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06/16/18
I may have found a way to earn a living in Osaka, but getting the permits might be rough.
Somewhere in a metropolitan area of 19 million people there is a bridge. There is a video camera on this bridge, and I check in a couple of times a day. It rarely disappoints me.
Here we are at 7:30 at night, with shoppers and out-to-dinner goers and bar hoppers all heading out across this bridge for an evening of fun. And who should they encounter? An accordion player...
I am as sorry as you are that there was no audio to go along with this. As for me, I would probably choose a selection of Italian opera favorites, with the occasional early 60's pop tune for good measure.
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06/08/18
How do I read this? Are they numbers, letters, both?
The colors are garish- do the colors provide a clue? Three blue characters, and they do look a little different somehow. It draws the eye.
But that first row is almost numbers, like a date. Except, only two numbers...
I see that the last character in the second line resembles the first character in the third line- except that it's missing a dot between two of the tree branches. Probably significant somehow. If that makes a difference, it means there can be a lot of similar characters with different numbers of dots in different places, all meaning different things. Phew! That's a lot to know!
Exclaimation points at least are familiar. But... why are they a little smaller than the rest? Aren't they usually bigger? Two of them for extra-extra I guess.
Here's that thing in context.
Now it's obvious! I don't actually have to be able to "read" it- it's part of an ad for cheap consumer items! A universal language.
Ah, Osaka!
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06/02/18
The world seems to be fucked up lately. Is it possible to motivate people to step outside of the framework they are in, where everything is broken, and to see a bigger picture, where everything is possible?
This, for instance, is a view into a prototype of a room which can rotate in any direction to provide the function of any room in the home. It's a little hard to see how that works from this view, but consider it- this is possible to do. Would it be desireable to do? Might it become necessary someday, could it solve housing problems?
Here's a section through the middle...
That gives you a better idea of the scale of the thing. You can see people standing, sitting, lounging. Can you imagine living in such a room? How can you be motivated to accept this as a possibility, maybe even as a desirable situation?
We are motivated by things like security, comfort, coolness (or status), and economics. An adventurous sort might be willing to live in such a room just for the hell of it, to find out what it would be like. Make it posh enough and many people would choose it because it was exclusive or very expensive. Make it cheap enough and it would become a necessity rather than an option (check out housing in Osaka for example).
The same things apply to any novel solution to a problem. It isn't that solutions don't exist- it's that people are unwilling to consider them. And so the world seems fucked up- but is it really?
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