This week, a giant, 112-foot-long sleeping infant floated above the shores of Lake Michigan. It wasn’t a collective hallucination—it was “Baby You,” a breathtaking art installation that captured the imagination of Milwaukeeans over the Summer Solstice. The spectacle celebrated the U.S. launch of Przekrój, an iconic 75-year-old Polish magazine. Known for observing the world with […] The post Crowds Awed by Floating Baby in Colossal Art Installation Over Lake Michigan appeared first on Good News Network.

Movies & TV house of the dragon A Secret Meeting Between Warring Queens: Will Cooler Heads Prevail in House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 3 Plus, some new characters, a very special bastard, and a deliciously creepy tour of Harrenhal! By Tyler Dean | Published on July 1, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share The third episode of this season of House of the Dragon, like the second, clocks in at over an hour. It’s similarly packed with the quiet character moments that made episode two so affecting. That said, we also get some new players on the board, as well as a reminder of why both this and the original series are near-universally lauded for their production design, and even a bit of dragon action to boot! Spoilers abound below, so be forewarned! The Title Episode three is entitled “The Burning Mill.” I’ll admit, this one surprised me a bit; I receive the screeners untitled and usually only discover the title after I have watched the episode—this is not what I would have expected from it. But it does make an amount of sense. The Battle of the Burning Mill is the first actual battle in the Targaryen civil war that the maesters later name the Dance of the Dragons. It’s represented as the opening scene of tonight’s episode and it serves as a bit of a microcosm for the whole conflict.  We can see that it doesn’t really have anything to do with the internecine struggle for the throne. It’s a local dispute between families that have always hated one another. Rhaenyra’s supposed child-murdering only gets brought up as an escalating afterthought. It’s the excuse that gets made for bloodshed—a theme that will crop up over and over again this episode. The mill has no name. It’s not incredibly important save that it gets destroyed. We don’t even actually see the battle—just the pointless provocation and horrifying aftermath. The first blood of this conflict is a deleterious loss of life, only vaguely related to the actual conflict, utterly pointless, and named for a landmark that holds no meaning or value. Not a bad episode title and not a bad metaphor for the show’s dismal take on war.  Unraveling the Opening Titles There are two new panels added to the end of the opening titles this episode. I was worried, after episode 2, that they would remain static, but it seems we just needed to get to the scene that would stand in for Blood and Cheese.  The first new panel shows Prince Jaehaerys’ funeral bier. A golden thread runs across the neck, followed by the ever-present blood stain, reenacting the murder itself. It replaces the death of Lucerys as the most recent atrocity in the Dance of the Dragons and certainly the one that will be remembered as the low point of that time in history. It’s interesting to note that the show opts for the public visual of the death of the Prince. These tapestries are, after all, a sort of public record made after the fact—so it’s nice that the show chooses to show what hundreds of mourners could corroborate and not what only Queen Helaena saw and adumbrated. Curiously (and tellingly) we also get a panel of the hanged ratcatchers. It’s a minor episode in F&B but the show is making a big deal of it and it might be their way of telling us that history remembers that Aegon was impulsive and vengeful as much as it (mis)remembers that Rhaenyra was a cruel child-murderer. Blood drips down from the hanged men and reaches towards the Iron Throne in the distance. The blood of the smallfolk soaks in beneath the throne, just as Sylvi (Michelle Bonnard) implied last episode. Sir Simon Russell Beale Appreciation Corner  Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO This episode marks the first appearance of Sir Simon Russell Beale on a Game of Thrones show. He’s among my favorite actors of all time so I’m going to use some of this space to extoll his virtues and discuss his performance on HotD. A trained singer and stage actor, with longstanding ties to the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre Live, Beale is an expert in lending humanity to oddball, fussy little men. He played the fastidious, flamboyant, and surprisingly wise Egyptologist, Ferdinand Lyle, across all three seasons of Penny Dreadful (you can read more about how excellent I thought his performance was on that show here—yes this is, secretly, a Simon Russel Beale simp account and, yes, I made a custom Funko Pop of him). He was Charles Musgrove in the 1995 TV version—to my mind, the definitive adaptation—of Persuasion (which also stars impeccable, Game of Thrones alum Ciarán Hinds). He plays an incredible Falstaff across multiple episodes of The Hollow Crown (2012). And, among many highlights in an absolutely luminous stage career, he won a Tony for the roles of Henry and Phillip Lehman in the much-fêted Lehman Trilogy (a role I was lucky enough to see him in during the 2022 Los Angeles revival). He’s an international treasure whose knighthood is well-deserved. He stars here as Ser Simon Strong, the great uncle of Matthew Needham’s Lord Larys Strong and the castellan of Harrenhal. Beale is a great fit for the role. In Fire & Blood, Ser Simon is barely mentioned—he’s the Strong who happens to be at Harrenhal and is promptly imprisoned by Daemon in a decisive coup. I vastly prefer the show’s version, where Daemon is made an uneasy guest, threatening imprisonment. It allows them to make Ser Simon into the sort of character Beale excels at playing—a long-suffering outsider who can comment on the ridiculousness of the proceedings. He is the sort of character one doesn’t expect to find in the Game of Thrones world: a disinterested party with virtually no agenda. It’s a great canvas for Beale to inject some much-needed humor into the series, and I can’t wait to see his story take shape in the weeks ahead.  Harrenhal in Full Glory Last season, I gave a full recap of the haunted history of Harrenhal and the many families who have fallen victim to its curse. Though it was briefly featured last season both as the site of the Great Council of 101 AC in the opening scene and the site of Lyonel and Harwin Strong’s deaths in episode six, Harrenhal has never been particularly visually interesting, in spite of it serving as a major location across several seasons of the original Game of Thrones series. This is a shame, because it’s described in the books as an absolutely monstrous place. I’ve previously made the argument that Martin is a better horror writer than anything else and that both shows have been occasionally underwhelming when it comes to exploring the spookier side of Westeros. That seems to be a thing of the past, as of this episode.  Harrenhal emerges from a fog-shrouded storm, as Daemon approaches, showing off the unsettling scale of the fortress; as Caraxes flies closer and closer in a long shot, the castle continues to get bigger. Whenever Martin writes about Harrenhal, he underscores the sheer size of it as part of how unnerving it is. In A Clash of Kings (1998), he writes “on the road, Arya had felt like a sheep but Harrenhal turned her into a mouse […]. The size of the castle made even Gregor Clegane seem small […]. Walls, doors, halls, steps, everything was built to an inhuman scale that made Arya remember the stories Old Nan used to tell of the giants who lived beyond the Wall” (457-8). Elsewhere, Martin describes its five towers as a broken hand grasping at the clouds. Caraxes is quite large and manages to look tiny atop the Kingspyre tower. Then there is the eerie emptiness of the place. Every shot shows us that, even beyond the echoing, cavernous rooms, decay and ruin have made the place feel even larger and emptier as we see cutaways to rooms and courtyards beyond. The five towers, melted by dragonfire, have an unnatural look—almost like huge melted candles. And everywhere that isn’t damaged by century-old char, weirwood roots distort the stones and burst through the walls. Harrenhal was built, in part, by leveling a grove of the sacred, ancient trees and they seem to be having their revenge on the place. Daemon looks down into the hall of a hundred hearths, where the Council of 101 AC was held, and finds it empty and muddy, with tattered House Strong banners rotting off their poles. At one point, a literal swarm of huge bats flies out of the eaves and into the night (in time, the Houses Lothston and Whent will incorporate bats into their sigils, inspired by their gloomy home). Even in the inhabited parts of the castle, the hearth flames gutter and flicker, the ceilings leak, and there is damp sediment underfoot. The two swords that Daemon uses to bar his door look hopelessly flimsy as some unseen force rattles them, demanding entry. In these moments, Harrenhal is, finally, the glorious, Gothic ruin it always should have been… and we can hope to see even more of it in the weeks ahead.  The Soiled Knight Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO There are a lot of bad knights in Westeros. In the original ASoIaF books, both Sandor Clegane (aka the Hound) and Sansa Stark have huge portions of their respective plots revolve around the idea that chivalry is a lie and that most knights are as weak and corruptible as any other men. In Fire & Blood, Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) seems to be an example of this sort of hollow, hypocritical knight—one who abused his power and position to do awful things in the name of the crown. The show has been really interesting, then, in giving us a more nuanced and fraught version of the character that nevertheless fits into Martin’s basic project of showing us that chivalric codes and tales exist to mask the fact that a knight is a killing machine, pure and simple.  This week, we get a tense exchange between a despondent Ser Criston and Alicent’s brother, Gwayne Hightower (The Great’s Freddie Fox), that ends with the latter saying “no one is more delighted than I to march out to war with a Dornishman.” Given that Martin’s world is not particularly colorist, it is sometimes hard to remember that there is quite a bit of in-world racism in the original books. Fabien Frankel doesn’t quite read as “other” by the metrics that White America might employ, but the show never fails to remind us that Westerosi can see his not-belonging from the start. The Hightowers, being powerful Lords from the Reach, have centuries of antipathy towards the Dornish—even more so than the other five kingdoms—and it doesn’t matter that Cole is the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard or the Hand of the King. It doesn’t even matter that he’s an awful person. To Ser Gwayne, he’s always a Dornishman first.  We then witness his most heartbreaking moment, to my mind, in the entire series thus far: Ser Criston asks Alicent if he can wear her favor into battle. Now, in Martin’s books (and, to a lesser extent, in actual European history) a knight might wear the favor of the woman he loves to remind him of what he is fighting or competing for. Especially in the tourney-culture of ASoIaF, it can be used as a way to signify the seriousness of a relationship, or spur on flirtation. It’s kind of the single most romantic move a knight has in Martin’s world.  And, for all of Criston’s flaws, for all that he is a monstrous individual, it’s kind of refreshing to see him motivated by the desire for something that isn’t foul or corrupt. He’s not compromising his integrity and breaking his vow of chastity because he’s carnally motivated and contemptuous of their meaning. He isn’t cloaking himself in virtue because he secretly wants power. In fact, he seems to hate being Hand of the King. He does, genuinely, want to live out this romantic fantasy of being a knight errant, risking life and limb on behalf of the nobly born maiden who has accepted his love and devotion. If we go back to season one, his hatred of Rhaenyra doesn’t stem from her sexual desire—it stems from her Targaryen license, her freedom from the rules he has lived his life by. It’s not even, necessarily, the fact that she rejects his proposal that disgusts him so much as the fact that she rejects his proposal while still wanting to have a sexual and possibly romantic relationship; it’s proof that the difference between them is that she doesn’t have to follow his code. He’s wrong of course. Please don’t take any of this as an encomium or apology for Ser Criston. He’s a bad guy—a morally weak, deeply misogynistic, spiteful man. He’s certainly one of the major villains of both the book and the show, but that villainy is rooted in buying into the myths of knighthood that have been limiting and pernicious for him in the same way that they have been for those he victimizes. He’s the inverse of the Hound in many ways. Where that character believes that all knights are false so he’ll never be one, Ser Criston believes that all knights are false so he’ll try and be the truest one he can be—even if he has to compromise his basic humanity in service of his goal. The best storytellers have empathy for their monsters, and what could be more empathetic, and more easily twisted, than a man who is desperate to live up to a shining ideal that no human could reasonably embody? Dragonseeds Ulf the White (Tom Bennett) gives away the game this week, both claiming to be the bastard son of Baelon Targaryen and describing himself as a “dragonseed.” The latter is a term that Gyldayn uses to describe any bastard children of the Targaryen bloodline—and particularly unacknowledged bastards that grow up out of view of the family. Bastardy is a problem in ASoIaF because it represents a potential challenge to the line of succession. But dragonseeds are special among bastards insofar as they carry the blood of Old Valyria.  Unlike the bastards of other noble families—even of royal families (like the Baratheons in the original show’s timeline or the Starks or Lannisters during the time of Aegon the Conqueror), dragonseeds have the blood of Old Valyria in their veins and, with it, the magic that was supposedly infused into the great dragonriding families. Valyria wasn’t a powerful geopolitical force simply because they possessed dragons—the scions of the great houses are supposedly the only ones who can ride them. After all, the bond between dragon and rider goes far beyond the mere training of a beast. Targaryens are the only dragonriding lords from Valyria that remain and even other noble families of Valyrian descent (like the Velaryons) aren’t capable of it (remember that Laenor and Laena Velaryon were dragonriders because of their Targaryen mother, Rhaenys). Martin sometimes plays coy with whether or not this is Valyrian propaganda or an actual, magical truth but nothing in the books or shows, so far, has completely disproved the theory.  It’s this blood and its dragonriding properties that grants the Targaryens their power. It’s the reason they practice incest in spite of the objections of the Church of the Seven and queasiness of the majority of their subjects. So Ulf, if he truly is a dragonseed, is now engaged in one of the most powerful and dangerous games in Westeros.   The Black Council Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO Last week, we took an in-depth look at the Green Council. This week we’ll be examining the Blacks. It’s interesting that the show places nearly all of the named members of the Council from the book around the Painted Table. It gives the impression that Rhaenyra has more supporters than she actually does. Most of her council members are drawn from the houses of the Crownlands—the area immediately surrounding King’s Landing and Blackwater Bay. Lord Corlys Velaryon — Steve Toussaint plays Lord Corlys, the Sea Snake. Before settling into his current role as the commander of Rhaenyra’s navy and the closest thing she has to a Hand, Corlys went on nine famed voyages across the seas of Westeros, Essos, and Sothoryos. There’s currently an animated adaptation of his voyages in the works at HBO and relics of those voyages are visible in his castle at Driftmark, which was heavily featured in season one. While he recovers from his injuries and rebuilds the navy he nearly lost in the Stepstones, he spends most of his time on Driftmark, just southwest of Dragonstone. Lady Rhaenys Velaryon — Currently serving in her husband’s stead, Rhaenys is Corlys’ wife as well as a first cousin to King Viserys and the granddaughter of King Jaehaerys I. She’s the “Queen Who Never Was,” given her superior claim to Viserys, which was ultimately denied by Jaehaerys and the Lords of Westeros during the Great Council of 101 AC. She’s played by Eve Best who also played Wallis Simpson in The King’s Speech (2010), making this the second time she’s played a powerful woman involved in a monarchical succession crisis.  Lord Bartimos Celtigar — Played by Nicholas Jones, the show has made Lord Celtigar the calmest and most constant of Rhaenyra’s supporters, even if he tends to undermine her authority. You can tell he’s a Celtigar by the crab-shaped fasteners on his coat. Ser Alfred Broome — Ser Alfred (Jamie Kenna) appears to be the most outspoken dissenter in Rhaenyra’s small council. Martin never mentions House Broome’s heraldry, but the show has given him the heraldry of the similarly named House Broom— chequy backdrop with a helmet topped by sprig of broom. It is certainly possible that the two houses are meant to be the same and there was a change in spelling at some point in the writing. The Broomes are a Westerland House, sworn to the Lannisters, but Ser Alfred was sworn to service at Dragonstone and commands none of the house levies.  Lord Gormon Massey — Played by James Dreyfus, Massey is the Lord of Stonedance, a castle at the end of Massey’s Hook—the curved peninsula that forms the southern boundary of Blackwater Bay. His daughter is Elinda Massey (Jordon Stevens), one of Rhaenyra’s ladies-in-waiting (and the only named one on the show).  Grand Maester Gerardys — Having been promoted to Grand Maester after having served, simply, as the Maester of Dragonstone Gerardys is played by Phil Daniels. As a maester, his writings survive and are referenced by characters like Tyrion and Varys in the ASoIaF books. He’s probably named after Vince Gerardis, Martin’s literary agent.  Lord Simon Staunton — Played by Michael Elwyn, Lord Staunton is the ruler of the tiny castle of Rook’s Rest, which he asks permission to return to and defend in this episode. Rook’s Rest is located along the peninsula that terminates in Crackclaw Point, forming the Northern border of Blackwater Bay. One can see that between the Masseys and Stauntons, the blockade that keeps goods out of King’s Landing is easy to enforce with sufficient naval power—power supplied by the Velaryons. Ser Steffon Darklyn — The current head of Rhaenyra’s Queensguard, Ser Steffon (Anthony Flanagan), who accompanies Rhaenyra to King’s Landing this episode, is the son of the current Lord Darklyn of Duskendale. House Darklyn is extinct in the Game of Thrones era after having attempted a coup by kidnapping Aerys II (the Mad King) and holding him hostage behind the walls of Duskendale for six months.  DragonWatch This episode marks the first appearance of Moondancer, Baela Velaryon’s dragon. In the books, she is described as pale green with pearlescent horns and accents and being not quite large enough to carry Baela during the Dance of the Dragons. The show has made Moondancer a bit larger so that Baela can be a more active combatant in the Dance. The show keeps that pale green coloration and adds some awesome, darker green brindling as well as a particularly punky finned ridge on the top of her head.  We get another shot of Seasmoke, still flying between Dragonstone and Driftmark. Mysaria suggests that he is lonely without his rider. This feels like a soft confirmation of my supposition, last week, that the show would treat Laenor’s exile as equivalent to his death. Or, perhaps, Laenor has died in the intervening years (it’s been about eight since he fled). Either way, I don’t expect we’ll see him again or learn of his fate. Seasmoke is a feral dragon once again.  Tyraxes and Stormcloud also get a shoutout in this episode. They are, respectively, the dragons of Joffrey Velaryon (Rhaenyra’s youngest son with Ser Harwin Strong/Ser Laenor Velaryon) and Aegon Targaryen (also called Aegon the younger, Rhaenyra’s fourth son and her eldest with Daemon). Both dragons are too small to be effective in battle and too small for an adult to ride. Still, it’s always nice to be reminded that they exist off-screen.  The Negroni Sbagliato Summit Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO After Season 7 Episode 5 of the original Game of Thrones series, my dear friend and professor of Early Modern literature, Colby Gordon, tweeted “there’s no femme solidarity in Westeros.” It was a lamentation about the fact that much of that season pitted Arya (Maisie Williams) and Sansa (Sophie Turner) against one another as Littlefinger (Aiden Gillen) manipulated the two sisters. The show attempted to deliver a satisfying twist by revealing that the two sisters had been secretly working together all along but, of course, we didn’t trust the show to give us that plot and, for many viewers, the whole thing fell a bit flat. In some ways, the entirety of HotD is that plot writ large; Rhaenyra and Alicent are powerful women, set at each other’s throats by their allegiance to the disappointing men in their lives. It’s a dangerous dynamic to toy with, given how tired that plot has become, but tonight, the show tips its hand a little bit and goes off-book, making for a truly memorable and brilliant final scene.  The relationship between Rhaenyra and Alicent is an invention of the show (in the book, Alicent is eleven years older than Rhaenyra and she is not in her stepdaughter’s orbit until Viserys marries her), as is this secret meeting between the two of them in the Sept. There is a lot to unpack about this scene. On one level, it’s great to see Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke share the screen. Beyond the excitement of bringing the show’s two protagonists together, it’s undeniable that Cooke and D’Arcy have an intoxicating chemistry, perhaps best exemplified by the viral interview clip from 2022 where the two actors give their drink of choice. D’Arcy’s breathy, flirtatious enunciation of “A Negroni… sbagliato… with Prosecco in it” paired with their raskish lean forward and followed by Cooke’s flustered “ooh, stunning!” was the moment that launched a thousand ships—so to speak. On Monday mornings, my DMs are filled with memes from friends bemoaning the fact that the show won’t just let Alicent and Rhaenyra be together.  And, while I don’t think the show will deviate from the books so much as to give us the happy, sapphic ending that the two characters clearly deserve, I don’t think that the show is exactly engaging in queerbaiting either. There is a deep love between Alicent and Rhaenyra—even a heavily implied, sublimated, closeted romantic longing. Queerness isn’t as stigmatized in Westeros as is it in our world. The majority of straight characters who are confronted with the reality of a queer character’s sexuality in Martin’s books react with a kind of pragmatic shrug; a disinterest in the opposite sex is considered a problem to be solved, but only insofar as it’s a potential barrier to in-wedlock procreation—the primary anxiety of Westerosi highborn. Alicent and Rhaenyra, as eldest daughters of noble houses, have always been valuable commodities in political marriages—so, despite a lack of moral condemnation, both women have always been under immense pressure to engage in heteronormative relationships and produce legitimate children as a result. And any chance for Alicent and Rhaenyra to be open and honest about their probable interest in one another was dashed when Viserys announced his intention to marry Alicent. Being in love with one’s stepmother and the parent to your siblings is pretty rough (though, if anyone could make it work, a Targaryen could). So we have two women, harboring long-buried affection for one another if not outright romantic love, whose actors have the kind of on-and-off-screen chemistry most rom-com directors could only dream of, and both of whom are crucial to the impending civil war, finally confronting one another, face to face, for the first time since the Blacks and Greens crowned their respective monarchs.  Early in the episode, Rhaenys wearily articulates what might as well be the thesis of the entire show—“soon they will not even remember what began the war in the first place […] we teeter now at the point when none of it will matter and the desire to kill and burn takes hold and reason is forgotten.” The cycle of revenge, of “a son for a son,” ends up as a mad power grab with no true justification. This is echoed, later in the episode, by Ser Simon Strong who says that the source of the Bracken/Blackwood feud is “lost in time: sin begets sin begets sin.” Rhaenys tells Rhaenyra that she needs to seek out Alicent because it’s the men around them both that want war, and that women’s cooler heads must prevail. She clearly knows what she’s talking about—after all, Rhaenys chose not to raise her banners against her cousin Viserys although her claim was clearly superior. She’s the Queen Who Never Was and her refusal to pursue the thones is what saved the realm from war for a generation. Neither Rhaenyra nor Alicent wants to be the woman whose ambitions, however justified, plunges their world into fire and blood. It is this pressure that undergirds the meeting itself. There is an easy vulnerability between the two, despite the stakes and the tension. Rhaenyra’s exclamation of “Oh, I have begun badly” after threatening to kill Alicent got an actual chuckle out of me, even considering how on edge I felt during this scene. But it is genuinely affecting to see them struggle to come to terms. I saw a lot of complaints after episode eight of last season to the effect that the showrunners hinged Alicent and Rhaenyra’s antipathy on the former’s misunderstanding of Viserys’ dying words. I think there’s something to be said for that response. The best dramas find reasons, other than the tiniest missed connections, to put likable and rational characters at odds, and this episode seems to be setting that right. Rhaenyra, without revealing the whole of Aegon’s dream, tells Alicent that her father was likely talking about Aegon the Conqueror and not Aegon II. Alicent is clearly harrowed and horrified by the fact that this civil war is coming to pass because she did not have the context to interpret her husband’s incoherent ramblings. There is the glimmer of hope that the two of them, exonerated, in one another’s minds, of the horrible murders that have been laid at their feet, might come back to the mutual love they bore Viserys and the love they hold for one another. But it’s not to be. Rhaenyra is right: the two of them don’t want war, both believe that she would be the better monarch, and they know they are each other’s best hope for peace. But Alicent is also right: it’s too late and Aegon, Cole, and Aemond won’t be stopped by her. This isn’t the story of how two women were duped into fighting by the men in their lives anymore. It’s the story of how their love for one another and their desire for peace was never going to be enough to defeat the impulsive, bellicose machinations of a patriarchal realm. So many reviews and comments this season have been characterizing Alicent as the villain of this show and Rhaenyra as the uncomplicated hero. This episode feels like a clear message from the showrunners that they disagree with those assessments. The villain of HotD is and has always been the patriarchy.  Odds and Ends Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO The Blackwoods and Brackens are the Westerosi version of the Hatfields and McCoys–ancient feuding neighbors who regularly spill blood in an endless cycle of revenge. Martin often plays their rivalries for laughs but it’s great to see the show’s version of the Battle of the Burning Mill depicted as absolute senselessness horror where what could have been a silly, entertaining, stand-off between some backwoods nobility smash cuts to the aftermath of truly gruesome, widespread violence.  There have been some hints of it in season one but I believe that this episode officially unveils the banners of Aegon’s court. The show reveals a golden, three-headed dragon (representing Aegon II’s dragon, Sunfyre) on a green field (representing the Hightower flame in their calls to war—an invention of the show). In Fire & Blood, the use of the term “green” comes solely from Alicent’s anniversary dress and so their banner is a golden three-headed dragon on the traditional Targaryen black. Making green central to Hightower iconography is a good move as far as the show is concerned, and it lets viewers more readily distinguish the banners of the two factions from one another.  Thus far, the Blacks on the show use the traditional Targaryen banner—a red, three-headed dragon on black. In the book, their banners are those traditional arms quartered with the Velaryon seahorse (white on teal) and the Arryn moon and falcon (white on blue) to represent the families of Rhaenyra’s first husband and her mother. We’ll see if the show chooses to represent those interests in the Blacks’ banners; it seems likely however that they will stick with the purely Targaryen iconography, especially since it means that the field of each banner matches their respective faction’s namesake.  The strange woman who tells Daemon that he’ll die at Harrenhal is fan favorite character, Alys Rivers. Even better, she’s played by Gayle Rankin who definitely stole all our collective hearts (and not just mine, to the concern of all my friends) as Sheila the She-Wolf on the excellent and canceled-too-soon Netflix show, GLOW (she’s also currently starring on Broadway as Sally Bowles in the latest revival of Cabaret). Let’s talk about Ser Criston’s Dornishness. In last week’s article, I mentioned that, in Fire & Blood, House Cole is a minor noble family from the Dornish Marches. Despite the name, the Marches are actually in the Reach, on the Dornish border. Because of centuries-old border skirmishes between Dorne and the Reach, the Marcher lords (like Game of Thrones’ Beric Dondarrion) are among the most bitter and anti-Dornish people in Westeros. It is unclear if the show has simply placed House Cole farther south and made them a Dornish House (which would make Criston an exile and expat) or if he is a member of House Cole as described but has some significant Dornish ancestry (which would make him the subject of scorn, potentially within his own family). Either way, making him Dornish is a neat change, especially during an era when Dorne isn’t part of the Seven Kingdoms.  Aemond walks the coin that Blood knocked to the ground in episode one over his knuckles. It’s a great little visual reminder of his obsession with the fact that he, alone among the Greens, knows he was the true target of Blood and Cheese’s ill-fated mission. Corlys, despite being married to the Queen Who Never Was and supporting her claim, still can’t bring himself to name his granddaughter Rhaena as his own heir. He may recognize the exceptional leadership of his wife, but he’s too deeply rooted in Westerosi patriarchy. Aegon models his new suit of Valyrian steel armor, claiming that it was worn by Aegon the Conqueror. In the books, the only person who wears Valyrian steel plate is Euron Greyjoy, and it’s considered to be a priceless artifact, given the fact that the secrets of forging Valyrian steel were lost with the doom of Valyria. It’s also somewhat ostentatious as the main properties that Martin ascribes to the substance (roughly equivalent to the similarly mysterious, real-world alloy Damascus steel) is the keen edge it keeps even after much wear. Armor doesn’t really need a keen edge. This all overlooks the fact that enough Valyrian steel to make of plate and mail would cost more than a kingdom (the show does mention it cost as much as a castle); Euron’s suit was looted from the ruins of Valyria on one of his dangerous, relic-finding expeditions. Game of Thrones made a name for itself, in part, by banking on the titillating effect of femme-bodied nudity—let’s not forget that “sexposition” was coined by fans and critics in the early seasons of the show. It’s been interesting to see that nudity, on HotD, is (a) more egalitarian across body types and (b) rarely played for out and out titillation. Between Alicent’s uncomfortable frenetic disrobing ahead of her anxiety bath last episode and Aemond using his nude body as a kind of off-putting defense against his brother in this week’s brothel scene, it’s nice to see HBO using its pro-nudity distribution model for something other than the male gaze. My HBO screener spoiler list said to say nothing about “the surprise appearance of a season 1 cast member” until this episode aired. I assumed it was going to be Viserys in flashback. A pleasant shock, then, to see Milly Alcock show up as young Rhaenyra in Daemon’s vision. Also, man, the show is making a lot of use of that Prince Jaehaerys prop body.  The original Game of Thrones started to play fast and loose with travel times and distances with characters famously teleporting all over the map. So far, it’s been nice to see the show attempt some accuracy. There are constant references to the armies of Oldtown (and the Hightowers) being months away from King’s Landing and it even takes a few days for Daemon to fly to Harrenhal on dragonback. This also works in reverse. The numerous secret trips to King’s Landing that the show has given us are stark reminders of just how geographically close our two warring courts are.  In Conclusion The show’s willingness to add new material into the show might have been disastrous. But, thus far, Condal and his writer’s room seem to have a clear idea of who their characters are and are making subtle changes to Martin’s narrative that enhance those characterizations. Additionally, the show looks better than anything else on television. The attention to detail continues to be astounding. I simply don’t have the time or space, in these articles, to call out every incredible bit of production design or amazing VFX vista. With a slower pace, no time jumps, and a solid foundation from season one, House of the Dragon is shaping up to be a wildly rewarding show and the season isn’t even half over yet.[end-mark] The post A Secret Meeting Between Warring Queens: Will Cooler Heads Prevail in <i>House of the Dragon</i> Season 2, Episode 3 appeared first on Reactor.

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Have you ever wondered why male mammals don’t produce milk for their young? Well, a new mathematical model may explain it, and it has a lot to do with microbes.The absence of male lactation in mammals has perplexed scientists for years. There is currently no universally satisfying reason why males should not produce milk. For one thing, genetically male mammals have both the means for producing milk, mammary tissues, and the potential to lactate. But they generally lack sufficient levels of the hormonal triggers that make it happen – hormones like prolactin, for instance, are actually downregulated in males.During the 1970s, evolutionary theorists suggested that the near absence of lactating males could be explained by paternal uncertainty. Basically, males can’t be sure they are the biological father of their offspring, so there is less of an evolutionary drive to invest in their care, especially through breastfeeding.However, mathematicians from the University of York believe there may be a different reason why males don’t breastfeed their young. According to a new mathematical model, the absence of lactating males may be driven by the microbes that live in breast milk. When a parent breastfeeds their child, they are doing more than just providing food. The act also transfers the parent’s microorganisms – including bacteria, fungi, and viruses – that are present in their body. This is vital for establishing the infant’s gut microbiome.However, problems start to appear if both parents transmit their microbiomes through this process. If both fed their infants milk, then there is a greater chance of harmful microbes spreading through mammalian populations. Maternal-only lactation stops this from happening, as it serves as a kind of “sieve”, preventing the infants from receiving too many nasty microbes.“This ecosystem plays a crucial role in health including by helping to protect animals against disease, helping to digest food and in many other ways we are only just discovering”, Brennen Fagan working at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity and the Mathematics Department at the University of York, explained in a statement.“While microbes are not inherently harmful or beneficial; it’s their presence and abundance that dictate the overall health of this internal community. A ‘wrong actor’ at the early point of an animal’s life could change the microbiome at a pivotal moment.”Fagan and colleagues became fascinated with this topic after they learned about Azara’s owl monkeys.“They turn previous assumptions about why males don’t breastfeed upside down because they are the most devoted dads in the primate world: They do 80–90 percent of childcare and only hand their babies back to their female partners for nursing”, George Constable, from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Work, added.“When both parents are involved in feeding, the chance of a microbe being passed along and getting an initial foothold in a population is essentially doubled. So our theory suggests selection against the transmission of harmful microbes through mammary milk could be an additional selection pressure against male lactation.”The mathematical model reveals the benefits of getting breastfed by one parent, but it also demonstrates why this would make sense from an evolutionary perspective. That’s because the infant has already received microbes from its mother during birth, and maybe even while in the womb.“This theory fits with a pattern of strategies mammals have adopted in an evolutionary bid to limit the spread of potentially harmful elements. Notably, in humans mitochondrial DNA is exclusively passed down from the mother,” Constable explained.“This mechanism serves as a natural filter, maintaining genetic integrity by suppressing the proliferation of detrimental mutations. Additionally, the prevalence of monogamous relationships among certain species has been suggested as an adaptive response aimed at minimizing the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).”Although the research is useful for understanding the evolution of breastfeeding in mammals, the team stresses that it should not be seen as the basis for any societal judgment about the act in humans.As Fagan noted, “Our model is very much focused on the long-term evolution of the animal kingdom. The model does not tell us about individual families making individual choices on how to safely feed their children, especially not for humans in the modern world.”“Our hypothesis fills a gap in evolutionary theory and is concerned with selection pressures on mammals at population level and over very long periods of time spanning multiple generations.”The paper is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Some 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) beneath the Arctic Ocean, scientists are exploring a bubbling field of hydrothermal vents along the Knipovich Ridge near Svalbard, the northernmost settlement on Earth.The hydrothermal vent field was recently discovered on the seafloor within the triangle between Greenland, Norway, and Svalbard on the boundary of the North American and European tectonic plates. Using a remotely controlled sub, researchers at the University of Bremen’s Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) gathered samples and data from the hydrothermal vent field, which they named Jøtul after a giant in Nordic mythology.Hydrothermal vents are found at junctions of shifting tectonic plates where geothermal activity is at its most intense. They form when water penetrates the ocean floor and becomes heated by magma from the bowels of the planet. The superheated water then rises back to the sea floor through cracks and fissures, becoming enriched with minerals and materials dissolved from the oceanic crustal rocks.Despite being a major junction of tectonic plates, no hydrothermal vents were previously known to be located on the Knipovich Ridge – until now.Some of the hydrothermal mounds were home to organisms, including tiny crustaceans.Image credit: MARUM/University of BremenThe Knipovich Ridge is particularly special because it wasn’t formed by two plates crashing together, but by two plates moving apart at a rate of less than 2 centimeters (less than 1 inch) per year, known as a spreading ridge.Very little is known about hydrothermal activity on slow-spreading ridges, so the team is keen to learn about the chemical composition of the escaping fluids, plus the geological features formed by its heat and minerals.Some of the fluids gushing out of the Jøtul Field are unbelievably hot, measuring up to 316 °C (601°F). When the superheated fluid makes contact with the frigid waters, the minerals solidify, forming large chimney-like structures called black smokers.Another interesting feature of the Jøtul Field is that its hydrothermal fluids are rich in methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as well as carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas. This means that the region might have some implications for climate change and the carbon cycle in the ocean.Strange and wonderful lifeforms can often inhabit fields of hydrothermal vents. In the pitch-black depths of the ocean where photosynthesis is impossible, hydrothermal fluids provide the foundation for chemosynthetic organisms, which obtain nutrients through chemical energy rather than sunlight. An in-depth understanding of the field's biodiversity is not yet available, although it will no doubt be a point of interest for the researchers at MARUM, who plan to return to the area in late summer 2024.The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

In a major first for a project aiming to restore the population of wildcats in Scotland, at least two females have given birth in the wild – and the footage of their kittens is as “awwww”-inducing as you’d expect.Last year, 19 captive-bred wildcats were released into Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park by Saving Wildcats, a project led by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland that aims to recover the critically endangered Scottish population of the European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris).The project team has now announced that at least two of the female wildcats released have given birth, having caught the mothers and kittens on camera.“We suspected that some of the females had given birth when their movement and activity changed very suddenly but didn’t know for sure until footage of the kittens was captured on our cameras,” said Dr Keri Langridge, the field manager for Saving Wildcats, in a statement. “With the support of local landowners, gamekeepers and the local community, our field team has successfully managed to monitor and film these kittens in the wild – which is no simple task. We have taken extreme care not to disturb the mother and kittens.”What’s not yet known is who the baby daddies are. Though it’s hoped they’re fellow wildcats, there’s a risk that the mothers may have interbred with domestic cats – generally considered to be the biggest threat to the survival of the wildcat population in Scotland.“While we know from their GPS-radio collars that the two females that have given birth have overlapped with male wildcats, we do not yet know their paternity,” said Dr Helen Senn, Saving Wildcats’ lead.“Once the wildcats are old enough, we will attempt to get a DNA profile from them. We are hopeful that they are indeed the offspring of male wildcats that were released last year – and the first of many more to come.”Ok wildcat mom, keep your secrets.Image credit: Saving WildcatsWildcats were once widespread in Scotland, first having made their way over to Britain from mainland Europe around 9,000 years ago and getting stuck when Doggerland disappeared beneath the sea.However, habitat loss and hunting had already gone a long way to reducing wildcat numbers by the end of the 19th century – and in the century that followed, interbreeding and the spread of disease from feral domestic cats also took a heavy toll. By 2019, the Scottish wildcat was considered to be on the brink of extinction in the wild.It’s hoped that the birth of wildcat kittens in their native habitat is only the first in a series of successful steps to bring them back from that ledge. “This is a major milestone for wildcat recovery in Scotland,” said Senn. “These births demonstrate that the process of breeding wildcats for release into the wild is working, as those released animals have learned to hunt and survive – and now reproduce in their first breeding season, a clear indication that they are doing well.”“While the mortality rate for wildcat kittens in their first year of life can be high,” Senn added, “we are hopeful for the future of these kittens.”

High in the upper atmosphere, from the edge of space to well within it, there is the ionosphere. Atoms and molecules there are missing electrons, so they are electrically charged. They are influenced by what is happening nearer to the surface but also by the Sun. New observations suggest that there is more understanding to be had, following the discovery of new structures.The work was possible thanks to NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission. It found that there are some peculiar formations in the ionosphere shaped like letters: X and C. These are connected to the previously known phenomena of crests and bubbles in the ionosphere, places where there is more plasma than others.The X-shaped structures had been observed before, believed to be the merging of crests caused by intense activity either from a powerful volcanic eruption or from an increase in the solar wind – the stream of charged particles from the Sun – following solar flares or coronal mass ejections. GOLD has shown here that X-shaped formations can also happen during quiet periods.       “Earlier reports of merging were only during geomagnetically disturbed conditions — it is an unexpected feature during geomagnetic quiet conditions,” lead author Fazlul Laskar, from the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), said in a statement.The presence of X-shaped formations in quiet periods implies something else is at work. Computer models suggest it could be that churning in the lower atmosphere can actually pull down some of the plasma, leading to the merging of the crests into an X shape even when there are no major disturbances.“The X is odd because it implies that there are far more localized driving factors,” explained Jeffrey Klenzing, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This is expected during the extreme events, but seeing it during ‘quiet time’ suggests that the lower atmosphere activity is significantly driving the ionospheric structure.”Similarly to the crests, the bubble also ends up in the shape of a letter. These bubbles are generally thin and long, following the magnetic lines of the planet. But some bubbles become curved into a C or reverse C shape. The process is believed to be linked to terrestrial wind, even though the ionosphere extends from 80 kilometers to 640 kilometers (50 to 400 miles) above ground.Among the oddities, the team found plasma bubbles that were incredibly close together, in the range of several hundred kilometers. This suggests that there is significant turbulence in the ionosphere – it is far from calm.“Within that close proximity, these two opposite-shaped plasma bubbles had never been thought of, never been imaged,” said lead author of the work on the C-shaped formations, Deepak Karan, also at LASP.“The fact that we have very different shapes of bubbles this close together tells us that the dynamics of the atmosphere is more complex than we expected,” Klenzing added.Both papers were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics and can be found here and here.

Beryl, the first named hurricane of this year’s Atlantic season, has made a historic start even before it’s due to reach the Caribbean this morning and, according to officials, it seems set to continue making its mark.While the Atlantic hurricane season runs all the way from June 1 through to November 30, the first named hurricane usually forms in early to mid-August and the first major hurricane – Category 3 and above – between late August and early September.Hurricane Beryl has already gone against the grain in both cases. First, it formed in late June – Friday 28 specifically, from a tropical storm. Second, it rapidly reached major hurricane status; on Sunday, its powerful winds took it into Category 4, making it the earliest storm of that strength to form in the Atlantic on record.Hurricane Beryl as it moves into the Caribbean.Image credit: CIRA/NOAAAlthough it’s now dipped back down into Category 3, Beryl is still set to be an “extremely dangerous” hurricane as it makes landfall in the Caribbean, according to the key messages of an advisory issued this morning by the National Hurricane Center.“Potentially catastrophic hurricane-force winds, a life-threatening storm surge, and damaging waves are expected when Beryl passes over portions of the Windward Islands with the highest risk of the core in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada beginning later this morning,” said the center.The latest data has shown the storm has maximum sustained winds of around 195 kilometers per hour (120 miles per hour), the strength of which is capable of uprooting trees and majorly damaging even well-built homes.It’s also anticipated that the storm surge could raise water levels by as much as 1.8 to 2.7 meters (6 to 9 feet) above normal tide levels, bringing “large and destructive” waves to coastal areas, said the National Hurricane Center.Add to that potential rainfall of 7.6 to 15.2 centimeters (3 to 6 inches), and it’s no wonder that residents in the Caribbean islands set to be hit by the hurricane first are being advised to prepare as much as possible.“Shelter in place or evacuate to a safe location if your home is unsafe or vulnerable to flooding or wind damage. Secure food, water and medicine for at least seven days in waterproof containers. Outdoor drains should be clear and loose objects secured by now. Sandbags should be near all entrances to your home,” warned the Trinidad & Tobago Meteorological Service early Monday morning.Even once Beryl passes over those first islands and moves across the Caribbean Sea, it’s expected to remain a “powerful hurricane”.While the current hurricane has already made its mark, it may not be the only one that does so this year. Back in May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service predicted that the 2024 hurricane season was likely to be an “extraordinary one”, with potentially four to seven major hurricanes.

Two sticks found in a cave in southeastern Australia show signs of processing that perfectly match curse-making practices described in the 19th century. The sticks have been dated at an estimated 11,000 and 12,000 years old, which would make this the longest period over which we have evidence for the continuation of a cultural practice anywhere in the world.Cloggs Cave, in Victoria’s Gippsland region, lies within the lands of the GunaiKurnai people. In the 1970s, an archaeological dig was conducted there without consultation with the GunaiKurnai, but little of value came of it. In 2009, GunaiKurnai representatives decided they wanted their history explored properly and set about establishing a relationship with anthropologists at Monash University, which has proved vastly more fruitful.Much of the cave became a sinkhole around 6,000 years ago, leading to objects of very different ages lying side-by-side. Consequently, Professor Bruno David and colleagues decided to focus on a part of the cave unaffected by the collapse. They found a lightly burnt Casuarina stick 40 centimeters (16 inches) long emerging from a fireplace the size of a hand, surrounded by limestone rocks. The stick was carbon-dated as approximately 12,000 years old, making it the oldest surviving wooden artifact found in Australia.It’s very unusual for anything wooden to survive that long, and the stick showed some even more exceptional features. The singeing at one end indicated it had been briefly placed in a cool fire, nothing like what is seen for something that was once part of a fire for warmth or food.The stick as it was found in the cave, one end still in the fireplace in which it was lightly charred.Image Credit: Monash UniversityThat alone indicated a ritual or cultural practice to David, and the more the stick was investigated the stronger the indication became. The stick carried lipids from human or animal fat, and twigs branching off had been carefully removed.Further digging revealed a similar Casuarina stick, approximately a thousand years younger, but processed in the same way. The end of the second stick had an angled back like a spear thrower, an instrument associated with power among Australian Indigenous cultures.“We are still astounded that they've preserved for so long,” David told IFLScience. “Things that favoured survival are: (1) this part of the cave is very dry; and (2) the sediments are not acidic, but rather have pHs between 7 and 8 ... meaning that they're neutral to slightly alkaline. Also, (3) there's not much mechanical weathering of the deposit; no large animals running or hopping around, and the cave was never used by family groups for camping. And (4) the sticks were quickly buried by fine sediments (including by ash from later low-heat fires nearby). All of these are ideal conditions for the preservation of buried items."The locations in which the two sticks were found, drawn as cartoons (left) relative to rocks and a wombat dropping and photographed.Image Credit: Monash UniversitySurviving GunaiKurnai people had lost the cultural memory of what the sticks might have been used for. However, 19th century ethnographer Alfred Howitt recorded aspects of culture of the Indigenous People of southeastern Australia, including descriptions of practices that were forgotten when the region’s First Nations were subsequently confined to missions and banned from speaking their own languages.Uncle Russell Mullett of the GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation (GLaWAC) discovered that, in addition to a book Howitt had published, his notes were kept in a museum. After a long struggle, Mullett gained access to these notes, restoring information not only to the GunaiKurnai but to other Indigenous Peoples whose ancestors Howitt had engaged with. At a time when many other anthropologists were mostly interested in trying to prove Indigenous Australians were racially inferior and destined to die out, Howitt appears to have been genuinely interested in their culture and a faithful reporter.Howitt recorded that when the GunaiKurnai people wanted to curse someone, they would have a highly-trained person known as a mulla-mullung conduct a ceremony using a Casuarina stick and something belonging to whoever had attracted their ire. According to Howitt, the item from the intended victim stick was fastened to the stick with some eaglehawk feathers and the stick was smeared in human or animal fat. The stick would be stuck in the ground next to a fire and the mulla-mullung would sing over it, including the victim’s name. If buried soon after the ritual, the stick would have been indistinguishable from the two sticks David and colleagues found.Mulla-mullung were also healers and may have had matching rituals designed to cure people.Jessica Shapiro of GLaWAC told IFLScience that reports of the ritual are distinctive to GunaiKurnai country.For these artefacts to survive is just amazing. They’re telling us a story. They’ve been waiting here all this time for us to learn from them. A reminder that we are a living culture still connected to our ancient past.Uncle Russell Mullett“The connection of these archaeological finds with recent GunaiKurnai practices demonstrates 12,000 years of knowledge-transfer,” David said in a statement. “Nowhere else on Earth has archaeological evidence of a very specific cultural practice previously been tracked so far back in time.”The GunaiKurnai lands border on Bass Strait, which flooded around the times these sticks were used, isolating Tasmania. Intriguingly, there is evidence Tasmanian Indigenous people retained stories of that flooding, as well as positions of the stars at the time, until the 19th century, becoming then the oldest surviving stories in the world.“For these artefacts to survive is just amazing. They’re telling us a story. They’ve been waiting here all this time for us to learn from them. A reminder that we are a living culture still connected to our ancient past. It’s a unique opportunity to be able to read the memoirs of our Ancestors and share that with our community,” Mullett said.“Today, GLaWAC and Monash University are showing what a true Traditional Owner-led partnership should look like. It’s only when you combine the Western scientific techniques with our traditional knowledge that the whole story can start to unfold,” The discovery is published open access in Nature Human Behaviour.