Ran

I'm so ready for this:

We've already referred to boiling wine and its use on wounds. Varys is suggesting that maesters might pour boiling wine into women's vagina's (an orifice) after they deliver a child, for which there is absolutely no evidence. For wounds on the exterior of the body, yes, wine is what is used. No, Baelor is correcting the person when he says it's wine, not oil.

Yeah, the thought crossed my mind after I posted. And it might read as way too partisan a starting point for a run at a seat in Indiana, anyways.

People talking to Politico are claiming that Bernie Sanders has expressed interest to Biden in being Secretary of Labor. Interesting. I'd say VA is pretty good for Buttigieg, but I can't help but wonder if something like some DNC role that lets him get out there on the talking head circuit and then running for governor in 2022 or senator in 2024 might not be an approach to setting up for 2028 (either as a potential VP or for President). Hard to prognosticate these things, of course.

NY Times out with what looks like a well-sourced report that Russia's FSB has been seen probing and infiltrating state and local systems, and they believe they have a sense of what the Russians are planning to do. Absolutely no evidence that they have compromised the actual election systems, but instead "officials expect that if the presidential race is not called on election night, Russian groups could use their knowledge of local computer systems to deface websites, release nonpublic info or take similar steps that could sow chaos & doubts about the integrity of the results." Again, so far no evidence they've cracked any voting machine or election tracking backends, and in many states there's more auditing and paper trails available than ever before. But even some confusion after the election, county websites claiming one result when it's actually another and so on, would be potentially bad if people are too credulous and don't understand it's just superficial shenanigans. re: Trump's Twitter password, Twitter came out and said, explicitly, that they've seen no evidence that the twitter account was compromised. Could be this guy is pulling everyone's leg.

You do realize that washing hands is something that doctors, surgeons, and healers did not do until the 19th century? Or even sterilizing equipment? People survived such treatment for centuries, but not as well as they could have. And in the very specific case of childbirth, early modern medicine -- with its lack of germ theory and antiseptic routines -- actually increased, not decreased, mortality. And it did it for centuries before someone pulled their head out of their rear and realized that it was the doctors themselves, and their direct interventions, that were the cause in the increase. Maesters, as described, should increase childbirth mortality for women, not decrease it, compared to more traditional midwives. One would have to imagine it, since there is no such reference made in the books, that I can think of. Until there is, the idea that they're pouring heated wine into bodily orifices sounds unlikely.

It’s a commission to study and make recommendations, not one that will set policy, and there are small-c conservative jurists and legal scholars out there who are not big fans of what the GOP has been doing who can be tapped.

Twitch discourages and bans people for doing illegal stuff like streaming while driving. In fact, a Korean streamer who has been in Europe was informed that she was getting a ban because she showed herself accidentally running a red on a pedestrian crossing while using an electric scooter. What I meant about traveling around was people livestreaming and interacting with chat while walking in their city or some foreign city, or hanging out in a park or restaurant, etc.

Twitch is basically Youtube, but instead of posting pre-recorded videos you broadcast ("stream") live, and can chat with people watching you as you play games or music, or just chat with you to hang out or while you're traveling around or eating a meal or whatever. It's mostly gaming focused. That's it, really. It's owned by Amazon and is the biggest live streaming site in the world, with about 90-95% of the market What that means is that they probably have a camera or two set up at the station to show you the DJs or hosts and their guests as they do their programs. Like this.

Hah. Better specs than my 6 year old PC which I had someone else build, so no snobbery here!

Borrowed from a staffer, but yeah, nice clean build and decent specs.

Not at all. Every example you provide are of obviously infected wounds. But maesters do not understand that they themselves are carrying invisible diseases when they are attending childbirth, and that these diseases are capable of entering women who are not suffering from any obvious wounds. It's not like post-birth they go, "And now we'll pour in the boiling wine:" Think of all the examples of maesters treating people, and you'll notice a curious thing: not once are they described washing their own hands! Aemon, Qyburn, Kerwin, Pycelle -- all of them just go right in. They may wash out infected wounds after, but they don't actually have antiseptic routines for themselves or their instruments.

The Among Us stream was extremely popular -- peaked at a total of 700k viewers or so among all participants -- and was a nice way to encourage younger people to vote (though, to be fair, some substantial portion of the viewers were too young to vote -- a lot of 13-year-olds out there on Twitch). Ilhan Omar forgot to mute her mic when she carried out a kill, and was heard laughing maniacally. Lots of praise for her play in particular, she went from trying the game for the first time to, in her second game, nearly winning it as the imposter, including taking out four other players along the way.

Stage magician and famous skeptic James Randi has passed away at the age of 92. Famous for his $1,000,000 challenge to prove psychic powers, no one ever got past the most basic tests, and most claimed psychics avoided him like the plague. He was also sued by Uri Geller at one point, I believe, as Randi was particularly merciless with him since he was the most famous "psychic" of the era.

This is too perfect. Trump and the White House press secretary presented Lesley Stahl with a massive book which they said represented the President's beautiful health care plan. The White House tweeted out the image of the presentation and her reaction to how heavy it was .... and her opening it up to take a peek and discovering that it was the usual big pile of blank pages. Why are they this incompetent? Or is the Resistance in the WH press shop?