Recent content by Cadence

I think it would be helpful in different game worlds to have a feeling for the setup. Are the elves almost the definition of natural, or are they extra planar fey descendents? Is magic a thing everyone embraces or do they hide in schools? Is a ghost an expected thing or a thing people won't...

Nero Wolfe hates that! https://the-art-of-reading-slowly.com/2021/01/11/verbing-weirds-language/

I would posit if it wasn't true for the vast majority of thngs (basic nouns, math, much of science) that a fantasy or sci-fi story would literally be impossible to read. It feels like it is the exceptions to that sameness that makes it fantasy or sci-fi - and are why we seek out the genre.

I feel kind of silly for not having looked at all the other uses earlier... holy cow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping#Applications <- Link to uses in different fields (although some seem to be borrowing from the computer or statistics one in their field).

Many of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe book entries on Wikipedia have a spot for the "unfamiliar word", although sometimes it is the usage that is unfamiliar and not the word.

I'm guessing the biggest use of "bootstrap" for the past 35 years or so has been in statistics where it has been one of the two big modern tools (the other being Markov chain Monte Carlo). It gets its name for an analogy to pulling oneself up by their bootstraps (reusing the sample data)...

Yes. But also I have faith enough in us all to pull something like this off even if they were clear.

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Do rhey have more than two eyes, arms, legs, lungs, and nostrils? Have orange blood instead of red? Non-mammalian reproductive organs? Five chambered hearts? Three stomachs? Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound? Metallic skeletons? Is there nothing that matches a normal human!?!?!

If Disney and the comics have taught us anything, it's that being an orphan helps (bat powers, spider powers, cold powers, glass slipper powers...). Going big and losing your entire planet can make you downright super.

Had to go googling Says you!" had this in Wikipedia: "Rounds 2 and 4 are the Bluffing Rounds. Similar to the game show Liar's Club and the radio show Call My Bluff, the three members of one team are given an obscure word (e.g. cacafuego); one of them gets the actual definition, and the other...

I'm trying to remember which NPR quiz show had a segment where the panelists made up definitions to a word and the contestant has to guess which one is the real one.

That must be why I was think colonnade sounded explosive! (I knew it was architectural, but for some reason was thinking it was like ornate decoration). I knew a fusilier was a soldier of some sort (royal fusilier from a Pink Floyd song? - I was thinking they were ceremonial) but not that a...

Is the few hundred years the dwarves live a long time? Do readers generally assume humans live, well humanish lifespans until told otherwise? Should they? If they didn't should Aragorn remarking on his age, for example, have surprised anyone? I'm betting if we took a survey or tested it...

It's hard to think of words you don't know the meaning of. "The fusilier colonnade was awe inspiring as it flew overhead on its bombing run!" (I actually had a guess for both, but had no idea what a fusil was and missed by a bit, but was totally off on colonnade).