I read it only in parts. Apparantly, there actually is a dollar-galleons-exchange rate carried out by Gringots.

“Consider first the Galleon–Dollar exchange rate (i.e. the exchange rate between the muggles’ money and the wizards’ money), which is not mentioned explicitly in the original 7-volume Harry Potter books, but we know from the books that the Gringotts handles such exchanges (Rowling, 1999a, p. 50). Based on information from three sources, we estimate that the Galleon–Dollar exchange rate is about $7.30/Galleon.”

The best of these sources is Rowling herself I think: “Third, in an interview on March 12, 2001, when asked by Rebecca Boswell, ‘What is the approximate value of a galleon?’ J.K. Rowling’s reply was ‘About five pounds, though the exchange rate varies!’ (Source: https://www.hp-lexicon.org/2007/02/04/wizard-money/, accessed June 6, 2022.) We conclude therefore that the Galleon–Dollar exchange rate is about $7.30/Galleon.”

Arthur Wesley after all also bought a muggle car and bewitched it.

No no, there is actually a whole economic going on and someone analyzed it: https://academic.oup.com/ooec/article/doi/10.1093/ooec/odac004/6646895

And its not so different and similary flawed than that in our world ;)

Idk. I mean, we all basically know how an engine works, how a coffee machine works, but these little magic devices that are supposed to work with these “microchips”. You can easily take apart an engine, but if you take apart a smartphone, you never find the bits …

You can probably exchange it. And I mean gold should count anywhere

I tried to base it on the advertising of the 50/60s. Its a bit thick …

Ok, now I get it. It’s an interesting concept. However, I think usability is a trade-off here and that means limited scalability. The average user wants to join a server and that’s it. I continue to place my bet on the federated concept ;)

Then if its filtered - why is it better against cencorship?

Ok, but can they also delete it once its through? Either all incoming messages are checked beforehand and are filtered by the admin, which is even worse of the bad censorship in the Fediverse nostr fans keep crying about, or its passed through and the user has to deal with toxic content. I’m not sure how that should work. The moderation has to happen somewhere, it sounds like nostr is heaving that onto the user.

Usually, if people say “its the best from both worlds” actually means “there is a tradeoff, but I like this adjustment of the tradeoff more”. If you want less “censorship”, which is ok, you use nostr, but have to live with a worse moderation situation.

Have they by now come up with a way to moderate things?

Look, first of all I’m not trans, I don’t know how its like, and you have my sympathy. The inzident with the H.P. fans harassing you sounds horrible and I’m sorry it happened to you.

Independent from this, I don’t think the world of H.P. itself is transphobic, if it was written by a different author there would still be things to critize but not more than many other childrens books. Also, I think that the fandom can free itself from Rowling in the sense that it becomes an independent thing from the author. For example the Lord of the Rings Series by Amazon Prime did some central things different than Tolkien. I think that’s how cultural development happens in contrast to just boycotting it. On the other hand, while Rowling still earns money from it and spends it for bad causes, there will always be a moral dilemma. But I’m willing to take the consequences of that moral dilemma in this case, because I think the H.P. fandom could be really good for the Fediverse and grow it, and a big Fediverse will be good for the world.

Additionally I have to add that, imo, throwing fashists and neo-nazis like David Duke into one bucket with Rowling is problematic, if not borderline totalitarian (and also just tasteless), because she simply isn’t. She is very conservative, but not a fascist. Fascists see certain groups of people as less human or not even humans at all, Rowling always said her arguments have nothing to do with the humans themselves, which is a crucial thing.

But none of them is anywhere near the popularity of Harry Potter. In the german-speaking area, his dark material and Earthsea are even less common.

Fine with me if we life in the enshittocene. If the fedicene is coming right after it

It’s so powerful to get more HP fans in more leftist spaces so they can incept those ideas.

That could prove to be harder than expected. I tried to reach out to r/harrypotter but they won’t let me put an advertisement post there :( Turns out that not so surprisingly, these fansites are kind of closed up themselves and until they open themselves up to AP, too, they will be very reluctant to any fediverse clones of them …

I’m now trying to reach out to other fansites. Let’s see.

So discussion of the text would be allowed in literature section. Just not if it were transphobic?

No, I meant that it wouldn’t be put to discussion if it were transphobic. It would need to be decided just like for any other book. I just don’t want to pre-empitively outrule the book because I don’t know it AND because the situation hasn’t arised yet.

But yeah, we can assume that it would happen. Its a fair question. Probably I or the mods would have to do some reading and then decide. But that holds for any controverse book.

Now, the question is, if in doubt, would I rather ban the book discussion or not, I would be on the side of allowing it, because banning books from discussion is a very radical step and then see if any transphobic comments pop up around it.

I mean frankly, you are gonna have the community regardless what I or any other trans person say, which is your right.

That’s true, it was never up for discussion; I mean, it was some work to put it up. But I’m interested in your opinions around it. Just because it will not be a safe place for queer folks (I have neither the resources nor the skills), it can still be a generally welcoming place to them (hopefully).

But what are these other franchises? I seriously don’t know any that strike the same nerve as H.P.

https://diagonlemmy.social

Its H.P. themed not Rowling themed. If they want to talk about Bad Blood in the literature section, sure. Like on all other literature instances, too. If its explicitly transphobic, its not.

I love to be able to reclaim works from their hateful authors, especially cultural ones. I’m a big fan of Lovecraft, and that dude was hateful. He makes JK Rowling look sweet and kindly. But it’s a lot easier to reclaim the narrative and make it a part of our culture when the author is literally dead.

Agreed. The athmosphere he creates is great but that dude was really problematic.

I understand that HP is important to a lot of people. It was a cultural phenomenon. But we aren’t leaving it behind just because JK Rowling said something offensive. We’re leaving it behind because the author is actively using our consumption to fund hate and campaigning to deny rights to trans people.

Sure, we find ourselves in a pickle, there. On the one hand, she is actively harming people and this will stay this way until it eventually becomes part of the public domain.

However, boycotting Harry Potter also comes as a price that, at least I would argue, also hurts minorities. Because the places create structure, which protects vulnarable people.

Why don’t we replace it with something else that does the same? Well, because in my opinion, Harry Potter culturally serves as a mythologization of the digital. People use it to understand the digital world. In past centuries, humans always made up stories and myths to understand complex concepts. The same thing is happening with the digital world and Harry Potter is one of the first to do this. It has a unique and central societal purpose.

That doesn’t mean that it can be improved, as can be seen in Hogwarts Legacy, which is kind of progressive, and also still slightly antisemetic, which is not so great, BUT I think overall the books still do much more good for vulnarable people than anything Rowling does against them, if she wants it or not.

So at the end of my line of thought, I always end up with two options: either create something new that does the same thing as H.P. while being more progressive but still hugely popular (which is hard to impossible), or to use H.P. and build on top of it to make it more modern (which is much easier).

What I would like to see more in these discussion is the question how EFFECTIVE Rowlings actions really are and if boycotting doesn’t hurt more than it helps.

I think the biggest challenge at the start will be keeping community alive. I know from experience that if you are the only person posting it is disheartening, and it leads to very fast burnout.

Yeah, I think so, too. I fear that Harry Potter memes could play a crutial part here, but I’m not yet confortable enough to enable images. Let’s see how it goes …

<3