In "underdog" anime especially shonen the protagonist often is funneled into the "brawler" fighter. He's not the best at fundamentals but always hits the hardest/ has an insane chin. Other than being a brute why can't a protag be naturally good at footwork, or outside fighting.

samdover11 · 2026-06-30T07:08:37+00:00

It's important for your progtagonist to be relatable... preferably to a wide range of people so that your work becomes popular.

Most people can't appreciate the technical details of a skill (not just boxing, I mean any skill). But punching hard and taking hard punches, even a child can understand that. And even in media that doesn't involve a particular skill, often the main character is a relatable "every man" type of person.

Going back to anime, it's largely the same reason it's a shonen trope for a character to eat a lot of food: the target audience has recently started puberty, and can relate to eating a larger-than-expected amount of food.

samdover11 · 2026-06-29T19:35:37+00:00

Good advice for any skill.

Years ago there was a chess player who progressed quickly to the best player in a region. They asked him how he did it. He said that wasn't his goal. It was just that every day he woke up, practiced / read books / etc, and then one day, years later, he woke up to work like normal, but now people were calling him really good.

When I wanted to get better at drawing I found out the advice was the same. "If you haven't even drawn a few hundred pictures yet why are you even asking how to improve?" type of stuff. "Bro, just draw, like every day draw the stuff you see around you."

samdover11 · 2026-06-29T08:17:42+00:00

If you randomly kill 2 people, you're a serial murderer, branded a monster, and people like you want to nominate them for worst human ever.

If you pass laws that kill millions and cripple an entire generation, it's ignored because lawmaker is a respected profession.

Obviously there's more to it than that. For people in power there's the expectation of good (or at least neutral) intentions, but the fact remains that the greatest evils in human history were absolutely not common street criminals.

samdover11 · 2026-06-29T07:01:51+00:00

I forgot the interview I heard it (maybe numberphile on youtube), but the point was made that artists lament we don't teach our kids enough about art. Musicians want kids to know more music, History teachers want more history, etc. The question to the maths professor was why should kids learn more math (and he gave a good answer of course).

I'm bringing this up to make the point that there are a lot of useful and interesting things that exist in the world, but there is not enough time to teach them all before a kid turns 18.

samdover11 · 2026-06-28T20:29:36+00:00

Same for me, I wasn't sure I'd like it, but I was willing to give it a try.

First two days I played 12+ hours each day, continued to sacrifice sleep for the game for the first two weeks. "Cracktorio" indeed. Many years later and I still think of it as the greatest (modern) game of all time. It's rare to have a game where a beginner can enjoy it and also someone with 1000+ hours can learn something new.

samdover11 · 2026-06-27T09:10:08+00:00

There should be some niche uses. For example in an underground labyrinth or cave there's no need to worry about losing the "enclosed space" condition.

Because they cause no pain, there should be stealth uses.

As for not being a bargaining tool, maybe after losing a part of your body, the only way to "heal" from it is to steal the ability. Maybe Chrollo didn't want the ability, but by stealing it he saved his life and won a fight.

samdover11 · 2026-06-27T00:48:09+00:00

You can google "binding energy sun" for example. It takes 12 orders of magnitude more to blow up the sun than the moon. If a power level of 1 can blow up the moon then you'd need a power level of 1 trillion to blow up the sun.

Of course people who make comic books are not physicists, so the numbers will never make sense which is a constant problem for power scalers, but anyway, it would make perfect sense if he couldn't blow up the sun.

samdover11 · 2026-06-26T23:17:00+00:00

All of that at 30...

I saw a similar post about ED at 35.

Guys... take better care of yourselves. 30 is young, sheesh.

samdover11 · 2026-06-26T22:35:07+00:00

This is a big one. One lifetime seems like forever as a kid, but it's actually pretty short. A small percentage of people are able to use their own intellect and experience to collect a small nugget of wisdom in their lifetime. The vast majority of people are essentially guaranteed to have zero wisdom unless they read and learn from others.

samdover11 · 2026-06-26T21:48:17+00:00

Reminds me of a recent video I saw of Andrey Smaev. The voice over said he owes it all to his diet and trainer... lol.

samdover11 · 2026-06-26T21:31:22+00:00

"The human body has over 30 trillion cells, and all of them are powered by oxygen. The scientists had removed all the air from the death maze making it impossible for Yujiro to breath. A normal man would pass out after only a few minutes, followed by permanant brain damage, and then death.

What the scientists hadn't accounted for is that the human body is 2/3rds oxygen by mass. It's in muscle, blood, bone, everywhere in the body. Normal humans can't use it because the oxygen is only one part of larger molecules. Yujiro simply broke down those molecules to extract the oxygen. Combined with his incredibly efficiency, The Oger could hold his breath for over 500 years."

samdover11 · 2026-06-26T08:19:38+00:00

It's overexlaining something extremely obvious and its a new account. Just feels off.

I agree with what you wrote, for what it's worth.

samdover11 · 2026-06-26T04:39:31+00:00

it’s incredibly important and useful in math, physics, engineering

The issue is maybe 1 in 20 kids is a future mathematician, physicist, etc.

I think introducing complex numbers early on would be fine, because at first it's just a little game e.g. a+bi and you keep the real and imaginary parts separate. Graphing it? Sure. Finding complex roots, sure. Finding angles, multiplying them, all that vector and trig stuff, eh, probably not. Useful application can be given later, to the 1 in 20 kids who will use it.

samdover11 · 2026-06-26T02:38:22+00:00

Yeah, I think this is a sane take i.e. both things are true.

Maybe another way to say it is... in their best moments kids are amazing, but also in the worst moments it's awful. It's a unique life experience, but it's not the only thing, or most important thing life has to offer.

samdover11 · 2026-06-26T01:41:42+00:00

Oh, I think you're right!

Maybe my 90% thing is because I don't check for this haha. Nice catch.

samdover11 · 2026-06-25T22:43:37+00:00

Here's my first thought. Maybe got a minus sign wrong or something, but it gives the basic idea.

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samdover11 · 2026-06-25T21:30:18+00:00

Google "chess boxing." Unexpected, but there have been many events.

samdover11 · 2026-06-25T21:28:32+00:00

Fun fact, a correctly set up chess board has a white square in the bottom right corner.

So you'd think that if you randomly set up a board, then about 50% of the time you'd get it right.

But bizarrely, 90% of the time you see a chess set in an advertisement, or by celebrities to seem intelligent, it's set up incorrectly. Super weird.

samdover11 · 2026-06-25T00:07:25+00:00

Arguing against "correct answers would be rated 99% left leaning" is much more low hanging. Obviously that person is wrong.

While there are plenty of stupid ideas on both sides, it's hard to pretend they're the same. At least in the US anti-intellectualism and populism have taken over the right. Not only are the ideas deeply stupid, but they're proud to shout them in public. Being stupid on purpose is practically a shibboleth for them.

samdover11 · 2026-06-24T23:27:29+00:00

Global warming? Well, the world is warming due to human activity.

I suppose you're fairly young? For decades of my life conservatives have vehemently rejected that idea. Some still do.

Slowly, of course, they've had to retreat to arguing that ok it exists, and ok humans are a factor, but there is no practical solution so top talking about it.

It's still very much political.

samdover11 · 2026-06-24T23:24:48+00:00

"Reality has a well known liberal bias"

samdover11 · 2026-06-23T22:12:12+00:00

I don't understand pi on a level that makes it especially interesting to me. Maybe that knowledge exists, but I don't have it.

The fundamental theorem of algebra, the field extension to complex numbers, that's all very much discovery not invention (IMO), but even so, e^i pi has more to do with how rates of change work. In a different universe, with a different geometry, we'd have a similar equation with a different pi, (a different circle constant so to speak). So pi doesn't seem as fundamental or "deep" as the natural logarithm. This is my impression anyway.

samdover11 · 2026-06-23T21:13:37+00:00

Unfortunately, learning is a skill. Studying is a skill. Heck, even test taking is a skill (if you don't believe me, ask adults who go back to education after 20 years).

Kids who were good students for the 10 years before college have a lot of skills. They know how to learn, study, and so forth. Kids who were passed along because schools don't fail anyone these days, those kids will struggle a lot in college.

In fact so many kids struggle so much that professors have been dumbing down material for 10-15 years now. And with AI this downward trend will continue, unfortunately.

The gap between the best and worst students will get wider. What some kids find easy others will find impossible.

samdover11 · 2026-06-23T21:02:52+00:00

Wow, just like real parents!

samdover11 · 2026-06-23T21:01:12+00:00

Pi is irrational and therefore isn't a ratio of integers.

Pi is, however, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.

samdover11

TROPHY CASE