John Blake

Not if you weren’t CERTAIN that he wasn’t yours AND he was the last living connection to the wife who was, allegedly, the only thing you loved. (And possibly even if you were certain BUT you didn’t want to to give Aerys the postmortem satisfaction of humiliating you further).

I don’t really see that: that he thinks Tyrion might not be his biological son doesn’t justify any of the horrific things he does to him.

has an affinity for the dragon skulls in the Red Keep; the death of the Martell kid who cannot commune with dragons sets up that there might be someone who can; and Tyrion is, in so far as any one is, the hero of the books.

“The dragon has three heads” we are forever told-Jon, Dany, Tyrion. Also explains why Tywin resigned as Aerys’ Hand (which otherwise makes little sense), but he’s never entirely certain Tyrion is not his, but the timing makes sense. Also Tyrion’s hair is often described as being white not blonde; he

I’d always assumed Tyrion ends up as king bcos the last Targaryen king was his father, having forced himself on Joanna, but even tho the series had Tywin say “you are not my son” they couldn’t give enough time to Tyrion being able to ride dragons (which is where I think his arc with Dany goes)

In the latest post on our Substack I try to make sense of the mutual incomprehension between teachers & students about the role of AI.

Is it OK for students to use AI to write their assignments if that's the most efficient thing to do?

If not, why not?

substack.nomoremarking.com/p/what-is-th...

I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better

Re: stripping citizenship, look. There is no legal mechanism for him to do it. The very fact that he is talking about it tells you, yet again, what he is. He’s an aspiring totalitarian who wants absolute power over people’s lives and to use it to reward friends and punish enemies. That’s really it.

New York Times editors as they're handcuffed and sent to a concentration camp: "Experts say this is a bad thing to happen."

This kind of smart, walkable, mixed-use development is illegal to build these days.

Hugh Muir recalls the response of London Mayor Ken Livingstone to 7/7 from Singapore. I agree that, despite his flaws & failings at other times, that this was an important message
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Tuesday

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Wars, Star Trek, LotR, Marvel.

www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1BCZ...

This is very funny and exactly how I’d expect AI agents to work right now (rather erratically) but also how I’d expect humans to behave (trolling the AI to buy tungsten cubes)

Worth a watch:

Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

Not that her skills as a journalist ought to matter: the President of the United States shouldn’t be calling for any accredited journalist to be fired.

Am also obviously massively, bitterly jealous you got to do this, and am considering whether it is ethical to try to persuade Lucasfilm to let me write “Weapons of Mas Destruction: How One Hard Working Politician Was Scapegoated For An Empire’s Crimes” as a revisionist riposte.

Are we still doing “delete your account”? If not, can we bring it back for this?

This is truly wonderful to hear

I also thought the reference to orders for boots going through the roof when Tarkin boarded the Death Star was very well done…

Genuinely could not praise it enough. I suspect lots of young people (but not just young people) will pick it up as a light fan read and at the end find themselves, perhaps unexpectedly, called to action. Lovely demo of the value of fantasy fiction AND of thinking abt the complexity of the past.

@chriskempshall.bsky.social I expected to love this as a geek who loves history & has always adored the idea of an in-universe history book. I didn’t expect to be moved by it as an educator, seeing something written well enough to teach invaluable ideas in an incredible accessible way.Huge congrats.

Absolutely enormous pub dog 😍

Education being, of course, entirely unrelated to one’s socioeconomic position…

This is dark

The BBC weather forecast is becoming apocalyptic

Broadcast Kneecap from Glastonbury, but voiced by an actor

We are all going to die so Donald Trump can make a weak joke about using “the N-word” aren’t we?

“Some of Our Uranium Is Missing”, starring Peter Ustinov and an old Routemaster Bus, through the streets of whatever city is left once Trump and the Supreme Leader have finished.