your terrible ideas

Buying a dog just to name it "Bounty Hunter"

― lego maniac cop (latebloomer), Tuesday, July 9, 2013 2:12 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

middle name The

a cartoon of an armed bob dylan following jeff koons, with the caption "Fucking Koons, he always gets away!"

a compilation of 'badgirl feminist' web writing called "Click My Lit"

http://clickmylit.net/

Here is a sexy lit story about an older guy who uses subliminal seduction to hypnotize a younger girl. Perhaps this online writing job is not of the usual style I have presented in the past but do remember that I like to promote lit that has not been already plugged in other places. Girl Hypnotized has promised they will presenting more lit soon so do check out their latest short subliminal seduction story.

not quite what you had in mind

I daydreamed an elaborate finance scheme that I call "Costco Membership Arbitrage" -- basically, you front members the money to go from the "regular" membership at $55 to the "executive" membership at $110 (so you front $55 per household) in exchange for a cut of their 2% rewards cash at the end of the year. The returns could actually be huge, for example, we got back $150 in rewards cash, so we made almost 200% on our $55 "investment" in the executive membership.

Of course this is a terrible idea for many reasons, not least of which being that you can only spend the rewards money at Costco.

Also what kind of family would spend enough at Costco every year to get back enough in rewards to make it worthwhile but wouldn't have the $55 to spend on the membership?

Terrible idea: Sandra Lee presents a cooking show based on the Forme of Cury.

xpost lol. picturing a room of suits buying and selling kirkland mayonnaise futures

I've also tried to dream up Costco import/export schemes. I devote an unseemly amount of time to this kind of thought.

I've also half-seriously tried to dream up ways of "churning" credit card rewards by just paying myself via a shell company. Of course you'd need a lot of different cards and a lot of transactions to make this actually pay off decently, you'd probably get caught, and I think the processing fees might be greater than the rewards anyway.

write and record 10 songs, then spend the rest of my life recording different versions of those same 10 songs

"I think the processing fees might be greater than the rewards anyway."
if you find a 5% reward, you could probably eke out a 2% return.
if you live in a state which forces retailers to pay balance of gift cards in cash, you can also churn through them.
when the US mint was trying to get rid of dollar coins, people maxed out their cards and returned these heavy bags of coins to the banks and flew for free the rest of the year.

there was apparently a good scheme running with something called bluebird prepaid cards for a while. I think the bluebird prepaid cards could be used for a lot of stuff regular credit cards couldn't? So you could really maximize your rewards. But I believe the cc companies caught on and did something to clamp down.

n/a that would make you a real acid mother -- you should do it.

a twitter account called @RTUnFunny which retweets only shitty jokes

hahaha

what if there are gods, and they can recognize all of the possible alternatives, and they got bored with our branch of the universe and left it behind a long time ago? for example, there's no reason the steam engine couldn't have been invented by the ancient romans - they had all the prequisite knowledge, they just didn't do it. if we're splitting off into nearly infinite branches of alternative universes all the time, then there would be a world where they DID invent the steam engine - jesus could have been a conductor - and that obviously would have been a more entertaining world for the god or gods to pay attention to. it's like save states in videogames. you, as the omniscient player, pay attention to the most successful (in your eyes) state of the game, and your old save states languish there. but what if they game continued on back in those old save states, but you weren't paying attention? that's us! whoa dude

ok back to work

we're splitting off

Misread this as 'spliffing off', which might actually be more appropriate...

In saddest of all sad Toy Story scenes, the Link in Ocarina of Time Saved Game Universe 3 is alone, working in a Goron mine. Epona is dead. He doesn't even remember how to play his ocarina. He sleeps on a dirty pile of hay in Lon Lon Ranch with this guy

http://nintendoforever.free.fr/N64/ZeldaOcarinaOfTime/ZeldaOOT_Divers/Personnages/ZeldaOOT_personnageSecondaire_ingoAvecEpona.jpg

heaven = resumption of a long lost save state by the god user
hell = resumption of a long lots save state by the god user's malevolent young sibling(s), who wreak havoc within the game with no intention of trying to make progress
the apocalypse/end of time = deletion of a save state

the next time I am frustrated with life, I will look to the heavens and shout "Blow into the cartridge!"

statistically, you'll have just as much success doing that as you would by praying!

in alternative universe, that post came out like this:

"statistically, you'll have just as much chalupa meat doing that as you would by slorting!"

― Z S, Thursday, July 25, 2013 11:22 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

terrible idea #234354:

everything is right! but also...everything is wrong.

for example, there's no reason the steam engine couldn't have been invented by the ancient romans - they had all the prequisite knowledge, they just didn't do it.

i have this odd mental scenario of one ancient roman saying 'you could make a steam engine with what you've got there' and the other ancient roman saying 'nah'

lol

are they wearing cotton drill togas from lowes.

Feel like people have actually written extensively on why the Romans didn't invent the steam engine actually, especially since they had forerunner devices like the aeolipile - - or at least why they didn't invent half the shit medieval people came up with... basically there was no percentage in it because it was a slave economy with a labor pool that was always in surplus of demand, so the value of replacing person-labor with machine-labor was like, eh, why bother? Whereas your hardscrabble medieval manor town, though not exactly stuffed with great minds and book-learnin', is kind of desperate for any good idea that comes down the pipe, so over the long course of time you see a ton of developments in the way of practical equipment and machinery.

er sorry i realize that is not the point of this existential speculation but historical pedantry insists that they were ill-disposed to invent the steam engine, fundamentally because they were romans

didn't hero invent the steam engine?

http://www.lyft.me/drivers

it's not my idea, but i feel like this belongs here

That
s a good

idea

i'm going to assume you're a rapist

http://www.yelp.com/biz/lyft-san-francisco

Fuck you Spiral Stairs

http://valleywag.gawker.com/when-your-smartphone-chauffeur-becomes-a-stalker-801080008

As someone who's used Sidecar, Lyft and cabs in San Francsico, and as a young female, I've honestly felt a lot safer in Lyft and Sidecar than cabs. I'd like to believe (and maybe I'm naive) that this is a rare occurrence. When you jump in a cab, no one has any idea where you're going. When you're in a Lyft, Sidecar or Uber, there's an app tracking where you are. You get a picture of your driver, their car and their name before you ever step inside the vehicle, and they've passed a written interview, phone interview and in person interview.

My roommate had a cabbie taking pulls from a handle of whiskey while driving and then whip out a knife on her when she tried to pay with a card. She ran away so panicked she didn't get his cab number or name, meaning he's still out there. That couldn't have happened in Lyft.

It was totally unprofessional for him to ask for her number in that situation and I probably would have reacted the same way, but I'd guess there's just as likely to be a cabbie stalker out there as there is a Lyft driver. 7/16/13 1:55pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging

tbf, that could happen with a cabbie too, if you gave one your number

yup

And tbh that's not really "stalking"! That's one awkward series of text message exchanges over the course of a couple hours!

I mean, she gave her number, then didn't respond to one text (or volley of texts?), then they had an exchange where the guy was weird, but once she made it clear she didn't want to see him it seems like it ended at that?

waterface i am impressed with your ready knowledge of ways to get some 1 on 1 time in a confined space with strangers

Roberto nice try but I enjoy reading and learning about various forms of public transportation.

But again, kudos to you for trying to frame me as a creep.

didn't hero invent the steam engine?

― sassy, fun, and RELATABLE (forksclovetofu), Friday, July 26, 2013 1:28 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think basically? I believe there are also practical issues to building a steam engine in 100 AD or whenever, just because metallurgy is not at the point where you can really construct a boiler capable of containing the required pressures. But I actually don't really know anything about anything so I could be wrong.

everything i know about this comes from a single paragraph in the william gibson interview with the paris review:

There’s an idea in the science-fiction community called steam-engine time, which is what people call it when suddenly twenty or thirty different writers produce stories about the same idea. It’s called steam-engine time ­because nobody knows why the steam engine happened when it did. Ptolemy demonstrated the mechanics of the steam engine, and there was nothing technically stopping the Romans from building big steam engines. They had little toy steam engines, and they had enough metalworking skill to build big steam tractors. It just never occurred to them to do it. When I came up with my cyberspace idea, I thought, I bet it’s steam-engine time for this one, because I can’t be the only person noticing these various things. And I wasn’t. I was just the first person who put it together in that particular way, and I had a logo for it, I had my neologism.

so, ptolemy. according to william gibson.

Huh!

and they had enough metalworking skill to build big steam tractors.

i don't think this is true tbh

they didn't have the metallurgy to make objects both big and strong enough to make a steam engine large enough to do useful work that people or animals were doing

iirc watt was inspired by a principal of planetary movement that ptolemy posited, i think gibson is making a bit of a jump there. hero(n) is really the guy who laid it out. but doctor casino here is essentially correct, the problem is metal. advanced metal working didn't really get going - and like many academic and scientific disciplines it peaked early and tailed off quickly. rome was pretty degenerate after the early empire. i think mental was a PITA for romans because the ores were elsewhere. and crucially they didn't get very far with iron alloys, and that is really the business end of things.

it likely peaked early
and metal, not mental

http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~gel115/115CH5.html

ps i love ancient and still-running academic webspaces like this