#crazyidea — Public Fediverse posts

#CrazyIdea: paternalistic surnames are unfair, and perpetuate the idea that a man "owns" the wife and children. They also get clumsy for less common/more complex relationships. For me personally, I'm more than happy with the traditional approach. But if I were to design an equitable society, I think a different approach would be better. Here are three ideas:

1. Maternal line: spouses retain the surnames. Children get the surname of their mother. Easier to be sure of the mother's identity than the father's, after all. Note that this does get more complex in cases of donated eggs or surrogate mothers.

2. New surnames: upon marriage, all spouses decide on a new surname - perhaps honoring some ancestor or picking an aspirational word. Their children have the new surname.

3. No surnames: delete the concept of a family name. People can still have three names, but the last name is just like the first or middle name - perhaps chosen by the parents at birth, or perhaps chosen by the child later.

Side note: it's odd that parents choose the name a child is saddled with for their entire lifetime. Parents don't own the child; they should be able to establish their own identity. Perhaps parents should give children two names and the child picks a third (first) name upon majority, so Francine Smith could become Emma Francine Smith at 18.

#CrazyIdea: an icebreaker game for large groups, loosely inspired by Lock and Key.
Fostering Conversation:
Everyone takes a cat card (such as "laser pointer cat"), a home card (such as "laser pointer home"), a conversation card (like "what are you passionate about?" or "where do you want to travel next?"). Talk to people. Talk about anything you want, but make sure to also use the prompt on the conversation card. Check to see if your cat matches their home or vice versa. When there's a match, return to the table with the cards to turn them in, get new cards and add to a scoreboard. At the end of the game, the total number of matches is announced and people are reminded of the need for fosters.
The nice thing about gamifying social activity is that it provides an excuse to start or stop a conversation, at least for introverts.

#CrazyIdea: smart, inflatable kayaks. The pump is built in. Push a button and it inflates or deflates the kayak, so you could easily put several in the trunk of your car. The kayak also has a waterproof mount for a smartphone, keeping the screen aimed at the paddler and the camera out at the river (or other body of water). Have software that tracks your location on the water (and perhaps that of the other boats in the crew), that records interesting things that happen at the front of the boat, and can identify wildlife. Perhaps build in some game functions as well, such as a visual scavenger hunt, bumper boats, or a Guitar-Hero like game where everyone has to paddle the same way at the same time.

Additionally, here are some freebies for kayak/canoe rental agencies: give people nets and reward them for collecting litter on the water. Perhaps with coupons for a nearby eatery. Such a restaurant partnership could be profitable, as after people paddle for an hour or two they're likely to want to eat. The restaurant could also provide coupons for the boating experience.

Overheard ...

"We need to teach the beavers to manage the heather."

#Environment #Overheard #CrazyIdea

Clothes shopping #CrazyIdea: clothing is put on a semi-inflatable mannequin, which adjusts to different shapes. Pics from all angles uploaded to website. While shopping, you click on a link to view that product on that website. It remembers your dimensions and shows you just the pictures of the outfit on the mannequin most closely approximating you. This could be helpful to everyone, but would likely be most valuable for women's fashions.
Also, IMO, all clothing should list multiple physical dimensions in centimeters, instead of using vague terms like "small/medium."

#CrazyIdea for #Education: although I think individualized, next-generation, computer driven learning is best, if whole classes of people have to go through the same instruction at the same time, it shouldn't be siloed by subject. Have projects that span multiple subjects.
This occurred to me while reading "The Spy Wore Red." As an example, students could act out or read aloud parts of the book, analyze it from a literature perspective, discuss how women were treated in the time period in different countries, attempt to research/fact check parts of it, try out some Morse code, prepare dossiers on key figures of World War II, even encode and pass messages to each other during the school day with facts related to an upcoming test.
Not a great example, but just to illustrate the point- students could go through engaging projects spanning many different subjects. It could be much more interesting for them, which would make them much more likely to enjoy it and absorb what they are learning.

#CrazyIdea: Chicago World’s Faire: beautiful buildings, wasteful to demolish them all afterwards.
What if an event like a World’s Fair was held with both a short-term and long-term purpose?
Imagine a new city being built out. An area where natural disasters are less likely - perhaps the Midwest. Ideally, a new high-speed rail line would connect two major cities, with this new city in between. It’s planned out from the ground up to be efficient and sustainable, to incorporate all the latest ideas about city planning. To be walkable and beautiful. A university, school, hospital, commercial spaces, townhomes and apartment buildings would be built, then used for a huge, six-month festival bringing in hundreds of thousands of people from around the world. Build some truly unique, feature like the Eiffel Tower or the first Ferris Wheel. Tour buses could travel between the new city and various other US cities to spread out airport traffic. The city would have zero emissions from day one and could demonstrate unique forms of architecture using recycled materials. Fill the city with the best the world has to offer, and even have reality show style competitions around food, sports, the performing arts and so on. Arrange leases well in advance for once the Fair concludes. At that point, final touches are performed on the buildings, and people move into homes, businesses set up shop, and it takes on life as a new city - with much of the investment costs repaid by the Fair.

#CrazyIdea: an igloo-shaped book nook, with wire racks to hold the books. Picture beanbags and a lamp inside. I'd picture horizontal shelves, unlike this AI art.

#CrazyIdea: restaurant made to look like the inside of a old-fashioned train, long and narrow. Dining booths like train seats. Each booth has a big TV screen showing slowly moving countryside. Different country each day with associated menu items. Stamp a "passport" or "ticket" as a loyalty program

#CrazyIdea:
Subsidize healthy plant-based food in grocery stores. Tax unhealthy food.
Require every fast food store to offer 1-3 healthy, sustainable dishes for free. Government pays the restaurant, approving a reasonable cost.
Healthier population (especially given that red meat increases risk of cancer and heart disease). Nobody, not even in a "food desert" goes hungry. Shift consumption to better fight climate change.
How to pay for it, you wonder?
Well, some of the tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for cattle and dairy could be redirected more usefully.

Crazy idea: A paternoster metro.

Build a circular metro line with one continuos train that fills the whole line. Wherever a station is desired a large semicircular section is constructed. The platform is a rotating disk that fits this section. A stair/elevator section is placed in the middle of the disk. The track should probably be banked to compensate for the centrifugal force, and the outer platform section curved along with it.

#crazyidea #idea

#CrazyIdea: fun Halloween event that debunks superstitions.
A spooky staged seance with cheesecloth ectoplasm and an explanation of how they were faked. A mock sleep paralysis demonstration. An astrology reading + planetarium, explanation of the stars and Barnum statements. Ghost tracking devices and spooky phenomena with demonstrations of why they happen. Room after room of creepy, entertaining activities - followed be info and demonstrations to completely debunk them.

Fear of needles is common. My #CrazyIdea: what if health facilities had intense, one-handed games, requiring intense concentration and a fast pace from the patient? I suspect they'd be less likely to notice the needle going in.
Also, what if the practitioner pressed several fake needles against the patient's skin before the real one? May ease them in, may work poorly.
Also, more could be done to help people with exposure therapy and positive reinforcement, even before inserting the needle.

#CrazyIdea for a video game: control an octopus. Lots of nature-inspired traits to draw on. Intelligence, squeezing through small spaces, dexterity, losing arms as decoys, venom, color-changing camouflage, tool use, jet propulsion, firing water jets at targets and more. Work in other sea animals with interesting traits. could be a fun arcade/puzzle game with unusual mechanics.

#CrazyIdea: A Rock Paper Scissors alternative for more than 2 players. Call it Finger Fracas or Digit Decider or something.
Hold out both fists. "Ready, Set, Go." Each player holds out 1-10 fingers. The winner is the one closest to, but greater than, any competitor. In case of a tie, only those in the tie proceed to the next round.
Example: 10,8,3,2,1. 3,2,1 are only 1 higher than a competitor (1 wraps around over 10). Next round: 10,8,4. 10 wins, as it is only 2 greater than a competitor.

#CrazyIdea: fairly select people for special privileges.
For each person, track:
- reward points - # privileges received (some might be worth more points)
- waiting points - sum of the reward points missed
To select people:
1. Consider people with lowest reward points
2. From those, consider people with highest waiting points
3. Tie? Choose random
Useful for concert tickets, sending employees to special events, choosing journalists for exclusives, sharing pirate booty, etc.

#CrazyIdea: a watch with functionality similar to braille, that presses against the back of the wrist so you can always tell the time without looking at or touching the watch with a finger.

#CrazyIdea on #economics: Not an economist, but I feel that the government could do more to prevent inflation than crank the interest rate up and down. There could be a nonpartisan agency to continuously look for potential supply bottlenecks in necessities. I suspect that's key to preventing inflation.
Additionally, invest in ways to make businesses more agile, able to change what they produce or ramp up production as needed, as we saw in the pandemic.

#CrazyIdea for #TTRPG: vibes-based gameplay
- each location has a given strength for each of multiple vibes
- the location's vibe affects characters there
- character actions can affect the vibe
- each spell/skill requires use of a vibe. The stronger the vibe, the more likely it is to succeed. A success increases that vibe in that location.
Roleplay the influence of the vibe on your character. Focus on using abilities related to the vibe, trying to improve the vibe before using big spells.

What if you build a DSLR. One with good live-view. But instead of the mirror directing light up into a pentaprism/mirror for the viewfinder you built the sensor above the mirror. So, mirror down and the sensor/liveview see the scene. Mirror up and film gets the scene. I suppose you'd need two shutters - or if it's a new lens mount then do leaf shutters in the lenses. For each photo you could do digital or digital+film. Has such a thing ever been built? #photography #filmphotography #crazyidea

Yesterday I found out that there is a thing called #google colab and it lets users to run code on a something called a runtime.

And today I had the craziest idea to convert that runtime to a vpn server and in fact I did😁. But I couldn't connect to that Host😪. And then I realized if it was possible to connect to the runtime with a different device then running some code in the runtime would be stupid since anyone can connect to the runtime and change stuff😂🥲.

#crazyidea #justforfun

#crazyIdea: What if instead of #Pokemon cards, we gave our kids #Protein cards to collect and play? All with annotations about post-transcriptional modifications, domains and orthologs. They could play with the protein interactions and assemble whole #pathways. After half a decade, cancer might be solved 😅

Having a #CrazyIdea right now.

Thinking about hosting some pages on my smartphone...

https://megaf.info/ is running on my Android with #nginx

Using #apache2 on #debian as #reverseproxy

#linux is crazy, isn't it? Amazing what you can do with #ssh and #portforwarding

Having some ideas for #loadbalancing now with #haproxy maybe, having copies of the website in several places.

A copy on a #raspberrypi, another copy on my #smartphone, perhaps another one on a free VPS tier or something.

#CrazyIdea: an #XmlSchema for representing #CBOR (Concise Binary Object Representation) data.

It sounds dumb but I feel like it would be useful for development and testing of software that consumes or produces CBOR.

As for why not JSON, two reasons:

- XML has comments
- CBOR has a typing system that has no JSON equivalent.

Of course, some custom "CTOR" (Concise Textual Object Representation) would probably be better but XML is already has great tooling.

However, I might attempt some sort of "CTOR" as a #TreeSitter learning exercise.

If it goes well, it might even become the "JSON with comments" we all dreamt of. (it won't)

(en) #CrazyIdea: let's make an #Orkut clone but for the #Fedverse!

(pt) #IdeiaDoida: bora fazer um clone do #Orkut mas para o #Fediverse!

#SoftwareNostalgia #Brazil #SocialMedia #SoftwareClone

(en) #CrazyIdea: let's make an #Orkut clone but for the #Fedverse!

(pt) #IdeiaDoida: bora fazer um clone do #Orkut mas para o #Fediverse!

#SoftwareNostalgia #Brazil #SocialMedia #SoftwareClone

(en) #CrazyIdea: let's make an #Orkut clone but for the #Fedverse!

(pt) #IdeiaDoida: bora fazer um clone do #Orkut mas para o #Fediverse!

#SoftwareNostalgia #Brazil #SocialMedia #SoftwareClone

(en) #CrazyIdea: let's make an #Orkut clone but for the #Fedverse!

(pt) #IdeiaDoida: bora fazer um clone do #Orkut mas para o #Fediverse!

#SoftwareNostalgia #Brazil #SocialMedia #SoftwareClone

(en) #CrazyIdea: let's make an #Orkut clone but for the #Fedverse!

(pt) #IdeiaDoida: bora fazer um clone do #Orkut mas para o #Fediverse!

#SoftwareNostalgia #Brazil #SocialMedia #SoftwareClone

#CrazyIdea a #ProgrammingLanguage for #DistributedSystems that allows the programmer to restrict to which machines certain values can be sent to to recommend where to run certain functions (e.g. run UI stuff on the browser and long computations on the server or desktop)

It would be like having `TootsReadableForUser<x>` in your #TypeSystem where x is a user id. This way it can protect the programmer from accidentally leaking info.

I feel like someone has already tried something like this.

#CrazyIdea an OS that
1) took care of the entire UI, and any app or program would define it's GUI through a declarative language
2) dedicated one CPU core to running the UI smoothly, so only the OS (or a privileged program) had control of windows, ensuring they wouldn't freeze or deadlock during normal operation.

An OS without 1 might have
2b) dedicated one CPU core to running the designated GUI threads of any program, and only those threads would have access to the GUI ABI/API.

Note to future-me: Whenever you're scrolling through #CrazyIdea to find some project to work on, take this as an extra vote on a multi-account masto client!!1!