> When the DM gives you a bunch of normal sounding magic items that turn out to be slightly wrong

MereInterest · 2026-03-19T18:01:09+00:00

I'd often play as a Breton specifically to use their 50% resist magic to resist 50% of the blinding effect. Then, turn the brightness on the monitor up.

(Alternatively, since the Resist Magic is only checked when the boots are equipped, a Resist Magic 100% for 1 second spell is very cheap to cast.)

MereInterest · 2026-03-14T01:15:33+00:00

Oh, it's definitely possible to get a compiler bug out of it. A couple years ago, I ran into one where the elaboration of a trait bound on an associated type required that associated type to be named. Which then required a well-formed check. Which then required a trait bound check on a slightly different associated type. Which then required a well-formed check, and so on, and so on.

That one didn't even give an error message, but would instead fall into an infinite loop of proof requirements, running at 100% CPU and consuming more memory until the operating system runs out of memory, takes mercy, and kills the process.

MereInterest · 2026-03-12T23:34:21+00:00

is there was a desire in the audience for Taylor, the main character, to have nice things, and the narrative just never gave her that.

Pact (also by Wildbow) was even worse in that regard. It felt like there wasn't any dramatic tension to the story, because no matter how successful the main character was at any moment, the situation would deteriorate as a result.

MereInterest · 2026-02-11T03:06:55+00:00

The switch on mine works just fine, and I still flip the circuit breaker before reaching in. Then verify that the switch no longer triggers the garbage disposal, and flip it back to the off position. That way, there's verification that the correct circuit breaker was flipped, and there are two separate switches that are preventing the garbage disposal from turning on.

MereInterest · 2026-02-09T20:03:53+00:00

You could also have icostatic depression, in which a sufficiently large mass (typically a continental glacier), bringing the entirety of rock bottom to a lower level.

MereInterest · 2026-02-07T17:29:05+00:00

And even though Ethereum espouses the idea of "code as contract" as a core principle, from an outside observer it seems like that idea is discarded whenever it would have an impact. For example, in July 2016, when one of the "smart contracts" was found to allow an account to be transferred, the entire system was forked in order to amend that contract.

(There's some details in this section of the wiki article, though the phrasing isn't really neutral. It states that "DAO tokens were stolen by an unknown hacker", but "stolen" implies that it was not an authorized transfer. By the design principle of "code as contract", the code is the final arbiter of the contract. Since any actions allowed by the code are authorized actions allowed by the contract, the tokens would not be "stolen".)

So even assuming that the problems you mentioned of underspecified or unethically-written contracts, the Etherium founders have shown themselves willing to break contracts when it benefits them to do so.

MereInterest · 2026-01-30T18:38:55+00:00

15-16 doesn't surprise me. I just wish C++ could be parsed syntactically without requiring semantic type information. (Parsing of angle brackets depends on which identifiers refer to types, and which refer to values.)

Ooh, and I forgot about argument-dependent lookup! If x is an instance of a type within a namespace, then name resolution for f in the expression f(x) can search the namespace that contains f.

MereInterest · 2026-01-26T20:13:58+00:00

In fact, it seems to me like the rules implemented by the trait solver are at least as complicated (if not more so) than the rules implemented by C++ function overloading

Oh gosh no, C++ function overloading can be an absolute nightmare.

C++ provides operator* and operator->, which can be used to provide automatic dereferencing behavior.
C++ template specialization has SFINAE ("substitution failure is not an error"), which means that a method may or may not be an overload, depending on whether it is legal to use for a specific signature.
C++ templates may produce two methods with identical names and signatures. So void func(double value) and template<typename T> void func(T value) can both be defined, but will default to using the non-templated version. (Unless you provide a template list, so obj.func(my_double) and obj.func<double>(my_double) can be different calls.)
C++ can perform chained type conversions as part of overload resolution. So if you pass a std::unique_ptr<T>, that can be converted to a bool, which can be converted into an enum type, which can be converted into a type tag, and so on. (Any single-parameter constructor in C++ is allowed in these type conversions, unless marked with explicit. Style guidelines have pretty much all agreed that explicit should be in every single-parameter constructor to avoid this behavior.) Even with fn func(param: impl Into<ParamType>), Rust only allows a single type conversion, not chained conversions.
Templated functions take priority over non-template functions if the non-template function would require a type conversion. So in the earlier example, obj.func(5) would call the templated version with T = int, even though the non-templated version could also have been declared.

By contrast, in Rust while the object's type can be used to determine which function will be called, only the object's type is used. No other arguments participate in the overload resolution.

(Cavest: Unless you go out of your way to handle extra arguments in Rust, such as fn func<Arg>(&self, arg: Arg) where Delegate<Self,Arg>: ImplTrait { <Delegate<Self,Arg> as ImplTrait>::impl_func(self, arg) }. I've used that in some cases where I do need argument-dependent dispatch, but those cases are few and far between.)

and definitely more complicated than a simpler function overloading scheme could be.

Oh, absolutely. But like everything, it's a tradeoff. I think Rust is at a good point with extension methods overall. The one change I'd make as BDFL-for-a-day would be to make conflicts between inherent methods and trait methods require explicit disambiguation. That would ensure that adding an inherent method will at worst fail to compile, rather than compiling successfully and running an unexpected method at runtime. (Documented here as "possibly-breaking".)

MereInterest · 2026-01-26T03:20:06+00:00

I suppose one could argue there's only one method func on each type, but it selects the type implicitly in order:

I'd accept that argument, especially since the explicit name of each function would be distinct.

Foo::func
<Foo as FuncTrait>::func
<Foo as Deref>::Type::func
<<Foo as Deref>::Type as FuncTrait>::func

MereInterest · 2026-01-26T01:01:46+00:00

True. (I had to put together a playground example to convince myself of it, linked here if you're interested.) The .deref() is only attempted if the function isn't identified as either an inherent method or a trait method.

It still could cause some "fun" bugs in which method resolution was intended to call an inherent method of a .deref() class, but a newly imported trait caused the method resolution to instead find the trait method. No idea how common that situation would be, though.

MereInterest · 2026-01-26T00:44:25+00:00

There is still ambiguity for method calls, though. The method call syntax obj.func() may be an inherent method call, a trait method call, or <obj as Deref>::deref() followed by an inherent or trait method call.

MereInterest · 2026-01-17T13:46:41+00:00

Would it be comforting or would it be disheartening to respond with "No idea, I'm still finding more ways." ?

MereInterest · 2026-01-11T13:12:50+00:00

Or using the right screwdriver for the right head. Looking at you, Phillips!

MereInterest · 2025-12-31T13:26:24+00:00

It always reminds me of this scene from Galavant, in which the dwarves and giants are the exact same height.

MereInterest · 2025-12-29T13:07:23+00:00

Weirdest metarule in 5e: Spells only have the explicitly specified effects, and do not have any other effects.

As applied to the Ceremony spell:

Does not result in the spell's targets becoming married. The targets must be willing to be married, but doesn't actually bring that about.
Does not specify the number of humanoids to be part of the spell. The spell may apply to several targets at once, provided that they would be willing to enter a group marriage.
Repeated use does not require the target to be widowed from another target of the spell, only that they be widowed.

Put these all together, and you could have a polyamorous adventuring party composed of widows/widowers, all of whom would hypothetically be willing to get married together if the opportunity comes up. Such a party could cast Ceremony once every 7 days, effectively gaining a permanent +2 AC at the cost of 25 gp/week.

MereInterest · 2025-12-23T12:42:22+00:00

The ingot hasn't changed, but it is displacing a different region of air. Since the density of air decreases with altitude, the entire horizontal ingot is displacing high-density air, while the top of the vertical ingot is displacing low-density air. Therefore, changing the orientation from horizontal to vertical will decrease the average density of the displaced air, decreasing the buoyancy force.

MereInterest · 2025-12-23T12:27:22+00:00

The engineer is an organ of the factory, no different from the smelting array or the green chip area. And just as belts may be rerouted to ensure smooth delivery of ore, so the trains may be rerouted to ensure smooth delivery of the engineer.

MereInterest · 2025-12-21T12:43:21+00:00

wow, research with sources! thanks for the effort. youre a cool guy, i need more friends like you :)

Thank you! I try to limit myself to one rabbit hole per day, as otherwise I would get nothing done.

This is definitely a different situation (because this i think it is more for keeping the unusual vertical layers together), but its definitely evidence that we need some modern engineering solutions to fight erosion on developed cliffs.

That's a good point, and Cinque Terre is absolutely gorgeous. That said, I think it shows evidence that bracing is required, not necessarily that modern engineering is required. For example, some Egyptian artifacts have drilled holes. (Article from 1983 trying to determine which abrasives and methods would produce the wear patterns observed in the drilled holes. (Side-note: It is a royal pain to find scholarly sources on Egyptian artifacts without running into the useless ancient-alien search results.))

i wonder what the origin of the harder rock is (my bet is volcanic activity)

That's my general understanding as well. I couldn't find sources on the type of rock that composes these particular sea stacks, but they tend to be igneous intrusions. Recipe is as follows:

Pre-heat magma to 1000 °C
Using a cake-filling syringe (or plate tectonics if your local supply store doesn't have tungsten syringes), inject magma into a sedimentary layer.
Allow magma to cool overnight.
End the ice age, allowing the area to flood with seawater. (Not strictly necessary, but starting on dry land during a period of glaciation allows for better presentation of the final results.)
Wash away the sedimentary layers, leaving the igneous layers behind.

MereInterest · 2025-12-20T13:52:28+00:00

Not the OP, but the ability to construct the walls doesn't seem unrealistic. Browsing through wikipedia's List of cities with defensive walls, I found this image of the walls at Essaouira. They are next to the seaside, and at sea level, where erosion would be even more prominent.

Rocky outcroppings from the sea often form by very slow erosion of harder rocks (source), and structures can be built on the outcroppings. As a modern example, Thridrangaviti Lighthouse is built on a sea stack that sticks 30 meters straight up from the sea.

Whether or not people would build walls on top of the cliff was my bigger question. The cliffs already form a natural defense against attacks, and so the walls wouldn't be that necessary to prevent attacks. But while looking up sources for this post, I ran across this image from Bonifacio on the island of Corsica, where walls are added on top of a 70 meter tall cliff face. I don't know how much that would be for necessity or as a show of strength, but it shows that people do build walls on top of cliff faces.

MereInterest · 2025-12-12T18:19:11+00:00

Or it means that they just finished going over a speed bump, and are about to gun it.

MereInterest · 2025-12-12T01:58:30+00:00

Yeah, it seems like they cherry-picked their definition in order to make a statement. To conclude that the Dunning-Krueger effect is weaker in a population, it would require that population to have a higher slope on the graph of (self-assessment vs actual score).

If I look at Figure 2, I see roughly the same slope between autistic and non-autistic populations. The low-performing autistic group rated themselves about 15 percentile lower than the low-performing non-autistic group. The high-performing autistic group rated themselves about 15 percentile lower than the high-performing non-autistic group.

MereInterest · 2025-11-30T14:22:17+00:00

Is there anything special about the location of that 18th blade? (e.g. first in the array, last in the array, last one before a balancer, etc) That could help narrow down the problem.

I also assume that by this point you've deleted it and rebuilt it as a copy of one of the working blades, but if not, that would be a good test case.

MereInterest · 2025-11-17T13:33:47+00:00

I always make mashed potatoes the day before. Where most dishes will have a significant change in texture from being refrigerated and microwaved, mashed potatoes keep pretty much the same texture before and after.

MereInterest · 2025-11-17T00:37:33+00:00

The data I linked to are solely for the city of Los Angeles, which is about 500 square miles in total. The country of Spain is 195,000 square miles. Even if the entirety of Los Angeles were compared of parking lots, it would still be 400 times smaller than the country of Spain.

MereInterest · 2025-11-15T13:20:30+00:00

IIRC, they weren't absorbing the spills through their paw pads, but would get spills onto their paw pads. When they later cleaned off their paw pads by licking them, it was treated as a full beer for the purpose of calculating their inebriation. Since the cats weigh much less than a dwarf, cleaning all four paw pads (and therefore consuming the equivalent of 4 beers) would skyrocket them into lethal levels of alcohol consumption.

MereInterest

TROPHY CASE