Wow that would kill a lot of people where I grew up. Very efficient.
You are overestimating the danger of a punctured tire. It is easy to notice, usually gives you plenty of time (on the order of minutes) to come to a complete stop before the tire is deflated, and even after the tire is fully deflated it still allows you to stop relatively safely for a short while (until it is cut through completely). It would probably result in a few crashes (because in carbrained places many drivers don’t know how to operate a vehicle at all), but the worst outcome from this is ambulances/firetrucks being stuck in traffic jams.
I was thinking starvation, due to food deserts in the too-big suburbs. (lots of roads, so I’m not sure what cleanup time would look like. I guess with good prioritization maybe folks could get groceries along the highways?)
Ah yeah, that makes sense. However, if all roads are fully jammed, most people would be able to walk to a grocery store - it’s likely not insanely far away from you (quick search suggests average straight-line distance to a grocery shop in the US is ~4 km = 50 min, which sounds very far away from a non-US perspective but still not completely unreachable), it’s just that usually there’s a highway full of traffic between you and the store.
Or like a 10-15 min bike ride, probably use the pavement or go off road until the spikes are cleared up
I’m assuming not many suburbanites have bikes.
Well then buy one, you can probably get one that is good for a while for less than your monthly car payment.
My city is fairly large and their recreational projects usually have budgets in the 10s of millions. I don’t think there is much I can do on that front. That being said, I think this question could be better framed as “to make your community a better place to live”. From that angle, I would have to get in touch with my HOA (I know) and see about opening a community garden with that initial investment.
That’s likely the best anyone can do with that amount of money.
Drop a bunch of solar meshtashtic nodes on roofs in waterproof casings.
Free Citywide Cell Service basically. Fuck the telecoms. 😁
Very little you could do to a city with 10k. Probably feed a bunch of people for a little while.
Donate it to the library or a local food bank. Simple community building.
I’ll echo food banks. $10,000 isn’t much money for a municipality of more than 100 people, but a food bank might be where that money goes the furthest.
Knowing from my local outfit, while they would of course accept a donation of actual food bought with that money, they can do much more with the money than the food it buys in the grocery shops.
They do that by reaching out to vendors themselves and getting discounts that would put Costco out of business. I once heard that monetary donations being stretched 5x is typical, oftentimes going 10x or more.
Skate park.
We had one when I was young but it got demolished to build a supermarket. It was devastating.10,000 is probably not enough. So:
- I would invest said money for a few years, in order to make it a lot more money and now:
- fund a trust for our local public library to become 100% independent from any power grab/censoring/book banning temptation. And, nope, it wouldn’t matter the slightest from what political side or from what moral ground said attempt would originate from.
- Promote reading among the general population. Focusing on the younger generations, because they’re our future and, even though it’s starting to fade away, they’re supposed to be the ones willing to make the effort of learning and be educated, but I would also not exclusively cater to younger people. I mean, unlike with kids, I tend to think that given a chance a vast majority of adults would hardly change their behavior/opinions, as they’re already set in their path and most of them are way too proud to ever admit they could have been wrong, but I would still want to give them the opportunity.
Edit: typos.
Honestly right now food is at an all time high, finding local food banks would be top of the list.
If I also had a fair bit of time, community micro-grants are my favorite. Solicit ideas for improvements, offering 100-1000 bucks each. Select several, widely publicize what will be done.
Next favored, run a citizen assembly on a community issue (if you can do it cheap, have some money to allocate as an agenda item).
Finally, if the point is to ask what I want done… Right now it is probably homeless shelters and food pantries in the US. Lots of grants drying up.
Try to get the bike route blocked off for through vehicle traffic around the area where I was disabled.
I wasn’t on the actual bike route. I had detoured to stop by a bank on my way to work, but the way I chose to get back to the bike route was to just take the highway because the traffic on the bike route is not a significant safety improvement worth an extra quarter mile of additional distance. If the route had no vehicle through traffic, I would have gone out of my way. There are several points where blocking traffic makes no difference. The only people driving that way are fools following nav systems, people that are lost, and asshats that have no spacial logic skills.
Other than that, probably give the money to the thrift store charity men’s shelter here in town.
I’d rather allocate that $10k to some kind of feasibility study, to see what really should be prioritized when a much bigger budget is made available, since I don’t really trust myself to know what an entire town really needs urgently
But if I had to be selfish, maybe we could fund an OpenStreetMap mapathon to help improve the online map of the town
Could not only improve ease of navigation of the town, but also get a clearer idea of how the space is used, which may give better insight on what might be worth redesigning in a larger project
The problem with 10,000 is that any contractor is going to want to make a minimum profit of 10,000 as soon as they know it’s for the government.
So I’d have to pay myself that $10,000 and go around fixing dead traffic lights.
IDK how much one of those billboards with the rotating ad strips that come together to make up and ad would cost to rent out ad space on, but maybe advertising positive affirmations would probably be the best I can do with that amount. At least from what comes to mind right away. I live close enough to one at a busy intersection that I could watch people and see how they react to them.
As much as I hate ads and billboards, I will admit they can be effective considering I always watched that specific billboard growing up whenever I passed by it.
Buying books for public schools directly, specifically for regular and SPED classes because our Department of Education is corrupt.
I remember being in the regular class of public highschool and seeing that there’s only one highly used book per 10 people. Sure the sections “for smart kids” were complete in books, often updated, but regular and special ed students were often lacking resources, and the Department Head of SPED even told me that the higher ups of the school were prejudiced against SPED students, and they couldn’t get funding for those students even for talent show events because a higher up said, “they have no future, so why bother?”, the specific reason I was contacted because I was identified as a Special Needs learner who had a bright (conventional) academic future as well as achievements, so I was encouraged to help the Department in proving prejudice otherwise.
I felt it was unfair that all the investments of education were to be given to already highly performing children. The reason why I wasn’t even in those sections for smart kids is because I was 1 or 2 points below the required report card grade in elementary, and that was when my mental health barely recovered from bullying. The reason I was bullied was due to classist bullshit (was relatively poor in a private school) and being neurodivergent.
Id contact those people who make those speed panels. If you don’t know what that is, its a panel showing your speed, in green up to 30, then red, then like “Warning” if faster. People are supposed to be sensitivised to the fact they are driving over the speed limit.
I’d pay them to add a flash that triggers every time someone goes over 35. Just a flash, like the real radars have.
