I don’t feel like digging through JKR’s body of work to find perfect quoted examples but if you feel inclined go back over Hermione’s advocacy yourself she is framed by author as “smuggly” shaking her collecting tin, cornering people in house common spaces until people acquiesce just to get her to go away. Every time her protest is brought up it is usually paired with some kind of value judgement device where the reader is made aware of the apathy of her friends or the people she’s advocating to or the annoyance she is on people in her space.

What Hermione does is a reasonable response for a person her age. What the author creates around that is a atmosphere of hopelessness where Hermione feels personally fufilled by the virtue of the cause but everything in the narrative conspires to make sure you know she’s tilting at windmills.

“By and large the system works” under most circumstances the system (elvish slavery) functions as intended/ without victims.

Probably not vaccinated for e coli. There’s very few options and most only work very short term. This smacks of reckless child endangerment.

I mean Cholera is kind of not the issue here. This creek has habitually tested high for e coli. An e coli infection makes cholera seem tame. You treat cholera it’s got a mortality rate of less than 1%… E coli infection has a mortality rate around 17% slightly less than one in five people who get hit die from renal failure. Those odds go up significantly for kids…

This idiot brought his grandkids to splash in this e coli laced stream. I am without words.

I mean when you look at Harry Potter through a magnifying glass it’s actually very pro status quo with a lot of issues breaking down to “the wrong people in charge” a lot of gestures made towards the sort of social problems of the society… Like look at house elves. We meet Dobby and everyone agrees that slave holding situation isn’t ideal but once we meet more house elves we learn that Dobby is kind of a weirdo and that they are effectively a sentient slave race with only exceptions like Dobby taking issue with being bound. Hermione sees this as a legitimate issue as any potential elf could be a Dobby but then great detail is placed about how annoying and virtually pointless her advocacy is but the rest of her society and the framing effectively informs the reader - “don’t think about house elves. Dobby is fine. It’s not your problem and shouldn’t be.” It’s framed as a problem to be solved on a small scale interpersonal basis because by and large the system works.

It’s generally difficult for people to critically read a narrative that throws up that many hairpin bends particularly when the set ups are made in the book that these things are social problems… but then never paid off. That it happens a fair amount innthe books is a fairly confusing yarnball. It feels progressive in the same way a company mission statement that is not being enacted in any real way feels progressive.

I mean dude, love the energy but this isn’t a protest to those laws… that’s just going out for enough time in public to need to use a public restroom as a trans man.

Trans men getting arrested by police for ‘causing a disturbance’ by being forced to use the women’s bathroom isn’t a bug, it’s a transphobic feature. They want to make being trans as uncomfortable as possible because they think that if they can ratchet up the discomfort level less people will attempt to transition. Trans men who pass on average are massively uncomfortable using the ladies room because it’s a great way to get arrested by cops, hastled by security, banned from private property, assaulted by women, yelled at and abused because everyone assumes you are a cis male creep, they want you to suffer for being trans or they just don’t care.

Like trans women are generally the forefront of the conversation but when it comes to trans men this isn’t “malicious compliance.” it’s either compliance compliance or stealthily breaking the law and hoping nobody notices. The trans deterrent system is operating as intended.

Very individualized as per need. Non-binary is an umbrella term for a whole bunch of different situations so what feels right is going to be very different for someone who feels like say a mix of masculine and feminine versus someone who has dysphoric reactions to any and all gender markers. It’s going to be different for someone whose identity is more static than say someone who fluidly bounces between extremes.

If you know someone who is non-binary that’s essentially just the tip of the iceberg of a whole discussion about how they personally interact with their body or the culture of gender. A lot of people seem to treat it as a full stop third category which can actually be a disservice to a non-binary person because it oftentimes just leads to a lot of new assumptions and frames out some of the ways they could be better treated than just as automatically genderless. I’ve heard of mixes of Mom/Dad for bigender people, just Mom or Dad for trans masc/femme folk, Completely new words that do not have cultural baggage, or just “my parent”. It’s not a one size fits all situation.

I’ve heard “Mawpaw” for a bigender person before which sounds kind of delightfully southern.

There’s a pernicious bit of socialization where women are often stymied from being directly assertive. Often they are rewarded for concensus seeking behaviour - euphemism, gentle value neutral phrasing, permission seeking, not interrupting and ceeding the floor. This socialization pattern rewards quiet and service in favour of other people’s emotions often at the direct cost of one’s own.

It’s not a good thing because it trains women to conveniently fade into the background, never center themselves publicly and builds in an instant hesitation every time they speak that takes years of work to undo. It’s effectively the female version of the socialization of men to never express their emotional needs except through anger. In this version one is denied anger or any form of strong self advocacy instead limiting women to a toolbox of subtle manipulations. It fucks women up.

If that is what was intended by this person it’s a very shitty standard to hold women to and they are a misogynistic prick. You are better off without that baggage.

Interesting. Really hedging their bets on oil, gas and coal remaining a dominant industry over the long term huh? Not exactly a bet I would personally take but if they wanna go it’s their funeral.

I dunno about that. This status quo was created because America came out of WWII smelling like roses. All of Europe was rebuilding and so American prosperity of the time was basically like being the one only slightly scorched house on a bombed block. It’s been long enough that the countries in question aren’t in need of leaning on the one stable currency.

This could be the push needed to equalize the world stage and break off of old habits. Like take Canada for example. Food self sufficiency in Canada was always a concern. That’s why there was a tarriff on US Dairy, because Canada wanted to retain domestic self sufficiency in one of it’s food production spheres. That issue persisted through other sectors but there wasn’t a strong political motive to make that shift. The government wasn’t called to protect and incentivize strong domestic production to a great extent because the US generally has a better growing year in the south. To not have food security however is a weakness in Canadian’s self determination if things go bad. Now that things have gone bad structure will be put in place and protected meaning a semi-permanent loss of market for American interests.

What Trump has proven is American volitillity in it’s government structure and voting block and nobody will want to tie a shoddy investment around their ankles. In fact some might take it as the opportunity to cut loose a problematic ally.

It’s the case that the entire premise of popular elections is kind of flawed system. Actual leadership and technical aptitude and the ability to play to a crowd are not really the same skills at all but we treat them like they are. It is a way to select someone who will make a bunch of promises that give them popular directives… But they aren’t beholden to those promises at all.

Having a balance between groups which are hired and fired based on their technical ability to follow the directives and achieve the objectives set by elected bodies is crucial. That they persist through different governments means a continuity of service and the ability to commit to long term planning.

Honestly what most people don’t seem to get is that any actual improvement made by a government takes almost a decade to pay off. Half the time they are dissatisfied with “broken promises” it is that those initiatives haven’t had time to work because elections aren’t that far apart. There’s a certain amount of technical fleshing out, research before the fact, wrangling of contracts and trial and error in execution before anything does what it’s supposed to do which often means an elected party is praised or damned by the actions of their predecessors.

Gods, had this conversation with a bunch of Americans recently. They were trying to defend Elected judges and I just can’t fathom why. Like why would I want someone who is less trained in the law adjudicating the process of the law? I would much rather have a system where you prove you understand and can carry out the code written into law by being selected by people who actually understand the function and process of the law otherwise lawyers are going to be able to pull all manner of fast ones and the judges won’t recognize it as perversions of justice.

Elected judges always run on a “tough on crime” platform which creates incentives to throw more people in jail, make police worse and that system never, ever de-escalates. Not everything is made fairer by letting the public vote. Whenever a specialized knowledge set is in play the public is more of a nuisance when they try and put their oar in because they wouldn’t understand enough to make an informed decision if they did nothing but study for a year. It would be like taking out a public vote on what medical surgerical proceedures for specific conditions should be the norm.

We need to collectively start understanding and championing the value of administrative branches of government, departments and agencies. Without experts in their fields being invested with reasonable powers our collective gooses will be cooked.

Technically that was a calculated movement of it’s time. They wanted a black character in a role that spoke to an easy childhood concept of authority to imply that power dynamically having black people in a dominant respected role in social spaces is a normal thing one doesn’t need to get upset over. Hence the whole friendly cop thing.

They were aware through the gay black actor they had in the role that police was something minority communities had issues with but the hope at the time was that more diversity in the force would be a solve. It’s naive from a modern standpoint but they did try.

It was sad that they purposefully kept the gay part of the actor’s identity under wraps. They knew they were asking him to do something harmful by keeping his private life strictly secret but the actor agreed that he was doing something he deemed worth the sacrifice.

It’s not nessisarily skewing the narrative, it’s just not providing context. Terrorist acts have a narrow definition in Canadian law. This guy could be a spree killer motivated by racism but unless that killing is for premeditated ideological, religious or political reasons to coerce a specific result or change of policy from the population / Government it doesn’t fall under the definition.

No manifesto or claim of reasoning or connections found to groups that claim responsibility - no terrorist designation.

A terrorist attack has a narrow definition in Canadian law where it is specifically part of a premeditated ideological, religious or political attempt to influence government policy or to intimidate a section of the public to a specific end. Basically if this guy didn’t have a manifesto or ever stated his reason within this rubric and was not part of a group that has specific aims then it follows under a regular old spree killer homicide unless it was racially motivated in which case it is also a hate crime.

Whether one uses cars or guns is not a factor in determining what counts as a terrorist act. The reporting on this has not been great ar clearing up this point.

There’s a very specific rubric for what counts as a terrorist attack in Canada. Probably the level of calculation and premeditation involved was a factor and that he’s not a part of an ideologically organized group that is trying to influence behaviour of a government or political body.

A spontaneous hate crime made against a population is technically not a terrorist attack by Canadian definition. To count you have to have done it for a narrow slice of very specific reasons.

But there are a lot of things that exist that aren’t exactly friendly. People often hinge their belief or disbelief in any divinity singularly on the bible. They consider proof of God existing is based on whether all the claims made in an old book are true - not that it is a fallible piece. It either has to be all true or all false which is not how any scientific text more than a decade out of date has proven.

Not saying that means anyone should start praying. The God as listed in the Bible given their behaviour does not seem either omniscient, omnipotent or benevolent but those ideals have shaped a lot of the discussion about whether something classifies as a “true” God or not. A lot of thought and debate goes towards squaring that circle. Sometimes the easiest answer is that lies exist. The presense of other gods are noted in the bible. Maybe that one was just a super powered Narcissist.

Actually more complicated than that. Sex is broken up into a bunch of factors. Phenotype is the word used to mean the grouping of characteristics we associate with either male or female. So that roughly covers genitals, secondary characteristics (boobs, body hair, build differences etc)… But it’s actually wild.

• Chromasomal sex - On it’s own means very little. If you have say an XY chromasome but for the sake of example an androgen insensitivity you develop as (phenotypically) female in the womb.

• Horomonal Sex - Is the mix of horomones that impact development. Whether you develop to appear male or female starts in the early stages of development in rhe womb and then kicks into high gear as puberty and can change unexpectedly. This means for example that there’s people who were born appearing entirely female and yet naturally develop along male lines later and vice versa.

• Internal reproductive Anatomy - This one gets crazy where individuals don’t always have internal organs that match their chromosomes. You can have opposite, none, both.

The precursor of trans medicine involved a lot of case studies seeing how naturally occuring variation in biological sex worked and the more it was studied the more scientists began to panic because they realized that the model of sorting into two strict sexes was flawed. There’s a lot of people out there who live practically their entire lives only to realize at the doctor’s office that they have surprise characteristics quietly existing hidden just below the skin. This lead to scientists realizing that for the most part the idea of phenotype and indeed a strict definition for biological sex is actually pretty wishy-washy.

The reason you weren’t taught this in high school is more or less that they just don’t prioritize it because they have to coach a group of students, many of whom are not scholarly material, through an overview of stuff. High school biology is basically all technically wrong because it’s been simplified to give you a taste of the discipline. If you start going to med school the first thing they do is tell you to light everything you think you know about the body on fire, throw it in the trash and start from scratch because half the stuff you were taught is going to need be unlearned. “Chromosome = sex” is one of the things that goes in the burn bin.

Technically that would be a defense if the god in question was actually as powerful as they say they are or that they are nessisarily good. There is always a possibility that Gods exist but are not on the hook to tell the truth and their goals do not align with humans.

A lying god telling the kids they have magic powers well beyond them and proving it like an uncle playing a dumb trick on the three year olds at a family reunion is a possibility. Maybe God exists and is just kind of an ass?