Another Reverie

Not one of my hypertoons, but in a somewhat similar style and covering some of the same concepts.

Queue for the LCDs?

Every coffee shop is different.  The "design science" clientele expects to be reminded of these memes.

For Tomorrow's Seminar

This is a live "teach in" in front of a live audience, whom you'll hear on the laugh track.

I say "laugh track" because that's mostly what they do (laugh); I don't mean to imply a "laugh track machine" is used.

Fuller has a good sense of timing and gets people chuckling about the darnedest things.

For those of you wishing a little historical context:  the man listening to Bucky was a non-academic practicing philosopher who later gravitated into academia more.  Werner Erhard.  The younger guy is Fuller's grandson.

Erhard had recently discovered Fuller for himself, as another "est person", an idea he'd lifted from science fiction.  L. Ron Hubbard is another figure associated with science fiction, but then where does one draw the line, between scifi and myth, fading over into religion.

For tax purposes, if you filed as a religion, you might be tax exempt.  Philosophies could file as nonprofits as well.  The tax law was very complicated.

Choosing Funds

If I'm really good at playing X, a computer game, does that mean I can send the money willy-nilly, to any charity I please?  Chances are, the answer is no, as the biscuit company committing Good Will through this game has already chosen from a list of vetted charities.

This way, the company has a way to define its reputation, to position itself, based on the charities it supports.

But what if I want to support charity Z and the game I'm playing doesn't list it?  Perhaps another game does?  Perhaps some other brand of biscuit or candy allows you to send Z your funds?

Perhaps there's another Coffee Shop down the street that fits your giving patterns more directly?

Charities may be controversial after all.  Some have racists goals or want to spread a particular religion.  Coffee Shops with a reputation for supporting racism might prove attractive to some, or go out of business thanks to the competition.

Democratizing giving is going to make for rapid change.  Charities will need to think hard about how they want to position themselves, to take advantage of what CSN has to offer them.

Funding Bizmos

What's a Bizmo?  When a Youtube channel takes the show on the road and starts going places, for real, they might use a bizmo, or even several.  A business mobile takes a crew to the "shoot" i.e. the place where recordings are being made.  A refugee camp for example.

Patrons develop an appreciation for a specific crew and the work it does.  Perhaps the crew specializes in digging wells or providing sanitation for small villages.  Perhaps you have an interest in such work as well.  Your company may sell pumps, digging equipment.  Getting your products on the scene and in use could be a form of advertising for you.

A bizmo crew shows up somewhere and makes an assessment.  They need specific medical supplies.  As a viewer, you're able to learn of their needs, and as a player, you're able to win funds to send their way.  Or donate directly.  It's not like you're compelled to play some biscuit company's computer game to send money to charity.  However, if you're good at the game in question, why not be a hero?

The Economics (and Psychology) of Philanthropy

The way most people think of philanthropy is you first need to amass a fortune, like Dale Carnegie did, or Bill Gates.  Then you get to use that fortune to influence the future in a major way, through various foundations.  The rest of us get to be on the receiving end, begging for patrons.

However, since the rise of electronic money (I'm including cryptocurrencies) and the ability to transact at the nickle and dime level (small amounts), it's become a lot easier for you and I, people without vast fortunes, to be philanthropists.  We may go on Patreon and support Youtube channels.  We see the results:  more programming of a kind we favor.

The Coffee Shops Network is about extending this ecosystem through the use of computer games.  You might not see the reasoning for putting a barrier between a would be donor and a programming channel.  Why can't I just give them the money?  Well of course you can.  Winning the computer game, or scoring high, lets you give others' money, that's the difference.

Who's money?

Consider a biscuit company that hopes you will buy their biscuits.  If you do, you get a token to play the game.  If you score high enough, you get to allocate an amount to charity, from a fund the biscuit company has set aside.  If the game is too difficult, people won't play.  If the game is too easy, the fund will be drained to quickly.  However, with this many parameters to play with, fine tuning occurs and before long, the biscuit company is happy with the increased sales.

A respectable company sets aside money for charity anyway.  In classical Economics, that was called Good Will in the chart of accounts, either explicitly, or perhaps it was measured as such, when writing up the financial statements and prospectus.  Investors like to see their investments going to companies with a conscience.

One of the main benefits accruing to you, the player, is you're free to publish your track record.  Not only may others get some idea of your skill level, they get to see what charities you consider worthy.  Not everyone has as much time or talent for research.  You may attract imitators.  You may attract fans.  You're a hero after all.

Part of what a Coffee Shop does is provide an environment for comparing notes, for doing research in the first place.

What will be the psychological effects of having children think about giving charitable donations from an early age?  What will be the effect on adults?  We don't have all the answers yet.

Key Frame: Prying Apart

Sometimes this blog is about "reveries" for showing on CSN LCDs.  As you sip your coffee, you might want to let your gaze wander from LCD to LCD.  Some will be showing abstract patterns, geometric information.  That's the kind of thing described here.

"Prying Apart", a World Game Museum exhibit, refers to appreciating a small gap in radius between two otherwise identical shapes.  One is a tad smaller, leaving a gap.  We're talking polyhedrons here.

RT = Rhombic Triacontahedron.  That's the zonohedron in question.

Subsequent key frames, to which smoothly transforming scenarios might exist, would be such as:

• "Remember the MITE (and Rite), Aristotle was Right" (space-filling tetrahedra)
• 2nd and 3rd roots and powers including "surd" symbol: √
• the golden ratio: Φ
• Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum (four submodules of the E module)
• the power rule (relating linear to areal to volumetric growth)
• two spheres (and a thin wall between them)
• a pair of RTs (tiny difference in radius, volumes 5 & 5+)
• an RT of volume 7.5 sharing vertexes with the RD of volume 6
• an RT of ~21.21 embedding the Jitterbug icosahedron (as long diagonals)
• five concentric zonohedra (six counting the cube of volume 3)...
• one of which is the the space-filling RD of volume 6
• the concept of tetravolumes
• T & E modules (RT)
• A & B modules (RD)
• alternative powering models
• scaling by Φ

In other words, we might envision one degree of separation between "minding the gap" (same thing, another alias) and key frames with any of the above labels.  Between key frames:  tweening frames.

For those new to this blog, here is where marketing sometimes storyboards "reveries" (LCD screen animations in many cases) for streaming.  Some of these are "hypertoons".

RT5 radius: 0.999483332262343440046
SuperRT:   21.213203435596425732025
5+ RT:      5.007758031332838515933
5  RT:      5.000000000000000000000
Emod:       0.041731316927773654299
Tmod:       0.041666666666666666667

Boosting Python (the computer language)

No, I have not to date joined the PSF trademark committee.  Kirby here, __CMO__ (Chief Marketing Officer) for CSN, where the double-underline aesthetic mimics Python's "special names". Imitation: the sincerest form of flattery, right?

So yes, that's an example of me "boosting Python" i.e. casting about for mnemonic techniques that might help cement the language in one's thinking.  "Python fits your brain" (sells itself) to begin with in this regard, so I don't have the uphill battle some in the language arts might face.

I've also looked at where Python already has a niche in western hemispheric lore, now spread to the world thanks to Disney.  Apollo and Athena, both Greek deities (superheros) stood for different value systems, as did (does) Dionysus. A lot of English and German language lit explored the Apollonian versus Dionysian spectrum, leaving Athena to her own devices.

However, in ancient Greek lore, Apollo goes after the Python under Mt. Parnassus, the residence for the Delphi Oracles, which originally worshipped Athena.  Their oracular powers somehow derived from the Python.

We might see Apollo's aggression as an act of hostile takeover.  We might let the snake get away from him in some versions, a fork I explore in my "escaped to Nashville" meme.

We all know Athena's mascots or familiars include both Python and Nike. Her statue in Nashville's Parthenon reminds us of these facts.

Here in Portland, Oregon, I live not far from the Nike headquarters of "Just Do It" fame (one of its advertising slogans), so why not consciously imitate with a "Just Use It" for Python? 

I've used that myself in some ASCII art output "on the farm" (we use Tractor and Field objects).