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[silverspawn]

So Rita Skeeter writes:

(Quoting Making Up Stuff that Harry supposedly said)
I suppose I get my strength from my parents. I
know they’d be very proud of me if they could see
me now... Yes, sometimes at night I still cry
about them, I’m not ashamed to admit it... I
know nothing will hurt me during the tournament,
because they’re watching over me...

Harry has at last found love at Hogwarts. His close
friend, Colin Creevey, says that Harry is rarely seen
out of the company of one Hermione Granger, a
stunningly pretty Muggle-born girl who, like Harry,
is one of the top students in the school.

[silverspawn]

So this angle is basically trying to make Harry look ridiculous despite being ostensibly not a hit piece. I do enjoy how almost literally everything about that is a lie; Colin isn't his close friend, Hermione isn't stunningly pretty, Harry isn't a top student, and he didn't say anything like that.

But it also goes back to what Awaclus said -- it's emotionally simplistic.

My version is going to be different.

[silverspawn]

And similarly with the "Potter stinks" stickers. As Hermione aptly points out, this is an astonishingly bland insult. And admittedly Harry as portrayed is hard to attack.

[silverspawn]

I'm too lazy to do a proper calculation, but based on a quick and dirty one using filesize, I've cracked the 50k word limit -- in less than a month! This implies I should be able to write three novels per year! Totally legit calculation.

[silverspawn]

note to self: CTRL+F every chapter for "Harry" before publishing

[silverspawn]

Democrats now 59 to 41 for holding the senate, according to 538's model

[silverspawn]

Ok enough of these unimportant posts, it's time to get to the big stuff

When Rowling announced the title of Harry Potter #5, the order of the phoenix, I remember that there was speculation about how it would be called in German because "order" could mean different things:

- a group of people dedicated to a cause
- a mandatory instruction given by someone

which would translate differently; I think they were talking "Orden des Phoenix"/Phoenixordern" and "Auftrag des Phoenix" (even though "Befehl des Phoenix" would be a more literal translation). But actually, there's more!

- an rule for how to arrange objects ("Die Reihenfolge des Phoenix")
- the state of not being chaotic ("The Ordnung des Pheonix")

And according to Oxford's dictionary, there are a whopping 32 additional definitions.

I rate this a 0/10 in good language design.

[silverspawn]

Just was like "isn't it also sometimes the name of a badge someone wins" and then I tab over, and yes that's definition 35(b).

[silverspawn]

Fun fact: if every word has 36 different definitions, then this sentence has 6140942214464815497216 separate meanings.

[silverspawn]

[silverspawn]

The secret of green tea is, well, it's pretty much what you read when you google, but it's nonetheless true:

- You mustn't use water at the boiling point; that ruins it
- You mustn't let it brew for more than 2 minutes; that ruins it. This one is particularly important. But 3 minutes are okay, right? No! I think 90 seconds or something may actually be perfect
- You mustn't use too many leaves, that also ruins it. This one you don't read about.

And when you disregard those rules, you will have green tea that tastes gross, and then you'll start to think that you don't like green tea anymore and stop using it at all!

[silverspawn]

From The Mind Illuminated:

Historically, the prevailing view in cultures throughout the world has been
dualism, the idea that matter is one thing and the mind another. However, close
examination renders this view untenable. As a result, two reductionist
interpretations have always existed side by side with the dualistic view, each
eliminating one side or the other of this dualism. Materialistic reductionism
asserts there is only matter, and the mind is at best an emergent property of
highly organized matter. And modern neuroscience is believed by many to
support this view.

On the other hand, meditation and other spiritual practices often make it
clear that our subjectively experienced reality is mind-created—exactly the
realization I had in my teens, although I arrived at it from a different route. This
realization often draws people to some form of idealism, the other reductionist
interpretation, which asserts there is only mind, and that matter is an illusion, a
mere projection of the mind to account for experience. For them, science is
irrelevant to any search for ultimate Truth. Obviously, I’m not one of those,
either.

I am a non-dualist. Primarily as a result of meditation experiences, but
supported by rational analysis as well, I hold strongly to this fourth alternative
view. There is only one kind of “stuff,” and both mind and matter are mere
appearances. When looked at from the outside, this “stuff” appears as matter,
and as such has been the object of scientific investigation. But when examined
from the inside, this exact same “stuff” appears as mind. Non-duality, as realized
through direct experience in meditation, completely resolves this dilemma. Both
the implications and explanatory power of non-dualism are vast, and would
require at least another book to even scratch the surface. But thus, I say that I
have spent my life investigating the mind from the outside through
neuroscience, and the brain from the inside through meditation.

[Awaclus]

The secret of green tea is, well, it's pretty much what you read when you google, but it's nonetheless true:

- You mustn't use water at the boiling point; that ruins it
- You mustn't let it brew for more than 2 minutes; that ruins it. This one is particularly important. But 3 minutes are okay, right? No! I think 90 seconds or something may actually be perfect
- You mustn't use too many leaves, that also ruins it. This one you don't read about.

And when you disregard those rules, you will have green tea that tastes gross, and then you'll start to think that you don't like green tea anymore and stop using it at all!

Using water at the boiling point is not great for the water because it gets less oxygen-rich at that temperature (and therefore you shouldn't use boiling water for any tea), but something like 95°C is actually totally fine for green tea. You just have to brew it for like 10 seconds, 20 seconds maximum if you do that. That way it gets a slightly different taste, I would describe it as putting more emphasis on the flavor from the roasting/steaming and less on the qualities in the plant itself, but I have no idea if that's even what's actually going on or why that would be the case, it's just a gut impression that I get. It's a fun way of making green tea, not just because it's a slightly different way of experiencing the same tea leaves but also because you get to feel like a super pro tea ceremony master for knowing this secret technique and nailing the very short brewing time just right.

But your description works too. Whenever I buy some new green tea I haven't tried before, I make sure to try it both ways.

[silverspawn]

oh interesting! I'll try a higher temperature but a shorter time.

One problem I have is that I don't actually know what temperature I'm using because my water boiler doesn't show it. I usually boil it, then open it and wait 5 minutes.

[Awaclus]

oh interesting! I'll try a higher temperature but a shorter time.

One problem I have is that I don't actually know what temperature I'm using because my water boiler doesn't show it. I usually boil it, then open it and wait 5 minutes.

You can tell the approximate temperature by looking at the water. When the first tiny bubbles start to appear at the bottom, it's about 70 °C (this stage is called Shrimp Eyes), when the bubbles are a bit larger but aren't rising to the top yet, it's about 80 °C (Crab Eyes), when they get even larger and start rising occasionally, it's about 85 °C (Fish Eyes), when they get even larger and start rising more actively but not super aggressively yet, it's about 90-93 ­°C (String of Pearls) and when it's obviously boiling, it's boiling (Raging Torrent). And then you can learn what kind of a sound it makes and/or how hot the side of the water boiler feels at every given stage, and learn to recognize the approximate temperature without having to look inside the boiler that way.

[silverspawn]

[silverspawn]

I wonder how much sadder I'm making this scene I'm writing rn because of the music

[silverspawn]

I always have this resistance to let characters swear, but most people swear all the time, don't they?

[silverspawn]

It's actually a weird topic because our society has decided that swear words are on par with graphic depictions of violence rather than basically harmless, so you only see them in adult-centered entertainment... but that's not accurate.

[Awaclus]

The average fictional character definitely swears orders of magnitude less than the average non-fictional character.

[silverspawn]

exceedingly beautiful music or boring pretentious bs? my opinion varies depending on my mood

[silverspawn]

How much did Rowling plan ahead?

In book 5, Petunia says,

“I heard — that awful boy — telling her about them — years ago,”

where [them] is Dementors. This sentence strikes me as brilliant writing since "that awful boy" has got to be Snape, but ofc Harry would think it's his dad. So that means she had to have had Snape planned out.

But in book 4, Moody can see through the invisibility cloak, and I refuse to consider that anything but a plot hole. So that would suggest she didn't know about the Deathly Hallows at book 4.

I'm sure there's info about this somewhere but everything Rowling says about the universe is just so dumb, I'm afraid to look.

Like, I just googled and

Angela Morrissey: Why is it that albus dumbledore can see harry under his invisibility cloak at certain moments? (during the series is the cloak only infallible to those who do not own a deathly hallow).

J.K. Rowling: Dumbledore, who could perform magic without needing to say the incantation aloud, was using ‘homenum revelio’ - the human-presence-revealing spell Hermione makes use of in Deathly Hallows.

IT'S A DEATHLY HALLOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE UNAFFECTED BY SPELLS

[silverspawn]

Why couldn't she just admit it's a plot hole?

[silverspawn]

This thing where the Democrats are funding right wing extremists because they think they'll make weaker candidates is really bad.

It's also probably genuinely not in their own interests? They amount of money they're spending is so low that it won't make much of a difference, and the optics are comically bad.

[silverspawn]

Like yes, it does make game theoretical sense. You can set up a game where this is the best strategy. But the details don't seem to work out.