All of Atelos's Comments + Replies

Atelos90

Chapter 86

"That was how your House came to be ennobled, Mr. Potter," injected the solemn voice of Professor McGonagall. "There is an ancient law that if anyone ends a Most Ancient House, whoever avenges that blood will be made Noble. To be sure, the House of Potter was already older than some lines called Ancient. But yours was titled a Noble House of Britain after the end of the war, in recognition that you had avenged the Most Ancient House of Monroe."

Atelos10

. What's curious about this is that it means Snape told them enough (or maybe it was Creacher? Hm.) to narrow down its location, but not enough to get in

I think it was actually the constant use of the name Voldemort by Harry and Hermione, as they had not yet heard of the Taboo, that told the Death Eaters there was something worth investigating in the area.

Atelos40

Nothing for gold that I recall, but Mundungus Fletcher stole a bunch of heirloom silverware and other such valuable things from Grimmauld place after Sirius died, and possibly even while he was alive, and didn't seem to be particularly cursed, just throttled by Harry for disrespect to Sirius's memory.

On the other hand with Sirius's attitude towards his relatives he could easily have made a statement declaring his disinterest in his heritage that intentionally or unintentionally revoked his ownership over such items.

4gwern
Fletcher is portrayed as a sketchy thief/fence pretty much from book 1, IIRC. It's hard to imagine that so many people could have intentionally or not abandoned their magical ownership as to make such a career feasible.
Atelos80

Actually her parents, or at least people claiming to be such do appear in canon, if barely. They get no dialogue, but during the shopping trip in the second book there's some mention of them being uncertain around all the magic and weirdness, Arthur Weasley saying something along the lines "oh wow, I get to meet real muggles, look they're exchanging muggle money!", and few lines about them being unnerved by the confrontation between Arthur and Lucius in the bookshop.

6TobyBartels
‘The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.’
-1Baughn
Ah, but surely an orphan's guardians might be similarly uneasy.
Atelos30

Side note: what characters have been seen to cast both Patronus and AK? Snape does it in canon I think? Does he ever cast his Patronus after he kills Dumbledore?

Yes, in book 7 he used his patronus to lure Harry to the lake where he left Gryffindor's sword.

Atelos30

He got 1980ish!Snape's interpretation/thoughts, 1991!Snape presumably has new ones.

Atelos30

If it gives a positive response to humans and some/all intelligent non-humans but a negative one to people made brain-dead through purely physical means and/or various animals?

0Kindly
We still have no way of knowing if it's testing for souls or brain activity.
Atelos90

You've seen/heard about the What Would Jesus Do thing, yes? This is that but with references to the Harry Potter as a Rationalist fanfic Yudkowsky is doing.

What Would Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres Do

What Would Professor Quirrel Do

Professor Quirrel Would Avada Kevadra (the Killing Curse, very efficient for removal of obstacles :P)

Atelos80

Sharks are legal to eat and this is a major factor in their current risk of extinction.

0Jayson_Virissimo
Sharks are not similar to tigers in that you can't (with current technology?) keep some types of them alive in captivity, but tigers you can. Legalizing eating tiger meat, though, without also legalizing tiger ranches (?) would not be of help in preventing extinction.
1Randy_M
Isn't extinction risk the goal here? (Not extinction per se, but population reduction down to the level it is no longer a threat. At least in this hypothetical.)
0DanielLC
Sharks are hard to farm, in that they have all the problems tigers have, but you also have to do it underwater. I also think sharks aren't as in demand as tigers. I've heard tiger meat is a popular snake oil. Or at least stuff that claims to contain tiger meat is.
Atelos160

I'm reasonably certain time turners can't jump you forwards in time. So far as I can tell everyone who's used a time turner has taken the 'long path' to catch back up with their most advanced present.

Atelos20

I know the blood is used to mark the Deathly Hallow symbol on the Cloak, but could you remind me where it says this relates to permanence?

Hmm, rereading the section of his Azkaban trip where Harry was making his Cloak related discoveries I seem to have confused the fact of the thestral blood symbol empowering the Cloak with someones conjecture in some discussion thread after we learned the law of potion conservation that the thestral blood suggested as a substitution in the eagle's splendor potion could have served as a modifier to make it permanent.

Atelos120

When Dumbledore showed Harry the comments he made in her potions textbook the potion he was commenting on was the Potion of Eagle's Splendor, which is the potion for an increase in the Charisma stat (which technically doesn't have to involve appearance but is often considered correlated with it) in 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons.

ETA: The other things which makes it more suggestive is that the potion Petunia took was dangerous or rare, else more witches would also have permanently improved their appearance, and a normal potion listed in the standard 5th y... (read more)

6Velorien
I know the blood is used to mark the Deathly Hallow symbol on the Cloak, but could you remind me where it says this relates to permanence? I rather assumed that, since thestrals are invisible to all those who have not seen and comprehended death, the relevance of thestral blood was to do with death and/or hiding from it. I really really wish I could believe that, but I can't, not in the wizarding world. Felix Felicis, which is extremely difficult to make and disastrous if brewed wrong (and disastrously powerful when brewed right, especially in the hands of children), is to be found in the same textbook.
2Velorien
Dumbledore scribbles nonsense in the margins of the Eagle's Splendour recipe of Lily's book =/= Dumbledore helps Lily brew Eagle's Splendour. At most, it confirms that Lily knew how to brew said potion when she was in her fifth year. Furthermore, even if Dumbledore helped Lily brew a fifth-year potion, there is no reason to believe that he did so secretly, or that he had ulterior motives beyond helping her. Lily was a student he paid rather creepy special attention to - why wouldn't he help her with a special project?
Atelos50

If someone performs the ritual to summon death then they lose a sword and a noose, unless they're a particular sort of obsessed with the remnants of past crimes they wouldn't care either except that they'd need to get new material components if they want to do it again. just as we'd have to pick out another star if we sacrificed Alpha Centauri A..

It seems to me that the term sacrifice is used simply to denote that even if someone wants their spell component back they can't get it, whereas there is a spell to reverse Crystferrium if you find you prefer the original to the glass.

1DanArmak
That's an excellent point. But if "ritual sacrifice" simply means "spell with material components which are expended", then every potion ever brewed is a "ritual sacrifice".
Atelos60

Somehow I doubt even those who believed Tracey's Harry summoning ritual was real believed she had ownership over Yog-Sothoth.

0DanArmak
I don't think their beliefs correspond to reality in this particular. It's just one more reason to consider the pretend ritual unrealistic - in addition to those that Quirrell gave.
0[anonymous]
Also, why do we "own" Sol? Because we live near it and nobody else does? Once HJPEV acquires the ability to sacrifice stars, constructing a space station orbiting Alpha Centauri and living in it for as long as it takes to acquire "ownership" would be trivial.
Atelos30

It seems to me that Harry was a bit too quick to dismiss the Resurrection Stone option. Certainly if it functions according to his current conceptions of it it won't bring Hermione back in the sense he finds meaningful. However the experience of that soul/magic explosion at Hermione's death gives at least some evidence of a soul actually existing, even if still not enough to make it the most probable explanation for the stone's function, and there are other non-soul requiring ways that the stone could function such as looking back in time for the most rece... (read more)

8CAE_Jones
The impression I got from canon is that it works exactly as HJPEV believes even in the Rowlingverse; there is some evidence against this (the resurrected marauders insisting that death doesn't hurt, LIMBO! Dumbledore's information might not be things Harry could have figured out on his own), but as I recall, one of the resurrected ones said "We're part of you, after all", and Dumbledore's "Well of course it's in your head! But why should that make it any less real?" Even if there is an afterlife in the Rowlingverse, it seems like she really did not intend for there to be any method of communicating with it. Of course, HJPEV does not have access to a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so you're right that he's privileging his hypothesis, and should at least do the obvious test--come up with information that Hermione would know that Harry couldn't figure out on his own, use the stone and ask the Hermione that appears about it.
Atelos100

Regarding "get in the kitchen!" -- submitter seems to be making an implicit connotative jump, because she likes cooking, to take it as if the sentence were simply equivalent to "Go do your favorite thing!" But that's not the connotation that is usually there. The people saying something like that usually mean it more like "Go do this thing whether or not you like doing it all, because it's too low status for males to bother themselves with it."

Also of "you ought to be feeding us because you're not important/competent enough to otherwise contribute"

Atelos00

To spell it out more explicitly, the suggestion is that while currently she's loyal to Harry because she thinks he's Harrymort, in the event that Quirrelmort wants to deny Harry influence over her by revealing 'Actually I'm the one with the Dark Lord in his head, I was just manipulating the boy in a complicated plot, as is my style,' she still might maintain some loyalty to Harry because manipulated or not, he still broke her out of Azkaban and performed all those impressive feats for her in the process. Especially the fact that he faced down the dementors... (read more)

Atelos40

If the enchanted stone that the Line is made of is subject to Harry's power of partial transfiguration then instead of breaking the Line he could take a piece of the chamber and make it into a new Line for himself. 'Merlin's spirit and Magic itself have endorsed me, now actually LISTEN to what I have to say.'

ETA: Or, since a few months ago in Azkaban he had enough power/skill to make quite a large hole in the walls and he's presumably improved further since then, and still assuming that partial transfiguration isn't one of the things the special stone is protected against, he could reshape a portion of the wall to say "Release Her". 'The stones themselves cry out against the injustice of this!'

Atelos10

Also, he could be judging the ritual most terrible on effects rather than sacrifices, and Quirrel's worldview obviously judges summoning Death, especially without the dismissal, as more terrible than making yourself some flavor of immortal.

Atelos30

However, every empirical study that has looked at CRA loans has concluded that they were safer than subprime mortgages that were purely profit driven, and CRA loans accounted for a tiny fraction of total subprime mortgages (107)

...

In November 2009 55% of commercial real estate loans were currently underwater, despite being completely unaffected by the CRA.[114]

...

He noted that approximately 50% of the subprime loans were made by independent mortgage companies that were not regulated by the CRA, and another 25% to 30% came from only partially CRA r

... (read more)
-15sam0345
3lessdazed
Do you think fault is other than a social construct?
3[anonymous]
I've no disagreement with your comment Atelos, but - why do those words exist? Is there a cluster of human minds in thingspace that have "sexual preference of adults for mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19"? Do they share any other properties in common? Eliezer on the subject of words that should not exist: Eliezer also suggests a reason why someone might coin such a word: in order to sneak in connotations. Also note that 15-25 and 18-21 are typically given as the prime age ranges of female physical attractiveness by Roissy and his commenters (although since these are arbitrary cut-offs, there's no need to give them a name). The 15-19 age range of "ephebophilia" cuts across this age range seemingly at random. The same goes for hebephilia, attraction to 11-14 year-olds. There is no discontinuity in the characteristics of a typical human between 14 and 15 years of age, and I don't see why hebephiles should form a compact cluster in thingspace either. On the other hand paedophilia does seem a valid word, because attraction to pre-pubescents seems qualititatively different from attraction to fertile human beings (there are evolutionary considerations at play, and there are great physical changes in a short space of time during puberty). Properties shared in common by paedophiles are presumably qualitative differences in "brain wiring" in comparison to humans of typical sexuality. Interestingly, Robin Hanson misuses the word pedophile in this post. The regular conflation of attraction to young fertile humans and attraction to prepubescent children in this way is another strange definitional phenomenon that calls for explanation.
2wedrifid
Fascinating. Following those links I just discovered I'm a teleiophile. Also a gynephile but I probably could have guessed that one myself. I'm somewhat nonplussed with having the word ephebophilia refer to a preference for either females of approximately 14-16 or for males of an equivalent level of development (so slightly older). Unless for some reason people with one preference have a particularly high chance of also having the other preference. Because by this age it is an entirely different kind of preference so if you are going to go to all the trouble of making up names for various categories you may as well have "likes young men" different to "likes young women". Having just one word for pedophilia and perhaps hebophilia makes somewhat more sense given the much smaller difference between sexes at the younger ages.
Atelos50

Homicide Bomber.

There are certainly other examples, but that's the first one to come to mind.

Jack120

Islamofascism, "real America", 'Democrat' as an adjective as in 'Democrat Party', Death Tax, Obamacare.

It's politics; people come up with this stuff for a living.

Atelos50

Most of the teachers? Binns and Trelawney certainly, Snape, but arguably he's more unprofessional and unpleasant than incompetent. Often the defense professor is incompetent, I suppose. Canon!Harry had Lupin, Snape and fake Moody for competent defense professors and Quirrel, Lockhart and Umbridge for incompetent ones. We have no reason to doubt the teaching ability of Mcgonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, Sinistra, Vector or Babbling. Burbage's Muggle studies course is often a subject of ridicule in fanfiction, but that might be a result of the (inter?)-national c... (read more)

Atelos150

The next line after "If you didn't tell her at all what the spell was supposed to do, it would stop working." says

If she knew in very vague terms what the spell was supposed to do, or she was only partially wrong, then the spell would work as originally described in the book, not the way she'd been told it should.

Knowing that the spell is 'For enemies' apparently counts as knowing in very vague terms what it will do.

Atelos480

In 2005, Hurricane Rita caused 111 deaths. 3 deaths were caused by the hurricane. 90 were caused by the mass evacuation. ... Exercise for the reader: Find other cases where cautionary measures are more dangerous than nothing.

The ratio of 90 deaths from the evacuation to 3 deaths from the hurricane looks bad, but is in fact irrelevant. The proper comparison would be 90 deaths from evacuating, to X deaths that would have resulted had those people stayed put, or performed some other action in preparation. While it's possible a proper estimate of the ris... (read more)

0Pfft
I guess the argument is the same as for the drugs: the evacuation effort should be scaled back until it causes equally many deaths as the hurricane.
Atelos80

He may still be able to be a double agent in Quirrel's organization.

In canon, Voldemort knew Snape reported to Dumbledore, how could he not when Snape was spared Azkaban on Dumbledore's word that Snape was a spy. Voldemort however thought that Snape reported to Dumbledore only for the advantages it gave him, personally and in the form of information to be used for the Death Eaters, and not from any true loyalty to the Light or opposition to the Death Eaters.

Similarly, Quirrelmort knows Snape serves Dumbledore, but thinks (perhaps even correctly) that Snape... (read more)

6TobyBartels
Obviously. And this isn't because of their recent conversation, or because of the Battle of Forty-four Bullies, or because of any other difference between MoR and canon deeper than that MoR!Voldemort is not stupid.
Atelos20

Causing disruption is certainly vicious in the sense of aggressive or violent, yes. I, and apparently Normal_Anomaly, read the quote from Mencken as meaning that lying is vicious in the sense of immoral, 'vice-ious', and hence unjustifiable.

Atelos130

Indeed. Harry's personal timeline looks like this.

Wakes up, does morning stuff.

Goes to lunch with Professor Quirrell.

Azkaban!

Back in time to be picked up by the Professors at Mary's Room.

Receives coded note, delivers message to Professor Flitwick.

Reports to McGonagall's office, receives message to be passed to Flitwick.

Back in time one hour from 9 PM to send coded note through Slytherin mail to Margaret Bulstrode who will/did bring it the rest of the way back to 3 PM using her own time turner.

Visit to Dumbledore's office to hear his theory on Bellatrix's escape, and it turns out, to help Fawkes yell at him.