New Nathan Lowell Solar Clipper book available!

 Nathan Lowe''s newest "Solar Clipper" series book is now available!

Read the continuing adventures of "Call me Ishmael" and Pip.  Now available from Amazon.

School Days

Cover image from Amazon.com

Knave 2.0

  The kickstarter is on for Knave 2.0!

  If you don't recognize it, Knave is the work of Ben Milton (of the Youtube channel Questing Beast) .  The original Knave, along with his Maze Rats, is an all-time best seller at Drive-Thru RPG.  Knave distills the adventuring rules of D&D down to their bare essence in a very playable manner in just a few information-rich (yet readable) pages.  The rest of the small booklet is enough random tables to run a game with, especially when combined with the massive random tables in Maze Rats.

  Knave 2.0 expands on the idea in deluxe printed (or pdf) form, with a LOT more tables.

  My favorite of the 100 random spells is Catherine:  You summon an attractive young woman who will answer questions and help the party with a few non-dangerous tasks if asked politely.

Even if you're not interested in backing the project, if you like role playing games, check out his Glatisant newsletter.  It's a free monthly roundup of the best of the internet musings on fantasy & sci-fi role playing.

The most important news you'll hear all week

This is the most important thing you'll hear all week. I don't care if Russia captures Kiev and hangs Zelenskiy by his toes, this is more important.

"there are a couple of bidders out there who are willing to bet very big money that food and fuel prices will triple ($18/$6.5) in nominal prices in the near term (i.e. five year horizon)." 

- Eaton Rapids Joe: What does $30k/acre corn ground mean to the consumer?

The real (not government "adjusted") rate of inflation for 2022 was in the range of 25-30%.

$100 compounded quarterly at 10% interest for 5 years is: $163.86

$100 compounded quarterly at 15% interest for 5 years is: $208.82

$100 compounded quarterly at 20% interest for 5 years is: $265.33
$100 compounded quarterly at 25% interest for 5 years is: $336.19
$100 compounded quarterly at 30% interest for 5 years is: $424.79
$100 compounded quarterly at 35% interest for 5 years is: $535.29

Archimedes wind turbine

This brochure for the Archimedes wind turbine looks pretty cool.  Until you read it, that is.

picture from the web site

Unfortunately, at normal ground-level wind speeds (5-10mph), it produces negligible power (well under 10% rated). It starts being effective (near 50% rated power) with 20mph winds, but is only rated for 28mph (100/550 watts), and then cuts out at 31mph (140/780 watts).

That's a very narrow window of effectiveness to produce, at best, a few score (small) / hundred (large) watts of power.  It doesn't help that the brochure is self-contradictory in places.  Do they need a better editor, or better (more consistent) facts?

On the other hand, how many could you fit on the average rooftop?  The big one is five feet across, 6¼ feet long, and weighs 620 pounds.  The little one is 2.5' x 3.6' and weighs a 'mere' 135 pounds, but only produces about one-fifth the power.

In which I rant yet again about the Copenhagen Interpretation

 W. M. Briggs, statistician to the stars!  has another excellent post up today.

I left a rather lengthy comment there, which I'm copying here, where it really belongs.

The entire argument behind the MWI is just an outcome of the “woo woo” caused by the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI). This is the root cause of so much misunderstanding in basic physics, and yet it has persisted for nigh onto a century now. The CI muddies the waters at all levels of quantum physics, even to the idiocy behind modern “quantum computers”, which do nothing that wasn’t done by gears and hydraulics decades ago (except at much, much greater expense).

Uncertainty is in our minds, not in the universe. Particles (or waves) exist in one state. We do not know that state, we *cannot* know that state without direct and careful measurement, because particles are tiny and easily disturbed by nearly everything, and everything depends on absolutely everything else, ad infinitum. “Superposition” means a variety of states. Yes, the particle/wave could be in any number of states. And yet, when we measure it, it is always found to be in exactly one. That’s not because of some magical “observer measurement” event. It’s because it was always in one and only one state, but we just didn’t (couldn’t even in principle) know which it was until we measured.

A fundamental principle of physics, seldom written down or articulated, is that “everything except energy sums up to nothing”. When two electrons are “entangled” by having opposite spins, their total spins adds up to nothing. One electron spins right (up), the other left (down). There is no magic involved. Which one is which is completely indeterminate (in our minds) until we measure it. At which point, voila! We instantly know the spin of the other, no matter how far away it may be. So what? If I buy a pair of shoes, and have a friend secretly mail one to Japan, and only after it arrives there I open the box with one left shoe in it, I instantly know the right shoe is in Japan. No hocus, and certainly no pocus, involved.

Uncertainty is in the mind.

As to the uncertainty principle? It is very difficult to measure a wave when using less than half of the amplitude. The less of a wave you have to measure, the more imprecise the measurement must be. The law is actually an inequality involving the product of two uncertainties. This is a basic principle of wave geometry (and you thought high school trigonometry was useless?), and has nothing to do with the precision of measuring instruments. It simply is and must be.

Fun fact: h-bar is the amplitude of not just a photon, but *every* photon. This is where the term “quantum”, meaning quantity, comes from.

The Three Warfares

Us Army document on Chinese tactics.

It's useful to skim through.  Some parts are actually worth reading.

This was what reached out and grabbed me:

THREE WARFARES 

1-57. China’s strategic approach to conflict employs Three Warfares designed to support and reinforce the PLA’s traditional military operations. These Three Warfares are—

• Public Opinion Warfare.
• Psychological Warfare.
• Legal Warfare. 

Sound familiar?  Let me rephrase them for you.

• CNN, New York Times
• Disney, public schools & universities
• SPLC, ADL, ACLU

RPG good (?) ideas

 Perusing the links from this month's Glatisant, the Questing Beast newsletter.

Here are some of the good ideas I found in the links.

Tension Cheatsheet

1d10	Tension Builders
1	Constraints	The usual approach to this situation won’t work.
2	Countdowns	This situation will end, escalate, or evolve soon.
3	Hidden Dangers	While the situation appears safe, there is something unexpected below the surface.
4	Mysteries	There are tantalizing unknowns within the situation.
5	Competition	Another person or group is actively opposing the characters in the situation.
6	Moral Stances	Participating in the situation says something about the characters.
7	Retribution	Participating in the situation will anger another group, person, or faction.
8	Troublesome NPCs	The situation contains NPCs that must be navigated carefully.
9	Gates & Gatekeepers	Getting to the situation requires a test and remaining in the situation may require further tests.
10	Hard Choices	The situation has zero sum choices—choosing one locks out all the others.

The overloaded, overloaded encounter die

1	Rare Creature Trace	Rare Creature Trace	Rare Creature Encounter
2	Uncommon Creature Trace	Uncommon Creature Encounter
3	Common Creature Encounter
4	Resource Warning	Resource Consumption
5	Environment Warning	Environment change
6	(Nothing)

And my own creation, another silly way to roll hit dice:
Everybody rolls a d8 for their hit points.

• Fighter:  Remain vigilant.  Roll 2, take the best.
• Wizard:  Wait, what's going on?  Roll 2, take the worst.
• Thief:  Hedge your bets.  Roll 3, take the middle.
• Cleric:  Accept your fate.  Roll 1 die.

Minor rant:  D&D style clerics are really paladins.  Holy fighting men.  They're not Friar Tuck (although he had a mean fist).  A priest's primary attribute would be charisma, not wisdom.