Math of Eberron

… Y’see, now, y’see, I’m looking at this, thinking, squares fit together better than circles, so, say, if you wanted a box of donuts, a full box, you could probably fit more square donuts in than circle donuts if the circumference of the circle touched the each of the corners of the square donut.

So you might end up with more donuts.

But then I also think… Does the square or round donut have a greater donut volume? Is the number of donuts better than the entire donut mass as a whole?

Hrm.

HRM.

A round donut with radius R1 occupies the same space as a square donut with side 2R1. If the center circle of a round donut has a radius R2 and the hole of a square donut has a side 2R2, then the area of a round donut is πR12 - πr22. The area of a square donut would be then 4R12 - 4R22. This doesn’t say much, but in general and  throwing numbers, a full box of square donuts has more donut per donut than a full box of round donuts. The interesting thing is knowing exactly how much more donut per donut we have. Assuming first a small center hole (R2 = R1/4) and replacing in the proper expressions, we have a 27,6% more donut in the square one (Round: 15πR12/16 ≃ 2,94R12, square: 15R12/4 = 3,75R12). Now, assuming a large center hole (R2 = 3R1/4) we have a 27,7% more donut in the square one (Round: 7πR12/16 ≃ 1,37R12, square: 7R12/4 = 1,75R12). This tells us that, approximately, we’ll have a 27% bigger donut if it’s square than if it’s round.

tl;dr: Square donuts have a 27% more donut per donut in the same space as a round one.

god i love this site

can’t argue with science. Heretofore, I want my donuts square.

more donut per donut

Wow… this stuff is crazy. Just Google it. It’s called Lightening Ridge Black Opal 

Found on Pinterest

Long, non-quotey answer under the cut.

What this kind of thing represents is a good thought. Someone writing the 5e handbook thought to themself, “hey, maybe we should add something to the bit on gender about trans/nonbinary/intersex people!” And then they wrote up a couple paragraphs and stuck them in a draft, and no one on the brand or editing team felt strongly enough about them to get them pulled.

And that thought that they had? Was a good thought. I’m not saying that it was pandering - I’m sure that the person who did this had the best of intentions.

But in the end, that’s all it was. One, single thought.

They didn’t think to research the terminology. They didn’t think to ask any of the classes of people they talked about how they would want to be talked about. And they certainly didn’t think to hire any trans/nonbinary/intersex people to write about ourselves, to weave our experiences into the very fabric of the game instead of into a minimal-effort patch near the edge.

That said, I agree with all these cool people whose responses I’ve reblogged here: this was a nice gesture from WotC and it was definitely better than nothing, but at the same time it was really poorly phrased and we should probably let the people in charge know. They’ve made it clear simply by writing this section that they actually want to reach out to LGBT people in their audience and they’ve just done it in a bumbling-in-the-dark way where they didn’t know that the choice of words they made sort of still came out as offensive.

Someone asked Keith Baker (author of Eberron) why people are prejudiced against certain races (like goblinoids) but not others (the example given was elves) and I really liked his answer.

<i>Let’s compare some elves from the dragonmarked houses to a city goblin and a hobgoblin from Darguun.

Hey, guys!  So, we’re all familiar with Cyberpunk and Steampunk, but there are so many more alternate histories/speculative science fiction genres out there!  I came across this handy-dandy infographic and figured I could share a bit of these punk genres for anyone interested.

Steampunk Roughly covers the Western world during the mid- to late-19th century (ie:  Victorian era, US wild west, etc.), and sometimes up to the Edwardian era.

Dieselpunk 1920s up through WWII, ending at just about the Cold War.

Decopunk A cleaner, artistic, more “optimistic” version of Dieselpunk (same time period)

Clockpunk Covers the time of the Renaissance (think da Vinci)

Atompunk Cold War era, ie: the Space Race

Teslapunk Derivative of Steampunk, but focuses on electricity rather than steam.

Splatterpunk Explicit horror and gore

Biopunk Biotechnology, genetics (part science fiction, part real life)

Nanopunk Nanotechnology, sometimes overlaps with Biopunk

Cyberpunk The granddaddy of them all:  computer technology, the internet, hackers, etc. 

Others not included in the infographic

Elfpunk Fantasy-based, features creatures like elves and fairies.

Mythpunk Mythology and folklore, includes urban fantasy.

Seapunk?