interesting ideas

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

moonlit-tulip:

One big problem with mystery shows, as compared with (well-signposted) mystery novels, is that they don’t give the viewers time to think things through before the parlor room scene. There’s no clear narrative break-point where the viewer knows they have all needed evidence to solve the mystery and can stop to think; even if the detective comments that they know who did it, what are you going to do, pause 3/5 of the way through the episode to comb over all the clues and discuss the mystery with your friends and so forth? That’s impossible during the initial serialized release (since TVs don’t allow one to pause), and impractical when watching via stream or disk (since it requires groups of people to take the generally-unnatural action of staying paused in the middle of an episode for an extended timespan, and that’s if they know where to pause at all).

Fortunately, there happens to exist an already-developed TV structure perfect for avoiding this problem: the structure of the 1966-1968 Batman series. Each two-episode story (which was the show’s default length, albeit with occasional exceptions (always in the longer direction, not shorter)) ends its first episode with Batman and Robin in some sort of death-trap, and its second episode starts with them escaping the trap and ends with them beating the story’s villain(s).

I’d really like to see a mystery show based on a similar structure. The default story length is two episodes. The first episode of each story ends with a dramatic reveal after which, by one contrivance or another, the audience is clearly told that the case is now solvable. The second episode then starts with the protagonists responding to the big reveal, and ends with the parlor room scene. Live viewers get a week to think through and discuss the solution between the episodes’ releases, and after-the-fact viewers get the advantage of a clear narrative break-point at which to coordinate their pausing-and-thinking, for an overall-improved mystery-solving experience relative to the current one-episode-per-story status quo.

(For bonus quality-of-life, make sure each episode is free to stream at least until the release of its associated parlor-room-scene episode, such that live viewers are on equal footing with archival viewers in terms of being able to rewatch pre-reveal episodes and refresh their memory about all the clues.)

Tags:

#interesting ideas #story ideas I will never write

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

officialgeorgecostanza:

As a linguistics nerd, I’d like to formally suggest “Nespring” as a nonbinary equivalent to niece/nephew and “Avaun” as a nonbinary equivalent to aunt/uncle

Nespring: literally meaning “the offspring of my sibling” from the old English roots “offspring” which is just ‘of spring’ and the Latin root “nepos” that both niece and nephew are derived from

Avaun: derived from the roots of both “aunt” and “uncle,” the anglo-French “aunte” and the Latin “avunculus”

@nonbinary-culture

Tags:

#language #gender #interesting idea #(fun fact: I used the word ”prumngle” in my thoughts a couple weeks ago) #(and then I stopped and looked at myself and went) #(”huh. I actually found a use for that word. neat.”) #(whereas these words would be *much* easier to find uses for)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

somnilogical:

evolution-is-just-a-theorem:

I really want a How To Solve Common Life Problems wiki. Usually when people have a Common Life Problem (not sleeping well, depressed, no motivation, whatever) they ask someone for help, they get a suggestion or two, and none of them work because people are weird and idiosyncratic.

However, I suspect the problem is not “people are totally weird and nothing generalizes” but “people are pretty weird and *two* things rarely generalize”. If we increased the volume of suggestions (to 10? 20?), I bet that list would solve the problem for >50% of people who have it.*

Plus if you stick everything in one place you can do cool things like let people approval vote on solutions that seemed to work for them**, and then display the top 5/10/20.

Obviously there are issues. How do you keep out trolls, how do you distinguish between similar problems (e.g. ”I can’t sleep” and “I can’t sleep because there’s loud noise” and “I can’t sleep because of light pollution”), how do you distinguish between similar solutions / prevent the most generic solution from always being the highest voted.

* Even if it’s much less than 50% it may still be worth. What does n need to be such that if you can solve a problem for n% of the population by building a webpage, then building the webpage is worth it?

here is a how to solve common life problems wiki. deposit worldly knowledge below if you wanna. this might save humans redundant thought cycles. i put .3 on this helping more than 10 people with at least one life problem after 60 days. [ https://predictionbook.com/predictions/188640 ]

wiki:
[ http://bring-me-to-life.wikia.com/wiki/Common_life_problems_Wiki ]

Tags:

#interesting idea #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #I am terrible at starting conversations #but I might be able to contribute solutions if somebody else provides problems? #not sure

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

athenaworshippingatheist:

It is made abundantly clear in the bible that angels were not beautiful people with wings.

They were terrifying

They were monstrous.

So, that monster under your bed, your closet, lurking in the darkness?

Fear not.

They are that guardian angel you’ve heard so much about.

Tags:

#interesting idea #there is probably some warning tag I should put on this but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

shedoesnotcomprehend:

I have some medication bottles with timers built into the lids that automatically tell you how long it’s been since you last took a dose (opened the lid), and these things are so convenient I’m actually kind of stunned they’re not more common.

You don’t have to go through the whole rigamarole of “wait, did I just take my meds five minutes ago, or did I just think about doing it? … great, should I maybe miss a dose or maybe take a double dose?” every other time you take them. You don’t have to try to remember what time it was when you woke up in the middle of the night and groped around for the bottle and took the next dose and fell back asleep. If you’re taking more than one medication, you don’t have to keep track of which you took when. And of course doing all that when you’re sedated or have a fever or are just in pain is extra fun.

Plus: pediatric medicines. When I or any of my siblings got sick as babies, my parents used to write up a chart on the whiteboard, every time, with medications and dosages and times. Because they’d be switching off taking care of us, and it would just be way too easy for Mom to give the baby something that Dad had just given them ten minutes before but not thought to mention (and with a baby, that can be pretty dangerous). With timer-caps, you’ve got perfect information-sharing: you don’t just know what’s the last time you gave the baby the medication, you know what’s the last time the medication was used.

So it really seems like this should be more of a thing! I mean, ordering them online cost me a couple of bucks each; so if the manufacturers were just building in timers by default, what should that actually add to the price, maybe a quarter for each bottle? A dollar at the outside? That’s definitely within the store brand – name brand variation for even cheap over-the-counter medications. I’d happily pay fifty cents extra to buy a bottle of advil off the shelf at the grocery store that had a timer built into the lid to count out four-to-six-hours for me.

At the very least, I’m kind of surprised that this isn’t a default feature on, like, prescription painkillers. My parents did the whiteboard thing again for me after I had jaw surgery, because I was on the good drugs and in no condition to keep track of whether I’d had a dose recently or not. I strongly suspect that having a timer that set itself automatically – so that even someone pretty drugged up could look at it and see if it had reached 6:00:00 and turned green – would make a nontrivial difference in the rate of accidental overdoses. And given how much those drugs cost, adding a dollar timer to the lid is completely insignificant.

So I’d really expect consumers to be demanding these for the convenience, federal regulations to be pushing them for safety, and drug manufacturers to be happily showing them off as a “check out the cool fancy bonus gadget our brand has, because we care.” And yet as far as I know this happens literally zero – you can buy the timer lids online, if you know they exist, but no medication I’ve ever seen is just sold in bottles that have timer lids by default.

Tags:

#… #interesting idea #the more you know #remind me to get some of these #(right now I’m only on iron pills) #(where it doesn’t really matter if you skip a day or two) #(so when I’m not sure if I’ve taken any today I just don’t take it and it’s not a big deal) #(but I expect at *some* point in my life I’ll be on important-timing meds for *some* length of time) #(I was going to use one of those pillboxes with separate divisions for each day of the week) #(but that gets rapidly less helpful with anything more complicated than once-a-day)

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

transgirlkyloren:

shower thought: if you buy the idea that the content of the voices people hear is culturally mediated, representation of voice hearers who hear nice voices is basically the most important kind of representation. if you make a couple of tv shows starring a voice hearer whose voices are kind and positive then maybe lots more people will have kind and positive voices which is a huge QOL increase for a very vulnerable group

Tags:

#interesting idea #the wondrous variety of sapient life

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

somnilogical:

alexanderrm:

serrarawillowfluttershy:

just-shower-thoughts:

If keyboards had braille on them, we all could have subconsciously learned braille by now.

Would that actually work?

Google isn’t any scientific papers studying it, only mismatches or a handful of people assuming it’s doable, but I’m not sure if that’s because all the psychological researchers assume it’s doable or because nobody thought to study it, or if I’m not finding them.
I could easily imagine the human brain being set up such that this didn’t happen; anyone want to get a braille keyboard, try this out, and report the results?

Learning via passive haptic associations works for learning morse code: [ https://m.phys.org/news/2016-10-morse-code.html#jCp ]

Sticker sets to change your normie keyboard into a braille one such as this one* cost 20$ if anyone would like to try this.

*[ https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00014VWP2/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1489562744&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=braille+keyboard+stickers&dpPl=1&dpID=411SqfyJvrL&ref=plSrch ] (h/t @bunniesravenclawsupernatural for the link to braille keyboard stickers)

FWIW, the related-articles section of that Morse code link has an article about passively learning Braille (through vibrating gloves).

Tags:

#interesting idea #I’m tempted to get a set of Braille keyboard stickers now #that particular listing doesn’t ship to Canada but there’s probably others #reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

obstinaterixatrix:

obstinaterixatrix:

concept: romcom narrated by a literary analyst like a nature documentary

“and here you see the lead male’s Supporting Cast, who are here to affirm his desirability by pointing out instances of unreciprocated attraction. note how he rejects their assertions – let’s see if he’s going for willful ignorance, or for humility. watch closely the stance he takes for the delivery of his next line, there are often nonverbal clues implicating what kind of protagonist we’re dealing with here”

Tags:

#interesting idea #story ideas I will never write

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

gwynndolin:

auspisstice:

gwynndolin:

supergameboytwo:

gwynndolin:

I’m gonna make a new word it’s called prumngle

what does it mean

that’s not my problem

prumngle (PRUM-gull):
• when you try to ball up something (like a plastic wrapper for food) but it expands back into almost its original form when you release your grip.
• can be used metaphorically, as in someone having a bad experience and their thoughts and feelings about it just keep rising up

examples:
• “man i hate how water bottles prumngle back up if you dont put the cap back on after you squish them”
• “dude dont even try to ball that wrapper up it’ll just prumngle right back”
• “man my emotions are just rly prumngling on me today can u give me a little break”

wow

Tags:

#language #interesting idea

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

eternalfarnham:

eternalfarnham: Y’know what this world needs more of?

eternalfarnham: Themed restaurants.

maxiesatanofficial: Oh?

maxiesatanofficial: You have any theme in particular in mind?

eternalfarnham: Honestly, yeah — people go for “sinfully decadent” food, but no one ever carries that to its logical conclusion, you know?

eternalfarnham: That is to say, hell-themed restaurants.

maxiesatanofficial: Gluttony being the obvious section, of course, which would just be “huge portions.”

maxiesatanofficial: Wrath could have you contribute to the prep yourself – giving you a baked potato to mash, or uncooked food to sear, or something…

maxiesatanofficial: Though the latter might raise legal concerns.

eternalfarnham: Lust is all bananas and oysters and chocolate, supposed aphrodisiacs and “suggestive” food.

maxiesatanofficial: Hm, well.

maxiesatanofficial: I would actually point out that lust in the traditional sense *isn’t* limited to sex!

maxiesatanofficial: Any sufficiently “indulgent” or “rich” food would qualify, imo.

maxiesatanofficial: A matter of quality rather than gluttony’s quantity.

maxiesatanofficial: Greed is presumably gold flake and the like? Conspicuous consumption-y and/or presentation-focused stuff?

eternalfarnham: Fair enough — I guess I’ve been thinking of it in terms of Dante’s Inferno rather than broader definitions of the sin.

maxiesatanofficial: While Pride would be yer health foods.

eternalfarnham: Of course. And Sloth… maybe a bunch of pre-prepared snacks.

eternalfarnham: Stuff that takes very little effort to prepare /and/ eat.

maxiesatanofficial: Sensible.

maxiesatanofficial: …Envy is just you paying for the right to eat other people’s food.

maxiesatanofficial: It costs slightly more than double, so that they can still eat without having to pay more.

maxiesatanofficial: (But they still have to wait for their replacement portion to be prepared.)

eternalfarnham: “‘Scuse me, I ordered the Green-Eyed Platter, which is yours.”

eternalfarnham: And for parties, I’m picturing, like, special party meals based on the Inferno — like, for small parties or if you’re not all that hungry, you might get the Limbo Special for the virtuous pagans, right?

eternalfarnham: Just for appetizers and finger-foods.

maxiesatanofficial: Ha. I can dig it.

eternalfarnham: Whereas the dessert special is all ice cream from the lowest levels, with the head of the table getting the Satan Sundae.

eternalfarnham: And in the middle, I’m thinking — for the falsifiers, traitors, etc. — you’ve got, like, really complex, hot Italian food, since, y’know, Dante — and that was the section where he stopped /pitying/ the sinners, people say.

eternalfarnham: Like, he liked the people in lust and gluttony, etc., a little more, because he felt that sins committed from love rather than malice weren’t so awful.

eternalfarnham: At least, I think I’ve read that somewhere.

maxiesatanofficial: Huh, ‘zat so? Interesting.

eternalfarnham: Mind you, he defined “heresy” as an active, malicious sin.

eternalfarnham: But anyway — I figure if you want Italian, you say “We’d like the City of Hell Special,” and the waiter says “That’s our patented specialty.”

eternalfarnham: “Oh?” “Yeah, it’s the Dis course™!”

maxiesatanofficial: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

maxiesatanofficial: YOU *FUCKER*

maxiesatanofficial: YOU FUCKING SACK OF GARBAGE I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS

maxiesatanofficial: I’M NOT OWNED

eternalfarnham: ;)

maxiesatanofficial: YOU PLAYED *RIGHT* TO MY WEAKNESSES

maxiesatanofficial: AAAAAAAA

eternalfarnham: i am chortling hard

Tags:

#puns #I’ve seen enough of @itsbenedict’s ”basketball games” that #I figured out it was one long lead-up to a pun only *most* of the way through #although the hell-themed restaurant is a genuinely interesting idea #food cw?