RetroFedDetroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport has a short story machine. You push a button, and it prints a story for you.
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ickplant
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I’m sad that I assumed this was a slop machine.
Local authors. Excellent.
They had a little blurb about the author at the bottom. I was impressed with the whole concept.
The machine is on the right-hand side by the wall immediately after you pass through security. There is a button for Child, Young Adult, and Adult. You press the button, and the story is printed out on a sturdy, long piece of paper.
I freaking love stuff like this!
Is this by the TSA checkpoint right at the top of the stairs or the overflow one below?
I am not that familiar with that airport, I believe it’s the overflow one because it was super empty, and I had to go down the escalator to get there. It’s the checkpoint by the Southwest counter.
That’s Concourse D, which isn’t attached to A or B/C. I wonder if they have one near those gates, too.
Looks like its this. https://short-edition.com/en/p/short-story-dispenser
Wish it was open sourced.
Yes, this is it! I didn’t have time to grab a pic, thank you for finding it.
Do you want to open source the stories or the machine?
The concept is good but technically it seems dead easy: three buttons, a raspberry pi or similar and a thermal printer connect via usb.
Does sound like a fun little project. Probably a DB or two online with an API to fiddle with.
I just want instructions to follow. I can maybe for the hardware but finding the stories is another thing.
I see their site has links to all the stories but I’m not sure how to call one at random and format out only the story.
My local library has one of these as well! Super neat.
Have you ever heard the tale of Darth Plagueis the wise?
Who hasn’t? In fact, Anakin’s thesis analyses the underlying dichotomy…
Came across one of these in the lobby of a hotel in Québec. My wife pressed the “English” button and got a cute little printout. Figuring this would be a good opportunity to practice my French, I pressed the “Français” button and the machine spit out a story the length of a CVS receipt.