The Windbag of Winter
By publishing an excerpt from the next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, George RR Martin proves that he genuinely is working on it, and may finish the series during the lifetime of one of Doc’s kids.
by Mike Schilling · March 30, 2014
By publishing an excerpt from the next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, George RR Martin proves that he genuinely is working on it, and may finish the series during the lifetime of one of Doc’s kids.
Tags: a game of thrones
Mike Schilling
Mike has been a software engineer far longer than he would like to admit. He has strong opinions on baseball, software, science fiction, comedy, contract bridge, and European history, any of which he's willing to share with almost no prompting whatsoever.
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[caption id="attachment_361266" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screengrab from WIVB Buffalo Channel 4 News[/caption]
Still a developing story, but what we know so far points to an utterly depraved act of violence at a Buffalo supermarket.
Comment →Ten people were killed and three others suffered non-life-threatening injuries and were transported to local hospitals after a mass shooting at a supermarket on Buffalo’s East Side Saturday afternoon.
The shooter was an 18-year-old white male who was heavily armed with tactical gear and was live-streaming during the mass shooting, officials said. City of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the shooter is not from Buffalo and traveled “hours” from outside the area.
“This was pure evil,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said. “A straight-up racially motivated hate crime.”
The shooter was identified in court Saturday evening as Payton S. Gendron of Conklin, New York, about 200 miles southeast of Buffalo.
Gendron was arraigned on one count of first-degree murder without bail.
The 18-year-old will be back in court on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. for a felony hearing.
When Gendron exited his vehicle at the supermarket, authorities said, he shot four people in the parking lot. Three of them died and one is in the hospital. The shooter entered the store and opened fire on customers.
Twitch deletes shooter’s live-stream video of Buffalo mass shooting
A retired Buffalo Police officer, Aaron Salter, who was working as a security guard, shot Gendron but he was unharmed because he was wearing armor, Gramaglia said. The retired officer was shot and killed.A law enforcement source told CBS News that the gunman had a racial slur written on his weapon. The attack is being treated as a hate crime.
Erie County District Attorney John Flynn will not confirm the existence of the shooter’s manifesto. He said they believe there was a “racial component” to the attack but won’t say more.
This attack is being investigated by the FBI as a hate crime and as violent extremism.
Police officers could frame people, file bogus charges, conjure evidence out of thin air—and, in most of the U.S., they would still be immune from facing any sort of civil accountability for that malicious prosecution. Until yesterday.
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Yesterday, the highest court in the country struck that requirement down, ruling that Thompson should indeed have a right to sue the officers at the center of his case. "A plaintiff such as Thompson must demonstrate, among other things, that he obtained a favorable termination of the underlying criminal prosecution," wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court. "We hold that a Fourth Amendment claim…for malicious prosecution does not require the plaintiff to show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence."
From THOMPSON v. CLARK ET AL.:
Held: To demonstrate a favorable termination of a criminal prosecution for purposes of the Fourth Amendment claim under §1983 for malicious prosecution, a plaintiff need not show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence. A plaintiff need only show that his prosecution ended without a conviction.
Thompson has satisfied that requirement here.
Thompson v. Clark was decided 6-3. (Alito wrote the dissent, with Thomas and Gorsuch joining.)
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Sorry, but that proves nothing. The ‘latest’ excerpt is over a year old. I think GRRM is only good at editing anthologies now. Too bad, sure was a helluva start.Report
It’s a fabulous chapter though. Well worth the read.Report
Tough going at parts, but then again the life this character has found would be a tough one.Report
What’s the deal with all the underlining?Report
The Others have killed almost all of the scribes, and the survivors are making do with whatever punctuation they can scavenge.Report
It appears to indicate unspoken thoughts.Report
Remember back in school, when you wrote—like, wrote wrote, with pencils and pens—and your teacher told you to use underlining as a substitute for italics? For some weird reason he’s doing that here.Report
I hope he introduces a bunch of new characters in the last two books, kills off one or two more of the most central characters, explains nothing about the things fans are interested in -like Snow’s mom- and leaves all of the central plot points unresolved- e.g. Daenarys is not yet taking over the west, the Others are still futzing around, etc.Report
space awesomeReport
On top of the heap, at the end of the day, the sole remaining claimant to the Iron Throne with enough strength to hold it will be … Samwell Tarly.
On a related note, whatever happened to Rickon Stark? Crow food?Report
He’s on an island with cannibals. The Onion Knight has been sent to pick him up…Report
I’m rooting for Hodor.Report
I think you Hodor that you are Hodoring for Hodor.Report
@shazbot3
No, he’ll kill off everyone at the end of book 6, and book 7 will just be a description of the snow falling on their graves.Report
That’s what the Others are there for. He needed viewpoint characters who could spend 700 pages describing snow.Report
Did you know that The Others have over 900 words for ‘snow’?
While I’m at it, this egregious, literal “Othering” of the natives of the far North is one of the worst things about GRRM’s writing. Whatever their flaws, at least they are not Machiavellian, incestuous backstabbers, like some of our ostensible “protagonists”.Report
I don’t get it. This didn’t link to any TV episodes.Report
Lovely, how many years and he gives me one chapter from my least favorite Stark.Report
Really? I think she’s most people’s favorite.Report
Lotta folks like Jon.
(For me, it’s anything but Dany. I loathe her plotline).Report
It’s probably contrarian of me but I have always found John Snow and Arya grating and annoying, not interesting or exciting.Report
You like Robb and Catelyn more?Report
I liked Robb and Catelyn a lot. Especially when they were figuring out what to do with Jaime Lannister.Report
Robb is one of my favorites, along with Sansa (even though I know she’s a twit). Catelyn is a Stark in Law and doesn’t count.Report
Is it too soon to turn “Jordan” into a verb?Report
Brandon wins the internets!Report
At some point they’re going to have to include 10-15 minute montages of people staring at eachother and glaring at eachother scarily between battle scenes.
We’ll probably end up with something like this in Westeros: http://funnymama.com/store/130825/208496_v0_600x.pngReport
Nah, the show’s going to either stop, or (more probably) go ahead with writing its own conclusion if Martin hasn’t finished TWOW within the next year. They’ve already added a fair amount of original material, and some of the characters’ plotlines in Season 4 are already including events from A Feast for Crows (e.g., Brienne) and A Dance with Dragons (e.g., Bran). Season 5 is going to take them up to the end of the published series, and possibly beyond.
I wouldn’t mind Weiss, Benioff et al. writing their own conclusion for the show. Martin’s pretty clearly getting bogged down and has lost track of his central narrative.Report