Welcome To My Page

Where do they come from. What do

they hope to achieve.

you all say: I love you I

love you I love you.

to sidewalks, so onions to

refrigerators.

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

My system is also linear, but it extends in two different directions, instead of just being "soft" vs. "hard." I think this is important because some science fiction settings combine realistic physics with implausible technology, or realistic technology with fictional physics, and I wanted to distinguish them.

So, because I should put it somewhere, here it is:

The Official(ish) Hardspaceships pH Scale of Science Fiction Hardness!

Acidic Science Fiction

Acidic SF violates the laws of physics in some significant, unpardonable capacity. The nature of the violation becomes more precise as pH increases.

0-1: Technology is whatever looks cool on screen. Technobabble abounds. Spaceships bank in space and blasters go "pew". This is where you find Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

2-3: Certain laws of physics are acknowledged, but liberally-applied handwavium technology helpfully ignores anything that gets in the way of the story. Space is probably silent, at least. Star Trek goes here, as does the Lancer RPG.

4-5: The laws of physics are now assumed to reign supreme, but we use handwavium to tweak our setting into the form we desire. Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and Firefly all go here.

6: We take the real world, change it, and justify our changes with precisely-engineered handwavium, with clearly-articulated effects. Hard magic systems, basically. Mass Effect and Mobile Suit Gundam go here.

Neutral Science Fiction

7: Apart from our "free pass", we aren't breaking the laws of physics at all. We aren't taking pains to implement realistic technology, either. The Expanse is my go-to example here.

Alkaline Science Fiction

Alkaline SF incorporates realistic technology. The overall realism of the technology increases with pH.

8-9: This is where you see technology that is purely speculative. Quantum radiators, black-hole drives, Dyson spheres/lasers, etc. We can't even begin to know how to pull these off, but we can consistently model their effects using real-world physics. High-concept and distant-future SF resides here.

10-11: This is where you see technologies that have had papers written on them, and may have fields of study dedicated to making it work. Fusion reactors/drives, Nuclear Salt-Water Rockets, nuke-pumped lasers, etc. Most "hard" SF is probably going to wind up here, where things are realistic-yet-still-speculative.

12-13: This is where you find technology that has actually been tested in real life. The Orion Drive, Nuclear Thermal Rocket engines, ion drives, etc. Typically the realm of near-future SF, like The Martian and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

14: Essentially reality, with no speculative elements. Space Brothers and Gravity go here.

This is mostly just vibes, and it would probably work better as a four-quadrant chart, but I do think it's worthwhile to distinguish between physics and technology when analyzing "realism" in science fiction.

I've always held that "hard" isn't a binary, and what it even means can be different for different people (I've heard people call Starfield "hard sci-fi" when it's a 3 at best). I might write about that in the future.

goodrx is the most well known one, but if i'm trying to find the cheapest price for a patient i compare it to scriptcycle, and use whichever is offering the best price. you just type in the medication (PLEASE make sure you're getting the right drug, dosage, and quantity) and your zip code and they will spit out some offers for you

some pharmacies may have their own discount card to compare to as well!

if you are getting a name brand medication, you can also look at the manufacturer's website to see if they offer any evouchers for you to use too

There is widespread agreement among people who study heart and digestive tract disease that “fiber” is healthy, and this has been known for a very long time. After 15+ years of doing my own research on fatness, diet, and digestive conditions with extreme skepticism, I fully believe it to be true that eating a diet that contains a generous amount of foods called “high fiber” is beneficial, but it depends RADICALLY on what you mean by that term.

So what does it mean? Nobody agrees. Has ever ageeed. The various bodies responsible for defining it, describing what it does, and deciding how or if food is labeled as such, and the scientists who have studied it again and again and again do not even agree on what “fiber” is. Like. Literally. There are multiple ways to define it, they change often, and they can be wildly divergent.

Unfortunately some of those definitions include and even recommend forms of “fiber” that are disastrously intolerable and irritating to my gut.

Clearly, eating those forms is not healthy for me, or the hundreds of millions of people worldwide with IBS. Yet I’m pushed to eat “fiber” by every site, pamphlet, and doctor whose opinion I have to tolerate, with virtually no guidance as to what is actually meant by that.

It’s only in the past few years I have seen patient literature talk about the difference between soluble and insoluble fiber, one of the more useful and less technical, easily teachable differences. The difference can mean not being able to eat without excruciating pain. It doesn’t even go into the other substances that can now be considered fiber – fuck you to death inulin – and thus surely “good”, which are often absolutely horrendous for people like me.

So no, I don’t trust that some foods are inherently bad or good. I think they all tend to do different things in the human body, and for some people, food that is “good” does not have effects consistent with what a normal person – one without their head up their ass – would call “good.”

I wanted to make a wiki about it but I don't have time for it.

The point was to try to encompass every "superpower" I could think of into a magic system.

You can check it out here !

The writing part is done, and I've done enough spells to provide an example for each element. The goal is to fill up that huge array eventually! >:]