The Factory Floor

@SCPilot You might forget your own name if the knowledge you were gaining was a vast number of people's names, to the point where you know so many names that you can no longer keep straight which name goes with who.

SCPilot

Ah. That's true.

ok

SCPilot

12:47 AM

Well, it's getting late, so I best head on out now. Take care y'all! And have a good night!

Mithrandir24601

Woo! Done - night!

1:37 AM

I wish the sandbox were more active. I'd contribute to it myself, but I've well proven that I'm not qualified to give people advice on how to write good questions.

2:33 AM

I've realized that my question-asking troubles were just an excuse. As a person with a question in the sandbox, I know I'd be happy to get help from even a user like myself, so I've gone through and did what I could to make constructive comments on the other sandbox question. My good deed.

4:59 AM

Wow! My bad question finally got an upvote! I've put so much work into making it better, and finally a sign that it might be paying off. Still negative and On Hold, but this could be the turning point.

7:03 AM

@Geo You are always allowed to answer your own question. SE encourages us to share our knowledge in Q&A format ;)

@Vylix That's a kind thought, but I doubt I have much knowledge to contribute. At least, I can't imagine what I might contribute.

@Geo In Worldbuilding, creativity weights the same as knowledge. And common sense.

I used common sense when I wrote the RPG save point question ;)

I usually get lots of upvotes for answers that are not creative at all. So creativity is not even important.

Tagwohl @Loong

@dot_Sp0T you can choose: either your answer be funny, creative (approach), in-depth, logic, or lot of technical terms

@dot_Sp0T what's a tagwohl ?

That RPG save point question is very creative! Usually save points are outside of game universes.

7:15 AM

@Vylix some obscure German greeting

@Geo thanks. I believe a game will be more exciting if you can explain game features with the world explanation

that's why I also +11111 the question about spellbooks

@Vylix the most exciting games do not need to have explanations everywhere. Things are inherently consistent and can be understood by experiencing the game world.

@Vylix Very clever answer, also.

@dot_Sp0T yep. It does not need to be explained, but can be explained by the world features.

@Vylix I always like it when there's books and stories sprinkled through the game world that dig into lore. Tales and fables written for the gameworld, set in the gameworld. Or even pseudo-scientific abstracts about phenomena in this world that do not exist in our world.

7:20 AM

@dot_Sp0T yep. Like the Elder Scrolls series

E.g. for the game I someday will create I'm still planning on having a different script as well as a math system using another base and different characters. Thus I am looking forward to create math textbooks and language learning books that would be used to teach children in that world.

A math book will have math as we know it in it. Addition & Subtraction, etc. But it will use different bases, will use different characters for text and numbers, will use different examples that would make sense in that world but not in ours.

@dot_Sp0T different examples? I wonder if the readers will understand it?

E.g. using my hexaped BoB to count multiples of 6

@Vylix that's it, the readers do not need understand it to play the game. But they will dig into the world by working through it.

Geo, the reasons your question gets downvotes are several: the query is tucked into the middle - almost at the beginning - of the text, not at the end; you have not stated what your actual problem is; the general tone of the post is slightly rambling, it feels disorganized, and it is somewhat hard to read.

@dot_Sp0T That method of worldbuilding works best in more visual media, where you can add really detailed incidental details. In text it’s a bit harder because you can’t leave a detail ‘in the background’, whatever you’re describing always comes to the forefront of the reader’s mind’s eye.

Though now I’m wondering if it’s possible to design a story where there are levels of detail to be dug into..

Possibly something with extensive appendices and lists of the lineage of the great houses of Arnor...

Wait..

7:35 AM

@Geo Also.... did you even take a look around the web about the concept of storing fluid in a body and excreting it at will? There are plenty of examples of animals that do that. Heck, even us humans do that: our urine bladder and urethra is exactly what you are looking for, only that it ends in another limb than our hands.

@JoeBloggs Have a look at Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus

3

@dot_Sp0T Great series.

The footnotes were the best part.

@Secespitus I remember how it switched to the perspective of Bartimaeus more and more with each book once the author realized these were the best parts; have you read the prequel (4th book) ?

@dot_Sp0T gotta love a bit of demonic sarcasm.

@dot_Sp0T Yes. I remember that one of his catch phrases or something similar was introduced like "I should remember that"

7:39 AM

@Secespitus yeah, it was when he was first summoned by Ptolemy, he did the whole thing and I was like - NICE PLAYED

@MichaelK You must be referring to a previous version of it. It's been much edited and improved over time. I was inexperienced when I originally wrote it, so I've put a lot of effort into correcting my mistakes.

@Geo You mean this one, right? worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/93864

@MichaelK That's the one.

It was beautiful to then read the passage were Nathanael summons him for the first time and he's being disappointed of his reaction and compares it to the last person that summoned him and was impressed by it

WHICH WAS PTOLEMY

Picked up the book in Stralsund on holidays and got instantly carried back

@dot_Sp0T It's been some time, I don't remember everything :D

7:41 AM

@Geo Yeah... that question — brace for brutal honesty — is a mess. Would you like to know how you can make it better? :-)

@MichaelK I would love nothing more. I've been getting lots of great advice.

@Secespitus oh my

@Geo I recommend people to structure their questions in the following way: Premise, Problem, Query. (Explanation to follow -> ).

I admit I started rereading it some months ago

You could've asked here - but then you'd have no additional internet points

@dot_Sp0T It was the first series I ever read.

@dot_Sp0T Story Identification is a great tag on SFF

7:43 AM

The Premise is where you give the people that will answer your question some background information about the world you are building. Tell us what the world is about, some basic rules that govern it... the bare minimum we need to know in order to understand...

@Secespitus it wasn't the first series for me, but an early one. Have you read Wolfgang Hohlbein's Anders ?

That'd be one of my first series' aside from Harry Potter

@dot_Sp0T Nope, never heard of it. What's it about?

@Secespitus German pseudo-modern fantasy

...the Problem you are having. Ok, so you were authoring your world/story/scenario . Then you ran into a problem that got you stuck. You need this solved, but you cannot do it on your own. That is why you have come to WB SE. State what the actual problem is. Then you finish with...

...a bang!

7:45 AM

...the Query. The query is the actual question... the sentence than begins with how/who/what/when/where/why. This is the question that — if it gets answered — will solve your problem.

@dot_Sp0T Cheeky. :-P

@MichaelK That's quite a contrast to @JDługosz 's spiral approach! I was taught to put the query first, because it's the most important part, then elaborate on it.

@Geo Oh yeah? I very much disagree with that approach. If may work for newspaper articles but here people spend more time and are more engaged in the posts.

@MichaelK @JDługosz was quite insistent that putting the query at the end was a bad practice. I'll have to re-read to remember why.

@Geo With your permission, may I try to edit your post and try to make it more legible?

@Geo most people decide whether to read on based on the start of your question

7:49 AM

@MichaelK Please do! I was just wondering how I might put your advice into practice. I'd love to see it.

I tend to do "hook" + "information" + "what I really need" quite a lot

My question tends to shift depending on who has most recently given me advice. I like to think I learn a little every time.

@JourneymanGeek Having a hook is easier said than done.

@Geo my question titles are my hooks

@Geo I think you better rollback your edit on that question, and start a new one

this one is very much better, and I'm curious on the answers

@Geo All right, now I have edited it. Take a look.

7:56 AM

I like to write a little paragraph at the beginning with the question so that people can decide whether they want to read Why I need an answer. Then comes the setup and in the end I repeat my question so that the people who only read the first paragraph and the people who only read the last paragraph know what the post is about.

4

@MichaelK Very interesting!

@Geo Also... the answer is — obviously — no, if you insist on the human being unmodified.

@Secespitus ^ that's a hook ;p

@JourneymanGeek I would call a hook something funny that draws attention, but is not the real question.

@Geo The closest we have to what you are speaking of is the Lymphatic System. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymphatic_system.

7:58 AM

@Secespitus a hook need not be humourous - though some of mine are

@JourneymanGeek I tried using a hook specifically with my question on SFF A witch, a vampire and a pixie meet in a bar and talk about tomatoes eradicating humanity

(and since I'm mostly on tech sites, I abuse gifs a lot ;p)

@MichaelK The human has to be unmodified, but the fluid can be anything. Who knows what might be possible with a properly engineered fluid. But I'll probably accept no as an answer if it comes to that.

@JourneymanGeek Okay, in that case I have the same approach as you have. Just a little different definition of what I would call a hook.

@Geo Well honestly... why not just say that the fluid resides in the blood and is not filtered out in the liver or the kidneys?

7:59 AM

@MichaelK Is that biologically possible?

@Geo Seriously, you are talking about a magic fluid. You are saying "I want magic... but it has to be non-magic too". No, make up your mind here... either you employ magic, or you don't.

@Geo that's kind of the point of blood

@MichaelK Yeah, of course, but magic is better when it's not too magical. The more you can ground your magic system in real things from people real lives, the more invested they will be.

@Geo No, that is a faulty assumption.

@Geo People are invested when you make them employ Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

@Geo Making things be as near mundane reality as possible is one way of doing it, but 1) it does not always work and 2) there are other ways and 3) don't overthink it... because if you overthink it, your readers will do that twice over and find the holes in your explanation.

@MichaelK People can also be invested when they feel that they are learning, when a story seems well researched by referencing true facts. If the magic isn't just mindless fantasy, but actually means something, the reader feels rewarded for reading.

8:05 AM

@Geo Then you make the reader fill in the gaps on their own. If you try too hard to plug the gaps you run the risk of creating something that does not hold water, especially when you are trying to blend magic with realism.

@MichaelK The trick is to not give the reader an explanation to poke holes in. Explanations are boring. You just have the explanation lurking in the background, hinted at in the story, but never openly stated. So when the reader figures out the connection between your story and real facts, they'll feel like they're smart for noticing.

@MichaelK I think the edit invalidates ALL of the current answers

@Geo Well there you have it then. 1) There is a magical fluid of sorts. It is ingested into the body through eating or breathing or soaking into the skin, or something is metabolised into becoming this fluid in the body.

@Geo again, I suggest you start a new question. Your edit invalidates ALL of the current answers.

@Vylix I did not add or remove anything. Basically just reordered the sentences.

8:08 AM

@MichaelK Yep, I replied on the wrong convo ;)

...so if the answers are invalid now, they were always invalid.

@Vylix A lot of the answers never respected the requirements of the question, no matter how early the edit. The question has always been asking for real biological explanations. Chi and things like that were always bad answers.

@Geo nah, your earlier question ask about biological system and how magic can come out of it

chi system is exactly what I'm thinking about

@Vylix Yeah, but it asks for real biology.

@Geo magic is never a real biology

else we'd be throwing fireballs at each other by now

or waterballs

wait, I want snowballs in tropical countries!

8:10 AM

@Geo So this point 1) is easily explainable (except for the magic) since this is what the body does all the time... and the blood is the key to human metabolism and getting the compounds we need distributed throughout the body.

@Vylix Yeah, but I still want to try to ground my magic in real biology as much as possible.

@Geo Then you need 2) the fluid — once ingested/metabolised — shall not leave the body. Well that is not problem. There are plenty of elements/molecules that will stay for good — or at least have a stupidly long biological half-life — once we have them in the body. DDT is a classical example of that.

@MichaelK That seems plausible, but can blood store things? Wouldn't it get clogged up or something?

lol

blood stores sugar, oxygen, water....

@Geo Good lord, have you any idea how many different elements and molecules we have in our blood stream?!

8:13 AM

blood is quite literally designed to move things around the body

@MichaelK I know blood is complicated. I meant that it's already pretty full, so I have doubts about stuffing more stuff into it.

@JourneymanGeek If it's already busy moving stuff, then also trying to store something extra in the blood ought to prevent it from carrying it's important cargo.

I'm just saying this once (I respect you as the question author), but edit that invalidates (a lot) of answers is a bad edit, and unfair to those who has spent time to write an answer to you. It's your choice. You can start a new question with no downvotes and clear slate (no comments and answers), so people can be more focused.

@Geo That is not a problem. Especially not if you make this fluid of yours so potent that just a few drops of it is needed to affect the magic.

@Vylix I feel a duty to my question to make sure that it's a good fit for this site. It's my fault that it's bad, and if I am ever to be competent as a writer of questions, I need to be able to fix it.

@Geo And considering the blood carries around macroscopic things large enough to be seen (at least with a microscope), adding a new molecule to this is no issue at all.

8:17 AM

@MichaelK That seems right. It's just a question of researching what would be able to exist in the blood without being filtered out.

@MichaelK blood is interesting choice. That explains why Summoning Jutsus in Naruto requires the character to bite their finger

@Geo No... no... stop, just stop. You are way overthinking it.

@Vylix Yeah, blood is often associated with magic, isn't it?

@Geo anything that dissolves in water will work

If you have already employed magic, then you are wasting your time by trying to make everything else be 100% physics-proof.

8:19 AM

@Geo well, the Bible said "Life is in the blood". Warlock uses life and soul to perform magic, so you can see they use blood in their rituals

@MichaelK Education is never a waste of time. I just learned something, anyway! Any water solution won't be filtered from blood! Really?

@Geo as long as the body does not recognize it as poison, it will never be filtered by the liver and dumped by the kidneys

@Vylix I wonder what causes the liver to consider something a poison.

@Geo It is kind of frustrating when you answer everything to you in such a way so that you maintain your fixation. What do you want: a credible magic world or a 100% physics-proof world?

@MichaelK 100% physics proof world = no magic

8:21 AM

@Geo You cannot have both.... you have to give on something.

@MichaelK Sorry. I'm just curious, that's all.

@Vylix ...which is my point.

@Geo Then listen to what we are saying instead of talking it down all the time.

@MichaelK I'm listening! I think this is all excellent. I've learned a lot.

@Geo Very well then.

@Geo In brief: no, an unmodified human cannot suddenly gain a bladder-like structure that delivers a magic fluid to hands and hands alone.

@MichaelK +at will? No. Just no.

The only thing I can secrete at will is urine and spit.

8:24 AM

@MichaelK It doesn't have to be to hands alone. It just has to be delivered to the skin of the hands. It might also be all skin, so long as it's not dripping out or something like that. Also, it can be a special fluid. Maybe something that can be activated by radio signal or something.

@Geo But blood works well enough. 1) It can retain an element indefinitely (for all practical intents and purposes) 2) it can deliver that element to anywhere in the body, including the hands.

Even sweat cannot be secreted consciously.

@Geo Well you are not going around bleeding all over the place are you? The body is quite good at keeping blood in.

@MichaelK Yeah, blood is turning out to be a excellent solution.

@Geo Well use techno-magic then... i.e. Arthur C. Clarke type of magic.

8:26 AM

@Geo You may want to search about the 4 main fluids in human body by Aristotle, if I'm not msitaken

@Vylix I've heard of those! I think I will look into them.

@Geo Turns out this fluid is not actually a liquid but billions of nano-machines. Large enough to not pass through the membranes of the liver and kidneys, but small enough to not be noticed as machines.

@Geo kheper.net/topics/typology/four_humours.html

Hot & dry (choleric) = fire magic, Hot and moist (sanguine) = wind magic, Moist & cold (phlegmatic) = water magic, cold & dry (melancholy) = earth magic

I know I'm not the only one who propose that

@Geo But in any case... for an unmodified human to do all this, no, then you cannot do it. You have to invent something new. Either the fluid's properties is such that it accumulates or is created in human blood on its own, or there is some hitherto unknown, incorporeal aspect of humans (see the answer that references the anime Bleach) that achieves this.

@Geo And again... I cannot stress this too much: do not overthink this. An even better way to get readers invested is if the reader can fill in the gaps on their own. Authors do this all the time... leaving holes in plot, narrative and/or exposition for readers to fill in. And while for some readers (yours truly included) it is frustrating, for the most part readers love to come up with their own explanations.

@Geo The most salient example of this would be Nik Kershaw's one-hit-wonder "The Riddle". You have heard the song. Now listen to the lyrics... what do you think the answer to The Riddle is? youtube.com/watch?v=bDygS0a6Tgo

@Geo It turns out there is no answer. The lyrics are boilerplate lyrics, something that Kershaw did in a rush just to have something, anything to the melody. It was needed for a demo, just to showcase that the melody works. ->

Later, when Kershaw tried to write some "real" lyrics, he failed... he could not come up with anything sensible. So eventually he just went "Feck it! Let's use the boilerplate and call it 'The Riddle'". His producer concurred. And that should have been the end of that. Little did they know...

@MichaelK Shame. Youtube blocked it in my country.

8:38 AM

The song was a hit... it got played a lot. And of course people wanted to know "What's the answer to the riddle?!". And worse... people came up with answers! Radio stations had contests about who could come up wit the best answer... because no-one knew that the lyrics were actually complete nonsense. As Kershaw himself put it "Some of the answers were actually really good!".

So the point is: leave some holes on purpose, and let people's imagination fill them. Do not overthink to fill every hole... as long as they are not so huge that the Willing Suspension of Disbelief falls through.

@MichaelK That's a really weird effect. But still... shouldn't we have a plan for how the gaps might be filled in? Isn't more rewarding for the readers if they discover something real instead of filling in the gaps with something of their own invention?

@Geo Does this video work? youtube.com/watch?v=IQ31jQjNpQc

@MichaelK Got. Thanks! They are nonsense lyrics, I see.

@Geo No... it is not required that you fill the holes with something real or even something specific. As long as people can fill it with something — anything — credible it is good enough.

@MichaelK Not required, but as a reader I find it more rewarding if I think the writer has a plan and there's a real hidden story to discover in the gaps.

8:43 AM

@Geo Yes but that is a personal preference. I know how you feel... I like that too. But this way we are feeling about it is not universal.

@Geo Then only thing you need to worry about is to write up some rules for this magic and have it be consistent. The worst sin you as an author can do is to break the rules that you established earlier on.

Oh yes, I know what you mean. Some of my favorite writing in the world has a magic system that is slowly, painfully drip-fed to the readers, keeping me begging for more details about its rules, never satisfying me. It's like an addiction.

If I ever suspected that the writer didn't properly understand the magic system himself, or wasn't being consistent about it, that would totally ruin the whole thing.

Are 20'000 letters a lot? (letters as in signs as in characters as in 'x')

@dot_Sp0T Too many for Twitter, I think.

@Geo but it just got an update :(

@dot_Sp0T A lot for what?

8:52 AM

just for your general feeling. if you spread them out on a screen or sheet of paper

Trying to think about a good limitation for a vertex buffer for a font-renderer

@dot_Sp0T It makes a square with 141 on each side. That's not much more than the 80-wide screens of old.

@Geo Well like I said: all you need is consistency. If you look at much of the things we do in our daily lives, most of it seems utter nonsense if it was observed by people that lived 500, 1000, 5 000 years ago. How is it for instance that swallowing two drops of clear fluid wards us from a horrible, crippling disease like Polio?!

(There is your magic fluid for you by the way... the Polio Vaccine. The antibodies stay in our blood... and are not shed into the outside world... and it has some really good magical properties: making us untouchable by that terrible illness)

I calculated the number by taking my screen measures (~1800 * ~2800) and dividing by letters of 20 * 15 px

I thought antibiotics just activated the immune system and got excreted.

@dot_Sp0T Yes, it's quite a lot

8:56 AM

which gives me some ~20k

Geo Vaccine is not antibiotics.

No, I was thinking of vaccines.

@MichaelK I must be tired.

@Geo Well it does not matter if what you ingested is excreted or not. It makes magic happen in the body and that magic remains.

having to multiply that by 20 as each letter takes 4 vertices and each vertice 3 coordinates + 2 texture coordinates it quickly adds up to 400k numbers. Each of these numbers taking 4Bytes gives me 1.6M bytes iirc.. irks

@dot_Sp0T You need to be able to fill the screen with characters. No getting around that.

9:00 AM

@dot_Sp0T Open a word document and then type until you are at 20k characters and you see how much it is. Do you really need to fill the whole screen with characters? No space anywhere?

in theory spaces are characters as well, in praxis I can get rid of them. but some 1.5MB seem a good rule of thumb

the idea is to pack as many letter's vertices into a buffer as possible and then draw it only once in order to utilize the parallelizing graphics cards are good at. Thus shoving as much data onto the card as I can

I might be able to 'cheat' by basing the size on the string that wants to be rendered. That would actually make sense - thanks brainstorm.se

9:16 AM

@dot_Sp0T Uhm... what are you trying to achieve? I missed the beginning of the convo?

@MichaelK just scroll up, everything is saved in the chat history

Q: How to safely check if you are immortal?

2

My hero lived his usual life until recently, when he realized that Magic actually exists. So far he has been granted levitation for short period of time and invisibility for several hours. Both worked perfectly. Now, he received third gift from a magician. Immortality. My hero was told, that th...

As interesting as it may be, I think this is too story based?

9:33 AM

@Vylix you're free to VTC it and see if others agree

@Vylix I've got to say that even though this could be perceived as a case of "What should my character do?" I view this as "How could a magically modified human test his abilities without being sure of the extent of these modifications?", which does sound on-topic to my ears.

@Secespitus you just want to have an excuse for writing an answer

@Secespitus Yep, I'm still refining my line of on-topicness

@dot_Sp0T I wouldn't write an answer if I was convinced it was off-topic.

@Vylix I think of it more of a big, blurry region that is quite subjective and dependent on the topic and format of the question.

@Secespitus yep, but there's somewhere in the region where it can be deemed as off-topic ;)

9:38 AM

@Vylix Indeed.

@Vylix (Don LaFontaine voice) "In a world..." er-hm (normal voice) "...where people are told they cannot be killed through physical injury, how would they go about testing that in a safe manner?"

@MichaelK I don't get the reference (since I have a very tiny resources)

@Vylix You don't know the "In a world" trope?!

@MichaelK I'm not sure if I get that

Don LaFontaine: The Voice

►

Don LaFontaine

Donald Leroy LaFontaine (August 26, 1940 – September 1, 2008) was an American voice actor who recorded more than 5,000 film trailers and hundreds of thousands of television advertisements, network promotions, and video game trailers. He became identified with the phrase "In a world...", used in so many movie trailers that it became a cliché. Widely known in the film industry, the man whose nicknames included "Thunder Throat" and "The Voice of God", became known to a wider audience through commercials for GEICO insurance and the Mega Millions lottery game. == Early life == LaFontaine was born on...

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InAWorld

9:51 AM

@MichaelK no :( I usually just get into the story and less bothered with the thinking

which is very weird, since I now developed a habit to build a world and explain the details instead ;)

and I'm kinda bad at listening English, especially if it has accent

@Vylix try watching more movies or tv series

@dot_Sp0T will be hard since all we have here in Indonesia is infotainment and reality shows

really, I wish we could make good movie, like The Raid

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

@Vylix I mean watching American/British movies/shows

Feeds

0

How two species can coexist without communication? In this world, there are two different species that use very different communication system and cannot meaningfully communicate with each other. One is insect-like that communicates via telepathy ala hivemind (can't be used to outsider), one is ...

@dot_Sp0T yep, will do. I really need to broaden my reading and watching list

Can we change the name of the Feeds bot?

10:06 AM

@Vylix I think other chat rooms have different names. So as far as I know it should be possible. Though I don't know who can do this and how much work it is.

Q: Can a "too story-based" question be saved with the "In A World" defense?

@Secespitus I'll start a meta about that after I get back home ;) see ya

Mithrandir24601

@Secespitus Hopefully either a room owner or mod can change it from here

Worldbuilding Meta

10:58 AM

1

We have a rule that says that is a question is more centered on a story than on a world, then there should be a Vote To Close for being off-topic. For example: How to safely check if you are immortal? However... This kind of question can possibly be saved by using the "In a world..." defense....

discussion too-broad

12:19 PM

@dot_Sp0T The prequel was about Solomon not Ptolemy. The bits about Ptolemy were in the third book which jumped between Ptolemy's story and Nathaniel's. Also, Nathaniel was not the first person to summon Bartimaeus after Ptolemy, Prague was in between as was most of his work in America.

@Bellerophon I should definitely re-read the series :D

What series is this?

@Geo It is biologically possible, take for example glucose. Also the kidney's only remove some water from the body so just have them only remove some fluid, around 50% would seem about right.

Q: A cynical demon writing annotations into the book for puny human readers

56

One of the first series I've ever read was about a young boy who was learning to become a mage. In this world it was possible to summon demons of different categories, ranging from small and not very powerful Fairy-like creatures, to Gargoyle-like mid-powerful creatures up to giant monsters devou...

story-identification novel magic demons

Bartimäus

@Secespitus Weird, it doesn't have the accent over the a and is written Bartimaeus in the English version. I assume yours is the German?

12:29 PM

@Bellerophon Oh, yes. It was the first series I ever read and I read most books in German.

I've never read that series. Oooh shiny!

The second answer, about the Myth books, I've read many of them, back in the 1990s. (Not sure I read the entire series?)

I actually met Robert Aspirin (author of the Myth series) at DragonCon in Atlanta, Ga, USA one year. Bought a signed copy of the then-latest Myth book.

12:50 PM

@Bellerophon well the joke about the tentacles and sulfur still holds

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

1:26 PM

@dot_Sp0T in my experience jokes about tentacles always hold

4

Feeds

2:05 PM

0

ETs want to establish trade with a hostile Earth. How could space aliens arriving at a modern Earth establish economic ties without destroying the present economy or generating lots of hatred? subtitle: What could the aliens offer that would pressure governments and businesses to trade with the...

2:19 PM

@JoeBloggs careful, there's a thin line between tentacle jokes and hentai...

3:17 PM

@CaM Surely you mean a thin film between tentacle jokes and hentai?

... and now I feel dirty. A pun too far...

2

indeed

4:16 PM

If you've got a question that's On Hold for being opinion based, and you carefully reword it to make it no longer opinion based, how long should you wait before you start thinking that you haven't changed it enough and it's still opinion based?

@Geo Weekdays at least 24 hours. Weekends definitely at least 48 hours. Give a chance for it to get through the review queue.

@Bellerophon Only 24 hours? Okay, I guess I won't start worrying about it until tomorrow.

@Geo At least 24.

Probably more.

@Bellerophon How long would you wait before changing it again?

I don't know. If no one voted to reopen after 24 hours I would edit more. If three or four people had voted to reopen I would ait a few days to see if I get that last reopen vote.

4:21 PM

@Bellerophon Is there some way to know how the voting is going?

@Geo Only if you have >3k rep.

Currently it is on 3 to reopen.

I'm feeling really good about it right now because it used to be negative and since the latest changes it's been going up in votes. I think I may have finally solved this.

I'm going to leave it as it is. These are a lot of positive signs and I don't want to mess it up by trying to fix something that's not broken.

Green

@Geo which question?

Q: A biological process for storing and excreting a fluid at will

0

In my world, ingesting a special fluid allows a person to perform magic. The fluid is powerful and precious in my world, so it cannot be involuntarily excreted from the body in a way that would leave it lying around wherever the person goes. It is critical that the body hold on to the fluid it ...

science-based biology magic anatomy biochemistry

4:43 PM

4 reopen votes.

Wow. Moving quickly. I'm certainly not going to change it now.

Green

I didn't see anything that appeared opinion based.

I think I was your fifth reopen.

I suppose that means I was the 4th.

Time to focus on my Sandbox question. No movement on that in a while, and I don't think it's entirely because of low Sandbox traffic.

I think I know what it means when a sandbox question doesn't get any activity. People look at it and just think "Blah. I don't like this, and I can't think of anything useful to say about it." I've seen questions like that in the sandbox and I've thought that. I had to force myself to think hard and leave a comment because it's hard to improve without help.

5:25 PM

@Geo if you wish, you can ping specific user in chat to ask their opinion about your post, in case they may have missed your question.

@Vylix Is that how's it's normally done?

Right now, current active reviewers (as I know it), are Secespitus, sphennings, Vylix

I've seen Separatrix doing mine and some other posts too

@Vylix Is that all? So few! Well, I'll do what I can to help out in the question Sandbox too.

@Geo nah, but chat is the only way we can ping users to check our question. I've done it twice with Secespitus and sphennings

@Geo sure, we need all the help we can get!

I doubt that sphennings would ever appreciate the sorts of questions I want to ask.

5:29 PM

@Geo well, I've noticed he has quite strict requirements of good question

With so few people active in the sandbox, how many upvotes should people be waiting for?

but that means getting a question approved by him some sort of achievement ;)

@Vylix No doubt about that! But there's not much point in asking a question that wouldn't be helpful for the world I'm building.

@Geo it's not defined. I wait at least 24 hours. If I managed to get an upvote, without disapproving comment, I usually launch the question.

@Geo it's only lately that I tried to seriously build a world. My earlier questions are purely just mental exercise.

@Geo if you find something interesting, even if it's not directly contribute to your world, see if you can make it to fit with SE Q&A format, then post it.

I love reading crazy questions and answers

3

@Vylix I guess it gets easier with practice. Right now formulating a good question is a major effort for me, so not something I take lightly. I only originally came here to help fill gaps in my knowledge of biology after being overwhelmed trying to do it with wikipedia.

5:37 PM

@Geo yep. And don't worry if you stumble. The community has no personal issues with someone. It's all about the posts.

With all the vast amounts of knowledge available on the internet, you'd think it'd be enough to answer any question without help, but sometimes you want to know a particular weird thing, and there's just no obvious way to find that fact without slogging through a full education in biology.

@Geo I think the internet has enough knowledge. It's just that we lack the keywords to search what we want.

I'd have tried biology.SE, but I don't think they'd have been receptive to questions about magic.

@Geo lol, of course not

@Vylix Yeah, no doubt. Really, once you start looking into biology on the internet, it just keeps get more and more complicated. It's such a baffling topic. The more I read, the more questions I end up with, instead of having fewer.

5:44 PM

I think we are the only weird site in SE network

@Geo You won't know how many tabs I ended with when I searched about fire resistant fauna

only in Wikipedia

knowledge is addictive

I started thinking that vasodilators might be a thing I wanted to use in my world, but it's crazy how many different kinds there are. I couldn't even manage to narrow down the vasodilator to a vague category because I could never find clear simple answers.

@Geo do you really need to picture such details to your reader ~_~

@Vylix No, no, I'd never share my research with my reader. Far too dry.

@Geo why'd you need to fuss over which correct vasodilator you'll need for your world?

just say I'm using vasodilator to open the capillary and blah blah blah

@Vylix If I try to write without knowing what I'm talking about, the reader will know. Readers are like wolves, but instead of smelling fear they smell lack of research.

5:51 PM

@Geo well... if your readers are all biologists I'd be afraid too... but are your target readers all biologists?

@Vylix They'll still know. If they like my story enough to even care, the ones who don't know about biology will look it up. The ones who know already will just stop reading because I'm insulting their intelligence.

k, need to go to bed now. gn @Geo

Q: Change the name of chat bot

@Vylix Thanks for your help.

Worldbuilding Meta

6:11 PM

0

In other sites, bot in chat room has custom name and profile picture. [interpersonal.SE] has Introverted Meta Man and Extroverted Main Man to post new questions in the chat room. In our Factory Floor, we have a bot with lame name Feeds. Can we change the name to something more cool? What shou...

discussion chat

6:38 PM

@Geo In particular, because it is very poorly received. I would think that it was an excellent essay structure, explaining and leading into the thesis statement (which is the Query). But they get shot down, horribly. Thus, my analysis (borne out by purposeful posts) that the Newspaper Reporting style is the way to go. IOW, it's empirical.

@JDługosz I don't think much of my own opinion, but I guess I know what I like, and I have to agree that I like it when the query comes early. It's a bit frustrating to read through the post before knowing what it's asking for.

Mithrandir24601

6:53 PM

@JDługosz I kind of wonder if the academic paper style (to be clear what I mean: abstract, summarising the question; intro, giving the background; something along the lines of the working and leading directly to the problem; the problem statement; then possibly a conclusion) would be a good style for a question? I often write answers (or what answers I do write) in that style and it seems to work

@JDługosz I don't think the order of the sections matters as much as asking the question clearly with a minimum of extraneous content.

@sphennings But if the query comes first, then you can be thinking about it while you're reading the detailed information. Otherwise you won't know which details are going to be important to your answer.

@Geo If a detail isn't important it shouldn't be in the question.

@sphennings I know what you mean, but the question probably wasn't written knowing what the answer would be. It might be important to the question, but that doesn't mean you're going to need every bit of it for the answer you'll write.

@Geo Well, I just wrote a question. After my natural tendency to do it the essay way, I moved the third paragraph to the top. The "spiral" is a way to handle doing this in a recursive way when trying to shorten that hoisted part so it's a simple sentence.

7:09 PM

@JDługosz The question is POB.

@Mithrandir24601 Well, you can start by identifying questions that use such a style. Is something along those lines seen here? My first impression is that this is long. If the abstract were itself written in Reporter style, that basically becomes a spiral.

@JDługosz The problem of writing a good question is really nebulous and mysterious. It's really great how you've created a structure to help with it.

@sphennings There is ample precedent for “How to name…” questions.

@James I'd argue that in most cases. They are POB.

@Geo Yea, it's a whole lot easier to identify bad ones than explain what's good.

@sphennings But with +16 score, 4 stars, and 12 answers it can arguably be a good successful question.

7:13 PM

@JDługosz this is probably the best "name question."

Oh, that was one of mine! Might be better to cite a different one

@sphennings Yes, in terms of the kind of answer I see on top.

The important thing about the greek name question is that it provided clear "good subjective" criteria for the question.

@JDługosz The point is that while I don't think that all name questions are POB, such questions need to provide a good subjective criteria. I don't think the question you just asked does that.

@sphennings A name question isn't opinion based if answers are about pre-existing words that have the desired meaning. That's not an opinion; that's just acting like a reverse dictionary. On the other hand, if people are just inventing words from their imagination, that would be opinion based.

Sometimes you really need a reverse dictionary. You know there's some word for this thing you're thinking of, but you can't put your finger on it, and Google's not giving it to you. Especially for very technical terms, this can be a struggle.

7:35 PM

@sphennings What are we talking about?

@James I was talking about how I think JDługosz's most recent question is POB.

@sphennings Were we talking about something? I haven't been in chat for like 2 days.

@James Sorry that was a typo. It's been a long week.

Maybe to avoid being opinion based, name question should specifically say that they require answers to be words that have been used previously, with references to where they have been used with the desired meaning, thereby excluding anything that's just been made up on the spot because it sound's right.

I was attempting to tag @JDługosz and I hit tab one too many times.

7:42 PM

ok good...I thought I had blacked out for a minute at work.

4

@James It's my last day at this job and it's been interspersed with rushing to get things done today and having nothing to do.

I'm 2 coffees behind where I normally am.

7:58 PM

@sphennings Thats a damn tragedy. Go gets that caffeine.

drink the coffee. Save the world.

If you were dipping arrows in arsenic, how many do you think you'd need to add up to an 8th of a teaspoon of arsenic?

Arsenic has been used for hundreds of years. I wonder where medieval cultures got their arsenic from.

Arsenic is a metal. So do you mean pure arsenic, or do you mean some arsenic-laced compound?

@CaM All the compounds have roughly the same effect, right? The block cells from storing energy?

If it's an arsenic compound, are you asking how much arsenic, or how much of the compound that includes arsenic?

What's the liquid's viscosity? a thick liquid will transfer more for each dip of the arrow[head] than a thin liquid that drips off more easily.

(think honey vs water and how much they stick to spoons)

8:15 PM

Well, arsenic works by mimicking phosphate and thereby stopping cells from using phosphate to store energy. That's the important thing. I don't really care how much arsenic is involved, what I care about is how much of the cellular effect it has in the end. I've read that an 8th of a teaspoon of arsenic is lethal, but I don't know which compound that was talking about.

Actually, that's how I'd determine the answer: dip a spoon into a measured container of liquid that is roughly the same consistency as your arsenic mixture. Extrapolate

@CaM Would it be fair to assume that arsenic mixtures tend to be like water? That wouldn't be wildly wrong, would it?

I literally have no idea. Try googling it.

@CaM I've been reading tons of stuff about arsenic. The internet refuses to give clear simple answers.

I guess it's good that poisoners can't learn about ways to poison people too easily, but it can be frustrating for people with innocent intentions.

8:33 PM

@Geo There is a tag for that on the English.SE.

@Geo It has a dipole so it would definitely mix with water and would probably be a decent solvent. It doesn't form hydrogen bonds so its melting and boiling points would be lower probably. It would be slightly more reactive than water at a guess.

@Geo Arsenic is a metal. What arsenic-bearing concoction are you actually using? How well does it stick to the arrow?

@JDługosz I'm assuming arsenic trioxide. That is the poison people usually mean when they say arsenic.

@JDługosz I haven't got one in mind yet. I'm trying to pick one. I wonder if any of them stick to arrows especially well. (Not trying to kill anyone.)

@Bellerophon It's important that the compound be available in a low-tech setting. I'm not sure how arsenic trioxide is made.

@Geo You also need to get that much into the blood, not just stuck to the tip of the arrow. And is it lethal that way, or will it quickly be excreted?

8:37 PM

@Geo If you fired an arsenic laced arrow at someone I think the arrow would likely be more deadly. Arsenic trioxide can be made really easily.

They had it in ancient China.

@JDługosz I'd have thought it would be lethal since I believe it is usually absorbed into the blood stream.

@Bellerophon Oh good, then arsenic trioxide is probably a good choice. I'm still having trouble finding info on how quickly it takes effect.

It would be good if it starts working immediately upon contact with cells. I know it works by mimicking phosphate, so might depend on how often cells absorb phosphate.

Hard to say with an arrow as it is usually eaten so the digestive system slows things up. Death is usually within 24 hours if consumption with symptoms appearing in ~30 mins.

@Bellerophon Good to know! Thanks!

The first symptoms are headaches, fatigue and cramps. If it was a big dose you pretty quickly get bad stomach cramp, vomiting, diarrhoea and bloody urine then you get circulation failure.

@Bellerophon Clearly it starts by attacking your stomach, so that's a good sign that it takes effect quickly. It doesn't have time to leave your stomach before it starts damaging you.

8:42 PM

In general the rate of absorption is based on the concentration gradient across the cell. So bigger dose = quicker death.

@Geo The stuff I use is water soluble. Protip: never confuse MDMA with MSMA.

@Bellerophon That would also mean that it does the most damage where it enters the body, and less damage as it spreads.

For real poison arrows, maybe some history or anthropology people would know.

@JDługosz I never even thought to try googling for arsenic arrows directly. I wonder if they've ever really been used.

@Geo well, the images are not what you would expect.

8:45 PM

@Geo Sort of, the most damage is kidneys and liver as the try and filter it out so increase the concentration.

Here you go: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpiment “It has been used as a fly poison and to tip arrows with poison.[citation needed]”

It's a natural mineral, and was known in Ancient China.

I'm off to lunch.

I still think an arrow is likely more dangerous than the arsenic in a battle. By the time the arsenic takes effect you may well be dead.

writingforums.org/threads/… if anyone's interested in jumping in…

@Bellerophon Yeah, but in this case I'm dealing with a monster that can't be harmed by arrows. I wonder how the Chinese stuff is different from arsenic trioxide.