETA: I might build a Zombie Apocalypse / end-of-the-world shelter. I do not think one will happen but I might do it anyway cuz you never know and I could. And a really, really nice one too! Is that weird?
There are some favorite authors that had to stop writing a series as sales slowly dropped off. I will give one example- The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart. The author had informed his fans that he had several more stories, but the publisher wasnt interested- sales had dropped off. (Sadly he is deceased, but perhaps his heirs?)
So, i will pay for those books and stories to be published. One of my fave authors even said for $20000 he would do one. This has been my dream, and it might not even cost a million.
Maybe pay for more books from you. But not films.
I would build the ultimate D&D dungeon, with products for sale (to help pay for the staff). Rooms to play in (free), a film room (small charge), refreshment bar (at slightly over cost, pizza, soft drinks, water, snacks) and a modest walk thru dungeon. Hire a couple out of work Disney imagineers.
I really enjoy watches but I could never purchase a $50,000+ watch even if I had a billion. I’m not even sure where I would draw my personal line on that but definitely a lot less.
Heck…at the high end you’d need personal bodyguards to follow you around all day.
I would have accurate full-sized replicas of various Star Wars ships (an X-Wing, a Y-Wing, a B-Wing, and the Millennium Falcon) built for me, and buy a very large indoor hangar in which to store them, and show them off to friends.
(I just showed this post to my wife. Her response: “Yes, I can absolutely see you doing that.”)
I would try to buy the Franklin Institute and hope that a billion dollar endowment would be enough to let it operate admission-free forever. Or at least till the sun swallows the earth.
I think something can be both charity and bizarre, so my major project would cover both. I would have the Harbor Island desalination plant built to solve the water problems of Corpus Christi. The only string I would attach is that the Inner Harbor desalination plant never be built.
That to. If you know Corpus Christi, you know which house I’m talking about . I’d have it decorated with actual weapons and armor from the pre-gunpowder era from all over the world. Suits of full plate mail, longswords, samurai armor, katanas, etc. Of course the armor would be of a size that I could actually wear.
Does anybody else remember the original SeaLegs fake crab legs? Thin layer of fish goo cooked then rolled into a tight tube shape and a swoop of red to not really look like a crab leg? OK, now “meat glue” - or transglutaminase, it turns scrap sized bits of protein into what seems to be solid cut of meat, if you have had the deli boneless ham from a big formatted loaf, that was made with meat glue. Cloning undifferented tissues is doable but only in thin sheets because the nutrient is in a bath not blood vessels.
Now get this - clone a segment of crab muscle, nice 4-5 cell deep sheet. Meat glue. Format into a faux crab leg, or shred for salad/filling, hell just format into a brick for the ultimate crab sandwich =) Same with lobster or shrimp, or any vanishing species of fish. Other than the ‘steak’ fish like shark or swordfish, we don’t really look for a solid hefty muscle like mammal. It seems if we can get the flavor bang on, probably something in the nutrient broth. I personally would never boil a live swimmy thing again if I can get a close enough version that was economical. And it would be preventing overfishing.
Alternately, in the same vein of overfishing - found a cod farm up off Greenland/Iceland/not sure and farm cod like we do salmon. Granted, the real critter surimi is more likely to happen. I could start it out as a seriously expensive exclusive thing =)
Buy myself an annuity totally separate from my billions and handled by a management/legal company. It would go into 2 accounts, 365,000 for my annual ‘allowance’ with the balance going into an account that is used to otherwise manage my million a year that pays for my home, vehicle, insurance, medical and whatever the expenses I have are. I doubt I would be living in a 10K a month flat in Manhattan, probably a nice comfortable house on enough property t have a small lake on it and I need a van to haul my chair around but they are not always expensive [I like the momvan sized sprinter] My main account would be the one that invests in projects, and any interest and profits go back into making more. I would also buy and refurbish buildings for ultra low income people to try and help with the overall homeless situation. I might try and put a workspace in each building that runs as a small call center or data entry center or something to be a bootstrap job. If I could help 50 people a year get into a better situation, it is well worth the time and money.
I would build rope-tows beside hundreds of public piers to pull surfers through the break to the line-up. Most of the money would be spent lobbying (or bribing) public officials to permit and accept this gift.
I don’t want to take away from the OP, but I guess one way of looking at it would be like if someone said to you
‘you get 50 billion you can do whatever you want with for for charity, family, friends, science, living expenses, but in order to get it you have to take 1 billion and spend it on weird or eccentric things first’
Reframing it that way makes it easier to do the thought exercise without guilt about wasteful spending. A Brewsters millions scenario.
One thing I would do is post roadside billboards and buy TV commercials all over the deep south of Colin Kaepernick with a bunch of scantily clad white women where he says things like ‘thanks Trump for the tax cuts’. Or maybe George Soros. Either way. It’d be funny.
I’d also buy millions of handheld radios for a couple bucks each from China, and air drop them all over North Korea so they can get foreign media.
I would go back and find ways to recreate foods from childhood that I can’t get anymore. I’d hire food scientists and chefs to recreate home cooked foods as well as commercial foods and restaurant foods that were discontinued.
I know OP said not to mention illegal things, but if it were legal, I’d create injection clinics that offered heroin or oxycodone free of charge to fentanyl users on the condition they use them in the injection clinics. There’d be medical support and narcan to avoid death by OD. Hopefully it would reduce the death rate from OD.
One of my wife’s favorite series (what there is of it of course).
One I’ve mentioned before in other, similar threads - live in DM. I haven’t gotten to do paper and pencil RPGs for years, friends moved away, scheduling even online too difficult, managing to find the hours for a session long enough to matter… heck, it’s hard to coordinate a 3-4 hour WoW run with my friends sometimes!
Piles of money means all those problems go away! And I could go back and play some of my weird, obscure or just out wrong games like SLA Industries (not for long, given!).
On a somewhat grander note, I’d like to create a small scale personal cruise ship, and then hire someone like Max Miller to host historical and food driven tours of all the greatest cities of the ancient and modern world. I could have a series of rotating chefs and historians so no one had to devote themselves to my edification full-time, and I’d have smaller, secondary river-craft for heading up-river from larger ports.
Oh, and I think I’ll endow an Anthony Bourdain film school scholarship while I’m at it. Just a +1 while I’m indulging my whims.
. I’d have it decorated with actual weapons and armor from the pre-gunpowder era from all over the world. Suits of full plate mail, longswords, samurai armor, katanas, etc. Of course the armor would be of a size that I could actually wear.