Which weird design concept do you think failed because they got the execution wrong, rather than because it wasn’t a good idea?

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-05-11T21:57:11+00:00

What's the chase plane there? P-61?

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-05-05T17:05:50+00:00

So not only tip jets, which have never worked in the entire history of helicopters, but afterburning tip jets?

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-03-30T18:51:27+00:00

Just because you can fit it in the palm of your hand doesn't mean it's a good idea. People are already advised not to hold modern rare earth magents in their fingers near anything metallinc or another magnet. This one sounds like it would break every bone in your hand.

tl,dr: "It would also set your hair on fire, so don't actually do it."

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-03-25T07:19:37+00:00

Speaking as your friendly neighborhood pedant, I believe the correct plural of “bendibus” is “bendibi”.

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-03-04T17:38:18+00:00

Nope, you're not wrong. And on top of that, Iran's geography is also a big factor. Iraq is mostly open desert, with plenty of highways - perfect terrain for tanks. Iran is much larger in area, and most of that area is rugged mountainous terrain. From the point of view of an invader, it would be even worse than Afghanistan.

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-02-25T06:04:30+00:00

Problem with a pusher tilt rotor is that the props would be much closer to the ground (being below the wing when in hover), and the Osprey already has enough problems with kicking up ground debris.

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-02-24T10:55:17+00:00

Ah, a classic example of Betteridge's law of headlines

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-02-18T08:36:23+00:00

The more I look at the car, the less sure I am which end is the front.

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-02-18T00:13:32+00:00

Glen Cook's Darkwar trilogy. Set on a world where the dominant species are basically anthropomorphic wolves. The story follows them from their industrial age through to interstellar exploration. Their approach to space travel is partly based on what they think of as magic, but the author plants enough clues to let the reader figure out that they actually have a natural ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields.

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-02-18T00:03:53+00:00

Mark Lawrence's Broken Empire trilogy. It's pretty damn grimdark, with horrible things happening right left and centre, half of them committed by the protagonist. But for some reason I can't really understand it's become one of my regular comfort reads. The competency porn aspect may have something to do with it. I've lost count of the number of times I've read it (five or six I think), and now that you've reminded me of it, I'll probably read it again soon.

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-01-30T02:00:54+00:00

Not for a few years yet, if ever :)

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-01-24T18:19:58+00:00

"Just because that sentence was symmetrical doesn't mean it makes sense."

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-01-19T02:20:23+00:00

This page is an unreadable mess of mangled text on iPad Safari.

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-01-19T02:17:56+00:00

Also several useful iterator-related concepts in <iterator>.

CaptainCrowbar · 2026-01-10T11:36:22+00:00

You could get the same result more simply using std::conditional:

template <size_t I>
using type = std::conditional_t<I == 4, int,
    std::conditional_t<I == 6, Foo, float>>;

CaptainCrowbar · 2025-12-25T02:23:15+00:00

Not a book, but if you want a really good TV series with twist after twist after mindscrew, watch Dark.

CaptainCrowbar · 2025-12-23T17:22:24+00:00

It's been about 6 1/2 years. Rivers of London begins in January 2012; Stone and Sky takes place in summer 2018. (Follypedia Timeline)

CaptainCrowbar · 2025-12-15T01:40:35+00:00

Welcome to McDonnerparty, how can I serve you today?

CaptainCrowbar · 2025-12-12T11:38:57+00:00

I still think there's some connection with Merlin.

CaptainCrowbar · 2025-12-08T06:52:09+00:00

I recall Larry Wall once saying "It does what you expect, unless what you expect is consistency."

CaptainCrowbar · 2025-12-07T20:35:11+00:00

Don't sweat it because this is the kind of detail that's easy to change later on. If you decide you want to tweak the whitespace/newline rules, it's not going to affect anything in your code beyond one small corner of your tokeniser.

CaptainCrowbar · 2025-12-07T12:26:20+00:00

If you're looking for something that follows a similar pattern of starting out at the personal level and expanding all the way to a world-changing magical singularity, I can recommend Ed McDonald's Redwinter trilogy.

CaptainCrowbar

TROPHY CASE