Ask Lemmy

Optimal crop tables in Stardew Valley.

The title of my talk is “Innovation as Rebellion against Complexity.”

I’ll start with my experience studying and teaching music history, and demonstrate how every major musical stylistic shift over the past 1500 years or so can be seen as a revolt against excessive complexity developing in the previous style. One example would be the shift from thick, complex polyphony that had become the norm in late Renaissance music, to the relatively simple and much-easier-on-the-ears style of early homophonic music. But I’d actually touch on all periods of music history.

I’d then challenge my audience to ask themselves and each other if this trend can be seen in other fields as well. Do we see such innovative rebellions in, say, art? Or literature? Architecture? The sciences? And what about technology…

…and are we on the cusp of a new rebellion against the massively complex technology that’s thrust upon us today? What does that look like? What innovations await us at the conclusion of that revolution?

I mean I’d be winging the fuck out of it with only a few seconds to prep but wouldn’t that be great to talk about?

You can see I’ve done a lot of thinking about this lol.

How insurance actually works, so dipshits can understand the real value of a single national health care plan.

"So you're probably wondering why I'm pissing on the floor".

Crash course on how to have a panic attack/nervous breakdown during a live broadcast

Edit: uh oh, my stalker null@piefed.nullspace.lol is back

"Punishment is the wrong way: Why Rehabilitation will always win out, and how it ties in with poverty, crime and mental health"

I could easily talk half an hour about that thematic complex without getting boring and making a pretty good argument why throwing a substantial portion of your population in jail is just slavery in disguise.

About https://keepandroidopen.org/

The reality of life-saving measures in health care, and why a having a DNR (that isn’t a surprise to your loved ones) is so important.

A year ago my cat was living on the street. Today she has enough passive income to hire her own chef and masseuse. Follow her for more advice.

I was reading a thread where people were talking about Japanese pronouns and remembered that this is my favorite icebreaker question.

My topic is Japanese pronouns. How they differ from English, a little bit of the history, and broadly why they should make us reinspect how we construct identity and how they complicate the idea of "individualism" vs "collectivism"

I could fill 25-30 minutes easily with no preparation.

At the beginning of my talk, I would have everyone turn off their phones and any other electronics. Then for the rest of the 15 minutes, I would have us all just sit around and veg out.

No talking, no distractions, no demands. Just day dream about whatever. You can take a nap if you like. You probably need one if you do.

And then my "talk" would end with "Let's try this every day."

"The art of improvising a seminar while nude"

Probably the experience and implications of non-consensual teleportation. It would definitely be the most notable thing I'd done in my life thusfar.

The wonders of nudism.

I'm naked in my bathroom, so teleporting me right NOW leaves me with limited choices.

That or 3D printing

Why I'm Not Wearing Any Pants (the starter) followed by Furry BDSM: Roleplay Online and IRL, from Vanilla to CNC. I'm your host, Midnight Wolf.

(I'm in the bathroom and the title said "right now" so fuck it, I'll do it live!)

The fact I was aiming for a Waffle House.

There are lasers that can cut metal. I used to operate, program, set up, and maintain such lasers.

I know enough about lasers to make them seem boring and pedestrian.

The way our urban design influences society and community, and how the loss of third spaces and the dominance of cars in Western society has led to the loneliness epidemic and influence bubbles. I would talk about the movement to reclaim main street and encourage "traditional development", and how that leads to the micro-encounters that help people feel like they belong somewhere. How parks, plazas and pedestrian areas create third places where people can casually encounter diverse individuals and create friends and community connections. Also with a hearty side about public transportation and how efficient it is, and what a better neighbor a tram rail is than a road of similar passenger load. This speech is pretty much 30 seconds away from coming out of me during any conversation anyway and it's a conscious effort to stop myself. Would be nice to let it out.

So, it turns out teleportation is real ...

The importance of a social safety system and a good (non employer related) healthcare system in order to have a productive workforce and society, and why everyone should have access to good healthcare, food, and stable, clean, pest free housing, regardless of their physical or mental ability to work.

The way we treat our sick, injured, disabled and elderly is atrocious and we should all be ashamed that we let this happen.

I work in EMS and the amount of people I've seen living in the most horrific conditions simply because they got sick or injured and are now permanently disabled absolutely haunts me. I've gone into places that I wouldn't even let an animal exist in and there are people living in absolute squalor. They aren't "lazy" or "looking for handouts" or any other shitty thing that people like to call them to other them, many of them simply had the misfortune to get sick or injured and not have a safety net in place. If you get disabled and aren't lucky enough to have people around you to help support you or haven't been rich enough to be putting money away to live off of for the rest of your life, you are fucked. I have no one in my life and I live paycheck to paycheck on a strict budget, and I see these people and know their life will be my future if I get sick or injured.

Some of them were always going to be permanently disabled, and some of them could have recovered and lived productive lives except they couldn't access the care they needed because of cost and now they're living in shitty poverty situations, still unable to access what they need, and it's too late to recover.

I could go on for a long time about this, and I could add in many other subtopics.

On a slightly related note, I don't in any way shape or form believe that a person's life or value should be linked to the workforce or their ability to labor and I think that's a disgusting concept, but I could also frame a solid argument along those lines and maybe win over some hardcore capitalists who maybe wouldn't give a shit about people otherwise. "Hey those people you don't care about, if you invest some money to ensure they are as healthy as possible and are happy, they'll get back to work creating profit for the company and will be way more productive than if they are sick and unhealthy, which will be way better than spending money paying out disability for the rest of their life."

random unexplained teleportation of individuals.

Gathered friends. We come here once again to recite the tale of Bionicle.

And then I keep the audience busy for 12 hours.

Tsukomogami and Patina: In Praise of Old Things

It's the concept that old mechanical things like typewriters and camera lenses (for example) all age individually. They develop their own quirks and foibles as they are used. They almost (as in Tsukomogami) develop a soul.

We are fundamentally losing that to a society that is about consumable mass-produced trash, and on a long enough timeline, it's going to mean losing a fundamental piece of who we are as a society.

Either I’ll demonstrate over and undertone Singing, or I‘ll talk about how easy it is to clone voices nowadays (3-5s audio is enough) and how many situations still rely on our voice for authentication.

Captive audience you say? Time to go over magic the gathering combos in detail.

Nutrition supplementation for the poor via soylent green produced from the highest earners in the world.

I rant about the grasshoppers eating the lettuce in my garden box

It’d be a bit disorganised but I’d talk about how recipes are not standalone processes but transferable blueprints for how to cook certain ingredients.

An extended call for more people to follow women's sports. I'd mostly center it around bringing more queer people who otherwise don't follow sports into the fandom:

• sports are really not that different from other serials you follow, fictional or otherwise
• shows are better when the episodes are released week-to-week as appointment viewing
• women's sports are pretty gay, so your blorbos will date and get married and you will squee
• there are cute walk-up fits before the game
• there's a big crafting subculture to make and trade custom apparel like friendship bracelets
• sports fans are easy to socialize with because there's ongoing narratives that are well-described and well-defined
• all the cool lesbians go to the games and the gay sports bars and meet each other
• there is much less corruption and fewer shitty toxic people than men's sports
• sports look simple but there are a lot of really smart people thinking really hard about tough problems and you can see what they think because they use their bodies to show you

"How to survive in America with 7 mental health issues, 3 health issues, a bum leg, and being gay."

I'll talk about world wide wealth caps!

I want that nobody can have a net worth of more than, say, 10 million dollars. After that, all income over that goes 100% to taxes until you're under it.

Imagine the same tax brackets that we now have, bit with much more brackets and the last one is 100%

This simple limit has a huge list of implications. Nobody can be extremely wealthy anymore, governments get so much tax income that they can implement all the socialist rights like free healthcare, free education, universal basic income, etc.

No more poverty

No more wealth inequality, meaning that everybody can live a good life

No more extremely large companies because upu need an incremental amount of shareholders to be able to increase its size..

Corruption? It's hard to buy someone when henl can't really give you much power and the buyer won't be able to offer that much and the risk of getting caught is still the same

You can work harder and earn more, but why would you if your life is good and happy? For those that need to innovate, there is still richdoms to get, but with reasonable limits

This of course needs to be implemented world wide to work well, and the exact limit is for others to function, but I believe this to be possible and extremely positive for humanity.

Needs a lot more work but for the 30 seconds given...

"Hi everyone, welcome to my talk on fainting from anxiety, as triggered by... this... this... uuuuuuuhhhgg..." [Thud]

Climate change and migration. There really isn't such a thing as "illegal" migrants to begin with, let alone that most people don't want to leave their homes but for economic reasons. With climate change destroying the fertility and economic productivity of land, it prompts people to try their luck into more prosperous countries, and they are getting demonised for wanting to have better lives. Most people don't realise this and are distracted by 1% propaganda to blame helpless migrants.

How to write and test and deliver high quality software.

It's... It's what I do.

Probably the fact how I just freaking teleported and somehow I'm still alive

Uncluttering your life by switching all of your home computers to linux.

How TED talks are stupid bullshit and the audience that consumes them are all vapid idiots.

the entire thing is a self-congratulatory circle jerk for rich douchebags to listen to pseudo experts, from which nothing of substance or merit comes other than everyone feeling very intelligent and that the answers to problems are So Simple.

I remember seeing my first one in like 2007 and thinking what is this crap. They are intellectual candy, the equivalent of pop science and pop psycho books that are NYT bestsellers that people read and think they are geniuses because the read it, when a lot of the information and arguments contained are massively simplified and generalized and to be at odds with the complex reality of the topic.