If you would like additional framing: you have only 30 seconds to prepare and you can talk for 10-30 minutes.
“The art of improvising a seminar while nude”
ask if anyone has an ibm 5100
The reproductive rituals of bedbugs.
I could talk for hours on how skateboarding has impacted my life, but Rodney Mullen already did the perfect TED talk on that, and how do you improve on the master?
Seriously, even if you aren’t into skateboarding, watch that one.
I guess two topics I could easily spend a half hour off the cuff on could be “Video conference systems design and best practices for Zoom and Teams call”, or “How to survive a permadeath vegetarian run in Subnatica”.
Then let the audience decide which they’d rather be bored to sleep listening to.
See what makes this hard is that my speech would have to explain why I am giving it barefoot with shorts.
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.”
How insurance actually works, so dipshits can understand the real value of a single national health care plan.
Probably best topic for me would probably be how to statistically model quality in manufacturing. Like what is hypothesis testing, what is a gage r&r, what is spc, how do you properly do those things, what are the footguns, how do you interpret the results, what’s a spec limit vs a control limit vs action limit?
How can you manipulate the tests for your business case? To be clear on that last one I’m not saying manipulate to lie, but it depends on business. For example your control limits are typically +/- 3 standard deviations. If you run a dark business making plastic forks but to get a engineer to fly out and adjust the machine is a few thousand dollarsand no one will care if the tongs on the fork are 3 thou longer than normal. You may set your control limits at 5 times. If you make the steel beams which hold up bridges where hundreds of people die if they can’t hold the forces and you’re measuring width of the beams you may go down to 1 or 2 times standard deviation. Yeah you will waste engineer time which is money but it’s hundred of people’s lives if it fails. Those are different business cases and you shouldn’t just default to the standard 3 st.dev in those cases.
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.
Probably slot machines and my system to win for a general audience.
For a technical audience I would have a field day with how I have been degoogeling (also other corps) myself for the past years and why you should too.
Optimal crop tables in Stardew Valley.
Do tell.
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.
My wife used to work in a nursing home. I’ve heard a lot about the slings and arrows of end-of-life care, and lifesaving techniques, and no thanks, I’ll just die.
Looking forward to your ted talk.
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!)
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
Yeah my thought was “Hello I’ve been teleported here from my perspective so either that’s now true and I need to go lay down or I’m having a psychotic break and need to go lay down. Goodbye!” then walk as quickly backstage as possible.
Wow, you’d be able to get words out?
Well either that or “Fuck this” would be said, but either way I’m hauling ass to backstage.
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.
I would happily sit through this TED talk!
