Nova Daily - 28 March 2025

Hi!

As might have been clear from several of my writings, I'm quite the Harry Potter fan. I love how careful each of the characters has been thought through, I love the dialogues, and it can teach you a lot about how the world works, and how people work. Sometimes the plot takes precedence over normal human behaviour (Why didn't Sirius Black just start in the Shrieking Shack, "I'm not going to hurt you, Ron, I'm here for your rat, because that's not a rat, but an Animagus" instead of blurting out a whole string of ambiguous lines that can be interpreted wrongly?) but overall the characters are very realistic human beings.

As for me...I'll be a knight.

- Stephen Fry Ron Weasley

Depending on where you are on the globe, you may know the first Harry Potter book as either the Philosopher's Stone or the Sorcerer's Stone. This difference, which was a conscious choice by the American editors in consultation with JK Rowling, has caused for some extra work. Some scenes in the Harry Potter movies had to be shot twice because of the two separate names. The audiobooks have been narrated by two different voice-actors, and so have the subsequent six books (and yes, I've listened to each of them). The US editions have been narrated by Jim Dale, and the UK versions have been done by Stephen Fry, whom we have to call Sir Stephen Fry since a few days.

Stephen Fry has many more talents than just his narration skills, but he is a proponent of the Constitutional Monarchy. "Even though it's preposterous," he says, "it keeps the politicians in place." It's his general belief that the world could do more with things that are both silly and lovely, such as a Constitutional Monarchy. And I think that that thought is both silly and lovely.

The game

Today's game was 15 moves short. It ended with a trick that's both silly and lovely. Pays to be aware of these tricks; I spent a much longer time waiting for the game to start than finishing my opponent off. Which did hurt me a little bit because my opponent started with the beautiful move 1.c4.

My thoughts:

The rest will follow, but I got some place to be tomorrow.