Oh yeah, the Bran stuff is frustrating. That really feels like it is left vague on purpose so it can be brought in whenever a dues ex machina is needed in the future.

In our house every time Jon Snow is asked a question, we respond with "I dun't knuh!", which does occasionally obscure his reply, but I don't think he's said anything important since the beginning of the show so it's not too bad.

I'm getting tired of the wheel-spinning this season- it seems like in the past at least a few storylines would move forward every episode, even if it was just laying down a foundation for later stuff happening. I don't think anything even happened this time, aside from Arya getting snatched by the Hound, and the Continued Adventures of Brienne and Jaime (which is kind of silly but also fun, so I can't complain). Does it just feel that way because I'm watching it a week at the time, whereas I marathoned the first two seasons? Ugh, also SO tired of Theon getting tortured. It was clear GRRM wrote this episode because of the relative gratuity of tits.

Klaxons- Twin Flames

I actually did some assist work on this when it came out a couple years ago, just realized it totally belongs in this thread.

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee are both fantastic and should do a good job countering that conservatism.

Ugh jealous! Are any of those fancy tricolor vinyl or fun gimmicky stuff like that?

Do me, do me!

You can put baby spinach in anything. Put it in an omelette, make a salad with blue cheese (which you can also put in the omelette) and cranberries and walnuts, make some pasta, sautee some of that baby spinach (more than you think you'll want, it cooks down and wilts pretty small- like a large handful per person), and toss that shit with pesto. Delicious. Put some in ramen with an egg (just crack it in right after you take it off the heat and swirl it around a bit- the hot broth will cook it) and some sriracha. Make another salad with avocado this time, and a hard-boiled egg and tomato, and a little more of that blue cheese. Make a quiche, or a spinach pie! If you do smoothies or juice you could toss a handful in there. I know there are some "sneaky" recipes for like brownies and stuff with spinach in them but that seems weird to me. I go through one of those boxes of pre-washed spinach a week and I do seriously have it in about every meal. I'll let you know if I think of anything else.

I made the pate earlier in the day, which took as long as it takes to pan-cook some chicken livers with herbs and put them in a food processor (maybe twenty minutes?), and for the rest, probably about three or three and a half hours from the time we browned the roast and set it aside to actually taking it out of the oven. Our pastry was pre-made too, so that saved some time.. The recipe was pretty well-written, so following those steps in order ended up being efficient and making loads of sense.

Our roast was only about 2/3 lb, so it was perfect for a very filling meal for two people, but now I really want to do a giant one for Christmas or Thanksgiving.

I made Beef Wellington:

from this recipe. It was delicious.

I think we established way up-thread that no one is saying "don't give advice ever". Plenty of people were trying to explain how that advice, specifically when it comes to rape, can be used to blame the victim. That's it.

The fact that she was a woman was technically a contributing factor.

I had a banana sandwich for dinner.

I'm looking forward to that new Ethan Hawke-Julie Delpy movie.

Sorry what's going on here? We're just listing things that have nothing to do with anything, right?

Personal injury is actually a particularly bad example because that is NOTORIOUSLY profitable.

AGAIN, advice-turned-victim-blaming isn't JUST the media response or blame for being carelessness, it's the cops and the judge and the attorneys who are victim blaming, whether they bring up the victim's past consensual sexual history, or whether they were intoxicated, or what they were wearing. It's a system that routinely fails to convict rapists, and one that discourages its victims from seeking justice. There IS no other analogy.

I want to point out that RAINN doesn't say anything about how you should dress, which was one of your examples. RAINN's advice is good advice, sure. But it's also important how and when that advice is used. When your car gets broken into, you're not going to have what you should have done differently thrown back in your face by the cops, your peers (maybe your friends if they're jerks), the judge, the media. That IS what happens in rape cases. THAT is the behavior that is part of rape culture. It's not the existence of that advice, but that people twist that advice into moralizing and judgments against the victim. That twisting doesn't happen in any other crime. It happens in cases of rape because our society has a really big issue with women and their sexuality.

Right and no one's ever not pursued a car break-in because they're terrified that how they  once let a friend borrow their car will be used against them, as evidence that they wanted their car broken into.

http://www.rainn.org/statistics This is an anti-sexual violence org with lots and lots of stats on their website, mostly from the department of justice. This PDF has a lot of statistics too, esp about substances involed, etc: http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Similarities_And_Differences_In_Women_s_Sexual_Assault_Experiences_Based_On_Tactics.pdf

It's how you tell them, and what you tell them, and how frequently and to what end. Like I mentioned above, rape is the least-reported crime, and much of that has to do with how loudly and frequently the whole "women need to dress this way not to get raped" drum is beaten. Please please try to understand that women get messages about how to act and how to present themselves sexually and how to dress every single minute of their lives, and those messages are frequently contradictory and almost always negative. It's vastly different from the choice someone makes to leave their car unlocked or whatever.

GoMichael- yeah that's pretty much right

Johnny Roastbeef- the main one is that rapists tend to be someone the victim knew beforehand. The stranger jumping out of an alley is largely a myth (though that happens too, obviously, just less so in proportion to date rape situations, which are also vastly underreported for the victim-blaming self-blame mentioned above).

What you miss is how frequently women receive admonishments on how they dress and what they drink and who they hang out with, compared to an offhand tip about not getting mugged or whatever, and how frequently those admonishments dissuade women from pressing charges. It's not just that other people victim-blame, so do the victims. That shit is internalized to a degree that prevents them from seeking justice. That is unique to rape from all those other crimes you mentioned.

For the record, style of dress has nothing to do whatsoever with how likely it is that a woman will be raped. It's the most frequently cited victim-blaming argument though!