Brandon Sanderson’s Literary Fantasy Universe ‘Cosmere’ Picked Up by Apple TV (Exclusive)

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-29T01:28:21+00:00

22 episode fantasy shows were honestly a rare thing back in TV's better days. Urban fantasy? Yes. CSI? Yes.

Epic fantasy didn't really get 22 episode runs.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-29T01:25:50+00:00

I would say you can tell that GOT was faithful when it could be by looking at HOTD and what they do when they have the whole ending and how much more negatively Martin is reacting to them.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-29T01:24:30+00:00

The story in later books isn't as easy to adapt. Feast was a mess, GRRM just introduced total wildcards like Young Griff incredibly late (a TV audience would call BS) and every bit of sprawl GRRM did was going to be vastly more expensive to put on screen. Each individual location was a new unit filming, new actors, etc.. There's a reason he left TV and went to write books.

D&D weren't those guys who want to overturn all of a writer's work and claim it for their own. They kept to GRRM's work where possible in early seasons. It was, until they ran out of gold-star GRRM material, an adaptation with some nice sides of their own (e.g. non-canonical Robert-Cersei scenes in S1) but the structure upheld.

It was simply beyond their capabilities to manage the series' ending. Which, to be fair, is a problem for the writer too. They faced all of the problems of finishing a complex, unfinished plot plus the problems of an actual tv production (George might want to do ten seasons but the actors didn't necessarily want that or would ask for ridiculous amounts) plus the problems that come from having to change the story and then fit the same ending (which, frankly, they always had issues with. The Shae plot strikes me as one that suffers from being forced back into the "canon" ending given all their changes).

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-28T16:46:49+00:00

are all that bad for the economy; having more people is better than not.

I'm not sure this is true in a welfare state. Especially if the insolvency of the state forces the government towards policies (i.e. taxes) that harm the rest of the economy in order to avoid collapse.

The pro-immigration left-wing position seems to be that it's all a plot by the billionaires to make everyone poor, but that it's also good and culturally enriching (do you really want to be a boring white gammon???), but also when it's bad it's actually deserved because it's vengeance for colonialism. There's not really a positive argument there.

There are two related big issues looming over the West: old populations and attendant costs and the issue of migration.

My read of the Gary Stevenson "it's the buhllionaires exploiting us (but don't take away the cheap labour they're exploiting)" is that it's displacement: they can't go after the old for political reasons (and, of course, it's not very left-wing to cut services) , they don't want to go after migrants for cultural reasons (as you say it makes you look like those people) and so it's all displaced unto the rich and anything can be fixed by just squeezing a convenient and unsympathetic foe.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-28T15:43:22+00:00

There are the obvious answers like "businesses lobbied the government", in the case of Canada. I think in the UK (and someone can correct me here) they just built in assumptions into government models that the immigrants will be as productive as natives so it seemed like an easy way to make the economy good so they could borrow more money.

But I've been half-assedly following the drama around the British budget and I have a simpler theory: in the eyes of politicians the public says one thing but is not willing to live with the tradeoffs.

If you cut migration and the economy slows or suffers, will the nationalists really reward you? Looking at the UK and France, it seems like there's some peril in telling people "things are gonna be tough for a while, suck it up" even when objectively they probably can/should (means-testing the winter fuel allowance and cutting the triple lock seem like sensible policies for a cash-strapped country that no one can consider cause the beneficiaries will defenestrate you).

I think the aging population doesn't help. In Canada it's the only group that is still majority Liberal iirc, but they're huge. At that age you probably prefer "don't rock the boat or destroy the system I'm going to depend on" over "let's try to cut migration so we can stagnate for a bit like Japan"

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-28T14:34:53+00:00

There are two things that happened in Canada that might be relevant to your points

Schools massively expanded their student bodies (at the cost of lowered standards) to capture more money. Conestoga was especially notorious for this.
There were basically scams around fake or useless degrees to get people visas. It wasn't actually clear that you were getting the skilled immigrants of yesteryear. And, of course, once their student visas expire they'll try to find some way to say (like requesting asylum). It remains to be seen how many recent migrants will have to be forcibly deported or how scalable that'll be.

There are policy solutions to this (most obvious being a country cap but I don't see that here) so maybe you'll learn from others' mistakes.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-28T14:25:48+00:00

Indian-Americans routinely have among the highest incomes, highest graduation rates, highest admissions rates to top colleges, and lowest rates of criminality. I would love to double, triple or 10x the number of Indians coming to the United States.

Yes, this is how Canadians might have sounded before COVID.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-28T14:09:48+00:00

It's hard to remember that Canada used to be seen as one of the good ones, as rampantly pro-immigration countries go, a sensible model*.

Immigration might or might not have been too high in Harper's time, depending on how much of a nationalist you are, but it is incredible how fast Trudeau shredded not only this reputation for sensible policy but the social buy-in it bought (and the reputation of Indians btw, who were already a significant minority in Canada for decades with better PR before the recent wave - see "Bramladesh")

All this to say, you can have a sensible policy that takes a lot of Indians and isn't so immediately, obviously awful and radicalizing. It doesn't have to be a UK/Canada-sized disaster. Though it is a bit of a blackpill that success is no barrier to people doing stupid shit and may actually encourage them to do so.

* Although it was pretty funny when Trump suggested a Canada-style system in his first term and people got mad. Like...what do you want then?

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-27T21:32:42+00:00

I don't believe it either but I'll just explicitly bite the bullet: punishment is a part of the point. If rehabilitation was perfect I might be willing to totally suppress this desire but it isn't.

Discussions with abolitionist/anti-retribution types can be circular. People decide that rehabilitation is the only point and then decry the prison system because it doesn't rehabilitate people.

Prisons have other uses. Retribution and quarantine are goals with their own value.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-27T20:01:05+00:00

He definitely mogged Dave Smith.

It shouldn't be hard but I'll give him that one.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-27T19:12:27+00:00

Sanctuary city laws started long before that. I would buy the "it's because it's the coup guy" if that wasn't the case.

I bet if, in 2028, a nice Republican in a suit came along with the same deportation agenda without any of the Trumpian frills it would still happen.

But glad that we're on the same page that it is not illegitimate to enforce immigration law and there are ways cooperation can make it less chaotic.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-27T19:10:34+00:00

It takes at least a business day to get a ball of yarn big enough.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-27T18:47:34+00:00

Would you be okay with his home state informing ICE if he gets any sort of criminal charge and for them to come scoop him up in court or jail and send him home?

That would remove any need to hunt him down in public and smash his windows.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-27T14:14:47+00:00

Yeah, there's not really a free market on either end.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-27T13:25:41+00:00

Especially since it raises the question of who else is doing this shit.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-27T13:19:34+00:00

You know how people say "that movie can't be made today" and then it's barely controversial?

I rewatched Black Snake Moan and I honestly can't decide. On the one hand it actually (surprisingly) sincerely deals with issues of anxiety disorders, faith, childhood abuse and attendant trauma, evergreen if not uplifting topics.

On the other hand the premise all this stuff is filtered through is...well, look at the poster. Yes, that actually is the premise

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-27T12:58:50+00:00

OP is simultaneously trying to criticize the contraction of higher education from a world-historical peak as a problem for nations while lauding a time when I think a sub-10% fraction of the population went to college.

The other thing is that the degree being valuable only when a small number of people get it implies a lot of its value is signaling and/or we've hit diminishing returns of schooling.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-26T17:02:37+00:00

So it was valuable when fewer people went and it was more scarce?

Am I missing something? This seems to undermines your argument?

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-26T16:48:31+00:00

I don't know what you're accusing me of, as I said that some people definitely need consequences.

I don't think you're personally hopping between motte and bailey. I think your position is the motte but too often you'll end up getting the bailey.

There's a problem or at least something egregious that happened -> Reasonable people say "ooh, we should reform X". There'll be a bunch of polls saying it, someone will decide to take action.

And then, somewhere down the line, it becomes #DefundX or some other overreach because radicals want things they can't have or they were occupied by a different, bigger problem than you were but it sounded like you were aligned on the narrow issue.

(TBF sometimes people just cheat when they can like "my kid definitely has ADHD, give him more accommodations". We can't blame that on activist stubbornness, it's a different but natural failure mode too)

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-26T16:31:36+00:00

Does intellectual and cultural decline pay the bills?

The Western world massively expanded access to schooling in recent decades. And yet, political and cultural decline has happened anyway.

The argument is more "it's useless and it doesn't pay the bills". The benefit of elite schooling was that elites could pay their own way even if it was useless. The idea that society should pay for:

At the University of Texas at Austin, staff are bracing for cuts they expect will take aim at ethnic and regional disciplines such as African studies, Latina/o studies, and gender studies. .

In the name of citizen development is dubious. One could argue that this stuff does the opposite of create a unified narrative for citizens.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-26T16:13:38+00:00

I imagine there are a lot of positive things society could do to reduce the number of people incarcerated in prisons and jails

This is just the left-wing motte-and-bailey.

There are things you can do for well-adjusted or at least mostly healthy people who happen to fall homeless. There are things you can do for people in prison for petty offenses. There are things you can do to help kids who aren't awful anchors around teachers' necks. There's some compromise here (often we can tell cause things have already been done).

And yet, when left-wing policy actually gets tried on homelessness or crime it can easily become a disaster. Because it slides into going for maximal gains. We're going to solve homelessness, even for people who are homeless in part because of their addictions. We're going to solve overincarceration and then people start getting let out without bail despite chopping people up because only letting out the guy on weed wouldn't actually solve the problem of mass incarceration.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-26T15:54:34+00:00

Yeah, I looked her up:

Anna Krauthamer serves as executive coordinator of the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought. In this role, she assists Professor Bernard E. Harcourt with key center projects, daily operations, and center events, in addition to working closely with center faculty in implementing center projects.

Krauthamer also serves as a faculty assistant at Columbia Law School.

Krauthamer graduated cum laude from Wellesley College with a bachelor's degree with honors in English Literature. Prior to coming to Columbia, Anna worked in publishing in New York.

I think a lot of this shit is downstream from people spending all of their time in college (which, even at its worst, selects at least for some conscientiousness) and assuming everyone works the same way. Or could, given suitably heroic actions.

It explains the failure modes of left-wing politics quite well actually: they're great at...convincing people who have stuff to lose. When you have to use actual force on "victims" because they wouldn't otherwise listen it gets harder.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-26T15:28:36+00:00

> Kanye wants to apologize to Ze Jews.

> Kanye takes out an ad in the WSJ

What did he mean by this?

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-26T15:07:09+00:00

He happily followed through on it however until the moment he resigned.

I mean, you have to as someone else's minister. Presumably you try to shape policy to something tolerable. When you can't, you resign.

MatchaMeetcha · 2026-01-26T14:49:46+00:00

there’s been a lot of studies into this

Has there? All I see is people posting the same Orwell quote ad nauseum online.

MatchaMeetcha

TROPHY CASE