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What's yours? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

My megaproject ideas are mostly pretty standard. I'd build a high speed rail network across North America, and build and expand metro and regional rail systems in and around every city. I'd turn all cities and suburbs into fifteen-minute cities. I'd decommodify housing, and build ten million units of public/social/non-market housing, mostly three bedroom units. I'd link those last three policies together by building TODs around the new Metro and rail stops. And I'd build bicycle networks in every town and city and connect them to the TODs. I'd build bridges and walkways across skyscrapers. I'd put a bidet in every American toilet (uses less water than toilet paper apart from being more comfortable). Fiber internet in every home. A heat pump in every home. An induction stove in every kitchen. Phase out fossil fuels and power everything with Pumped Storage Hydropower and Geothermal. I'd make the US go Metric.

But my truly crazy, obsessive idea would be to bring back the French Revolutionary calendar. Or I'd purge all French influences from English.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Hobby centers where all of the gear you would need to get started on various hobbies are available for anyone to use on site. Like a library loaded with tools, CNC machines, stuff for knitting, high end computers, art supplies, musical instruments and recording gear, etc. I would limit the ability to take things off-site only to people who cannot visit in person for medical reasons.

The goal is building community and encouraging creating things for fun. It would also promote innovation, art and music, etc, but that would never be the goal, just a nice side effect.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

These are already a thing in some places at a small scale. Libraries in some areas lend tools, and there are some community tool libraries that either lend tools or lend tools and have workspaces!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Mine was pretty hostile to anyone noticeably alt :(

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Ban lawns. Like, completely. No more lawns. Having one is a punishable offense. I want children to report their parents on this matter. Merciless enforcement. EVERYONE with ground space MUST have a garden.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

One of my not-crank i will actually do this if you fools let me wield power projects is evacuating the suburbs in to high density city cores, mining the burbs for useful materials, the bulldozing them for use as crop lands, light industry, and whatever else is acceptable to have near cities.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'd want to breed sapience into cows and have them join us in society.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I think the cows might have beef with humans, sans India

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Arcologies. Entire cities built into single, massive complexes.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

give them big spider legs too

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Every multiplayer pvp game will be mandated to have an unskipabble 10 minute gay kiss/sex scene on startup.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

i would:

  • massively increase the building code standards and provide government-sponsored training for tradespeople to understand and implement them
    there are houses getting built today with foil-faced cardboard sheathing. stick framing and engineered wood are defensible but cardboard sheathing is deranged
  • seize unused farmland from big landlords and build solar/wind energy; coupled with nuclear as baseload power plants and large-scale energy storage we could easily replace all fossil fuel power
  • on that track, NATIONALIZE THE FUCKING GRID and force Texas to join the rest of the country
  • nationalize all utilities (water, internet, etc). fuck AT&T, bring back Ma Bell but this time it's owned by the government
[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'd pour massive amounts of money into arguably crank Bazinga ideas like Life Extension and proper Nanotech. I'd ban all cars and replace with public transport. Thorium power plants in every house! SPAAAAAAAACCCEEEE!

I'd make massive urban farming and gardening projects regardless of economic viability.

I also have Gaddafi-grade western fashion revival ideas. You will have to dress up for all evening events and no a Tuxedo is not gonna cut it. if you want a vision of the future it's an 1700s dance slipper brushing a human face lightly, forever.

I am also for the French Revolutionary calendar. Happy Basil Day!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Please repeal the great male renunciation while you're at it.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Put on the salmon coloured Justacorps, Shinji.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

End natural predation.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

White people and even former capitalists are given the opportunity to be full, equal members of society

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Very occasionally, you find a capitalist who'll say something along the lines of "You're prejudiced against rich people! This is discrimination!"

And, like, sure, OK. But guess what? You can always just give up the capital and then the 'discrimination' ends.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Indeed. Being discriminated against for an unnecessary privilege you voluntarily hog all to yourself is fine.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I guess it depends on the scale of regime I'd have. Once all the normal stuff happens and people have housing, good jobs, transit, food, healthcare, literacy, half the earth rewilded, and everything else, I'd go buckwild.

We're gonna set up Mars for terraforming. Put a big fuckoff magnet at L1, and put a particle accelerator on Phobos to create a torus of plasma along its orbit, do 'em both, we need a backup because this shit has to last a billion years. Smack it with some ammonia-rich asteroids, shotgun the surface with extremophile lichens and bacteria, build some ecopoiesis domes. Just let it go wild. Not a colonization attempt, just create a trickle of progress and let it slowly improve over time and go wild til we're actually ready to do something with it.

We're going to learn everything we can and we'll save all of our knowledge. We will learn everything we can, uncover old mysteries, and explore. The only limiting factor for sciences should be people-hours. And we're going to make backups. Off-site ones too, maybe even off-world. We should never forget anything ever again.

We're going to preserve languages and learn a universal second language. Teach everyone Esperanto or something, but make sure that people's native languages are preserved and retained. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis may be bullshit, but I think there's a lot of cultural value in preserving languages. It'd be great for everyone to be able to communicate together, but it's important that we're not losing things along the way to that goal.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Venus would be more viable

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'm not entirely sure of that, Venus just has so much atmosphere. Most of the "easy" methods would turn it into 4x10^19 kg of graphite, or roughly the mass of Saturn's moon Mimas. Now that's a lot of pencils!

Direct atmospheric removal would need to carry it sufficiently far away from Venusian orbit as to not result in recapture, perhaps exporting some of it to Mars is a decent use?

I think a couple maybe-possible options could be used together.

Drop 4 Vesta into Venusian orbit as a satellite, mining it for primarily Magnesium and Iron, as well as any Calcium present. React with the atmosphere to form carbonate rocks and to leave Iron behind as a catalyst for the Bosch reaction we're about to use to convert the remaining atmosphere. Move Miranda from orbit around Uranus, impacting it into Venus at an angle to add some (not a ton) of velocity to its rotation, and to eject material from both the surface and atmosphere. Most material can be incorporated into Vesta, or atmosphere could be sent to Mars if you want. The primary motivator for impacting Miranda is the large amount of water ice (and hydrogen) which will introduce substantial quantities of water and will strip additional atmosphere through the Bosch reaction mentioned earlier.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Create an artificial language with no exceptions to its rules, then teach it in every school in the world, so that the whole humanity spoke one language.

Also ban smoking

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I used to be for this, but then I started finding out about all that is lost when a language is, and now it makes me sad to think of losing any more than we already have. But also, pragmatically, it'd be awesome to not have language barriers. Need sci-fi style universal translators.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

In addition to massive expansion of the north and south American rail systems my megaproject would be a rail link across the Bering Strait to connect AfroEurasia to North and South America. My dream is being able to travel from Cape Horn to Cape Town almost entirely by rail

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Building a coherent rail network for Africa is a must

The Bering Strait rail link if built could decimate the entire container ship industry. DO IT sicko-blur

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Two words: Climate Stalin.

The entire economy will be mobilized to solving the climate crisis, to the point where even finding a job will be a total non-issue. The pigs that are polluting nature to death will pay for all this with every penny they got, they have stolen more value than they can ever stuff down their throats. Oil oligarchs and media talking heads will all be tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity. Many useless treats are going to be banned, and yes, we're coming for your Funko Pops, white boy.

One very important detail and job would be hiring a bunch of artists, architects, designers, etc. I want to ensure that my regime looks aesthetic yet villainous, so whether or not I fail as Climate Stalin, 13 year old boys in the future will look to me and not Prince Nick Fuentes II as the badass supervillain to idolize, and eventually support. Also, the people deserve a much more beautiful world than the one I had to endure.

Oh wait, idiots like Nick Fuentes would be seen as scum because I did a cultural revolution where I beat in that delinquency isn't cool.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

idk if you'll be able to stick the villain part, chinese people had flood stalin all those years back and to this day he's credited with being the hero founder of the first dynasty

like yeah they say everyone got together in harmony under his leadership to build all the infrastructure to fix the floods but come on, it was like 2000 bce, you know that shit was done with slave labor

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Buy out the ozempic patent and deliver it to every obese person

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I mean better than charging out the ass for it but if you're supreme ruler couldn't you just fix the food supply to not be so terrible for you? when you stop taking that stuff you gain the weight back, and it has not insignificant side effects

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago
[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I wager that many obese people are insecure about their bodies. Giving them a drug to lose weight would potentially bring them happiness, lead to better socialization, less physical disability and comorbid diseases, alleviating the healthcare industry burden. Skinnier people touch grass more, run marathons, etc

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Semaglutide has an off-label use as a weight-loss aid. It is effective. However, if you're in the US, it'll cost you like $1000/month because your insurance won't cover it for that reason.

I don't think anywhere has approved it purely for weight loss either, it's just getting some off-label prescriptions, and there was a mini-crisis where 95% of the ozempic prescriptions in North America were being written by a single doctor in Nova Scotia, and then distributed by mail pharmacies across Canada to US buyers.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago
[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

My thing would be to give people previously unhoused or disconnected to connect with one another to make villages just large enough to be self-sustaining. And they could do specific tasks or research that personally appeals to them with or without credentials/gatekeeping as far as education in our current systems.

I mean like communes I guess, but more goal focused - like a village of agriculture enthusiasts who want to grow and use local plants and resources to sustain themselves and track success. Or a village of people who want to repurpose old hangars to develop aviation technology or something physics related.

Honestly I just want to group together enthusiasts and see what they can make or discover when there's no worry about rent, no paywalls, and no profit incentives.

I think I'd like to live in a village somewhere isolated and low tech that focuses on spending large spans of time on personal projects and sharing them in a group setting like once a month. An introvert's paradise. I think there are cool things we can learn and create when given different safe environments. I know that people would really gravitate towards what motivates them when they have their needs met and given the opportunity to explore.

I'd also like the idea of education in general being freely available with certification only necessary in relation to human safety (medicine, nuclear physics, etc.).

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Reminds me of The Dispossessed

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Night trains from everywhere to everywhere would be neat. Including neat sleeping cabins so that the population of the world can migrate by climate phases and joy.

But since I played openttd make it river canals and ships that are trolley boats.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

They're a relic of the cold war even here in Europe. Only ÖBB runs night passenger trains covering mostly Germany, Austria (since ÖBB = Austrian Federal Railways) and Northern Italy.

In many cases, due to cuts, ran-like-a-business principles, understaffing and underinvestment, here in Germany it can be hard to get anywhere by train after 9 PM. Bus Night lines are more common, but that's a big city thing.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

A fellow Openttd player! Post a screenshot!

Here's one of mine:

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago
  • An eco-corps jobs program tasked with removal of invasive species and restoration of degraded habitats.
  • The best elements of scouting would be folded into the education system and become the core of its new outdoor skills portion. Everyone would learn how to safely & responsibly conduct themselves while enjoying the outdoors.
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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse

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