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PaperclipPerfector  14hr ago (text post)   418 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 27, 2026

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So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up al-Katibi's The Rules of Logic, an apparently influential Arabic logic primer. The book itself is actually quite short, with the commentary by the translator taking up the majority of the pages.

It has recently been said of Peter of Spain’s Summaries of Logic, probably written in the 1230s, that no other book on logic prior to the twentieth century had such wide readership or, in consequence, did so much to shape Western ways of constructing well-formed sentences and putting them together in valid arguments. But perhaps one other logic text has had just as many readers, and as profound an impact on ways of formal discourse and argument. In the Muslim East, al-Risālah al-Shamsiyyah (literally The Epistle [on Logical Rules] for Shams al-Dīn) was written some forty years after the Summaries, by someone who was Peter’s exact contemporary: Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī (d. 675/1276). Al-Risālah al-Shamsiyyah also came to figure in the education of nearly every aspiring young scholar, and is still read in traditional schools.

I finished The Best Minds this week. Author Jonathan Rosen published several novels before writing this, and there are times when you feel like you're reading a novel rather than a work of non-fiction. That's not solely due to the manner of its telling, but also because the story itself is so surprising and so saturated with dark irony. Indeed, if it was a work of fiction, a satire of well-meaning but misguided deinstitutionalization efforts, its basic premise (a brilliant but troubled young man is diagnosed with schizophrenia, becomes the public face of contemporary efforts to break the stigma around mental illness and stop the mentally ill from being discriminated against, sells the rights to tell his inspirational biography to Hollywood for more than a million dollars – then has a psychotic break and stabs his pregnant fiancée to death) would seem almost painfully on-the-nose.

While reading the book, it struck me that it's a clever subversion of a genre of books and films I call "TOA stories": "triumph over adversity". These are formulaic and sentimental stories about a brilliant individual who faces some unexpected major obstacle in his life (physical disability, disease, mental illness), struggles mightily against it, and summons strength he didn't know he had to overcome it. Something something mind over matter, inner human resolve, a moving testament to the power of the human spirit etc. The Best Minds starts off following that structure to the letter, but where a conventional TOA story would have ended with Michael selling the rights to his story, marrying his girlfriend and delivering an inspirational speech, Minds keeps going, showing that the real thing is nowhere near that simple. In the end, adversity triumphed over Michael, not the other way around. Part of the reason adversity triumphed over him was because so many around him chose to pretend that he'd already triumphed over adversity, and hence missed (or, less charitably, ignored) obvious red flags that his condition was very much not a thing of the past. Rosen notes that, prior to his murdering his fiancée, so many articles about Michael described him as having "a history of schizophrenia", as opposed to "schizophrenic". Amusingly, the phrase "triumph over adversity" does appear in the book, in the form of a press release Rosen quotes about the film A Beautiful Mind. That film originated as a loose biopic about Michael, but after he murdered his fiancée, the producers decided they needed a more palatable lunatic for their subject. Interestingly, after a certain point the real John Forbes Nash gave up taking antipsychotic medication, but near the end of A Beautiful Mind, Nash claims to be taking meds. Director Ron Howard felt this artistic license was the responsible choice, as he did not want to send the message that schizophrenics should attempt to overcome their condition via sheer willpower. This decision of his feels even more poignant when you understand the genesis of the project: Michael's story must have been weighing heavily on Howard's mind, as a cautionary tale of what can happen when schizophrenics don't take their medication.

Easily the best work of non-fiction I've read so far this year, and the saddest work of non-fiction I've read in years. Highly recommended.

Magic-school time-loop litRPG progression slop: Serpent's Coil. Twist: The protagonist of the story is, not the primary looper, but just a secondary looper who can be erased by the primary looper if he ceases to be useful.

Mildly interesting Harry Potter short story: The Subtle Science and Exact Art of Asking the Right Question

Potions is presumably based on medieval alchemy more than anything else. Slughorn's antidote lesson is even called "almost alchemical". Why shouldn't it look like it?

Besides which, the other thing that comes up a lot in fanon is tables of ingredient interactions. With the hundreds, perhaps thousands of ingredients used in various potions, those could fill whole volumes like the logarithm tables of the 1600s. But worse is having to keep track of all the interactions within a potion that might have dozens of ingredients. (Hermione's antidote in that same lesson had 52.)

But the thing is, that's not really how real-world chemistry works. In chemistry, you make one (or a few) intermediate products at each step (such as Syrup of Adoneta here), and you only have to keep track of interactions with those intermediate products, which themselves may fall into a few broad categories. That problem is still fiendishly complex (ask any pre-med student who's taken Organic Chemistry), but much more tractable, as it scales linearly rather than quadratically.

Even fics that go all-in on Snape mentoring Harry to become a potions master rarely give a reason for the brewing steps, rather seemingly pulling names of ingredients and interactions out of thin air. They rarely even address the question of why the Half-Blood Prince's canonical potions modifications work. Treating potions like real-world chemical synthesis could go a long way to resolving those questions.

TL;DR, if I had more free time and a degree in chemistry, it would be eminently possible to create a potions-centric canon rewrite every bit as rigorous and innovative as the Arithmancer-Verse was for arithmancy. But since I don't have either of those things, let this one-shot stand as a taste of what's possible.

Mildly entertaining magical-girl novella: An Uneasy Stalemate

The Bane known as Decay has watched his fellows getting slaughtered, and decided he wants no part in their fate. When he's ordered to cross the rift to Earth himself, he's willing to do anything to survive. There may be no chance of victory, but, with a little effort and a few acts very much against his nature, it might just be possible not to lose.

This is a short story, mostly following the POV of the very confused and slightly traumatised magical girls as they try to figure out what to do with their rather atypical enemy.

Mildly entertaining grimdark Madoka Magica fanfiction: Fargo DX

In the frostbitten American Midwest, ragged Magical Girls vie for territory to survive the unforgiving landscape. One such girl is Sloan Redfearn, who wastes away in no man's land after being betrayed by her best friend. Only one goal keeps her alive: Revenge.

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