spicycaramel @thatkidofwarandpeace - Tumblr Blog

I feel like I am taking crazy pills

genuinely hate the way modern journalism works; if you look this up all the results are just news sites regurgitating the same information with less and less detail because none of them are actually doing any research, they're just rewording each others articles. The oldest article I can find on this is this one from the sixth of august and if you give it a read you can see that it has significantly more detail than the guardian article screenshotted in the post.

if you read just the guardian article, it sounds like something that is a) happening currently, and b) that the cable was actually in place when the changes were made.

neither of these things are true. this whole thing comes from a podcast episode which released recently, where simon ludlam talks a bit about the process of working on interconnector cables, and mentions that during the community consult phase of planning for the greenlink interconnector, in 2019, people sent in harry potter related complaints that led to them altering the cable location by a few metres. again, this was entirely in the planning phase, the cable had not yet been placed. he also makes it pretty clear that he is talking about it because he thought it was silly and a bit surreal, not because it was any huge imposition on the project.

the environmental impact statement for the greenlink cable is freely available online, and outlines much more serious issues with its placement due to environmental concerns, stating that "The shore crossing at Freshwater West would extend through sand dunes approximately 3m high at the northern extent. The sand dunes are environmentally sensitive areas and installation through this area would require environmental permitting."

now, is this situation ridiculous? of course! but it's not that hard to talk about it being ridiculous without resorting to clickbait and misinformation, and it's genuinely alarming to me how many people are sharing these headlines without questioning them in the slightest. in this particular case it doesn't really matter that much, but the normalisation of inaccurate, sensationalist headlines and fact poor articles that are at best under researched and at worst deliberately misleading is a dangerous trend.

tldr; harry potter fans suck but misleading and unresearched news sucks even more

returntotheseaplease

This reddit comment has a good summation, copied below.

"There's something weird going on with this Dobby pipeline story and I just cannot figure out what. I've seen so much discussion about it and there's just absolutely zero evidence for this actually happening aside from one little anecdote from a podcast.

It seems to have originated from this interview at 16:55 with Simon Ludlam, who was the project director for Greenlink. I've searched and searched and can't actually find any evidence of this interview he mentions, let alone any indication of there being backlash.

First of all, this happened years ago. The consultation was in 2018, the cable was laid starting in 2022, it was tested at the end of 2024, and it's been in use since the start of 2025.

The cable wasn't dug into the top of the beach, it was drilled horizontally underground (point 7 here). This has evidently been the case since at least October 2018, and from what I can tell the route under the beach did not change between then and October 2021 when it was finalised.

The archaeological survey was done in 2019, and the commitments to not go close to any of the archaeological sites was made in October 2020. From what I can tell it was also offshore, so it was more about the routing before the beach.

And finally, the part that imo makes this whole thing nonsense - Dobby's grave is on the south side of Freshwater West, and right from the earliest proposals I've been able to find (page 63, October 2018) the interconnect has come in through the north side.

From everything I can tell, this story is just completely false and it's all stemmed from one guy's embellishing of the truth for an anecdote on a podcast.

If there's any discussion that should be happening, it's the fact that there are 30 different public PDFs, and this absolutely insane 350 page behemoth of absolute waffle on every single possible detail that I'm fairly sure absolutely nobody will have read. There really is a point where planning consultation gets massively out of hand, lol."

whitepeopletwitter

samshine-and-lollipops-deactiva

Wait, it got better.

libertineangel

He does this a lot, to my deep surprise in undergrad:

For reference, the reason nobody likes this book and you can press tofu with it is that it’s about 1600 pages long.

horizon-penblade

It’s also, by all accounts, the origin of Cousin Throckmorton

supreme-leader-stoat

despazito

Another one for "objectively funny crimes should not be punished"

entities-of-posts

The Stranger

strawberrydykke

opened up ravelry to look at patterns and the very first thing i saw was

The Garment by Robert Cole

bixbythemartian

went to read the Ravelry and that was such a treat:

Let the Garment envelop you; experience its heft and splendor. The original Garment pattern was knit in the round, from the bottom up, and designed for someone six feet in height. A simple adjustment of the number of stitches you cast on will allow you to customize the length. Follow The Garment on Instagram: @HeftAndSplendor Update, Aug 9, 2026: Many thanks for all the Garment enthusiasm in recent days! In response to sensible feedback, I’m developing and testing two alternate versions of the pattern: one for children, and the other a top-down version. I’m not entirely sure why I chose to make the first The Garment bottom-up—it almost certainly makes more sense for sizing, etc., to make it top-down—although I will say that casting on 300 stitches for the bottom of a The Garment feels like quite a leap of faith into the great unknown. In any case, both new versions of the pattern will be included in the update and sent to everyone who’s already bought the original pattern.

The pattern for the Garment costs only five usd so if you are a knitter and you want to make something beautiful and baffling, there you go. I do almost want to learn to knit so I can make the Garment.

(Also there's more pictures of people wearing the Garment at the Ravelry page and they're all FANTASTIC.)

kosmogrl

I will make a beautiful life for myself no matter how long it takes. I will I will I will

winningmachine

Being small Nobody quite recovers from being a child: the asymmetry of power between parents and children always leaves a trace

corvidaemnit

every single day I think about how american black vultures are known for engaging in interspecific allopreening (preening between different species)

and they have a specific relationship with crested caracaras, in which the black vultures assist them by not only preening them after meals but also leading them to food in the first place— due to their superior sense of smell— while the caracaras assist the black vultures by acting as a warning signal in case of danger

and while this is more typical of black vultures, this is not common at all for any member of the falconidae family— it’s a special bond!

yet another post in favor of vultures everyone , hope you enjoy:) and I implore you to do some more research on these incredible birds !!

EDIT: I meant interspecific allopreening! excuse my typo!

theprofessional-amateur

link to bluesky post

theprofessional-amateur

In addition to how to turn various things, it includes:

Other useful AI Removal/Detection links

How to spot AI Hallucinations like a Reference Librarian (originally on Substack)

Library Freedom Project has a lot of handouts about AI on their Resources page

caffeinatedopossum

Me when I remember something I said ages ago that was wrong or my values no longer align with

lizluzz

I miss taskmaster

transjudas

never take for granted the moments when you’re not nauseous

fiercestpurpose

There’s a quality that certain books/movies/TV shows have that leads me to say, “Yeah, I can see people making fanfiction of that.” It’s something to do, I think, with how tight the story is, how much feels open-ended or like it could be elaborated on.

Something like Breaking Bad, for example, has low squiggability (that’s what I’m calling this quality). It’s tightly written, the characters are consistent, there’s little left to interpolate or extrapolate. Obviously, people DO write fanfic of Breaking Bad, but it still has a low squiggability score. Whereas something like Supernatural has a high squiggability score. Fantasy and science fiction often have high squiggability scores. This suggests squiggability could also be related to worldbuilding and potential for people to borrow a premise or setting.

And sometimes you’ll read or watch something and you’ll say, “Ah, low squiggability,” and then you’ll open tumblr and find out that everyone else seem to think its squiggability was very high indeed.

captainlordauditor

Leverage is a fun one because in my head it has pretty low squiggibility but nearly endless squiggibility when you add any other property to it and make a crossover