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Alexis + “knocking”

bonus:

I think my favorite thing about those scenes where Sansa grabs Jon’s arm (and really, most of the Jonsa touching scenes) is that it’s Sansa who makes the first move (except that glorious forehead kiss).

We obviously don’t know exactly how much Jon knows about what happened to Sansa but given his reactions to Ramsay/Littlefinger/Tyrion/Theon we can safely assume he knows quite a bit about what she’s been through.

So I love that most of the time he waits for her to take the lead - when the reunite at Castle Black, Jon doesn’t move in for the hug until Sansa does. Both times that she grabs his arm/hand he seems surprised - and she’s the one that initiates the touch. And even on the battlements with that forehead kiss it’s very slow and gentle like he’s giving her time to pull away if she needs to.

This is part of why I think if/when a marriage is proposed, it’ll be Sansa that brings it up - even if Jon had considered it and thought it had merit or if he wanted to marry her, I don’t think he would ever think of bringing it up himself. I also think he will probably argue against it at first, even if his arguments are weak and just “I don’t want to force it on you” or “you deserve better,” both of which may or may not lead to Sansa directly/indirectly confirming her own feelings by admitting that she wants to marry Jon, that it’s not just out of duty.

npr

Proponents of the chips say they're safe and largely protected from hacking, but one scientist is raising privacy concerns around the kind of personal health data that might be stored on the devices.

npr

An NPR/Marist poll finds that as the president has waged a trade war, Midwestern voters have moved in big numbers toward Democrats less than two months before November's elections.

mindblowingscience

One of the species identified as "critically endangered" is the northern sportive lemur, of which there are thought to be only 50 individuals left, IUCN said.

Ninety-five percent of the world’s lemur population is “on the brink of extinction,” making them the most endangered primates on Earth, a leading conservation group said Wednesday.

The arboreal primates with pointed snouts and typically long tails are found only in Madagascar, where rainforest destruction, unregulated agriculture, logging and mining have been ruinous for lemurs, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said.

“This is, without a doubt, the highest percentage of threat for any large group of mammals and for any large group of vertebrates,” Russ Mittermeier of IUCN’s species survival commission said in a statement.

nobodysuspectsthebutterfly

I saw in one of your answers that you thought Tyrion will ride rhaegal and jon viserion. Ive always thought those would be reversed. Is there strong evidence one way or the other? Gut feeling? Thanks

The only reason I’ve ever seen anyone say why they think Jon will ride Rhaegal is that the dragon’s a namesake for Rhaegar, and Jon is Rhaegar’s son. (I don’t doubt that Jon will have to deal with the fact that Rhaegar’s his father, but I don’t think his dragon’s name will have much to do with it.) Generally they seem to give Tyrion Viserion by process of elimination, but sometimes they refer to the white dragon cyvasse piece Tyrion holds in his second TWOW chapter. (Personally I think the point of that scene is not that it’s white, but that it’s bloody, but anyway.) I don’t think that really works – if you’re matching namesakes, shouldn’t you find a reason to associate Tyrion and Viserys, then? – or if you’re going by color/foreshadowing, where’s Jon and green? – but that’s not my theory, so I won’t work at rationalizing it.

For me, I have several reasons why think Jon will ride Viserion and Tyrion Rhaegal. Firstly, color symbolism: Jon is associated with white (Ghost, weirwoods, winter, snow), Tyrion green (Lannister eyes, wildfire, “money”). More symbolism can be found in the placement of the dragon eggs on Drogo’s pyre:

She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her sun-and-stars. The black beside his heart, under his arm. The green beside his head, his braid coiled around it. The cream-and-gold down between his legs. –AGOT, Daenerys X

As I said the other day, of the three heads of the dragon, Dany (Drogon) is the heart (emotions, passion, id); Tyrion (Rhaegal) is the head (intelligence, knowledge, ego); Jon (Viserion) is the “sword” (strength, military, superego).

Also, @joannalannister (who may have thought about this more than I have) gives several more reasons, connecting the dragons with the first trio of dragonriders. To paraphrase, she has Jon associated with Viserion/Visenya, the temperamental warrior, and Tyrion with Rhaegal/Rhaenys, the wise counselor. (Dany is of course Drogon/Aegon, the conqueror.)

So, with all that, I hope that helps you see where I’m coming from. I hope that GRRM has been thinking along these lines as well. :)

joannalannister

GATHER ROUND FOLKS, CUZ IMMA EXPLAIN IN DETAIL WHY BUTTERFLY’S THEORY IS THE REAL DEAL AND WHY YOU SHOULD GO PUT MONEY ON IT IN VEGAS

Keep reading

allthecanadianpolitics

New stock of adult-dose injectors not expected till end of August, manufacturer says

EpiPen injectors, which are relied on by people with life-threatening anaphylactic allergies, are in “very limited supply” and Canadian pharmacies are to run out of adult doses in “coming days or weeks,” according to a statement from Health Canada.

Pfizer Canada has been reporting shortages for months due to manufacturing delays, and today told Health Canada it won’t have new stock of the 0.3 mg adult dose of epinephrine until the end of August.

allthecanadianpolitics

Canada's border agency has used ancestry.com and familytreedna.com to establish nationalities of failed refugee claimants — even contacting users.

In another example of the extraordinary lengths Canadian immigration officials go to deport failed refugee claimants, the Canada Border Services Agency has been collecting DNA from migrants and using ancestry websites to find and contact their distant relatives and establish their nationality.

“I think it is a matter of public interest that border service agencies like the CBSA are able to obtain access to DNA results from sites like Familytreedna.com and Ancestry.com,” said Subodh Bharati, a lawyer who is representing a man who says he’s Liberian, but who the government is now trying to prove is actually Nigerian. “There are clear privacy concerns. How is the CBSA able to access this information and what measures are being put in place to ensure this information remains confidential?”

Bharati, who is representing his client through CLASP, the legal aid clinic at Osgoode Hall Law School, said he is aware of at least two individuals who used Familytreedna.com, one in the UK, who have been contacted by the CBSA seeking to deport someone from Canada.

“Individuals using these sites to look at their family tree should be aware that their confidential information is being made available to the government and that border agents may contact them to help facilitate the deportation of migrants,” he said.

mentalflossr

They left Russian society under persecution in the 1930s and remained hidden until 1978, and didn't know WWII had happened.

mindblowingscience

Horrific fires have ripped through homes in Greece, floods have submerged parts of Laos, and heat waves have overwhelmed Japan.

[…]It’s the hottest month of one of the hottest years in the history of human civilization, and unusual wildfires are sprouting up all over the map. Sweden has called for emergency assistance from the rest of the European Union to help battle massive wildfires burning north of the Arctic Circle. Across the western United States, 50 major wildfires are burning in parts of 14 states, fueled by severe drought. The wildfires burning in Siberia earlier this month sent smoke plumes from across the Arctic all the way to New England, four thousand miles away. Last year, big wildfires burned in Greenland for the first time in recorded history.

And then there are the rains. In Laos, after days of downpours, a hydropower dam that was under construction collapsed on Tuesday. Hundreds of people have been reported missing. Higher global temperatures increase the evaporation rate, putting more water vapor in the atmosphere and making extreme downpours more common.

In recent weeks, high temperature records have been set on nearly every continent. On Monday, Japan had its hottest temperature in recorded history — 106 degrees Fahrenheit — just days after one of the worst flooding disasters the country has ever seen.

Algeria has recorded the highest reliably measured temperature in Africa, 124 degrees Fahrenheit. In late June, the temperature never dropped below 108 degrees Fahrenheit in Oman — the highest overnight low temperature anywhere in the world.

Even in normally temperate places the air has been sweltering: Temperatures approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit hit parts of Canada, overwhelming hospitals in Montreal — where another heat wave is imminent this week.

npr

The moon will turn orange or even red. And the eclipse — expected to be the longest this century — will be best to see in eastern and southern Africa, the Middle East, eastern Europe and south Asia.

mindblowingscience

Deficits in the brain’s reward circuit are linked to social deficits in children with autism and may point the way toward better treatments, according to a new Stanford study.

Children with autism have structural and functional abnormalities in the brain circuit that normally makes social interaction feel rewarding, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The study, published July 17 in Brain, documented deficits in children with autism in a crucial reward circuit, called the mesolimbic reward pathway, that’s buried deep within the brain. The degree of abnormality in this pathway predicted the degree of social difficulty in individual children with autism, the study found.

The findings help clarify which of several competing theories best explains the social impairments seen in children with autism. The discoveries, made via MRI brain scans, support the social motivation theory of autism, which proposes that social interaction is inherently less appealing to people who have the disorder.

“It’s the first time we have had concrete brain evidence to support this theory,” said the study’s lead author, Kaustubh Supekar, PhD, a research scientist at Stanford’s Translational Neurosciences Incubator. Disrupting the mesolimbic reward pathway in mice reduces their social behavior, prior research has shown, but no one knew how closely the pathway was tied to social skills in people. “This is the first neurobiological evidence in children that this mechanism might explain their social impairments,” Supekar said.

mindblowingscience

Shhh don't mention it.

It’s hot. Too hot. And climate scientists agree that it’s only going to get hotter. Yet despite the record-breaking heat wave impacting millions of Americans right now, barely anyone in the mainstream media is talking about the elephant in the room.

A new and distressing report from Media Matters reveals that most major broadcast TV networks are completely ignoring the link between unprecedented heat waves and climate change.

In the last week of June, the US was hit by a massive and powerful heat wave stretching right across the country. The dangerous temperatures are like nothing ever seen before, breaking 227 US records in the first week alone.

It would be nice to think that reporters would want to - no, have to - explain to the public why these dangerous and deadly temperatures are becoming more common and more intense. Media Matter’s recent analysis puts that hopeful assumption to rest.

The report analyzed two weeks of TV segments on ABC, CBS and NBC. Out of all 127 segments featuring the US heat wave, only one bothered to mention climate change.

mindblowingscience

"California set the toughest emissions targets in the nation, tracked progress and delivered results," Gov. Jerry Brown said Wednesday.

California greenhouse gas emissions fell below 1990 levels, meeting an early target years ahead of schedule and putting the state well on its way toward reaching long-term goals to fight climate change, officials said Wednesday.

The California Air Resources Board announced pollution levels were down 13 per cent since their 2004 peak — as the economy grew 26 per cent since that year. The achievement was roughly equal to taking 12 million cars off the road or saving 22.7 billion litres of gasoline a year, the board said.

mindblowingscience

Bill passed by parliament means more than €300m shares in coal, oil, peat and gas will be sold ‘as soon as practicable’

The Republic of Ireland will become the world’s first country to sell off its investments in fossil fuel companies, after a bill was passed with all-party support in the lower house of parliament.

The state’s €8bn national investment fund will be required to sell all investments in coal, oil, gas and peat “as soon as is practicable”, which is expected to mean within five years. Norway’s huge $1tn sovereign wealth fund has only partially divested from fossil fuels, targeting some coal companies, and is still considering its oil and gas holdings.

npr

Why President Trump Hates Canadian Dairy — And Canada Insists On Protecting It

President Trump has railed against Canada for taking advantage of the U.S. when it comes to trade.

A particular point of criticism is the dairy industry. Canada slaps steep tariffs on imports of milk, cheese and butter from the U.S., something Trump has called a “disgrace.”

Trump may not like it, but those tariffs are part of a politically sensitive, decades-old policy to protect Canada’s dairy farmers.

The system is called “supply management” and it sets production quotas for the country’s dairy, poultry products and eggs.

Photo by Trevor Hagan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

mindblowingscience

A new Dutch proposal would put climate at the center of national politics.

Last week, a coalition of seven Dutch political parties unveiled a climate policy proposal that is breathtaking in its ambition. If it becomes law, it will codify the most stringent targets for greenhouse gas reductions of any country in the world.

There are still several steps between the proposal and passage, including debate in both houses of Parliament, and lawmakers may make changes. But given the broad political support — the parties involved control 113 of 150 seats in Parliament — it is widely expected to pass in something like its current form by late next summer.

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