i think it falls into the slightly-too-clever category, but http://www.neilconway.org/docs/vldb2014_edelweiss.pdf treats safe log truncation as a conservative optimization.

its similar to tail-call in that the efficacy of your program depends on the compiler figuring out what you're trying to do - which is unsatisfying

but its a great idea and a ray of hope here

edit: this also implies that the set of reads against the history is fully known at compile time - which may make it irrelevant depending on the usage