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Harlaw+Tarth descendants continued: This is entirely speculative, but it is my best guess for where any daughters of this initial Harlaw+Tarth match ended up: A first son and heir would have been matched with a family that was firmly Ironborn. Descendants of people born elsewhere would be considered suspect by the Ironborn if they did not reaffirm their allegiance to the Islands. If only 1 daughter, the best be is that she became the wife of Goren Greyjoy. Vickon, Goren's father, believed in good relationships with the Conquerors and this match for his heir would have been his way of showing it. Also, Goren seems to have felt the need to "prove" himself as fully Ironborn and having a wife seem by the Ironborn as mildly suspect could have been part of the reason he felt that need. If there was a 2nd daughter, the most likely bet is IMO House Farman. Why? Because the match would have been requested by Visenya, the Westerlands had long-standing conflicts with BOTH the Riverlands and the Iron Islands, and Visenya's matchmaking aims were about uniting the Kingdoms. IMO the Lannisters themselves might not have accepted a Harlaw match, particularly so soon after being pushed into the Redwyne match, so it would be Westerlands bannermen with a fraught history with House Harlaw. Finally, named characters are more likely to be descendants than non-named ones. A Farman match would be the backstory behind Franklyn, Elissa and Androw, all born after 16 AC and before 32 AC which is exactly the right time window.

That only people I know who earn decent money but somehow don't seem to ever have any, tend to have a fairly excessive drug habit.

His retired campaign manager had instant access to £5K - £6.5K, in fact. So I'm not buying that as an excuse. And in the grand scheme of things, £90K a year really is that much. It puts you in the top 5% of earners.

If it's a Tory MP then most likely he couldn't pay for the call girls (or boys) he had hired, or the blow. I'm sure the pimp had come round and demanded payment.

I'm impressed you know of Babism. That's not a widely known aspect of Baha'i history.

This sounds more like a big sex party that went wrong, and it was an off the cuff plan when they realised he was vulnerable to blackmail.

The more curious point is, imagining he had been kidnapped or detained by some 'bad people', why do they only want £5k? What kind of shitty criminals think that small?

They'd bloody well better get the green light! (I just finished the first season recently)

£63 a month better off due to the cut in NI, going to go crazy.

I agree it is incredibly suspicious, but to the highlighted, i'd be surprised if most people making that have instant access to £5,000. I don't keep that much in my savings account, i have about 2 grand for emergencies and the rest is tied up in investments. About 50% of people have less than a grand, i know the majority of those will be on lower incomes but 90k really isn't that much in the great scheme of things.

Watched The Sympathizer, Park Chan-Wook's adaptation for HBO of the Pulitzer winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Robert Downey Jr. features as a CIA agent who interacts with the lead character, known only as the Captain, played by Hoa Xuande, who is a North Vietnamese mole inside the South Vietnamese secrete police. It's shot with Park's typical verve and style, cutting back and forth in time, and features a pretty nail-biting sequence as the Fall of Saigon begins and people are rushing the American air base to try and get one of the last flights out. It's quite good.

While I also think Argilac knew about Aegon's marriages, I don't think they fought against Volantis at the same time. Argilac joined the alliance twenty years before the battle against the Gardener king, which in turn took place before the Conquest. Depending on the precise date of the Battle of Summerfield, Aegon would have been a young boy or not even born when Argilac was in Essos.

I've just noticed the idea of mummery and pretence is tied in with the idea of 'playing roles' in Quentyn's first chapter: Back in the Planky Town Quentyn had played the wineseller, but the mummery had chafed at him, so when the Dornishmen changed ships at Lys they had changed roles as well. Aboard the Meadowlark, Cletus Yronwood became the merchant, Quentyn the servant; in Volantis, with Cletus slain, Gerris had assumed the master's role. - The Merchant's Man And the only other time the word 'role' appears in ADWD is when Barristan is musing on Quentyn's death: Grief and guilt had been known to drive good men into madness, and Archibald Yronwood and Gerris Drinkwater had both played roles in their friend's demise. - The Queen's Hand I don't completely buy into the 'Quentyn is alive' theory but this careful use of the word 'role' might be significant. Are we being led to assume some 'mummery' on the two friends' part in the events surrounding Quentyn the Crisp?

So I'll forgo my rant about how shitty our generation is, and how we've no right to criticise younger folks when we are so awful, in favour of highlighting this story, which the headline ('Tory MP suspended over alleged misuse of funds') really does not do justice: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68841840 I suspect this is one of those times when we won't ever find out the whole story, but clearly, there's a little more to this than 'Tory MP misuses funds'. I appreciate that MPs live an expensive life, but this dude gets £90K a year in basic salary and he did not have £5K in the bank even for a matter of life and death? Who were these bad people? How did this situation arise? This is extremely concerning. There's also another £14,000 of medical bills covered by party money and not repaid.

Good, it sounded fucking boring. Tell him to make his Star Trek movie instead !

https://deadline.com/2024/04/quentin-tarantino-final-film-wont-be-the-movie-critic-scrapped-1235888577/ Yippee, wasn't really excited for that to be a swansong personally

I was thinking it has to be a clue to the way the big 'magical processes' work too. It could equally be related to the Fire end of that spectrum, though. Dragon bonding rituals probably demand sacrifice, consuming one 'head'.

Ads have definitely gotten longer and less skippable. Also finding a lot ads being cheaply made using AI which is curious. There is also the controversy of YouTube fighting back against ad blocks. Ad blocking is a life saver really, but they even went so far as to actively slow down your machine if you watch videos with an ad blocker on.

YouTube ads have doubled in annoyance lately.

Yeah the ads so far are not too egregious. But that is so far. If YouTube is a good model, then they will gradually ramp up the amount of ads and try and strong arm you into going for the more expensive ad free version. Then they will lose their shit when you find ways around the ads like ad blockers.

we left the house the other day and i paused netflix, which meant i could only use one account, even for downloaded content in the car, so one of the kids had a meltdown. Surely it can recognise that a paused TV is not a device being used. Wankers.

If i owned Tesla stock and the company were trying to pay Elon 50 billion, i'd be somewhat aggrieved.

I have pretty much dropped out of Xmen 97 now. I was a huge fan of the comics, not so much the original cartoon. I’d say 97 accurately captures the mood and style of 90s storytelling, but that for me isn’t a positive attribute. I’ve found 97 also mostly incomprehensible even when it was covering storylines I grew up reading and rereading. You could try going back and watching the old show, or reading some of the comics. I’ve done both but it was clear to me that my expectations are pretty different than they were as a kid in the 90s. Both now feel a real slog to get through and don’t really stand up all that well. So that’s why I think the 97 show is pretty faithful.

True, Babism/Baha’i is a more recent development. I was not talking about Iranians in Iran, but from my experience with Iranians that live abroad (for a variety of reasons). And amongst them there seems to be an interest in basically everything (Persian) that isn’t the official statal version of Islam. There are some western polls and media reports that this is also the case in Iran itself, though I admit I have no idea if those surveys are very representative, since as you said things such as apostasy are subject to the death penalty and other forms of punishment and repression.

Windhaven (by Martin and Lisa Tuttle) was pretty good. The reader just has to push through the first part, which is predictable and somewhat rushed. It's basically a prologue so that the reader can witness how the society reacts to those events, which is the purpose of the story.