this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 107 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ok, wizard. Next time you "ponder your orb" keep your bedroom door closed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Ar ya winnin' son? ¯\(ツ)

🦴😯

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I put on my robe and wizard hat

[–] [email protected] 86 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

As a little nitpick, "extreme pressure" is partially true. We do need "extreme" pressure; not extremely high pressure, but extremely low pressure. We have these series of pumps that are able to remove more and more particles at each step. We have your standard pumps that get rid of most gases, then we have turbomolecular pumps that blow away a lot of the matter that remains, and then we have things like ion pumps, which electrocutes molecules in a vacuum and sucks them out using electric fields. This way, we're able to create better vacuums here on Earth better than Space itself.

And honestly, that's pretty much wizardry to me.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Space is a terrible vacuum. It's full of literally everything.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

So is my vacuum.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In that regard Space can no longer be considered to be a vacuum. Not even remotely.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The distance between stuff is so inconceivably huge that it's still a vacuum. Kind of incredible to think about.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

What are you even talking about? I can see loads of stuff right here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

True vacuum doesn't exist, it's always relative to something else, generally to common human environment.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is absurdly untrue. Space is VERY empty. The above comment is just plain wrong. CERN has the best vacuum in the world at around 1000 atoms/cc. Deep space is less than 1. Even nebulae have a density far below 1000 atoms/cc, and those are the most dense regions of space.

It may be true that we use vacuum pumps for chip manufacturing that get vacuums less dense than the exosphere, which we like to call space sometimes, but it's definitely influenced by Earth and not a good definition of a space vacuum.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's a joke, buddy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If space was a vacuum then Roger Wilco would be out of work.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Won't anyone think of the molecules!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Huh, I always thought my chamber is way worse vacuum then space (usually about 2×10^-10^ mbar)

[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

extremely rare rocks

Silicon is the second most common element in the Earth's crust... 90% of all rocks are some form of silicate...

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The gold involved is minuscule. So much so that it isn't really economic to strip it from the components.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Still rare rock extraction

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, gold isn't really anywhere near as rare as you've been led to believe. Just like diamonds. And no "rare rock extraction" is involved in making silicon chips. The claim carries no water at all.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, no, they actually do use plenty of water, if I'm not mistaken, for cooling and such.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That doesn't carry it as the pipes have no bucket.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You also don't use extreme pressure.

[–] Honytawk 6 points 1 year ago

Those warlocks do seem to experience tons of pressure from their masters to work faster though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

my guess is most modern electronics are mostly plastic by weight. oil is kinda like a rare rock? like semi-rare rock juice

a lot of electronics have a fair bit of lithium for the battery, but apparently we get most lithium from seawater. rare by concentration, but usually not extracted in rock form

so yeah rare, not really, and rocks, hardly at all...

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm proud to be one of the warlocks that can harness the magical powers of the stone, although I'm not yet very powerful. I'm not an apprentice, but I have a lot to learn.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Stone Warlocks are often very specialized. Don't feel bad if you don't understand every incantation and every spell that gives vitae to your creations.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Understand? No one understands the magic spells they just recite the ancient scrolls of the stack overflow almanac.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I'm a warlock's apprentice, training to be a defendant of the stones and maybe eventually carve my own intentions into them. I salute your work and hope to get there someday myself.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

To add on to this:

  • Use magnets to capture images of your body deep inside.
  • Use light to burn and cut so you can have funky magical trinkets.
  • Use light to sculpt your eyeballs so you can see.
  • Use another magical light that you can't see to take images of deep inside your body.

Also, light, magnets, electricity, so fucking magical, fr.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Magnets aren't real. The word was invented to hide the discovery of magic.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Violent J, is that you?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

From the Book of BangPowBoom by the ICP Prophets

Fire, water, air and dirt. Fucking magnets, how do they work? ...Magic everywhere in this bitch

And so spoketh the Clown. Ramen.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C Clarke.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There's no such thing as Fortnite porn. It's all just porn of other characters that happen to have Fortnite skins.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago
[–] Honytawk 1 points 1 year ago

Weird hill to die on, but ok

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This actually makes for a great sci-fi writing prompt! TLDR: I started writing cause I was bored, and stuff got out of hand.

Long ago, humanity discovered the element Obscurium with the innate ability of capturing and holding lightning. Ancient sculptors discovered a series of runes that, when carved into slabs of the element, allowed them to manipulate the lightning. Cults of Wizards developed, focused on creating ever more complex spells with the runes. Different cults saw beauty in different classes of spells: The Sages developed practices to imbue the stones with memory, and developed complex architectures to store and retrieve any information at a whim, giving them the power of shaping humanities collective memory. The battle hardened Order of Warlocks trained for years to become proficient in manipulating enormous amounts of data, creating spells that could solve any practical problem in seconds. It is said that some warlocks even claimed capable of imbuing the stones with an artificial soul. The more proletarian Order of Sorcerers believed the magic of the stones should be available to all, and created interactive artworks that allowed the non-initiated to communicate with the stones, and feel some of their power.

While these cults gained much power, they remained beholden to two small groupings. One was a group of Hermit scroll compilers, who dedicated their lives to the discovery of new runes, and the creation of translation scrolls that translated wizards' spells into the language of the runes. These were loosely organised in the Order of Scrolls. The other was the Order of Sculpting Monks, whose monasteries were the only places where lightning could be harvested, and runes could be carved into the stones with the required precision.

For many years after the discovery of Obscurium, humanity prospered. The conflict beholden "Nation States" of old gradually dissolved as the global Orders gained power and kept each other in balance. The first major conflict occurred when a monastery of the Sculpting Monks broke with established doctrine. For years, the Monks had worked to carve ever more complex and specialised runes into their slabs, but the monastery of the far eastern island of Taketomi had begun simplifying their slabs, creating dense meshes of simple runes. These dense meshes gave the slabs fascinating Azure-Red-Magenta colour patterns, giving them the name ARM's.

The global head of the Order of Sculptors, seated at the Monastery of Intelaken called this out as heresy, and claimed "These Simpleton slabs will be forgotten in the archives of the Sages". However, soon some of the Hermit scroll Compilers had written translation scrolls for the new ARM's, and even promoted them to the wizard cults as GNU's (Genuinely Necessary Utilities). The wizards discovered that the new, simplified slabs required far less energy, allowing them to perform more powerful spells before reaching exhaustion.

Seeing this, the Intelaken Monastery proclaimed the Monks of Taketomi as excommunicated. They used their vast monetary funds, and were capable of the nigh impossible task of bribing a few of the Hermits of the Order of Scrolls to write scrolls dedicated only to their slabs, and only providing the scrolls to paying wizards, thereby breaking their oath to provide humanity with Free, Outstanding Scroll Stuff.

With tensions rising, the Wizarding cults began to fracture, unable to decide who to support. Some wizards saw the magic of the stones as their birthright, and supported the provision of scrolls to only a select few. Others, especially many members of the Order of Sorcerers, fought to make the power of Obscurium available to all. However, the Order of Sorcerers knew that their true power was in creating intuitive and beautiful structures that made it possible to use the spells developed by the Warlocks and Sages, and that alone, their power was fleeting. They also knew that laymen were largely unaware of this, and as tensions were rising they began to seek allies among the laymen to support them in the conflict they saw on the horizon.

What the Sorcerers didn't anticipate was that in the fracturing power-base of the global Orders, some of the "Nation States" of old, ruled by laymen, which had long since been replaced by the global Orders of Wizards, Hermits and Monks, began to re-emerge. With tensions at a peak, the re-emergent Nation State of Miklagarðr on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean launched a surprise attack on the Monastery of Taketomi. They had recruited a break-out band of Warlocks to infiltrate the archives of the Sages on Taketomi. The Warlocks attempted to extract the secret to the ARM's, but were countered by powerful shuffling spells, making the archives unreadable to them. However, in the final moments before their destruction, the leader of the band, known only by his battle-name Strostrup the Bear, cast a corruption spell, destroying the archives.

With their archives destroyed, the Monks of Taketomi could no longer manufacture the GNU ARM's, and chaos ensued....

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Ackchyually (sorry lol), your phone most likely runs some arm soc, not an intel chip

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I weep for the man with an Intel® chip in their pocket.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I had a Zenfone 2 with an x86 processor, the miserable thing had to go through two motherboard repairs in 3 years. It was literally falling apart once I replaced it with my current phone. Also the battery life was crap and it overheated constantly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I had an asus phone with intel chip, battery lasted like 2-3 hours of screen time, and less than 1 day on standby.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Pynchon wrote it better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is how the renfair types on Hysperia talk.

Billups would not be impressed