7 ms·
$580M undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf
- Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 3mo ago> The fans’ resistance to having Dobby’s “grave” desecrated seemingly prevented the undersea cable from going through the area. It was instead rerouted in an area that was close to some Bronze Age remains and urns, which, ironically, are associated with human burial.
- Swizec 3mo ago> instead rerouted in an area that was close to some Bronze Age remains and urns To be fair, in the UK (and much of Europe) bronze age remains are everywhere. But there’s only 1 fictional Dobby grave. Like farmers will regularly dig up a bronze age thingamabob while plowing a field. For example [1], [2]. There’s a story like this every couple of years. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/23/farmer-bronze-age-grave-find-ploughed-field/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/23/farmer-bronze-ag... [2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/rhubodach-scotland-bronze-age-tomb https://allthatsinteresting.com/rhubodach-scotland-bronze-ag...
- yehoshuapw 3mo agowhile I do agree with this point, I want to point out that this isn't quite a fair comparison. every single entity has (normally) a single (real) burial site. Us grouping many unknowns in one group, and comparing to a single specific one is not quite fair... there is only one burial site of many other fictional characters including some other well known and beloved ones.
- dofm 3mo agoThere’s another! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1l6vm84d0o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1l6vm84d0o
- nkrisc 3mo agoSince it’s a fictional grave, you can build it anywhere you want, as many times as you want.
- zzrrt 3mo agoBut this is the one and only burial place pictured in the movie that people watched. You can't change that now.
- nkrisc 3mo agoIf they can use their imaginations to pretend it’s a real grave, they can use their imagination to pretend a different pretend grave in a different location is the real one.
- Rebelgecko 3mo agoTBF, human burial sites are a dime a dozen. There's relatively few locations associated with house elf remains.
- tgv 3mo agoNone, to be precise.
- rcxdude 3mo agoThey didn't say the location contained them, just that it was associated with them, which obviously it is for at least some fraction of the population.
- saalweachter 3mo agoWhile we're pedanting, I believe the location is where his death scene was filmed; he was buried somewhere else. Because beaches are terrible places for graves, one good storm, the beach shifts and you've got to bury them all over again.
- skeeter2020 3mo agomaybe go back and watch the movie; it shows Harry digging his grave slightly above the high tide line, same location.
- OgsyedIE 3mo agoThe cost of planning the alternative route hasn't been published anywhere yet AFAIK, although it's non-trivial to estimate.
- mhb 3mo agoThere is some skepticism about the veracity of this. Of course, be skeptical of the skepticism. https://bsky.app/profile/dsquareddigest.bsky.social/post/3msqenyjyqc2w https://bsky.app/profile/dsquareddigest.bsky.social/post/3ms...
- drcongo 3mo agoThe whole story is absolute nonsense.
- amiga386 3mo agoWhat we can say for certain is that the sole source of this claim is the project director for Greenlink, Simon Ludlam, and he made the claim as an anecdote on a podcast this week. The project's public consultations were in 2019. The anecdote starts at 16m55s: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-we-connect-the-worlds-electricity-grids-with/id1829678991?i=1000780000761 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-we-connect-the-wor... Non-British people might also like to know that the UK news media is in what's called the silly season, where they run any old nonsense as news because Parliament is in recess, the MPs are on their holidays, and there's a dearth of serious announcements to cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season
- rcxdude 3mo agoIt would not surprise me if it came up at some point in the long and tedious process of public consultations and planning permissions that such projects need to go through (basically anyone can write in to comment/object on such things for any reason), and it stuck in his mind enough to mention it, even if it didn't actually weigh into the decision about where the cable went.
- scottLobster 3mo agoIf anyone doubts that popular media has at least somewhat taken the place of religion, here you go
- seki285 3mo agoAnd made the cable reroute through a Bronze Age burial site too...
- skeeter2020 3mo agoit's a nice change that a big company suffers the result of an "organic hallucination" brought on by people associating the location with a fictional event; how do we make this happen to AI companies?
- penguin_booze 3mo agoReligion is, in fact, glorified fiction - so glorified that it's been declared a funda-mental right. Hilarious, I know!
- dist-epoch 3mo agoReminds me of this classic article from Michael Lewis: > Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called "hidden people"-or, to put it more plainly, elves-in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, "we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people." https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2009/4/wall-street-on-the-tundra https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2009/4/wall-street-on...
- voidUpdate 3mo agoIf it's a legal requirement to have the government check for hidden people before you do building, why do they need to hide the fact they did it? I'm not a Christian but I'm pretty sure I'd still need to deconsecrate a church before knocking it down
- Freak_NL 3mo ago> I'm not a Christian but I'm pretty sure I'd still need to deconsecrate a church before knocking it down What makes you think that? If you own it, it isn't a listed building, and zoning laws allow it, you can knock it down in most countries. I'm not sure that would be illegal anywhere. Deconsecration is part of canon law for some religions. Whether you as an individual care about those or not is a personal matter. I doubt that there are many cases where the previous owner forgot to deconsecrate the church when they sold it off.
- rcxdude 3mo agoUK law can be quite intertwined with the church in a lot of cases, so I wouldn't want to confidently say this wouldn't turn up somehow. And churches are also pretty likely to be listed, anyhow. (It could also turn up as part of the planning permission which you do need for demolishing a large structure in the UK)
- gempir 3mo ago> The National Trust, which owns the land, has previously warned pilgrims not to do so, as the area is ecologically sensitive, but it seems that people still do so. Ah okay, laying a few stones is ecologically sensitive, but if a billion dollar company wants to dig up the entire beach for a cable, that's not a problem.
- bpodgursky 3mo agoI have literally never heard anyone associated with the environmental movement say: "This area is ecologically insensitive. I'm not too worried what you do here." Until they define some map or scale of what "ecologically sensitive" means, I put zero weight on that statement. It's meaningless. They say it about everything because it is their job to do so.
- literalAardvark 3mo agoI'm guessing you also haven't asked. All places are very much not the same degrees of sensitive and important.
- cjbgkagh 3mo agoA common trick in mining is to send surveyors to an area they don’t want so the various interests just so happen to decide that the area being surveyed is the one with historical / ecological significance. After that has been established they send surveyors for the area they do want.
- kmoser 3mo agoWhy wouldn't those various interests just complain about the next area being surveyed? Why would they stop after the first?
- cjbgkagh 3mo agoThe ecological studies also cover the surrounding areas. They can’t say that absolutely everything is significant so to make the stronger case they pile the significance into the area they think is the likely site to be developed. Then the miners are ‘responding’ to the feedback by relocating to a less significant location that already has been ecologically studied and deemed insignificant.
- DonHopkins 3mo ago[flagged]
- wez_official 3mo agoDobby dies?! Spoilers!
- tonyhart7 3mo agoits undersea right, why would it matter ???? seeing the picture online seems that the grave would not be touched
- jp_sc 3mo agoits undersea until it arrives to the land it connects to
- tonyhart7 3mo agoI doubt there is global data center on that grave
- roryirvine 3mo agoHVDC cables aren't landed at datacentres. (And even if it were a fibre connection, those usually have dedicated Cable Landing Stations which are mostly concerned with separating the power & data cables and dealing with the power & cooling. Datacentres tend to be further inland)
- tim333 3mo agoHere's how such cables get underground https://youtu.be/0HUFXuF8QDM?t=98 https://youtu.be/0HUFXuF8QDM?t=98
- mellosouls 3mo agoThis is a rehash of the Guardian article (submitted here yesterday with no traction), which should the the link: Harry Potter fans force relocation of £430m undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-potter-fans-force-relocation-of-430m-undersea-cable-to-avoid-dobbys-grave https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-po...
- dyauspitr 3mo agoIt is predicted that Binface will win by a landfill.
- hollow-moe 3mo agoI'm so tired of needing technical workarounds because of human stupidity. Exact same thing as the "age declaration" bullshit we see all over. Dig that trench, bury the cable, put the sand back, end of the story. Here in France we use public money to pay "experts" to ensure building wind turbines won't disturb the "natural energy highways" or some other bullshit before delivering the permit, they may even propose alternative locations for the turbine to disturb less the energies, bunch of lunatics.
- bestouff 3mo agoWhat are you talking about ?
- hollow-moe 3mo agoIt's difficult to explain shortly and I think it's a very local problem to France, but basically: in some regions, local branches of gov mandates bullshit experts to make sure the new wind turbines won't disturb some imaginary natural energy network. They call it "geobiology".
- cucumber3732842 3mo agoIf only those sorts of problems were local to France. They can call it what they want, I call it "paying off an industry to support the government" because that's essentially what it is. It's a make work project for whoever benefits and that industry will thereafter go to bat for the BS because they don't want the gravy train to stop.
- Krssst 3mo agoFor the last point: https://www.franceinfo.fr/environnement/energie/energies-renouvelables/des-sourciers-imposes-sur-les-chantiers-eoliens_7261329.html https://www.franceinfo.fr/environnement/energie/energies-ren... (in French) The associated pseudoscience has a wikipedia page too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobiology_(pseudoscience) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobiology_(pseudoscience)
- youngtaff 3mo agoIf you every get the chance, go visit Freshwater West… it's a beautiful part of the world
- ButlerianJihad 3mo agohttps://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Dobby's_grave https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Dobby's_grave Many fans have visited the beach to lay painted rocks, several crosses, and many socks in Dobby’s memorial. However, as the memorabilia has had a negative effect on the environment, the beach asks that visitors just interact with the site by taking photos.[4] Note: there is currently no indication of this controversy in the article. Anyone who holds an account on Fandom could check through the history and diffs, for any revision since 2019 that would indicate someone tried to add information about the undersea cable or the alleged row.
- rglover 3mo agoWe are not serious people.
- enos_feedler 3mo agoSpoiler alert geesh
- mrlonglong 3mo agoThis is false. The cable was already under ground where it gets to the grave.
- mrlonglong 3mo agoDownvoted for speaking the truth, lovely. I'll find the article and post it shortly. Up yours.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- thundercleeze 3mo agoThis is a nice thing.
- mrlonglong 3mo agoTruth. There was never any attempt to route it over that grave. https://backofmind.substack.com/p/chortle-on-a-chortle https://backofmind.substack.com/p/chortle-on-a-chortle
- wrongdumbass 3mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3mo ago"Louisiana is an impoverished shithole populated by violent negroids." I think I'll take my critiques from people who don't have shit like this in their comment history. Thanks!
- nomel 3mo agoActual article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-potter-fans-force-relocation-of-430m-undersea-cable-to-avoid-dobbys-grave https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-po... Podcast where this is all from, "Can We Connect the World's Electricity Grids? with Simon Ludlam" (google it for apple/spotify/etc links)
- wrongdumbass 3mo ago[flagged]