Narrow thoughts on Wide

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

I actually think we should lean into the concept of 'Baby Names'. This is the name we called you when you were a baby but then you grew out if it and now your name is something else.

I want people to get weirder about naming their children but then normal about those children changing their name later in life. I want to see a cubby little baby and their parents go "Their name is Carrot" and then in 10 years I see the same kid and they're like "My name is Hello Kitty" and then in another 10 years they're like "My name is Carrie its short for Carrot." we need to be having MORE fun with names damn it.

Babies SHOULD have fun names that bring their families joy to say. And children should have fun names that bring them joy to say. And teenagers should be allowed to try out names and identities as easily as they can try out new clothes. And adults should too!

But i want you to really stop and play in the space with me if you can. Please remember, I am that kid just all grown up. I am speaking from personal experience. Let's take some deep breathes and do a little exercise.

Carrot is too out there for you, I get it, I chose it because it would elicit that reaction but lets dial it back towards something more typical. Lakiesha. Is that a "bad" name to give a child? What about Muhammad? What about Kaʻanāʻanā?

And if a name is typical in one place but a family moves should they change their children's names so they fit in? Really think abput this, I know its going to be anyone's first reaction to say "No of course not!" because most people don't consider saying 'Give your child a name they wont be bullied for' racist but it really is. Who decides what a "normal" name is? And what names are okay to give even though teachers and peer and strangers online will make fun of them? Is it okay if the name has a long history as a name somewhere? But all histories begin somewhere.

Why is June considered a typical name but people look askanced when I say i like the name November? Why is Fern okay but not Amaryllis? Naming a child after Christian religious figures is pretty standard in the parts of the world where that religion is big but what about more obscure holy figures?

Six day week is superior to seven because a prime number week is stupid. There's a lot of things that people like to do every second or third day; in a six day week, this is always the same days each week.

All months are the same length. Advantages obvious.

Thirty days is a good round number for a month; it can be divided into so many smaller numbers. Convenient for things that need to be done regularly; you can do them on the same days each month and have the gaps between them all exactly the same.

Every month in a given year starts with the same day. If the 3rd is a Wednesday, every 3rd will be a Wednesday. This is a massive help in scheduling bullshit that ends up happening "second Tuesday of every month" or whatever, and also helps people track regular monthly things (if you have a monthly meeting on the 15th, it's going to be the same day of the week every time). Fitting weeks perfectly into months just offer so many improvements for scheduling and remembering stuff.

The days move back with each non-leap year -- if the 1st of every month in 2025 is a Tuesday, the 1st in every month in 2026 will be a Monday. (This also happens with out current calendar as neither 6 nor 7 fit into 365). This means that if your birthday is on a Monday or whatever, it won't be that way every year -- only the same day of the month WITHIN THE YEAR (2 years in a row for leap years) is the same. (I bring this up because last time I mentioned this people didn't do the math and thought that the days of the week would be consistent across years, somehow, mysteriously).