I propose a divided approach: melt down the generic pro-Confederacy monuments but leave the ones depicting specific Confederate figures. Those monuments we deface.

I think this gives us a good system to go with: knock down generic pro-Confederate monuments and tar-and-feather those honoring specific Confederate figures.

Melt the statues into nice plaques: “On this site on August 31, 1864 between 2,000 and 2,700 traitors decided they would rather die than stop treating black people like property. Good riddance.”

I’ve never heard it called Planetos before; that tickles me.

I think they’re the same person: the Last Hero supposedly won the War for the Dawn and Azor Ahai is said to have defeated the Others during the Long Night.

Sam was good to Gilly when she relied on him entirely. Since she’s learned to read and started becoming more her own person, he’s become increasingly impatient with her.

Don’t forget that she taught Davos to read too and he was instrumental in getting Stannis to the North which is the only reason Melisandre was there to resurrect Jon!

Okay, so that’s, as far as I can tell, the only wrong thing Sam’s ever done thus far hahah

It’s unlike Samwell to be so disrespectful of Gilly [...]

I don’t think miscarriage is likely just because that would make Cersei ever so slightly sympathetic and the show seems hellbent on not giving her character any nuance. I think you’re right that if Jamie finds out about the lying he will attack Cersei and be killed by the Mountain, but I think that’s the endgame:…

I was flabbergasted that they just glossed over the annulment thing. Like, Gilly just revealed the most important information since the Tower of Joy scene, but no, let’s let Sam have his butthurt little tantrum.

I really hope this happens because it would be such a pedantic, blue-balling, “well technically” way to fulfill the prophecy.

I would definitely not peg Jamie as a foundational pillar of the show. Which characters are most important to the show depends on how you look at it.

I really want Jamie to die (I don’t buy his redemption arc), and to die without killing Cersei. The prophecy says Cersei will be killed by “the little brother” not “her little brother” and it seems very in keeping with Game of Thrones to heavily set up a standard fantasy trope just to cut it down, like with Ned’s…

Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck in the BSG reboot

Reparations, to my mind, are supposed to put an economic number to the losses suffered collectively by black people in America. That means slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow, segregation, redlining, everything. Why would that exclude people whose ancestors weren’t enslaved?

This is a really good read. The questions you pose are important and frankly some of them may have no answer. But the fact that we as a nation cannot even hold a serious conversation about reparations is telling.

I think it’s important to note that the bill is intended to establish a committee to study reparations; it doesn’t authorize any payments or even pledge to act on the committee’s findings. We can’t even pass a bill to think about reparations.

The Democratic Party’s platform—like any political party’s platform—is made up of individual stances which are supposed to be based on a unifying set of ideological principles. When you start compromising on those principles, you can no longer truly be said to be a member of that party.

Seconded; Oryx and Crake is one of the few books I kept from my high school English classes to reread for fun.