Mountain home near Aspen, built for monks, sold to Palantir CEO for $120M
44 comments
·December 21, 2025therobots927
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” - Mark 8:6
Enjoy your mountain fortress Karp. The afterlife won’t be kind to you.
rboyd
I donno. Seems like a maintenance nightmare made easier only when you got a cenobium living on the grounds.
bigstrat2003
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that religious vocations in the Catholic Church are way more rare than they used to be. The church sometimes struggles to have enough priests to meet the needs of the parishes, let alone having enough monks to keep up all the monasteries.
Since there aren't enough monks, the church would have to pay people to come in and maintain the place - but they can't really afford that. So, either they let these beautiful places crumble and decay, or they sell them to someone who will hopefully be able to take care of it. Between the two, the latter seems like the least bad option to me. I certainly wish that these places could stay as part of the church and not be some billionaire's home, but I would rather they be a billionaire's home than go to ruin.
nkrisc
> made easier only when you got a cenobium living on the grounds
or being a billionaire.
perihelions
(To save you a click: cenobium/cenobite = koinos + bios = "community life", "A monk who lives in a religious community, rather than in solitude").
(Not related to Hellraiser (1987)).
sallveburrpi
In some (more catholic) regions in Germany you spend a (voluntary) week in a monastery during school - called Besinnungstage (loosely translated as “mindfulness days”).
I went and thought I would hate it at the time - mostly because I really really hated the narrow catholic mindset i grew up in at that time - but it actually was a really profound experience that I think back to often.
The life the monks led was simple, almost primitive, but it radiated a contentment and mindfulness that was inspiring. Also the brotherhood and love they had for each other. Of course I only saw the surface and as a teenager I didn’t appreciate a lot of the lessons, but looking back it was one of the better parts of being in a heavily catholic coded school.
Edit: also my religion teacher told the story how we was a monk in his early life and then left everything behind when he fell in love with a woman - which immensely increased my respect for him. I though he was this dried up, humourless pendant, so finding out he had this great passion in his life was a great surprise to me
krautburglar
It is probably for the best that Alex Karp is kept in isolation.
2OEH8eoCRo0
The ego of these people is humorous.
bogwog
Do not laugh at the billionaire.
Laughing at billionaires is the antichrist.
therobots927
I am trying to figure out why you’re getting downvoted. Maybe not enough people are picking up on your sarcasm?
sam_lowry_
I guess he is referring to Peter Tiel, but the reference is too subtle even for HN public.
jmyeet
I thought this was going to be Peter Thiel but if he's on brand, he's living under or in a volcano on a tropical island somewhere. Plus he probably can't stand on previously consecrated ground.
Honestly, Palantir is one of those companies where I think I'd rather be homeless than work there. The amount of direct evil Palantir is responsible for is hard to overstate (eg [1]).
The rich are just trading assets with Monopoly money at this point. None of it's real. I have to wonder how far we are from the richest 10,000 owning literaly everything where the rest of us are just living in worker housing on grand estates, in debt that'll never be paid off, the latest incarnation of South Asian brick kilns.
[1]: https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
therobots927
That’s definitely the direction things are headed. I’m having a hard time imagining an alternative timeline. Unfortunately given this trajectory the best solution seems to be acquiring as much money as possible. Not necessarily by working for Palantir, but it’s quickly becoming a situation where you either assist the billionaires or become their victims.
dataviz1000
> landed a $10 billion software contract with the U.S. Army
The United States has ~$38,000,000,000,000 in debt which means a baby born in the US will get $1000 in Trump Bucks to invest in S&P 500 along with a $111,000 share of that debt with its $3,000 a year interest per person. Can someone explain to me how long this will be sustainable?
I'm a little sad that I'm not getting any free borrowed money in order to funnel it into $100M mountain properties. However, I'm trying to be objective. Given this situation what is the investment with the little bit of wealth that I have acquired? Do I need to worry about this not being sustainable and crashing?
siliconc0w
The debt will be inflated away, we'll lose access to cheap debt, and tech-company bonds will be the new treasuries.
ultimately we may be better off over the long term since the firehose of government money creates a lot of market distortions and inefficiencies.
reilly3000
Better not skip the ads or your retirement savings will tank…
cons0le
I notice that when anyone says anything negative about the rich on the internet, people show up at lightspeed like you insulted their mom to defend them
et-al
Because we're all temporarily embarrassed startup founders who haven't exited yet.
CamperBob2
Because stereotyping is not, in fact, OK when you do it.
esseph
Not a single billionaire worth shedding a tear over.
Too much influence, too much power over others, and way more than their share of... Everything.
marcosdumay
> Can someone explain to me how long this will be sustainable?
It fails through stagflation. There are lots of people speculating the US is doing that right now, but since their most recent inflation numbers are bad, nobody has the data to say it for sure.
Just increasing government debit isn't a problem by itself. It becomes a problem when that raising debit isn't making the economy grow.
gotezk
You can invest by using your time to build useful things that people want and move society and civilization forward than chasing rentseeking money and complaining when another asshole outplays you in the market by shady deals with the government
You’re welcome.
rightbyte
Are you implying that Palantir is subject to market forces?
whatshisface
They can take your stuff faster than you can make it.
Noaidi
Buy gold and silver. Seriously. If you do not see the precipice we are a top of I have nothing else to say. ever since the great recession the Fed has been propping up the economy with low interest rates and Quantitative Easing. There is no way out of this but for an even greater depression.
All these fake trump bucks and investment plans are not for the children, they are for the investors that need the money in the market as another way to prop it up. The whole thing with Dell giving this money to these kids? Bullsht. He gave it to himself and to other investors. Nothing but a new kind of stock buyback plan.
Get ready to see poverty, and get ready to help each other. We are living through the 1920's again and it is crazy very few see it.
akudha
get ready to help each other
This. This will make all the difference, everything else is secondary.
In today’s media/social-media hellscape, how does one even begin to build a community? Every front page is filled with negativity, divisiveness.
I used to think preppers are nutjobs. As I grow old now, it feels more like they have a point
ipaddr
Doesn't feel so roaring.
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malux85
Don’t worry about it - you know why? Because if the entire thing crashes, then everyone crashes with it, and there’s a million people (or more) that have a lot more skin in the game, a lot more power, and therefore a lot more incentive to make sure this doesn’t crash.
This is not your battle alone, so don’t worry like it is.
whatshisface
They're going to issue a bailout that saves themselves via your paying for it all.
Simulacra
That happens a lot... Too Big to Fail should never be a concept.
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Noaidi
[flagged]
estearum
You’re thinking of Peter Thiel, who is not the CEO of Palantir.
Noaidi
I know who I was thinking of. Theil is looking fro the Antichrist, and the antichrist is Karp.
Signs of the antichrist:
1. He will exalt himself.
2. He will heed his inner voice above others.
3. He will be hostile toward the true God.
4. He will exalt human logic above faith.
5. He will prosper for a season and be loved.
6. He will not desire women.
7. He will not follow the faith of his fathers.
8. He will viciously persecute Jews and Christians.
9. He will think of himself as greater than God.
10. He will become increasingly lawless.
11. He will honour military power above faith.
12. He will love wealth.
13. He will hoard precious things.
14. He will become a man of war.
15. He will wage a war on all people of faith.
16. He will force Israel to ratify a treaty.
17. He will divide Israel and Jerusalem.
18. He will invade Jerusalem.
19. He will enter the restored Temple.
20. He will declare himself above God.krautburglar
selah
pbreit
How are people irate about this?
verdverm
People see the rich getting richer while they struggle. This is your daily reminder we live in a segregated society
pbreit
Why does this bother people? Who cares? There's always going to be stratification. Has literally no impact on anyone. Is it just jealousy?
verdverm
This is the CEO of Palentir, one of the more dubious or evil companies out there
The stratification has become much worse the last few decades and the trend is not showing signs of slowing. This cannot be taken out of context of the larger going ons in the US and the world. People see the kleptocracy because they are so brazen they do it right out in the open
Life imitates art
The Mountainhead https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35396529/