Inconsequential Ideas
Everyone loves talking about their most controversial ideas; debating politics; losing friends. I think we should talk more about our irrelevant hot takes.
Here are some of mine.
> Public smoking in close proximity to others should be considered extremely rude, on the level of spitting at someone or coughing in someone’s face.
> The food is good in every country. If you don’t think this then you are unreasonably picky and/or bad at finding good food. People are not that different, and we’ve been around for long enough to figure out how to make things taste good. You will like some countries’ food more than others but nowhere is it bad.
> Similarly, the people are beautiful in every country. People are beautiful. You can have preferences but you will always sound silly when you say, “Bro, the girls there are so hot,” because they are hot everywhere.
> Coffee shops should charge 50% more if you want to use a laptop while you are there. If you want to take a Zoom call, you shoud have to donate $100 to the coffee shop’s charity of choice (this buys you one 30-minute call).
> On average, certain genres of writing have better prose than others. Related, certain genres of wrting take less technical skill to write succesfully in.
> People are way too blasé about committing to things and then backing out of them. Not doing something you say you are going to do should be a much greater social offense than it currently is.
> Seed oils are almost definitely not as bad for you as the conspiratorial right-wing influencer want you to believe. What’s definitely bad for you, though, are all the foods seed oils are in that didn’t exist 100 years ago: like Twinkies and Doritos.
> Airlines should have card readers at the gate, and if someone tries to board when their boarding group has not been called, they should charge them 20% of the total ticket price—to be paid on the spot—and announce it to everyone in a funny-but-embarrassing way for the person paying.
> Huge screens in cars are the worst and we should go back to mostly buttons. The perfect world is a mid-sized screen for navigation and buttons for everything else.
> People who try to cut in customer service lines because their problem is ‘more urgent’ should be put in an automatic 30-minute timeout box of shame, then sent to the back of the line.
> You should not spend more than ~10 minutes per year thinking about about a celebrity as a person (more okay if you are thinking about their work, less okay if you browse Twitter to learn their relationship gossip).
> Most people either spend too much money on things that don’t them happy or too little money on things that do make them happy. (Thoughts)
> It would be better for almost everyone if self checkouts were no longer capable of weighing the items you put in your bag after scanning them.
> Signatures are one of the dumbest and most inconsequential things we still view as important.
> A worringly high amount of bureacratic processes (e.g. residence, taxes, criminal system) are actually not very standard and instead depend on the individual person whose job it is to make the decision.
> A lot of people form generalized opinions about countries based on a small number of ancedotal experiences. I do not think a lot of people actively recognize this, though. I think most people just think that their experiences were representative of reality.
I’ll keep adding to this over the years. It’s certainly not comprehensive even as of today.
Here are some of mine.
> Public smoking in close proximity to others should be considered extremely rude, on the level of spitting at someone or coughing in someone’s face.
> The food is good in every country. If you don’t think this then you are unreasonably picky and/or bad at finding good food. People are not that different, and we’ve been around for long enough to figure out how to make things taste good. You will like some countries’ food more than others but nowhere is it bad.
> Similarly, the people are beautiful in every country. People are beautiful. You can have preferences but you will always sound silly when you say, “Bro, the girls there are so hot,” because they are hot everywhere.
> Coffee shops should charge 50% more if you want to use a laptop while you are there. If you want to take a Zoom call, you shoud have to donate $100 to the coffee shop’s charity of choice (this buys you one 30-minute call).
> On average, certain genres of writing have better prose than others. Related, certain genres of wrting take less technical skill to write succesfully in.
> People are way too blasé about committing to things and then backing out of them. Not doing something you say you are going to do should be a much greater social offense than it currently is.
> Seed oils are almost definitely not as bad for you as the conspiratorial right-wing influencer want you to believe. What’s definitely bad for you, though, are all the foods seed oils are in that didn’t exist 100 years ago: like Twinkies and Doritos.
> Airlines should have card readers at the gate, and if someone tries to board when their boarding group has not been called, they should charge them 20% of the total ticket price—to be paid on the spot—and announce it to everyone in a funny-but-embarrassing way for the person paying.
> Huge screens in cars are the worst and we should go back to mostly buttons. The perfect world is a mid-sized screen for navigation and buttons for everything else.
> People who try to cut in customer service lines because their problem is ‘more urgent’ should be put in an automatic 30-minute timeout box of shame, then sent to the back of the line.
> You should not spend more than ~10 minutes per year thinking about about a celebrity as a person (more okay if you are thinking about their work, less okay if you browse Twitter to learn their relationship gossip).
> Most people either spend too much money on things that don’t them happy or too little money on things that do make them happy. (Thoughts)
> It would be better for almost everyone if self checkouts were no longer capable of weighing the items you put in your bag after scanning them.
> Signatures are one of the dumbest and most inconsequential things we still view as important.
> A worringly high amount of bureacratic processes (e.g. residence, taxes, criminal system) are actually not very standard and instead depend on the individual person whose job it is to make the decision.
> A lot of people form generalized opinions about countries based on a small number of ancedotal experiences. I do not think a lot of people actively recognize this, though. I think most people just think that their experiences were representative of reality.
I’ll keep adding to this over the years. It’s certainly not comprehensive even as of today.