January 2024 Links
Why George R.R. Martin will never finish the series, politics and parenting, the importance of sunlight, and more. 8 links.
George R. R. Martin will never finish A Song of Ice and Fire. The ending of the story demands a wedding, and that’s something that Martin is incapable of writing, given his worldview.
I don’t think it’s so much that Martin won’t finish the saga as that he can’t. And principally for one reason (though I imagine there’s a host of ancillary reasons): Jon Snow & Danaerys Targaryan themselves. He didn’t anticipate when he set out to write his story, I suspect, to write one genuinely heroic character, let alone two.
It’s clear that Tyrion, and the Lannister family in general, are his favoured characters, and it’s the Lannisters who set the tone of the series. I think this is so for both internal-structural reasons and for personal reasons. Martin just prefers them and sympathises most with their worldview. Structurally, I believe the Lannisters are the vehicle through which Martin has tried to accomplish his main artistic goal in writing A Song of Ice and Fire: to subvert the Fantasy genre, with its roots in the heroic and the mythical, by introducing an element of cynicism and realist historiography, a literary Real Politik.
A lot of this shoplifting is organized, and across state lines. The feds could put a stop to it if they wanted.
According to the search warrants, Mack paid as many as 12 people to steal from Ulta Beauty stores, as well as other retail outlets, and ship them to her Bonsall post office box.
In certain cases, Mack allegedly purchased plane tickets, rented cars and paid for hotels for the shoplifters who worked under her.
The most important book about the US Civil War to read today. I learned a ton just in this quick summary and will be reading the book very soon. Great tidbits about John Brown and Harpers Ferry.
Thoughts on the book “A Disease in the Public Mind” by Thomas Fleming, which covers the role that memes and public hysteria played in the run-up to the American Civil War, and the book’s applicability to today.