All of monsterzero's Comments + Replies

Our culture typically presents rationality as opposed to emotion; I believe that a disproportionate number of misanthropes are drawn to rationality for that reason.

However, logic is meaningless without having an underlying goal, and goals are generally determined by one's emotions. What are your goals?

I find that thinking of other people as inferior or irrational is not particularly helpful in accomplishing my objectives. I feel less stress and make more progress by recognizing that other people have different goals than I do.

It is possible to get others (even "irrational" others) to help you accomplish your goals by offering to help them with theirs.

Yes, it would have been nice to see Hermione really start to fulfill her badass potential. But this was a pretty good place to end the story.

Trolls are bald, and I don't know if they have fingernails. If they do, then there's probably a set length up to which troll nails will regenerate without further growth.

boss: what’s your greatest weakness?

guy: i’m bad at giving rhymed answers to questions.

I am so stealing that for my next job interview.

Human consciousness isn't optimized for anything, except maybe helping feral hominids survive in the wild.

-Charles Stross, "Rule 34"

If Harry can figure out how to reverse a Time-Turner and send Hermione's body into the future, he doesn't need cryonics. And there's no worry about paradoxes, so possibly the six-hour limit wouldn't apply.

I wasn't thinking particularly about recent events. If Harry wanted to unravel the secrets of magic, he should have been interviewing goblins and house elves since he learned they existed. Hagrid would have been another good lead, as he could potentially be networked to allow introductions to centaurs, giants, etc.

Asking Draco about Dumbledore has yielded some really interesting new hypotheses. More viewpoints = more data!

Thank you for that link. I particularly enjoyed reading about "Azidoazide Azides, More Or Less".

Even if the other humanoid races are essentially human, it seems like Harry should be talking to them more. Getting different viewpoints and information could be incredibly helpful. If the differences are primarily cultural, well, there can be an awful lot of variation between cultures. Not to mention the differences in magical ability and techniques.

Of course, in canon, Harry didn't catch on to this until the fourth year or so.

Fulminated mercury.

Edited to add: Sorry, been rewatching old Breaking Bad. You'd have to trick them into chewing it or something, wouldn't you?

http://pbfcomics.com/72/

Yeah, when I try to imagine future events in HPMoR, my brain keeps editing Minerva out. She was an NPC for so long that I'm having trouble factoring her in.

Draco's Patronus says in Parseltongue, "OK, we have the girl-child'ss body and are keeping it cold as insstructed. Now what?"

In 1992, I think Voyager 2 was still closer to the sun than Pluto. Wouldn't the sun still be the brightest star in the sky?

Does a Dementor count as a material object? If so, the (now-disproven) fact of their indestructibility would have made them seem to be ideal Horcruxes.

Or, since they are "wounds in the world", are they simply places where space isn't?

they sometimes find issues even where issues don't actually exist

Issues are subjective. Something that's not an issue for you can still be an issue for someone else.

For example, you have a problem with thakil's phrasing and have offered a "corrected" version. However, you've destroyed the point of thakil's sentence, which is that it's possible that ((Person A finds X enjoyable) AND (Person A finds X problematic)). I know from direct experience that this is true; I have been Person A in that situation.

If you have not personally been in that situation, it doesn't follow that another person has not, nor that they are somehow being "unfair".

Given your username, isn't everyone else a Philosophical Zombie?

...for all I know, the teachers at your school are giving everyone lessons in advanced necromancy every Monday.

If only.

I can't wait to see Hermione resurrected as the first p-zombie.

Do French wizards cast French spells? What about the Chinese?

Probably. Quirrell teaches at least one spell which is clearly neither of English nor Latin origin.

The word "very" in this sense means "literal". The prophecy is talking about actual stars.

The real secret is that once you know why it works, you can never cast Patronus 1.0 again. The humanoid form is a clue, so Harry needs to conceal it.

Killing Dementors is awesome, but in the short term the benefit of showing that ability off does not outweigh the risk of leaving all wizards everywhere defenseless against them.

Very early in the chapter: "He had regained an impossible memory, for all that the Dementor had made him desecrate it. A strange word kept echoing in his mind."

And later: "Harry glanced in the Dementor's direction. The word echoed in his mind again. All right, Harry thought to himself, if the Dementor is a riddle, what is the answer? And just like that, it was obvious."

Once Harry figures out what Dementors are, he stops being able to hear their "voices", because he no longer sees (hears) them as sentient. But if "the word" was actually coming from the Dementor, I don't know what would've kept everyone else from hearing it.

And yet the broomsticks work.

Have you ever tried using a humidifier (at night or just in general)? Dry sinuses are way more susceptible to allergens, and there are plenty of ubiquitous allergens that could be responsible for your headaches no matter where you live.

I googled 'a specific person -"genghis khan"' and got Bob Dylan in the top result. If you want specificity, include "specific".

So Snape heard the prophecy from...someone with a Slavic or Germanic accent. The only candidates from canon that I can think of are Grindelwald, Karkaroff (who doesn't have a strong accent, at least not in the movies), and Krum (who may not have even been born yet.) Could Snape have visited Grindelwald in Nurmengard at some point?

Hat & Cloak seems like Quirrell to me. Who else stood up for Hermione, even a little bit, at the Head Table? Though he must have a lot of faith that multiple Obliviations don't cause permanent damage. Hermione is way too potentially useful, both in her own right and as a lever on Harry.

I've been thinking of Patronuses as only being able to bring back one bit of information: "delivered message" vs "couldn't deliver message".

Though I'm sure there are counterexamples in both canon and MoR.

It's pretty important not to overdo perfume/cologne, as there's a lot of variation in people's sensitivity to odors (and odor preferences). One squirt or dab is usually more than enough. In addition, the person who is wearing the scent becomes habituated to it after a few minutes, so "I can't smell myself anymore" isn't a good reason to put on more.

Dealerships can be evil. They may try to get you to agree to pay X dollars/month for N months without telling you what the total actually is. Bring a calculator and for Merlin's sake Read Before Signing Anything.

And remember that you can always just walk out of there and buy a car off craigslist. That's what I ended up doing.

I definitely wouldn't use the disposable plastic spoons that fast food places give out with their food. Those might actually melt, especially if pressed against the side of a hot metal pot.

I used to be extremely self-conscious about my voice before I became a volunteer DJ at my local college radio station. After six years of listening to myself through headphones, I speak much more slowly and clearly, and people who don't know about the DJing have told me that "I should be on the radio".

But my ability to be understood by phone systems that depend on voice-recognition doesn't seem to have improved at all. Any suggestions there?