There's someone at work who's really mean to me, despite the fact he's very bad at his job, and I have to do loads of work to tidy up after him. I'm sure he's nice to his family and everything, and I know he helps out at a local charity, but at work it's infuriating and exhausting.
Mean Guy is also running a local half-marathon at the weekend. It's thought that Mean Guy, a pretty good runner, might even come in the top 10. In fact, coming round the final bend, he's in the lead! But then he trips over his shoelaces just before the line and is overtaken, so finishes second instead.
I would expect the athletics correspondent of a local newspaper to accurately report that this was a tremendous athletic performance by Mean Guy, way ahead of expectations, and, in spite of the finish, a silver-medal result.
But when I'm chatting to my friends in the pub, letting off some steam about my work nemesis, I think it's OK – not perfectly morally unimpeachable behaviour, but just a normal human response – for me to say "Did you see how Mean Guy faceplanted – *smack* – right onto the tarmac! It was hilarious! What an idiot!"
Re the rocket launch, it seems like the message that "oh yeah it'll probably blow up" really wasn't out there much ahead of the launch. This could perhaps be due to SpaceX having absolutely woeful publicity people (or zero publicity people), though I suppose to Musk it doesn't matter. Our expectations are that "the spaceship won't blow up straight after launch, and if it does that won't be a good thing", and SpaceX had done zero to change that expectation. I certainly never heard anything about that in all the scene-setting pieces on radio news that preceded it.
Re the JKR video game, how amusing that the Twitter effort had absolutely zero (measurable) effect. If anything, the commenters on that piece seem to want the whole issue to get the hell off their lawn.
Anecdotally, the failed Hogwarts Legacy boycott might even have had a small reverse effect. I know of a few people who bought HL when they wouldn't have done otherwise purely to oppose the boycott.
TBH your fundamental mistake is assuming Rowling means exactly what she says. She's clever enough to hide her bigotry behind the traditional cowardly bigot's stance of concern and nonsense like that and tow the line to just the right side of acceptable that someone relatively uninformed and neutral on the matter might think they are being reasonable.
She says doesn't hate trans people she just actively spends inordinate amount of time obsessing about them and campaigning against their rights. But no she doesn't hate them.
And you're making the mistake of thinking bigots have reasoning first when bigotry is the reactionary impulse first, followed by the intellectual justification second.
It's like nimbyism (ultimately it's both to do with the reactionary impulse) they react first and come up with justifications later. It's not her being rational it's her rationalising her prejudice
And that's assuming she means what she says and has not deliberately toned it down for a general audience which seems unlikely
But the crucial tell with Rowling is who she associates with and talks to online and IRL. And their views which are far far less self censored and far more openly extreme and bigoted.
But ultimately what she believes is irrelevant when the outcome of what she's ultimately doing is laundering transphobic messages which themselves are rehashed anti gay arguements.
It's so amazingly transparent a re-run of gay panic that it's astonishing people, even terfs, struggle to see that.
2. Love these “guilt by amazingly distant association” things. On the Farrow thing, the whole extent of Rowling’s support is: “—Tweeted “Big love to you xxx” to Caroline Farrow, an anti-trans, anti-gay, and anti-abortion activist after Farrow complained of “having had my life invaded and dominated by insane trans rights activists.”” Possible that Rowling saw some similarity in her experience?
This illiterate idiot doesn't even even know the difference between its and it's and expects to convince people that Musk isn't the charlatan that anyone that knows anything about engineering already knows.
Regarding the rocket launch, I understand that a failed flight can be a successful test, but what about the stories about the (much larger than previous) explosion raining toxic crap over a very large area that included places where people live? When something launched from Cape Canaveral exploded, it would land in the ocean. Apparently Elon built a test facility in Texas because he felt more ideologically at home there, but when you’re testing something like this wouldn’t it be better to site it where it will do the least damage when something predictably blows up?
The launch site in Texas is right by the ocean and when things blow up they generally do land on the ocean.
The problem was that one of the things that went wrong was that the launchpad hadn't been built strong enough for the rocket (tbf, the rocket was twice as powerful as anything ever launched before. But also, Elon personally vetoed several improvements to the launchpad that he's now been forced to backtrack on and authorise). So the launchpad got smashed into bits and that (basically: concrete dust) was what was raining all over the place. If that happened at Canaveral, they'd have exactly the same problem - the dust would rain all over a nature reserve rather than people's houses because that's what's next to Canaveral, but that's not really better.
One of the nice things about this rocket is that its fuel is just methane and oxygen, so when it blows up, there isn't a ton of toxic chemicals everywhere (methane is lighter than air and goes up, oxygen is just air). Most rocket fuels are either mildly toxic (like kerosene) or really toxic (nitric acid, hydrazine, ammonium perchlorate), with the only other reasonably safe option being hydrogen/oxygen, and only Delta IV uses that exclusively (there are lots of hydrogen/oxygen rockets, but all the others have solid boosters and the solids are really nasty chemicals).
I really wanted to post this on Mastodon, but then I thought better of it...
Oh go on, rage clicks are still clicks!
There's someone at work who's really mean to me, despite the fact he's very bad at his job, and I have to do loads of work to tidy up after him. I'm sure he's nice to his family and everything, and I know he helps out at a local charity, but at work it's infuriating and exhausting.
Mean Guy is also running a local half-marathon at the weekend. It's thought that Mean Guy, a pretty good runner, might even come in the top 10. In fact, coming round the final bend, he's in the lead! But then he trips over his shoelaces just before the line and is overtaken, so finishes second instead.
I would expect the athletics correspondent of a local newspaper to accurately report that this was a tremendous athletic performance by Mean Guy, way ahead of expectations, and, in spite of the finish, a silver-medal result.
But when I'm chatting to my friends in the pub, letting off some steam about my work nemesis, I think it's OK – not perfectly morally unimpeachable behaviour, but just a normal human response – for me to say "Did you see how Mean Guy faceplanted – *smack* – right onto the tarmac! It was hilarious! What an idiot!"
Good analogy, but James’s point was about capital-J Journalists on Twitter, inc Ben Collins.
Re the rocket launch, it seems like the message that "oh yeah it'll probably blow up" really wasn't out there much ahead of the launch. This could perhaps be due to SpaceX having absolutely woeful publicity people (or zero publicity people), though I suppose to Musk it doesn't matter. Our expectations are that "the spaceship won't blow up straight after launch, and if it does that won't be a good thing", and SpaceX had done zero to change that expectation. I certainly never heard anything about that in all the scene-setting pieces on radio news that preceded it.
Re the JKR video game, how amusing that the Twitter effort had absolutely zero (measurable) effect. If anything, the commenters on that piece seem to want the whole issue to get the hell off their lawn.
Anecdotally, the failed Hogwarts Legacy boycott might even have had a small reverse effect. I know of a few people who bought HL when they wouldn't have done otherwise purely to oppose the boycott.
TBH your fundamental mistake is assuming Rowling means exactly what she says. She's clever enough to hide her bigotry behind the traditional cowardly bigot's stance of concern and nonsense like that and tow the line to just the right side of acceptable that someone relatively uninformed and neutral on the matter might think they are being reasonable.
She says doesn't hate trans people she just actively spends inordinate amount of time obsessing about them and campaigning against their rights. But no she doesn't hate them.
And you're making the mistake of thinking bigots have reasoning first when bigotry is the reactionary impulse first, followed by the intellectual justification second.
It's like nimbyism (ultimately it's both to do with the reactionary impulse) they react first and come up with justifications later. It's not her being rational it's her rationalising her prejudice
And that's assuming she means what she says and has not deliberately toned it down for a general audience which seems unlikely
But the crucial tell with Rowling is who she associates with and talks to online and IRL. And their views which are far far less self censored and far more openly extreme and bigoted.
But ultimately what she believes is irrelevant when the outcome of what she's ultimately doing is laundering transphobic messages which themselves are rehashed anti gay arguements.
It's so amazingly transparent a re-run of gay panic that it's astonishing people, even terfs, struggle to see that.
One other figure who gets wildly (and perhaps deliberately?) misinterpreted by his critics - Kier Starmer.
1, Elon really doesn't need another random crypto fanatic defending him.
2, Please note that Ms Rowling has supported numerous far right figures. Including the odiously homophobic Caroline Farrow.
3, That image should be "Elon" with you jumping in front of "facts about Elon".
1. Not sure who you’re thinking of here
2. Love these “guilt by amazingly distant association” things. On the Farrow thing, the whole extent of Rowling’s support is: “—Tweeted “Big love to you xxx” to Caroline Farrow, an anti-trans, anti-gay, and anti-abortion activist after Farrow complained of “having had my life invaded and dominated by insane trans rights activists.”” Possible that Rowling saw some similarity in her experience?
3. No. Read the piece.
this is a perfect example of how people literally make things up in an effort to justify their unwarranted vilification of JK Rowling. Caroline Farrow is not "far right"- not even close. She is married to a Catholic priest (yes, you read that correctly .. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1226449/Pope-allows-married-men-priests-bid-attract-Anglican-recruits.html).
This illiterate idiot doesn't even even know the difference between its and it's and expects to convince people that Musk isn't the charlatan that anyone that knows anything about engineering already knows.
Regarding the rocket launch, I understand that a failed flight can be a successful test, but what about the stories about the (much larger than previous) explosion raining toxic crap over a very large area that included places where people live? When something launched from Cape Canaveral exploded, it would land in the ocean. Apparently Elon built a test facility in Texas because he felt more ideologically at home there, but when you’re testing something like this wouldn’t it be better to site it where it will do the least damage when something predictably blows up?
The launch site in Texas is right by the ocean and when things blow up they generally do land on the ocean.
The problem was that one of the things that went wrong was that the launchpad hadn't been built strong enough for the rocket (tbf, the rocket was twice as powerful as anything ever launched before. But also, Elon personally vetoed several improvements to the launchpad that he's now been forced to backtrack on and authorise). So the launchpad got smashed into bits and that (basically: concrete dust) was what was raining all over the place. If that happened at Canaveral, they'd have exactly the same problem - the dust would rain all over a nature reserve rather than people's houses because that's what's next to Canaveral, but that's not really better.
One of the nice things about this rocket is that its fuel is just methane and oxygen, so when it blows up, there isn't a ton of toxic chemicals everywhere (methane is lighter than air and goes up, oxygen is just air). Most rocket fuels are either mildly toxic (like kerosene) or really toxic (nitric acid, hydrazine, ammonium perchlorate), with the only other reasonably safe option being hydrogen/oxygen, and only Delta IV uses that exclusively (there are lots of hydrogen/oxygen rockets, but all the others have solid boosters and the solids are really nasty chemicals).
Thank you for the clarification. I guess this puts the issue more in the realm of what James’ original post was about.