The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas (2022)

https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff-arkansas

by dbcooper • 2 years ago

289 173 2 years ago

maxread.substack.com

https://1900hotdog.com/2023/07/upsetting-day-john-fenleys-cu...

is the far more entertaining read.

I feel a bit bad, because John Fenley is among us here on HN. But I think they also surface that John, you really need to get out of Pine Bluff and reevaluate these pie-in-the-sky ideas.

ratg13• 2 years ago

this is the most entertaining article i have read on the internet in some time.

thank you for sharing!

greenie_beans• 2 years ago

surely most of those incidents are fiction?

reducesuffering3• 2 years ago

No, all of it is very real. And there's a lot more on John's Twitter and Youtube.

throwaway13337• 2 years ago

Doesn't the writer sort of revel in the misfortunes of John?

I'm not sure how he got his money, but what he is trying to do with it doesn't sound awful. He might be bad at business - it seems like that's the idea here - but a person like John, from what I can tell, is a kind of protagonist.

He wants to build his crazy ideas that seem on their face not all together sound. And he puts a ton of effort into making it happen. These ideas are meant to improve the world in some way through the market forces as he can tell. I wish him the best for it.

It seems like there is a big culture of cynicism towards people trying to improve things through action and not words. Underlying it is the assumption of negative externalities. But I think we lost sight of something here. All actions have the possibility of some negative externalities, but humanity got to where it is because of a lot of people doing their best to improve things.

The instinct to make potshots from the sidelines at the guys playing the game sucks.

ethbr1• 2 years ago

100%. Sitting in a basement and griping about things on the internet has 0% risk.

Real life fails much more spectacularly and frequently.

But it also has an infinitely larger chance of effecting actual change.

Edit:

> He’d had enough. Fenley began open-carrying a weapon at all times and holding any would-be thieves at gunpoint.

This is semi-rural Arkansas.

A state ranked 47/50 [0] in per capita income.

It may require more than holding people at gunpoint, unfortunately enough.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...

reducesuffering3• 2 years ago

John isn't a bad guy, and if he was close to achieving good things, I would be all for supporting him.

Unfortunately, he is living off a 6 figure sum he got from stock years ago. He is rapidly burning it to 0 by buying unprofitable real estate. Instead of proving out ideas on a small scale, and scaling up from there, he thinks if he just tries for a home run, he can eventually do it. But he has multiple kids that he isn't seeing when he's in Pine Bluff most of the time. It's obvious that he's burning through his savings and will go bankrupt if he doesn't change course sooner. The nuclear reactor or mayor of Pine Bluff moonshots are never going to pan out.

freetime2• 2 years ago

Yup, I don’t like to see anyone be the victim of crime like that. We can laugh at some of the poor investments he has made, but the reality is things sound pretty dire in Pine Bluff. I feel bad for him and all the residents of Pine Bluff living in a city where the rule of law has basically failed.

justadolphinnn3• 2 years ago

This article seems worse in tone frankly

jachac• 2 years ago

https://twitter.com/pontifier

He tweets pretty frequently about the on-going drama

cko• 2 years ago

I just scrolled through his tweets (Xeets?) and I must say I really like the guy. Hugely entertaining.

I hope for his sake this is all a performance art but but I doubt it.

cdchn2• 2 years ago

Top tweet is him confronting an intruder then biffing on his face after tripping on a fire hydrant. I just couldn't scroll any further.

criddell• 2 years ago

And he posts here too. Recently he mentioned his plan for eliminating crime in Pine Bluff and maybe everywhere:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39633534

83457• 2 years ago

1. buy warehouse 2. buy houses 3. start a company and rent houses to workers 4. maybe profit

mopenstein• 2 years ago

Imagine owning and renting to the people you employee. What a nightmare! He'd be villainized immediately.

lotsofpulp2• 2 years ago

Step 2.5

Find reliable, quality, trustworthy colleagues.

readyplayernull• 2 years ago

That seems to be a dangerous place, even hydrants are against you:

https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1609493285675859973?s=2...

Take8435• 2 years ago

This entire post is so great. Love that it was posted by dbcooper lol

untech5• 2 years ago

What’s the story of dbcooper?

darby_eight• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper

If he is posting, I sincerely hope he's doing it through the security-from-state of some anonymized internet access. Chances are he's just dead though.

Fuzzwah• 2 years ago

Stole a bunch of money, hijacked a plane, jumped out with a parachute, escaped capture.

untech5• 2 years ago

I think buying a warehouse is kinda cool! But if he’s facing security problems, can’t he just hire guards? The labor price must be as low as land price there.

declan_roberts• 2 years ago

"Can't he just hire guards?" I'm curious what you think a ballpark cost for 24-hour guard security would be?

untech5• 2 years ago

I’ve looked up minimal wages in Arkansas. It’s $11/h, which seems ridiculously high, but I’m not an American. I think that in a depressed town, it shouldn’t be hard to find someone for, say, $35 per 12-hour night shift, just to patrol the property with a torch, so that it wouldn’t look abandoned? Which amounts to about $13k per year.

hindsightbias• 2 years ago

In economically depressed areas like this, it doesn’t matter what you pay.

If you roll in a $5K welder or roll of copper, your guards are going to screw you.

etc-hosts• 2 years ago

Pine Bluff has one of the highest murder rates in the entire United States.

User23• 2 years ago

I recently drove through the area and when I left the interstate it felt like being in Fallout.

margalabargala2• 2 years ago

44 murders per 100k residents. More than Detroit, less than Baltimore.

sneak• 2 years ago

You only need to hire armed guards for a few months until the problem of the repeat career criminals breaking into the place is solved. They will run out of criminal burglars before you run out of armed guard salary.

krisoft2• 2 years ago

Sure, because criminals are all dumb as rock and flock to your guarded property like lemings.

What they certainly won’t do is threaten the family of your armed guards, or bribe your guards, or sabotage the vehicles of your armed guards until they don’t show up no more, or learn the schedule of your armed guards and sneak around them.

Or you know, lay low and do easier things until you stop paying guards and come back then.

throwitaway222• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576974&p=2#39587743

dullcrisp• 2 years ago

Eliminate crime everywhere huh? I guess where would we be without maniacs?

CrimsonCape• 2 years ago

How even do you reclaim Pine Bluff? it's obviously overrun with thieves and the local police are qualitatively useless. It's almost like the national guard needs to be sent in.

hahajk• 2 years ago

You could institute a UBI by building a tower that drops a $1 bill every minute.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35585305

Tabular-Iceberg5• 2 years ago

I propose pillorying for lesser crimes and public executions for greater ones, but that’s likely not possible due to the eighth amendment. And suspending the constitutional would be the final nail in the coffin of the whole American project.

The modern western criminal justice system only really works when thieves and killers know what they are doing is wrong, but do it anyway. What you have in places like Pine Bluff is more like barbarians sacking Rome. They don’t think it’s wrong but do it anyway, they do it because they believe that it’s right. It’s an antique problem that calls for an antique solution.

rKarpinski• 2 years ago

What he bought was a large warehouse and later some foreclosed lots at auction, spending in total ~400k. The warehouse alone was worth 3.4 million as recently as 2008 but de-industrialization and local crime have since cratered it's value. [1]

While he's engaged in a completely unreasonable adventure, It's sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the hallowing out and degradation of the US.

[1] https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2022/08/17/meet-a-man-who...

lotsofpulp2• 2 years ago

It's sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the hallowing out and degradation of the US.

Certain parts of the US. It’s a big country, it might not be reasonable for it to all be doing well, especially with an overall older and older population with productive segments of the population agglomerating to smaller regions.

cdchn2• 2 years ago

t's sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the hallowing out and degradation of the US.

It is disappointing that people are socioeconomically swept away by the tide, but I think all across America since its inception has been a place of ebb and flow. A nation of boom towns and ghost towns.

7thaccount2• 2 years ago

I've lived in Pine Bluff before (not that long ago) and almost everyone I worked with commuted from either Little Rock (a straight shot on the interstate for something like 45 minutes of drive time) or one of the nearby little rural towns. A lot of businesses have since left the town and will likely never come back. The crime is just too high and there aren't enough jobs in the area. Little Rock is pretty dangerous too in parts, but is safe for the vast majority of places.

TimMeade• 2 years ago

i was stationed in Arkansas in the late 80's and we used to go to Pine Bluff sometimes. It was a lovely little town. Just tragic about the downturn. I had no idea.

smallmancontrov• 2 years ago

For anyone who wants to understand the macroeconomics behind why the US Economy seems to hate export industries lately, I highly recommend the book "Trade Wars are Class Wars" by Michael Pettis.

metabagel• 2 years ago

Don't conflate Arkansas with the United States. It's one of the poorest states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

bigjimmyk32• 2 years ago

While Pine Bluff is one of the fastest a shrinking cities in the country, the northwest corner of AR is one of the fastest-growing metro areas. A fascinating example of the somewhat fractal nature of growth in the US.

callalex2• 2 years ago

It’s harder to have sympathy when I’ve watched these places blatantly vote against their own self interests for my entire lifetime.

Tabular-Iceberg5• 2 years ago

Probably a case of just wanting to vote for “your own people” rather than who’s actually competent.

You saw the same the same thing when Jacob Zuma was jailed for corruption. They had massive riots in his support. They had massive pro-, not anti-corruption riots.

mtlynch• 2 years ago

I'd never heard about this, but I found Bentley super likable and easy to root for. I hope he manages to get things going in his direction soon.

Bukhmanizer• 2 years ago

I fell down the pontifier rabbit hole from a HN comment in early 2021 as well and I’m glad other people have found the story as fascinating as I did.

I do think the article makes him a bit overly sympathetic and glosses over some of his eccentricities. Like the fact that he seems to really think he can build a nuclear fusion reactor from an old MRI machine and I guess all of the Nem saga: https://whoispontifier.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/the-journey-...

I still haven’t decided if all this is or isn’t some sort of elaborate performance art, but I appreciate the effort in any case. And even though I think he’s probably a few cards short of a deck, you do kind of root for him in the end.

mikea1• 2 years ago

you do kind of root for him in the end

I'm rooting for him too. He doesn't have all the qualities of a classic protagonist, yet I find myself hoping that he succeeds in his madcap endeavors. I admire his grit: I would have not had his fortitude in the face of violent threats nor withstand the constant frustration.

pard68• 2 years ago

I'm not anywhere near knowledgeable enough to chime in on the feasibility of creating a nuclear reactor from a MRI machine, but there is this guy in Floyd, Virginia who has created a nuclear reactor from some old medical equipment, so maybe it's possible with a MRI machine too?

ThrustVectoring• 2 years ago

Nuclear fission is relatively straightforward so long as you either don't know or don't care about the health risks of radiation. It's just a pile of spicy rocks at the end of the day.

Fusion, on the other hand, requires you to get center-of-sun temperatures and pressures going on to work properly. That usually requires either extremely difficult engineering processes or a fission bomb (and more precise engineering calculations but they're actually reasonably solvable).

adastra22• 2 years ago

Nuclear reactors are easy. Nuclear fusion is not.

At least not a useful fusion reactor.

ashleyn• 2 years ago

Reading this was difficult.

* What exactly was his plan for the building? I don't see anything coherent. One moment it's a makerspace, another it's a music warehouse, then it's a science museum. Was there a coherent plan? $281k is a lot of money to spend with no real plan.

* The city allegedly giving him grief. I'm still not sure if this was preventable or not considering the bit about how he failed to submit building plans. If your plan is to own a significant chunk of this city, you're going to have to play better politics than repeatedly being asked to leave at public functions. Palm-greasing would be a far better strategy than righteous anger. Maybe a fraction of that $900k could've opened a nice park they always wanted. Maybe the PD needs a new bearcat. Something.

* Living in a tent on the lot instead of hiring security. This bit was straight out of some episode of a sitcom. This is a depressed flyover country town. If you couldn't afford security then you couldn't afford the building. Again, a good chunk of that $900k would cover round-the-clock security for at least a year. Righteous indignation over the crime isn't an actual cost-cutting measure.

* The land is cheap for a reason. The way a town gets revitalised is external value flows in. How would the makerspace-warehouse-museum thing bring that value into the city? Even if all this did pan out, I'd predict an entirely new problem he'd have, which is no willing customers outside of a 200 mile radius.

I don't get why people make cockeyed "investments" like these when the S&P 500 is sitting right there at a nice 8% a year. No bums, no politics, no thinking it through at all really. Just buy it and don't touch it. If your idea can't do better than that intersection of earnings and effort, don't bother with it.

Nextgrid• 2 years ago

Sadly this whole story & his YT channel looks like witnessing a man's slow descent into madness, like the meatspace equivalent of TempleOS.

resolutebat3• 2 years ago

He was living in a tent and subsisting off ramen until he landed the $900k windfall, which he proceeded to squander on unrelated properties.

But yeah, the total lack of security is astonishing, you'd think he could afford to hire a security guard: the main theft happened after he got the windfall and could easily have paid for it.

thepasswordis• 2 years ago

which he proceeded to squander on unrelated properties.

He bought 74 parcels of land in the town, including a house which he moved into, for around $140k.

toss12• 2 years ago

I was thinking the cheap warehouse made sense if it were to be a warehouse/logistics operation. But then a makerspace, without a huge quantity of makers living nearby - huh?

Then after discovering that he is a far above average target, and getting a windfall and bringing all his gear and customer's property to the site, he gets no security?

Definitely seems to be a few cards short of a deck and have more money than sense. I hope he doesn't get himself or his family killed if one of those robberies goes bad.

ryandrake4• 2 years ago

None of his ideas make sense. It just sounds like he has this picture of a life in his head, but it's not even remotely his. The last line is particularly baffling:

“It'd be freaking fantastic to own a hotel, and like, have rooftop parties and turn the whole top floor into a penthouse for me. You know? Like, that's, like, how would I not want to do that?

Dude? Who the fuck are you going to be partying with? The town is full of criminals who steal from you. A makerspace? Where are the makers? An art studio? Where are the artists? Your town is "MAGA, drugs and crime" as an HNer put it in the previous article about this saga. Where is all of this culture going to magically come from, besides your imagination?

This guy seems like the true "If You Build It They Will Come" believer, but he's not even building anything. And even if he does Build It, the place seems like too much of a shithole for anyone to actually come.

ryandrake4• 2 years ago

The city allegedly giving him grief. I'm still not sure if this was preventable or not considering the bit about how he failed to submit building plans. If your plan is to own a significant chunk of this city, you're going to have to play better politics than repeatedly being asked to leave at public functions.

Maybe it's just because I don't live in a depressed area like this, but I simply don't understand the city's motivation for being a pain in the ass here. I mean, pretend you're the mayor or city council of this town. Industry has left. The jobs have left. Your schools suck. The state and country is ignoring you. Your citizens are spiraling into poverty, drugs, and crime. A wacky entrepreneur moves in, and would like to take a shot at revitalization.

And you're worried about architectural drawings and building codes?????

Even if the guy is has weird ideas, why would you make it your job to get up his ass when he appears to at least be trying to do something positive?

It's hinted in the article that the local government has its own (lame) revitalization plans, which will also not work, and sees this guy as competition. So silly. No wonder it sucks living in these hopeless places.

Cheer21712• 2 years ago

And you're worried about architectural drawings and building codes?????

The most important reason why building codes exist is for safety. The buildings have been abandoned for some time and are likely in deep disrepair. It seems the city wants to know that if their children go to the science museum, it won't collapse or burn down. This guy is not an architect or engineer, and hasn't even hired one. If the city had building codes but didn't enforce them, and some tragedy happened, they might even be liable legally. They would definitely be liable politically if a big tragedy happened.

blindstitch• 2 years ago

Some development boards and city councils definitely have a talent for shooting themselves in the foot, but the man is outright antagonistic to them and has been for years. Before you can build you have to do some legwork in advance and show the development board that your plans are going to be compliant. The board wants to be assured that the plan won't have safety or nuisance issues for the town. In some cases they want to have a guarantee that development will actually happen. In each case, Pine Bluff presents very low bars to development that this guy repeatedly fails to meet.

IMO this is not a case of a nimby board standing in the way of an eccentric trying to innovate. The problem is that he has made himself known to this board as an unserious crank who does not show the board respect for their processes. He has been approved for several different uses at the site and failed to follow through on any of them. He demands special permissions while actively campaigning against their plans. If he could show a good faith effort to help the town build upon what the electeds are doing he might have a fighting chance, but he instead goes around talking shit about them anywhere he can.

bglazer• 2 years ago

Wacky entrepreneur moves in, builds go kart track in abandoned warehouse. No safety precautions are taken whatsoever. Kids come for birthday party. Go kart catches on fire, the warehouse fills with smoke. The kids die.

For a less hypothetical scenario, its not hard to see the parallels with another wacky entrepreneur and a submarine that eschewed traditional safety concerns

pfooti• 2 years ago

And you're worried about architectural drawings and building codes?????

Building codes, like several other categories of regulations that can at times feel oppressive or arbitrary, tend to be written in the blood of accident victims. See, for example the ghost ship fire in my recent memory of why they are important even if (especially if) you are using an under utilized space

ametrau• 2 years ago

Wow. I thought stories like these ended when the internet died. I’m glad I was wrong. Should have been on HN ages ago. Crazy and exciting read. Thanks max read.

cpach• 2 years ago

It’s been discussed before: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

kevinmchugh3• 2 years ago

This story only exists because the guy can constantly post for all to see everything that he's done or is trying to deal with and all his grand plans

NotYourLawyer• 2 years ago

He’s here on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pontifier

dec0dedab0de• 2 years ago

I love this, and I am rooting for him. It's the kind of thing I dream about having enough money to do.

cjbgkagh2• 2 years ago

I find that there is a lot of inertia in decline, things that have been declining for a long time generally continue declining. The amount of work to turn around a township (?) would be insane and I wish him the best of luck.

TigeriusKirk• 2 years ago

There's a lot of small towns where buying Main Street wouldn't be an outrageous cost. It's got some appeal. Go in and make it work again.

But when you get down to the "How?" it quickly becomes apparent that the inertia is strong and the odds of success are extremely low.

Still, it's a fun daydream.

cooper_ganglia• 2 years ago

Challenges aside, I’m jealous! He needs to pull a Rajneeshpuram and politically take over the town, too, lol

kylecazar• 2 years ago

Someone posted his twitter above and on it he claims to have been running for mayor as a libertarian

callalex2• 2 years ago

Be sure to avoid the salad bar!

superq• 2 years ago

Needs more pitch for the archer towers.

Maybe some war dogs.

AI_beffr2• 2 years ago

i find the person who wrote this to be a complete ass-hole. talking about ill-advised redditors, he gives one example of a man who decided to build his own house. but the link to that guys story is a weird twitter thread that just shows a guy building a house. as someone who knows how to build a house, i knew how much work and hard-earned lessons went into each of those progress pictures. and the guy builds the house better than most contractors would. besides the plumbing snafu. the doors and windows were not placed in a way that is pleasing to the eye but overall it was a great accomplishment. how is that ill-advised? its not, its awesome. i hate people that take a shit on those who actually make change in the world and take risks. all from their safe little cubicle or basement. people who are so ignorant and dumb that all the information that is packed into those pictures flies right over their heads.

as a person in real estate, looking through pontifiers twitter feed is like looking back at my own life. most people know that there is a homeless problem. but what many people dont realize is that basically everywhere in the united states there are people who wander around at night looking for stuff to steal. they poke around everywhere but actually do not physically break in most of the time. people in liberal areas are familiar with window breaking and break and enter but everywhere else there is just this omnipresence of vagrants who commit smaller crimes. they are just really annoying and make the neighborhood seem more trashy than it really is. these people are all fit and ready to work. the cops wont arrest them. nobody really bothers them. i think the reason they exist is because people are shittier now and dont feel any urge to fix the societal problems that they see around them. there are videos on pontifiers twitter where he confronts them and they are totally without shame. they arent afraid of being caught. i think something similar happened in the 80s and people got super fed up and then NY started stop and frisk and other things. we need another one of those.

as for the actual purchase of the warehouse and other properties, the risk isnt so bad when you take into account the relatively small amounts of money that are actually on the table here. as far as i know, hes making these purchases in cash. i would say that theres a good chance he will pull through and be able to use what hes learned to start making a real difference in this community and others. by far the most concerning part of this story is the city not cooperating. biggest road block by far.

epivosism2• 2 years ago

yeah, the author seems to like the guy but still falls into typical prejudicial choices in explaining the actual story. It's so schoolmarmish. Step back man, people can do what they want, they make mistakes, they have grand plans that sometimes fail.

“The Overconfident Optimist and His Ill-Advised DIY Project.”

This is what I mean. The article just started and he's defining his conclusion for all readers.

Then, he compares Fenley to a "Child-destroying slackline" (which apparently never actually hurt anyone?). Fenley bought some property and tried to artistic type stuff. It is really slimy to compare him to such a horrible thing as hurting a child. That linked tweet is another "we know better" type of guy who's telling someone else how wrong they are. Yeah, doing risky stuff is risky, and I definitely don't think kids should (or would) be allowed to ride that thing, but I think they'd figure it out real quick (possibly after the creator died testing it).

This is really a cultural thing - puritan types freaking HATE how unplanned, disorganized, and free/careless other cultural groups are in the US (i.e. appalachian/borderer people). So reading this as straight up cultural mockery/status management/ridicule makes it clear. Its basically equivalent to a 19th century "lets go to other countries and laugh at people's behavior" type of travelogue by northeast USA "know better than you" types criticizing other cultural groups for the behavior they don't like (monster trucks, bbq, hotdog eating competitions, basically anything that's just not done in the uptight north-east USA)

Also: author, did you personally ever make 900k from a patent? So yeah, people are weird, have bad/dumb ideas. And I can feel you kind of like the guy despite everything. So like, get over the contempt you feel, figure out what he's got that gave him the skill to invent something, and rise above your need to mock him. The rest of the article is fine in tone, just fix the initial disrespectful comparisons. Something like "I looked into this guy and found a complicated, naive, but also gifted guy... <details>" rather than just hitting the regular playbook.

Final comment: the note about race / murder is super weird. You mention a company moved, then immediately explain the race distributions without any reason to do that, as if there is a connection. Is there? what is it? Did the company ever mention race? This is typical journo hinting/dogwhistling. Is there any evidence of any racial problems in the subject of the article? Some towns are poor, some rich, some white, some black, whats the point? Then you mention the murder rates... inadvertently confirming a hate fact, that certain groups are linked to super high murder rates (victims and perps). I just don't get it. Like, what's the point of bringing that up?

resolutebat3• 2 years ago

Our protagonist hails from deeply Mormon Provo, Utah, home to BYU, a slew of tech startups, and 0.8% people who identify as Black, and they've trying to spin up their business in a wrecked, deindustrialized shell of a Southern town that's over 75% Black and they know exactly nobody. Even with the best of intentions they're going to get major culture shock.

kevinmchugh3• 2 years ago

The extremely dangerous zipline never killed anyone because armchair critics correctly pointed out the danger!

kevinmchugh3• 2 years ago

The individual with the bad window placements was actually a Something Awful user (not a redditor) and he was actually well advised not to do what he was doing. Folks who'd like to know more can search for "Groverhaus" or the more evocative "load-bearing drywall".

AI_beffr2• 2 years ago

"load bearing drywall" ok i may have to give him a little less credit

Tabular-Iceberg5• 2 years ago

Looks like pretty classic American architecture to me. It just needs some turrets and dormers.

Lammy• 2 years ago

he gives one example of a man who decided to build his own house

The original thread happened on SomethingAwful where being a sneering asshole was the dominant culture: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=22... (2006)

htag• 2 years ago

I can't believe no one has mentioned the FDA toxicology lab near the town [0]. There is good reason they put the lab in the middle of impoverished no where. There has been issues with the lab in the past, including missing primates last year [1]. Maybe I'm a bit tin-foil-hat, but this is literally an isolated place to study toxicity and I think it's a unique risk to relocate near it.

[0] https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/nctr-location-facilities-servi...

[1] https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/aug/30/monkeys-gone...

krisoft2• 2 years ago

including missing primates last year

The article you linked does not talk about missing primates. They were doing experiments on monkeys. Activist put pressure on them to stop and they did stop. Then they rehomed the monkeys to a sanctuary.

They are “missing” in as much as the monkeys are no longer there, but everyone knows where the monkeys have gone and why the monkeys have gone. The article you linked itself explains this.

maayank• 2 years ago

Awesome read. A real life Nathan Fielder (I mean, the “character” Nathan plays)

LispSporks22• 2 years ago

I love this guy

Mountain_Skies2• 2 years ago

Perhaps he has really long term vision. According to National Geographic, if the polar ice caps melt completely, Pine Bluff will benefit immensely by being waterfront property on the now larger Gulf of Mexico.

grouchomarx• 2 years ago

agent assured me the price was correct
arkansas

yea

Animats• 2 years ago

At least he's spending his own money. There have been far worse schemes where someone tried to create their own community. Some recent ones:

- Satoshi Island [1]

- Seasteading [2]

- California Forever [3]

[1] https://www.satoshi-island.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seasteading_Institute

[3] https://gizmodo.com/tech-billionaires-project-to-build-a-new...

returningfory2• 2 years ago

Why do you think California Forever is a far worse scheme?

hristov• 2 years ago

I would like to remind HN that hoarding is a serious and well established mental disorder and that we should not encourage this poor soul that has fallen victim to a real estate version of this disease.

It is unusual that someone should hoard real estate and it is interesting to see the circumstances of how this happened but otherwise it is a pretty standard case.

Note how from the interviews he gets pleasure in obtaining new properties and yet has no idea what to do with them. Note he does not spend the money required to even get an architectural drawing made and yet he spends money on obtaining more and more properties.

Or the fact that he has decided not to hire security but to guard his properties by himself, which would make it much more convenient if he has fewer properties not more. But he still keeps buying more. At this point a smart thief can get a map of his properties helpfully provided on the internet, find out where he is and attack any one of his other forty something properties.

Note how in the end of the interview when he is supposed to say some inspiring words of his progress or near term plans, he does not talk about what he is going to do with the warehouse but fantasizes with great excitement about buying yet another abandoned property, a hotel.

By the way I fully sympathize with the city officials. No city will approve any building project that does not come with fully compliant drawings signed and stamped by a licensed civil engineer and/or architect (depending on the project). Nor should they. It is their job to keep the community safe and habitable.

It is kind of funny they are stealing his ideas, but that also might be understandable. They might be good ideas, after all. Here you have a town that is looking for ways to revitalize itself with little money, and here comes a young techie guy from California with what seem to be some very good ideas and some money. There probably was some excitement in city hall when this guy first submitted his plans. But then they slowly realize that this is a sad disturbed individual that is unlikely to ever accomplish anything and will not spend money on anything other than acquiring abandoned real estate.

But the town keeps deteriorating, they have to do something, and his ideas do seem pretty cheap. So they decide lets try them out ourselves. Cities do not like to own businesses. The officials cannot take outsize profits for themselves but are on the hook for any screwups. So I am sure they would have much preferred if someone else was running these things, but they simply knew that this guy was not going to get it done.

So yeah, this is an interesting case of hoarding, but that is about it. I urge Mr. Fenley to consult a psychiatrist.

shmageggy• 2 years ago

So true. This tweet of his really drives home the point (https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1559080834057097219?s=2...)

Ants, flies, termites, cockroaches, mice, rats, mosquitoes, thieves...
They all want what you have, and make life miserable.
Will I ever have peace? I'm so tired of everything, and don't see an end to it.

There's a very simple solution to this problem my dude...

fundad2• 2 years ago

He’s a politician, this is all part of his campaign. WTF?

ryandrake4• 2 years ago

Talk about tripling down. Looks like he's running for mayor of the town, too[1].

1: https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1761982196649250831

codethief• 2 years ago

Oh, it's the Murfie guy! Does anyone know what the status is there? The video on murfie.com ends with "It'll happen. I'm not giving up."

Cheer21712• 2 years ago

As always, The Simpsons did it first. Go watch the episode where Bart buys an abandoned factory at a tax auction for $1, although even Bart hired Millhouse as a security guard.

The reason the city wants architectural drawings and probably an engineer to be involved is the same too. Spoiler alert: the building collapses into rubble at the end of the episode.

lazide6• 2 years ago

The thing that people always seem to forget about real estate is that assets can have real ‘negative value’ elements.

For awhile they were selling houses in Detroit for something like $100 - but all the articles about it didn’t mention the $10k+ in delinquent tax liens on the properties, or the $100k+ in required improvements to make the property even basically habitable.

Or that you’d likely get shot attempting to live there, unless you had some very specific skills.

PickledHotdog• 2 years ago

For Australians: Right-wing, Sky News talking head, Rita Panahi, was born in Pine Bluff, AK, according to its wikipedia page. Sure would explain her hatred of the poor.

selimthegrim• 2 years ago

This is AR, AK is Alaska.

slater• 2 years ago

I think that's a typo, her Wikipedia sez Arkansas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Panahi

justadolphinnn3• 2 years ago

Completely different place

cjbgkagh2• 2 years ago

I think one of the things that makes this guy’s story interesting, at least to me, is that there is big part of me that would do as he has done but I have actively and intentionally suppressed it. Maybe we share the same ADHD inspired impulses. The part of me that suppresses these impulses could have easily been missing, I see his story I think, ‘there but for the grace of god go I’.

I don’t want to see him fail but since I’ve suppressed this aspect in myself I am kind of seeking reassurance of my own decisions. If he succeeds then that may suggest that I have been making the wrong choices in life. I wouldn’t begrudge him for his success and instead I would use it to try to recalibrate my own decisions.

bigjimmyk32• 2 years ago

I am a lifelong Arkansan, and I hope he is able to pull off some kind of win. I visited that area often as a teen, and Pine Bluff was the main entertainment destination for the region. I haven't been in awhile, but it sounds like the years have not been kind.

I really hope that his analogy to 1980s NYC works out. It's easy to give up when there's so much cultural and institutional inertia, but this guy seems to have a pretty deep well of motivation. I hope he hangs in there.

tossedacct• 2 years ago

Pine Bluff is crazy. I know this because many years ago I found an amazing building in the downtown area for sale and went to see it. After a couple of hours of tours from a real estate agent and town officials I realized that this place was not coming back from the dead. The previous owner of the building had been stabbed there while trying to get it ready for occupancy. The city employees openly wanted money to help me avoid taxes. And the kicker was that it smelled awful when the wind blew in from the nearby Tyson chicken farm. It’s consistently been in the top murders per capita rate in the US. I feel bad for this guy, but it would hard to miss the red flags before buying there.

gottorf• 2 years ago

Others have touched upon the point of crime, but it really is worth mentioning that crime (especially of the violent and/or property type) is a huge hindrance to the economic revitalization of any area. It's much, much easier to risk time and capital to try and build something versus risking your life and those of your loved ones.

Just goes to show that rule of law and strong private property rights are necessary conditions to any level of wealth-building.

The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas (2022)

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