meh.

The police ruled it a suicide. The family and local community demanded an investigation. The police refused to change their ruling.

Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click. "Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said. Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from. "If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."

And here's one from Time magazine (May 20, 2026):

While Google already has “AI Mode,” the company will now power the whole search bar through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model.  Instead of the classic list of blue links, Google Search will now also generate a custom page with an AI-generated summary of what you’re searching about, which will then trigger a conversation with AI Mode on the main page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions—similar to the kind of layout you would see when opening ChatGPT.

And a little more from Time's article on how this may affect the websites that we are trying to search for:

edit THANKS @smellslikebot

Cult of the Lamb (2022)

instead, pirate, bootleg, and diy. watch the movies via thrifted DVDs. if you must get merch, thrift that too! you can always find Harry Potter stuff at 2nd hand stores.

moral of the story, keep your morals and ideals in mind when spending you money.

Im assuming her work is being used in other countries as well, but its difficult for me to confirm that because I don’t have time today.

The idea of thrifting or pirating to avoid supporting something directly works when the thing in question is smaller than harry potter lol.

Thrift stores stock shit they know will sell: buying harry potter merch sends the message that the thrift store should prioritize harry potter merch, because it WILL sell. This maintains the franchises relevancy.

Companies, especially for large franchises, monitor pirating sites: both to do take downs, and also to see whats doing well.

Not to mention, pirating the shit keeps the seo active, which companies also monitor: how frequently is harry potter being looked up? In what context?

So although those methods may work with smaller media (stand alone movies, for example), its not effective enough when up against something as large and all encompassing as hp.

The other thing I wanted to say that I think needs to be considered:

Part of the attachment, refusal to recognize harm is because of racism. White women are characterized by being: soft, dainty, delicate, safe, harmless, nurturing, powerless victims exclusively.

This has been a huge obstacle for feminists of color basically since racism existed: white people (and poc who havent worked to unlearn it) dont believe white women are capable of causing harm.

Neil Gaiman’s rape case was contrasted with JKR’s harm, but part of the difference in how these were received is in how they affirm/contradict bigotry.

Neil Gaiman is a Jewish man that was confirmed to be not only a rapist, but a ~sexually deviant~ one at that, which directly affirms, and leans in to very old antisemitic tropes about sexually depraved Jewish men raping white christian women and children.

So, of course, his shit was dropped. It affirms preexisting beliefs.

Jkr’s on the other hand goes against preexisting beliefs-to acknowledge the harm her shit is doing is to acknowledge that white women are not exclusively limited to the box of victim, but can also cause harm and damage.

To acknowledge the harm her activism is causing, is to acknowledge that white woman can gain power and can wield that power against other marginalized people.

To make matters worse, she is a feminist. She does have some progressive views in regards to things like abortions.

So to reconcile the harm she’s actively, directly contributing means recognizing white progressive women’s ability to do harm. They are not biologically, intrinsically: soft, ethereal, harmless, perpetual victims.

And a lot of people, including progressives and feminists, dont want to do that.

I fully believe that if she were a woman of color people would be far more willing to let it go, because at that point, it would be reinforcing preexisting beliefs instead of contradicting them.

Its good Gaimans shit has been dropped.

so, more often than you may think, people actually don't know, and it does not help at all for people to shun them without ever explaining why

if someone you're talking to doesn't have a Discourse-Aware Queer Relative Or Friend in their life who they regularly hear about these things from, they may have never once heard that their gryffindor scarf is speaking louder than their pflag pin or whatever.

it is worth remembering, in the real world, how oblivious people can be to things you think no one can possibly still be unaware of! sometimes people are not actually bad people with bad intentions, they are just people who operate in different spheres than you who no one has bothered to pull into the loop yet. by assuming that people know everything and are doing it in spite of knowing, you're missing out on people who genuinely don't and will eventually be horrified to find out - or who have only been told in a backhanded manner by people who also made that assumption, and dealt with them in a callous way that caused them to be defensive instead of receptive (ie: lady in my reading program last year who, when i said why i don't care for HP, sat back for a moment and then went. "oh, maybe that's what my ni-, uh. my nephew. maybe that's why he was mad." bc i guess her like, fifteen year old trans nephew just kind of yelled at her once, and she didn't realise he was talking about a real problem bc fifteen year olds do kind of yell about stuff sometimes i guess. i dunno how that resolved, but she did thank me for telling her, later.)

i don't really have a good solution for how to tackle the problem, it's pretty case-by-case as to how you can talk to people about issues they're simply unaware of. but, like. next time you see someone who you are pretty sure isn't a shitty person being really really into harry potter, maybe you could consider the option of being the bearer of bad news for them, rather than putting them into the "oh well, guess you're just an irredeemable shitbag" box

and no, not everyone has dropped gaiman. a lot of people also still haven't heard anything about that one either. literally the librarian at the school i read at... heard about that one from me.

never attribute to malice what simple ignorance can explain.