If you would like additional framing: you have only 30 seconds to prepare and you can talk for 10-30 minutes.
Optimal crop tables in Stardew Valley.
Do tell.
I just use Stardew Profits
Nice! I’ve been making most of my money from mushrooms.
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.
Finally a worthy opponent!
Do we see such innovative rebellions in, say, art? Or literature? Architecture? The sciences?
I never thought that music went through a similar rebellion. At least not in the matters of complexity. But it makes sense. I’m very familiar with the art & architecture one. Modernism is one of the most revolutionary movements in human history.
I would happily sit through this TED talk!
Well said and a great point. I do feel, personally, I have already begun a small technological revolt. You should actually make a
TED talkvideo or blog post about this if you have more to say.I’m not homophonic. Some of my best beats are homophones.
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
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 art of improvising a seminar while nude”
“and with some poop still hanging”
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.
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.
I’d love to watch a Ted on that, sounds meta interesting. I tried searching for something on the subject on YT but only found grammar/language-oriented videos. The identity construction molding the culture due to their language structure sounds like an amazing rabbit hole to learn about.
@MarieMarion@literature.cafe @OddDeer@lemmy.dbzer0.com thanks for being my audience. Skip to the end for a TL;DR.
The abbreviated version of the speech follows:In English, everybody uses the same personal pronouns (I, my, me). We do have unique pronouns that characterize people based on individual characteristics, but those are all 3rd-person pronouns (he, she, they). What this means is that in English, your pronouns are fundamentally decided by somebody else. Yes, you can still tell somebody your preferred pronouns and request that they use those 3rd-person pronouns to refer to you, but fundamentally it is a decision that is up to them; you cannot force somebody to refer to you in a certain way.
I bring that up because in Japanese it’s actually the opposite. It is the 1st-person pronouns that are unique and characterize people. There are at least 5 personal pronouns that I would say are in common use today but historically there’s a lot more, maybe dozens. Do you want to subversively use a more masculine pronoun as a woman? Do you want to use an antiquated formal pronoun at all times? Do you want to use a mildly formal basic pronoun that doesn’t really reveal much about yourself? Literally nobody can stop you. Yeah they can judge you for it, but it’s different from English in that the language is designed so that you have control over your pronouns.
This difference between the two languages led me to two conclusions.
The first is that: pronouns have become such a big “problem” in the Anglosphere. Imagine a conversation between two people where one introduces themselves with “My pronouns are she/they, what are yours?” and the other person responds “I don’t really believe in having pronouns. I think it’s kinda weird.”
Don’t you immediately get the impression that these people are on opposite sides? That there is some serious conflict in their points of view? It’s easy to get caught up in that dichotomy, and yes there is a “right” side. It’s good to respect people’s preferred pronouns. But I want you to realize that this “problem” exists entirely in the language itself. If we had the power to declare our own pronouns without making a request, to “say and therefore be,” the problem would largely disappear. People would still judge you. People will still disrespect you. But the English language gives people a tool to do so.The second conclusion that I came to is that linguistically, English is actually pretty conformist/collectivist while Japanese is pretty individualistic. It’s pretty common knowledge among people who make a distinction between “individualistic” and “collectivist” cultures that Anglosphere countries are considered to be more individual while Asian, particularly Sinosphere countries like Japan, are considered to be more collectivist. But if you told me to compare the pronouns in two languages: one of which has tools for you to put other people into simple boxes and no tools to express yourself, the other has tools to express yourself and you cannot put other people into boxes; I would definitely come to the non-obvious conclusion that Japan is a much more individualistic culture while Anglosphere countries are all collectivist. I could definitely go into more depth here, but I’m sure you already see the broad point: the collectivist/individualist dichotomy is a false one. Cultures all have elements that are one or the other. Everybody universally appreciates some things that are individualist, like art, and other things that are collectivist, like family and school.
As a last point, I want to address an obvious elephant-in-the-room for people who speak Japanese. You all know I’ve been ignoring a very important fact about Japanese that punches a big hole in the argument. Japanese already has the exact same 3rd-person gendered pronouns as English: 彼氏 (kareshi, he) and 彼女 (kanojo, she). I would like to counter that observation with two points: first, those words are used FAR less often than they are in English. When speaking in the 2nd- or 3rd-person in Japanese, it is very common to forego pronouns and just use somebody’s name. In fact, if you use the 2nd-person pronouns in almost any context, it’s a little weird; almost like you forgot their name and have to call them “hey you” instead. In 3rd-person, you also typically will refer to somebody by name as well, and would rarely use kareshi or kanojo.
A second point: kareshi and kanojo are literally English imports. In the Meiji era of Japan after their long isolationist period, there was a desire to find ways to translate the gendered pronouns in English and French literature, which is where kareshi and kanojo (the latter originally kano’onna) came from in the first place.If I wanted to fill more time I would also talk about how honorifics can personalize 2nd- and 3rd-person communication, the implications of using specific Japanese 1st-person pronouns, and I could really go in depth speculating about how English could have a neopronoun revolution in the future not via ones like xe/xim but rather anon, oomfie, homie, bestie, my guy, my brother in christ, girlipop, etc. and that maybe we are seeing that revolution right now.
TL;DR: English pronouns create some problems because they let you put other people into gendered boxes while Japanese pronouns let you express yourself and your unique relationships with other people. This should make us skeptical any time we hear somebody say that a culture is entirely “individualistic” or “collectivist,” and we should also recognize that the problem that some people have with respecting preferred pronouns is almost entirely a linguistic problem (sure, exacerbated by anti-trans outgroup politics) rather than an actual problem in people’s viewpoints. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Lost art of tatting (lace making) and why is there a space for it in our modern life
I would go to your Ted talk
If I got you interested you can check out Wikipedia on tatting. In the gallery they have couple of contemporary pieces.
And if I got you hooked, there are tons of resources on this topic. There is a tatting lemmy also (tho it is kinda dead)I’ve been watching this tatting YouTuber for a bit now, and I’m loving it. I love fiber arts in general, and tatting seems super fun
You can look up what russian ladies invented Ankars a very heavily beaded tatted jewelry. Or you can take a look of the modern Japanese tatting with simplicity.
You can also use shuttles or a needle - personal preference, both techniques have ups and downs.
The biggest online community with a lot of links to free and paid patterns sources listed is called craftree.That’s awesome! Thank you for the links!
You’d ace this talk!
I’d watch this at 2 AM and be hooked start to finish.
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!)
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 fact I was aiming for a Waffle House.
“My Day”, by @spaghettiwestern
In case you missed it: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/20/fema-gregg-phillips-waffle-house
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.
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.”
The worst part is that a rich person hears this and thinks about all they’d have to sacrifice to have empathy for these people. But then there’s the part you mentioned: “could have recovered and lived productive lives”. Many aren’t just going to flip burgers at Burger King, they’d be the one inventing a new burger that tastes better, wins the company tons of money, and makes people happy.
Productivity is the tide that lifts all ships, and we’re actively firing at the floor of the boat with a machine gun.
I would like to attend your Ted talk.
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.
