James Arryn

There are usually more than one kind of manslaughter, this might qualify as involuntary. Depends a fair bit on the country/system, etc. but if I remember correctly to qualify for the voluntary kind the req’s are 1) unlawful killing 2) some kind of callous indifference or gross negligence or similar, something that moves it beyond happenstance but not so far as deliberation, malice, etc. Where is gets really vague is when there is anger involved; often the lines blur and a killing + anger will sometimes meet the standard for murder, sometimes not and I doubt anyone can categorically determine the difference without getting into case law specifics. Some people think an enraged act without intent to kill but also without demonstrating an intent not to harm is the definition of manslaughter but those exact circs also describe a lot of murder charges, historically. Sadly, in the justice game from my pov most prosecutors are aiming for the highest charge they feel they can safely see through, and that calculation often involves aspects it shouldn’t, like how much of a legal fight they think the defendant can and/or will put up. I’m sure there are very conscientious prosecutors out there, but, you know, people and their careers…

Well, we see Pate. We only conclude it must be JH because we accepted Pate’s death, unproven. Without that acceptance we have far more actual cause to suppose he is alive than poor Quentyn. But that’s normal. No POV sees Cressen die, but we accept it. In fact were it not for the accepted truth that PL characters always die, we’d pretty much never get the kind of confirmation some are saying is significant to QM’s death. IMO the reason it cut away was to signify that nothing in life prepares you for dragon fire. Or your own death generally, unless you’re an old hand like Beric. That’s imo what GRRM is trying to show realistically, that death always comes as a Stranger. And what makes a stranger a stranger? The fact that we don’t recognize it when we meet it.

Yeah, though the bigger sin is not not being Stannis, but rather an obstacle to his achieving what Justice, Truth and Good Dental Insurance obviously intended, undisputed King. Other characters are ~ forgiven for not being Stannis, but almost none are forgiven for being attacked/killed by Stannis. That said, and agreeing that Stannis’ individual military achievements are overblown, (and his mistakes either hand-waved (BW) or not unreasonably said to be secondary to his magic-based plan (SE)) on the whole he is one of the better commanders we see in the series. Nothing remarkable yet, Ice might be that coming, but almost uniquely he has credibility as a commander on land and at sea, that’s definitely something. What really gets me in terms of his eval is any belief that there was any military viability to his attack on SE/the coming battle with Renly. If you believe it was a pretext for supernatural assassination, okay…not great about Stannis the person, and imo a hell of a gamble on the unknown, but you can argue that if Stannis needs to be king, he’s going to have to pull something out of his hat to prevent the inevitability of King Renly/Queen Marg. But arguing that and at the same time trying to say Renly’s death just prevented an Agincourt imo demonstrates nothing but someone really, really wanting that to be true. The situation has almost nothing in common with the earlier HYW English victories except numerical disparity, crucially contradicts same in so many ways, not least of which is the quality of troops and need to fight a battle on two fronts which compounds the numerical disparity, and this belief that all of that won’t matter because Stannis. That’s what gets me. It would have been a complete route. There’s just no reasonable way of arguing otherwise consistent with military realities beyond the always applicable truism that nothing is ever 100% certain in war. And to base any expectation on the single argument that it’s not technically impossible is, I mean, I guess if you want it to be true bad enough you take what you can get. Even absent all the reasons it was not Crecy et al, the point about those battles being big deals was the degree to which they were the exception. This had all the reasons it was highly improbable and none of the reasons it became the exception.

Oh, I completely agree that not being a warrior king leaves you much more open to criticism/disloyalty, I just don’t think that’s especially true for Targs more than anyone else. Arguably less so, as generally speaking the Conquest was a series of engagements where Aegon et al were out-general’d/outfought only to see that made irrelevant by dragons, and given that game changer, the presence of a ~ nuclear power that just sat there for a century is inexplicable for a martial culture. Agree on Maegor, though to be honest, while I agree that faithfulness to their old religion/custom’s definitely makes them more Valyrian, ie imo unlike the martial aspect, this is a specific distinction, when it comes to the piety/strength of faith as opposed to form, I don’t feel I have much grasp on how pious Valyrians tended to be when compared with Westerosi. George and religion, it’s the soap in the bath, no single line of reasoning works for every scenario/character. Many characters have remarkably modern attitudes towards religion for a medieval model…it’s hard to overstate how atypical that would be for the models he’s using…but at the same time magic is real and often religiously based, so…really hard to evaluate. Sorry, this isn’t a point of disagreement, hope that’s clear, just that this reductionist approach is making me ponder the various aspects themselves and reminding me how slippery GRRM is about religion. But yes, Maegor being more ‘Valyrian’, I can see that. Imo he’s more Visenya than anyone, and the whole Caligula-like personality-intensifying medical episode is an interesting what if. Certainly he’d never have been a good person, but it’s possible that, as some did with Bootsy, George was leaving open the idea that he might have been en route to being a very effective, if unpleasant, medieval ruler before his head injury. It’s even possible that he was heading towards making the IT an absolute monarchy in a way that Jaehaerys sometimes angled for, other times away from, but ultimately did not really evolve, yet.

While I agree that the Tyrells are ~ Targ loyalists and do feel a debt, the Tullys were likewise raised up, arguably with even less of a resume, and that didn’t keep Hoster faithful. So it’s not a reliable factor, even if it can hold true for people like the current Manderlys or Tyrells we have seen. But we don’t see that much of either beyond the surface, I doubt a deeper exploration of either house would find them monochromatically loyal anymore than most houses.

The Marg thing, imo, again had more to do with models. Ie, the two principal models for Robert were Edward IV (especially younger) and Henry VI (especially older) and I think the Marg thing was a) actually realistic because of Robert’s character…sure, a long shot, but one with virtually no cost if it fails…and b) an allusion to Anne Boleyn, either as a false lead in the minds of readers or one of those garden paths than end up going nowhere. I don’t get the criticism of this, btw, beyond it being Renly. If it succeeds Renly achieves basically all his principal wants. If it doesn’t it’s a nothing-burger. Again, it’s Renly demonstrating an advanced understanding of Sun Tzu’s military ideal; to win the battle/war without fighting.

In my opinion, it’s not so much seen as controversial as kind of only talked about/considered ~ on a technicality. Ie, since George apparently decided his criticism of Tolkien not having (the ~ immortal) Gandalf die in Moria was way off and introduced an ever increasing number of non-dead deaths, everyone combs the text for other possible false deaths, and Quentyn is one of the more fringe examples where, yes, technically there is some room for ambiguity in the language. But imo that ambiguity is much more likely to be down to literary tendencies rather than another false death. Ie, George often goes abstract when POV characters die. Pate or whoever also tend to have technically ambiguous language about their own deaths because George shows minds in confusion in the face of or detachment from their death, generally. How he tends to confirm their deaths is with it being discussed later on by others, and that’s what he did here too.

I don’t think the warrior aspect is a Valyrian distinction in and of itself. Medieval kings mostly had to be warriors, and we see this RL reflection in Westeros with or without Valyrian influence. There were many RL medieval realms where for example blinding or maiming kings or contenders was standard form specifically because a king had to be able to lead armies and disqualification from that was equivalent to disqualification from ruling. Great idea for a thread/breakdown, just disagree on the viability (not interest, I like it as a just chatting category of discussion) of that one category. With the possible exception of some of the Gardeners…and that I think is George using absolute rule France as a model rather than any comment on their martial tendencies…the vast majority of pre-7K kings that we hear about were warriors. As have been the majority of post-Targ Westerosi kings, excepting some of the children, and that was probably just a matter of time and opportunity. I hate Joff as much as anyone, but contrary to the show in the books he was itching to get into the fight at the BW. He was a complete shit of a person but I have little doubt that he’d have happily lead armies once out of Cersei’s control. I think Joff’s model is pretty clearly Edward of Westminster*, at least the Yorkist understanding of same. And though Tommen is much nicer, he also seemed to enjoy the, er, sport of war, so I think he’d have been a pretty orthodox ruler in this regard, but of course these are speculation. But all the rest, Robert, Stannis, Renly, Robb, even buckethead Balon were as much warrior kings as your typical Targ, if not more so. The idea of Aegon or arguably Maegor as an archetype is a fun way to do this, and I’m looking forward to where this discussion goes, but an archetype doesn’t monopolize every trait it demonstrates, and in this case it’s not much more distinct than being bipedal or w/e. * with seasonings of Caligula like most despotic young rulers in western history/fiction since.

Been saying for a looong time, the US is currently grappling with their history of dealing with gender, race, religion etc. but never even for a second explores the brutal history of brutalizing and murdering in droves anything even remotely related to organized labour. Just read the history of the Pinkertons for one single example, they made their bones as gangs of ‘strike breakers’ who beat up, killed or framed countless people for trying to uphold the only power labour has in the marketplace, collective bargaining. Like it’s not even discussed, and if brought up is dismissed the way all the other horrible things used to be, ie ‘product of their times’ never mind how relatively bad or one-sided or even retained it is. A reckoning is surely due there too, but never a hint of it anywhere in popular American culture or political debate. I wonder why that is.

Lol, I was all set to propose Akhenaten…it’s impossible to isolate his motivations, may have been political or w/e, but the probability imo is that he was ~ philosophical..until I got to your last para. Also there were ‘sages’ in India going back to Dirgatamas and the like, and they have been ~ interpreted as philosophers down the ages.

I don’t think bigots necessarily devalue products of their group of choice, generally, though of course some might in some instances. Anyways, sometimes that can add a kind of (neo-colonial?) cache. Example, Cuban cigars in the 80’s with the moneyed/conservative hence most strident Marxophobes/anti-communists.

I’d heard that she asked if the conflicting trial in March might be flexible and was told no, so it’d be earlier or later than that, and experts were tell us something about we should expect moving forward. Asking about a conflict she already knew existed and may well have known was inflexible…or, worse, if she is indeed Team Trump, she might keep doing this. Ie, to make another trial against Trump seem like the obstacle to w/e ‘fair’ date she was gonna pick. Might be an unnervingly canny/effective strategy, pitting various Trump trials against each other as obstacles to the alleged ideal. It works legally, strategically and optically. Edit: I should add in fairness that the same experts did all agree that until now in this trial, she hasn’t set a foot wrong, before this development. And as for this, yes, it might be her giving him as much help as she can without making her vulnerable to review like last time, or be vulnerable to recusal like if she set a post-election date.

Yeah, and there are tons with weapons only used for violence against people, etc. The idea was to seem dangerous. Personally I like them, but I also get the feudal Japanese mon thinking, and from that POV a sigil like the Tyrell rose is much more significant; putting scary monsters or weapons or w/e from their point of view was childish, and as such had the opposite effect from design. Ie, if you seem to be trying too hard to be scary, that doesn’t frighten people with legit experience with war an violence, it actually makes you seem weaker. If it’s important to you that people find you scary, that means you are trying to avoid conflict, that’s bordering on cowardice. From their pov an actually brave man doesn’t care if you’re scared of him or not, let alone by a picture he wears. He knows he’s deadly and if you test him, so will you. Neither is right or wrong, of course, just a matter of culture/taste. But it’s ironic that the impression people get is sort of inverted from feudal Japan and…you don’t get much more bloody and violent than sengoku jidai Japanese clan wars, armies, battles and killings on a scale Europeans of the time would have found unbelievable…to say nothing about collecting heads, so it’s not like they don’t know what they’re talking about or are soft or w/e.

The banner has been around for literally millennia. I can see readers perhaps being warned by it a bit, but Robb doesn’t know he’s in a novel. I don’t at all see how you are expecting him to know that the sigil chosen thousands of years ago was all leading to this moment, and so far as we know the Bolton have been ‘peaceful and quiet’ for centuries. That means lots of Lords of the Dreadfort…with that sigil…did nothing, betrayed no one, so far as the outside world knows. But there are sigils with hanged men, a few with skulls a la SS, giants breaking their chains which, again, if Umber rebels, seems portentous in hindsight, and I mean…tons of man eating predators including their version of nukes, sea monsters, skeletons, devices of torture, drowned corpses, a vulture with a fucking baby in it’s talons, snakes biting people, and not one but two with fucking turtles!

Anchorman. With nuclear codes.

I do feel closer to some kind of dystopian outcome than I ever expected to experience. But that’s been true for everyone who goes through it. F Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway were partying it up in Paris before the Nazis came, if you get me…real life goes sideways, sometimes in major ways. Maybe it’s connected with becoming a parent, maybe slightly more so with girls, but I often wonder just what we’ve brought them into, how selfish that might have been. Authoritarianism has risen before in places much less comfortable with that dynamic than America, it really shouldn’t be surprising if you pay attention to history, but we often unconsciously subtract ourselves from general truths.

If the Greatjon ended up betraying him we would see the finger chomp as a clear indicator. Robb had to work with what he had, and Bolton was amongst his most senior commanders. If Ned ever thought Roose Bolton likely to betray the Starks, he’d have done something. But there was nothing but creepiness. Believe me, medieval rulers have to work with things a lot worse than creepiness if they want to function. The thing with Bolton was no one ever gave reasons for distrusting him except his eyes and his quiet voice. These are not great reasons upon which to make strategic decisions. Everyone sees the signs afterwards.

Good post, generally agree. The above, however, is unreliable. First, Ukraine’s allies are varied and so too their motivations, and secondly even within those there are competing interests. Let’s just say it would be rare for commercial interests to be completely usurped at the top of the pile. But, yes, they will probably put a lot of it on credit, which can actually be more profitable long term. Lend lease, for example, was sold to Congress as a fantastic deal only possible because Britain was ‘over a barrel’, ie in a terrible negotiating position, and accurately…it more than recouped the investment long before the last repayment ( in 2006!) even without accounting for the actual geo-strat value of all those bases for ships. And to remind you of the staying power of moral obligations over profit, remember the US did this while actually breaking treaties of mutual protection with GB/France AND being the Nazis biggest foreign supplier/trading partner*, so…like I said, profit is rarely absent from these kinds of calculations. *including seemingly inexplicable issues like the Ford company continuing to be a huge Nazi munitions/parts supplier even after the US officially was at war with Germany. Seems impossible, but it happened. Partly because corporations have more loyalty to their profit or at best shareholders than any state, but in this case specifically because Henry Ford was a pretty hard core Nazi sympathizer.

River mouths/estuaries can be great locales for cities, but are also often deltas that hold little solid land and problematic water supplies, ironically. Depends a lot on local geology, especially pre-industrial. But more significantly, the actual ideal is not so much the mouth of the rive, but the furthest up the water system regular shipping can go. Pre-mechanization, even to a degree post, but more essentially pre, you want to travel/ship by sea as far as you can before transitioning to the much less cost-effective means of land transport available at that time. As a Canadian this is more realized because the St. Lawrence explains why Canada’s two biggest cities/Atlantic trade ports are Toronto and Montreal, each very far inland from the Atlantic, and why Quebec City was such a geo-strategic priority. Why unload in say Halifax and then start mule trains or w/e to get inland when you can ship everything as far as like Duluth, Chicago or similar?

I’m unsure what is being argued here. Is it that politics is a meritocratic sphere? Is it that the left is too idealogical? Is it that Starmer’s personal failings are to blame? There seems to be differing, even contradictory premises being offered. Re: the first, well, okay. Putin’s opponents within Russia have demonstrated a severe lack of ability for decades, right? Or is it maybe not that simple? A lot of studies (to be fair the ones I’ve seen were almost exclusively about the US, but I assume the general premise applies) show that, contrary to basing political choices on the effectiveness of the respective candidates, voters are increasingly and to a degree willingly walling themselves off from access to what politicians they don’t support do or say excepting when w/e news source they have chosen is criticizing it. So effectiveness doesn’t get much of a look in. And while it’s not as cut and dried as Bobo Doll et al make it seem, the general truth is that people *choose* which political affiliation they have fairly early, very often that of their parents or guardians. As they age there can be stages of rejection, reconsideration, disillusionment, but my understanding is that online bubbling is making that less and less likely to happen, and even still people are overwhelmingly likely to vote as their parents did. So it may be reassuring to think of politicians as rising or falling on their merits, or the merits of their positions, but if ‘who did our parents vote for?’ is over 70% of the time who we vote for, is it an accurate rationale? edit for more information: studies in political psychology and political neuroscience has also revealed some more basic divides. For example, a conservative personality is more likely to be motivated by fear, a progressive by anger. Conservatives value security and predictability much more than progressives do, and are more positively responsive to authoritarian figures. Progressives are much more comfortable with the new, the complicated, the nuanced, and much more suspicious of authoritarian figures. This is why, despite even myself at times falling for the ‘liberals suck at messaging’ type easy explanations, I also know that for example group psychology plays a significant role. Ie, the fear vs. anger thing, just think of group behaviour. Frightened crowds are much more easily directed than angry ones, and fear is generally much more sustainable than anger. If you are in a crowd and guns start going off, you are extremely likely to follow anyone who says they know the way out. If you are united by anger, the results are much less predictable and diffused into differences. Herd vs. mob. That’s just one aspect, but imo illustrative. It also plays out in practices. Can’t speak for the UK, but I know that for example Democrat presidents have been much more willing to appoint or retain Republican candidates for positions in government than the reverse. You can argue optics or principles, or w/e, but that’s the pattern, and obviously it has tactical benefits for conservatives. As just one example…and a hilarious one given this sudden anti-FBI movement in the GOP…in the entire history of the FBI, going back ~ a century, there have been 8 directors. Or those 8, 8 were Republicans. Can you imagine the conspiracy theories if that was reversed? The person directly in charge of domestic intelligence has come exclusively from one of two parties? Just allowing this and similar occurrences (and with virtually zero outcry) might not prove the left is ‘too’ idealogical, but it probably shows that their ideology walks the walk more often. (Edit: in retrospect, no, this is wrong, it assumes they both have ideologies that prioritize inclusiveness and ‘fairness’ or w/e. I mis-stated this, apologies. It does seem to prove that Democrats walk their ideology in practice even when it is tactically disadvantageous, but it proves nothing about how much Republicans walk their own talk. On things like family values, religion et al, well, Trump, but that’s separate from the point I was making.) Final caveat: I forgot to include the concession that of course both liberals and conservatives are motivated by both fear and anger. This is about general tendencies, not absolute excursions. That might well be naïveté, if regarded from a ‘winning is all that matters’ perspective. Whether that is what we do (or should) want from our leaders or not is a matter of debate.

It is very interesting and informative, but inconclusive, and in such a way that almost every theory posited can find something here to support it. Want to believe Heisenberg was secretly sabotaging the nuclear effort? This can support that. Want to believe that Hitler/the Nazis were never enthusiastic about developing nuclear bombs, or indeed never even ordered their development? Yeah, this demonstrates that. Want to show Heisenberg did slow the process, but not to bring about German defeat but rather that given the lack of interest from Hitler et al and Germany’s technological situation, he did it as a bureaucratic short cut to prevent time and effort going down counterproductive cul-de-sacs. This says that. Etc. The most interesting thing about positing that Heisenberg was stalling is the customary assumption that he wanted the allies to win the race. There’s virtually nothing to show that that was a motivation. And his commentary doesn’t support it, and we have to theorize that he was just not speaking the truth…before or after the war…for reasons which are pretty entirely supposition. Given that the scientists working on Manhattan also overwhelmingly and bitterly protested the way their work was used, imo the Occam answer is that Heisenberg had similar moral conflicts and would have similarly slow-walked any bomb program. The difference might just have been that America was fully committed to the weaponization aspect in a way that the Nazis never were, and that that direction overrode the potential for individual scientists to manage things as Heisenberg might have. But the part of all of these that we ought to really pay attention to is the recurrence of retrospective justification as a primary motivation for much of the allied/American research and commentary on the issue in the time since. (That being stated openly as motivating ‘research’ would normally make any conclusions derived thereof highly suspect to say the least.) Similar motivations are evident in a lot of aspects of this discussion, and one of the reasons I find parroting the company line on the matter as though it were settled history frustrating. Especially because virtually any actual effort to look past the slogans makes any researcher aware that there is nothing about the evidence that remains that should lead to any level of certainty, let alone that post-applied explanation that just so happens to be the one that frames the choice to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in a heartbeat seem akin to a kind of hard truth ~ altruism. So when people confidently assert that the reason they dropped atomic bomb(s) on ~ 700,000 civilians was to save lives, the only information that supplies is that their confidence must be based on ignorance or bias. I’ve read more than the average person on aspects of this, though again to be fair that was much less about the actual development programs, there I have some understanding but probably not much more than most, but the area that was within my focus is still overpopulated with unknowables or similar. For example I can say with something close to confidence that the recorded communications/journals/etc. relevant to the decision to drop the bombs on cities do not support the now-agreed consensus that it was a life saving excercise, but that doesn’t mean I can state with any confidence what was THE motivation, or that no one was considering that aspect, or w/e. I can say that if it was a primary motivation, it was mostly left out of what was put on paper by the people involved, much more often contradicted by same…ie people were generally for or against it’s use on civilian targets, or indeed just for or against the prioritization of the weaponized aspect, little discussion was given to the ~ Ozymandian calculation it has settled on since in at least American general opinion. But even that doesn’t prove no one was thinking it. And there are other darker motivations which are much more documented, but even there ‘motivation’ was often framed within dialogues that themselves held certain things to be understood, and there’s no way of knowing to what degree the ‘kill a million to save three’ or w/e was in the back of their minds. But I can say that that’s where the most evidence of saving lives being the priority lies, in that which cannot be shown on paper to be true. And there’s a lot of evidence that flies in it’s face. Most evocatively with regards to the way the Japanese were discussed. To short hand it, meshing the current belief with the records kinda leaves you with a ‘We need to prioritize saving those @#$%@*&@#$@ing @#$%@#*#ers lives’. Even forgetting all the much-more evident concerns about the Russians, revenge, demonstrating power, ROI, etc., in order to believe the saving savage barbaric sub-human lives by killing tons of them idea, you also need to reconcile yourself with the official position of the USAF re: bombing Japan generally or in specific, as stated on many occasions, in writing and on film, by Curtis LeMay, the man in charge of it and subsequently the top AF official for several decades/administrations since: to kill as many Japanese as possible. Not Japanese soldiers, nothing like that, just as high of a headcount as possible. His premise was simple: less Japanese, less material of potential resistance, ergo kill as many as possible as quickly as possible. He admits it as a war crime, btw. How does that line up with the ~ altruistic motivation now agreed upon as ‘truth’? And conversely, how easily does it line up with less elevated motivations?

Something about this reasoning feels off but I can’t put my finger on what exactly that is. Anyways, I’ve ~ lived in Florida too, but I’m not sure if it counts before puberty…that seems to be when the Florida gene activates, and suddenly instead of reading a good book or going out to a dinner with friends, you have this overwhelming urge to throw an alligator through a fast food drive-through window, at speed. I’m talking a desire to do that MUCH stronger than that atavistic urge we all feel from time to time. If Florida got rid of gators and drive-throughs, I’ll bet it’d cut the crime rate in half. Florida is actually pretty middle of the road when it comes to violent crime rates (at least officially) but it leads by a country mile in what legal analysts call ‘Florida type crimes’ and my research reveals that over 2/3rds of ‘Florida crimes’ involve one of either an alligator or a drive-through, and weirder still over 85% involve both. Maybe that’s what DMC has gone down to fight, the plight of the Florida Crime criminal. It can’t be about weed; he went from illegal state to illegal state. Maybe…I think I’m starting to see it…maybe he sees these issues as linked. You’re a lot less likely to have the urge or energy to throw a decently sized alligator through a standard sized drive-through window while passing at some speed when on weed. Any individual component of the classic Florida Crime crime is indeed likely to prove a fridge too far. Except for the drive through, but people on weed who manage to make it to a drive through window for food are usually either trying to remember why they’re there, laughing at the memory of that time they almost told a really funny story, worried they have been there for hours when it’s really only been 4 minutes, trying to pay with their gym membership card or just eating like rescued castaways. Anyways, point being, maybe this is his life’s purpose. Maybe beneath that cynical, faded, jaded been-there-done-that-told-the-t-shirt-vendor-to-go-fuck-himself exterior beats the heart of an impassioned crusader for the underdog of underdogs, the Florida Crime criminal. That or it’s all on us. And by ‘us’ I mean Kal, Jace and you.

I take his moving there as a board failure. We let him down, somehow.

Tywin also wears them. Because red is a house colour.

I’m thinking if BC can rework it one way it can be worked the other; the Romans were in Britain for much longer than the US has been a country. How odd is it to see an immigrant adopt a native religion, possibly in the family for generations? And this is in a society with religious fluidity so different from the modern monotheistic world as to be incomparable. Many people were several religions at once, just as one example. edit: meant to say generations…centuries works too but unnecessarily expansive.