Maximum Effort, Minimum Reward: One Year Anniversary!

Dec 08, 2022

I’ve been writing Maximum Effort, Minimum Reward for a year now (plus a week), and as such, I thought I’d collect some highlights from last year!

All images generated by Stable Diffusion 2-1, except the Ancient Egyptian one.

Math & Physics

The Tyranny of the Wagon Equation — Pre-Gunpowder Military Logistics and the Minimum Donkey Rate. In this post, I first derive the classical rocket equation from first principles. Then, using the same method, I derive an equivalent expression for the minimum donkey rate for supplying food to a pre-gunpowder army, assuming a Harmonic Donkey Transfer logistics scheme.
Dungeons & Dragons, Peasant Accelerators, and Inertial Confinement Fusion. How many times do I have to cast Enlarge on a rock before I make a sun? Does the Fifth Edition rulebook allow this? Will my DM allow this? Respectively, the answers are 19, Yes, and Absolutely Not.
A Statistical Analysis of Sniffing in the Wheel of Time. What is up with Robert Jordan? Why does it seem like his characters are constantly “sniffing” at everyone? I investigate closely.

Voltorb Flip: Part 1, Part 2, Part 2.5, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 (Coming Soon!). My longest series, in which I spend a truly ridiculous amount of time solving a minigame from Pokémon HeartGold. I think this project demonstrated to me the value of thinking deeply about silly problems, and I got a Slugma as a reward. Truly, this series epitomizes the theme of this blog.
I Taught ChatGPT to Invent a Language. ChatGPT and I invent a fictional language spoken by slime-people. I used to think that the rationalists and AI doomsayers were overreacting. I still think that, but… less.
Is A Hot Dog A Sandwich? Defining the Sandwich with Unsupervised Learning. A classification of dough-wrapped meats with unsupervised learning, and a rigorous answer to the hot dog problem, in which I disagree with Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the definition of a sandwich.

Ancient Egyptian and Emoji Chain Letters, in which I explore the near exact mapping between an ancient language and the dirty chain letters my friend sends me. This is the first article I ever wrote, and a personal favorite.
A Brief History of Dik: Indo-European linguistics and counting rhymes, or, Dik + Pimp = Bumfit. I explore the connection between remnants of a long-dead language, children’s counting rhymes, diks, pimps, bumfits, and Hickory-Dickory-Dock.
The Great Kings of Assyria Reply to Spam Texts: My new favorite way to respond to spam texts, including specially curated copypasta for you to try out on all those irritating election spambots.