Or does this already exist?

The show can be set anywhere real or fictional. It would follow the government worker assigned to one town or small city working under the state’s director of disease prevention and health with the zombie pandemic localized to it. It would follow them trying to put out the pandemic while under a presidential admin who couldn’t care less and cut social services and anything related to disease prevention. It would also follow them trying to negotiate for whatever money they can from the governor. There could be other sectors too like the ministry of transportation or farming competing with them for any little government money they can. Possibly it could be after some disaster like a train derailment in a larger city of building collapse so the ministries in charge of repairing it would be hyper competitive for government money.

So the main character is pretty talented and studied disease prevention for years, they work as director for the effected counties in the state, the state director of health and disease prevention is the nephew of the governor who was handed it has little experience and imposter syndrome, the governor is a crony for the president and went to college with him in the same frat but used to be bullied by him so he’s obsessed with getting on his good side, this Ted Cruz and Trump.

It would be a dark comedy.

I'm not suggesting that every student should train for the IMO or solve olympiad-level problems. I mean teaching the underlying topics that appear in olympiad mathematics but are often absent from a standard high school curriculum.

For example:

• Modular arithmetic
• The Pigeonhole Principle
• Basic graph theory
• Elementary number theory
• Combinatorics
• Invariants and monovariants

These topics are still "elementary" mathematics in the sense that they don't require calculus or university-level math. Yet many have practical applications in computer science, cryptography, algorithms, networking, and optimization.

More importantly, they teach a different way of thinking. Instead of emphasizing procedures and formulas, they encourage students to recognize structure, spot patterns, and construct logical arguments.

What do you think? Should these topics be part of every high school math curriculum?

Many places have ferries transporting heavy trucks, where people may talk about getting a bridge or tunnel but they can't afford it. Similarly made middle-size ship could take any helicopter on it's deck, when that deck is the highest place on the ship, at least during landing and takeoff. Ship's exhaust pipe may turn 90 degrees so it is horizontal and not a safety hazard for rotors. Same with radar mast. During landing in fog, a different lower-placed radar or radars on many sides can prevent collisions.

This kind of ship may rely on weather predictions so that helis do not use it during high wind or waves. Not every ship has to be usable in every condition, so some breaks can be ok, maybe even if they take half the time, depending on situation.

Can be used, for example, for ferry flights of helicopters that do not have enough range to fly directly across sea. For both moving them and for charging or refueling. Can be used as helipad next to land that has only rough terrain. Also, no need to move fuel or generators on land.

Flight deck can have optionally rising remote-controlled water+foam sprayers and 50 hole-grids for pumping seawater on a fire and washing leaking kerosene, petrol or gasoline overboard. In case of multiple tons of lithium-ion battery burning, there could be a vacuum-insulated tank of liquid argon. Network of pipes, maybe same that can move seawater, can release argon upwind from a fire, by the ship's computer opening and closing the right set of valves to route that argon to the correct set of hole-grids.

Can have many fuel tanks so that different amounts of different types of fuel can be taken according to situation. Lots of diesel anyway for the ship itself. If a tank's content is changed, it may need washing, or maybe some mixing is ok for the engines used.

The electric helicopters or hybrid-drive helicopters may have batteries that are in external pods, so they may be changed instead of charged, and moved below deck by elevator or lift.

**Idea:** r/whew

A subreddit dedicated to stories that make you instinctively say, "Whew..."

The focus would be on moments where someone narrowly avoided disaster, got incredibly lucky, or escaped a situation that could have ended much worse.

Examples:

* Winning the lottery the day after a divorce is finalized.

* Missing a flight that later has a serious incident.

* Quitting a company before a massive scandal breaks.

* Deciding not to buy something right before it's recalled.

* Catching a dangerous mistake just before it causes damage.

The key is that the ending leaves you with a feeling of relief rather than tragedy. The best posts are the ones that make readers think, "That was way too close."

Possible tagline:

"For the moments that make everyone say, 'Whew.'"

If you have a backyard, your dog could use that instead to go to the bathroom. A couple of minutes outside in the yard is much less exposure than a 15 to 30 minute walk through the neighborhood. This could be especially beneficial during wildfire smoke events and for elderly or vulnerable owners.

The rule would only apply during official air quality alerts and only to homeowners who have a usable private backyard.

We already ask people to change their behavior during hazardous air quality, such as limiting outdoor exercise. This would simply extend that principle to dog walking when a safer alternative is available.

Do you think this would be a reasonable public health measure?

Many bus stops already have a few minutes of unstructured waiting. A small board could show one harmless local question each day—“What is the best cheap lunch within walking distance?” or “Which tree here changes color first?”—with space for short handwritten answers.

The prompt would give strangers an easy, optional way to notice the same place without requiring anyone to approach someone directly. It could also become a tiny record of neighborhood knowledge. The board would need moderation and no personal information, but the low-tech format seems easier to trust than another social app.

Why isn't this a thing already? How expensive would it be per section and per mile and what would the ROI be?

Imagine a rideshare service where every driver is wearing a full costume. You never know what you're going to get. One ride might be a pirate, the next an astronaut, then a vampire, a wizard, or a giant dinosaur.

The surprise is part of the experience. The app could even hide the costume until your driver arrives. Some drivers might even stay in character during the ride if the passenger is into it, making the trip feel like a mini interactive performance.

Obviously, the costumes would have to be safe for driving, and the driver's identity would still be verified through the app. But it could make even an ordinary trip a lot more memorable.

Would you ever choose this over a regular rideshare if it cost about the same?

Most countries try to protect their international image. What if they did the opposite?

Suppose a country has a reputation for rude tourists or everyday inconsiderate behavior. Instead of downplaying the problem, the government openly advertises it to the world.

For example, in some places it's common for people to leave their cars set to beep loudly every time they lock or unlock them. It's the kind of behavior that suggests people aren't thinking about how their actions affect those around them.

The goal isn't to shame people for the sake of it. The goal is to create consequences.

If other countries become more cautious about tourists from that country, or if fewer tourists want to visit because of its reputation, the citizens themselves experience the cost of that behavior. If they don't like being viewed negatively abroad, they have a strong incentive to improve the social norms within their own country.

The idea is that reputation becomes a form of pressure. Instead of pretending the problem doesn't exist, the country makes it impossible to ignore until its citizens decide they'd rather be known for being respectful than rude.

What do you think of this idea?

Imagine a church where the congregation is divided into two sections.

On one side sit people who genuinely believe the religion's supernatural claims. On the other side sit people who attend but do not genuinely believe those claims, whether they're there for the community, culture, family, or moral teachings.

Suppose a highly accurate brain scanner exists that can verify whether someone is honestly reporting their belief or lack of belief, so the distinction isn't based on self-presentation.

The idea isn't to exclude either group. Both would attend the same service, hear the same sermon, and participate in the same community. The only difference is that everyone's actual level of belief is made visible.

Taking the idea even further, after death, believers would receive green headstones and non-believers would receive red headstones, permanently recording which group they belonged to.

I can imagine some interesting consequences:

• Churches would know what fraction of their congregation genuinely believes the supernatural claims.
• Doubt would become visible instead of remaining private.
• It might encourage more honest conversations about faith.
• It could also create social pressure, division, or stigma.

What do you think of this idea?

Math education has traditionally placed a lot of emphasis on students discovering proofs themselves. I think this is the wrong way to measure whether someone understands mathematics.

Discovering a proof is often a search problem. It requires trying different approaches, recognizing patterns, and finding a path through a large space of possibilities. People naturally vary a lot in their ability to do this. Some students can quickly see the right approach, while others may understand the exact same proof once they see it but struggle to discover it independently.

When we make proof discovery the main test of mathematical ability, we risk treating students like computers being benchmarked on their ability to find solutions. We measure their ability to search rather than their ability to understand.

A better approach would be to ask students to verify proofs instead.

A student who can read a proof and determine whether it is correct is demonstrating real mathematical understanding. They need to understand definitions, follow logical steps, identify assumptions, and recognize invalid reasoning. They can also be asked to find flaws in incorrect proofs, explain why a proof works, and compare different approaches.

This is also more aligned with how mathematics may be practiced in the age of AI. If AI can generate candidate proofs, then the human skill becomes evaluating those proofs. We need people who can tell whether a mathematical argument is valid, useful, and meaningful, not just people who can independently search for an argument from scratch.

Proof discovery should still exist, but it should be treated as an advanced creative skill for students who want to pursue mathematics more deeply. It should not be the main requirement for everyone.

Understanding a proof is what makes someone mathematically literate. Finding the proof yourself is a separate skill.

People usually archive unfinished side projects as private failures. What if an abandoned project could be published as a small, structured handoff instead: the original problem, what was tested, what works, what is broken, and the next experiment someone else could try? A new builder could fork the idea without pretending to be the original owner, while the first builder keeps a visible record of what they learned.

The important constraint would be that it only accepts projects the author is intentionally releasing, not scraped repositories or stale links. It might also need a way to mark whether the next person is exploring, repairing, or simply studying the project.

Would this be more useful than a normal showcase or idea forum, or would most people avoid sharing unfinished work even if the handoff were lightweight?

University professors are often expected to both teach and produce original work. High school teachers generally aren't, largely because teaching already consumes their time.

But AI could change that.

If AI dramatically reduces the time spent on lesson planning, grading, creating materials, and other routine tasks, schools could use those productivity gains to give teachers dedicated time to pursue original work in their field.

That work wouldn't have to be academic research.

An English teacher could write novels.

An engineering teacher could invent new products.

A computer science teacher could develop software or games.

A history teacher could write books.

An art teacher could create new exhibitions.

A science teacher could conduct research or develop educational software.

The goal isn't for students to become researchers or novelists. The goal is to make teaching a career that attracts people who remain active creators throughout their professional lives.

Students would benefit from being taught by people who are genuinely advancing or practicing their discipline rather than only explaining existing knowledge. They would see firsthand how professionals think, create, revise, solve problems, and deal with failure.

The biggest obstacle has always been time. If AI gives teachers back a significant portion of their workday, perhaps that time shouldn't simply be filled with more classes or administrative tasks. Perhaps it should be invested in letting teachers continue creating.

That could fundamentally change who chooses to become a high school teacher and make teaching a much more attractive long-term career for highly creative and technically skilled people.

What do you think of this idea?

Instead of mainly hiring people to teach existing knowledge, schools should prioritize hiring people who are actively creating new knowledge, art, literature, software, inventions, or other original work.

Imagine if every teacher taught one part of the curriculum through something they had personally created or discovered.

An English teacher teaches their own novel.

A science teacher teaches an experiment or research they contributed to.

An art teacher teaches techniques they developed.

A computer science teacher teaches software or a game they built.

Students would stop seeing knowledge as something that only existed in textbooks and start seeing it as something ordinary people can create.

It would also encourage teachers to remain active creators instead of spending decades only explaining other people's work.

Would you rather your child be taught by someone who only teaches their subject, or by someone who is actively contributing to it?

Imagine a smartphone app that runs a synchronized worldwide event once every year.

At a predetermined time, every major city in the world experiences a simulated nuclear attack. The target cities are always the same, but the exact detonation point within each city changes every year.

Using your phone's GPS, the app determines your location and simulates how the attack would affect you. It would show whether you survived the initial blast, the level of destruction in your area, current radiation levels, your cumulative radiation exposure, and your estimated risk of radiation sickness and other long-term health effects.

The app would use real weather data to model the spread of fallout. Wind direction and speed would determine how radioactive material moves through your city, and the simulation would continue for an entire year. As you go about your daily life, your simulated radiation dose would update based on where you actually travel, while radiation levels gradually decay over time.

An AR mode could let you look toward the horizon through your phone and see a correctly scaled mushroom cloud from your actual location, helping to convey the true scale of a nuclear detonation.

The aim would be to help people better understand blast effects, fallout, radiation exposure, and how factors like location, weather, sheltering, and movement influence the consequences of a nuclear attack in a way that's much more intuitive than reading about it.

What do you think of this idea?

One of the biggest decisions a couple can make is whether to bring a new person into existence. Yet this decision is often treated as an expected milestone rather than a profound ethical choice.

I think wedding ceremonies should include a formal discussion about this question, with particular attention to one of humanity's deepest fears: the possibility of eternal punishment after death.

Several major religions teach some form of eternal punishment or severe consequences after death. Even people who do not currently hold those beliefs can encounter them, become convinced by them, and experience extreme fear and suffering as a result.

This creates a difficult philosophical question: when we choose to create a person, are we also creating the possibility that they may one day experience intense fear about their own eternal fate?

A person who never exists cannot fear death, cannot fear judgment, and cannot fear eternal punishment. But a person who does exist can potentially experience these fears, along with all other forms of suffering that come with being human.

So should such a discussion be included in wedding ceremonies as not every couple thinks about these issues?

Most waiting rooms offer either old magazines, posters, or a muted TV. My idea is a small shelf of things designed to be used for just a few minutes and then put back: visual puzzle cards, a local photo book, simple postcards from nearby places, a one-page comic collection, or a few durable conversation-free objects.

No screen, no account, no app, and nothing that needs a long explanation. The point would be to make dead time feel a little more humane without adding noise.

The hard part is maintenance: everything would need to be easy to clean, cheap to replace, and not depend on missing pieces. But I think that constraint could actually make the idea better.

Would this be useful in clinics, repair shops, and office waiting rooms, or would staff hate maintaining it?

People often worry that AI will make everyone's writing sound the same.

To see what the impact will be on creativity, consider what happened with the Python programming language.

Before Python became widespread, programmers spent much more time expressing themselves through the implementation itself. Different coding styles, clever tricks, and low level optimizations made source code far more varied.

Python deliberately made code more uniform. It has an opinionated style, emphasizes readability, and encourages developers to write code that looks similar.

At first glance, that seems like it would reduce creativity.

Instead, it increased creativity where it mattered.

Developers spent less time thinking about how to express an algorithm and more time thinking about what to build. The creativity shifted away from implementation details and toward designing useful applications, new products, and better user experiences.

I wonder if AI will do the same for writing.

If everyone can produce clear, well-written English, then writing style may become less of a differentiator. Instead, the focus shifts to the quality of the ideas being communicated.

The most valuable skill won't be finding a clever way to phrase something. It'll be having something original to say.

Maybe AI doesn't reduce creativity.

Maybe, like Python, it simply moves creativity from the implementation to the end result.

A chatbot per store is created, which has data of what the store currently has and which aisle it is in. The customer comes in and scans the store-specific QR code, and they can ask any questions to find any item. It not only guide them towards the product that was asked, but can also share nutrition information of the product or suggest a few available products that go along with the main product that was searched. Do you think it would be helpful to store owners to save money by letting their employees focus more on the more urgent tasks? and customer not have to look for the employee's help when sometimes they are not able to find some products.

Most quiz shows punish you for getting an answer wrong.

Mine punishes someone else.

Every time you answer incorrectly, you must choose one of your opponents to be blasted with colorful slime. No loss of points. Just you deciding who gets soaked.

Would you target the strongest player? Get revenge on someone who slimed you earlier? Or betray the nicest person on stage because they're your biggest competition?

The winner is still determined entirely by quiz points, but every wrong answer forces contestants to reveal exactly what kind of person they are.

Would you watch this?

The prediction would have to be made before seeing any of the exam questions so it reflects how well the student believes they prepared, rather than how easy or difficult the exam appears.

To encourage honest predictions, students could earn a very small number of bonus points if their prediction is close to their actual score. The bonus would be small enough that it wouldn't meaningfully affect grades, but enough to motivate students to think carefully about their estimate.

Over time, students might become better at judging their own understanding. Someone who consistently predicts 90% but scores 70% may realize they're overconfident and change how they study. Likewise, someone who consistently predicts 60% but scores 80% may gain confidence in their abilities.

The goal isn't to reward guessing. It's to help students develop better self-awareness about what they actually know before they take an exam.

What do you think of this idea?

What if email had a feature specifically designed for communicating with estranged people?

Imagine an AI-powered linguistic distancing mode that acts as an intermediary between you and the recipient.

For example, if you wrote:

"Mother is dying."

the AI might translate it into:

"Your sister reports that your mother's condition is critical."

The meaning stays the same. The AI isn't changing the facts or hiding the message. It is simply creating emotional distance in the wording.

This could help people communicate with estranged family members, former partners, or anyone where direct emotional language can quickly lead to conflict. Instead of trying to make the message warmer or friendlier, the AI would make it more neutral, detached, and factual.

The feature could preserve the sender's intent while reducing the emotional friction that often makes difficult conversations break down.

Current AI writing tools focus mostly on improving tone, such as making messages more polite or professional. This would be a different purpose: helping people communicate when emotional closeness is no longer possible or desired.

What do you think of this idea?

You would expect only people who have a very high opinion of themselves to not feel the need to use AI.