Power cable linking UK and Ireland now passes near Bronze Age human burial remains instead of fictional grave on Welsh beach
Update: further information by @BigDiction@lemmy.world in the comments below
Fans of the wizard series come to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” despite being asked not to by the land owner, the National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site.
But apparently not so ecologically sensitive that an undersea cable couldn’t run through it.
You only have to lay a cable down once and it’ll work for however many decades. People trudging through on a regular basis to leave rocks would be an ongoing concern.
This assumes a lot of things about the installation and longevity of the cable and its jacket, and forgets that some of these things have been so magnetically interfering to their surroundings that sharks have bitten them.
To be fair, sharks bite a lot of things.
This sounds a bit cliche, or like just a joke, but it’s really quite true.
Haha yeah, it sounds like a joke doesn’t it. I was thinking of the shark that’s known for eating license plates and nails. Or the one that eats car tires.
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My ignorance is as valid as the knowledge of experts.
The knowledge of experts is as valid as the hand which feeds them.
They’ll do anything but acknowledge they’re funding the legal discrimination of trans people in the UK.
I don’t give a fuck about HP Whatshercunt, but I do love this story. Because it shows that collectively we have more power then these companies. If we could get our shit together and stop fighting each other we could bully them into litterally anything we want because THERE ARE MORE OF US. It’s so dumb that we have let a tiny group of people convince us, the larger group that massively outnumbers them, they have all the power in the relationship.
It was a … power cable. To connect the Irish grid to the welsh/English grid. To allow for more efficient transfer of power between renewable generation to the respective grids based on availability and need.
It was actually a good project? Like unironically. It was going to allow for further decarbonization. Now it’s been delayed and going to cost a lot more, and may have to go through a Bronze Age burial site now.
The people who blocked the project were also disturbing the local environment by leaving huge amounts of synthetic fiber socks at the beach.
“Sorry, too busy attacking political allies for disagreeing with me on a point or two.”
Which two points are you talking about? Would it happen to be:
- Blocking strikes
- Supporting genocide
Because people who support those things are not allies.
A brief glance at their profile shows they mostly spend their time on the fediverse dropping incendiary comments in politically charged threads; we may never get clarification.
I’m here. Just waiting for you to answer the question.
It didn’t seem like a good faith question so I didn’t bother answering, but it seems at least one person in the shadows thinks it was, so I’ll answer it:
I was thinking of people who think the Uyghur genocide is fake news, the Holodomor was an accident and Ukraine ought to be a Russian territory again, and the DPRK is a wonderful place to live. If you disagree with that on the fediverse, there tends to be much gnashing of teeth from certain people who otherwise make sane political arguments about the biggest evils we currently face, at least in my country (e.g. Epstein Class Bad, Trump Bad, Fascism Bad).
As for your two points, I haven’t met anyone who supports genocide or the blocking of labor strikes, so I don’t know why you thought those up.
You accuse me of asking a question in bad faith and then act like you’re living under a rock? Labor issues and genocide support are at the forefront of current political discussions. I can’t remember the last time an American politician mentioned the Uyghurs.
As for your two points, I haven’t met anyone who supports genocide or the blocking of labor strikes, so I don’t know why you thought those up.
Joe Biden went around congress twice to ship weapons to Israel in support of their genocide. Joe Biden, 44 Democratic senators and 36 Republican senators passed a bill to block the rail strike in 2022. Were you unaware of this?
I feel like you over-specific’ed my meme into an apparent attack on me or my position(s)?
I don’t see an answer to my question anywhere in this comment.
It didn’t seem like a good faith question so I didn’t bother answering, but it seems at least one person in the shadows thinks it was, so I’ll answer it:
I was thinking of people who think the Uyghur genocide is fake news, the Holodomor was an accident and Ukraine ought to be a Russian territory again, and the DPRK is a wonderful place to live. If you disagree with that on the fediverse, there tends to be much gnashing of teeth from certain people who otherwise make sane political arguments about the biggest evils we currently face, at least in my country (e.g. Epstein Class Bad, Trump Bad, Fascism Bad).
As for your two points, I haven’t met anyone who supports genocide or the blocking of labor strikes, so I don’t know why you thought those up.
Jesus Christ, they’re not even good children’s books
It’s, of course, a matter of taste whether or not you find them good. But let’s not pretend that we’re not talking about one of he most popular, best-selling children’s book series of all time that spawned a 30+ billion dollar franchise of movies, merch, games, and a theme park. Plenty of people found them plenty good enough to generate that big of a financial success.
hey now, lets not try to get people to realize that other people’s opinions matter.
And we all know that popular equals quality
Popular doesn’t mean great, of course, but it does mean it was at least good enough to be enjoyed by a lot of people. If it were objectively bad, as in it had no good qualities at all, it wouldn’t be popular.
Harry Potter is very well written. Like leagues beyond what you typically get for youth fiction/young adult.
Its pretty mid.
I was a book kid, who grew up and was 13 to 17 during the release of the HP series.
I read mountains of YA books and adult alike. Spent tonnes of weekend days at the library.
HP was okay, it wasnt bad.
But it wasnt the best either. I would absolutely say stuff like Sabriel and the Bartimaeus trilogy were substantially better.
Oh and dont even get me started on Redwall, Jacques was an amazing writer who knew how to craft incredible worlds.
By comparison to those, Id score HP closer to a 6 or so.
Sabriel and Redwall were my jam as a kid. I still revisit the Abhorsen series from time to time. Basically I reread them all when Nix releases a new book.
I love you. THE goddamn Bartimaeus Trilogy. I have been searching “bartholomew djinn adventure” “bartoman magic series” and “funny djinni soup” for SO long. Im gonna go fucking read those books again. Various forms of praise for you, etc.
You’ve only got “UK AKSHULLY NO IT ISNT LALALALA” responses, and I feel obligated to speak up for my late (queer fan) friend and say I’m not a fan but they are completely fine books written better then a shit ton of other books for kids. I’ve read the first four and found them to be between “serviceable” and “great”. They were no “Animorphs” to me, but at no point did I find myself thinking “this is boring and sucks”, so people saying they’re straight-up bad are nuts or just being disingenuous.
If the author wasn’t a mad cunt, I guarantee most of the people saying they’re shit wouldn’t be saying that.
If she hadn’t become a vociferous anti civil rights activist the reality is a lot of us would still be tired of the books and frustrated with elements of them, but there’d be less anger when they come up. There were plenty of people getting real sick of how popular they’d remained in the mid 10s.
I read them all as a kid and loved them, but I was definitely tired of how much cultural space they took up for so fucking long. And the criticisms are valid, the books did an amazing job of inspiring obsession in a kid of the time, they felt like they grew with me, they had so much room to imagine in, and they were also full of holes, mid prose, and the sort of issues I’m kinda shocked my parents didn’t feel the need to have a conversation about.
But also, would people be as vocal about these issues if it wasn’t the largest media franchise under individual control and controlled by someone who has funded massive rollbacks in rights for a group she’s bigoted towards? Obviously not, we’d just still be saying to read another book, not arguing not to continue purchasing products from the franchise.
Harry Potter is very well written. Like leagues beyond what you typically get for youth fiction/young adult.
, they said loftily.
It’s not very well written, even by youth / young adult standards.
It’s not poorly written either mind.
Have you actually gone back and read any of the copious amounts of ya books?
Off the top of my head – go and reread a Goosebumps book. They are super simple. HP is downright shakespearian compared to them.
Hardy boys, tom swift series (80s/90s versions) and countless other one shot books that I can barely remember are all super simple too.
Yes, there are always outliers like Redwall but when compared to the whole HP was well written regardless of the trash person who wrote them.
None of that changes the fact she isn’t a good writer.
It’s really not well written, by classical standards. It’s very colorful and fun and entertaining. But the story and plot constantly use “deus ex machina”. Just try an summarize the actions and plot of the movie, it makes no sense whatsoever. Really the story is garbage, but the characters and adventure still makes it fun.
I think that is a feature of a many modern “web novels” or fan fiction. A sort of liberation of the shackles of good writing. Web novels democratized authorship in a way. We really have far more entertaining authors with much more talent than was made to believe (Tangent: A bit like porn today, now that everybody can do it on their own, from their home without some creepy porn producer, we have far better and more creative porn than ever). Most people are creative and pretty good as amateur writers. They just haven’t learned the craft of writing a good story lol (cannot be said about Rowlings though, she should have known better).
Why some things become a hit and others not is an unsolved question. If we could answer that, book publishing and movie studios would work very differently. Don’t ascribe to quality which can equally be ascribed to luck or marketing.
You should read His Dark Materials or The Old Kingdom. Both series are much, much more thoughtfully put together. Their plotting and characterization really put HP to shame.
Not to mention Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians (younger audience) and Skyward (true YA audience).
I do think a lot of that popularity was because it came out when internet forums were a novelty. If you’re used to only one or two people liking the same book as you, then you see thousands liking the same book, that book must be popular.
Then the popularity fed itself. Movies, merch, games, everything was done to capitalise on the “popularity” of a new series, and this introduced it to a new audience. Media started to talk about the new book series that people were going mad for. People who didn’t read the books wanted to find out what everyone was talking about. Time passes, and people look back on the books with nostalgia goggles. Even you, when defending the book, can only point to its popularity as an argument.
The actual book doesn’t matter. It’s popular because it’s popular.
Even you, when defending the book, can only point to its popularity as an argument.
Well, that’s a bad assumption. I was appealing to it popularity and financial value because that is a real objective measure that indicates that people liked the series. I didn’t argue with someone on the internet who declared that the books were bad, full stop, over my subjective perception of its merits and quality becuase that is a pointless argument to have. Not to mention, likely one to be met with open hostility on Lemmy. No thanks.
First, it’s only a measure that people consume the media, not that they enjoy it. Hate-watching is a thing, as you can tell from a comment higher up. Or they watched because someone else wanted to watch (or they thought someone else wanted to watch).
Second, enjoyment does not reflect quality. People can like bad media. I like the second D&D movie, and even I can only rate it’s quality as “fine”.
Third, even at the height of its popularity and among its strongest fans, there are flaws galore in the books. Even ignoring the racism, sexism, ablism, slavery, “ugly is bad” mindset, and all that, there’s also stupid plot decisions and lazy world building. Of all the fanfics on AO3, well over a third of them are fix-fics.
Fan merch doesn’t sell for “fine”. Theme parks aren’t floated on hate-watching. People don’t spend $30 billion ironically. Yea, those things factor in, but they are clearly not the main drivers. And flaws do not make a work not good overall. I’m the first to admit it is flawed, for every reason you mentioned and more. But none of that makes it bad.
There is fan merch of The Room. Theme parks don’t need a popular franchise connected to be popular, so long as there’s a rollercoaster and something fun for the whole family. People will happily spend money on nostalgia and fitting in with others, or on gifts for someone you think likes the thing.
All of this is, once again, an appeal to popularity. It has nothing to do with the quality of the books. And you saying the book isn’t bad despite bad plot, world, characters and implications just condemns your judgement.
You know you are being disingenuous. You know plenty of people enjoy(ed) the series. This is a stupid pedantic argument.
Plus the Author is a bigot.
They are quite shit. They are easy reads, and it gets children to read, that’s pretty good. But damn, shit makes no sense, and harry potter adults are pretty damn weird.
I like the books, hate the writer
The first four are decent monster of the week fare.
The last three remind me of bad fanfiction. The attempt to pull it all together into some sort of grand storyline is pathetic. The Horcruxes and Deadly Hallows crap was clearly pulled out of her ass at the last minute.
This is actually a win. The original site was going through an ecological sensitive area. People fought to protect the “grave” of a fictional character but accidentally protected a delicate ecology. That is more important than protecting the dead, real or not.
Fans of the wizard series come to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” despite being asked not to by the land owner, the National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site.
Gotta love that a fictional character created by a transphobe carries more weight and concern than the further destruction of our biosphere.
People are leaving rocks at the site of the “grave”, which they’ve repeatedly been told not to do, specifically because of concerns about harm to the environment. So they might have accidentally helped in some respect, but it doesn’t exactly mean much when they’re showing up themselves, and fucking it up anyway
The HP obsessive are also littering that sensitive sight with a bunch of socks.
Also the cable was for sharing load between grids to account for variability in power generation in renewables. It was literally being built to support further decarbonization of the grid.
Oh and now the cable might have to go through a Bronze Age burial site.
Like, this is not a win, this is idiots making a good project more expensive and difficult and potentially causing the destruction of an archeological site.
This is fucking pathetic
At least no actual harm was done to a site of archaeological significance to placate a bunch of fucking nerds
Tasteless transphobic nerds.
This is so frustrating. My sister loves HP and refuses to discuss Rowling. While still buying merch that directly supports her.
If there was ever a reason to buy unlicensed knock-offs…
I love Harry Potter. I pirated every book and seed every movie.
You can still enjoy something without supporting her.
Talk to your sister about the economics of pirating. You can make your own merch.
True, but on a personal level I also just really can’t enjoy it anymore knowing who’s behind it regardless of how I obtain it.
(I also just grew out of it, that too)
No. No I think when its doing ecological damage you need to knock it the fuck off.
For books and merch, second hand also avoids supporting Rowling
No. No they’re doing ecological damage now. They need to stop.
I wish I was talented and safe from prosection. I would sell every Harry Potter thing I could, and donate the profits to a trans-positive cause…
Trust me, many (former) Harry Potter fans are incredibly disappointed and do not support the queen TERF.
a bunch of fucking nerds
Lol Harry Potter readers being nerdy kids may have been true in the late 90s or early 00s. Most fans of the movies are normies.
It wasn’t even true then. Harry Potter was the flagship of the Scholastic book fair at the time along with books like Animorphs.
Have you read Animorphs? Those books were bought entirely by people judging them based on their cover. They have kids on them turning into a different animal on each. That just looked cool. If I had had the money for it, I too would have collected them, entirely based on the animals on the cover (I’ll take the dog, the hawk, and the dolphin, thanks). 99% of kids who bought them would have done so for the exact same reason.
The actual story is some of the least kid-friendly I’ve ever heard. It’s filled with body horror, cosmic horror, guerilla warfare and espionage with child soldiers, children losing their bodies, children losing their minds through torture, kids having existential crises after witnessing and participating horrific acts of war, countless murders of loved ones, planet scale genocide, etc. It’s not for normies. I don’t know anyone personally that has actually read the whole series, including myself. I have watched a guy on YouTube go over the plot in summary and… holy fuck. Those books are darker than anything I’ve read as an adult.
I don’t know anyone personally that has actually read the whole series, including myself.
I think I have? There might be a side book or two I missed, I think I only read one of the choose your own adventure ones. But I read the main series all the way to the end and the ‘main’ side stories (Hork-Bajir Chronicles, etc). I enjoyed the hell out of it as a kid, it definitely influenced a lot of my anti-war feelings.
You can get the ebooks for free with the author’s blessing. I started reading them as a kid when they were new but couldn’t find the books readily enough. Found them again as an adult and read the whole series. It’s far better written than anything Rowling has ever penned and has the added benefit of Applegate being an actual decent human being.
I loved that shit as a kid.
I also watch the news and learn about the genocide in Palestine every morning. The biggest difference is that Animorphs was much more fun and had a better ending.
You’re both wrong. All books are for nerds. Now hand over your lunch money.
I was a kid back then so I definitely read some of them. Though I have no memory of them having a related story or a contiguous plot line, or really of any of the plot lines anyway. I vaguely remember that there were more books later on, I’m pretty sure the ones I read were like the first few published.
I definitely remember there being Animorphs posters in our school library and shit and the software used to make the cover was very popular, at the time it was also used in several TV shows and such.
I mean yeah but animorphs was definitely some nerd shit. I say that as a proud nerd, but it absolutely was.
Stop the nerd on nerd hate - if you’re posting on Lemmy the chance that you are also a nerd is pretty damn high.
The Bronze Age burial site is nerdy, to bury the dead in the first place and to study it a thousand years later is nerdy, that is to say the product of a complex mind. Perhaps over-complex but that is beyond the scope of this post, enough to say its all a bit nerdy.
If you think the two are remotely equivalent in historical significance, then you can suck the farts directly out of my arsehole
I don’t want to do that.
If burying one’s dead is nerdy, we might throw the concept out entirely lol.
Okay yeah Harry Potter fans need to fucking stop. Just fucking stop. Read a book that isn’t fucking shit.
Read literally any fucking book
Malania Trump’s memoir it is.
With an Atlas Shrugged chaser.
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
Okay maybe have some standards. You know they’re gonna go straight for mein Kampf.
Harry Potter fans aren’t necessarily readers. Harry Potter succeeded because a media empire was built with it, not because it was a good story that spawned a lot of readers.
The first few books had zero merchandise because Rowling was against it. I know, talk about a change of heart…
Maybe someone should teach them to read?
Yeah, you know like the parents, and their teachers. J KKK Rowling has done enough damage.
y’all i was a mega harry potter fan growing up and even i think this was pathetic; READ ANOTHER BOOK
I’m starting to think there’s a correlation between cults and the inability to read more than one book…
Although in saying that, most Christians I’ve met haven’t actually read their book so that theory falls through pretty quickly. Nevermind!
correlation between cults and the inability to read more than part of one book
Why can’t they read more?
I was about to say, I read all the books as they were releasing. This is still dumb as fuck and the fans who agitated for it should feel ashamed.
I suggest Ellen Booraem’s books, especially Small Persons with Wings.
chris colfers the land of stories is amazing too!
and jessica spotswood’s cahill witch chronicles
they’re some of my favourites
What I don’t get is, how did Dobby get so much love in the Harry Potter fandom while Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars got so much hate? They were both insufferably annoying characters.
I get that Dobby has fans; what I don’t get is why the same wasn’t extended to Jar-Jar.
Jar-Jar didn’t die, I guess, but I feel like even if he did, fans would glaze him over decades later. They’d say “good riddance” and that would be that.
Because Harry Potter fans, including the adults are children.
I am 58. I’ve read War and Peace, Ulysses, LOTR and the Harry Potter series and that’s fine because I’m not an insecure child.
PS fuck JKR.
And Star Wars fans are not?
Star Wars fans at their worse are more like adult teenagers. The types that made it their whole personality.
When you tell a HP fan that they shouldn’t give Rowling money, they whine like a spoiled child having their candy taken away.
Are we talking about all the people who’ve been Star Wars fans during the nearly 50 years that it’s existed, or the people who are still fans in 2026? I’d agree that Star Wars’ current fanbase is made up of insecure children, since everyone else checked out long ago.
Different children.
They are both children, the adults of which should feel ashamed for liking such basic crap
I happen to think you should feel ashamed for judging what people harmlessly enjoy. Guess we each have our pet peeves.
Harry Potter is the cash cow intellectual property of a billionaire who’s made it her life’s goal to eradicate trans women.
If you’re an HP fan and think it’s harmless, you’re showing the world exactly what kind of person you are.
I am not ashamed to judge you for your shitty morals and lack of taste.
It isn’t harmless and we should be boycotting it. There’s a big difference in saying it sucks because of the author and it sucks because of the content though.
It’s fun and deeply anchored in nostalgia. Let’s not pretend it isn’t entertaining. I won’t even pirate the new series regardless because of the author’s lunacy, but still.
What do you think all capitalist enshittified art and literature amounts to, if not easily digested nostalgia? Harry Potter is ok at best, and its fans seriously need to read another book.
No fun allowed 😠
You’re the literary equivalent of a full-grown adult that eats nothing but chicken nuggets and fries. At some point you’ll have to expand your palette…
As if I actively read Harry Potter. It’s a kids book. Walking superiority complex over here, try being less of a dick. No one is saying Harry Potter is the peak of modern literature.
Jar-Jar was introduced at a time when everyone had spent twenty years forming their idea of what a Star Wars movie should be like and he ran totally counter to that. Dobby was introduced in the second instalment of his series.
Personally, I am a fan of the Darth Jar-Jar hypothesis. In light of recent real-world history, it has become very plausible.
As someone who read 4 HP books back in 2001-2 and only saw the first 2 movies, I was deeply annoyed by that goblin. Maybe I didn’t see “the good part” of the character?
My wife cried when Dobby died. I couldn’t have cared less, thing showed up for like 10 seconds, pulled a Deus Ex Machina and died. Congrats, you served your purpose random Red Shirt.
You didn’t read the book
I read the book, I read **all ** the main series books. Dobby was as useful as Cho Chang to the story, minus one scene.
Jar jar was racist
Harry Potter was mostly kids watching and their families. Phantom Menace had to also cater to adult-shaped children who lost their collective shit after realizing Star Wars is actually a kids movie franchise made to sell toys and merchandising and licensing deals to children and continue on into adult hood.
Dobbie was perceived by kids aging into adults.
JarJar was perceived by adults from the start.
Probably, kids had more capacity for their bullshit?
I was a kid when Jar Jar was new, and I’m still quite fond of the character. To me he’s the best thing about the series (I don’t hold Star Wars in very high regard), so I think you’re on to something.
Jar Jar was too much of a racist caricature.
So was Watto and it doesn’t get that much backlash.
Or the trade federation dudes
Watto and Nute Gunray weren’t portrayed as buffoons, though. Jar Jar had the double-whammy of not just referencing an ethnicity, but doing so in a gratuitously insulting way.
(Granted, Watto, being a slaveowner, was certainly not a sympathetic character either, but at least he behaved reasonably enough in the context of the story. A shrewd businessman, but not greedy or duplicitous, you know? At least Lucas stopped short of the really offensive antisemitic tropes.)
And Watto didn’t get that much screen time, did he? We establish that Ani and his mom are slaves, the racially stereotyped slave owner is a piece of shit, they buy out the slave padawan, and fuck off, right? How much mind space does Watto deserve?
That’s because the Gringotts Goblins control the galactic media.
No idea. I hate Dobbie deeply, and cheered when it died
I couldn’t stand Dobby. Didn’t shed a tear when he died. Fred, on the other hand…
wow this sucks
Cult behavior.
probably not true, fortunately: https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1vjde6y/rumours_speculation_questions_and_reaction/p2t4b8m/
Fuck that. Login???
Yeah, if you open Fuckweddit and look at a page for long enough it covers the entire page with a big LOG IN OR SIGN UP to block contents
That’s why I’m here
RedLib link: https://redlib.shreven.org/r/ukpolitics/comments/1vjde6y/rumours_speculation_questions_and_reaction/p2t4b8m/
(RedLib is a private FOSS frontend for viewing Reddit.)
I am not creating an account to view that
I for one am glad they’re leaving this gender neutral toilet alone
It kind of cute. Even in modern times we create new sacred spaces, although a bit different than we were used to.
I can imagine some future archeologists wondering who this “Dobby” was that his grave was an importat site of pilgrimage. Maybe concluding it wasn’t actually a person but a local minor deity.
“who was this dobby? and how did he manage to bury himself in solid cement?”
I could imagine they would be confused that we thought he was an elf and then more confused when they can’t find the body so assume it was either removed or never existed.
They will debate on what exactly an “elf” was. Dobby was an elf, but Legolas was also an elf. At least a few articles will be written trying to reconcile the contradictory data.
Yikes. Fuck these dumbasses.
