Not addressed: all those downward-facing photos with feet poking into frame.

Rarely do I feel my mind changing dramatically in real time. This was one of those moments.

I, like many, looked at obsessive selfie-takers with contempt. “So self-absorbed. How can a person enjoy the world around them if they’re only ever looking at themselves? If someone’s highest priority is posting images to show off the curated version of their life they want to represent online, aren’t they simultaneously cutting themselves off from truly engaging with that very life in the world as it happens?”

This (quite) long and well-reasoned argument from Medium entitled simply “Selfie” may take a while to read, but is full of passionate (and convincing) reasons that I was simply wrong. That selfie-taking is more about learning to love oneself, and take control of the way we are seen by the world. It’s powerful stuff.

Here’s the secret: Nothing destabilizes power more than an individual that knows his or her own worth, and the campaign against selfies is ultimately a crusade against widespread self-esteem. What selfie-haters fear, deep down, is a growing army of faces they cannot monitor, an army who does not need their approval to march ahead. They fear the young, the technologically savvy, the connected… so these selfie-haters want to silence and erase the faces they don’t understand. It is that simple. Anyone who hates selfies outright is likely in the position of privilege to never have felt invisible. They fail to perceive the value that a new way of seeing can bring to so many lives.

This article gets one of my very highest recommendations for provoking conversation on a topic that I’m guessing has very entrenched stances on either side.

Forcing yourself to consider selfies as a socially empowering and positive tool, how does that change how you see other people taking selfies?

How might it change your own behavior around taking and posting your own?

Or if you don’t buy into this argument at all, what’s your best explanation for the rise of the selfie? What needs are being met, what social role do these images play?

Keep all the great stuff, just make Jesus optional.

It’s probably fair to say that most of what we do around Christmas at this point is only tangentially related to the birth of Christ. For most people, the 25th does not include a trip to church. In the home or lawn decor departments of your local big box stores, more light-up Santas and snowmen are sold than light-up nativity scenes. When people say, “the holidays”, they refer more to a season of giving, celebration with friends and family, and various ways to indulge in food and drink more than they mean to conjure up the arrival of a baby in a manger.

Why not make the break a clean one? Rename and reschedule and rebrand, whatever it takes to put the “War on Christmas” meme to bed. Let the Christians have their day to celebrate what’s important to them (thanks are due to them for getting these wonderful traditions kicked off!), but let’s move on as a culture. Make this thing bigger and more inclusive. Call it Winter Week (everyone gets more time off!), or Giving Day (there are still presents, and a general feeling of generosity in the air, we should definitely keep those things), but this way it’s not one group enforcing their values on the rest; it’s a fully inclusive, mutually agreed-upon, totally positive but non-religious event for all to enjoy.

Wouldn’t this be better for everyone, especially those not raised or currently part of a particular faith? Especially for those in other faiths who feel left out of Christmas?

Wouldn’t focusing on the giving and togetherness parts actually reinforce what we really love about the holidays?

Do we keep Santa or can we come up with even better icons of this new holiday?

My main concern if I could stop time: can I still stream Netflix?

When someone says “Time Machine”, everyone thinks of a machine that lets us travel backward and forward through time at will. It’s a mode of transportation in a new dimension.

But what if instead of theoretical time travel, we were talking about theoretical time creation? A machine that makes time, not one that transports you back and forth through it.

How would you want a time creation machine to work?

What would the rules be? Would the world stop while you got to go about your business until you turned it off? Would it merely slow down the whole world so there were more hours in a day?

What would be the most useful or necessary features?

If you were the sole owner of one of these new kinds of time machine, how would you use it?

Turns out your answer depends a lot on whether you’re the car or the pedestrian.

Self driving cars sound awesome. Less traffic, fewer accidents, more free mental bandwidth while commuting. But nothing is perfect, and some scientists are beginning to examine how automated cars should handle accidents:

Here is the nature of the dilemma. Imagine that in the not-too-distant future, you own a self-driving car. One day, while you are driving along, an unfortunate set of events causes the car to head toward a crowd of 10 people crossing the road. It cannot stop in time but it can avoid killing 10 people by steering into a wall. However, this collision would kill you, the owner and occupant. What should it do?

One way to approach this kind of problem is to act in a way that minimizes the loss of life. By this way of thinking, killing one person is better than killing 10.

But that approach may have other consequences. If fewer people buy self-driving cars because they are programmed to sacrifice their owners, then more people are likely to die because ordinary cars are involved in so many more accidents. The result is a Catch-22 situation.

So one could abstractly argue all day about what’s right, and if you’re able to take yourself out of the equation, the math is what it is.

If it were up to you to decide how autonomous cars handle accidents, what do you program them to do?

How does your answer change if:
a) you’re the first one driving one?
b) you’re also in charge of convincing other people to buy one?
c) everyone is required to drive one (and is that worth doing)?

Also, which day of the week would you never want to work again?

Corporations dream of continuous growth. It shows prosperity, guarantees healthy stock prices. If GDP moves up, the country is healthy; if it remains flat, the country is “stagnating”. Our whole financial system is based on chasing more and more growth for greater and greater rewards.

Some economists suggest there may be another ideal, the steady state, at which productivity increases lead not to continuous growth, but a more equal distribution of limited resources, and for much of the currently employed, a reduction in work hours as employment hours and free time are essentially redistributed. I’m drastically oversimplifying the premise for a setup here, but if you’re into the economic argument, this fantastic Mother Jones article goes in depth.

Essentially, the proposal is that we all share the amount of employment needed to maintain a healthy steady state, then tax big corporations and the very rich to supplement the services a healthy society shouldn’t make its citizens go broke paying for itself (like health care and education) to make our remaining pay go farther. Interesting theory.

But at the end of the day, an immediate change would be you work less, but make less. We’d have to adjust to less money (and therefore less consumption), and more free time.

Would you be willing to go from a five day to a four day work week for four-fifths (20% less) income?

How would you adjust to having less money? What would you do with the extra time?

What other societal implications or changes might result from a shift like this? Would we be more or less informed and engaged? More or less relaxed and satisfied with our careers? More or less able to travel, or create or appreciate art and culture, or any other positive pursuits?