Links - 30th April 2020 (1)

Harold Lake's answer to Who do you think deserved to be the king in the end of Game of Thrones? - Quora
Comments: "I don’t remember which episode it was, but David Benioff was talking about the episode in a smug face “Dany kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet”, like it is completely normal to forget about the fleet that destroyed Dany’s entire naval force. What kind of shit writing is this? What kind of a halfwit forgets about his enemy’s entire forces and fleet? Danaerys could have destroyed it all within a single episode using three dragons, but she “kinda forgot” It would be like saying “The Americans kinda forgot about the Japanese fleet”, When U.S joined the war in Europe, and because of this fictional blunder 3/4 of USAAF are destroyed but still the remaining take out the entire Japanese fleet with ease."
"This line basically sums up the effort the writers put into this entire season."
Of course, there're still people who defend them

Scott Newman's answer to Were Benioff and Weiss out of their depth with something as huge as Game of Thrones? - Quora - "At the heart of most complaints to Game of Thrones seasons 7 & 8 are two basic writing mistake
1. Unfired Chekhov’s Guns
2. Plot Driven writing
Good writing is ‘character driven’ - bad writing is ‘plot driven’. In character driven writing, characters are established as believable human beings, and then act as you would expect that human being to act in that situation. In Plot driven writing do what the writer needs them to do to achieve the required plot points. One of the reasons Game of Thrones was so successful was that it was a masterclass in character driven writing. Unfortunately most of this seems to have been carried over from Martin’s writing - in season 7 and especially 8 Benioff & Weiss were at best working with mere plot points from Martin, at worst making stuff up because certain characters had been shoved too far from Martin’s plot line. And suddenly we veered sharply into plot driven writing. Bran became King because he had ‘the best story’ because that’s what Martin told him, but they wiped out so much of his story (apparently because it was too ‘supernatural’ for mainstream audiences) yet they kept the plot point even though it no longer made sense. Dany’s turn to the dark side and burning kings landing was hinted at - but hinting isn’t true character development and most of the audience had whiplash - it happen too suddenly, too ‘out of nowhere’. Jaime hooking up with Brienne then running back to Cersei ? Again all of this just happened because the plot points required it not because it made sense that the established characters would do that. Meanwhile it is often said that season 8 was rushed - there were enough episode to achieve the plot points - but the problem was there wasn’t enough episodes to get the characters naturally to those plot points...
Don’t blame Martin for not finishing the books - they had his outline - they had him on the payroll - a decent writer should have been able to finish the series in a credible way with the outline.I would also add that while kept ‘polite’ in his media comments he regularly made the same key point - that when you adapt a book or series, every change you make has consequences - and when you know you have to get the plot for point A to point Z you have to be aware of the consequences of these changes and how it will effect getting to point Z. It seems that despite repeated warnings Benioff & Weiss blissfully ignored this basic advice.SO season 8 is so littered with basic writing mistakes it will become a text book case of how not to write.On a technical writing level appalling to the point of amateurish."
"Actions stopped having consequences... Shock was prioritised over plausible plotting"

Jacob Anderson: "Grey Worm dies a horrible death by butterflies" - "Grey Worm went to a pretty dark place in the final two episodes of the season, massacring the people of King’s Landing along with his queen. For his part, Anderson had fun with it. “Grey Worm just turned into a jerk at the last minute, he turned into the villain.”... what happened to Grey Worm and the Unsullied after they left King’s Landing? We know they were headed to Missandei’s home island of Naath, but what happens when an army of trained killers gets to the peaceful shores of what sounds like an island paradise? “The Unsullied are just gonna die straight away as soon as they get there,” Anderson told Insider.If you’ve not read the books and are wondering what in the world he’s talking about, let’s have a quick mythology lesson. The isle of Naath is known for being home to many butterflies. As detailed in The World of Ice and Fire, the people of Naath revere butterflies as the messenger of their god, the Lord of Harmony. These butterflies are said to protect the islanders from outsiders who mean them harm by spreading Butterfly Fever.Sounds harmless, right? Wrong. Symptoms include painful spasms, blood sweats, and flesh sloughing from the bones. These butterflies mean business. Anyway, when told of the theory that Grey Worm and his Unsullied compatriots would be murdered by butterflies, he played along. “Yeah but that’s a book thing. It’s not in [the] show. I mean, actually, do you know what? I want to spread [the word] that David and Dan told me that that’s real,” he joked. “Yeah, quote me. What actually happens is Grey Worm dies a horrible death by butterflies.”"

Brandon Ross's answer to Why is money laundering necessary? Why can't people just put their illegal cash in a safe and spend it instead of laundering it? - Quora - "It's VERY hard to spend very large amounts of cash. You can only buy so many dirt bikes, and PS4s, and other petty things for cash. Many dealers… well, they’ll just buy more drugs. And repeat the cycle. And many others, will use drugs too. Which reduces their hoard—their own drug dealers love receiving cash: they don’t try to stop it... Now you have to store it somewhere.Under the mattress is going to get very bumpy. Cash in a safe can be stolen. Half the reason drug dealers are shooting each other is because they know the other has a large amount of cash on-hand... many would prefer to put that money into the financial system. Buy houses, a car, start a business, whatever. It's just very hard and getting harder to do those transactions in cash. Almost impossible without a government agent being notified.Eventually, frequent large cash transactions raise questions about where the cash is coming from. Why?If you deposit above a few thousand dollars, a bank is obligated to snitch to the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), by filing a Suspicious Activity Report... drug dealers have a very hard time explaining why they're depositing so much cash. This person I mentioned above? It would just be a little hard to explain what an unemployed, high-school drop-out is doing depositing $50,000 in cash every week.You might say, well, “Why not just deposit a little bit at the time?”You little felon, you.If you deposit cash under the reporting limit on multiple days to avoid reporting, that is a new, separate federal crime known as “structuring”... This is why banks ask you all kinds of probing questions about what you’re doing with your money. Usually casual conversation at first—but sometimes very probing questions. Your bank is gathering evidence against you for the government. Because anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.Structuring is punished severely: maximum of 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. In fact, people have been convicted of structuring… simply for making large cash deposits. With absolutely no connection whatsoever to drugs or other illegal conduct... You go start or buy a legitimate business, something that deals in cash transactions. For example only, let's say a car wash. You operate the car wash normally. At the end of the day, you slip some extra cash into the register. You take your cash drop to the bank, depositing it into the car wash's business account. Your accountant records the income. You pay your taxes on it. And no one is any wiser. And now your money is “clean”."
Comment: "Lower-end property rentals are ripe for laundering money. I buy and hold rental real estate and I stumble across the occasional operation that makes me suspicious. One in particular stands out. It was an unremarkable 3BR/2BA/2 Car home with an unfinished basement in a so-so part of town. It went on the market as a bank-owned in 2013 and it was TRASHED. The ask was only $50k, but it needed to be completely gutted. A $50k makeover and then it would be a pretty narrow margin for a flip or as a rental, it was unlikely to pull in the rents to justify the investment, so I passed.It did sell and a year later it was on the market again at $120k"
"Here in India, many corrupt bureaucrats open fashion boutiques and beauty parlours in the name of their wife."
"I think that’s why GST has been implemented in India. Now people cannot sell without they buy.
For Eg. a jewellery buys 10 kg gold a month but sells 13 Kg how is it possible? This used to happen a lot but GST has stopped it."
"High margin businesses are also quite good way. You want something that is cash-heavy, has high margins and easy to manipulate books.Enter night clubs"

Mumbai tests traffic lights that stay red if you honk your horn - "Fed up with the din from car horns in their city, Mumbai Police conducted a trial in November and December last year in which decibel meters were connected to traffic light poles.If the meters registered noise levels of 85 decibels or over, the lights were reset and stayed red for longer.As in several other Indian cities, traffic lights in Mumbai display countdown timers... The video begins with the police describing Mumbai as "the honking capital of the world," before stating that they had been "itching to do something" about the problem.In the clip, police name their creation "The Punishing Signal" and offer the following warning to motorists: "Feel free to honk if you don't mind waiting." The TomTom Traffic Index, which ranks cities according to their congestion, names Mumbai as the world's fourth-most congested city in 2019.The index estimates that drivers in Mumbai last year lost eight days and 17 hours stuck in traffic. It calculated that someone could read Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" almost one-and-a-half times during these wasted hours."

Hungry girl tries Shake Shack, Five Guys, Burger & Lobster and Burger+ - "It’s generally not advised to go all the way on the first date, but this time, I throw caution to the wind. Because the menu board clearly states the option of a cheeseburger “all the way”: With mayonnaise, pickles, tomatoes, grilled onions, mushrooms, ketchup and mustard. It’s very forward – my mother would be appalled – but what girl wouldn’t go weak in the knees?... I take my first bite, and then before I know it, the burger is all gone.The onions are cooked through and sweet. The buns are soft but have bite. There are – praise be! – two slices of cheese, which is definitely better than one slice of cheese. And, the ultimate deal-sweetener: The patties, handmade with an 80-20 lean-to-fat ratio, are juicy and meaty, in spite of the fact that Five Guys cooks their patties to well-done.It is a quintessential all-American burger. I’ve inhaled it in record time. Do I regret leaving nothing to the imagination on our first date? Not a chance. But the more pertinent question, I know, is: Is it so good that I’m willing to stand in the snaking queue for it whenever I feel like a little afternoon delight?My heart is conflicted, because maybe, no matter how much we’re attracted to each other, it’s just not meant to be between me and this burger. And maybe that’s okay. Because, when all’s said and done, how many times in your life can you say you went “all the way” with not one but Five Guys?"

How Governments Use Immigration to Boost Their Economies - Bloomberg - "For inspiration on possible fixes, Americans might look north to Canada, which uses a points-based system to screen economic migrants—a group that makes up almost 60% of its immigrants. The method, which factors in criteria such as education and work experience, is a reason only 27% of Canadians regard immigrants as a burden on their country—the lowest percentage among the 18 nations surveyed in a Pew Research Center poll released in March... The new program will grant five-year residency permits to as many as 345,000 low-skilled workers over the next five years. That’s a drop in the bucket compared with what’s needed, but in establishing a pathway for permanent residency, its significance goes beyond the math. In the past five years, the number of foreigners working in Japan has doubled, to almost 2 million. Many come with student visas or through a technical trainee program meant ostensibly to offer overseas development aid—back doors that have allowed Japan to import hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers on short-term visas, without having to acknowledge them as immigrants... Canada wasn’t always selective about who it took in. After a couple of decades of unchecked immigration from postwar Europe, concerns began to build that the new arrivals weren’t contributing to the economy, says Stephanie Bangarth, an associate history professor at Western University in London, Ont. In 1967 the government introduced a point system that graded aspiring residents on criteria such as age, language proficiency, and skills... Last year, 17% of the invited candidates worked as software engineers, IT analysts, or computer programmers. Almost half were from India, with the next largest groups of candidates coming from China and Nigeria... Employers in Manitoba were looking for lower-skilled workers than those favored under the federal framework. So about two decades ago, the province secured the right to devise its own, says Ben Rempel, assistant deputy minister for immigration and economic opportunities in Manitoba. “Yes, we wanted nurses and doctors, but we were also interested in carpenters and welders and industrial butchers,” he says. “So we had to find ways of matching employers to people who weren’t looking at Manitoba as the back door to Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal but had a good reason to come and stay here.” It worked: The province of 1.3 million people has welcomed more than 137,000 immigrants under that program since 1998...
In Venezuela, in about 2013 or 2014, I started to feel that the situation was no longer normal. There was no rice; things were missing from the shelves. Then cash began to run short—you’d go to the bank, and there was no cash."
US sanctions are so powerful that they caused problems in Venezuela in 2013 when only around 30 people were targeted

Alice Smith on Twitter - "Venezuela: “We’re socialists doing socialists stuff.”
The Left: “No, you’re not real socialists.”
Scandinavia: “We’re not socialists and our policies aren’t socialist.”
The Left: “That’s real socialism!”"

Venezuela's Suffering Shows Where Illiberalism Leads - The Atlantic - "Regardless of what actually happens there, Venezuela—especially when it was run by Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez—has long been a symbolic cause for the Marxist left as well. More than a decade ago, Hans Modrow, one of the last East German Communist Party leaders and now an elder statesman of the far-left Die Linke party, told me that Chávez’s “Bolivarian socialism” represented his greatest hope: that Marxist ideas—which had driven East Germany into bankruptcy—might succeed, finally, in Latin America. Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left leader of the British Labour Party, was photographed with Chávez and has described his regime in Venezuela as an “inspiration to all of us fighting back against austerity and neoliberal economics.” Chávez’s rhetoric also helped inspire the Spanish Marxist Pablo Iglesias to create Podemos, Spain’s far-left party. Iglesias has long been suspected of taking Venezuelan money, though he denies it. Even now, the idea of Venezuela inspires defensiveness and anger wherever dedicated Marxists still gather, whether they are Code Pink activists vowing to “protect” the Venezuelan embassy in Washington from the Venezuelan opposition or French Marxists who refuse to call Maduro a dictator. And yet—Venezuela is not an idea. It is a real place, full of real people who are undergoing an unprecedented and in some ways very eerie crisis. If it symbolizes anything at all, it is the distorting power of symbols. In reality, the country offers no comfort for youthful Marxists or self-styled anti-imperialists—or for fans of Donald Trump. I spent a few days there earlier this month, on an academic invitation. During the course of ordinary conversations with me, three people burst into tears while talking about their life and their country... Whatever progress the country made against poverty in the past was due to high oil prices, which have since slumped. Now Maduro presides over a disaster that is devastating the poor above all. Raffalli told me that the food-production system began to break down nearly a decade ago, thanks to the expropriation of land and the destruction of small agricultural companies, though a few big ones survive. Widespread malnutrition began a few years later... if you haven’t heard about hunger in Venezuela, that’s not an accident: The government is going to great lengths to hide it... The parents of a child who had died from starvation tried to give her the corpse, because they were afraid that state officials would take it away and hide it... To anyone who knows the long history of the relationship between Marxist regimes and famine, this development seems uncannily familiar... To anyone who knows the long history of Communist countries’ use of food as a weapon, the Venezuelan regime’s manipulation of the food supply comes as no surprise, either. Most Venezuelans—80 percent according to a recent survey—now rely on boxes of food, containing staples such as rice, grain, or oil, from the government... Even people who are not starving now spend most of their time just getting by—standing in lines, trying to fix broken generators, working second or third jobs to earn a little bit more—all activities that keep them from politics. But when Raffalli’s voice broke, she was talking about something else: the indifference that was growing, both at home and abroad. The United Nations, perhaps thanks to some officials who admired Chávez—or who do not admire Trump—has not launched a major humanitarian-aid program in Venezuela... Like the destruction of the economy, the destruction of the political culture took some time, because there were several decades’ worth of democratic institutions to destroy... Chávez broke the rule of law completely. His first attempt to take power was via a coup d’état, in 1992. He won a legitimate election in 1998, but once in power he slowly changed the rules, eventually making it almost impossible for anyone to beat him. In 2004, he packed the Supreme Court; in 2009, he altered the electoral system. Just like other illiberal governments, the Venezuelan regime also sought to undermine abstract ideas of justice—which might have protected ordinary people from the authoritarian state—by dismissing them as a Western plot... “They said everything that we understood as human rights was a ‘liberal hegemonic imposition.’”... Chávez began to transfer the wealth of the country to his cronies... Some elements of Chávez’s method will seem strangely familiar to anyone who has studied other kleptocracies... Chávez successfully polarized society into groups of fanatical supporters and equally dedicated enemies—warring tribes who felt they had little in common. Some of the differences were based on class or race, but not all... Extrajudicial murders like this one are now common. An initiative called Mi Convive—whose mission is to monitor and reduce violence—registered 1,271 extrajudicial murders in Caracas alone from May 2017 to December 2019, out of more than 3,300 violent deaths in the city... Venezuela is the endgame of ideological Marxism"
Damn US sanctions, forcing Maduro to rig elections, kill dissidents and fake nutrition statistics, and Chavez to pack the Supreme Court and be corrupt!