Nothing I’ve seen about this party suggests it’s more than a Pro-EU rebrand.

Socially conservative, business focused, steeped in white nationalism. But they hate Moscow more than Berlin.

He had twelve years to loot the country while running it into the ground.

What will be the consequences for his crimes?

acts like an asshole

gets banned

“I’m a serious person!”

She did. Took them for all they were worth

A kernel of truth to this, if you recognize that both Republican and Democrats have wanted the Iranian government overthrown and replaced with American loyalists for nearly fifty years.

The Obama/Biden strategy was to let the State Department polarize the rest of the region against Iran and squeeze them until they capitulated. The Bush/Trump strategy has been to outright assassinate Iranian officials, seize Iranian assets abroad, and plot an invasion of the sovereign territory.

We have a bipartisan consensus on wiping the IRGC and the Muslim-led anti-American government off the map. The question was never of policy, only of strategy.

My wife once tried to grow potatoes and got what felt like a mile of potato greens while the slips barely grew at all.

Then she went back to her job as a lawyer and made enough money to buy a truck full of potatoes

And women earned rights in the UK before the US

Rights are very different than status.

Then again, racism was on the decline here

That’s debatable.

Rowling spends almost every bit of income she gets on funding anti-transgender organisations and literal fascists

I think you’re underselling how much she spends on country club memberships and private planes.

The undercover agent kills a secretly terminally ill teacher to protect a young boy who is being jumped into a fascist gang.

It’s bad storytelling (because the stakes have been ratcheted so low) not bad politics.

It’s most probable that Rowling is actually trans, but refuses to accept it.

I’ve heard this speculated extensively. It would certainly be ironic.

But I’m more prone to believe she’s one more British Fascist, poisoned by money and a growing circle of reactionary hysterics.

She has even said that she wished she was a boy

A lot of that stems from British entrenched misogyny. Wanting the privileges of masculinity, as much as the actual biology.

A bunch of obsessives scouring the sky for additional planets probably had nothing to do with it.

I can assure you I am quite active in advocacy and direct action for queer folks in my life and ib my community

Which is great. A lot of folks are.

It’s also great to hear what they’re doing with their free time, as a positive rejoinder to “HP is toxic”.

More interested in new progressive media than a 10 year old argument about a book that came out 20 years ago.

Ask anyone not wearing a helmet that got hit by a car or smacked their head on the concrete after going over their handlebars. Oh, right, you can’t.

I mean, you can. Falling off your bike isn’t universally fatal. Even bad injuries aren’t unrecoverable - especially when you’re young and resilient and you’re body is still growing.

But imagine telling a 12-year-old to take off their helmet and pads and go plow themselves into a tree, because it builds character. Why would anyone voluntarily subject themselves to this? Why would anyone advocate for this?

You’re not building up some kind of robust spirit of mind or body. You’re not growing as a person. You’re just being hazed.

Can’t believe The Onion is nearly a century old.

they incorrectly believe that because they lived that there was no actual danger.

Also, incorrectly believed that they were the ones on the bicycle.

For every kid doing this right, there were ten that did it wrong and fell over.

For every ten that did it wrong, there were another ten laughing up their sleeves and then… putting on a helmet and pads because they didn’t want to end up in traction (or because their parents were yelling at them to be safe).

Preferably I’d like if people could just let HP die and fade away

With enough time and a vacuum of marketing dollars, it will. The reboot is already flopping.

just try not to give her royalty money, and if you can’t do that then at the least i don’t want to hear about it.

Hard to advocate for a boycott without hearing about the things you’re boycotting.

The principle of a boycott is to pressure the business to change it’s policies. The implication is that you’d come back if they reformed.

If you’re really looking to replace a franchise rather than reform it, helps to fill the vacuum.

“I’m a big fan of X over Y, because it’s got all the things I like without the crude” tends to bend more ears than “Stop doing Y without my permission!”

Apollo 11 made it to the moon and back with the computer power of a Dollar Tree hand held calculator

I think it was the rockets doing most of the lifting

Artemis II never landed on the moon. It was just a flyby. This makes it more equivalent to Apollo 10 and the famous exchange

Stafford: “Oh—who did it? … Give me a napkin quick. There’s a turd floating through the air”.

Young: “I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine”.

Cernan: “I don’t think it’s one of mine”.

Stafford: “Mine was a little more sticky than that. Throw that away”.

Cernan (later): “Here’s another goddam turd. What’s the matter with you guys?”

You can give up Harry Potter. It’s the right thing to do, it’s worth it, and it’s the adult decision.

It’s a children’s story. I don’t think you’re asking for people to leap over mountains by giving up childhood things as an adult.

At the same time, people seem to fixate on the consumerist aesthetics and ignore the material realities. If you’ve got transgender friends and family that you support with your time and care and money, and you want to flip through an old dog-eared copy of Philosopher’s Stone (or rewatch The Usual Suspects or throw on an episode of Fat Albert) because of nostalgia, I don’t think you’re committing any kind of grievous sin.

JK Rowling isn’t going to stop being a billionaire because you played a HP themed video game or watched an episode of her rebooted book show on HBO.

Meanwhile, abstaining from all things problematic, without doing anything materially positive for any of the LGBTQ folks in your life isn’t doing anyone any favors. Being a Consumerist Harpy who only knows how to scream at people for their mass media of choice, in the name of LGBTQ, is turning civil advocacy into some kind of branding exercise.

The really weird thing is how many LGBTQ folks latched onto HP in its early releases as what was recognized to be a kind-of pro-queer YA novel.

You had a young boy who was literally in the closet, disowned and disrespected by family, who is spirited away to a magical school where his differences are valued and cultivated. He’s got a bunch of friends who could easily sub in for queer icons. There are gender-bending magical spells, the bad guys are explicitly fascist, most books end with some kind of “The power of friendship and love will triumph!” rejoinder. FFS, Dumbledore is canonically gay.

It is far more a testament to the psychologically corrosive power of plutocracy that JK Rowling went off the rails. I don’t think it’s unfair for people to like the books and hate the author. Just remember not to pay for anything and you’re fine.