After a few decades, the idea of being a wizard is synonymous with working 8+ hours a day on magic that no wizard really wants and there is so little new spells and magic being created in the world that everyone wishes there wasn't any.

Then leaks come out that the products these megacorporations create have been slowly killing the planet and they've known for decades. But since they have so much power and money, nothing can stop them until the world dies.

[–] BreadOven@lemmy.world 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Chemists are wizards?

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I mean chemistry direct predecessor, alchemy, was basically in large part magical practice attempt.

[–] BreadOven@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

True. They didn't make gold, but they discovered phosphorus...I think? The reducing urine one experiment.

[–] TheDoctor@hexbear.net 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I spend 8 hours a day gluing together spells my company purchased from a proprietary caster’s book to serve increasingly arcane (no pun intended) business needs. In my free time, I like to read about the latest advancements in corporate spellcraft, but most of the new spells are either patches of old spells or new spells that fix problems created by popular spells of the past 5 years. These new spells inevitably introduce new problems that will be “solved” in another 5 years.

[–] BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago

Yep, that's exactly it. I'm assuming this is software dev in a nutspell.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 months ago

Yep. You wouldn't have adventurous magicians going out and casting spells against dragons. The variety of spells known by D&D type wizards wouldn't even be a thing. You'd have a guy who was a specialist in ritual-casting flame spells whose job consisted of continuously heating up cauldrons of metal ore so it could be smelted. If he was jumped on his commute home, he couldn't fight the attackers off with "fireball" or something. Maybe that was covered in school decades ago, but he's spent his entire career doing nothing but that one smelting spell Or, you'd have the "Gate" wizard whose entire job was to keep up a portal for their entire 8 hour shift, so that tourists could pass back and forth.

[–] NormalPerson@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Stop, I can only get so depressed!

[–] xavier666@lemm.ee 11 points 2 months ago

Bro made fantasy stuff into a capitalist dystopia

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 3 points 2 months ago

This comment made me sad.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 75 points 2 months ago (2 children)

"If"

You realize embedded systems engineers are real, right?

[–] kboy101222@sh.itjust.works 36 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And if anything qualifies as esoteric, arcane knowledge, it's embedded systems programming

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'd say OS and driver programming is also in that category. It is the deep magic.

[–] kboy101222@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

True, true. I have a vague idea how embedded systems work. I have no idea how you even get started with driver development.

OS development isn't terrible though. There are numerous books to help you make your own kernel and OS

[–] cmder@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (5 children)

For linux driver development you can start by reading "Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition" pdf.
It is free and give you an idea about how everything works.
The real learning is by reading and using the linux kernel api doc or directly the source code of the api you want to call.
Source : i did this for a school project where i had to implement multiple kernel modules.

[–] kboy101222@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 months ago

Neat! I'll add it to my long list of things ADHD will never let me finish!

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[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago

“There are lots of books on harvesting your own primal power source, but most people these days make a pact with the demon Linus and simply channel his power”

[–] ChrysanthemumIndica@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This makes me feel so much better after spending a morning banging my head against some wild pointer arithmetic, thank you much much! (Ultimately the pointer incantations were successful, praise be!)

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[–] SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org 63 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

That's literally Megumin from KonoSuba lol. She's supposed to be one of the strongest wizards around, but refuses to learn anything other than explosion magic. Explosion magic is basically useless in most situations, as it just flattens a huge area.

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 53 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

If explosion magic doesn't solve your problems then you're clearly not using enough explosion magic.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Megumin's other problem is she only specced into things that would improve her explosion's damage output, neglecting basic mage things like mana capacity and efficiency. So she can only cast one (stupidly overpowered) explosion spell before all but passing out from using more mana than she actually has. It's why no other party would take her, because even in situations where the spell would be useful she becomes a massive liability after casting it.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago

Don't be too harsh she just played Lineage 2

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[–] Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website 33 points 2 months ago

*I didn't ask how close those buildings are, I said "I cast FIREBALL" *

-Megumin, if they played D&D

[–] OpenHammer6677@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

Expulooooshon

[–] TheDoctor@hexbear.net 46 points 2 months ago (3 children)

How people think wizards would talk:

Behold! I have unfurled powers beyond mortal comprehension!

How wizards would actually talk:

If I hear, “why don’t you just channel the infernal essence through an ephemeral plane?” one more goddamn time from someone who hasn’t actually read the fucking rune diagrams, I’m going to lose my shit.

[–] abfarid@startrek.website 14 points 2 months ago

In other words, wizards do exist, they are just called IT specialists.

[–] xavier666@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago

RTFR - Read the fucking runes!

[–] a_little_red_rat@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They would 100% be trying to peddle ape runes inscribed with XP cost (for extra permanency) as the next big investment opportunity

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[–] Toribor@corndog.social 38 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If magic was real, expert magic users would not trust it at all.

"Haha yeah I mostly do transfiguration magic but I do some evocation too occasionally. No I don't eat any transfigured food or do any of that at home or anything honestly I'm surprised it works at all."

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

Right, so literally computer security

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Discworld wizards represent!

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

Ponder Stibbons inserts another punch card into Hex. Ants flow through tubes and gears begin turning.

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[–] TheAuthor_13@lemm.ee 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There’d be hair restoration & ED specialized wizards within a year.

[–] 0laura@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh great wizards finasteride and dutasteride, give me back my hair!

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[–] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Ergo, Wizards can't be exploited by capitalism

[–] Fermion@feddit.nl 44 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Imagine thinking that PhD's and postdocs aren't exploited by capitalism.

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (5 children)

To be fair, PhDs and postdocs can't call down lightning from the sky or reanimate the dead to do their bidding.

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Of course they can and do call down lightning; the magic spell is called "lighning rocket".

To revive the recently deceased a spell called CPR combined with Defibrilation is used.

Some wizards dedicate their lives to researching even higher level spells

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[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

That one kind of magic would be capitalism. I mean the situation from OP post is the current state of liberal economics.

[–] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 2 months ago

Yes

[–] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

[–] VolumetricShitCompressor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago

Now that's just academica.

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago

Haha, look, it’s my career!

🫠

[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Grasshopper mind sorcery

[–] blackouttripleseven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 months ago

no way it's the yomi hustle guy

[–] SkeletonQueen@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

So they'd be like cobol developers? From what I know that is basically magic to keep it running

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