domain:savenshine.com
weird that they didn't have means to detect somebody had been imperiused, but let's not dwell of that, HPs magic system is so full of plot holes
Also, sometimes you just can’t do stuff. Modern fantasy is very influenced by sci-fi and D&D, and readers expects thing to be rule-based, comprehensible, and amenable to experimentation. See for example all the silliness about playing rules-lawyer with genies.
I don’t think the deep HP magic runs on such modernist lines. It’s more like art: there are principles and the basics are straightforward but the complex stuff just isn’t, and you have to go by feel.
Corvos
9hr ago
No, I agree with @SteveKirk here. The Weasleys have a noble background (they’re on the Black tapestry) and they’re well known as an old-established Pureblood family. Lucius Malfoy basically dislikes them for being traitors and letting the side down.
It’s noted several times that Mr. Weasley could have a lot more money and be a lot more influential if he were willing to toe the line. He has personal relationships with bigwigs and Department Heads like Bagman and Crouch.
Many of their children also get distinguished positions: Percy goes straight to the top of government and Bill has an important job in the biggest bank in Britain.
(I’m ignoring accents and going by the books, I never had much interest in the films).
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9hr ago
People generally don’t understand drugs or how dangerous or addictive they can be. Allowing the public to take addictive forms of morphine or opioids for every ache and pain without supervision just makes a population of addicts who cannot hold down jobs and are thus dependent on the state. Other drugs are easy to overdose on and do pretty serious damage to the body.
Corvos
9hr ago
Certainly I find that living in a foreign country is more relaxing in many ways because my social radar isn’t going off all the time.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9hr ago
The problem being trying to find out if you’re a real victim of exploitation or if you’re just unsatisfied with where you ended up. Most people will absolutely believe that they deserve more.
orthoxerox
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9hr ago
or worse as, “I’m not interested in playing your silly provincial status games”
That's one of the only privileges you have as a foreign worker if assimilation is not your goal. Just smile and trample every boundary.
veqq
9hr ago
I love that Americans can look at the same scene through an entirely different colour spectrum, and all the flashing red bits just look gray to them.
The question is what value is encoded in the British lens and what Americans are missing by not seeing this worldview. Does it make Americans worse analysts when interacting with the Chinese etc or does it free them to do more, with less mental burdens or are they stupider because they're not constantly doing such social calculus etc etc Like preeminent American Timothy Dexter I'll put my punctuation at the end...,,,???????
orthoxerox
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9hr ago
There are also a bunch of intra-African stereotypes Westerners would find very surprising to hear, but they tend to reflect reasonably accurately how Africans experience other cultures
Well, please go on, I want to be surprised.
Race: The stereotype that African Americans are less educated is not true.
It bothers me that I have no problem imagining a woke person asserting that this stereotype is false, and then in the next breath asserting that lower rates of educational attainment among African-Americans is one of many metrics demonstrating the extent to which the US is still a systemically racist country. It should not be possible for a mentally sane person to simultaneously believe "owing to systemic racism, African-Americans have lower rates of educational attainment than white Americans" and "the notion that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans is a false and harmful stereotype".
Like, if you believe that African-Americans are less likely to get an education because of racist policies or teachers or how assessment procedures, that directly implies that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans! The latter "stereotype" cannot be false without completely invalidating the former assertion.
Related: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/if-you-believe-in-structural-racism-16c
pbmonster
9hr ago
There are some drugs that you probably don't want in the hands of the general population due to third-parties being harmed
There's also the point to be made that people in countries without a culture of medicine prescriptions just love taking antibiotics for anything that ails them, and those people not finishing an antibiotics regimen once they have started one.
This directly leads to things like India being a global hotspot of antimicrobial resistance, which kills at least 300k (likely a multiple of that) people a year.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
9hr ago
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains are a good reason.
Folamh3
9hr ago
That all people with geeky interests (video games, anime, D&D etc.) are unusually intelligent.
Nerds are intelligent, and a lot of nerds have geeky interests, but there are plenty of people with geeky interests who are utterly lacking in intelligence or even common sense.
JarJarJedi
9hr ago
DEs had a lot of people and AFAIR accepted anyone who was pureblood and was willing to worship the big V. I don't think it required any special position in the society, at least for mere membership - it seems to be modeled after the Nazi party, which explicitly welcomed low class people that felt the society has left them behind and wanted to do something about it, no matter who gets hurt. It seems the true numbers of DEs weren't even known as many who were eager to join when the things were going well for them, later claimed there weren't true DEs as they were imperiused or coerced (weird that they didn't have means to detect somebody had been imperiused, but let's not dwell of that, HPs magic system is so full of plot holes).
Folamh3
9hr ago
That people who play sports, exercise a lot etc. are just "dumb muscle"
All things being equal, the guy going to the gym four times a week is probably smarter, more accomplished and more disciplined than the nerdy Reddit moderator who blows all his disposable income on Funko Pops.
I also refuse to give the algorithm anything. I'm not even logged in almost anywhere, and I certainly won't use an app.
The best way for me to keep tabs on content I regularly follow is - still, after decades - RSS feeds. You can even "subscribe" to a youtube channel and/or twitter account by just adding it to your RSS reader. And of course it works naturally for blog-style content.
Also, skimming hackernews and curating a list of decent subreddits still works OK for content discovery.
MotteInTheEye
10hr ago
Has no one ever told Scott about color contrast best practices? That's not even close to a pleasant reading experience.
JarJarJedi
10hr ago
Well, they weren't forharrising hard enough, so they get no prize. Yet again, meritocracy raises its ugly (at least as far as the left's theory is concerned) head.
JarJarJedi
10hr ago
Who's "we"? Is she supposed to know such things? I don't see in her assignments much that would require her being briefed on the latest propulsion tech, for example. So, she not knowing what it is may just not mean much. I don't think she even knows what stuff is on the shelf (not to be critical of her, most people that do not specialize on studying this probably wouldn't know, a lay person would know nothing about it) and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of stuff off the shelf being tested of which only select people are aware and know the details. She is on Armed Services committee but the military does a ton of stuff, and I doubt they brief every person on that committee about every single project - nobody would have time to follow on that, especially given it's not even their main or only job.
If somebody who really specializes on military R&D and propulsion systems and is fully knowledgeable on all current projects and technologies said something like that, it'd be interesting. But I am not sure Sen. Gillibrand, with all due respect, is that person.
orthoxerox
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10hr ago
Civ 4 for me as well.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
11hr ago
There's a very-clear argument in favour of requiring prescriptions for government-subsidised medicine, because the state has much more of an interest in people consuming appropriate medications than inappropriate ones. As it happens, I just got some drugs here in Oz that are over-the-counter legal but which are far-cheaper with a prescription.
There are some drugs that you probably don't want in the hands of the general population due to third-parties being harmed (methamphetamine because murders, plus all the various drugs to pacify people that can be abused for rape or slavery); requiring prescriptions for those appears pretty logical as well (obviously, if you buy into recreational-drug prohibition as a whole, requiring a prescription for medical use is necessary to enforce that).
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
11hr ago
they would not be hurting others, at least not in any direct way.
Unless they're buying them for children.
There are practical factors, like maybe some medications are supply-restricted so it's necessary for doctors to prescribe them only to people who actually need them. But it's for similar reasons that there's no country where all drugs are legal - most societies have decided to operate with a degree of paternalism regarding what other people can and can't do to themselves.
2rafa
11hr ago
Dursleys are middle middle not upper middle, they live in a barratt box in a new development with a tiny lawn and a small conservatory - expensive in the green belt today but relatively much cheaper in the mid 90s. Dursleys are people who say “settee” and “pleased to meet you” and so on. They scrimped enough to send Dudley to a cheap local private day school, but he would have been nobody special there. Hermione’s background is upper-middle.
2rafa
11hr ago
Weasleys werent old money, even if we discount the weird Irish twins none of them speak in RP / upper class accents except for Ginny to some extent. If one had to place them in the British class system it would be as middle-middle rurals vaguely involved in county life but certainly not upper class. There’s no real evidence dad’s job is a sinecure and the ramshackle thing they live in is more quaint converted barn (or grain silo) than dilapidated dower house.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
11hr ago
And then he was replaced by a lesbian, and many an article was written about it.
Surprised I never heard of this on the Motte.
The penguin was amazing show. Too long since we had a proper protagonist that was flat out irredeemable.
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