Best Harry Potter book:

@sillyheathen yes, Umbridge really infuriates me in a way few other storybook villains could.

@shahnm Harry Potter and the Cauldron of TARDIS

Nobody’s perfect. Sadly.

@brennyn Just posted this in the product thread

Here is Rowling’s explanation if anybody is interested in actually hearing both sides of the story: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

@steamwolf Thank you. That was worth reading.

@steamwolf Really worth the read. Thank you.

@steamwolf

@steamwolf

Rowling is an incredibly gifted writer of genre fiction. And she prob “means well”, as the saying goes.

Unfortunately, her critical thinking skills and her selections of “supposed facts” re complex social issues and issues of personal identity are not at the same level.

I just realized that I never read her side of the debate. Thank you @steamwolf… I’m on her side now.

@f00l @steamwolf

Unfortunately, her critical thinking skills and her selections of “supposed facts” re complex social issues and issues of personal identity are not at the same level.

Huh. I guess she has that in common with literally every human being I have ever met except myself.

@Limewater

Plenty of cogent and well written responses were published to her essay immediately after she pushed it out to the public.

Re thinking etc and

Not at the same level

She’s not, and had never been, any sort of theorist; she has publicly admitted this herself, in the distant past.

I wish she had been more careful about her thinking and arguments re this issue before she decided to step into it. She wasn’t.

Since she is a global figure who was so widely seen as a universal champion for all the bullied and neglected kids and grownup kids of the world, the response to her essay is not surprising.

However, on another implied topic:

the innate and automatic assumption (within each of us) of our own “personal intellectually superiority” is likely a built-in erroneous human brain function, and is a lifelong problem for every person.

As is the assumption that each of us understands reality (which is so often just a current prevailing social and personal construct)

As is the assumption that each of us understands logic
(Which is always problematic on complex social issues; and is even often problematic re tightly defined and rigorous mathematical issues)

This ongoing likelihood of unnoticed (possibly v large) error/bias is constant, and is a potential trip-up for everyone.

We can all be fools; and we can all make fools of ourselves.

Esp true for moi

/giphy “logic error”

@f00l I decided long ago that I would try to evaluate books/music/art/architecture/whatever on their own merits separate from any assholery of the authors. A good thing or I would be missing about 2/3rds of my library. I don’t think it’s because authors are worse than other professions, but rather that a writer, given a platform and a few million adoring followers, will write stuff. And more stuff, and more stuff. And since they usually don’t have editors for non-book stuff, it goes out unfiltered and unadorned. It really gives me an appreciation for their book editors.

@rockblossom

Yes. Exactly.

Given that I know so little of their lives, for all I know (nothing, mostly) Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Douglas Adams, Tolkien, John Le Carre, Hilary Mantel, Neil Gaiman, and a host of other excellent writers might be, or might have been, compleat assholes.

I’m happy, so far, to read and love their works.

When might I start boycotting someone creative? I suppose there is a line.

For starters, are they monsters? Or are they apparently obvious liars/hypocrites about their lives and the relation their life choices have to their works?

I admit to very little interest any longer, in seeing a Woody Allen film.

I made that choice not when Allen’s/Farrow’s daughter Dylan Farrow’s accusations went public; but rather, prior to that, when it became public news that Allen, who had a then-current and long-standing and intimate relationship with Mia Farrow (and had children with her),
was also having a simultaneous covert sexual relationship with Soon Yi Previn, an older, but still possibly still minor, adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and Andre Previn. (there was then uncertainty about the actual date and year of Soon Yi’s birth)

That event crossed my boundary.

I suppose there are other creatives whose conduct might disturb me to that degree. I don’t campaign about it tho.

@haydesigner @steamwolf If you’re on the fence this video is actually kind of a fun take on it.

@rockblossom

Within my little list of a few among the many writers I like, there are a whole buncha Brits. Didn’t noticed until now.

I like stateside writers also.

Between notes, he had contemplated means of destroying Myrna Minkoff. His most promising scheme had involved getting a book on munitions from the library, constructing a bomb, and mailing it in plain paper to Myrna. Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked.

A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole

@phendrick
This is the book that never ends
its verse goes on and on my friends
Some people started reading it, not knowing what it was.
And, they’ll continue reading it forever, just because
This is the book that never ends…

@2many2no I thought was “Harry Pothead and the chambered bong”.

@goldnectar as one of my favorite threadless shirts says

I installed CAPTCHA to save my fellow robots from wasting money on this crap.

There’s a hundred and four days of summer vacation…