A stunner, paying off not only the (we can now confidently call it) deliberate pace and structure of the first three episodes but on numerous longstanding pieces of storytelling. In this regard, you can’t not start at the beginning, which for a half-scene feels like “oh god can we start an episode anywhere other than the Wall” until, abruptly, it switches into an event the show has been building to since the Stark diaspora commenced in the second episode. It’s a moment that shifts the entire show on its axis, and it’s structured beautifully, given all the time in the world to breathe. And that’s the opening. It follows that up with an immensely satisfying scene in which Sansa becomes the dominant figure of the relationship (and also well done owning the slight arbitrariness of their relationship – Benioff and Weiss claim they’ve never actually been on camera together before this episode, which is hard to believe but entirely possible), and then a lovely grace note of Brienne meeting Davos and Melisandre.

There’s an obvious question of how to end an episode that starts that big. The answer – to lean on the way this reaches back to Season One and recreate the cliffhanger of “Fire and Blood.” I howled with laughter as she torched the Dothraki – a charmingly direct solution that served as a satisfying reminder of what constitutes a Daenerys-scaled problem at this point. Although the earlier, fairly large Daenerys scene is also satisfying, giving Daenerys a small moment of victory – her first of the season – that quietly prefigures her later one. So much of what makes the last scene work is its beautiful inevitability – Daenerys is already safe as of the time Jorah and Daario get to her. That’s already a reasonably-sized moment that is keeping up the episode’s momentum when it happens. So Daenerys’s casual acquisition of the entirety of the fucking Dothraki is wonderful icing on top of the cake.

But the fact that Daenerys is on a fast ticket back to Meereen also enlivens that plot satisfying, which is good, as Tyrion is one of the bits of this episode that isn’t quite working. The general momentum and direction of this episode lends credence to his claim that he’s going to have the advantage over the slavers. Tyrion is good at what he does. In many ways, it’s been seasons since he had a substantial moment of victory, and so he’s massively overdue to get something. And yet the scene is pointing overwhelmingly towards him making a mistake – to the point where you wonder for a moment if he’s about to Stark it up completely and get put down by Grey Worm or Missandei. The sense of marking time would be frustrating were it not for the knowledge that there has to be a breakthrough coming at this point.

Because literally everything else is just plowing forward. Even the two smallest scenes – the Greyjoys and Osha’s death – have weight to them.…

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I’ve been blasting review copies of Neoreaction a Basilisk (currently available on Kickstarter) out to the world, including an open offer to send it to Yudkowsky-style rationalists and neoreactionaries if they want to trash it. So here’s a roundup of the reaction it’s gotten, which has mostly been within the rationalist community so far. (But do stick around for the end, where there’s one great big of neoreactionary response, and an announcement of a new stretch goal.)

First, though, the big one, whcih is that Eliezer Yudkowsky weighed in on the book’s existence. Well. Sort of. Actually he told everyone to stop talking about the book while referring to it only as “[CENSORED].” Say what you like about the man, he’s at least very consistent in his reaction to basilisks. I’m sure it’ll work just as well.

Meanwhile, in the “good reviews” department, Tom Ewing, of the mad and epic blog project Popular, penned this very insightful, funny, and complimentary review, which I 100% promise you that you will want to stick around for the last line of. No, no. Don’t skip ahead. Just let it happen.

Tumblr user nostalgebraist wrote a lengthy series of posts on it, of which this is the last one (but it has an index of the whole thing at the start). It’s a mixed review in terms of what it thinks of the book, though I’m inclined to think it makes the case for the book just by having such a lengthy and nuanced engagement with it. It definitely sent me back to the draft manuscript to shore up and tinker a few passages, and is a thoroughly good read. (Nostalgebraist is also the author of The Northern Caves, which is by many accounts brilliant, and which I’m hoping to get to and write about, but you know how the schedule is these days.)

Also on tumblr was psybersecurity’s three-part review (again linking to the last part as it has an index). The main review (the post with review in the title, that is) is what I described as a “good bad review,” which is to say that it makes a serious effort to understand what the book is doing and has entirely sensible and justifiable reasons for it not being his cup of tea. The post actually linked, “Pwning Sandifer,” is a middling deconstruction, but middling is a hell of a good result for your first effort at deconstruction, and it’s worth reading for bit where it gets entertainingly excitable in its sheer horror that anyone would ever say the things that Thomas Ligotti says, culminating in a declaration that Ligotti is “nothing more than pure unadulterated evil,” italics his. 

In a similar genre of “Yudkowsky fans attempt to pastiche the literary style of Neoreaction a Basilisk” is socialjusticemunchkin’s sort-of-ten-part review, which I link to Part 8 of, again because it has the index of the whole thing. In a reasonably clever joke about Mencius Moldbug’s failure to ever write Part 9c of A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations, Part 9 was deliberately excluded.…

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As part of the promised avalanche of Shabcasts, here‘s another.  This time I’m joined by the dulcet tones and clever thoughts of James Murphy of Pex Lives, City of the Dead and (formerly) The Last Exit Show, for a mammoth chat about the Bible, anti-Semitism, Labour, Brexit, the Tories, the May elections and Sadiq Khan… taking in Lee & Herring, Terry Pratchett (I get told off), Stephen King, fame, podcasting, American history, the psychology of Presidents, and Hillsborough along the way.  Trust me, your ears will thank you for subjecting them to this pleasant ordeal.

I didn’t clock the fact that this episode would be going out on the 100th anniversary of the murder of James Connolly – Irish Republican hero and one of the greatest socialists, internationalists and revolutionaries of the 20th century – by the British imperial state, so I failed to raise the topic with James (which would’ve made for interesting listening, and a two-part podcast… because we pushed the envelope as it is). 

So here are some quotes instead:

State ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism – if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials – but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.

*

Under a socialist system every nation will be the supreme arbiter of its own destinies, national and international; will be forced into no alliance against its will, but will have its independence guaranteed and its freedom respected by the enlightened self-interest of the socialist democracy of the world.

*

The Irishman frees himself from slavery when he realizes the truth that the capitalist system is the most foreign thing in Ireland. The Irish question is a social question. The whole age-long fight of the Irish people against their oppressors resolves itself in the last analysis into a fight for the mastery of the means of life, the sources of production, in Ireland. Who would own and control the land? The people, or the invaders; and if the invaders, which set of them – the most recent swarm of land thieves, or the sons of the thieves of a former generation?

*

No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression.

*

We, at least, are not loyal men: we confess to having more respect and honour for the raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any, even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers, adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England.

*

The great only appear great to us because we are on our knees – let us rise.

*

The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. And in the work of abolishing it the Catholic and the Protestant, the Catholic and the Jew, the Catholic and the Freethinker, the Catholic and the Buddhist, the Catholic and the Mahometan [sic] will co-operate together, knowing no rivalry but the rivalry of endeavour toward an end beneficial to all.

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All-New All-Different Avengers #9

Confusion over whether I had dropped this for Standoff or for good meant it was in my pulls today, so I figured why not. Answer: because this is simply a bad comic. An issue anchored by a Jarvis-level perspective in which Jarvis is a figure of cartoonish, stupid excess. The result is that all emotional resonance the book has is that Jarvis is screaming bloody murder at the newly introduced Wasp, a cipher of a character with outsized potential for a fridging or heel turn. (And is Janet dead again?) Meanwhile the larger book is all Kang and superhero neoclassicism, while the new bunch characters remain basically wasted; Waid is depressingly incapable of writing either Ms. Marvel or Miles Morales well. Add Asrar’s bland and flat art and you have a complete waste of a good book. Definitely drop for good. 

Silk #8

Spider-Women is back on track, with an issue that actually makes a semi-compelling case for reading Silk by dovetailing nicely into what was apparently the book’s pre-crossover status quo as the Black Cat dramatically enters the plot. Meanwhile, the overall arc is elegantly poised for Jessica Drew to come back into the narrative. Really, everyone seems set to come out of the crossover on interesting and compelling terms. I’m still utterly unsold on Silk as a character, but when I hit post on this I’m going to quickly check if Robbie Thompson is writing anything else, cause he’s good.

Black Panther #2

Ta-Nehisi Coates is still awkward – he’s putting too much in every issue, and making the book a very slow burn. I suspect it might come off in trade, but as a monthly comic, this is a rough sell. Still, you can see him learning and starting to find a rhythm. There are scenes where, while he doesn’t quite soar, he at least gets some lift and the possibility implicit in the concept of him writing this book starts to shine through. This remains something that could be incredibly special. But it isn’t yet. Coates is terribly endearing in the letter column, though, and seems to have a sense of how much he has to learn, so that’s good.

The Ultimates #7

Al Ewing, meanwhile, is a confident, polished pro who elevates the brief “lead up to that barely coherent Civil War II thing we released on Free Comic Book Day” into an entertaining team book. The chess pieces are being put on the board for the crossover so elegantly you don’t even really notice, and yet Ewing is clearly laying himself a fun path to bounce off the crossover onto – one that, due to the cosmic scale of the book, feels substantial in its own right. This is the proper Avengers book right now.

Darth Vader #20

Typically sharp stuff, with Vader’s confrontation with Thanoth being climactic and surprising while remaining faithful to Thanoth’s understated demeanor. I suspect a neoreactionary influence on Thanoth’s stated worldview, and I suppose more broadly on the book as a whole, which remains very Uber For Kids.…

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