Aku Aku

Obama?

I don't know how I feel about this guy. I'd like to be as excited about him as other people seem to be, but I don't really get what he's about other than being so new to the game he's probably not corrupted yet. On the way to Tahoe this weekend I re-listened to his speech at the 2004 DNC. His and Al Sharpton's were my favorite of that convention (you used to be able to download both from Apple's iMusicStore for free, btw ..grab them if you haven't heard them). He's an excellent speaker, but I still don't have any idea why he would be an excellent president.

I plan on sitting down to do some research eventually, but anyone else have an opinion on him?

Designed By a Tree

I love this concept of creating a font which is carved into a tree and then updated yearly by capturing how the tree has modified it by growing.

 

 

 

Food Delivery 2021

Ran across an interesting project which at initial glance is about food delivery called Free Food. As I explain below, that's free as in speech not beer.

The creator of it, Noah Levenson, has a pretty good intro video:

Given the project name, at first I thought it was about getting food that would be thrown out distributed to hungry folks, but watching the video, it became clear that this is more about being able to order food directly from verified local restaurants on a decentralized trust network and avoiding the (almost criminally) inefficient middle man services like DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc. The README for the project explains the goals well and has a quick run down on why the middle man food "delivery" apps/services are so bad.

Using a decentralized network (think BitTorrent more than BitCoin) it allows for restaurants owners to verify their ownership of a particular local restaurant and publish their menus. This protects against the type of unauthorized listings and other fakery that the middle man services engage in, so you know you're dealing with the real restaurant. Hungry people can find the menus of nearby restaurants and place orders. Reference implementations of the diner and restaurant clients are shown, although I didn't see the source for them available. Presumably the restaurant uses its existing delivery staff for the delivery, or you can pick up.

This is an interesting project, particularly because it's potential goes well beyond just restaurant delivery. Really any resource that can benefit from decentralized (no valueless middle man required) localized (relevant to you, where you are now) discovery can benefit from this type of system. In theory a delivery drivers could advertise themselves as resources and the system could do the matchmaking. Since the network is decentralized this would mean they wouldn't have to share their fee with a middle man network provider.

I'd definitely give this a shot if it started up in my area. In the meantime there is a better sort of food delivery service that I've been using lately and have been quite happy with. It is called Club Feast (use my referral code dav1 if you try it out!). While it still is a middle man service, they have a twist on it that should benefit both the restaurants and the delivery drivers. It requires you to order your meals hours in advance (it used to be the previous day but in the past month they have been able to move it up to same day). This allows the restaurant and delivery network time to optimize the food preparation and the routes. It is a subscription service, which means you sign up for a certain number of meals a week and pre-pay for them as credits. It lets unused credits stack up and you can pause, so it is fair to the subscriber. The meal credits themselves are $7 each, so the meals are inexpensive although limited to what the restaurant decides to make available for $7. There are tons of options though so that has not been a problem for me in San Francisco. It seems like a great win-win-win compromise for the restaurants, drivers and customers, although I would love for a journalist to investigate and report on the actual outcomes.

Would a robust Free Food network be better than Club Feast? Perhaps? CF optimizes a somewhat different problem, but perhaps that could be layered into FF as well? Is there additional value CF could bring that benefits from its centralization? Not really sure. Some things I am sure about are that both of these are better than the dominant centralized apps, and that Free Food really needs to change its name, and the paltry amount of tests in `libfood` is scary 😂.

 

An Ode to Roblox as a Gathering Place

I haven't spent a lot of time in Roblox, even though both of my kids have spent significant amounts of their time and my money there, but this essay about how it compares to those places where teenagers hang out and create their own space away from the rest of the world really resonates. It makes me want to give it a try again.

Some choice excerpts:

On his first experience in Roblox:

In one of the very first games we played together (a work-in-progress safari game, the link to which I have since lost), V became a zebra, and I was a lioness. We ran around a broad plain populated by other animals, trees in the distance, low clouds overhead, and the buzzing of insects on a 2-minute loop. The chat was full of messages from prey to prey, predator to predator. V was almost immediately killed by a cheetah who then got in the chat to say, “Overyone come to pr,” “theres meat.” Summoned, I did so, and as I ate the still-living digital body of my friend in the company of a stranger in the shape of a wild dog, I thought, “Oh. This is special.”

On the game creation tools:

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Roblox Studio is the Toolbox. Other game engines have assets stores, but none of them feel like this: a rollicking, copyright-fucked, messy, virus-filled, unsortable pile of labor and of love.

On the long tail of forgotten worlds (games) waiting to be stumbled upon:

But the things I am making in Roblox are not what are unique or compelling about Roblox, and the same could be said for most of the big games that populate the platform’s front page. Instead, what is so special here are the millions of bizarre little worlds, all networked together and waiting (mostly empty, sometimes for over a decade) to be dropped into and explored with friends.

On the "brutal" monetization situation:

As a developer, you can monetize your own games in a variety of ways, from the above-board (tip jars! cosmetics!) to the scammy. Developers earn 70% of Robux spent in their games, which is a pretty standard cut for an app store/developer split. However, getting USD back out of Robux is a different story. The payout exchange rate drops to $0.0035 USD per 1 Robux, meaning the takeaway in real world currency is roughly 24.5% of any in-game commerce—a brutally extractive exchange rate.

Fighting Date Rape With Nail Polish

Now that Bill Cosby got an early release from prison, my friend Paul brought my attention to the company Undercover Colors that developed a clear nail polish that allows you to check a drink for drugs by dipping a fingernail into the drink. The nail polish changes colors if drugs are encountered.

Brilliant! And love that it was founded by NC State students (didn't to school there, but did participate in their rugby club as a townie).

 

It looks like the product has evolved slightly to a more typical strip test kit though. I supposed the manufacturing costs proved too high? Hopefully they are still working on the more subtle version.

Post Pandemic Predictions

I started compiling this list before George Floyd was murdered, and its triteness bothers me now so I'm just going to post it and move on.

In no particular order:

• Masks largely stay culturally accepted in flu and allergy seasons from now on in the USA, but will always carry a political connotation so some groups will never wear them and mock those that do, but like punk rockers have always mocked people in suits.
• 15 years from now, a common trope will be determining how old some young adult is by what basic K-12 subject they seemed to have completely missed. "How old is Alexandra? Well she can never remember what a gerund is, she must be 27-28."
• It'll be seen as the inflection point for polyamory going mainstream when the released masses just can't get enough of each other 😂.
• 2021: long hair on dudes is back in fashion.
• The artist live stream phenomenon is too beloved to simply disappear, but outdoor live music venues are going to see a boom. There might even be a combination of the two.

Comments

[treb]

Don't really have much of an opinion on Barak Obama, (other than that I prefer him to Hilllary by a long shot...), but I don't think he's got the experience to be elected.

My prediction?

Al Gore wins a Nobel prize, and he and Chuck Hagel decide to run at the last minute,  sweeping away the rest of the lame Republican and Democrat field.

[Brandy]

Did you ever get my message to you? Well reply to you? 0_o 

[miz_ginevra]

I've read a lot of his work, and I've been impressed with what he's doing from a community organizer perspective. When he speaks, he seems to be seeking to change the tone and content of regular elections. I'm not sure that gets you a winner, but it does make ya think. You can read Alex's blog if you like, since he's been studying all this for his phd.

[Dav Yaginuma]

brandy, ugh. i never notice the private messages on here. replying...

treb, ginevra: thanks. i'll check out alex's blog.

Btw, I agree. I don't like Hillary either. I really would prefer to have Al Gore run again (I don't know who Hagel is though). Maybe with Obama or Clinton as a VP would be a winning ticket. Or Nader :)

[Schomer]

My opinion is that people like guys like Obama who can say things that sound promising. "Feel good" people. Clinton was like that. I don't know of any other president who did so little who people love so much. He was great at making the American people feel like he was taking care of the country and really cared about people. Obama appears to be similar. Like you said, there's not much of a record to look at. Just his people skills.

Hillary... can't even stand to hear her speak. Seriously, with this campaigning happening so early this time around, I think everyone is going to tire of hearing her voice. Even if she's saying something nice, I just want to change the channel so I can get her voice out of my head. :-)

[ed]

Elections are always about picking the least horrible out of all the available evil.The US voters made a terrible awful mistake in 2000, the Democrats made a terrible mistake in 2004 running Kerry and voters responded by again making a terrible mistake and reelecting the worst possible evil.


So whats the worst can happen if voters finally hippie up and elect a clean-cut idealist like Carter or JFK or Obama?


Oh, right.