Toby and David use the following prompt approach…
Char Modifier + Character + Complication + Crisis + Premise
discuss Organoids after watching a video of brains grown in the lab. Could this be a mechanism for mind uploading using serial sectioning to scan the brain and then grow it in a new brain by scaffolding the data in an organoid?
Catering to humans in space travel is costly and cumbersome. Growing a brain in the lab to pilot a spaceship would be an interesting solution.
The return of one-to-one marketing with personalized medicine? We grow organoids of you and develop therapies on them? Reminds us of “The Island” movie in which clones are used for organ harvesting.
Organic 3D printing using your own biological material. Installation is the problem, still. DIY organ transplant is not yet on the horizon. Plastic surgery at home might be possible if it becomes an outpatient procedure (you could go to your local barber!)
Char Modifier + Character…
Charismatic Disaster Magnate Cult Leader
Catastrophicist - Nostradamus meets George Soros. New take on Thunderbirds - a global international rescue team, non-governmental actors that go to deal with emergencies. The catastrophicist hires the best people to predict a terrible event and use it to their advantage; they don’t warn people but prepare to clean up the mess after the fact. They ‘extort’ others. “Disaster Harvesting”. They predict, don’t warn, then take immediate economic advantage of the crisis once its mature.
Thunderbirds is a neo-liberal dream. It’s a private corporation of wealthy individuals - Musk & Bezos - who go on adventures to save the planet instead of relying upon steady and reliable government institutions with accountability to their citizens. Do Goldman Sachs have a similar venture? GS did stockpile physical assets (aluminum, etc) to play both sides and extort their customers.
Team America was inept but GS Thunderbirds is savvy, creating mayhem in the world for their own benefit.
What do we call this firm? Something like, Executive Outcomes (aka, Blackwater). How about Helping Hands? H.E.L.P. “Human Emergency Life Preservation”. P is for ‘premonition’.
A journalist notices that the help arrives before the calamity. What’s going on? H.E.L.P. has arrived.
After pacific war in WWII, the US had to physically store assets and ended up using Vietnam. Did they pre-place their military there to take advantage of a future event?
Peter Thiel’s Palantir is similar to HELP in that it profits from disaster by involving predictive engines through Big Data analytics. Why do these guys always use Tolkien names? Predictive Analytics. They use “Forward Deployed Engineers”.
Exploit then benefit. Thiel is the Disaster Magnate.
Now, adding the complication… “Failed to Deliver”.
We need a catastrophe multiplier.
Now, adding a crisis… “Black Hole”
Could it be metaphorical? Suck in all the data, memory, etc - like an EMP taking down parts of the Internet or stock trading networks?
Premise… “Money Talks”
Putting it all together:
Charismatic Disaster Magnate Failed to Deliver Black Hole, "Money Talks"
Rich entitled people deciding who they’re not going to rescue.
Watch video altercation of a white woman telling a man of color not to deface private property with “Black Lives Matter” in chalk on the pavement (outside of his own house).
If I’m a global gazillionaire, the entire world is my neighbourhood and like Lisa in the video I can go anywhere and do anything I want. The solution is upon me.
We have become more and more reliant on the super-rich to save us. Instead of having government programs or charitable solutions (e.g. the Church or synagogue) deal with big social problems, we ask the wealthy to deign to help us. Story about wealthy alumnus who erased the student debt of the graduating class. We are at the whim of Ad hoc Philanthropists; waiting for them to save us. Waiting to be rescued by the entitled.
Captains of Industry believe that they’re doing the right thing. They go to fix a crisis and put a bandaid on it but ultimately make it worse.