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Thanks that makes sense.

Robert was a bad king. He plunged the Realm in debt, ignored rampant corruption, favoured the Lannisters, the worst of the major Houses, failed to give justice for Elia and her children, or for Mycah, and was oblivious to the impending signs of civil war. The less said about his personal behaviour, the better. But, that does not make Aerys a good king, a man who was a capricious sadist, who planned to murder thousands of his subjects, people who should be able to count upon him for protection.

No but maybe he should he judged by the era of his time ? I mean Lincoln would be considered a racist in today’s day and age.

Which… as much as I love Tolkien and the world he created… makes the ban seem arbitrary and poorly conceived. I just re-read The Silmarillion. For a Roman Catholic Tolkien writes his world with an almost Calvinist fatalism. Characters are controlled by their past choices. They cannot trun aside they will always stay on the terrible path regardless of the fact that they see horrible things from forty miles away… they just keep on heading for disaster.

Well in this case, I suppose it just comes down to a plot device: the Ban fits the cosmological narrative of the continued separation of the spiritual and temporal worlds, and also offers the motivation for the destruction of Numenor so Tolkien could include his version of the Atlantis myth.

You can have a happy medium. The complete lack of emotion when the Yamato was destroyed on TNG isn’t realistic… that kind of loss affects people and people attempt to be professional and carry on but the loss and grief is there and a professional facade isn’t… that good or believable. Regardless the end of season 4 of Discovery had stakes that were about as high as any portrayed in Trek… Burnham breaking down on the bridge was entirely believable to be… hell I felt the tension and releif in the climax episode of Season 4. Professional, sure, emotionless zombies… no… that isn’t what drama is about. @TrackerNeil back me up here… oh nitpicker of note…

I really hope the Senate shoots this bill down. It's just gonna make things worse for Jews and give the anti-semites more fuel for their conspiracy theories.

Keep hearing robert ned and john didnt rule well which is actualy b.s the more you reflect on it! Robert didnt like ruling but he left a decent team.in charge of affairs , decades of peace interrupted by one quickly quashed rebellion! If it wasnt for varys and LF fucking around itd be a dynasty that lasted with 3 illegitimate kids being married off In his stead stannis has purged dragonstone and most of the surrounding islands of filthy targ loyalists to set up a stable 2nd baratheon house on the islands and reestablished a strong royal fleet. His brother has kept the normaly troublesome stormlords in check in his stead and even built bridges with the powerful tyrells while stannis marriage to the florents holds a stick to renlys olive branch The kingdoms have had decades of peaceful food gathering to try and survive what is set to be one of the the longest winters yet! Now he has put the crown in debt but its a debt easily swallowed by his in laws or a reduction in the amount of tourneys and/or tax increases!

Sure, just totally ignore Littlefinger's fraud and embezzlement. And a large surplus of bodies, torture devices and wildfire. Targaryens are worse.

So less evil is somehow good, lol

The TNG and DS9 crew were exposed to death almost every week and almost never cried. I really miss professional adults acting like professional adults.

Please stop using facts, they’re the natural enemy of all trolls, lol We all know that Ned and Robert are the worst humans in the history of the series, lol

And the fact that that you got to play ironman mode. That's only for the experts.

I don’t think “Dune” would have been made in 1984 if it hadn’t already been “popular”.

That sounds hypocritical considering the major American professional sports leagues are all closed shops with no promotion, relegation or easy entry by new franchises — designed to be oligopolies that protect profits for incumbent owners. But “up to 12” being specified in the F1 Concorde gives the complainants some plausible basis, even if this is primarily a lobbying effort.

Your article by Jerry Coyne is already off to a great start: If you are using the term "woke" unironically to describe this, it kind of undermines any claims of trying to speak from scientific objectivity on the matter of biological sex.

Another whistleblower dead. https://time.com/6973635/boeing-spirit-aerosystems-whistleblower-josh-dean-dead/

I have to admit, halfway through the show I was going to just stop. It was at times really not a fun watch. It's quite upsetting at points. If you get through that, I think by the end it makes it all worth it, and Gadd actually creates a pretty thoughtful piece that is much better than what looked like a standard scary stalker tale.

My wife is desperate to watch it, as someone who once had to call the police on a housemate (that's embarrassing) after i woke up with her watching me sleep, and then making cat noises outside my door after i kicked her out, its doesn't sound fun.

Also, “we’re talking gonads” as a random quote will help me get through today.

Earlier there were appeals to common sense and what regular people grew up understanding as a woman. Now it's gametes, as if this was something that the aforementioned common person easily grasps through common sense. From best I can tell, gametes are just the latest and newest goal posts that are being shifted in a long debate about what it means to be a woman. The writing on the wall seems to be finding whatever criteria can be used to exclude transwomen from womanhood. ETA: Potentially disagreeing with what an emeritus evolutionary scientist has to say about sex and gender does not mean disagreeing with evolutionary theory. So let's cut that one ahead of the curb as well. ETA: Here is an interesting blog post by a biologist talking about how the obsession with gametes has become the latest in a series of talking points used by transphobes.

Telling how specific you insist we talk.

I’ll go back to my food analogy. Are you going to remember and relish your daily big mac that is always available or your few times dining at a four star restaurant? Sanderson is a big mac. It is dependable and consistent… sometimes it’s fresh and well made… better than usual… but it is never a gourmet meal for all that it is easily obtainable. Let me put it another way. Frank Herbert only wrote six books in the “Dune Universe”… KJA has written vastly more than that. Does KJA quantity ever surpass Frank Herbert quantity based on volume alone?

Baby Reindeer has been a massive success on Netflix, but is also creating quite a controversy as online snoops try and piece together who the real life counterparts to the characters in the show are. This has led to people being sent abuse and wrongly being identified as abusers themselves. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/apr/28/baby-reindeer-sleuths-real-life-drama-netflix-debate-identities It is quite amazing that this was allowed to happen. It seems a bit misjudged by Netflix to allow the show to do things like cast an actress who looks basically identical to the real life character she was portraying, and not doing enough to disguise people's identities. Having said that, I think the show is very good. If you watch it all the way through, Richard Gadd, who plays himself, takes a lot of the blame for the situation on himself and it's quite self reflective. This isn't about turning someone into a monster and about shaming them. If you watched the first couple of episodes you might get that impression but as it goes on you see much of it is about him. It can be pretty sympathetic to the Martha character, despite her terrifying behaviour.

The pardon before the help. Receive the pardon first. Walder has learned from Robb's treachery.