Powerline Mail Delivery, Crows as a Service, Single Sock Purchasing, and Photo To-Do Lists

- I'm Scott. - I'm Russell. - And I'm Leo. This is Spitball. Welcome to Spitball, where three hacker heroes and a guest empty their heads of startup and tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all have them for free. Anything that we say is yours to keep. And Scott, you brought our guest with us this week, right? - I did. We have our longtime friend, Ali, with us today. Ali is from Maine.

She's captain of the Trivia Trollops and is currently a survivor of the cicada apocalypse out in Chicago. Welcome, Ali. - Hi, glad to be here. - Oh, this is gonna be great.

Ali, like a guest before her, has brought so many ideas that we thought this week would be fun to do another intramurals round. So we're gonna do a warmup run with a couple of rapid fire ideas, one each. And who wants to go first? - I can go first. - Do it, hit us. - So anyone who has done a long car trip with children understands the pain of the arm reach around, handing a snack, messing with a tablet. I want a car conveyor belt.

I want a little platform next to my seat that I can put the snack on and I can just push it back so I don't have to reach my arm around and they can take it off. And then if they need help with the tablet, they can put it on, push it forward. There's no grabbing, no danger while you're driving. I also drive a minivan. So if my kids are in the back seat, I can't reach them. - Like in the way back. - I need a device that will get snack from point A to point B and keep me safe while driving.

- Snack delivery system. - Does it go both ways? Like the kids can, you know, sometimes if you're driving, you have to get the snack that the kid has. They just, it just sounds really good in the back. - Oh yeah, it's the mom tax. I need a bite. - The mom tax, there it is. - One gusher please. - How about a whole pneumatic tube delivery system? Like a bank. - You put an iPad through that? - So I was thinking like if it's in the middle, it's gonna stop kids from getting in and out.

So I was thinking you could put it like on the ceiling. - Whoa, just like a claw that goes back and forth. - Or like hooks all along it so you can like hang the little Ziploc bag on it and it goes back, that's fun. - Yeah, like a laundry thing. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Zip lines, you could zip line. - Clothesline, yes. - I like this idea just 'cause of the instant recognition on both Leo and Russell's faces. As soon as you said that, like, oh my God, absolutely.

- Yes. - You initially, you guys initially texted me right before I got in the car to drive it to Michigan. So of course I'm driving and I'm thinking and as I'm thinking, I'm reaching behind to get a snack and I'm like, oh my God, this sucks. - That's the whole point of the show, man. Train your brain to look around. - That's where the idea came from. - See these problems, highlight it. - For Scott, your doggy treat delivery, all right? - There it is. - You got Trooper in the back.

You know, I'm sure it's easier, you can throw it back there and he'll figure it out. - If I have treats up front and he knows it, he is also up front. There is no delivery system needed. - But that is a good thought. - Unless you trained him to be obedient and wait in the seat for the delivery and the conveyor belt to bring it to him. - That sounds like the same thing with extra steps. - Yeah, you could probably do that today with a couple metal cables and little chip clips.

You just, you know, get a couple angled cables, zip line that, you know, from the front to the back. It only goes one way though, you know. - You can get a pulley, you just have a whole loop and then you just gotta do this move to it. - Just a big magnesium magnet and stick it up there and just have it go back and forth. - Guys are geniuses, yeah, just a pulley. Just a pulley system, you know. - Like a chairlift at a ski resort, yeah. - I didn't even think of that, yeah.

- You just got the constant loop going and you just hang something like a sushi buffet or something. - Yes, light it up and you got yourself a, now it doesn't look like a conveyor belt system, it looks like a decoration, you know. - I really like this idea. This is very easy to prototype. - Should have saved it for my Spitball. - I have to move this to Varsity for the murals. - Bring it up to JV. - All right, Leo, what do you got?

- So there are music streaming apps and there are audio book streaming apps, but standup comedy has been languishing without its own place, its own home. And I am constantly annoyed that standup comedy albums are treated like music, like tracks, where it doesn't really keep track like a podcast of how far you are through it. It doesn't recommend good similar artists in the same way.

I wish that there was a dedicated, either built into Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, or a totally separate service that it was just for standup recommendations, for keeping track of stuff that works like a podcast app, but is better at, I mean, there's thousands of comedy albums out there and I'm a big fan, but discovery is hard and keeping track of what I have and haven't heard.

If you try to go back to an album that you partway listened through, it's so hard to figure out where you left off because they're just treated like music tracks. I want that. Come on, Spotify, who's the product manager over there who needs a promotion? - That's right. I'm almost picturing like TikTok for comedy, where it's just like, I can just scroll and there's another comedian there, but it lets you save it off to the side or remembers what you had before.

- I would love, yeah, that'd be great. The YouTube algorithm, but for, or the TikTok algorithm, but just audio, or maybe it is audio and video too. And it's doing a better job of that. That is an underserved market that I am a fan of and a part of. - I actually really like that where it is just audio. 'Cause like I'm in driving in the car and there's TikTok running, but like it's just me hitting one button, the skip button on something and I don't like it, but the algorithm's still there.

- Thumbs up, thumbs down if you want. - Sure. - You could sell a little like coin size accessory that goes on the steering wheel. That's a thumbs up and thumbs down, little Bluetooth controller or something. - Dude, that's really cool. I think that's a million dollar idea right there. - Yeah, man, get me like a wifi enabled iPod shuffle, but thumbs up and thumbs down. That's got constant stream of tracks from comedians. I would love that. I would eat that up, save for later.

I really like this person, really like this genre. That'd be great. - I think that would make more comedians come online. I feel like there's a lot of like maybe unknown comedians that are local that you're just getting the- - Yes, you fall into some niche. There's like, oh, this random unknown comedian is actually perfect for you. That's a great call. - You could have like a discovery page where it's like smaller people from like local clubs in like San Diego or like Austin. - 100%.

- Whoa. - I like it. - All right, Russell, you're up, what's up? - All right. This is true intramural 'cause I don't know where to go with it. (laughing) Okay, so interest rates are high, home buying is hard. Why not make, and you know what? I already trust my company with literally my livelihood for medical health benefits. Why can't I trust them with my home? And so my suggestion is, is create a benefits package that lowers my interest rate.

They own my home and now I can pay a part of my salary. Maybe they match it, whatever. - Oh, directly into your mortgage. - Yeah, so my company owns my home and they give some sort of benefit. So instead of paying an insane interest, it's like, hey, I will work for this company for 10, 15 years if I get a 15 year mortgage with no interest. Like literally I am making so much money by trusting my company with my homely livelihood. I already trust them with my, I mean my health benefits in a way.

So like why not just take the million dollars that's gonna go to a bank, ensure that I'm gonna be with this company for another 10 years. And I mean, hell, I'm already paying my principal. Like it's just all around just, I feel like everybody wins in this situation. You get loyalty with a company. - You're corporate overlord. - Yeah, I mean. - The company owns your very livelihood and can abuse you. - You know, in the same way a bank can do that, right? What's the worst?

- I got evicted by my boss. - Yeah. - But what if you got demoted? Would they be like, okay, sorry, you gotta move to like the shittier house two blocks down now. - No, I think that's, I think it's part of the package is you pick your home, whatever you wanna pick, they just own the home. - The boss has the corner office and has the lakefront property. - Oh man. - There's something, if you get demoted, I mean. - That is interesting, Russell.

'Cause like all these companies out here, if they're sitting on liquid cash, they can set their own interest rates. They pay for it up front to the bank or whoever the buyer is. You're paying 3% or whatever to your company. That, I love all of it, minus the what happens when I leave that job. - So you have to refinance. As soon as you leave, you have to refinance and go to a bank. So you trust a bank anyway, right?

Or your next job, if this becomes popular, takes on that same, like that's their benefit, right? So. - I like that. You have it all pre-set up ahead of time. Like if everything crashes, then I'm gonna go to Huntington or whatever. If I lose my job, I go to Huntington. - Your Christmas bonus would be like a 1% less interest rate. - Hey, I would take that in a second. - That would be an amazing bonus. That would be incredible. I'd be like. 'Cause like in a way, right? It's like the same thing.

It's money going to a bank instead of my, like my boss is paying me to pay a bank. Like why not just cut the middleman out? - I'm sure we're missing a lot of things on this, but I really like this. - My boss gives me money and then I give it to a bank. Why not cut out the middleman and not have me any money? I don't like having money. - Literally, guys, I was doing this mortgage thing in our discord. - Sure. - Every dollar I borrow, I pay 75 cents for every dollar I borrow over 30 years.

My first 10 years, I am paying so much more money up front for interest. And like, I literally am just renting my house from the bank right now. I just like, what the hell is this? If I were to refinance, I could have just rent from the bank even more. There's something inherently evil about the way interest rates are and the way I want to own. And also it's a big problem for the world right now. Sorry, this is beyond the rules now. So cut this out. But like, we got problems. - Rise up.

- Hate the rich. - Like give me a flat fee or let me own more of my house when I pay my mortgage. But I'm like, my company, like they have money. Why can't they just buy my house and I just get a discounted rate? I'll stay with them for 10 years if they cut literally what I'm gonna do anyway, right? If I'm already gonna stay there, like, I don't know, what's it to them? So, that's it. Somebody make that happen. - I really like that. - All right, Scott. - How are you gonna eat the rich?

- What's your intramural? - I had nowhere near that. - I read an article the other day of fabric that can block specific UV. And my very first thought of that was like, let's make SPF shirts, long sleeve shirts, where I can put it on and it's the equivalent of having SPF 15 sunscreen on or SPF 30 sunscreen on. - That's a thing. - Is that a thing? - Every parent-- - Isn't that all shirts? - Every parent knows this. - As a ginger, I can attest that is a thing. - Are all shirts not SPF?

- Yeah, but you just wear like a T-shirt, I could get sunburned underneath it. - I'm saying you just get, you specify like the actual specific amount of how much SPF this is and then brand it. So, I have a full set. I've got my 15, I got my 30, I got my 45 or whatever. - This one's the tanning oil shirt. - You know-- - Yeah, exactly, SPF 5. - That actually, honestly, Scott, I think that would be very successful 'cause people probably don't connect the dots there.

- As long as you branded it really obvious and in front and then you just target people who don't like to put on icky sunscreen or something and then, I don't know. - Which is me, I hate the feeling of sunscreen and lotion. - There you go, now you can get a great tan just by being outside. - I have never considered that any item of clothing that I wear is not already inherently SPF infinity. Like, does any UV light get through any outfits, clothes?

- That's why I was so excited about this particular article is like this fabric, you can set the amount based on thread, whatever. So I'm like, yeah, let's just-- - But it's not like translucent. - It didn't look translucent. I can't speak if you get that shirt wet, but. - Yeah, 'cause I've seen like swimming shirts and like exercise shirts, but just not like a normal fabric shirt. - Yeah, I don't wanna-- - Is that the difference?

- I've seen like exercise ones where it's like prevent all UV or UV proof or whatever. I wanna do the opposite. - It sounds like I'm hearing you say that this exact thing is not, it lets through some and that's the innovation. - Yes. - Before they just didn't let through any. - I mean-- - That's interesting. - Yeah, you could do the sun umbrellas, you could do parasols, you could do not just clothes, you could do like sheets, right?

Like literally you go to the beach and now you have a tent and the tent is literally like a UV lightener, right? - Reducer, but not eliminator. - So I could like kind of tan. - Yes. - Instead of putting on sunscreen, it's an alternative, which you sell that to coral reefs all day. - Ali, I think the blocker is, you and I think of sunscreen as don't let any through, but this is some people's definition of only let some through. - Which I don't want at all. - Yeah, same.

(laughing) - I want no sun. - Interesting. - Wow, you guys don't tan, huh? - Not well. - I come in two colors, red and white. There's no in between. - Very patriotic. - Me and Scott have just a hint. You know, the olive skin and the-- - Just a itty bitty. (laughing) - So for the Jersey Shore, Scott, is what you're saying. We're gonna sell all these Jersey Shore. - Those are some fun ones. Yeah. - Should we like end it on like a, I don't know, what award do you get in your ear murals?

- Participation trophy. - All right, who? Everybody gets a free T-shirt. Yeah. - Yeah. - A free sunscreen T-shirt handed to you by a claw in your minivan. (laughing) - I couldn't pay your bill, yes.

- All right, Russell, you're up. What do you got for us this week? - All right. - What's your varsity idea? - Hmm, you know, it's a little off the wall, but you know, sometimes I look at the infrastructure. You know, sometimes it's just good to look up in general. When you're going for a walk, you know, look up at the sky and then you see all these power lines everywhere and you're like, this is ugly.

And you know what's funny about power lines is they go to every single home in any community, right? And you know what else goes to every home? Mailmen, UPS drivers. There are people that do stuff every day and they go to your house. So why not create a system or a device that connects to power lines to suck the power out of the power lines and deliver your mail every day? You just have a mail carrier right in the utility lines, house to house. I just don't see why we have the infrastructure.

Let's just add a device to it. That's it. Simple idea. - Wouldn't it blow up? - You tell the engineers to not let it blow up. All right. - Oh, I passed the many. - That's the engineer's problem. - Requirement number one. - The boys down in engineering have that solved. Yeah, that's their problem. - That's all you gotta do. - Okay, I want to back up here. Are we talking about like transferring data modularly through the power line or a claw that rides the power line holding your Amazon package?

- The second, the latter. - We're talking about claw machines tonight. - That makes me so happy. - You've got a series of baskets that are traveling like little locked safes all along the power lines. They only unlock when they arrive at the house itself. They leach a little bit of ambient current off of the line that they're hanging on, which is a thing. - Delivers the mail, delivers packages. You know, somebody somewhere said, "Let's run wires on poles to every home in America."

And nobody bat an eye. Why can't we use those wires for other things? - I have a question. - We're not taking any. (laughs) - Several. Go ahead, Ali. - If the power line is buried, what do I do? - I was thinking a little bit about how many of them in our neighborhood are currently being undergrounded. - You tell your city to put poles back up. You tell them they messed up. - Do you know how much money I spent to bury that power line?

- You know how it's a great idea to take all of our critical infrastructure and dangle it up on poles, precarious poles, blowing in the breeze? - It eliminates USPS. - My boss likes to tell, I don't know if it's an old wives tale or what, but a story about how the dog used to know when the phone was gonna ring before it rang. Did I tell you guys about this?

- No. - So, I don't know if it's true or not, but the dog would be outside and it would start barking and then a few seconds later, the landline phone back in the 60s or 70s or 80s would ring. And after a while, they realized, well, there's a 60 volt current that would go along the telephone line wire as it went to the house to make the bell ring on the landline phone.

And they were clipping the dog to the thing and the dog running along and over the years had worn down the shielding on the cable. So it was just getting zapped as the phone was about to ring. So you'd hear a ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, and then the phone would ring 'cause he was getting a little shock. I do worry a little bit about the wear and tear of a bunch of little baskets going along all of our critical infrastructure. - Did they name the dog Sparky? - I hope so. Oh, wear and tear, huh?

- Yeah. - You know, somebody could fix that, right? - I'm not here to be a naysayer to your genius. - It's a problem for the engineers. - That's right, okay. You could use the bots to repair the wear. - I was actually just thinking that. - It's spraying a little bit of sealant or something. Yeah, sure. - There we go. You see, the engineer in the room thought of that before everybody else. - Some Flex Seal. - Flex Seal.

I actually love the idea of some kind of sloth looking bot on wheels, like goes along, gets to the pole and like slowly grabs to the other side of the pole and then continues on. That would just be incredible to see a bunch of those running around. - That'd be great. - But what would you do in a traffic jam? - Right. Well, we could have like extendable where they go, - Oh. - You know, over and under and around each other maybe.

- Okay, now that Scott has said sloth, that's what I'm imagining and it would be adorable. So can we do this? Like, can we make them, - Reaching around. - Oh, that would be so fun if you gave them like little cute faces. - The thing is, - And they like hold the letters in their mouths. - Yeah. - Right. But these workers 24/7, post people, right? They're working nine to five, you know, they have to sleep, they have a benefits.

No, I'm just saying like, you just get rid of, you don't have to worry about time. Literally mail arrives, when it arrives, it could arrive three times a day. It can arrive no times in a day. You've changed the way logistics as a whole works by using already existing infrastructure that taxpayers have already paid for. Boom, nobody loses. - Except the mailman. - Except the mailman's pension. You know. - Russell, the more you talk, the more I think you are a corporate overlord.

- Listen, if we were in the business to keep people working, we would never have a lawnmower. We'd have scythes. We would... - You're saying you want the USPS to be the largest robotics maintenance contractor. - One of the biggest. - Building these bots. - Right, buses, like if you think about all the jobs in cars would be taken away if we just mass produced more buses. No, I don't know. Maybe I am a corporate overlord.

All I have to say is, I just think there's underutilized something with utility poles all over the nation. - The engineer in me is crying. - They're gonna go away if we just bury them, right? To Ali's point, like let's just bury them, but why not just sell the access? I guess like, how's this? Open access to utility poles. What if we level that up a little bit? So you just like, you charge rent on utility poles. I don't know if that's how it works today.

- I would steal so much power if that was the case. - That is a thing. So like the AT&Ts and Comcasts of the world work with our local contractor, at least who owns the pole, our local utility company puts it up and then basically they pay rent, yeah, to put their own cables up on the existing infrastructure. - I mean, there we go. - Why not USPS? Throw it on there as well. - You're basically there. - That actually could do a dedicated USPS line. - Yes, right? Let me throw this out there.

What if Amazon was like, we're gonna do this? Like we got billions of dollars, we don't know what to do with it. Would you pay-- - Abandoning the drone project. - Yes, they're abandoning the drone project and now they're like, Amazon premium, we need access to your utility pole, but you have to pay $100 more a year, let's say. Would you pay $100 more a year to get your packages delivered? - Same day. - Well, they would be like replacing paying people. They shouldn't charge me more for this.

I don't care how it gets to my house. No, I would pay, I would take $100 less if a human delivers it to my door versus the robot. You're incentivizing this wrong. I wanna, I mean, it would be kind of fun to watch your robot go along the lines. Maybe I'd pay a hundred bucks for one year to watch your little bots do their thing. That would be kind of fun. - Especially if it was sloth shaped. - That's true. The sloth packs. - That's the most important part. - You talked me into it.

- I guess you're right. I guess the Amazon is saving money, maybe in a way. So why would you pay more for the way that packages get delivered? Unless it was faster, right? - They talk about how the last mile is the hardest part in logistics. So maybe this is it. - There it is. There it is, Leo. We'll call it, that's the company name. The Last Mile. - Makes it sound like the last surviving mile. Like you're gonna burn it all down. - The Last Mile High Club.

(laughing) - This dystopian image of a Amazon truck pulling up to a power line and just like putting sloths. - Unloading all the sloths. - All these sloths onto it. All of them full of packages and they all scurry away. - Oh, but there could be like a subscription fee and you could change the animal. - Ah, there you go. - Like you could choose who's gonna deliver your packages. - Who's it gonna be today, buddies? Oh, it's a giraffe. Oh, he's got his little neck around the power line.

- He left a paw print. - Oh, it's a squirrel. No, wait, that's just a real squirrel. - It's Blue from Blue's Clues. It's your favorite Paw Patrol guy. Whoa. - Oh no. What if you ordered food and the squirrels actually got your food? - That's some door dash. - There you go. - All the crows and seagulls and shit are gonna learn immediately about this. - Ali, that's brilliant. - Scott, you nailed it, dude.

Imagine just like all the old burritos sitting at Chipotle waiting to be picked up by door dash. You just, you literally throw it in the power lines and the sloth picks it up and gets you there. - So could we make like a sushi train, but all the way from the sushi restaurant to my house? - The same company that's doing the minivan retrofit for the conveyor belt system. - The squirrels have never been happier. - Would you guys travel? What if it was a people mover?

What if you rode it like a zip line? - I don't think you know what a people mover is. (laughing) - Zip line. - Yeah, I would zip line to Chipotle. - You know, like public transportation by utility pole, all right? Literally clip in, it's got the power and they just move you around. - It would make me feel like Spider-Man. - I think it would be fun. I keep flip-flopping between, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. This could work, I actually like this.

Put a disclaimer in this episode, must take 10 milligram edible before listening. - Warning listener, do not try zip lining from power lines in backyard. (laughing) - This is like, you have to build an entire city infrastructure on it, right? Like imagine no roads. You replace all roads with giant ass utility poles and you zip line from point A to point B. Just the entire infrastructure. Gondolas. - At this point, it almost feels like you're reverse engineering it though.

Like you wanna build a whole city with these poles that do all these things and then, oh yeah, we'll just add the power into that too. - Afterthought. - Yeah, and fuck solar 'cause that would ruin the whole idea. You know, if everybody had solar on their roofs, that would destroy the whole infrastructure thing. But, okay, here's another way to spin it. Power companies need to figure out what to do with these utility poles and now power isn't on it anymore. - Why not?

At that point, yeah, you know what? Spitballers, this is gonna need your help. - This is gold. Can't believe you're giving this away for free, man. (laughing) - Scotty B, what's your idea this week?

- It's not the level of an hinge as I need to be, I think, but we're gonna try to get up there. Okay, fell down a YouTube rabbit hole last night and you see those videos of people that train crows to be like, "Pick up cigarette butts," or "Bring me coins," and stuff. Why can't we automate this entire process?

Why can't we make a crow training vending machine thing that we just franchise all over and we just put it in a park and it is fully autonomous in that it goes through all the different stages to train crows to bring X to it. And then we just place them all over the country. I don't care if they're bringing you dollar bills or it's for garbage cleanup or something. It's like, this YouTube was explaining, it's four stages to train a crow.

First you need to make it really obvious for them and you have to lay a bunch of coins and they accidentally knock one in and a sunflower seed comes out. Then the next stage, they make it a little bit harder. You have to pick up the coin and drop it in. And then the third stage, the coin is on the ground and by the fourth stage, they are just flying out. All you need to do is keep this thing fully stocked with freaking bird seed and then empty it every once in a while like a vending machine.

- The first ever, that's the entire idea. - A new business out there, it's called Birds as a Service. You got SAS, you got Software as a Service, you got platforms, now it's just getting Birds as a Service. This is the funniest thing I've ever heard. - I thought the birds worked for the bourgeoisie.

(laughing) - I thought there was an experiment involving crows and trash collection where they were doing this and they were teaching them to collect food and stuff, but then the crows were-- - Got addicted to the cigarette butts. - Creating new litter in order to, they were bringing, they were like, oh, I can just go grab trash and throw it all over and then bring some of it back and then that also gets me the reward. - It's like training an AI.

- Yeah, so there's some unintended consequences for teaching birds, find as much trash as you possibly can and bring it to-- - They're probably just gonna end up robbing people if you train them to get shiny objects. - They'll be taking it from your trash machine to the neighbor's and back and forth, back and forth. - What would you want specifically the birds to be putting in this bird training vending machine?

- The optimist or nice person would be like, again, cigarette butts or just pieces of litter or something. The more Slytherin person is like shiny objects, coins, dollar bills, fives are up. - Dude, could we get these birds to like deliver surveys to people? (laughing) - On your power lines. - Yeah, deliver DoorDash. - I'm just, I'm thinking the corporate entity out there is like, man, how do we reach our customers?

Let's hire crows as a service to deliver paper surveys to people and pick them up like after they fill out the survey, the crow drops the $2 in its mouth and then takes the survey and delivers it to the vending machine. - That might add like 19 more steps to my four step box that I'm trying to make, but. - The engineers will figure, I mean the botanists or whatever the. - We just lost all our engineers as subscribers on here. - Sorry, that was not the engineers.

It's more of the, yeah, the vets or the vet techs out there. - For real though, I feel like this would not be complex hardware. Once you have one working one, you just duplicate it and put them all over and they just work on power and bird seed and that's it. - Dude, adopt a highway campaigns, right? - Yeah. - Like all over you get, right? We just literally. - Beach cleanup. - We get prisoners to do that work. I mean, let's get some. - Why not birds? - Why not crows? You just.

- Alfred Hitchcock would be so proud. - The crow hive, right? And they just go out and they collect all the trash on the sidewalk. You can bring beehives to like commercial farmers. They hire beekeepers to travel and bring entire beehives to pollinate farms. Why can't we do this for trash cleanup and robbery? - Like bring the crows. Yeah, I see what you're saying. - Yeah, in a truck. - I think a big difference is bees instinctively pollinate flowers.

There's no training of crows involved or training of bees. - How many generations of natural selection would it take before crows just have an instinct where they have to clean up trash all the time? - So we're breeding a slave? Race of birds? - Oh yeah, there's an ethical problem there. You exist to serve butter, right? - Carrier pigeons, they did that. What happened to the carrier pigeon? You know, it's just an alternative to carrier pigeon. - Birds are smart.

- Yeah. - What happened to the carrier pigeon? - I mean, let's just make it. - Technology happened. - I guess that's true. It is whimsical. It would be fun to send love notes via carrier pigeon or something. - Power line. If it's cheaper than a stamp, all right. - I have a vision for what this box would look like. - How many crows would you need? - I wish I knew more about it. It doesn't matter. You just put it out there and they will figure it out.

You could get a hundred crows, you can get one crow and it'll just keep going. Maybe it'll train other crows. - Governments would pay for this. I don't know. I think that governments would pay for this if you could actually figure it out. - It's like the aerial version of like the Silicon Valley companies that hire the fields of goats that they don't wanna pay for mowing their lawns. So they just pay for goats instead.

You're just not paying for a beach cleaner truck, a Zamboni that goes and cleans up the beach. - Oh, it's real. - Some of the already exist. - The crow box.com. I'll put the link. - Oh, congratulations to the crow box.com for scooping us before we even published. - Okay, but do they sell to like theme parks? - Okay, this is sick actually. - What if you did a different model, Scott?

You train crows for every theme park in the country and now their theme parks are always clean and you create crow training as a service. You just-- - Russell, yes. Also, this is open source. - Yeah. Wait, what? Crow box is open source? Like crow training? - The dude did a TED talk about it. I just looked it up too. - God damn it. - Sorry, man. Someone beat you to it. - It's open source. - This is fun. - It's open source. That means that like anybody can do this.

Like they've given away the training manual and now every theme park in the nation could have crows on demand. - Every beach? - This is actually way cooler than what I was picturing. - It's like the cats at Disney. - There's cats at Disney? - Oh, you haven't heard about the Disney cats? - No. - Yeah, the cats. Yeah, they got a bunch of cats to keep the mice away. - They like house and feed them. - Really cool. - I guess that makes sense. - And at night they all come out.

- Whoa. - Oh my God, I gotta watch this TED talk. All right, Leo, what's your Varsity idea for this week? - I've got a really simple one. All you need is some space, a big warehouse. You ready for this? It's another simple one that can be boiled down to just a couple of words. Store for single socks, single shoes, single boots.

If someone comes to your store, you just have every make, model, whatever, of shoe, boot, sock that you have. And you on the inside buy a regular pair of New Balance, whatever. You buy a pair of whatever socks and you ship just one of them because I'm sick of losing just one of socks, kid shoes, sandals, whatever. And the washer dryer eats them up, right? Wherever the heck they end up going. I have many one single socks. I don't know where the heck they go.

I think that they're just in my washing machine in the unreachable spots or something. I don't know. But I would go to a store and pay 60% of the cost for 50% of the product and just get one back. - Leo, I love this. - All you have to do is buy a pair of two socks and then you sell it and you make 10% profit, right? On each sale. - I have a basket of single socks. - Right. - Next to my basket of match socks. And I keep saying, "Oh, I'll find the matching sock eventually." I never do.

- And I'm up to like a dozen or more single ones and I have never seen them. And I need to part with them. But would you go to a store and name what kind they are? Some of my socks are nice. - So I think you said like mail it off. This could be like a set, like, "Okay, here's my sock, match it and mail it back to me." Like an Amazon thing. - Or an exchange. Maybe you mail it in and that goes to someone else's house as their complete set.

And then you in return have a credit that you can spend when you need to. - So similar but different. I saw this YouTube video of amputees. And what they do is they find people with the opposite leg, but the same shoe size and they exchange shoes. So they're like, I don't know if it's an online like chat or like meetup, but it's something where like you go and you find, "Hey, I've got a right leg. You've got a left leg size 10.

Let's just, you buy a pair of shoes, I buy a pair of shoes and we'll trade shoes." - Unreal. - It's so great. How many amputees out there wish that they could go to my cool new website that I just registered and shop for every kind of shoe. And we just buy the pair of shoes on the backend and ship them the one, charge them, you know, 60, 70% of the cost. And then we have the other one on hand for when someone else comes along.

And then over time we accrue more and more and more and more single ones 'cause no one's buying the other one. Yeah, maybe donate it to Goodwill. I don't know what you do with it. - Leo, just picture in a dedicated app that you have for this where you scan your socks and it just pulls up the match on your website and just all ready to go in your cart and you ship it out.

- What you could also do is like, if I mail you a single sock, you could mail me back a fresh new pair of like matched socks and then you could just hold the single sock until someone sends you the matching one. And it would also cut down on textile waste, which is a huge problem. - Yeah, you gotta filter out the ones that are obviously like too worn. I know that Goodwill has a big problem with that and Salvation Army, they'll get a lot of donations for garbage that really is past its usability.

But if you're able to take in a stream of you and I's pile of socks that we cannot find matches for anymore, everyone who donates into that bucket gets a few sock bucks that they could spend on the completed matches that we're unable to assemble. That could scale. That would be tedious for the poor wage slaves who have to match socks all day, every day, forever. (laughing) That is truly doubtful.

- Okay, okay, I'm gonna spin this a little to say like, all right, you lose one sock, you send that sock in, they destroy it and recycle it, upcycle it to make two socks, right? Or, you know, instead of using it as raw material, it could duplicate itself, turn one into two, right? 'Cause I feel like-- - Turn it back to yarn, yeah. - Yeah, or, you know, I have a bunch of one socks, I would love to recycle that sock 'cause, hell, nobody's gonna find the other one maybe.

Give me a pair back and now there's some sort of, I don't know, money logistics thing that solves for that, right? - Hmm, I think you just discovered or pitched recycling. (laughing) - It's kind of like the Tom Shue's model for one sock. You donate one sock, you get a pair back, right? - I don't think your math works there. For every one sock you give us, we'll give you two back. It's a great business. - Yeah, I just, no, it's true.

I just, you know what, I have a hard time figuring out, like, if I were to give this one sock that I know I only have one sock, maybe they duplicate it. Maybe they look at my sock and they're like, you know what, I bet I could copy this sock. Like, literally, like, because I don't think it'd be that hard to create another sock that looks very similar or a shoe or something, I don't know. There might be something there to, like, do that.

- Instead of writing Nike on it, you write Nacky and then you're suddenly like a Chinese, you know, copyright infringing knockoff dealer. That's awesome. - It's tailoring, right? It's not trying to clone anything. - We've tailored you another identical sock that says New Balance on it. - Yeah, no, I don't think that's illegal, right? - Ah! - You could even just start your own sock company where the whole motto is like, hey, all of our socks look the same.

So when you lose the pair, like, we'll just send you another one. - What a concept. It's so simple, I love it. Why is that not a thing? - Yeah, I've been very slowly trying to transition my collection from cheap 24-pack awful socks to, like, nice wool ones, and it's been great, but they are all different and it sucks that that's the downside to it.

'Cause I lived that life, I would just have, you know, 50 pairs of identical white cheap Hanes socks and it was fine, like, it was not great or not terrible, but it is a real upgrade to get nice socks. I would highly recommend it. I've reached that point in my life where I'm excited to get socks as a gift and I've just come to accept that about myself now. - Welcome to your 30s. - It's like true middle age. - It really is.

- Socks and your Christmas stocking is now, like, the best thing ever, rather than the worst. - Feels like a personal attack, Leo. I go to Costco and I buy the Puma, like, 80 pairs of the low-cut ankle socks. - And they're all the same and you don't have this problem and I'm jealous. - Yeah, that's because I've bought so many packs of them, like, literally, I can't even shut the drawer on my socks. I have to make sure there are enough dirty socks so that I can close my clean drawer sock.

But, you know, I don't know if this is too much of a curveball here, but I feel like there's a market for, like, a really, like, that missing sock. And there are some cases where you're like, oh man, I love this pair of socks, or I have, like, shirts that I really like that are way past, like, they're overworn, they've lost their color, they're worn out.

If I could send my shirt to a company because I have a lot of sentimental value or whatever, it could recreate it or make a like-new version of that. That would be really cool. 'Cause, like, if it is like a cheapo sock, like, it does make sense, like, you know, just throw it out and buy, like, a pack of 80 again.

But if it's a really nice sock or shirt or sentimental or pants or whatever, like, it's a mix of, like, like, I have this dress shirt right here that I'm, it's definitely past its time of use. And I would just love an exact same shirt. Just get me the same one. - Renewal service, refurbishment. - Low subscription. Yeah, or, like, get me a brand new one for all I care.

Like, if you can't fix it or restore it or refurbish it, just, like, I will pay 80, I will pay more than I paid for the original shirt to get the same exact shirt 'cause I don't have to think about it. I don't know if you guys have that, I hate buying clothes, so that's probably a little bit of a curveball. So just, yeah. - Me too. - If I find a shirt that I like, I just, get me 100 versions of that shirt, but I don't wanna store it all in my house, so, like, can you just keep it for 100 years?

And I'll buy it when I need it or something? - Well, I feel like you could have, like I said, a subscription service. So be like, I'm gonna subscribe to this shirt. So every, like, three years, they'll just send you the same shirt. - Oh. - Oh. - And then that way you'll just keep, like-- - That's interesting. - Rehabbing, like, refreshing the shirt that you really like. - Yeah, then you never have to worry about your sock, missing sock, you just get new ones.

- And you don't have to go shopping 'cause you have something you like. You can go on a website and be like, I'm gonna subscribe to that shirt, and then they'll just send it to you every couple years. - And you look the same in every family photo from the '90s until now. - I try that. Change the color. You know, every other year, you can mix it up, but it still fits the same, yeah. - I just wanna give Leo a warehouse and see what happens. - Just use my garage.

- I'm gonna end up with a lot of single socks that I have no matches for. - I'm just drowning in a sea of socks. - I swear I saw one that looked just like this somewhere in this warehouse. - Just be dreaming in socks. - I think there are a lot of people that would just buy one sock, you know what I'm saying? - I know the brands and styles of the ones I have singles of.

I know it's a lot to ask of like, here, just find me matches, but if I was able to go to a place and say, I need one of these blue darn tough socks, I need one of these whatever hiking socks, I would pay the discount. I don't want to buy another pair because then I have three, not one. - Yes. - Yeah, no? Or I have a pair of Keens where my dog chewed on one of them and the buckle thing is all torn up and stuff. I would replace just one of them if I could.

I guess if they had a refurbishment, I could do that. But yeah, sometimes things are damaged beyond repair for just one of two things. Your mittens, I went skiing years ago and I tore up one of my gloves holding onto the tow rope too long and the other one's fine still, but I guess I'm just gonna throw away both of them because one of them's all screwed up. I would buy a single glove from that company.

- What if, Leo, instead of trying to replace the glove, you sent, like, Ally has a basket of one socks, right? What if you sent the whole basket of gloves, socks, whatever, and they, I guess this is recycling again, but they turned it into something that you wanted, right? So they took your stuff, they took your materials and turned it into a blanket or, yeah. - I was gonna say, the company that does the T-shirt blankets. - Sock blanket. (laughs) This is my old sweaty socks. Isn't it great?

Snuggle up. - Sure, there's a very specific audience on the internet for that, so. - Yeah, right now. (laughs) - The same people who buy Gamer Girl bath water, I think. - That's what I was going for earlier with the one sock thing. Like, people would just buy the sock as long as you didn't clean it, you know? (laughs) - Oh no, they don't want it clean. - Yeah, I was gonna say. - Not at all, right, yeah.

- All right, Ally, what have you brought for us this week? - So I am a very ADHD person and I live by the to-do list. But as an ADHD person, I also have the object permanence of an infant. If I don't see it, it doesn't exist. Like, out of sight, out of mind is very real. I want a visual to-do list where I can take a picture of the chore I need to do. The dirty dishes in the sink, the laundry basket of clothes, the bag I need to go to Old Navy and return.

And I want, maybe we've got all these AI advancements, it can make me a to-do list, but I want a to-do list app where I can take a picture of the chore I need to do and then it'll make me a to-do list and I'll have all its little pictures of the things so I can look at it and be like, oh yeah, I need to walk back to the kitchen and do my dishes. - Ooh. - You can swipe right and swipe left on the pictures of the things I need to do. That's for tomorrow, that's for tomorrow.

Oh no, I'll do that one now. - Well, the other idea I had, kind of like thinking of it, is I would love it if then I could put like a timer on the to-do item and then it would buzz me, be like, hey, this is a chore you need to do today. Buzz me like 8.30, like hey, you're gonna get ready for bed, go do your dishes. - This is what your dishes look like, Ali. - Scott, is there some kind of physical product that you could recommend that-- - Ali, I love this so much.

I have struggled with ADD the entire life. I just got this in the mail yesterday. This is a board I have been designing that is literally, I put, so describing this out loud, it's just a rectangular board with different spots on it to put tasks, things I need to do daily, weekly, whatever. I have LEDs on one side that'll light up when it is time to do that task. It is Sunday night, you need to take out the trash and this LED will light up on it.

When it is completed, I hit the button to be like it is done and the LED turns off and goes on. And I wanna combine this with what you're saying, which is just like I can take a picture of something of, that's just the easiest way. Oh my God, there's something I need to do later. I take a quick snap of it and then it's already gone from my mind. I move down to the next thing. Combine it with something that literally shines in my face to be like you need to do this at this time now.

- Yes, that is exactly what I need. - I love that so much. So, okay, you have, Scott, you have the Ring cameras in your home, right? Could you use it to make the list so like you could see how dirty your dishes are and it sends you a picture of your dishes or your garbage can? Like this is, you know, like the state of your chore. - That's nuts. - The litter box has passed the threshold of dirty and now it's lit up. - I'm gonna have to put money in the AI swear jar.

We're not supposed to talk about AI here, but like, yes, Russell, you could, with everything that's been going on nowadays, like how hard could it be to train an AI to be like, tell me what's in this picture. Do you see a full garbage can or an empty garbage can? Throw that with some if this, then that, and be like, hey, it's time to take out the garbage or the dishes are piling up in the sink. It's time to do this.

- Hey, you need to go replace the toilet paper in the bathroom before you get in there and realize you need to replace the toilet paper in the bathroom. 'Cause I don't remember to do that when I'm done. I'm like, that is a problem for a future Ali. - Thousands of hours of toilet videos. - She said a hundred of these little automations in there. - The AI has to sift through those poor AI models. - If there's ever an AI uprising, they're gonna be pissed. - Literally pissed with water.

No, anyways, no, but that's a great example. - Have you ever just taken a picture of anything and uploaded it to chat GPT and then like, describe this to me and how much detail it'll go into of everything that's in that picture? - I see a Labrador slash Husky breed that is sitting on next to a fireplace that is this color and the blah, blah, blah. It just goes into so much detail.

It absolutely could tell if a trash can is full or if there's dishes in the sink or something or if the toilet paper needs to be refilled. - Yeah, exactly. - Going back to the to-do list, that would be so easy to like take a picture of something. And then if you want to have the picture to-do list, that's great, but you could have an AI program that would convert it to a text to-do list. - Yes, an actual task. - I love checking boxes and crossing things off on my to-do list.

It makes me feel like making my to-do list, I write make to-do list and I cross it off at the bottom 'cause it makes me feel productive. - That's cool. - Totally. - I've bounced off of task list apps before. And I think partly because of the friction of getting stuff into them. I don't want to like stop what I'm doing and remember to get it in there.

So if it was a quick, you know, take a picture of the thing and you're done as the input, that rules, like it'll figure out what you're trying to say actually. - Yes, it could even ask like the one confirmation. You take the picture and one confirmation pop up. Did you mean to do a task to do the dishes or something? You don't have to type anything. You just hit yes on there and move on. - Are you listening to do list or somebody?

- I could take a picture of my kitchen and be like, did you mean to do dishes? Check yes. Did you mean to wipe off counter? Yes, like. - Rapid fire, the seven different suggestions. Yes, no, no, yes, no. - The ability to just snap a picture. Oh, Ali, that is so good. - There's something there for sure. - I think the, like, so you know, when you see your completed checklist, you're like super sad. Imagine just a photo gallery of all your chores that you completed this week. How sad is that?

- It's like a green checkbox on all of them. - I love seeing the TikToks of like come clean with me and they do the before and after or like the time lapse of the cleaning. I will never do that. But if I had an app where it was like, take a picture of the chore and then when it's done, I can take another picture. And there was like a little animation that made me feel happy. Like, give me the dopamine, please. - Here's your year in review. You've cleaned 6,000 plates this year.

- Your week in review of your chores. But I mean, like, imagine, I think there's something actually incredibly psychological about training yourself to love doing chores by like getting multiple dopamine hits from one chore. Like, I think there's like a pro, like a literal mental programming that you can do, this app turns you into a chore machine. And now you're like, yeah, addicted to chores. I don't know.

- You could make it at a game, compete with your friends who has completed their dishes first tonight. Like, I challenge Scott, like, hey, who's gonna remember to take the trash out first? - Photo proof required. - Or you have a particularly like terrible chore and you're like, look at this dish pile. Like, you're just social. - The final boss. - Yeah, like taking the embarrassment out of dirty homes or whatever. You're like, my mess today, my mess tomorrow. And it's like dirty clean, right?

Like something about the authentic elements of social media, you post about it, right? I don't know. - Well, if we wanna make this like more addictive, you add the social media component and you say like, oh my God, add me on like chorely.com. And then like your friends can comment like, you go girl, like vacuum that floor. - Whoa, what if, do you guys have like honey do lists? Are you, you know what I mean? Like, okay. - My husband works at a hardware store. My honey do list is very long.

- So like wives, let's say, will gamify their husbands into competitions. - Yes. - This one's worth 12 points. - This might be something. - This might need a whole nother spit ball here. Husbands are completely oblivious. They have no idea. - Yes. - Well, it's like how, you know, peer pressure as an adult is watching your neighbor mow their lawn. Be like, oh, my neighbor vacuumed today. I guess I should vacuum too.

- Guys, I think that like competitive honey do lists would, I think just, there might be a destruction of society, the fabric of society. - No, it would be so efficient. - Wives sitting on the couch, just manipulating their husbands into being meatheads against each other. That's great. - I think the momentum of it existing would just be like all of it. Like it wouldn't even be wives competing against each other at some point.

It would just turn into men competing against each other all of a sudden because wives started it and then it just, it's a mind of its own at that point because the male competitiveness. - Which has been their plan all along from the beginning. - Oh my gosh. That's a dangerous Spitball. Like I feel maybe. - That's a good one. - Ally, you're the, (laughing) Ally, Ally's sitting here like sitting on a billion dollar idea. Like I'm gonna turn every man into a chore machine through gamification.

- Competition. - Hey, I was just thinking about this for myself, but if I'm gonna get y'all to do the chores for me, bonus points. - Leo did more chores this week and now my wife's telling me about it and now I gotta fricking do 10,000 steps and do my chores. (laughing) - Of like a weekly leaderboard. - You're not measuring steps, you're measuring miles traveled holding a vacuum.

- You could get sponsors and then like on the weekly leaderboard, they could have like, "Oh, you've won like a $10 gift card. "Like take your wife out for coffee." - You just won the Windex Weekly Window Wiping Champion. - Yeah. - There's the ads. (laughing) - You've earned a date night. - Win a free Dyson vacuum. - Ooh, if I could win myself some like scrub daddies, I would be all for that. - Guys, is this like a thing that could happen?

Like this feels weirdly like, there are stupider apps, I guess is what I'm thinking that are more successful. Like way more stupid, way more successful. Like, I don't know. - We grew up in the generation where we had apps that were literally pretend Zippo lights on our phones. Do you guys remember that? - Fart apps and yeah. - Fart apps like. - These apps are all about the networking effect, right? You gotta have like other people on there to feel like there's a community there.

So how do you incentivize initial signups? - I mean, I think part of the social media element of that to be like, "Hey, add me on this app." - I think it starts as a to-do list. It evolves into the social media elements. So like you can't. - Reel them in with the picture thing, yeah. - And then you add like, "Share your chore with your friend." And then sharing your chore is, "Compete against your chore lists." Right? And then all of a sudden it turns into. - That's true.

- Husbands kill each other over chore lists. (laughing) - I'm gonna go throw a rock into my neighbor's window so they have an extra chore. I get ahead of them. - That's just more points. - Clean up the class. - No, that's cheating. - That's right. Neighbors are doing their husband's chores. - I was just gonna say, you wanna do their lawn and yours to get the bonus points and disincentivize them from getting the points this week. - I'm gonna shovel so many driveways this winter. - Exactly, right.

- That's the power of this app. I think there's something dangerous. - Competition, man. - See, but at the base of it, I really do just want a visual to-do list. And I want something where I can take a picture and then walk away, 'cause that is the amount of attention span I have. I take the picture, I go somewhere else, and then I still have the image where I can look at it. And be like, oh yeah, I didn't just forget about that 'cause I walked through a doorway.

- Facebook just started out as sharing pictures with their friends, and now look at them. Evil corporation. I'm just, Chorleys, Chorleys. - So many evil corporations tonight. - I guess so. - Just a couple steps in between. - No, I like the idea of a visual. I don't know why that's not a, it just seems like a accessibility thing too. - There's gotta be someone listening to that to-do list right now, or I don't know, Apple Reminders. That's gonna be at WWDC 2025. New feature to Reminders.

Take a photo, we'll use Apple intelligence to turn it into a task. - Or I think Ali's idea of being just photo-centric, like photo-forward instead of an add-on to an existing, it's just something's inherently different about that. And you have to, if you lean into the whole photo element, I think it's more different and fun, 'cause everybody has their own way to do to-do lists. And it's just, I don't know, the photos sound better.

- Well, and like Leo said before, my biggest problem with any to-do list app is the input element, where it just takes more time for me to input it into the phone, where if I could very quickly do it, it would be such a game changer. And a photo is the fastest way to do it. - We could do this with a Polaroid camera right now. Like just put the Polaroid on a stack of Polaroid tours. I don't know, that'd just be wasteful. There's the MVP, yeah, I guess, is the Polaroid camera.

(laughing) - Oh, one of my tasks was clean up Polaroid mess. That's right. - Taking a picture of the Polaroid. - It's a picture of the stack of pictures. - That's amazing.

- Thank you for listening, listener. We hope you enjoyed yourself, you new chore machine. And thank you, Ali, for being here. This was a lovely time. - Thank you for having me. - Our website is Spitball.show. There you can find links to our YouTube channel, social media, email us questions, comments, ideas. We'd love to hear from you or podcast@Spitball.show. That's also how you can follow us on the Fediverse, which is Mastodon. We are podcast@Spitball.show. And our subreddit is r/spitballshow.

Our intro/outro music is "Swingers" by Bonkers Beat Club. Please, if you wouldn't mind, take a break from your chore and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. I know you're doing the dishes right now, but would you mind drying your hands off and just real quick, hit that add button, leave us a review, it'd really help us. And it's the best way for people to find out about the show. A new episode is coming out in two weeks. We will see you then. (dramatic music)