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Regardless of competence, anyone seeking to enter politics at eighteen with ambitions of high office should be viewed with the utmost suspicion.

By the time Dany gets to Westeros, the food stockpiles in the Vale will either be part of the deal to join F-Aegon or local. the horses can always grace, they also eat horses but as usual, the smallfolk will bare the brunt of it and have what little they have to eat, taken from them and worse with the Dothraki coming to town, especially the women.

RECORD NUMBER OF WRITERS JAILED WORLDWIDE IN 2023 For the first time, Israel and Russia rank among the top ten jailers of writers FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 1, 2024 https://pen.org/press-release/record-number-of-writers-jailed-worldwide-in-2023/ The top ten jailers of writers in 2023 are China (including autonomous regions) with 107, Iran 49, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam each with 19, Israel (including the Occupied Palestinian Territory) with 17, Belarus and Russia each with 16, Türkiye 14, Myanmar 12, and Eritrea seven.

You might have liked Clytemnestra (2023) by Costanza Casati much more.

She's going to do it the exact same way every other army has had to - plunder the countryside, inducing mass famine in the smallfolk. If Faegon is able to very quickly take control of King's Landing, as seems likely, he's going to be massively popular in that he stops the wars temporarily, particularly if the North turns their full attention to the Others. We know from Dany's vision that the Mummer's Dragon is going to be very popular with the people. Dany's going to face mass hatred by the smallfolk of Westeros because she's bringing a huge foreign army and will re-ignite the wars, further depleting the smallfolk's stores immediately prior to a terrible winter. I think that might be the final straw that causes her to do something drastic.....probably not exactly the same as in the show, but her repeated attempts at ruling have either resulted in disaster (astapor) or revolt (mereen.) Having the smallfolk of Westeros hate her is going to severely disturb her mental calm.....particularly if it occurs after she helps save the world from the Others and Euron and loses a dragon to each. I do think she's going to go mad with grief.....it's just going to be set-up a lot better than the show. Perhaps she won't even be responsible for the destruction personally...if she enters a deep despair over the people's reaction to her....her link with Drogon might cause him to go on a rampage against what he percieves as the source of her pain - the people. She may lose control of him.

Yes. This is known. We are not surprised. Like no-fat foods, are loaded with sugar.

Well, if you are honest, hardly anyone in Congress and many other US "respected institutions" do either.

So do I. It's chilly and rainy here, and all focus is on campuses so hopefully Cinco de Mayo will be a happy day and night.

Not if you go by Judge Tawny. And other, um readings, of law and the Constitution. This story's been quite covered. Venues such as the WaPo last week go more deeply into the hows, whos, whys, etc. and the legal details. Remember, this is TEXAS. Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s out-of-state abortion The previously unreported petition reflects a potential new antiabortion strategy to block women from ending their pregnancies in states where abortion is legal. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/05/03/texas-abortion-investigations/ However! This is how to get around confidential medical records! In fact, it's already happened, but that's another story. .... If one of these cases did surface, Volkmer said, it would probably be reported by an employee of a doctor’s office who was aware of the abortion — or by the “purported father. ... Paid informants aren't far behind, in fact are here in these states -- bounties on informing. As states ban abortion, the Texas bounty law offers a way to survive legal challenges https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1107741175/texas-abortion-bounty-law This, in 2022 already.

Do you think that this has deterred him to any extent whatsoever? As far as I can tell, it has not had any effect at all. Soft power is useful, but only when people actually value legitimate trade, travel and other interactions. Otherwise, it does not do much beyond creating a nuisance. For example: Neither Russia nor North Korea nor Hamas nor the Houthis nor any of the other powers and groups that flagrantly violate international law care at all about our norms and conventions and imposing further limits on ourselves and our allies is not going to change this.

The "troll" theories are the only ones that I really hate - they're why I took about a year long break from this place. Particularly when the people responsible would pop into every other thread to try and derail actual conversation. Everything else....eh, it's fine. Some of them I think are a bit silly, like any theory about Jon's parentage apart from R+L = J. The evidence is just overwhelming in that case, both via actual textual clues and thematic ones. I don't hate the competing theories...I just don't think they make any sense. Bloodraven not being the Three Eyed Crow is another eye-roller for me, though I don't hate it. I just think it's clear that Bloodraven wasn't aware of how Bran saw him in visions...but then he thinks about it and is like "I suppose that makes sense." Very similar to how Jojen saw Bran as a chained wolf with wings. The aspects of a person appear as physical details in the vision-world. Bran is a Stark (wolf) who is crippled (chained) with wings (green-seer). Bryndan Rivers' nick name is Bloodraven and he's a man of the Night's Watch (crow) who's capable of visions (3rd eye open.)

Should be but it won't, she's a Texan. They've brought in more than a few laws to track and penalize out of state seekers.

Yeah, I think that is indeed the overall goal of the anti-abortion movement. It's pretty rich given if you listen to any Republican moderate on abortion rights (Yes, they exist) is they point to abortion rights being protected in blue states as the reason no needs to worry too much about the issue and indeed it's completely safe to keep voting GOP. I'm not surprised by this, but I am shocked that this is moving so quickly as for as moving towards the slave catchers regime. As for this individual creep, I think the goal is to eventually sue the woman, doctors, or anyone that helped her. Bunch of harassments suits. I would not be surprised to see the Texas courts give full approval. These are the same courts that keep ruling to abolish the ACA immediately and other garbage. And of course he's already harassed the woman by taking these actions and causing news stories.

My brother is currently helping run a food truck all day with his Cuban/Mexican-American best friend. …I hope they both get home safe.

Rob is a good first go-to, but George fills his books with these common names to make the world feel real, so it might not be the only reference. I'd use the nicknames or surnames usually to dig into what's going. on. If the dream is meant to make us ponder the Tower of Joy, then Jon is probably as good a connection as any. He's one of the more subtle 'fool' symbols in the book ('you know nothing, Jon Snow') and the red wound in the belly of Rob the Simpleton could be referencing Lynna's bloody pregnancy as much as Robert's fatal boar wound. Jon was the babe that needed to be 'buried in the sand' after the Tower of Joy, metaphorically speaking. His Targ nature was essentially 'buried' by Ned. In this sense we can just see Rob as being synonymous with 'very common name', just like 'Jon'. As for the horse, yes it's one meaning. George has spoken about his fondness for secondary and tertiary meaning too, though, so we should usually be on the lookout for these I think.

Happy Cinco de Mayo -- another opportunity to eat tacos, drink margaritas (while we still have enough agave left to do so) watch telenovellas, admire low riders, listen to Bad Bunny, wear Mexican silver, visit an exhibit of Frido Kahlo, and hablo español!

So it seems that according to this report from the US Congress, Big Oil has known about climate since at least the 1960s. Interestingly enough, the report attacks natural gas and carbon capture technology as fake solutions promoted by the fossil fuel industry. The first being obvious by now, but the second is refreshing. More stuff:

Like what?

Only on their home soil though, not in their territories. Essentially, they outlawed enslaving their own people, but not others. They still relied heavily on forced labor. AFAIAA, France was the first country (that still exists) to ban it....in the early 1300s....except the ban only applied on French home soil - French territories continued slavery until the 1800s, shipping slave-produced goods and crops back to France. So, that's not outlawing...that's outsourcing. Western european nations only outlawed slavery piece-meal after that, with bans against the enslavement of specific groups, while it was still permitted against others. Some of them outlawed it on their home soil but not on their colonies, moving forced labor to where the core citizenry wouldn't have to see it, following France's lead. Later, most of Europe banned the slave trade in the late 1700s to early 1800s, but not slavery itself - so slavery was still legal, you just couldn't buy slaves at market anymore. They didn't abolish it and it still existed for quite a while longer in their territories. The United States did the same thing - the slave trade was banned in the US in 1808 but obviously US slavery continued through the end of the US civil war. The Western world only started the overall systematic dismantling of slavery in the mid 1800s. So....slavery showed a slow decline and eventual ban by the Western world, from the 1700s through the mid-late 1800s.....the exact same timeline as the slow rise of the industrial revolution. Honestly, you can make a pretty compelling argument that the Western world is still heavily dependent on slavery and we never actually did anything but outsource it. It is still going strong in parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa....they make our phones and mine the lithium and other metals for our "green" batteries under horrific conditions, all driven by demand from the industrialized world. I suppose that's my happy thought for the day

If so, we've yet to see any of it, from Arya's training.

Aren't medical records private and protected, and since when do Texas laws apply to Colorado? This should be tossed out asap.

O ya! So it gets investigated -- i.e. peering deeply into a woman's personal life. So what is going to do? Continue on with prosecuting her to be tried for murder, she and everyone she may or may not know? Would he have paid child support. We don't think so. This is a vengeance case, paid for because he ain't got no money honey, by somebodies else, who wouldn't pay for the child either. They are paying to have her put on trial, humiliated and imprisoned along with everyone else they can think of. One wonders ... if they did that and she was in another state where abortion is perfectly legal, is it now time to file for extradition? Shades of the Fugitive Slave Act, also enabled by a SCOTUS judge.

I don't really see the need to get personal, tbqh, particularly when the accusation of being 'patronising' comes in response to me defending my understanding of the subject at hand against a repeated out of hand dismissal. That experience is absolutely relevant when we're discussing political activity among people of that exact age group. (Many of whom, by the way, are involved in local council politics at the same time. My officers regularly meet with local councillors, MSPs, MPs, etc. and we give evidence to local council committees and Scottish government consultations - I've written a lot of these with my officers.) I'm genuinely glad to hear you've taken the initiative you describe. I hope those young folk have a champion who will stand up for them, and I hope it's you: but you'll understand, that's hard to fit with the things you've said about young people in this thread. Part of that might be performative? But even in the post above, I think you're limiting what young people bring to the table. 'Life experience' doesn't necessarily give people any special ability to implement policy.

Ithaca was ok. It's well written like all of North's books but it felt a bit predictable being constrained to stick to the outline of the story we know from the Odyssey and the premise of 'actually all the men from the Illiad/Odyssey were fairly awful' doesn't feel like an especially radical reimagining of the original. I didn't dislike it and I'll read the sequel but it didn't really hold my attention that well either. Next I'm going to read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Alien Clay.