Best comment on Ch. 81, by Hokuten Mage: “When Harry Potter stares into the abyss, the abyss runs away and hides.”
New fan art: Karen Dutton brings us that poor Dementor, HK66 (contact me with your cameo name!) brings us Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle, and Chloe silhouettes the Three. Darek says this was inspired by Quirrell’s many identities – I’m not quite counting it as fan art, but I’m linking it. And Dinosaurusgede is baaaaaack!
Some people have been asking why I’m posting these at 1 per week. One answer is that each posting involves a lot of last-minute editing and finalizing, so they are still tiring – the last arc’s final pace of 1 per 3 days was exhausting – and I’m trying to hold it down to one per week this time. Ch. 83 will be a short chapter posted Wednesday (Apr 4) at 1pm, and then, since that one doesn’t really count, Ch. 84 will be posted next Tuesday (Apr 10) at 7pm. (And Ch. 85 a week after, according to current plans; that’s the last one queued.) Next time I may consider trying to finalize the arc further before beginning it, and then posting at a faster pace (at the price of additional delay before starting).
The Center for Modern Rationality is now accepting applications for the next set of Rationality Minicamps, the successors to the highly successful Rationality Minicamp of 2011. Dates are May 11-13, June 22-24, and July 21-28. These Minicamps will be planned on the assumption that attendees have read at least some of the Less Wrong Sequences, not necessarily all. We plan to send out the first batch of acceptances soon, and applying should only take about 10-15 minutes, so please fill out the application now, especially if you prefer to attend in May.
The Center for Modern Rationality is offering $50 prizes for any suggested rationality training exercises that look good enough to test, and $500 prizes for any suggested exercises that we actually adopt into a unit. Specific descriptions of mental skills, accompanied by the request for exercises to teach them, have been posted for the units Be Specific and Check Consequentialism. (Think of this as trying to invent the actual content of the bizarre exercises that Harry has been inflicting on the Chaos Legion since Ch. 29… oh, wait, I haven’t mentioned those in the text yet, have I?)