  Permanent magnets are fascinating. They generate magnetic field and act as
the key component in compasses, motors, speakers for practical applications.
They are also made into magnetic toys for entertainment and education with
magical magnetic tricks. Some of these tricks fueled the recent upsurge for
magnetic-responsive objects including but not limited to a LK-99 mixture. A
lack of full consideration of the magnetic interactions seems to be the reason
why some tricks like "half levitation" is misinterpreted, and the situation is
not really rectified in the following replications and discussions. Here I
would like to go through some less commonly taught facts about real-world
permanent magnets starting from the nonuniformity to their combined effects
with other factors. Based on these facts, I will also break down the situation
of some examples of how permanent magnets diversely interact even with ordinary
objects, as one may have seen from recent sources. I believe this discussion is
useful both in an informative and educational way, helping those who want to
think deeper about magnetic mechanism beyond a simple attract/repel
terminology.
