The White Walkers are a myth that even the black watch don't believe existed, yet here they come. Melisandre is surprised by her power. Thoros of Myr was a drunkard who pretended to be a red priest, yet suddenly discovered ability to raise the dead. The maesters had a joke about getting apprentices to fruitlessly try lighting a black candle as part of their initiation, yet suddenly the candles have started burning. Euron at sea seems to have some sort of Cthullu magic starting.

It started out as a world without any supernatural creatures or magic. Then it has started returning. There is a genre in fantasy of 'the fading world' where magic and wonder is going away for various reasons. GoT's trajectory is in the opposite direction, so maybe that answers your question. I look forward to the horde of snarks and grumpkins arriving from the far north in book 7.

Pubs closing is all part of the plan. Pubs make a piddling profit because so much goes on bills and tax. So the private equity owners apply to the local council to shut the pub and turn it into a residential property, which would make far more profit. The council says no and insist it stays as a pub. So the PE run it into the ground, let the building rot for a couple of years with a 'Tenant wanted' sign outside, then approach the council again saying that its clearly unviable as a commercial property. The council will now agree to allow a change-in-use application to smarten the area up a bit. So the PE makes 10X the profit this year than it would otherwise. Why would they take this one-off payment instead of being in for the long term? So they can buy up more failing pubs and start the process again.

I remember the early search engines like AltaVista in 1997. Typing 'United Kingdom' into a search box would always bring back the CIA page as the top entry, with a brief text description of 'Size : Slightly smaller than Oregon'.

Be a shame if its price increased in the US for some reason.

Well, theres a problem. AI doesn't really solve or understand anything, it just functions as search engine. Thats not true intelligence.

With a side order of nothing tacos.

So a girl smiles at me, and my first thought must be 'Oh, shes after my bitcoin. Run! RUN!'. Crypto really is an all corrupting dark place to get into.

In the past year, Alphabet announced a deal worth 'tens of billions' with Anthropic. There was another deal with OpenAI for an unknown amount, but presumably similar to the Anthropic one. They are both a a complicated arrangement of chips going one way and services going the other, but the deals have been given a monetary amount that is beneficial to both parties, so I'm guessing that is going to be a large part of the increased profits at Alphabet. (And will probably also show up on the net balance sheet at Antropic and OpenAI. Its the circular economy bro!).

"The music tape. Somehow its... evolved".

I mean the P/E ratio is 524.23. I need a bigger phone or smaller fingers.

So yeah, it might be overpriced.

We had her put down at 21 because of other overwhelming health issues. It never occurred to me to have her put down because she wasn't the cat she used to be. She was clearly away with the fairies for the last 18 months. It bothers me now that with hindsight it might have been kinder.

She spent her days as a silent black shadow, leaping from a hidden corner into your lap without a word being spoken. In her final year she'd just sit in the middle of the room, peer into space, and then howl loudly and repeatedly. It was heartbreaking.

I can confirm this is entirely true :(