Very neat. Thanks for the heads up.

They’ve also some tie ins with the upcoming D&D movie. The group has a brief cameo in the film, and I saw some toys and a book from the series in stores. Wasn’t a specialty nerd store either, that book was on display in a supermarket.

Weird but neat to see the property getting a bit of life to it again.

It was definitely pushing the envelope further than most 80’s cartoons. Lot of rough spots, but it’s one of the few D&D properties that feels like D&D to me. Half the show is taking the fantasy world seriously, the other half is modern teens making fun of it. All while being pointed in the right direction by a Dungeon Master*. If anyone is wondering; this show was cancelled before I was born so this isn’t just nostalgia taking.

*one element that intrigued me was the slow reveal of Dungeon Master’s backstory. The show isn’t serialized, at least not in the modern sense, but the way the breadcrumbs slowly built up makes me wonder what a modern crew could do with the idea. >!Over the course of the show it’s revealed that the kids are not the first group he brought into the realm, and that both of the two groups mentioned met a nasty end. The last episode of the show implies a group of teens brought over sometime around the turn of the 19th century, who then tried to fight the big bad of their time, but failed. All but one of them was imprisoned in a pocket universe, and Dungeon Master abandoned the surviving girl, Martha, to wander the realm until the kids meet her as an old woman!<

> Dungeons & Dragons

Specifically he was one of the writers on “The Dragons Graveyard”.

For those who haven’t seen it, it’s an episode where the kids finally conclude that they will never get home so long as Venger (the main villain) keeps stopping them. So they decide to kill him.

The staff had to fight for the network to let them air it. The idea at the time in kids shows was that characters could react to violence, but never initiate it. Nowadays this kind of plot is pretty common, but back in the day this was breaking bold new ground.

> because the term usually involves a distinct population group being colonised

I mean, is that not relevant here? Siberia was colonized by Russia at around the same time, and using many of the same methods, as the British, French, and Spanish were using in North America. In this case the Indigenous population would be whatever native Siberians were living there before Russian settlers came. With respect to the whole “De-Russification” idea the Soviets were into early on, the germ of my original post was wondering how that played in the JAO. For example, were the indigenous people there offered land elsewhere? Or were they intended to be integrated in some way?

Although even for Russian settlers I’d be interested what exactly the Soviet government told them. Was there pushback to the idea that their area was marked for Jewish settlement? Was the government plan to move them elsewhere eventually? I mean it’s entirely possible the government was winging it and hoping the details would sort themselves out, but I’m really curious what the long term plan was.

What happened to the indigenous population of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast when it was formed by the Soviet Union?

Been on a kick lately reading about the formation, rise, and downfall (at least as a hotspot of Jewish culture) of the JAO but this is something I haven’t been able to find any info about. There must have been people already living there when the Soviets decided to create the territory. Was curious if there was any response to suddenly finding out the new designation of the land they were on.

Honestly can’t remember. Been years since I read it and can on recall the general idea of the article.

Reminds me of an interview I once read with an amputee who’d been gifted a prosthetic hand that cost tens of thousands of dollars. The prosthetic was made to be as much like a human hand as possible, with tiny motors inside that could be used to mimic any kind of pose and grip.

She used it for a few weeks before going back to her old system of several different prosthetics she could swap out. She found it more efficient to use assistive devices that, while cruder than the robot hand, were specific to each task she was attempting to do.

> No evidence that the thought speed isn't a learned limit through speaking.

There is.

Average syllable count per second varies across languages. But when the linked study looked at how fast information is actually conveyed they all do so at roughly the same rate.

Probably not. Research on speed reading has mostly supported the idea that the rate at which we naturally speak is the limit to which our brains can meaningfully process information. That is, while you can train yourself to understand text and speech a bit faster than normal, “speeding” through pages of text in a second isn’t any better than untrained skimming. Getting rid of “subvocalization” (I.e that inner voice many hear when reading), as many advocates of the method propose, does nothing to change that.

In other words, with a bit of training I suspect you might be able to output text like the micro machines guy, but none of it would have any meaningful thought behind it. That is, two people would not be able to have a “sped up” conversation, nor would it let you output a book any quicker.

Valid point.

> If our society was just now passing drunk driving laws, many of these same people would whine about the nanny state, say things like “everyone dies eventually,” and claim it violates their right to take risks.

No need for hypotheticals. That’s pretty much what happened when mandatory seatbelt laws were introduced.

Interesting. Thanks for the answer. Was swimming earlier when the question popped into my head and I realized I didn’t know if they were just large baths or used more like modern pools.

Did Roman Baths slope like modern pools? That is, did they tend to have “deep” and “shallow” ends?

You know that really would be. I got really into the first season of Heroes… wonder where they were going with that originally?

Man I would love to see a retrospective on all the Lost-knockoffs that came out in the mid-00’s.

I mean, there’s a bit of confirmation bias at play here. You only read about cases like this one where it turns out to be accurate, nobody writes articles about all the inaccurate maps or nonexistent geography.