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True.

So far it is all set-up. Much like the micro-clues that set up the red wedding: As we now know the signs of the Frey-Bolton scheme were all there, but very subtle. So if I am wrong we will know when Winds comes out, but if I am right, the family connections and history element is going to all come to the fore all at once everywhere. GRRM is not going to do it in one place first and then give away what he has planned for other regions. So while other people think I am wasting my time looking at the histories and the names and trying to connect the dots as best I can, I kind of think that it is one of the best paths for theory making that we have available while we wait. My strongest hunch of all though is that LF believes that first Catelyn then Sansa was/is his key to power because of their lineage, and this is precisely why GRRM has concealed the Tully family tree.

Still a good job keeping Boston 30 points below their season average.

Face scanning is problematic because you show your face a heck of a lot more than your passport, your name or other ID. With face scanning at airports, you now have a way to link entry and exit to faces scanned in protests, entering and exiting buildings, etc. Without the face itself being the ID at airports, you need to do the additional work of connecting those faces swept up during surveillance to a name, then matching that name to the person at the airport. Not impossible to do, but it's a roadblock to a smooth, centralized way to log all your movements in a single database with a single type of ID. Add atop this the serious ways face ID can fuck up, and the ways those fuckups are worse for people of color because facial recognition models tend to be heavily weighted in their training data to white people, as do camera color balance algorithms, and you're left with a system that will make life harder for a larger fraction of people. I really don't understand all the snippy back and forth about this. ETA: and this is linked to using AI for war. Drones targeting based on face recognition is already a thing. And as a brown person with a beard, I don't fancy being bombed because some dipshit AI thinks I look like a terrorist.

Hopefully, but him being approached at all doesn't bode well for my impression of the filmmaker's idea of the book. If only Stellan Skarsgard was younger... More bulk and height, he's perfect

Do you have any specific ideas about which of these similar names will reveal a hidden connection between families that has some effect on the story?? Are there any places in the story so far where this has already happened?

At least you can't fall in love with something only to discover that the creator is a horrible person later. That's the one advantage of AI created content I see.

Hitting 23/43 3s will do that. Ofc if they keep doing that they’ll win the series but that’s fairly unlikely.

Nobody here. And those people are fucking idiots.

I've seen people flipping shit about trans women participating in a literal fun run, they've attempted to ban or have banned trans kids from playing on their high school teams which is pretty much the only place a teenager can expect to be able to regularly play sports. What the fuck are you talking about?

Didn't think of you as traditionalist, with me ending up in the modernist camp arguing, the message is whatever you see in it.

The difference in performance in darts and chess are almost certainly environmental, with cue sports there could be a very very small advantage (size and cue power), not enough for me to think it should be legislated against. Nobody has said they can't play sports for the joy as far as I can tell.

The analysis feels a bit like grabbing in the dark but I do think you are probably on to something in noticing the wormy apple reference. The question is, what exactly, right? I will have a think. One thing that does stand out to me is that it landed at the feet of Armen. We know next to nothing about Armen the acolyte, except his name. But that name is one that appeara only one other time in the histories, and that is Armen Peake. So this Armen might well be a Peake as well, or at least a descendant by the female line.

Well, GRRM also thought he could deliver it before Season 5 (or was it 6?) of the TV adaption. We all know how that worked out. To be clear, he is entitled to work at his own pace and finish/deliver books as he sees fit, and better shelve it for a year than deliver a bad book. However, that doesn't mean this being the year the book gets published shouldn't be treated as a running gag. Sidenote. Him finishing A Dream of Spring before his 90th birthday gets odds of greater or lower than 1/10.

I've seen people calling for trans women to be banned from chess, darts, and fucking pool. Which suggests to me the "reasonable concerns" are just a cover for a bunch of bigots. Sometimes you need to look at who is using the same argument you are, and maybe just stop. To use a hopefully uncontroversial example, Anita Sarkessian's media analysis was shallow, boring, feminism 101 crap. But she also had a bunch of Nazis hounding her, so I could leave that alone so as not to hurt someone already going through hell. But hey, if fairness is so important that you're crying over some skateboarder who got 17th instead of 16th but was also beaten by an 11 year old maybe spare a thought for the runner who's only ever had a dirt track who has to compete against someone who trains in a billion dollar facility, or the athlete who has to work 2 jobs to afford to travel to competitions competing against someone who was selected by their country at 12 and has had to focus on nothing but their sport since. Realize sports aren't fair, fairness isn't actually a god damn concern, and maybe that should be a focus before we decide that the most important thing in the world is to take joy away from some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

I thought it was the Wall... :') Hey, since "hard materials" had to be defined, might it be made of leather? It's a real life material, not cloth, but hard.

I mean, he isn't. I like to laugh at him as much as the next person and I get why he must be extremely frustrating to watch, but he's really good at unsettling defences with his movement, creating space for himself and others, generally bringing other forwards into the game, etc. He's a shit finisher and I don't know that that will ever change (though Forlan managed it) but his flaws would be a lot less glaring if your other forwards didn't keep shitting the bed too - especially since in your setup it's not really the central forward's bailiwick to be the main scorer. Like he's scored 11 goals in the league. It's not an amazing return but it's hardly bad when someone else is the main guy for that, and from what I've seen despite scoring more goals Salah has been a lot less useful to you in overall impact this season. But also I just hope Klopp one day goes on line, sees the negativity towards him coming from a lot of Liverpool fans right now, and signs on to manage us or Everton.

My guess is gone.

Though I should note that cutting off contact doesn't necessarily have to be forever. I'm certainly no expert and have been accused of treating emotions like a robot, but I'm still convinced that the feelings can pass when you keep your distance for some time. In a year or so, or at the very least when you find yourself in a different spot of your life and have a fresh perspective, you could still tentatively reach out and reconnect as long as it doesn't bubble up again.

Going by GRRMs Stephen Colbert interview, it should be due in 2026.

Very surprised to wake up to a celtics defeat where the heat were without Butler.

Labour pledge to re nationalise 'most' railways within first term. I don't see how they could do worse.

Whether they are currently is irrelevant, you make rules now before there are issues so people know where they stand. Emily Bridges would be one example though. Her performance trajectory very much would have had her winning Olympic medals this cycle. She was an outstanding cyclist pre transition and her performance held up very well post transition. You can't begin to have the conversations when someone has dictated years of their lives to competing at the highest level then pull the rung from under them. That would be extremely unfair on the athletes.

We now have a cover for Neal Stephenson's next novel, Polostan, which is the first book in the Bomb Light Trilogy: (Still hate the name of this book. Polostan? What is this, an independent country founded by the owners of Polo and Banana Republic?!)

There is video, you can see that technically the women were better, physically they aren't in the same league. Do you think women that were so dedicated that they are the best in the world voluntary rolled over and let a bunch if 15 year old beat them? You are just as guilty of making assumptions to support your argument here as I am. You should refrain from that label, because it would be bullshit. There are very legitimate scientific arguments as to why trans women should not compete with cis women if fairness is the most important factor. Far far far more science says this than the opposite. You might say that science is biased based on who is carrying it out and that's a fair position in some cases, but not all. And certainly not enough to discredit the wealth of data that's out there. You might not agree with them, and if you value inclusively more than fairness that's fine, but the kneejerk leap to 'trans phobia' every time someone make any argument against trans inclusivity in top level sports, is boring and weak as fuck.