Beasts
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Background: Some parks and recreational areas prohibit off-leash dogs. If a person brings a dog to one of these areas and lets it run around off-leash, there’s the possibility that this person will be issued a citation and a small fine (Figure 1). Proposal: However: is it really fair for only the human to be…
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Background: When humans draw pictures of animals, they usually “human”-ify them in ways that don’t really make any sense: for example, adding eyebrows to a fish, or adding a face to a jellyfish. Humans also typically represent an animal as whatever is “most noteworthy” about it to a human: for example, a spider might be…
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Background: Background: Many types of psychotherapy strive to help clients improve their lives by reducing the stress caused by certain negative emotions and thoughts. Additional background: it is sometimes possible emotional states to be temporarily overridden by an immediate existential threat, as described in detail in 2024-03-04’s “emotion displacement” idea, which explains the process of…
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Background: Certain types of office jobs, such as data entry, are limited by the typing speed of the operator. This is generally acceptable for humans, because human hands are adequate for keyboard typing. The smallest common keyboard has 61 keys (a so-called “60%” keyboard: https://www.google.com/search?q=60%25+keyboard). So the maximum possible human key coverage (Figure 1) is…
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Background: If we’re to believe the promises made in movies, genetic engineering will one day unleash a host of biological horrors on mankind. But this promised future of terrifying hybrid animals seems to never actually arrive! Is there anything we can do to accelerate things? Proposal: Maybe the problem is that there is no market…
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Background: One widely-used metric for encouraging people to maintain a healthy weight is “BMI” (Body Mass Index), which is defined as BMI = (weight / height²), when given a weight* in kilograms and height in meters. [*] Or “mass,” for the highly pedantic. The Issue: Doctors often recommend that humans maintain a BMI in the 18.5–25.0 range, although the…
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Background: Birdwatching is a hobby that appeals to many completionists who enjoy trying to see every possible bird. The Issue: Unfortunately, many species of bird have gone extinct. Some notable examples: Fortunately, birdwatching as a hobby requires only two senses: sight and hearing. Most birdwatchers do not consider it to be strictly necessary to touch,…
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Background: It has been reported, since the time of this guy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus), that there is a type of bird that picks food out of the teeth of crocodiles, who are unable to properly acquire or use dental floss. Specifically, we have: Conclusion: birds are not reliable dentists… at least, not to crocodiles! Proposal: The fact…
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Background: Many people feel obligated to look “sufficiently presentable” when they go out of the house: this may involve non-wrinkled clothes, makeup, hair styling, etc. The Issue: Sometimes, people just want to go about their lives without worrying about fashion or oppressive standards of personal grooming and hygiene. One interesting approach to this is to…
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Background: Computer speakers can play high-frequency sounds that a dog can hear, but a human cannot. (This will be important later.) The Issue: People often wish they spent less time casually browsing / “doom scrolling” on the Internet. Unfortunately, it’s a hard habit to break! Proposal: This solution is very simple: an operating system can…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 