butchscientist:

The mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell is a fact which is often discussed on the internet. The Golgi apparatus, however, being the post office of the cell, has not gotten nearly as much recognition. This is in line with the years-long underfunding of the postal service, which provides a deeply important service to society yet does not get the recognition it deserves. In this essay I will

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journalism owns

catasters:

ndiecity:

soloveitchik:

Which one of those guys is biden

cryptid-sighting:

cryptid-sighting:

cryptid-sighting:

I was just a little bit too old to really get into it by the US release of the first Harry Potter book, so I never read those books until quite recently (2016) and I was really surprised when I finally read them. I thought Harry Potter was supposed to be like, this model for nerds and outcasts, but instead he’s a dumb jock who’s famous for being famous. And he wants to be a cop (which is at least consistent).

There’s something really off-putting and mean about it. It’s “ethically mean spirited” as Ursula Le Guin remarked when asked her impressions of the series, and a better writer might have been able to take that and Say Something about the hierarchy of life as teenage, but JKR is just not able to think through the implications of anything she writes whether that’s the antisemitic implications of goblin bankers, why Dumbledore sent Harry back to his horrible family instead of placing an anonymous tip to muggle child protective services, or why Harry Potter’s shit for brains attitude is always, always rewarded and what that tells her more impressionable audience.

Five years ago, I couldn’t figure it, but with what we’ve learned about JKR’s politics in the mean time, it makes perfect sense.

It’s not just that Harry isn’t particularly bright that’s troubling, but the fact that he treats his friend who isn’t a dullard as a pain in the ass, except for when he needs to exploit her book smarts for something because he didn’t fucking study.

He’s the kid who doesn’t do the reading, acts disengaged through most of the class, but then when the big test comes around he’s cribbing off whatever sap is willing to put up with his shit, whether due to insecurity or pity or some combination of the two.

For all the faults in her writing on a structural level, JKR has a very specific world view that comes across very clearly without making it superliminal a la Ayn Rand. 

Fundamentally, her world view is shaped by being a lower middle class Briton who resented the class system while also idolizing it. It’s the Chris Hitchens disease (not the one that killed him, the other one). She hates power and is fascinated by power. A very fraught relationship.

So instead of making Harry this special boy who upsets the order of the Wizarding World with his otherness, his arrival is actually celebrated and makes him an instant sensation because it represents a return of normality and order. She wants to make him a rebel, but she can’t actually have him challenge power in any way because power is constantly valorized in these books. His biggest ally is the headmaster of his exclusive private school (or would it be a public school in British vernacular?). So instead she makes him a cut-up and a delinquent who’s misbehavior is constantly hand-waved by everyone, except the one hard-ass professor who absolutely has Harry pegged except that professor happens to be a former Nazi so we can’t really sympathize with him, no can we?

The whole thing is a fantasy for suffering lower middle class British kids who dream of secretly having a peerage even as they resent the class system for all the opportunities it’s denied them and doors its slammed in their face. It’s an extremely British point of view and it’s not really surprising most American readers are oblivious to it, but at the same time it’s weird that more critics haven’t pointed it out. 

This point of view perfectly unites the three main political causes Rowling has taken up: empire fetishism, austerity politics, and TERFism, all hallmarks of middle class British social climbers. Rowling has of course made it long ago, made it far further up the ladder than Hitchens ever did, and is fantastically wealthy beyond the dreams of many of the peers she once might have envied (and maybe still does). Still, the basic grubby insecurity of the class position she lived in for years before her big break remains, which explains a lot about how she sees higher taxes as some kind of personal affront, above and beyond what even many rich people born into money would see them as. 

fleur-aesthetic:

instagram | ritafarhifinds

academicssay:

reallyreallyreallytrying:

cool bell dude. who does it toll for