WearyTraveler

Sloan's points were that ACNtracker: 1) Is a bad app because anonymous users can post lies (such as, 'Jimmy Kimmel is drunk at XYZ bar right now!!!' when the guy was actually with his family thousands of miles away from XYZ bar) and lies are damaging to the innocent celebrities 2) Is an invasion of privacy (where is it written that just because you're famous people have a right to pry into your personal life?) 3) Is dangerous because a stalker could actually cause physical harm (even death) to the targeted celebrity Don's points were (among others) that Mary's website: 1) Is a place were anonymous users can post lies (such as, 'John Smith raped me!!' when John Smith is just a guy who the poster hates for non-criminal reasons) and lies can be damaging to the innocent person that is falsely accused 2) Is an invasion of privacy (people can accuse anybody, innocent or guilty; the accused's life will be scrutinized and his/her privacy invaded, even if the accused is innocent) 3) Is dangerous because someone may take it upon him/herself to punish the accused by not hiring him/her, causing physical harm (even death), etc to the targeted accused I find it ironic that although both, Sloan and Don, were making very similar (if not completely identical) points, somehow Sloan is this great crusader and Don is just Sorkin's mouthpiece, through whom the writer can validate, even impose on us, his "misogynistic" views. What's the percentage of celebrities about whom people post lies on the internet? probably higher than 2%, so does that mean that because a higher percentage of celebrities are affected, they are somehow entitled to a better defense of their rights? How much damage can come to a celebrity from such lies? It depends, but a celebrity certainly has more financial resources to fight back. Not very many celebrities end up dead because of a stalker, their lives and reputations are likely salvageable after a lie has been posted about them; but when a regular person is falsely accused of such a serious crime as rape, it is probably not as easy for him/her to repair the damage. Are celebrities' rights somehow more important than those of the regular men and women out there? I think because Mary was a sympathetic, believable character, we feel for her and we instinctively want her to get justice. She got raped and then she didn't get any justice, and there was not much she could do. Bree, OTOH, came off as an arrogant, unsympathetic asshole who didn't care about anyone but himself. What if Bree had been depicted as a shy, young man who had grown up poor but whose life drastically changed when he created this app that Pruitt bought? What if selling that app allowed him to take his parents and siblings out of a miserable, poor, crime-ridden neighborhood? Would we feel even a little bad for him then? For the record, I'm a 42 year old woman who has never been raped, thank God, but I have been stalked (and it's terrifying). And when I was younger somebody who had a fight with my mother threatened to actually LIE so that an academic full college scholarship I'd earned with blood, sweat and tears would be taken away from me (and I wasn't even involved in the particular incident with my mother and this person, she just wanted to hurt my mom where it would be most painful -her children). I took action to prevent that from happening but I can't tell you how much anguish that caused me. At the end of the day, I think one of the points that Sorkin was trying to make is that these are not simple issues and there isn't a simple solution. There are drawbacks and sometimes horrible consequences, no matter what solution we explore. Also, I don't think Sorkin hates the internet. I think he hates the irresponsible, immature, amoral, stupid assholes out there that ruin the internet for everyone. And there are plenty of those. I also think that Don made up his mind about airing the story when he saw Sloan and Mac fighting back for their belief that they should report the news properly against Charlie, of all people; someone who up until 52 days ago would have completely agreed with them and was fully on board (enthusiastically) with that idea. I thought Don felt, at that moment, that he had to stand up for what he believed too. As for his decision taking away Mary's choices, that's not true at all. Mary can contact any number of networks out there who would salivate at the very idea of her confronting her rapist on a live broadcast on TV.

Could they merge Tristan and Aegon? Maybe the TV Martells passed Aegon as their own (or will say that Tristan is Aegon even if he's not).

They have BIshop's underlings on tape discussing how to hypothetically commit a crime, but not Bishop himself. Any decent attorney would argue that just because Bishop knows these guys, it doesn't mean he was involved in whatever "business" they were discussing with Cary. And Bishop can afford much more than a decent attorney. What I don't get is how the undercover cop never got anything juicy on Bishop himself, seeing as he was so deep into the organization that he was hanging out with Bishop's guys, discussing hypothetical heroine shipment with Bishop's lawyer in Bishop's house. That couldn't have been the only time the undercover cop recorded something, but none of his other recordings have been discussed at all.

But are there any states where you can practice law if you're a convicted felon?

It's all true, unfortunately. I could write a lot about it, but in the spirit of not derailing the conversation too much, let me just recommend the Facebook Group Apocalypse-A-Go-Go for further reading materials, as well as a new documentary coming out soon called Ten Billion (based on the book by the same name, and directed by Peter Webber of Girl with a Pearl Earring and Hannibal Rising fame), which also has a Facebook page where you can see the trailer. _____________________ Wedding shenanigans: I come from a big Spanish family (one set of grandparents had 12 children, the other set 6; I have 54 first cousins on my mother's side alone) and while I was growing up there was always someone in the family getting married. I've seen it all in that regard and, in my experience, anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Even the most meek, even keeled, level-headed brides and grooms can go bananas over the smallest detail, so, I don't find any wedding related events on the show to be outside the realm of possibility.

All is right in the world!

I thought the connection was that the new diamond collection by Zales was called "Past, Present and Future". That's why all the jewelry pieces had three diamonds each.

JIMMY: "I want to keep my balls!" LMAO!

who played Krumholtz' father in Numbers; so, it's all in the family! ;)

I don't find that so contrived. I think that sometimes life can be that way. It has certainly been for me a few times when EVERYTHING was happening all at once (to me and to people around me) and I barely had a chance to catch my breath. I remember, for instance, one time when all of the members of my immediate family (mom, dad and sister) were ill with totally unrelated medical conditions. Mom had a cast on her arm, dad was just home from the hospital recovering from thrombosis surgery, and my sister had been rushed to the ER (a couple of days after dad was sent home) because she had hemorrhagic dengue fever. Meanwhile, I had clients that wanted their projects completed, so I was hauling my computer back and forth from my home to the hospital, where I had to sleep in case my sister needed a blood transfusion. Hectic doesn't even begin to cover it. And that was just me. My friends and other family had their own stuff going on too. It happens.

Well, for the record, I'm not trying to crucify anybody. I don't feel that passionate about the characters in this series. I think Season 1 was its best, and they should have had the guts to reveal Brody as a terrorist, and have Carrie kill him. Damian Lewis is a wonderful actor and probably the only reason why the Brody "redemption" storyline almost worked. But instead, they waited to kill Brody until it almost killed the show to have him on. I think this season is an improvement over 2 and 3 but nowhere near as good as one. What I was saying in my previous post is that everyone does have a responsibility for the direct consequences of their actions. We can always trace back and try to identify who got the ball rolling, so, yeah, first it was Boyd, but before that it was Sandy (who got Boyd involved), and before that it was Nazeem, and before that it was Bin Laden, and before that it was the US government for training Bin Laden, and before that it was Russia, for invading Afghanistan.... and so on, back through history until we get to Adam and Eve and that business with the apple :D (funny side note: a popular cartoon in LATAM in the 60s had one character -a precocious child - stating that she had been told that the world was a mess because of the original sin of Eve biting into the apple; after which the child, horrified at the thought that such a little thing as an apple could cause so much pain and misery, wonders what state we'd be in if Eve had decided to eat a watermelon instead). I wasn't trying to pin Aayan's death on Fara, but the fact that it was his uncle who killed him came about because the uncle found out Ayan had been played by the CIA, and he found that out because Fara fucked up. Is Fara the only one that fucks up? Not at all. Everyone does. That said, I disagree with your assertion that "Fara's mistake is less a proximate cause than Boyd's luck". Boyd wasn't lucky. Fara was distracted, she wasn't on her game, she was followed, she failed to notice that the pictures were taken, even though there were clues all over the place. She failed to tell her driver to wait outside and be on the lookout. She failed to spot a trail. That's all on her. Had she noticed the pictures were taken and run out the door right then, she might have seen Boyd walking away and perhaps been able to stop him. Had she told her driver to wait for her, Boyd might have not been able to enter the house and steal the pictures. Boyd's luck had nothing to do with it.

I think Aayan was going to die either way, so, I'm not sure Fara is responsible for his death, but she's responsible for the means of death (the uncle instead of one of Carrie's drones). What is totally on Fara is the failure of the operation in a MAJOR way and increasing the danger to Saul. Haqqani was sure the world thought he was dead, so sure, in fact, that he met with his nephew in Islamabad, in the middle of the day. They manipulated the CIA into droning the wedding so that the CIA would think he was dead. After that, he could move more freely. The pictures revealed that the CIA knew Haqqani was alive. Why would the CIA be so interested in Aayan otherwise? This changed Haqqani's strategy and sent him into survival mode again. If Haqqani had still believed the CIA thought he was dead, he might have shown up to the meeting with Aayan without Saul and with a lot less security. He decided to use Saul as a human shield and with the two additional identical cars because he knew the CIA knew he was alive. Had Carrie's plan worked, Aayan would have probably died when Carrie ordered the drone operator to fire on Haqqani, so, he was going to die, either way. Fara's actions resulted in his uncle killing him, but he was a dead man walking from the moment he decided to trust Carrie.

I think it's possible. The Ambassador's husband took pictures to show the female ISI officer. I think Carrie, at some point, will go through the pictures left in her office and realize some of them are missing. She saw Aayan looking at the pictures, then we saw Fara picking up the pictures, then we saw the professor showing the ISI woman the pictures, then we had a line (before Aayan was killed) informing Carrie the stuff from the safe house was in her office and she said that it could wait. It's presumably still waiting to be sorted, cataloged, and filed. My guess is that Carrie suffers a great deal with the ISI people, whether hot military officer is in on the plan or not. But, eventually she will go back to the embassy. They'll probably demote her and tell her she's too much of a risk because of her illness, she'll feel defeated and depressed. She'll be in her office, picking up (possibly because she's being sent home in shame) and she'll go through the bags. She will then have a "revelation" and start connecting the dots of the missing pictures. She'll get frantic asking Fara what happened when she was cleaning up the safe house. Some people will think she's on the crazy train again. But, evenetually, this will all lead to Carrie discovering the mole inside the embassy and redeeming herself in the eyes of the CIA. Incidentally, it's funny how they make such a big deal out a mole at the embassy. It's my understanding that every single embassy of every country in the world is always at risk of having spies within. They need to hire people to clean and cook and stuff, and they usually don't bring those workers from their own countries, they hire locally. Everyone is aware of that, so hosting governments place their own spies in the hiring pool. There are protocols, off course, to avoid any of these spies getting information. Within large embassies there are "safe" rooms which are swept for bugs twice a day, so people can have top secret conversations, same with dedicated phone lines. At any one point in time there could be not one but several spies within any embassy.

Don't be sorry, he's hot! :D I think she should bang him too. I wouldn't mind a peek at his naked chest. OT: Are you Venezuelan?

The way I understood it, once the confetti people confirmed that Perdy was announcing, it became real. Apparently, when you order confetti, that's it: you're running. Maybe it's the last thing people get for their announcement party, so, when that gets ordered, it becomes a clear signal that everything else that could have possibly been done in preparation for the announcement has been done (shrug!). A big deal has been made about Perdy being a big brand. and Alicia's campaign manager said it again at the end of the episode, but so was Alicia; she has always been, according to previous episodes. There was that initial polling Eli made that said if the election were held that day (against Castro), Alicia would win, even though she wasn't even running then. To me, the implication was that Castro got the same confirmation from the confetti people (or from some other source) that Perdy was running, and he knew he couldn't win against two big brands like Alicia and Perdy. He had the entire campaign time to try to lower the value of Alicia's brand and he had started trying to do exactly that (following her, revealing the abortion that Zach's girlfriend had, etc.), but you know what they say about waging war in two fronts: it's got a high probability of resulting in two losses. So, knowing that he would be defeated by either one of the other two candidates, he dropped out. It's not likely people would invest their money in the campaign of the candidate most likely to lose. As to why Alicia would continue to run, even when Castro is out of the picture, there was a scene where Perdy told Alicia he'd made up his mind to run after he`d interviewed her. He was all smug trying to make her feel that she herself was the cause of his running and she saw through that (or at least that's how I interpreted what the show told us) and accused him of purposely ambushing her during the interview because he had decided, before hand, that he was going to run. Basically, she equated him with playing the same dirty tactics Castro was playing, which is one of the things she maintains she wants to eliminate if she wins the election; so, I think the show is trying to say that Alicia will be fighting the same kind of foe Castro is, only with a different face, and perhaps more finesse. Not to mention, the guy does have a larger base than Castro. I think the show wanted to put Alicia in a more evenly matched fight, where she is as powerful as her opponent (in terms of voters), if not the underdog of the race that will end up overcoming all the obstacles to win the race.

Jeoffrey (sp) was auffed fairly early in his All-Stars run. Episode 3, I think. So, I guess returning winners don't have a special immunity. Seth Aaron won when he did All-Stars, so, they apparently have no problem crowing a former winner

3 days, IIRC. That was back when the unconventional materials challenges were considered extra hard and they gave the designers extra time. If it wasn't 3 days, it was 2, for sure. The whole "you have ONE day for this challenge" didn't become a constant until recently

I think it's very smart to ask people what they can do and play to their strengths. That said, I also think there's nothing wrong with asking people what they want to do and training them to improve if they so desire. From the little I've watched of this show (only this season) and of Mark and Sadie, it seems to me that she's not being forced to do anything against her will (or her family's conservative values). It's a competition, one assumes she wants to win. Sometimes winning takes stretching yourself, testing your capabilities and learning new skills. So far, it seems to me that Sadie has a choice in what she does / doesn't do and that her wishes and her family's have been taken into consideration and respected. No one in that clan is shy when it comes to expressing their opinions / objections. Sadie is nicer about it, but she does express her concerns. Mark is trying to choreograph something that will get them the most points, he's worked with her the whole season and presumably knows what she can / can't do. A good coach not only observes your strength, but also your potential. If she's having trouble / objections with any part of the routine, one would think the professional dancer can make the necessary changes while they are rehearsing. That's one of the main objectives of a rehearsal, to see the if the people who have to execute the routine can actually do it. I highly doubt that a professional dancer, eager to win, would include something his partner can't do with some degree of proficiency and I doubt that Sadie would actually do something she doesn't want to do or her family doesn't want her to do. The three situations mentioned above (leg caress, butt holding, and naked chest) were discussed, and in my opinion addressed. First, I think Mark toned down the leg caress, not going as high as originally intended and not keeping his hand on the leg as much time as he might have wanted for the choreography. Second, Sadie asked if his hand had to be on her butt, it seems he explained why that was necessary for her own safety; at this point, Sadie could have asked to have the lift changed / eliminated. She didn't, so, one presumes she evaluated the situation and thought that it was fine because the touching wasn't sexual; maybe she equated it with going to the doctor where you let a person see you naked and touch where he/she needs to touch in order to ensure your health. Who knows? The point is she apparently had no objection to the placement of the hand once it was explained that it was for safety reasons. Finally, he asked if she had any objections to him being shirtless and covered only by body paint, she did, so he was partially shirtless and there was no body paint. If that's what his costume ended up being, I have no doubt that the family agreed to that compromise, otherwise, they are the type who is vocal enough to express it and stop it. Enough on Sadie for me! Alfonso and Witney for the win! I wish I didn't live in another country so I could vote for them every single week!!

Great finale! I was rooting for Dina, so, I'm happy with the results, but I'll agree with everyone else that the other artists are very talented too. I liked Cig's Death knight; and I thought Drew's characters were beautiful. For a second there I thought he might walk away with the win. But Dina's level of detail on every single piece was amazing. I'm glad the judges saw and rewarded that. Her Death knight was my favorite make-up of the night. Awesome show with classy contestants. I love it and can't wait for next season. EDITED TO ADD that I was also very glad with the monster light aspect this season. I hope they strike a similar balance in the future.

The newspaper pictures only showed the destroyed buildings, they didn't show any of the monsters that caused the destruction. I imagine the reason for that was that the artists were supposed to create the monsters themselves, not copy the monster in a picture created by production. So, the news paper from Russia did not have a picture of a Yeti crab.

In the book, when Dany banishes Jorah we read her internal monologue. She thinks that she can't look at him because if she does she won't be able to banish him at all. It's true that she's angry with him, but I think the books made it clear through her thoughts that she still had feelings for him, not romantic feelings, but feelings, nonetheless. She seemed to me to be sad and angry when she confronted Jorah, not just angry. So, for me, it's a real possibility that she would drop into the pit to save Jorah (and everyone else, mind you) when Drogo makes his appearance. Also, all the trials and tribulations Jorah has suffered in the books after his banishment and the fact we are left with him pretty much set to go into Mereen and fight for Dany's cause the last time he made a book appearance, signal, IMO, that the plan for the books is that Jorah and Dany reunite and he fights for her cause, with her approval, once again. The show might just be fastforwarding this development.

As icky as I find Littlefinger's attraction to Sansa, there's no incest involved here, as he's not really her family and she wasn't raised as his niece (i.e. she didn't spend years and years under the belief that he was her uncle).

I'm going to guess a couple of possibilities, given the information we have so far. I think that, as the female intelligence officer told the professor after his class, he was a friend of Sandy's from he past. Maybe from college, maybe because given the wife's political career, they met sometime before in one party/reunion or another. It's highly likely they crossed paths before, and Sandy, being in the intelligence business, would have been wise enough to know that you groom and maintain important contacts, because you never know what you might need. So, my guess is that Sandy gets contacted by the female (Pakistani?) intelligence officer and proposes a deal: she will give Sandy locations to take out known Taliban members and, in exchange, he will provide her with some US intelligence info. At first, Sandy might have seen no harm in it. Pakistan is friendly with the US; and even though there are reasons to challenge that friendship, Sandy might have thought the US still had the upper hand in the relationship. It is my understanding that sometimes agents are authorized to share certain "secrets" in order to play a double-sided game, letting the other side think they are getting valuable info out the asset, when, in reality, everybody knows what the asset is sharing. It's true information, but not damaging in major ways. As the relationship between the female intelligence officer and Sandy evolves, she starts asking him for more relevant info, and given that her information on the location of known US targets had been accurate, and helped Sandy garner a great reputation in the CIA, he feels compelled to comply, but he is not authorized to share major information and he doesn't have access to it either (remember the CIA works in a need to know basis, Carrie had to set up a secondary location that none of her staff as station chief know about, for example). Enter the friend he made a while back and has kept in contact with throughout the years (ambassador's husband). Sandy approaches him to get more valuable information. The husband complies because he wants to prove to his wife that he's more than the academic who plagiarized a whole chapter of his book (side note: how dumb does one have to be to do that and not expect to get caught? I wonder). He feels emasculated by his successful wife and needs to prove that he can get the job done. Eventually, when it comes out that he's had a role in ridding the US of a bunch of high profile targets, he can tell his wife: "see? I can do this too! I'm a hero!!". Plenty! I believe one of the reasons given for the creation of the NSA was that all the intelligence agencies in the US operate in a kind of silo and don't share info. It's one of the reasons given for 9-11. The intelligence was there, but so compartmentalized that no one had a full picture view. As stated above, they work on a need-to-know basis. Some diplomatic documents might cross the ambassador's desk that could be for her eyes only, and who she shares that information with is left to her own discretion. If she felt she didn't need to brief the CIA people under her supervision in Islamabad, she was within her purview to do so. What I understood was that Lockhart was informed that Sandy was selling secrets after the fact, not that he had authorized it, which is why he put the guy who informed him on paper shuffling duty. My guess is that he confronted Sandy and Sandy told him he was getting the job done (i.e. killing US terrorist targets from the 1,000+ list). If Lockhart wanted that to continue, he had to allow Sandy to go on doing the job the way he was. Lockhart agreed because he gets plausible deniability this way. He can always claim he didn't know how far Sandy was going because he never provided the intelligence that Sandy leaked. He keeps the whole operation off the books. If it goes well, and Sandy continues to provide good drone targets, Lockhart gets credit for the CIA ridding the country of terrorists under his watch. If it goes wrong, he can say he didn't know what Sandy was doing. Not a stellar mark for him, but still better than being prosecuted for treason. He took a calculated risk, and so far, it had payed off for him. But Sandy's death changed the game a little. He pulled Carrie out in part because he knows she's like a dog with a bone, and he didn't want her discovering all the things she did discover anyway; but still she got enough leverage on him to get him to appoint her Station Chief in Islamabad.

I don't know. Elsa was certainly blackmailing her, so, in that sense she was taken advantage of. Much like a politician who gets caught on tape cheating on his wife. What I don't have very clear yet is if she wanted to try the drugs by herself, if she found it thrilling to be with the freaks, if everyone was high or just her, etc. I think if they all were high and the party spun wildly out of control because everyone wanted to keep escalating, it gets very complicated to establish consent.

For me, it's hard to form an opinion on exactly what happened to the Candy Striper. I can't say I know all the facts because they weren't shown in the episode. We saw Elsa giving her a card and asking her to come to the tents, Candy Striper seemed intrigued. We don't know if she went voluntarily, or if Elsa talked her into it (e.g. worked harder to convince her to go), or if the cigarettes Elsa gave her were laced with opium and she made the decision to go while under the influence. I think the show wants us to believe that she went voluntarily because of her expression when she got Elsa's card, but I don't think they showed that categorically. Next thing we know Candy Striper is telling Elsa she wants to go home. She looks disheveled, her hair is all tangled up, she's wearing a robe that keeps barely in place and a bra, and her make up is all smeared. Then we see the spliced video showing the Candy Stripper doing drugs and participating in an orgy, smiling through it all. She seems to be surprised at seeing herself enjoying the orgy, so, she clearly was so stoned she didn't remember what she had done. I can't determine if she was taken advantage off or not as I didn't see the scenes leading up to the orgy. I don't know if her intention was to willingly experiment a little bit but not go as far as she did. I don't know if the performers manipulated her to get higher and higher or if she kept hitting the pipe of her own volition. I don't know if the drugs were forced on her. I don't know if the performers were as high as she was and just kept rolling with or if they were sober while she was high. Unless I know these things, I can't decide if she's a victim of the freaks or of the circumstances. I think that if she went there willingly and participated in a party the performers were having where everyone was high out their minds with opium, it gets harder to assign blame. If she went there willingly and then was coerced or manipulated into participating, then I think the freaks acted wrongly. If she was forced, coerced or manipulated into going, then it's all very, very wrong. But with the facts presented on the screen, I can't tell one way or another. I would also like to know what Elsa's motives were. Did she just want to teach the Candy Striper a lesson because she overheard her talking about what she would do if she had a "freak" baby? I feel like there's more to this story coming up at some point this season. I don't think they'd hire that particular actress to play the Candy Striper for only one episode. And not because the actress is Meryl Streep's daughter, but because she has done other work and she's at that point in an actor's career where the roles they are offered are either highly shocking or significant for a one episode guest spot (which I don't think this was) or recurring / regular on a series. I looked her up on IMDB and if you want to know if she's credited in later episodes, the answer is . Do remember that the information on IMDB is not 100% reliable, though.