#Problem Validation

[armendez21]

Week 3: Commuters Interview

In our 3rd week of interviews, we have encountered more student commuters. This we have heard students and its challenges faced that somehow relate us as fellow students.

Emilio, as a student living in Calaanan can get to school a lot easier because the morning rush, combined with traffic, is no longer a problem with the new ticketing system in place. The only problem Emilio faces is overloading, which can be discomforting as people are forced to be sardined together. Sometimes, the air condition on the bus is not working, or the bus driver is overly aggressive with the speed limit.

Casandra, Lyka, Judie, and Marc Lester; these commuters face challenges with buses. The buses often accept standing passengers even when seats are fully occupied. Conductors sometimes dictate seating, and Marc Lester highlights the wait times for buses in his area, which takes up his time.

Jewel, a student who commutes by bus for round trips. Her routine is easy, thanks to familiar conductors, but she observes that buses often claim to have more space than they do, leading to overcrowding and discomfort for elderly passengers.

Cindy, a student who commutes, it takes 5-10 minutes each way. She feels uncomfortable when buses have standing passengers, and she encounters fast-driving bus drivers. Mornings are particularly challenging due to rush hour.

This another week of interview ended with an insights that can help us in our problem validation. It highlights diverse experiences, making the interview session both enlightening and informative.

[first-interview]

Business Idea Validation: What People Really Need

Every Business Idea is a solution to a problem. Regardless of the size, whether that problem is small or big, they have mission to address a specific need or challenge. However, the world is full of problems waiting to be solved, and identifying the right one is not always easy. With this in mind, we came up with four startup business ideas and conducted interviews to understand which problem resonates the most with people and holds the greatest potential for impact.

The Idea That Stood Out: PlastiCash

After analyzing the feedback, we found that one particular idea stood out the most—PlastiCash. This concept revolves around a system where people receive money or rewards in exchange for properly disposing of plastic bottles. While similar initiatives exist in other countries, they are not widely implemented in the Philippines. To better understand public perception, we asked interviewees about their plastic consumption habits, their willingness to recycle if given incentives, and the challenges that make recycling difficult for them and their communities.

Public Opinion

Most interviewees had a favorable opinion of the idea, particularly because of its reward-based approach. Many agreed that financial incentives could encourage people to recycle more actively. However, concerns were also raised, including the cost of implementation, financial sustainability, and inventory management. Some participants also pointed out that a major challenge lies in human behavior—many people tend to throw plastic waste away without segregation simply because it's more convenient. This insight suggests that while a reward-based system is appealing, additional efforts such as awareness campaigns and making the process more accessible may be necessary to encourage long-term participation.

Through this process, we learned that while many business ideas aim to address real problems, the most effective ones are those that resonate with people's behaviors and needs. The feedback we gathered provided valuable perspectives that will help refine the idea and make it more practical and impactful.

[egophiliac]

one last batch of Scully Js for the road before Malleus eats my brain again

let's all pour one out for the King of Halloween, whose only crime was being born a Hot Topic goth before Hot Topic existed for him to shoplift his Jack Skellington merch from (and also the whole turning people into pumpkins thing I GUESS) (look, nobody's perfect)

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF movie Mike and Michael meet their younger selves..

[inkskinned]

hey btw if you're in the USA at  2:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Oct. 4, they're testing the emergency broadcast system. your phone is probably going to make a really loud noise, even if it's on silent. there's a backup date on the 11th if they need to postpone it.

if you're not in a safe situation and have an extra phone, you should turn that phone completely off beforehand.

additionally, if you're like me, and are easily startled; i recommend treating it like a party. have a countdown or something. be surrounded by your loved ones. take the actions you personally need to take to make yourself safe.

i have already seen mockery towards any person who feels nervous about this. for the record, it completely, completely valid to have "emergency broadcast sounds" be an anxiety trigger. do not let other people make fun of you for that. emergency sounds are legitimately engineered to make us take action; those of us with high levels of anxiety and/or neurodivergence are already pre-disposed to have a Bad Time. sometimes it is best to acknowledge that the situation will be triggering for some, and to prepare for that; rather than just saying "well that's stupid, it's just a test."

"loud scary sound time" isn't like, my favorite thing, but we can at least try to prevent some additional anxiety by preparing for it. maybe get yourself a cake? noise cancelling headphones? the new hozier album? whatever helps. love u, hope you're okay. we are gonna ride it out together.

[demigods-posts]

no but imagine percy who inherited his mom's beachwave brown, shoulder length hair as a kid. and all of his classmates and teachers thinking he's a girl and referring to him as such. and he doesn't correct them because he thinks it means they find him pretty. and he likes feeling pretty like his mom. then gabe makes him cut his hair in the second grade. and finds he likes the short hair and feeling handsome too. but he also really misses feeling pretty sometimes. and it isn't until after gabe mysteriously dissapears that he grows it out again and reconciles switching between both.

[nebulo-philiac]

We gotta stop pretending that the "censorship/antishipper" movement is run by dumbass children when most of the people who actively participate on there are GROWN ASS ADULTS who say stuff like this, this person has 25+ on their bio😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[ontheoutside-lookingin]

Some chronic pain memes for extra hurty times

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[sunny-knight]

MASSIVE DELTARUNE SPOILERS

I need to talk about that ending.

Correction- WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THAT ENDING-

This is…such a genius scene that seems so simple, but HAS SO MUCH BAGGAGE WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT. When I first saw it I felt the weirdest combination of emotions ive ever felt in my entire life and now I can’t stop thinking about this moment, so heres an attempt at putting those thoughts into words!

What makes it so interesting is that… yes, it is VERY FUNNY, AND an epic win for Soriel shippers…but…it feels so WRONG,

Kris and Susie were presumed MISSING well into the night, and Toriel seems to not even notice because of her drunkenness. Its incredibly irresponsible on her half, as she’s so distracted by “just having a little fun” (Queen Mom theorists be winning, Toriel has a drinking problem confirmed/hj)

The entire time I was laughing while going “oooooo….” Toriel thats not it girl. And when Susie left, the way Sans completely dismissed her and went “party back on yippee” also felt very off. Kris’ reaction to everyhing makes me so sad and put on edge by the whole thing, IT IS A GREAT SET UP TO THEIR OPINION ON THEIR HOME LIFE, THATS FOR SURE. At some point when Susie looks at Kris, they look away too, and when Toriel falls down they just walk away and refuse to go anywhere but their bedroom. which is just UGHHH I feel so bad for them, they’re tired of this shit

Tenna saying “We’re a happy family RIGHT KRIS???” and the whole Dark World in their house being centered around ACTING and being an ACTOR… hm.

AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON PAPYRUS- This bits more my own biases, but it makes me sad imagining him being all alone in a messy house all night like this poor bastard 😭

theres just SO MUCH TENSION from Kris’ end, its so…ugh. The entire thing screams irresponsibility. It is insane tonal whiplash, but not for the funny reasons some may think on first viewing i think. From my perspective it went from somber pain, to more like…oh god. this sucks. so hard.

My opinion on Soriel has never been strong in either direction, but now I am just FASCINATED cause from this scene it feels like- toxic??? they’re enabling each others bad habits, like on the surface it seems innocent but in hindsight its incredibly irresponsible on Toriels half, and only maybe on Sans’, we still dont know his and Papyrus’ whole situation or anything.

But yeah I love when relationships are complicated and not always healthy! gives ME MORE TO ANALYZE

[sofiisx]

Real

[blackkatdraws2]

[ORV] Happy (late) Father's Day to Han Myungoh. Spread the word for Men's Mental Health Awareness Month



[essektheylyss]

Losing it over the fact that Caduceus was ready to Bane and Zone of Truth Braius if he didn't seem like he was going to be forthright. He seems from an external perspective like he's being kinder than, say, Fjord and Beau, but he is just as prepared to be mean in pursuit of growth. Do not ever forget that Caduceus, for all he makes an effort to come across as kind and helpful, is every bit a member of the Mighty Nein. And the Mighty Nein are so ruthless and such bastards and I love them for it.

[sapphicdalliances]

My friends always tease me for defending murder when I say this but I genuinely think it's relevant that the setting (both the world at large and the specific period of conflict much of the story covers) of MDZS has a much higher baseline of violence than our own. Purposeful combat (with intent to kill or injure), corporal punishment, and killing of others are all more normalised to the characters than to us in the 21st century

Which is just to say that JGY's various crimes really should be interpreted within the framework of how his world worked, and in essence killing his commander is not equivalent in severity to killing his assistant branch manager would be in a modern AU

Which is to say, I honestly don't believe JGY would really consider murder to be an option in any regular old modern AU? Like both from a logistical and a moral perspective

[levemetal]

@sillyxaly suggested Jw adopting SJ and it was too fun to brainrot about with @ace-shenanigans too.

Rest assured, no matter the au variation, as long as SJ is adopted by a tgcf character, he shall be the bane of Jw's existence and make him consider early retirement.

[mindfulstudyquest]

❥﹒♡﹒☕﹒ 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀

𝟭. travel ( ✈️ )

2024 took away many travel opportunities from me. i was supposed to go to barcelona with my family, but my grandfather passed away, and we stayed in italy to handle the funeral. i was supposed to travel to sofia with my cousin, but one of my exams was rescheduled to a date i couldn’t possibly miss, so i had to give up the trip. lastly, i was planning to go to valencia to celebrate my birthday, but a flood disrupted the city, and i couldn't go anymore.

in short, it was a frustrating year in this regard — i lost a lot of money and, most importantly, many opportunities to travel, which i believe has significantly inhibited me in this area. while i used to be much more inclined to book last-minute trips when the chance to travel on a budget arose, now i feel much more anxious about doing so.

i want 2025 to be filled with travels. i want to fully take advantage of the opportunities that circumstances beyond my control stole from me in 2024.

𝟮. keep my life even more private ( 🔒 )

it's been years now since i completely disappeared from social media. i no longer post photos or updates about my life online as if i were an influencer, and my daily life has significantly improved without the pressure to appear a certain way online. life is truly better when no one knows anything about you.

however, in real life, i'm quite the chatterbox, and i often find myself oversharing without even realizing it. that said, because i strongly believe in the evil eye, i've learned that, even if i have to bite my tongue, i can't share projects that are not yet completed — not even with the people closest to me, not even if i'm 100% sure they would be happy for me.

in fact, even though i cut off toxic people from my life two years ago, other friendships i thought were strong have ended this year. i want to live a peaceful, private life, even if that means staying silent. show results rather than plans.

𝟯. meditate and journal ( 🪴 )

i started this year (2024) well with this kind of self-care, but i completely lost it around may. i'll try again in 2025, hoping i can stick to it. if not, see you in 2026.

𝟰. indulge in healthy female friendships ( 🩷 )

two years ago, i cut ties with many toxic friendships that were holding me down and keeping me from healing. since then, i've been mostly alone, except for a few surviving connections i kept after high school. when i started university, i made new friendships, but they were very superficial and always centered around university matters.

however, since moving to spain, i've really understood which people were just taking from me without truly being interested in me as a person. in return, though, these past few months i've met some truly amazing girls in madrid, and i want to let myself indulge in that beautiful feminine energy that only girl friendships can give. wine and cheese in front of an episode of gilmore girls while you cut out pictures for your vision board.

𝟱. eat healthier ( 🥗 )

these past few months have been a rollercoaster with food. i've prepared a lot of homemade meals, but i've also ordered out quite often. i don't see anything wrong with ordering takeout or eating out with friends, but since it often happened when i was alone and didn't feel like cooking, i want to try to organize my cooking better and eat as many homemade meals as possible. of course, i won’t deprive myself of lunches and dinners out with friends, but i want to limit takeaway food to social occasions, not to lonely sundays.

it's been less than two years since i got out my ed and i want to keep the happy and healthy relationship with food i gained with so much hard work.

𝟲. keeping up with goals reached last year ( ☁️ )

obviously, all the work i’ve done over the past few years won’t go to waste! i want to persevere with the good habits i’ve developed and the work i’ve done on myself. the past few years have been strange and full of changes, but i feel like it’s all been positive. i’m happy with where i’ve gotten to and the person i’ve become, but i know i still have a long way ahead of me.

happy new year's eve everyone 🎉 which goals are you planning to reach?