No no, HEMA guys would be all "Well at least none of them has a fucking katana. You realize that katanas were approximately the same form factor as any number of European cavalry swords, similar in weight to a longsword (which had the advantage of being double edged) and generally weaker than European swords because…

I hope this is true. When I first read Dance, I was convinced that Rickon was coming like the vengeful id of the North, riding a massive direwolf at the head of a horde of cannibalistic vikings.

To play devil's advocate, it doesn't look like the Others are having a hard time finding other bodies to raise, so I don't know that it would make a huge difference in numbers. If they get raised as zombies, they're zombies on the far side of a wall that has stood for eight thousand years. If you let them into The…

Although you can see why the producers went with fencing, since most HEMA guys would respond to the request "Please realistically choreograph a fight where two guys fight off seven guys, all armed and armored" with something sarcastic about what "realistic" means.

Fights are hard to do well—Peter Dinklage, on the other hand, can be entertaining reading a phonebook.

Eventually they'll cater to my nostalgia :(

I'm going to try to get into Darkest Dungeon this weekend. I gave Offworld Trading Company a shot recently, and was pretty disappointed, so I'm hoping that the hype is more in line with my gaming preferences this time.

Is there any MTG computer game that lets you play with the equivalent of old school starter decks and booster packs? I played for a few years way back—Revised Edition and Fallen Empires were my introduction—and I'd love to get back in the sandbox, but I can't be bothered to learn a few thousand new cards.

I no longer think it's likely, but I still think it would be awesome. The raw, unrestrained id of House Stark.

She's clearly not real. She's "no one." She's a mask that one or more servants of the faceless god wear, if she's not a total illusion altogether.

Gendry is too swole to die now. That's show-canon.

Aren't we all possibly Sinatra's kids?

For a long time I hoped that the way the North resolved itself was that Rickon came storming down from Skagos a child warlord riding a direwolf at the head of a horde of rampaging cannibal vikings, slaughtering Boltons and Karstarks alike and declaring himself Child King in the North.

No, but The Waif isn't even a real character and they're giving good odds on "her" getting it this week, so I wouldn't put a lot of stock in anything associated with this column.

Actually a prequel.

Dear White People was okay but could have used an editor. The special features were way tighter and better crafted. I'm cautiously optimistic about this—I think the episodic structure could help.

The definition of "institutional racism" is not the definition of "racism." "Institutional" modifies "racism" by specifying the kind of racism, narrowing the scope of the term, the same way that "domestic cars" is narrower than "cars." Arguing for the above definition of racism—frequently quoted in internet…

Okay, that's a worthy goal, but I do not see how it is meaningfully advanced by redefining the word "racism." If anything, changing the definition obfuscates the point. Racism is an easy-to-understand concept; the effects of racism, including the knock-on effects of decades and centuries of racialist and white…

Right, but there's a purpose for that. Someone can kill another human being, but not be a "murderer" because "murder" is a crime. A killing in self defense, or as part of a lawful execution, is not murder.

How is that definition ever useful in any context other than attempting to score semantic points? What is the purpose of narrowing the definition of racism so that it no longer includes numerous categories of prejudice, discrimination or antagonism motivated solely by racial bias?