the more I think about it, the more I realize that 2009 me would be pretty scared/intimidated by 2014 me and that’s what counts
2009 me would be like “wait you can just BE A MAN???? Even when people have always told you you’re a WOMAN???? I AM SO GOING TO DO THAT I AM SO GOING TO BE A MAN!!!!!”
I was thinking about how nobody really knew that Voldemort was called Tom Riddle, not even Hermione who read books on him and it actually really confuses me. It implies that basically the whole Wizarding World, even those brought up in the world don’t know about his past at all.
[…]
Learning that Tom Riddle = Lord Voldemort could have saved Ginny in her first year. It’s also excluding muggleborns. How are they to know about the tensions about muggleborns in the past (which are still effecting society to this day) if they’re not taught about it in class? Do they get taught by their housemates, their friends, prefects – in awkward mumbles and with feet shuffling? Think about how confused Harry was at the Quidditch World Cup. Think about how confused muggleborns would have been if they had seen a Dark Mark branded on someone’s arm. They probably would have shrugged it off, not knowing that turning that person in could help.
It just shows how narrow minded the Wizarding World is really, and how stand-still they are. It seems to me like they haven’t changed the curriculum of what is taught in History of Magic for at least 100 years, and they don’t seem to understand why its a problem. They literally believe they are the perfect society the way they are, not understanding the need for constant evolution and innovation.
I think this post is making the assumption that like wizarding historians know Voldemort is Tom Riddle, like do they? I get the impression that Voldemort was not announcing his origin story to the world, and may have cultivated the impression that he’d just appeared from nowhere.
On the other hand, I think Dumbledore pretty clearly knows. And Ollivander remembers selling Tom a wand, so like. Some people clearly know.
I don’t know, I think we might actually be looking at a bit of a plot hole here.
As far as I remember, Voldemort started gathering followers (later Death Eaters) when he was still in school, so I don’t think he could have pulled off the whole “appeared from nowhere” thing. And his name and history might not only have been important to historians, but also for the war itself – I think finding out possible hiding places and allies would be easier with his civilian name and background. Can’t imagine nobody would have bothered to find that out.
Let me tell you some things.
I used to investigate child abuse and neglect. I can tell you how to stop the vast majority of abortion in the world.
First, make knowledge and access to contraception widely available. Start teaching kids before they hit puberty. Teach them about domestic violence and coercion, and teach them not to coerce and rape. Create a strong, loving community where women and girls feel safe and supported in times of need. Because guess what? They aren’t. You know what happens to babies born under such circumstances? They get hurt, unnecessarily. They get sick, unnecessarily. They get removed from parents who love them but who are unprepared for the burden of a child. Resources? Honey, we try. There aren’t enough resources anywhere. There are waiting lists, and promises, and maybes. If the government itself can’t hook people up, what makes you think an impoverished single mom can handle it?
Abolish poverty. Do you have any idea how much childcare costs? Daycare can cost as much or more than monthly rent. They may be inadequately staffed. Getting a private nanny is a nice idea, but they don’t come cheap either. Relatives? Do they own a car? Does the bus run at the right times? Do they have jobs of their own they need to work just to keep the lights on? Are they going to stick around until you get off you convenience store shift at 4 AM? Do they have criminal histories that will make them unsuitable as caregivers when CPS pokes around? You gonna pay for that? Who’s going to pay for that?
End rape. I know your type errs on the side of blaming the woman, but I’ve seen little girls who’ve barely gotten their periods pregnant because somebody thought raping preteens was an awesome idea. You want to put a child through that? Or someone with a mental or physical inability for whom pregnancy would be frightening, painful or even life-threatening? I’ve seen nonverbal kids who had their feet sliced up by caregivers for no fucking reason at all, you think sexual abuse doesn’t happen either?
You say there’s lots of couples who want to adopt. Kiddo, what they want to adopt are healthy white babies, preferably untainted by the wombs and genetics of women with alcohol or drug dependencies. I’ve seen the kids they don’t want, who almost no one wants. You people focus only on the happy pink babies, the gigglers, the ones who grow and grow with no trouble. Those are not the kids who linger in foster care. Those are certainly not the older kids and teenagers who age out of foster care and then are thrown out in the streets, usually with an array of medical and mental health issues. Are they too old to count?
And yeah, I’ve seen the babies, little hand-sized things barely clinging to life. There’s no glory, no wonder there. There is no wonder in a pregnant woman with five dollars to her name, so deep in depression you wonder if she’ll be alive in a week. Therapy costs money. Medicine costs money. Food, clothes, electricity cost money. Government assistance is a pittance; poverty drives women and girls into situations where they are forced to rely on people who abuse them to survive. (I’ve been up in more hospitals than I can count.)
In each and every dark pit of desperation, I have never seen a pro-lifer. I ain’t never seen them babysitting, scrubbing floors, bringing over goods, handing mom $50 bucks a month or driving her to the pediatrician. I ain’t never seen them sitting up for hours with an autistic child who screams and rages so his mother can get some sleep while she rests up from working 14-hour days. I don’t see them fixing leaks in rundown houses or playing with a kid while the police prepare to interview her about her sexual abuse. They’re not paying for the funerals of babies and children who died after birth, when they truly do become independent organisms. And the crazy thing is they think they’ve already done their job, because the child was born!
Aphids give birth, girl. It’s no miracle. You want to speak for the weak? Get off your high horse and get your hands dirty helping the poor, the isolated, the ill and mentally ill women and mothers and their children who already breathe the dirty air. You are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, for children. You don’t have a flea’s comprehension of injustice. You are not doing shit for life until you get in there and fight that darkness. Until you understand that abortion is salvation in a world like ours. Does that sound too hard? Do you really think suffering post-birth is more permissible, less worthy of outrage?
“Pro-life” is simply a philosophy in which the only life worth saving is the one that can be saved by punishing a woman.
In reply to a ‘pro-life’ blogger: STFU, Conservatives: When I say I’m pro-life… (via grrrltalk) emphasis mine. (via fuckyeahfeminists)
Anti-choice
(via kaosafro)
And Yudkowsky knows enough that his tone is off-putting to point to it. So I wonder- is this story ACTUALLY teaching people things? Or is it just a way for people who already know some of the material to feel superior to Hariezer’s many foils? Do people go and read the sequences so that they can move from Hariezer-foil, to Hariezer’s point of view? (these are not rhetorical questions, if anyone has ideas on this).
I (as usual) just interpreted Harry’s arrogance as part of his character and inability to connect to other human beings on a level that isn’t directly related to knowledge or skills. Also possibly something he got from his father (who, as we learned in the first chapter, views it as “winning” if he can make others feel stupid and therefore probably doesn’t have the kindest, most humble approach to people he perceives as less smart).
As for the rest of the chapter- its good to see Hermione merits as human, unlike Ron. There is a strange bit in the chapter where Neville asks a Gryffindor prefect to find his frog, and the prefect says no (why? what narrative purpose does this serve?).
It is a bit of important characterization for Gryffindors as wannabe heroes! (But by now you probably know that.)
Self-aware hats in chapters 9 and 10: I know nothing about AI and am not a hundred percent sure what self-awareness means in that context, but isn’t self-awareness the ability to notice how one feels? As in… normally, the hat wouldn’t be able to feel uncomfortable, but now that it’s self-aware, it does, and that makes it willing to avoid future discomfort. Its goal to sort people still stays in place, but it hasn’t been programmed to never develop goals beside that, so it can set the goal to avoid discomfort without conflict.
Chapter 14: I’m not sure if it counts as an experiment, but Harry does give some people Comed-Tea before telling them something he thinks will surprise them, and they all drink and spit. (Also, he notices the times he gets an urge to drink Comed-Tea after his realization, and something surprising always happens afterwards.) I’m currently a bit too tired to think about formal experiments about Comed-Teas (it sounds like a pretty complicated thing to test?), so I’ve no idea whether that counts.
In a world where wizards can magic wood into gold, how do you keep counterfeiting at bay? Maybe the coins are made of special gold only goblins know how to find (maybe the goblin hordes hoard (wordplay!) this special gold like De beers hoards diamonds).
Maybe the goblins carefully magic money into and out of existence in order to maintain a currency peg. Maybe its the perfect inflation- instead of relying on banks to disperse the coins every and now and then the coins in people’s pockets just multiply at random.
I vaguely remember something later about the goblins being really scary wrt counterfeiters, and possible wars between goblins and wizarding world.
As to the remarks about Harry and Draco in Chapter 7: I kind of just read them as these two weird shut-in kids who’ve spent all their previous lives learning a very narrow, very specific kind of skill set that they’re sure is the best possible thing to know, and now they interact using AS MUCH OF THAT AS POSSIBLE, at all costs. But yeah, reading through your reviews really makes me marvel at how differently people can interpret HPMOR.
While at lunch, I dug into the first chapter of HPMOR. A few notes:
This isn’t nearly as bad as I remember, the writing isn’t amazing but its serviceable.. Either some editing has taken place in the last few years, or I’m less discerning than I once was.
There is this strange bit, where Harry tries to diffuse an argument his parents are having with:
“"Mum,” Harry said. “If you want to win this argument with Dad, look in chapter two of the first book of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. There’s a quote there about how philosophers say a great deal about what science absolutely requires, and it is all wrong, because the only rule in science is that the final arbiter is observation – that you just have to look at the world and report what you see. ”
This seems especially out of place, because no one is arguing about what science is.
Otherwise, this is basically an ok little chapter. Harry and Father are skeptical magic could exist, so send a reply letter to Hogwarts asking for a professor to come and show them some magics.
Yeah but his father is a ~scientist~, and he discounts his mother’s observations based on what he thinks is ~scientific thinking~, so it’s entirely relevant what science really is (and of course he wouldn’t argue with what Feynman says science is).
(I’m sorry, I’m probably not going to do this for every chapter you reviewed or anything, but you directed me to your reviews so I’ll nitpick a little!)
There is a line in the movie Clueless (if you aren’t familiar, Clueless was an older generation’s Mean Girls) where a woman is described as a “Monet”- in that like the painting, it looks good from afar but up close is a mess.
So I’m now nearly 25 chapters into this thing, and I’m starting to think that HPMOR is this sort of a monet- if you let yourself get carried along, it seems ok-enough. It references a lot of things that a niche group of people,myself included, like (physics! computational complexity! genetics! psychology!). But as you stare at it more, you start noticing that it doesn’t actually hang together, its a complete mess.
The hard science references are subtly wrong, and often aren’t actually explained in-story (just a jargon dump to say ‘look, here is a thing you like’).
The social science stuff fairs a bit better (its less wrong ::rimshot::), but even when its explanation is correct, its power is wildly exaggerated- conversations between Quirrell/Malfoy/Potter seem to follow scripts of the form
“Here is an awesome manipulation I’m using against you”
“My, that is an effective manipulation. You are a dangerous man”
“I know, but I also know that you are only flattering me as an attempt to manipulate me."
"My, what an effective use of Bayesian evidence that is!”
Other characters get even worse treatment, either behaving nonsensically to prove how good Harry is at manipulation (as in the chapter where Harry tells off Snape and then tries to blackmail the school because Snape asked him questions he didn’t know), OR acting nonsensically so Harry can explain why its nonsensical (“Carry this rock around for no reason.” “Thats actually the fallacy of privileging the hypothesis.”) The social science/manipulation/marketing psychology stuff is just a flavoring for conversations.
No important event in the story has hinged on any of this rationality- instead basically every conflict thus far is resolved via the time turner.
And if you strip all this out, all the wrongish science-jargon and the conversations that serve no purpose but to prove Malfoy/Quirrell/Harry are “awesome” by having them repeatedly think/tell each other how awesome they are, the story has no real structure. Its just a series of poorly paced (if you strip out the “awesome” conversations, then there are many chapters where nothing happens), disconnected events. There is no there there.
HPMOR fan, fast reader here – I noticed some of the stuff OP was talking about (the way they constantly affirm each other’s NPC-ness, and also the way Harry is ridiculously overpowered in a lot of ways), but I definitely don’t mind that there are a lot of “unimportant” scenes and dialogues or chapters without plot, because… idk, plot isn’t all that important to me, and if you can fit in “pointless” scenes that are funny or have awesome conversations, that’s reason enough to throw them in, in my opinion. I kind of read things more for those things than the plot, anyway.
Welcome to Night Vale is a free podcast in the style of community radio set in a strange, Twilight Zone-esque town called Night Vale.
What do you need to know?
- You can listen to it on itunes for free or listen to it here (scroll all the way down to the bottom for the first one).
- Each podcast is 20-30 minutes long.
- New ones are posted on the 1st and 15th of the month.
- The broadcaster’s name is Cecil.
- It’s weird. Get used to that.
- Yes, the weather section is just music. But it’s awesome music.
- No, Cecil having a third eye, tentacles, moving tattoos, etc. are not canon. These are all fanon interpretations of him. There’s no canon description other than that he has a face with a nose and eyes and mouth, and he’s neither tall nor short, thin nor fat.
- Carlos is perfect.
- Desert Bluffs is a rival town. They suck.
- Sit up when you’re listening to it. Cecil’s voice is smooth and sonorous, and it can put you to sleep.
Why listen to it?
- There’s queer representation in the form of our host, Cecil.
- Cecil’s love interest is a POC. And perfect.
- Cultural appropriation is fucking slammed.
- The fandom is amazing and produces beautiful art and graphics.
- It’s funny.
- It’s unlike anything you’ve ever heard before.
- There’s a floating cat.
I just listened to the first episode and what
Alligators can kill my children?!?!?!
and where the hell is South, I should probably look there really quickly and maybe build a giant wall there (wait that sounds like reverse Game of Thrones)
“When someone hits another person, the legal system views the action as assault. Whether I’m at a bar and I have a disagreement with a stranger, or if I’m home and have a disagreement with my husband, or even if I beat my neighbor’s kid, the act of hitting and/or beating anyone because I do not like what she said or did is considered assault (and poor self-control on my part). Assault is also illegal, and I could be charged with a crime. The fact that it is legal to hit a child in any capacity when a parent is mad at her harkens back to master/slave relationships. Slave owners could legally beat their slaves (whether this meant with a belt, their hands, or whatever else they saw fit) because slaves were not seen as people under the law. They were seen as property and had no rights. Do we really want to relate to our children as if they’re slaves? This black woman sure as hell doesn’t.”— Spanking is a euphemism. For assault. — Culture Club — Medium
Doesn’t that same argument suggest that time-outs are a euphemism for imprisonment, making kids do chores is a euphemism for slavery, and taking away a kid’s toy (either as a temporary punishment or because they’re misusing it) is a euphemism for theft?
I think there are definitely parallels between time-outs and imprisonment, but that there are important differences between them that don’t exist between spanking and assault, namely a) imprisonment is something that legally happens to adults when they do something wrong, whereas assault is not (or should not be, at least in Western countries) and b) time-outs can be helpful (e.g. give everyone time to calm down) whereas spanking cannot.
IMO, slavery involves more than just unpaid labor, for example the threat of physical punishment, starvation, homelessness and such. That obviously (or, well, less obviously in the case of spanking in the USA) should not be the case for children. Also, depending on the particular chores and how the kids are made to do them, they might be stuff adults have to do, too, like doing dishes or laundry (and depending on the consequences for not doing chores they have to do, that might be comparable, too, although I guess if a kid wears dirty laundry too often the parents would get into trouble, not the kid).
Whether taking away a kids’ toy is comparable to theft depends a lot on the circumstances – how old is the kid, who paid for the toy, is the toy directly involved in the problem (e.g. a toddler drives everybody mad with their toy xylophone and some adult eventually takes it away and offers a quiet toy instead) or is it intended as punishment for something else, are they going to get it back and if yes when and how? – and while there are no such simple parallels to adults’ punishments as with imprisonment, it’s also a way more complicated matter than spanking vs assault. (If a teenager bought something from their own money, and their parents took it away, could they sue? Not even sure about that.)
i like to pause this episode like this
because then it actually looks like Sam and Dean are decorating the tree and not pushing it over and snapping the branches to stab people with…
Is our fandom really that fucked up.
We need professional help.
Omphaloskeptomai 