Story about Galen

only @Alkiphron here actually knows who Galen was, but he was ( most likely a petty criminal ) living on an Alaskan island in the general Ketchikan area and i used to debate him on Twitter about the merits of seafood …

he had some interesting nutritional ideas and in private ( Twitter DMs ) wanted me to give him $50,000 so he could produce a batch of his protein product … he said the food processing plant would not do a batch smaller than $50,000 …

aside from the fact that Galen wasn’t the most trustworthy of individuals ( later i saw his mug shots ) who lived essentially outside of civilization ( hiding from somebody he fucked over ? ) my main issue with his great master plan ( there was no plan, he just floated this ) was that there was absolutely no reason to believe we would ever make the money back …

because regardless of how good the product would be ( it wouldn’t be hard to make the best product in history of mankind, even without Galen’s help ) it is marketing that sells products, not quality.

reality is we probably would be able to sell maybe a few hundred bucks worth to people like @Alkiphron who were following our nutrition debate on Twitter, and we would have to dispose of the remaining 95% of that batch by pouring it down the drain.

i bring this up now because now it is me trying to scam @Alkiphron by getting him to chip in about $400,000 towards a house on a 50/50 split but i realize he has about as much reason to think it’s a good idea as i had to think Galen’s was a good idea.

and if i were to flake @Alkiphron would probably be out about $50,000 between the time lost, the cost of moving and the fees of real estate agents, lawyers and bankers to refinance everything and get out of that mess …

honestly the likelihood that i won’t flake at some point is only about 50% …

which, on the positive side, is better than roughly 0% chance i had of ever getting money back from Galen if i gave it to him …

also obviously the deal would be 100% symmetrical - we would both pay exactly the same amount, and there would be a contract and everything. Galen, by contrast, didn’t envision contributing a single dollar to his own project.

although every contingency could be covered in the contract the problem is that if either of us bailed on living in that house the other one would be forced to go through the whole process of moving again since the house would be too big and expensive for whoever stayed there to keep living in …

it’s kind of the exact situation i’m in now. after grandma died the house i’m in now is too big and expensive for me and i need to move out of here. i can’t just have somebody like @Alkiphron move in here because this is a 55+ retirement community.

technically as long as my mother visits me on the weekends i could live here forever as this place is paid off but i don’t want to live here because if i have any guests over i would have to explain why i live in a retirement community, plus i wouldn’t be able to blast music at 2AM or disturb the peace in any other way …

it is super quiet here ( except the birds are loud, especially right now at 5 AM ) and super safe - gated community - i can go to gym and leave my garage open with 4 bikes inside and be sure they won’t be touched 5 hours later when i come back … but i don’t need my place to be THAT safe. all i need is gun laws that put home owners above home invaders, and a generally white middle-class neighborhood.

preferably in the vicinity of a major tech hub like Boston.