hihi24522

Walrus don't need no chicanery. Once a lady goes walrus, she never... She... No one ever goes walrus.

These X-Ray specs will really take the guess work out of surgery. No more blindly chopping in the goop.

I'm doing my job-- There's Amy.

I spend a few hours selecting a candy from the machine-- There's Amy.

I wake up the morning after sleeping with Amy-- There's Amy.

Destiny has cheated me by forcing me to decide upon: The woman that I idolize, or the hands of an automaton.

Without these hands I can’t complete the opera that was captivating her

But if I keep them, and she marries him, He probably won’t want me dating her.

If you assume that a “bullet” is a unit of momentum (the mass and velocity of a bullet) and “square child” is actually just referring to the mass of a child who happens to be square shaped and not the mass of a child squared, then “bullets per square child” is describing valid units for a velocity

“Preposterous twaddlecock Time travel is impossible!”

“But Professor, you time traveled yourself. Remember? When we went back to Roswell?”

“That proves nothing! And furthermore, you'd think I could remember a thing like that! Plus, who are you anyway?”

Geologically, ice is a mineral, aka a rock. If lava is just rock heated past its melting point, water is lava.

The state (as defined by Engles, Marx, Lenin, etc.) is the problem. Like this is exactly what it does by definition.

If the government forms an alliance with the market it becomes a slave to the market.

There are more homes than homeless, more food than starving kids. Life saving medicines can be extremely cheap to produce but are sold for fortunes. Everywhere you look, the bourgeoisie are literally holding people’s lives for ransom… and the government does nothing.

In fact the government does less than nothing. It is the government that facilitates the hoarding of these resources. It is the government that enforces patent laws that allow life saving medicines to be kept from those in need. It is the government that enables and legalizes this racketeering by the rich.

When you live in a society where politicians talk equally (or more) about how they’ll help the market as they talk about how they’ll help their citizens—which is what their job is supposed to be—are you really surprised?

Are you really surprised that a government which chooses to let its people go unhoused just to keep the real estate market up is a government in which wealth holds the power? Are you surprised that a government that shuts down worker strikes and forces compromise on the side of the exploited rather than solely on the side of exploitative corporations is a government that can be manipulated by the owner of multiple massive companies?

There is nothing surprising here. The system is working exactly as it is intended to. The problem is not a few members of the bourgeoisie colluding to manipulate the state because that’s how the state always works. The problem is the state.

If you would like to learn more about “the state” I suggest you read State and Revolution. That’s what made me switch from “oh we just need to tax the rich” to “the rich should not exist.” It also is just kind of impressive how Lenin describes many things that are very relevant today despite the fact he wrote this short book over a century ago.

Not to be that guy, but science is basically anything that gets studied/tested/researched. If you have the ability to cast spells and someone notices similarities and tries to categorize spells, that’s science. Studying how spells are made would be science. Studying the limitation of spells would be science. Testing news spells would be science. Etc.

So the big question is really how well understood is the science of magic in your world?

Does anyone actually know how it works or is it more like quantum mechanics with lots of theories but each still has limitations?

If magic is widespread and the beings using it are curious, chances are they’ve experimented with it and possibly taken notes about their experiments.

If magic offers great advantages then knowledge of it might be closely guarded by practitioners and not easily learned.

If magic can only be practiced by a certain species/family/etc. then general knowledge of how magic works could be much less accessible to the general population making it much more mysterious.

If not, then it’s likely there are schools that teach it to those who can use it and even those who can’t use it would likely still be taught about it. I mean, if you’re an engineer and you want to shape titanium and some spell can do that more easily than a mill or lathe, you’re going to want to know.

If you can heal with magic, non magic doctors would still want to be in the know about what can or can’t be cured with either medicine or magic.

If you mean science as in advanced physics or having digital devices, things will get more complicated if you want to make a logically consistent world. Like very complicated to the point it might take the joy out of world building. For example…

If there’s a spell that creates light/heat, where does the energy come from? You either violate thermodynamics or that energy comes from somewhere. OR the energy disappears after a while which might be a cool thing to think about.

If there’s a spell that freezes things, it violates the laws of thermodynamics in a big way unless more heat (entropy) is generated somewhere else. If this generation somewhere else is somewhere really far away, you can create an infinite power source pretty easily.

Arguably teleportation may or may not violate relativity which, fun fact, might be the reason gold is gold colored and not silver colored so if you break relativity you might break some weird shit from the color of chemicals to the laws that hold your proteins together.

If magic has any visual effects, like an aura, it means magic interacts with the electromagnetic fields in a way that generates or manipulates photons. This could fuck up lots of digital stuff but also might be dangerous because color corresponds to frequency. If you can change the frequency could certain spells emit gamma radiation? Do invisible spells produce infrared or UV? If some spells interact with photons but some don’t then why?

Furthermore, air is a substance. If you cast a spell that explodes objects how does the spell know when it hits the object and not an air molecule? If the spell isn’t instant why does it have a specific speed? If it’s effected by matter then would casting a spell under water go slower? Does water explode if you cast an explosion while in it or does the spell hit the nearest solid before causing an effect?

If magic doesn’t interact with matter between the caster and the object, what medium transfers the information? What particles carry the magic force(s)? If magic particles don’t interact with physical matter how does a being made of that matter cast a spell? How does the being specify a target?

If spells have incantations, what makes those work? Can any sound create magic? Could a parrot accidentally cast a spell? If it’s in a specific language, why? What beings created that language? If magic just randomly happens to be a set of sounds that humans can make that seems rather coincidental yes?

If only certain creatures/races/families can use magic, why? How does the genetics of a being effect if it can or can’t interact with a fundamental field of this universe (magic)?

If it is genetic or physical in any way, with enough scientific study it should be possible to replicate it or remove it.

If it is metaphysical like it comes from the ‘soul’ then religion and science will overlap. Furthermore beings would likely use this to be prejudiced against any living thing that can’t do magic.

If all living things can do magic what about viruses? What about single celled bacteria? What specifically defines “living” in the context of magic and by what mechanism do those criteria enable the use of magic?

Anyway, the point is that if you try to get to technical and logical, it’s going to become a pain. The best bet, in my opinion, is to try avoiding the abundance of magic. If magic existed in our universe it would already have multiple scientific disciplines devoted to it. You’d be able to major in magic but more importantly, most of the general population would know fundamental things about magic and its limitations which means you’d likely need to explain your magic system more.

If you don’t want to get technical it might be best to not let your characters get technical. Keeping the knowledge of magic secretive/mysterious would help with this.

Or you can get completely lost in the world building and start writing out how many different magical fields there’d need to be and how they interact with elementary particles and how the thermodynamics of spells is rectified by events in those fields giving the illusion that thermodynamics was violated while still preserving the typical physics required for chemistry to remain unchanged and then think to yourself wait, wasn’t I going to write a story? Why am I researching theoretical math?

Don’t forget his birthday and his mother’s maiden name too

“Mr. Doctor man questions his hands…”

See I agree with your last statement. I mean “any” is a stretch but yeah there probably are other systems involving distance based forces that we could draw similarities to chemistry from.

I guess the issue here is that my argument is there are similarities and your argument is that one shouldn’t point out similarities unless there are enough of them…?

Your first paragraph implies you thought I meant just setting these systems statically next to each other would create a stable orbit. You’re right, that would be wrong. But I don’t think I ever mentioned stationary combination. Furthermore, while regular chemistry could work like that, in the real world every atom is moving. The bonds form when atoms get close enough. This is why temperature increases chemical reactions. More motion means more “collisions” that aren’t really collisions but you get the picture.

Objects in space are also constantly in motion. If you want to bring two stellar systems together, you need to give them velocities relative to each other. Or as you put it, momentum. This could be enough to ensure a stable system but it requires that the velocities at least a roughly specific which is what I meant when I said system chemistry would be highly directional in my original comment.

As for magnets. You could say both atoms and magnetic systems run on similar forces. You could make the argument that they, like atoms, have components which are constantly in motion and that if perturbed enough one could overcome those forces and break the system into its individual components.

However the behavior of the system as a whole is not similar to atoms because it cannot form any bonds of any kind with other similar systems.

If you were able to find magnetic monopoles which may or may not exist, you could probably build a system that is much more atom like than a gravitational system. But with magnets that have dipoles, even a ferromagnetic material would be drawn to one pole or the other. I suppose you could get up to two ferromagnetic bodies to orbit a rotating bar magnet if the velocities and distances were right, but you wouldn’t be able to combine them because moving any magnet closer would disrupt the conditions needed for stability.

Magnets are much more sensitive than gravitational systems because the objects have to be large relative to the system and close together whereas gravitational systems can be ginormous like Alpha Centauri.

Anyway it’s fun to think about what exactly I would count as chemical like properties.

I’d say they are mostly just the following:

1. A unit system is made of different components that are held together by some distance based force in a specific state of equilibrium; the unit has a space near the center containing the majority of the mass, and the unit can on some scale be treated as a particle.
2. Both components and units are separated by a functionally empty medium
3. Units can lose/gain/steal components from other units
4. A unit’s components and their amount/locations/motion change the way it interacts with other units
5. Some components can combine into a single component, split into multiple functioning components, or decay
6. Units can decay spontaneously or as a result of physical interaction
7. The removal or addition of a component to a unit can cause the unit to become unstable but does not always do so
8. Units interact with other units via a distance based force and can form stable multi unit equilibrium states, combine into a single unit, or destabilize entirely.
9. The specific equilibrium state (shape/configuration)of a multi unit system affects how it will interact with other units or multi unit systems.
10. Units can be removed from multi unit systems by other multi unit systems or external units with or without destabilizing the rest of the system from which it is removed.
11. Units and systems with similar enough configurations will react in similar ways

I think that covers it. So if you can find a system that fits those then I’d say there are similarities between them and atoms/chemistry. I will honestly be pretty excited if you do because it will be interesting.