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Well you'd have to say the same for the destruction of the Ring then Says who? Which is an understandable misconception/wishful thinking on the Numenorians' part considering factors like a generation's enduring cultural obsession. It depends on whether or not the "knew" them as myths or facts or somewhere in between. The Faithful would continue to treat them as real while the King's Men could have treated them as warped by pro-Elvish propaganda. Consider: Of all those who are somewhat familiar with Christianity today, there are people who don't believe in the accuracy of the biblical stories and the Christian tradition. There are a number who will deny the Jesus even existed and that the whole thing was invented by Constantine. Now subtract the Church acting as a preserving institution for belief. Is the Numenoreans' fading faith really that unbelievable? But of these people are descendants of the Noldor exiles and in the case of Gil-galad might have been born in Valinor. In any case they are still connected to the blessed Realm. They are High Elves. They speak the name of Elbereth. Elrond's motives are not quite clear here, yes. But to call it "utter silliness" is, well, silly. Elrond might have had his reasons for not advertising that connection. The potential for "special and deep insight" doesn't amount to much if you don't posses the moral character to make use of it. We see that with Denethor, Boromir and Faramir.

That's what the text says. If you want to ignore the text then fine. Contradicted by the text but okay.

Yes, I know. And I do think there is a good chance that something like that happens. But regarding Margaery and the Tyrell situation in general we have to keep in mind that the Faith might yet conduct its trial which could go wrong for Margaery and Arianne/Aegon could decide to unleash the Dornish army in the Prince's Pass against Highgarden before they move against KL to further distract/weaken the Reach before they move to depose Tommen. After all, with Willas and Garlan occupied with the Ironborn threat on the Shields the chance for the Dornishmen to actually capture Highgarden itself is not exactly low. If any such things were to happen then the potential for a peace between Aegon and the Tyrells might even be gone before Aegon's forces take KL. While the Sand Snakes do have a lot of potential to wreak havoc I think Tyene's chances to mess with Margaery during the trial might be better than Nym's chance to actually murder Tommen or Myrcella. Nym will come with a retinue to KL but the Red Keep is full of Lannister and Tyrell guardsmen. Tommen (and Myrcella, if/when she arrives at the castle) should be pretty safe from direct attacks, especially in the wake of the double murder. No chance for any royal to go anywhere unattended. Nym could repeat Gregor's stunt if/when the city falls to Aegon's forces, though.

In my experience I would say it’s more common for women to just not change their name after marriage than it is to hyphenate

Lol

Managed to give myself a nice deep gash under the thumb that required stitches (my birthday present to myself, it seems), so I will try to be brief, and then will sadly have to bow out for the rest of the day because I really shouldn't be typing. As baxus says, none of this changes the person's biological sex, but it's all true... and it's basically what I've already said if you had read my posts, that we can make greater or lesser changes to secondary sexual characteristics such that a transman may have a deep voice, facial hair, and a phallus, or a transwoman may well be very feminized, have a vagina, etc. (FWIW, the matter of stopping someone's puberty before it even begins with the intention of giving them a puberty associated with their chosen gender seems, from evidence from Europe and some gender clinicians in the UK and US, to be ill-advised as a clinical approach to dealing with gender dysphoria -- it leaves these young transchildren with very little in the way of genitalia to work with to fashion a neo-vagina or a new phallus, and may leave them with very little sexual function as well. Maybe once we are capable of cloning organs to use to donate tissue, this won't matter too much.) But we need to remember that according to statistics, only a small portion of trans people actually have gone so far as to have gender-affirming top/bottom surgery, and something like 50% don't even take any hormones. So why are we making policy with the least male transwomen and least female transmen in mind as if they are the typical trans person? How do we make policy that encompasses people who are for all intents and purposes 100% female or 100% male but are gendered as men and women respectively? I'm not opposed to self-ID, you see. I don't think it's my business what gender any adult says they are. But when their gender identity ends up leading to a conflict with others tied to their natal sex, then we need to start figuring it out rather than pretending that sex differences exist and may be relevant on a case-by-case basis. Just briefly, to your link: Gorelick and Henshaw are speaking of simple eukaryotes and, well, non-mammalian species. Scientists do in fact agree that humans have only two biological sexes. You are a male or female person, and then you have your various variations and maybe DSDs. The thing about gametes is the organs that produce them are also the organs that produce the majority of hormones that make our bodies masculine or feminine, triggering the development of the sexual organs like the penis and the uterus, the sexual dimorphism we have later in life, etc. They are the basic foundation of all things sexual. So trying to dismiss them and to argue that sex isn't binary seems a fool's errand. At the same time, biology should only matter so much and only in certain circumstances. Which basically means we're in agreement, and I think we can leave it at that. If a woman who had testes and a consequent penis still has those things, I can see why another woman might not want to share an overnight hospital bedroom with a person they don't know who is a different sex from them. If a person who once had testes and a penis no longer has them, I don't know, I think the argument for putting them in a room with another woman seems stronger, but then I think fewer women would object to that situation. I think the anatomical issue tends to be the biggest for people in regards to things like changing rooms and bathrooms. Western society, even the rather liberated Nordic society, largely separates the sexes when you undress or are undressed, and people grow up with a certain sense of what is modest and comfortable and what is not modest and no comfortable, and in particular at what ages it's appropriate to see the other sex nude or not and thereby learning about the different anatomy. I don't really know how to make policy around the fact that we should support all trans people, including those who do not medicalize in any way, while also being sure that all stakeholders are reasonably comfortable. It's invasive to ask how modified ones body is. Like, if a gym changed its locker rooms from "Women" and "Men" to "Penis-free zone" and "Vagina-free zone", would that be better? It still leaves some trans people having to go into a room they aren't comfortable with, but at least we're moving away from "women" and "men" and trying to get into the .... nevermind, I was going to use an unfortunate phrase. That's how I read it too. I will say that just giving males urinals would speed things up. They take up less space and reduce demand for the stalls/rooms. I'm all for them, personally. It seems the straightforward course to me (not everyone agrees, just on grounds of the argument that one gender tends to be cleaner than the other when it comes to the state of toilets, remembering to put the ring up, cleaning up any spills, etc... but I've seen mixed evidence in this regard).

Ohh. So does that host start another game, or does the chain restart?

WWE shows outside the US are just a completely different level of fan engagement. The fans at BackLash in Lyon were absolutely insane throughout the entire show.

I'm not bound up enough in this at the moment to address the innards of these arguments [for and against] at the depth they require, but the point which no-one, and especially the R+L=J crowd, need to appreciate is that GRRM uses a lot of parallel symbolism, here, there and indeed everywhere in his writing and as we've commented over the years, a simple R+L=J is simply not his style - whatever the real answer might be.

My view is based upon Jon Con wanting to extinguish Robert’s bloodline, and the Sand Snakes being mad for revenge.

What Israel is doing to the Palestinians generally is wrong. What Hamas did to Israel civilians was just as wrong. I wish we could lock the Likud Leadership and the Hamas leadership in a Thunderdome until there was no one to release.

Today the Washington Post embarks on a series," Russia Remastered", examing Putin's new Russia, its objectives, goals, procedures, culture and designs, including the Orthodox Church, which are all geared to take out the 'West' and particulalry the USA. It's damned brutal. Yes, we have always employed that word with Russia since at least the 18th century, but this round it has All the Technology to fulfill its aims more effectively and rapidly. This part identifies the writers, describes what the WaPo did and summarizes what learned in 6 months of work: We reported for months on changes sweeping Russia. Here’s what we found. Over six months, The Post examined the changes sweeping Russia as Putin has used his war in Ukraine to cement his grip on power. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/06/we-reported-months-changes-sweeping-russia-heres-what-we-found/ This is the first installment: Under Putin, a militarized new Russia rises to challenge U.S. and the West For women particularly this is brutality in the extreme. "Long obsessed with Russia’s population decline, Putin is urging Russian women to have eight or more babies, while also seizing chunks of Ukraine’s population by force. ... " https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2024/putin-values-russian-society-conservatism/? It also identifies Putin's alliances, which include USians inside the USA, who aren't even Russian immigrants. What we are too look forward to if they get their dreams fulfilled.

Ormond - interesting question. What you describe is becoming more common in folks my age or below, in the middle classes particularly, such that if I met a University lecturer with a double-barreled name (male or female) I probably wouldn't assume it was a class thing. But if I met an MP, I would. To some extent (and you'd know this, of course) it depends what the names actually are. There are some names that are stereotypically upper class - If I meeting a Granville-Beaumont or a Bowes-Lyon I'm going to think of that differently than a Wilson-Jones.

As I said, I'd take 40M from my current position and be over the Moon about it, but if I was already making 40M and could increase that to 50M, I'd probably do it. And I think it's the same with most of the people in the world. The beauty of it is that you wouldn't have to engage with any cunts. You pay someone a fraction of those 10M to handle your accounts and let them engage with cunts. I'm with you. This board is the closest I'm getting to social media. Used Twitter and Instagram back in the day, but quit. It was surprisingly easy.

There’s at least one Tory with a quadruple-barrelled name, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax

I wrote "some fans". I never said 'you'.

How people define biological sex - no matter how they do - is consequently a use of language.

That's fair, but when did I say those fans you speak of have the right to feel and behave that way? And no, players are not paid only to play football. No matter what you or I would prefer, those days are long gone.

They may be one pf the few orgs that understand or have records of how the valyrian empire crumbled etc so they may undertand the stark bloodlines gifts etc.

Had to Google Tim Duncan. Netball.

If someone said 40 million and you don't have to engage with any cunts, I'd go for that option every time. But then again I only have a very minimal SM footprint anyway (Facebook only and rarely used) so it would be no skin off my nose.

To you and me those amounts seem like infinity, but I'm quite confident that we would both go for 50M$ per year instead of 40M$ if given a chance. Also, Tim Duncan retired in 2016 which is almost a decade ago. Things have changed since then.

This is just a tangent, but I can't resist commenting on how different the stereotype of "double surnames" would be for politicians in the UK vs the USA. I just checked the present US House of Representatives. There are 10 who go by "double surnames" -- some hyphenated, some not -- and they are ALL women, with there being 9 Democrats and only 1 Republican. I think the assumption would be that these are all women affected by feminism who retain their "maiden name" along with adopting their husband's surname, which is why they use the double surname. Are there any women politicians in the UK who use a double surname for feminist reasons, or does the "upper crust Conservative" stereotype prevent this?

That's fair, but some fans seem to feel entitled that footballers have a duty to have social media accounts so they can be abused. Despite all the 'age we're living in' bollocks, my view is players are paid to play football, not to be punchbags for nobs. I'm with Mexal, - I fully understand why a footballer or any celebrity for that matter doesn't fancy putting themselves in the firing line.

Technically, at least according to the NYT's account of a briefing from an Israeli military spokesman, Hamas attacked IDF soldiers near the crossing, but not the Kerem Shalom crossing itself. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/05/world/middleeast/hamas-rocket-kerem-shalom-israel.html Whether that's a good idea when it's predictable that Israel would close the crossing in response, probably not. On the other hand, since Hamas and Israel are at war, all Hamas fighters/terrorists and all IDF soldiers are legitimate targets. I don't think any civilians were injured in the attack.