Also, you know, we had been steadily bombing them after the gulf war "ended" ten years or so before and also pretty much the entire center-and-right-wing parts of the foreign policy establishment had been planning for when we got to go to war with them for ages.

I kind of think "ok let's let everyone on" might have been an even better call, given what she knew about the situation. The captain of the Somnambulist didn't have anything close to a reason outside of "I don't want to risk dying". The available options were (1) they coordinate and we're pretty sure we save half of…

People form mobs pretty easily, but it's just as true that when faced with catastrophe we pull together pretty hard. Just breaking the panicky mob mentality was probably plenty to knock people into the "what's important is the survival of the group!" mode. And it's especially true if you're in the middle of a "This…

I think the navy should refocus their naming away from "which state/politician will be flattered into increasing Navy funding" towards "what will make it harder for our enemies to deal with our ships". Bring on the USS Harmless Frog, the USS Red Leather Yellow Leather, and the USS Our Own Boats!

Not to mention that he's basically taking hostages: he doesn't say that he'd destroy, or be able to destroy, all the ships. He says that the first one who fires is definitely getting destroyed, and that's probably something he would be in a position to guarantee. And the whole thing is happening in the middle of an…

I'm willing to believe that suicide or some kind of self-sacrifice was something that he was seriously considering, though, just that he opted for something else instead. That's part of why he needed some time to psych himself up for it.

In fairness, if the age of the scotch mattered it would have been because it was in barrels not bottles. And either way at that point it would'n't be that great* even if it hadn't been at the bottom of the ocean.

Which is perfectly in character, in a way, since she does it to surprise people and throw them off their game - and awfully effectively in the show too. In the book she's more generally foul-mouthed so while it still works it doesn't catch you off guard like it does when watching the show.

I think a lot of parents would be willing to roll with "my daughter now has a weird blue void monster body" if the alternative was "my daughter is dead".

Everyone else was doing their clever scheming and she just went "screw that sandwiches!".

It's not easy to corral a bunch of people together and remind them of their shared culture of sacrifice and then just sort of go "bye now suckers!" at the end of it, especially if the person who gets hurt is the one who reminded you of what you believe in and also meets the criteria that you were emphasizing when…

At least in North America this is absolutely true. It was the source of the whole "Manifest Destiny!" thing that I learned over and over in high school history classes without ever actually having it explained why they believed it/what was going on.

What is her third option?

I was so happy to see book-Avasarala show up in that moment. Getting the go-ahead to have her cursing has been wonderful, and they can only do more of it as far as I'm concerned.

What baffles me is that Penny is in the poison room filled with endless books of unspeakable magical power, and he pretty much just goes in, gets the one he's looking for, and then leaves. Dude! At least help yourself to some of the ones around it. Maybe they aren't useful - that's fine. Books aren't that heavy,…

I liked that someone - finally - reacted to "those chairs have a horrible curse on them!" with "well let's get rid of them then why do you just leave them sitting right there!?"

The nice thing about god-killing bullets is that you make them by killing gods. It's a sustainable resource!

The IRS would be the ones referring him for prosecution, though. I mean, the prison system isn't exactly great but punishing white collar crime too harshly isn't necessarily its greatest flaw.

No, no they were. It's just that the government cheated. They totally would have won otherwise.

I strongly suspect they did both. But at some point you have to go from "no seriously give it to us now" to "ok everyone pay attention to what's happening here because fraud actually is a real straight up crime and not something where you just risk having to pay a little more in taxes than you would have otherwise."