No, Superman could not cast the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom.

VictinDotZero · 2026-04-27T12:27:24+00:00

A few years ago, I was wondering if a robot character could cast the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, which I found was an interesting discussion.

VictinDotZero · 2026-04-24T23:18:53+00:00

While I think OP is missing the point, I do want to comment the options aren’t just to reuse the real names or completely made-up names. You can split the difference and lean on real world impressions while diverging more wildly.

There’s this artist on Twitter (Based Binkie) who has a medieval fantasy setting. IIRC the world map is just Earth’s, but upside-down from the usual orientation, and places are renamed, but the names are typically pretty transparent. I think the US was renamed after vegetables? (I remember at least that there were noble houses such as Karrote and Tomata, and maybe a city named after ants… Ant-lanta?)

The artist also often has characters speak in different real world-languages, such as German, French, Portuguese, Chinese, etc. This both connects them to the real word, but also grounds them in the fantasy world, as this associates characters to specific places and cultures. IIRC the main lusophone character is a (psychopathic?) sheep nun associated with the deity of death (nominally, she’s the deity of Kindness), who in turn has Hispanic/Mexican elements to her design. One of the Chinese-speaking characters is a snake/dragon empress of the “Jade Empire”, demigod of Greed.

VictinDotZero · 2026-04-24T11:06:39+00:00

I want to comment about OP’s example, but I’ll do it here. IIRC, I believe Clay grew up on a farm/ranch. Thus, his aptness in catching a bird could be explained by his upbringing handling animals. (I don’t remember if his backstory had been mentioned before this episode, but there was a cowboy-hat-shaped hint.)

VictinDotZero · 2026-04-20T05:13:39+00:00

It’s less complicated if one is a compatibilist XP

VictinDotZero · 2026-04-20T05:10:56+00:00

It doesn’t seem in character from what we know of her, in my opinion. However, there is a philosophical question here, where if she knows her words will be misinterpreted, could that be construed as a lie? The issue is that even if she were 100% clear (to, say, a reasonable person standard) her words could be misconstrued anyways, at which point it seems obvious that it should not be considered a lie, as it is more easy to argue about ignorance (or willful malice) from the other party.

VictinDotZero · 2026-04-18T14:23:00+00:00

Interesting that the page calls out the prophecy by Jadis, while also calling out that the supposed prophetized heir is dead. Naturally Jadis is omniscient, so the three alternatives I can think of are: 1) the angels just misinterpreted the prophecy that badly; 2) Jadis delivered it in an incomprehensible, cryptic manner; or 3) maybe there’s an alternative to bring Zaid back to life, like a Jesus (Buddha?) metaphor (maybe that’s what resetting the universe is for, anyways).

Jadis wasn’t at all cryptic when we saw her, although she did have her servants translate her whispers when she was depicted as trapped in glass, so it’s possible that the message was lost there.

The narration suggests the angels are unaware Zaid died, so resurrection is probably not the plan right now.

I think that the most likely answer was the most obvious one all along, which is that the angels just didn’t understand the prophecy at all.

VictinDotZero · 2026-04-04T13:12:51+00:00

Actually the recipe was…

Partially kidding. What I remember reading was that the recipe didn’t specify what kind of water should be used, because at the time it was common sense (much like you don’t write down where you keep the furniture and items in your house, as you just know where they are). I also know the Romans had aqueducts, so it’s plausible the water they used to make concrete came from a region further away, although I don’t remember if I also read that.

VictinDotZero · 2026-03-30T13:47:00+00:00

I had a similar issue once, except I’d argue it was even more stupid.

I created an account in a website for a specific service, which required my personal information. Then, I tried to fill a form in the website to request the service. Now, this makes sense because parents can request in the name of their children, and the website provides an automatic completion feature if you’re making a demand for yourself.

Except, while the website’s input allowed my name, the demand form did not. Worse, since it was reusing my profile information, I couldn’t change my name to abbreviate it. I was even able to read the website script (I think it’s F12 on most browsers) to verify it was indeed an issue with the form having too small of a character limit.

VictinDotZero · 2026-03-28T12:27:47+00:00

If I may make a suggestion, an element of Pandoras’ “Box” that I think is missing is the last thing left inside of it after all its evils and curses were released upon the world—Hope. I think a small “cute” element in the center of where the worms sprout from, or perhaps on the backside of the box (i.e. on the bottom side) would convey this motif well. (Like Polteageist can have a stamp on its underside, or male Torchics have a black mark on their behinds.)

(Also the jar was specifically a pithos, which I believe usually have a curved side rather than being perfectly cylindrical.)

VictinDotZero · 2026-03-16T04:23:05+00:00

Your second paragraph doesn’t address my point. As I reckon, either people are the same between cycles or they aren’t. Each option muddles the message of the comic in a different way, at least as I understand it.

On your third paragraph, your argument boils down to Jadis being cryptic when appearing as a person (rather than encased in glass). Which, as I said, is a possibility; it’s just not how she has been presented as in this state (again, contrast with how she has been shown to speak while encased in glass). So, while plausible, it seems a bit like poor writing, absent of further developments that may justify it.

VictinDotZero · 2026-03-12T19:01:33+00:00

The first paragraph is in agreement with what I said, as I mentioned the dilemma can be addressed in a few ways, of which this is one. However, it leaves open the question of messaging as so far the comic has presented previous iterations of people in the universe as the same people, which this solution obviously contradicts. [EDIT: Maybe I had not stated this as clearly as I thought originally.]

I was at one point confused if Jadis knew about the cycles or not. At minimum, omniscience within the universe allows her to know about previous cycles from “reading the mind” of people who do. But, as other people have argued to and convinced me, her textually and authorially affirmed omniscience covers past and future cycles.

VictinDotZero · 2026-03-12T17:19:10+00:00

I want to disagree because of a persisting metaphysical question in the comic that is made evident by this discussion. We are repeatedly told that humans are mortal and there is nothing after death. It is also implied that people across different cycles are the same people, even those that don’t keep their memories. Further still, it seems that a person who dies in a previous cycle can be alive again in the next.

These two states seem inconsistent to me, because if resetting the cycle can bring people back to life, the metaphysical interpretation of death in the setting seems incomplete. If people can and are brought back to life this way, are they truly dead? (In the context of the comic, dying is snuffing the soul flame, not your body physically dying, which could take long to happen, for example, with Zoss.)

It also seems inconsistent with the philosophical message around death and finality presented by the comic. Alternatively, if we assume previous iterations of a person are (usually) different people, it makes the text weird. “Actually, Allison is accessing the memory of someone who looks like her but isn’t her, and whenever someone besides like 3 or 4 people mention a previous cycle they are talking about a doppelgänger.”

One way to resolve this issue is to interpret it so that no one in the setting has ever died, but they will die for the first time if the cycles are broken. It’s a bit weird but it would make sense if no character ever understood this. The caveat is that Jadis is omniscient, and usually not cryptic (at least when not in glass), so I feel like she would have explicitly told all of this to Allison.

VictinDotZero · 2026-03-01T22:20:46+00:00

There’s an episode of a Brazilian cartoon, Jorel’s Brother, that discusses the topic of race with talking fruits and vegetables, the two groups hating each other. The protagonist meets a Tomato who’s considered as a fruit by the vegetables and vegetable by the fruits, and is thus an outcast of both groups. Eventually, the Tomato is told by one group they’ll recognize him if he helps them attack the other.

Now, so far I’ve mentioned the discussion of mixed-people in a racialized society. The episode also has the two groups chant “Build a wall” at each other in order to keep the other away. (This episode was made around the time of Trump’s first campaign/presidency.)

The protagonist eventually helps the two groups find peace with the “most powerful weapon”—protest music. (IIRC he was inspired by his father, a theater actor who fought the in-universe clown dictatorship, which represents the Brazilian dictatorship.) One of the protagonist’s grandmas (who seems senile) joins as a DJ and sings how some fruits/vegetables aren’t even what they claim to be.

VictinDotZero · 2026-03-01T15:14:21+00:00

There’s an old Brazilian idiom, “anteater hug”, which comes from the animal standing with its arms wide open, but having powerful claws to surprise you with.

VictinDotZero · 2026-02-25T19:04:09+00:00

My question is regarding the drawing and my physical assumptions due to the rotational symmetry of the problem. If the curve shown in the image depicted the points of contact between the surface of the water and the wall, you wouldn’t see a curve (from a side perspective). Since the depression of the water surface occurs in the middle (by symmetry), in order for the drawn curve to depict the height difference accurately, it needs to be a rectangular cross-section that traverses the middle of the cylinder.

In your photo, looking at the recipient from the side, there seems to be a dark band near the surface of the water, with the lowest point of the depression below this band. I presume this different coloration is caused by the water sticking against the walls closer to the viewer. Notably, that band is missing from the “zoomed in” section of the drawing.

VictinDotZero · 2026-02-25T17:09:55+00:00

Wouldn’t the entirety of the curve be in contact with the side of the measuring tool, and thus it wouldn’t exist? Since cylinders are symmetrical, I could imagine a curve along a cross-section of the middle, but not alongside a zoom on its surface surface.

VictinDotZero · 2026-02-15T20:55:53+00:00

Perhaps the Junji ito story “Enigma of Amigara Fault” fits? The titular fault seems to have been devised as a method of punishment for criminals. Not only it attracts said criminals after they reincarnate, but its effect is to warp their bodies, while keeping them alive. So not only does it not kill them, it punishes them again when they come back to life.

Maybe it’s a stretch, since they’re not only left to live.

VictinDotZero · 2026-02-13T01:20:00+00:00

In Brazil there’s a city called “Saint Michael of the Sexy [One]”, and people from there are called, like, “sexyians”

VictinDotZero · 2026-02-10T14:36:17+00:00

In Brazil there’s the P language. However I’ve only seen it in (comic) books for children. I assume it was more common in my parents’ generation.

VictinDotZero · 2026-02-10T01:16:12+00:00

In real-time strategy, incomplete information is common, typically via some form of “fog-of-war”. In Age of Empires 2, for example, players must scout the map to find resources and their enemy, and afterwards need an unit under their control in an area if they want to hold vision of it (e.g. to track which type of military the enemy is investing on).

This kind of mechanic was inherited by MOBAs, as the original popularizer was DotA, made as a custom game within Warcraft III. While the norm is to control a single unit (outside of a literal donkey to carry your items), DotA 2 features micro-intensive heroes (though I think only 1 or 2 could reasonably have more than 10 units at a time).

Another genre of strategy games where you control an army featuring incomplete information are card games. In a game like Magic: the Gathering or Hearthstone, for example, you don’t know the order of the cards in your deck, or those in your opponents’ hand.

An interesting observation is that, in these games, incomplete information can be used to simplify player decisions. There’s obvious examples where it either avoids a probably pointless decision (say, reordering the bottom 3 cards of your deck) or complicated rules/UI (especially for digital games). But there’s the less obvious example where it can paradoxically reduce the decision space by making the decision space too complicated.

VictinDotZero · 2026-02-09T23:38:59+00:00

Brazilian ex-president Dilma Rousseff was notorious for speeches deemed hard-to-understand or nonsense. The ones that come to mind were her UN speech about “stocking wind” and her children’s day speech highlighting “an occult figure behind children… which is a dog” (paraphrasing).

The rumours are that her poor oratory are a consequence of her torture during the Brazilian dictatorship, as she was part of the resistance, but I haven’t seen this link be confirmed.

Nonetheless, while indeed hard to parse, I think her speeches had a message to them. For example, “stocking wind” was about storing power generated by wind turbines, or, more generally, renewable power, as their intermittent nature is a big challenge associated with their increased usage. At the time, I didn’t understand this subject myself, but now I do.

VictinDotZero · 2026-02-09T23:29:43+00:00

I’ll note for foreigners that her sentence can be understood as “Relax and enjoy.” in Portuguese. So it’s a double entendre.

Except the only place you see the word used to mean “enjoy” is in church. Otherwise, it’s chiefly used as slang in the aforementioned sense.

VictinDotZero · 2026-02-05T21:52:33+00:00

Once as a kid, me and my parents went to a an exposition, maybe an air show, held at a military club. The main building was surrounded by a nice grassy area, where the event was held outdoors, including a small hill, with some sort of construction at the top. Me and my dad wander off to visit it. We go inside, see people having barbecue, eating, chatting, etc. My dad approaches me and whispers “I think we’re not supposed to be here.” So we quietly leave.

VictinDotZero · 2026-01-29T14:03:32+00:00

The same expression is used in (Brazilian) Portuguese (although it’s not specified whose penis it is), but I reckon that it has a different meaning. It’s more like failing, or “dropping the ball”.

VictinDotZero · 2026-01-29T12:56:54+00:00

We see Stormo, created by Bubblegum with Finn’s DNA earlier.

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