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Books Mark as Read Magic Doesn’t Have to Make Sense In praise of fantasy that embraces rebellious, lawless, and delightfully un-rulebound magic. By Molly Templeton | Published on May 22, 2025 Photo by Scheich Méshaël Zahedd [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Scheich Méshaël Zahedd [via Unsplash] For reasons I’m not sure I will ever fully understand, the topic of magic and rules comes up with slightly alarming frequency in SFF circles. So much so, in fact, that it is very tempting to use ominous capital letters when referring to the two bits of said topic: Magic and Rules. Does magic have to have rules? Would everyone just run about drunk with power if the rules did not constrain their magics in some way? What are rules, and what are parameters? If limits are not imposed upon wizards, will they ever impose them upon themselves? When does magic become science, and how much of this entire topic can I throw at the feet of Clarke’s third law? That law, for those in need of a refresher, states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Fair enough. But must we try to reverse-engineer this? Let me back up: I know there are a lot of books with intense magic systems because I hear about them. I read about them. I encounter online arguments about them and I see authors’ laws and notions about them. But I don’t, for the most part, read those books. I bounce off magical rule sets like drunk bees bounce off windows. But I’m not here to drag the rule-havers, long may they reign in their specific territory of fantasy. If you like the rules, more power to you, go with god(s), etc. I’m sure we can find something else to talk about should our paths ever cross.  I am here instead to sing the praises of rebellious, lawless, delightfully un-rulebound magic—not just the kind people do, but also the kind that simply is. I tried to find an example from Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland books and was overwhelmed with them: the wyverary (half wyvern, half library); Gleam the lamp; the smartly dressed Green Wind; the whole thing with the moon in the third book: Valente writes like she’s never heard of “rules,” and I have never wanted anything in one of her novels explained to me any further than she explains it. Strange, arguably magical things happen in Helen Oyeyemi books, and whenever they—or she—run up against a rule, whether of science or nature or anything else, it goes ignored. A lot of my favorite books, I can’t remember how the magic works. And I mean that as a compliment. In The Incandescent, magic exists, and some people are just better at various kinds of it than others. (Some of it involves invoking demons, and if you mess up that kind, well, magic definitely has a price.) Magic in The Magicians comes from pain. That’s fine. That’s a source, not a rule (one does have to learn fancy hand motions in order to do magic, but that’s a process). It also always kind of feels like a wry punchline to me. Every life has some pain. Therefore we’ve all got some magic. Magic relies on things, has processes, requires learning: yes, yes, yes. If magic is an art, well, art takes study. I could spend hours learning to draw and I would still not be an outstanding artist. Why would this not hold true for magic? What of the incredible alchemy of art and skill and practice and learning? If magic is a natural force, well, one also has to learn to understand those. I am not suggesting every wizard, witch, sorcerer, or other practitioner suddenly have access to powers unbounded. It only tracks, in my kind of brain, that in a world with magic, some people would have it come easily, and some would have to work a lot harder. Some would decide that the work wasn’t worth it, and learn to make elaborate candles or really good focaccia instead.  I admit, though, there is a little part of my brain that understands the rules and parameters and specific magical-math folks. A little bit. At least in principle. I understand the appeal of directions you can follow, steps you can take, a path laid out for success. Quantifiable actions. Stages and tasks and if-x-then-y. I play a lot of Zelda. I feel like magic systems are like when you decide to upgrade your armor: You will need a number of lizalfos tails and a number of flowers and probably some pretty gems you dug up in the mountains. It’s all fun and monster-killing and steady progression until you realize the game is never going to provide those elusive electric lizalfos tails. And then it just becomes homework. There’s also a little part of my brain that understands wanting magic to work like things we know. Maybe it takes a certain alchemy of light and water and invisible elements to create a flower; maybe it takes that to create a spell. But I don’t want to read a textbook for something I cannot actually learn. There is a point, for me, at which the fictional education becomes too much. Magic feels to me like something that should, on some level, be unknowable. Maybe dangerous. I’ve read more than one book in which magic elicits a sort of backlash. Unpredictable, possibly dangerous, and uncontrollable. You would have to be really sure that you needed to do your magic if it might come back to bite you in the metaphorical (or literal) ass like that. I like not knowing. I am currently sixty-odd pages into Jared Pechaček’s The West Passage and I have no idea what kind of book I’m dealing with. It’s sort of like if Piranesi and City of the Uncommon Thief are doing a really complicated dance together, beckoning for the reader to join them, but said reader has no idea how the steps go. There are people with trout heads and a beehive that prances around like a pony. Magic. No one’s doing magic, exactly, at least not yet, but this world is magic in itself. There is magic in its seams. I do not need to know why the trout person has a trout face. I might find out, or I might not. But logic is not required. Magic! Illogical, glorious magic! Give me more. Shape it with names, summon it with car-antenna wands, sing to it with bells, make deals with demonic figures, do incredible works through magic rocks. Let magic run wild and only a few people know how to chase it. Make it as common as air and a pain-in-the-ass to wield. Limitations are great. Limitations are fun to work with, fun to play with, delicious to smash. I’m not suggesting we need a whole lot of nuclear-warhead level mages in every story doing whatever they want, because that would be boring. But that’s not down to the rules or the magic system; that’s down to the story and the characters. Anyway, maybe magic doesn’t want to be used like that. Maybe it’s sentient. Maybe it hates you. Maybe it’s petty. Maybe it likes systems! Maybe sometimes magic systems are just science in new outfits. Maybe magic met chemistry in college and they got along really well.  I am not the first and will not be the last to make this plea: Let magic be magical. Let it not “make sense.” If you don’t believe me, will you listen to N.K. Jemisin? Because this is magic we’re talking about. It’s supposed to go places science can’t, defy logic, wink at technology, fill us all with the sensawunda that comes of gazing upon a fictional world and seeing something truly different from our own. In most cultures of the world, magic is intimately connected with beliefs regarding life and death — things no one understands, and few expect to. Magic is the motile force of God, or gods. It’s the breath of the earth, the non-meat by-product of existence, that thing that happens when a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it. Magic is the mysteries, into which not everyone is so lucky, or unlucky, as to be initiated. It can be affected by belief, the whims of the unseen, harsh language. And it is not. Supposed. To make. Sense. In fact, I think it’s coolest when it doesn’t. It’s coolest when it doesn’t. This is from Jemisin’s 2012 blog post, “But, but, but — WHY does magic have to make sense?”  This is also why I love it when writers get their fantasy all mixed up with their science fiction. Space is big and wild and if we’re going to explore far distant (made-up) parts of it, who’s to say what lurks between those moons and stars and planets? Who’s to say there are limits on what fiction can invent out there in the black? A book—any book—needs to have a sense of internal logic (unless it is purposefully and cleverly not doing that, but that’s a whole different thing). But that doesn’t mean we need to know why there are talking trees. Or what songs the stars are singing to the spaceships that drift by on their way to new (and possibly magical) worlds.[end-mark] The post Magic Doesn’t Have to Make Sense appeared first on Reactor.

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry voted for the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, but he’s not very happy about it. The bill passed by 215-214 margin, with one “present” vote. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal, he discussed what happened behind closed doors in last-minute negotiations between congressional leadership, White House staff and holdouts from the fiscally conservative House Freedom Caucus. “My biggest reservations, quite honestly, generally still remain,” he told The Daily Signal shortly after voting for the budget reconciliation bill. “All the savings happen in the 10-year window, but of course, as always in Washington D.C., at the end of the ten-year window.” Specifically, Perry wishes the bill had more aggressively reformed Medicaid and Biden-era green energy tax credits to cut spending and calm already uneasy bond markets. If signed into law, the budget reconciliation bill would fulfill many of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, such as extending his 2017 tax cuts and funding border security.  But less than 24 hours before voting on the bill, Perry and fellow fiscal hawks from the House Freedom Caucus said they had received an offer the night before from the White House to include more aggressive cost-saving provisions in the bill.  (From left) Freedom Caucus Reps. Keith Self of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Chip Roy of Texas discussing the White House’s “offer” Wednesday. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) This was denied by a White House representative, who said that they were presented with policy options, but “no deal.” Perry rejects this narrative. “Regardless of what staff at the White House says, we were given an offer, not options,” said Perry. “We were given an offer, and we took it. And then to save face for themselves, they backtracked on it.” The White House was not able to immediately respond to a request for comment on Perry’s claims they “backtracked” from an offer. Perry would not go into the details of this offer, but he told The Daily Signal that it was appealing to fiscal conservatives. “At this point I think it’s kind of moot, but just suffice to say that it was relevant enough. I will say, I will—no, I better not,” he said, when asked for information.  “It was just relevant enough to get the vast majority of the people that had significant concerns from our viewpoint to ‘yes,’ but it never materialized once we agreed to it.” Shortly after announcing this offer, Perry and his fellow Freedom Caucus members went to the White House to meet with Trump and Republican House Leadership.  Asked if any parts of the previous offer were put back on the table after their visit to the White House, Perry said, “No, not one of them.” After the Freedom Caucus members and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., came back from the White House, the Speaker announced that they had come to a working agreement. ? Mike Johnson gives update on the 'Big, Beautiful Bill': "We will decide whether the vote will be tonight…or tomorrow morning. And we are excited–I believe we are going to land this airplane." pic.twitter.com/yK5RiWNryJ— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 21, 2025 “You will see how all of this is resolved,” he said. “I think we can resolve their concerns, and it’ll be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas, as well as here in Congress. So there may be executive orders relating to some of these issues in the near future.” Perry is skeptical of these claims. “Outside of reconciliation at this point, I don’t see that as very viable,” he told The Daily Signal. The budget reconciliation process is exempt from the Senate’s typical 60-vote requirement for ending debate. But a few hours after Johnson got back from the White House, he released a “manager’s amendment”—the final draft of the bill that came out of the House Rules Committee.  This draft contained key concessions to Freedom Caucus members, such as earlier implementation of Medicaid work requirements, and some new limits on green energy tax credits. Perry says that this amendment was “a combination of the speaker [knowing] where we were, but also out of the conversation at the White House.”  Despite calling his “yes” on reconciliation, a “tough vote,” Perry is proud of how he and his caucus shaped the entire process. “We pushed as hard as we could. We improved the bill and process immensely,” he said. “You recognize and realize the Republican conference went [on retreat] to Doral in Florida and came back with a recommendation of $30 billion in spending cuts? And now we’re at what—1.6 or 1.7 [trillion]… and those are directly due to the efforts of the Freedom Caucus.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. Perry said that the Senate may alter the reconciliation bill (Allison Robbert/The Washington Post via Getty Images) Despite his continued reservations about the bill, Perry says that the Senate could still change it in a way that he’d prefer. “We are hoping to make some changes in the Senate. Now, they could go the other way too, so we have obvious reservations about that.” It’s almost conventional wisdom in Washington that the Senate does not make bills more fiscally conservative. But Perry says they might have a chance to buck that trend. “That has been the history,” said Perry. “Now we hear that we have a much more conservative Senate now, and some say arguably more conservative than the House.” The post Skeptic of ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Tells All on Last Minute Negotiations appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Supreme Court Thursday ruled against a Catholic charter school, upholding the Oklahoma Supreme Court decision disqualifying the school for state funds. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the ruling, resulting in an equally divided court. The court did not issue an opinion, only stating, “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court.” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, sued the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Baord and its members, seeking to invalidate its contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The school, supported by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, aims to operate as a Catholic virtual charter school. The contract had recognized religious rights for St. Isidore that deviated from the expectation that charter schools remain nonsectarian under Oklahoma law. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the contract violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. The court had taken up the case to examine two questions: whether the education decisions of a privately owned and operated school constitute state action because the school has a contract with the state; and whether the First Amendment’s free exercise cause prohibits or the establishment clause requires a state to exclude religious schools from its charter school program. ?BREAKINGThe Supreme Court splits evenly, 4-4, on the Oklahoma charter school case.This means the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling against St. Isidore of Seville school stands, and the important questions in the case go unresolved?https://t.co/ZUCQc2AA6y pic.twitter.com/3D5gUEVehT— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) May 22, 2025 The Trump administration had previously filed a brief supporting the school, arguing that excluding it from the program would violate its free exercise rights. This is a breaking news story and will be updated. The post BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules Against Catholic Charter School appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In February 2024, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., received a devastating phone call from a sheriff in his home district while attending a Trump rally in South Carolina. The sheriff informed Collins that Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student enrolled at Augusta University’s College of Nursing, had been murdered while jogging on the University of Georgia campus in Athens on Feb. 24. The gruesome murder set off almost a year of policy debates and political calculus that culminated in President Donald Trump signing the Laken Riley Act into law. Collins, the leading House Republican on that piece of legislation, joined “The Signal Sitdown” to give a behind-the-scenes look at how Republicans got this major legislative accomplishment across the finish line. When Collins received that call in February 2024, he had a feeling the perpetrator was a criminal illegal alien. “I said, ‘Oh God, don’t tell me what you’re gonna tell me next,’” Collins recalled. In response, the sheriff told Collins, “Well, I can’t confirm it, but I can assure you.” The illegal alien murderer, 26-year-old José Antonio Ibarra of Venezuela, was arrested the day after the heinous crime. Riley’s murder could have easily been prevented if America had anything close to a sane immigration system. Ibarra, who was found guilty of all charges in November 2024, was apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection after illegally entering the United States in September 2022, but he was released on parole while awaiting further immigration proceedings. A year later, Ibarra was arrested in New York City and charged with acting in a manner to injure a child under 17 but was released back onto the streets. A month later, Ibarra and his brother were arrested in Athens, Georgia, for shoplifting at a local Walmart. He was released while awaiting court proceedings, proceedings for which he failed to appear.  Soon after learning about Riley’s murder, Collins said he “made a phone call to the family and told them that we were gonna be on top of this.” The product was the Laken Riley Act, which Collins introduced in the last Congress on March 1, 2024. The legislation requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants arrested for a number of crimes, such as theft, rather than letting criminal illegal immigrants out on the street and hoping they do not strike again. The bill passed out of the Republican-controlled House with some Democrat support, but “when it got to the Senate, it just fell into that big black hole over there,” Collins said. “I told the family, uh, we talked after it went over there and I was told there’s no way it’s coming up,” Collins recalled. “And I told them it had gotten personal. I told them that I couldn’t let it go.” “No matter what, we were gonna get this passed if it’s the last thing that I ever do,” Collins said. The strategy was straightforward: Say her name. “We were sitting around [thinking] how do we do this? We make sure that we keep this in the public, we make sure that we keep this in the media. We make sure that Laken Riley’s name becomes the face of this problem,” Collins told The Daily Signal. “We do that, we’ll be able to get some legislation that’ll impact and make a change.” Democrats only changed their tune on legislation like the Laken Riley Act after thoroughly getting embarrassed in the November election. Collins went door to door on Capitol Hill to try to whip the votes in both the House and Senate to get the Laken Riley Act on Trump’s desk. Some Democrats, however, threatened to undermine the effectiveness of the bill while still taking credit for it, Collins said—even elected officials from his own state. “[Sen. Jon Ossoff] told me he was gonna dismantle the whole bill, make it his bill.”  “That ought to tell you where people stood right then,” he recalled. “It wasn’t about the policy, it was about the politics. Because he’s up for reelection and he knows he’s in trouble.” Collins and Republicans managed to keep the bill intact and apply enough pressure so that Democrats caved. The House voted in favor, 264-to-159, and the Senate, 64-to-35. Collins was with Riley’s family when Trump signed the Laken Riley Act into law on Jan. 29, 2025. Collins recalled Riley’s mother asked to speak at the signing event, turning to him and saying, “Mike, I get pretty emotional,” Collins recalled. “I said, yeah, me too,” Collins replied, “but when I do, I just take in a deep breath, and when I do that, I can continue talking.” During her speech, “it was getting emotional,” Collins said. “She paused, and I could see out of the corner of my eye, President Trump … put his hand on her shoulder.” ”You think about how that young lady fought for her life,” Collins said, “she fought to her last breath, and that’s the least that we could do for her.” The post Inside the Fight to Pass the Laken Riley Act appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The past couple of weeks has seen a lot of drama within the Make America Healthy Again movement. Much of the commotion surrounds President Donald Trump’s new Surgeon General nominee, Dr. Casey Means along with her brother, Calley, a special adviser to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A few members of the wider MAHA coalition have cited concerns over their involvement in biotech companies, while others condemn their lack of emphasis on vaccines. Predictably, the far-left media is having a field day, running stories better suited to the E! network than serious media outlets. Amidst all the distractions, however, major MAHA wins are flying under the radar. FDA Wins Not only did the FDA mandate that three of the most controversial food dyes be removed from processed food, but the agency will also be conducting a post market review of all added food chemicals. In a recent press release, the FDA announced measures to “increase transparency and ensure the safety of chemicals in food.” According to the press release, the FDA will roll out a modernized, evidence-based prioritization scheme for reviewing existing chemicals, initiate a final, systematic post-market review process, and expedite its review of chemicals currently under review. Barely any legacy media outlet covered these stories, much less applauded them. In a contentious hearing before the House last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had to toot his own horn to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who was blasting Kennedy for his consolidation efforts at HHS. “Congressman DeLauro, you say that you’ve worked for 20 years on getting food dye out. Give me credit! I got it out in a hundred days!” He repeated his now popular charge, “There’s no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. There’s just kids and we should all be concerned with them.” In response to the changes at the FDA, many companies are fast-tracking efforts to comply with new standards. Recently, Tyson Foods announced it will be eliminating petroleum-based dyes by the end of the month. In addition, last week Kennedy ordered the FDA to conduct a complete review of the popular abortion pill, mifepristone. According to insurance data, one in ten women experienced a serious adverse event within 45 days of taking the pill, including sepsis, infection, and hemorrhaging. According to the report, “the real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high as the summary figure of “less than 0.5 percent” in clinical trials reported on the drug label. Vaccine Recommendation Changes The FDA plans to introduce a new review system for future vaccines that would require placebo testing, a huge victory for MAHA supporters. FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary signaled his support for the move. “We want to see vaccines that are available for high-risk individuals,” Makary said. “And at the same time, we want some good science. We want some good clinical data.” The agency is focusing on the good data it already has. Years of failed COVID policy preceded years of underreported mRNA side effects and needless injections. Finally, health officials are doing something about it. On May 20, Makary, along with Dr. Vinay Prasad, announced that federal agencies will no longer recommend COVID shots for children and teenagers. Furthermore, officials have limited recommendations for ongoing shots to high risk and older individuals. It’s a small step, but it represents a historic reversal of the CDC vaccine schedule for kids, which, with only one exception, always grows and never shrinks.  For many years, Trump touted his first-term health campaign, Operation Warp Speed, as a huge success. As a result, many speculated that the president would stymie efforts by Kennedy and others to re-assess the COVID vaccines. But every relevant public statement by the president supports Kennedy’s efforts, even if it means rethinking past policies in light of new evidence. Earlier this year, Kennedy also suggested HHS would review the entire childhood vaccine schedule, though, at the moment, this remains a promissory note. End of Gain-of-Function Research Another MAHA success came on May 5, when Trump signed an executive order to ban federally funded gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens in foreign “countries of concern.”  Kennedy called the move “a milestone and historic development.” Though the executive order was quite narrow, it’s clear that leading health officials recognize the problems with this research wherever it is conducted. “There’s no laboratory that does this right, there’s no laboratory that’s immune from leaks,” the HHS secretary commented during the signing.National Institute of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya stated, “The conduct of this research does not protect us against pandemics as some people might say. Any nation that engages in this research endangers their own population as well as the world as we saw during the COVID pandemic.” “Gain-of-function is an area of science where scientists really play God,” Kennedy told “The Record With Greta Van Susteren.” “They’re taking pathogenic viruses and they’re making them more transmissible, they’re making them more virulent, and they’re making them more deadly.” Some in the MAHA movement have complained that these policies are too modest—and that may be true. But each represents a reversal of policies that, until recently, elite influencers treated as settled. Among fans of MAHA, the more charitable interpretation is that Kennedy, Makary, and Bhattacharya are wisely choosing an incremental approach. It’s easy to forget that they have held their positions for only a few months. Like much of President Trump’s agenda, it’s been hard to keep pace with these major health policy reforms. However, if the MAHA coalition can stay focused and disciplined, we have every reason for hope that the Trump-Kennedy vision of making American healthier will succeed. The post Drama Shadows Recent MAHA Wins appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Left Inevitably Embraces Terror

Hmmmm: DoJ Opens Probe Into Cuomo Over COVID-19 Testimony

When Mars seems to shine, like you've had too much wine (robot lubricant), that’s a-Deimos.