The health care system is not so unfriendly it will kill us all. Maybe it is time to stop using unfriendly to mean a wide variety of conditions.

It is further evidence, because it's the only thing still in contact with his body.

This has appeared in the popular science page "I Fucking Love Science", followed by almost 20 million people on facebook. I think this is extremely good news. Despite the picture and its caption, the article seems to take the matter seriously.

As much as I'm a regular xkcd reader, I'm mildly annoyed with this strip, because I imagine lots of people will be exposed to the idea of the AI-box experiment for the first time through it, and they'll get this exposure together with an unimportant, extremely speculative idea that they're helpfully informed you're meant to make fun of. Like, why even bring the basilisk up? What % of xkcd readers will even know what it is?

If the strip was also clever or funny, I'd see the point, but as it's not, I don't.

Excellent advice, both in the post and in the comments. I only wanted to add that at least some readers (that I guess belong somewhere in between the skimmer and full reader categories) read the figure captions (and look at the figures, obviously) besides reading introduction and/or conclusions, as a way to see directly, but rapidly, the main results of the paper and how they are demonstrated. This obviously depends on the field, and I can only know for sure that it happens in my own field(s), stochastic processes/modelling of biological processes/other related fields.

I personally also do it for biology papers, because I do not trust the conclusions, but I'm not sure biologists do this.

You have justified Charlie Manson. If it's true for you, why isn't it true for them?

That leaves the question of how Penn actually knows that Chalie Manson was acting based on what his heart was telling him.

Psychopaths are frequently bad at empathy or "listening to their hearts". It might even be the defining characteristic of what makes someone a psychopath.

"I should do X" sometimes means something a lot closer to "I have an obligation to do X" rather than "I want to do X and am willing to pay the costs associated with doing so"...

The old witch’s eyebrows rose. “How did he identify you to the Hogwarts wards, then?”
A slight smile. “ “The Headmaster drew a circle, and told Hogwarts that he who stood within was the Defense Professor. Speaking of which—”

Quirrell is Baba Yaga, a "she", and some "he" also in that circle is the Defense Professor. EDIT: The Troll is the Defense Professor.

Past Professors of Defense have included not just the legendary wandering hero Harold Shea but also the quote undying unquote Baba Yaga, yes, I see some of you are still shuddering at the sound of her name even though she’s been dead for six hundred years.

" quote undying unquote Baba Yaga"

Quote hint unquote.

“Here of course we have the Sorting Hat, I believe the two of you have met. It told me that it was never again to be placed on your head under any circumstances. You’re only the fourteenth student in history it’s said that about, Baba Yaga was another one

Gee, Baba Yaga's mind had the same effect on the Hat as Harry's. Do we hypothesize his brain being like anyone else's brain?

And I daresay that most wizards would be hard-pressed to name a single Dark Lady besides Baba Yaga.”

Yes, they'd be hard pressed to name a single Dark Lady besides Baba Yaga. Note how that doesn't say there weren't any, and indeed many. Maybe, let's say, the quote undying unquote Baba Yaga masquerading as other people? Do we know anyone else who masquerades as other people? Anyone else with a brain like Harry's?

I will say this much, Mr. Potter: You are already an Occlumens, and I think you will become a perfect Occlumens before long. Identity does not mean, to such as us, what it means to other people. Anyone we can imagine, we can be; and the true difference about you, Mr. Potter, is that you have an unusually good imagination. A playwright must contain his characters, he must be larger than them in order to enact them within his mind. To an actor or spy or politician, the limit of his own diameter is the limit of who he can pretend to be, the limit of which face he may wear as a mask. But for such as you and I, anyone we can imagine, we can be, in reality and not pretense.

There are 3 and only 3 mentions of Baba Yaga in the book so far, and they tie Harry, the Dark Lord, and Quirrell together.

“Oh, now I see!” said Tracey Davis, speaking up so suddenly that Hermione gave a small startle. “You’re joining our protest because you’re worried that not enough girls are becoming Dark Witches!”
There was a half-smile on Professor Quirrell’s face as he replied,...

Probably a good idea to pay close attention to what Quirrell says when he smiles to himself.

EDIT: Guess who else Harry is like?

“Congratulations indeed,” said Dumbledore. “Even I did not make any original discoveries in Transfiguration before the age of fourteen. Not since the day of Dorotea Senjak has any genius flowered so early.

Latest half baked idea. Harry is Quirrell. I'd been operating on the theory that Quirrell is preparing Harry to take over the world, and then take over Harry. He's actually already taken over Harry as a baby, and lived out a new life as Harry. There are multiple scense of Quirrell comparing events in his life to Harry's, with the implication that Harry's life is the new and improved one.

The whole "Sense of Doom" business is the potential coming together of one person in two time turned bodies in the same space time.

With the ridiculously rampant and specific foreshadowing, some kind of time turning solution seems likely. And causality back through time was already set up with the Comed-Tea incident

but it all makes sense once you draw the causal arrows going BACKWARDS IN TIME!”

Here's a fascinating quote by Dumbledore about Fawkes:

as close to undying as any creature that exists in this world, for whenever their bodies fail them they immolate themselves in a burst of fireand leave behind a hatchling, or sometimes an egg.”

And Harry is discovered as a baby next to the presumed immolated remains of Voldemort.

Actually, it was all like this:

Quirrell heard about Minerva's decision to support more heroism. He realized that Harry changed his original plan (to make all teachers obstacles to Harry, except Quirrell himself), but adapted quickly. He asked Minerva to do something heroic together, as teachers -- to travel to the past and try saving Hermione.

In the past, he changed Minerva to Hermione, telling her that now the attack will come to Minerva and she can better defend against it, or do something very clever. Without Minerva's knowledge, he changed Hermione into a troll, and somehow made her believe that the enemy's plan is the following: while the real Hermione cannot be found, the false Hermione will try to kill Harry. Or something like that.

Now the troll (Hermione) heroically followed and attacked the false Hermione (Minerva) and tried to kill her. The sun didn't hurt the troll, because it was not a real troll. Harry came and killed the troll (Hermione), which made the wards report that a student was killed. The dying false Hermione (Minerva) tried to do the right thing and explain Harry that it was not his fault.

Quirrell is now waiting for the moment when Harry tries to revive Hermione and realizes that the body/brain that he saved actually belongs to Minerva from the future. Then Harry will realize that he killed Hermione, and specifically destroyed her brain by explosion. That should turn Harry to the dark side.

Is there any way that tearing the stars apart could plausibly be related to trying to save Hermione?