this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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Power cable linking UK and Ireland now passes near Bronze Age human burial remains instead of fictional grave on Welsh beach

Update: further information by @BigDiction@lemmy.world in the comments below

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[–] turdas@suppo.fi 169 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Fans of the wizard series come to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” despite being asked not to by the land owner, the National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site.

But apparently not so ecologically sensitive that an undersea cable couldn't run through it.

[–] ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml 140 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You only have to lay a cable down once and it'll work for however many decades. People trudging through on a regular basis to leave rocks would be an ongoing concern.

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This assumes a lot of things about the installation and longevity of the cable and its jacket, and forgets that some of these things have been so magnetically interfering to their surroundings that sharks have bitten them.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

To be fair, sharks bite a lot of things.

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[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My ignorance is as valid as the knowledge of experts.

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[–] remon@ani.social 98 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

In the end, he said, “we went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby’s grave”.

The Bronze Age remains include urns associated with human burial.

Priorities are in order!

[–] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 90 points 1 week ago (8 children)

This is fucking pathetic

At least no actual harm was done to a site of archaeological significance to placate a bunch of fucking nerds

[–] PRIMEcavitationfetishist@quokk.au 57 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Tasteless transphobic nerds.

[–] chocrates@piefed.world 30 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This is so frustrating. My sister loves HP and refuses to discuss Rowling. While still buying merch that directly supports her.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 week ago

If there was ever a reason to buy unlicensed knock-offs...

[–] moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I love Harry Potter. I pirated every book and seed every movie.

You can still enjoy something without supporting her.

Talk to your sister about the economics of pirating. You can make your own merch.

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[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

a bunch of fucking nerds

Lol Harry Potter readers being nerdy kids may have been true in the late 90s or early 00s. Most fans of the movies are normies.

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

It wasn’t even true then. Harry Potter was the flagship of the Scholastic book fair at the time along with books like Animorphs.

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Have you read Animorphs? Those books were bought entirely by people judging them based on their cover. They have kids on them turning into a different animal on each. That just looked cool. If I had had the money for it, I too would have collected them, entirelu based on the animals on the cover (I'll take the dog, the hawk, and the dolphin, thanks). 99% of kids who bought them would have done so for the exact same reason.

The actual story is some of the least kid-friendly I've ever heard. It's filled with body horror, cosmic horror, guerilla warfare and espionage with child soldiers, children losing their bodies, children losing their minds through torture, kids having existential crises after witnessing and participating horrific acts of war, countless murders of loved ones, planet scale genocide, etc. It's not for normies. I don't know anyone personally that has actually read the whole series, including myself. I have watched a guy on YouTube go over the plot in summary and... holy fuck. Those books are darker than anything I've read as an adult.

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[–] GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago

Stop the nerd on nerd hate - if you're posting on Lemmy the chance that you are also a nerd is pretty damn high.

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[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 73 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Jesus Christ, they're not even good children's books

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (26 children)

It's, of course, a matter of taste whether or not you find them good. But let's not pretend that were not talking about one of he most popular, best-selling children's book series of all time that spawned a 30+ billion dollar franchise of movies, merch, games, and a theme park. Plenty of people found them plenty good enough to generate that big of a financial success.

[–] Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

hey now, lets not try to get people to realize that other people's opinions matter.

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[–] HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com 19 points 1 week ago

Plus the Author is a bigot.

[–] FatVegan@leminal.space 15 points 1 week ago

They are quite shit. They are easy reads, and it gets children to read, that's pretty good. But damn, shit makes no sense, and harry potter adults are pretty damn weird.

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[–] PRIMEcavitationfetishist@quokk.au 62 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Okay yeah Harry Potter fans need to fucking stop. Just fucking stop. Read a book that isn't fucking shit.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Read literally any fucking book

[–] moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Malania Trump's memoir it is.

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[–] RainbowBlite@piefed.ca 43 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This is actually a win. The original site was going through an ecological sensitive area. People fought to protect the "grave" of a fictional character but accidentally protected a delicate ecology. That is more important than protecting the dead, real or not.

Fans of the wizard series come to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” despite being asked not to by the land owner, the National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Gotta love that a fictional character created by a transphobe carries more weight and concern than the further destruction of our biosphere.

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[–] Doom@lemmy.world 43 points 1 week ago (16 children)

I don't give a fuck about HP Whatshercunt, but I do love this story. Because it shows that collectively we have more power then these companies. If we could get our shit together and stop fighting each other we could bully them into litterally anything we want because THERE ARE MORE OF US. It's so dumb that we have let a tiny group of people convince us, the larger group that massively outnumbers them, they have all the power in the relationship.

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 week ago

Power cable linking UK and Ireland now passes near Bronze Age human burial remains instead of fictional grave on Welsh beach

Just another story about people making the real world a little worse because they're disconnected from reality.

Do you also applaud antivaxxers get together and bully people? Same thing isn't it? People disconnected from reality bullying people.

Sorry, but people disconnected from reality aren't capable of making any improvement in the world.

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[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 1 week ago (35 children)

What I don't get is, how did Dobby get so much love in the Harry Potter fandom while Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars got so much hate? They were both insufferably annoying characters.

I get that Dobby has fans; what I don't get is why the same wasn't extended to Jar-Jar.

Jar-Jar didn't die, I guess, but I feel like even if he did, fans would glaze him over decades later. They'd say "good riddance" and that would be that.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 39 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Dobby was a pitiful creature enslaved by a bad guy who dies saving the main characters

Jar Jar was a stupid alien added to the prequel for comedic relief

[–] grue@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Jar Jar was a stupid alien added to the prequel for comedic relief

Jar Jar was the big bad until they dialed up the obfuscating stupidity too high and the backlash made George Lucas chicken out.

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Darth Jar Jar has always been canon and nothing will convince me otherwise

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I don't really buy Darth Jar Jar, but I can see him being an exiled Jedi. None of his "accidents" worked against the goals of the heroes and he was always where he needed to be. He felt like the drunken fool who would be revealed to a kungfu master by the end. Gin's dismissive lines to him in episode 1 was setting up for something. The whole prequel trilogy was about the corruption of the Jedi and Jar Jar might have been exile or left because of his opposition to it.

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[–] remon@ani.social 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I think one major difference is that Dobby is a character that was introduced quite early in the main run of the books/movies, where as Jar Jar was kind of just shoe-horned into an already bad prequel series.

But I don't want to imagine a world were Jar Jar was part of the OT.

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

As someone who read 4 HP books back in 2001-2 and only saw the first 2 movies, I was deeply annoyed by that goblin. Maybe I didn't see "the good part" of the character?

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[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 41 points 1 week ago (5 children)

y'all i was a mega harry potter fan growing up and even i think this was pathetic; READ ANOTHER BOOK

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm starting to think there's a correlation between cults and the inability to read more than one book...

Although in saying that, most Christians I've met haven't actually read their book so that theory falls through pretty quickly. Nevermind!

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[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"How did Donald Trump win in the US? How could so many people be so stupid and out of touch with reality?"

Harry Potter fans force relocation of £430m undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’

[–] Diddlydee@feddit.uk 19 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I was dragged along to see this by my kids. Having never seen the movies or read the book, I was expecting something substantially more than the pile of rocks with some old socks.

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[–] StillAlive@piefed.world 11 points 1 week ago

Yikes. Fuck these dumbasses.

[–] bowsertattoo@piefed.social 10 points 1 week ago

wow this sucks

[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 week ago (4 children)

It kind of cute. Even in modern times we create new sacred spaces, although a bit different than we were used to.

I can imagine some future archeologists wondering who this "Dobby" was that his grave was an importat site of pilgrimage. Maybe concluding it wasn't actually a person but a local minor deity.

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[–] strumpet@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] Technoworcester@feddit.uk 16 points 1 week ago (3 children)
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