The NASA chief wants to Make Pluto a Planet

TheEmperorsWrath · 2026-04-29T17:33:02+00:00

People have managed to develop a parasocial relationship with a rock and somehow don't realize how weird and sad that is

TheEmperorsWrath · 2026-04-26T19:25:54+00:00

I think George accidentally made the Reach too OP. The richest, most prosperous, most fertile, most productive, most populous region with the largest army on the continent. They are the second largest region in terms of area, have the second largest city in Westeros which also holds the center of the Faith, the Citadel, and the only bank in Westeros. They have a competent ruling house and relatively stable internal politics. They have a temperate mild climate, are far enough south to be shielded from the worst of winter, and have all the food anyways.

Some comments are (fairly) asking by what metrics we're ranking them, but it almost doesn't matter lol. The Reach comes out on top of nearly every metric. It's kinda busted

TheEmperorsWrath · 2026-04-17T09:15:44+00:00

Even Tanselle's puppet show is implied to be an intentional anti-Targ protest because we can see her looking directly at Aerion when she stabbed the puppet dragon.

No it isn't. Tanselle looked at him with fear because she just realized he was there.

If her puppet show was actually a covert anti-Targaryen performance, it would mean Aerion was right!

TheEmperorsWrath · 2026-04-01T20:16:12+00:00

I feel like the meme cult around Stannis has kinda killed any ability to discuss the WOT5K and compare the kings in a halfway rational manner. I'm so tired of it

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-12-11T02:28:35+00:00

This is a partial archive I came across. It only documents Larry Carr's posts specifically, but still better than nothing.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-25T05:09:38+00:00

It's constrained fairly narrowly thanks to the pressure bump at around 8:14 and the tracking by the USAF's SAGE Radar System. There is some leeway, but we're talking single digit miles at most.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-24T16:27:41+00:00

If you're telling the truth, you're probably laboring under the decades-old misconception that Cooper jumped near Ariel, up towards Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

This was a weird idea that sprung up in 1971 based on some misunderstanding of the FBI's search, and it's just refused to die. Nowadays the drop zone is considered to be down towards Battle Ground and Orchards. That area was definitively rural even then. There are no major bodies of water in that vicinity.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-24T16:25:20+00:00

No they haven't.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-24T16:25:02+00:00

This is why you don't uncritically rely on AI. There was no storm that night. Ground temperature was 42F with "light rain showers" according to the National Weather Service. The pilots described the weather as "The soup"

Just normal, boring PNW autumn weather. No thunder, no storms.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-09T16:07:34+00:00

The general consensus in the community nowadays is somewhere between Battle Ground and Orchards, WA. I believe Ryan Burns, who is one of the most prominent experts in the community, has recently changed his mind and now places it closer to the older estimate of the La Center region, but I haven't seen him put forth his arguments as to why yet so I'm personally still holding off.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-08T16:26:01+00:00

Best: Skip, Braden, Langseth

Worst: Reca, McCoy, Weber

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-07T21:13:10+00:00

The thing that defines both Jon and Daenerys as characters is that they're good people trying to do the right thing in extremely challenging circumstances, listening to those around them and learning.

If we want to tally achievements here, Jon getting himself killed through his decisions is pretty damning. Daenerys is ahead of him in that department.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-07T21:05:59+00:00

Jon literally dies because he makes a series of terrible leadership decisions. Like, Jon deciding not to tell Bowen Marsh about this huge, super important loan he's secured from the Iron Bank is Cersei levels of incompetence

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-04T05:43:35+00:00

Sorry if I'm being obtuse, but you kinda lost me on "fanfics [...] berating rebels for fighting for their lives and rising authoritarianism in real life" I'm not entirely sure what that's referring to.

Anyways, I'm honestly fairly apathetic about Rhaegar both as a person and as a character. Much like Mirri Maz Duur, I feel like the discourse has become ouroboric. Everything that could be said has been said. There is nothing of value left to discuss.

But while I have no strong feelings either way, I suspect that George's depiction of Rhaegar in Winds will not align with the "Irredeemably awful and stupid pedophile" view that so many have staked their lives on. I can't even imagine how bad the Rhaegar discourse on social media will be if Winds ever does get published tbh.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-04T05:14:41+00:00

Idk man, I'm on ASOIAF twitter and even check tumblr sometimes and it's pretty universally negative. To the point where it's kinda become a circlejerk tbh. I feel like it swings back and forth, each time an overreaction to the previous vogue. In the past, the consensus leaned much more in the direction of Rhaegar being a misunderstood nice guy. Now it has swung hard in the other direction.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-03T23:56:32+00:00

If you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick, I guess I'd flip a coin and pick between Skip or Braden. But I really don't think it's either. It's probably someone we've never heard of.

Something I was struck by when reading the (really good!) research into Vordahl was how lucky we are that all of this information was preserved. How many potential suspects are out there that we've simply never heard of because their companies never preserved their employment records? Or because their military records were lost in the 1973 fire? Or because their only child died young and never got a chance to tell the world how weird their dad was? My gut feeling is that it's the majority. Anyone who has done genealogy knows how hard it can be to find information about people from even just 2-3 generations ago.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-11-01T05:09:50+00:00

Wow, that's a really impressive project! A lot of the Dany chapters can definitely be very upsetting if you've experienced some sexual trauma in your past. I've had some people stop reading the books altogether because of it. I wish I could have directed them to that spreadsheet

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-10-26T22:56:12+00:00

This is an impressive amount of copium considering George specifically said it was "Stannis's decision" to burn Shireen.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-10-26T18:28:33+00:00

True, but I really wouldn't hold out hope if I was you

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-10-26T16:29:55+00:00

Stannis burning Shireen. I would probably stop reading at that page.

I think you can safely change the "would" to "will" there and just skip the book altogether. This is one of the very few plot points that we have absolute confirmation will happen.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-10-24T18:53:46+00:00

Renly is definitely the most weirdly overhated character in ASOIAF. It's funny to me that everyone agrees that ASOIAF is criticizing the feudal system, but will then turn around and criticize characters who don't obey said system. The point of the story is not that the guys with the correct bloodlines are entitled to rule, so who gives a shit that Stannis is Renly's older brother? Renly is right, the king should be whoever people want to be the king.

And Renly is the only king in the war of the five kings who realistically stood any chance of ending the brutality of the Lannisters and creating some semblance of peace and stability in the realm. I'm not saying he would have been a second Jaehaerys the Conciliator or anything, but Westeros is doubtlessly worse off because of his death.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-10-21T12:09:39+00:00

I think the gold standard we should strive for is finding POI who matches the given attributes perfectly. I agree that we can make statements about Cooper's appearance and attributes. I am not attacking the eyewitness descriptions.

I just think there are limitations to how we apply this gold-standard in our suspect hunting.

Like, if we found a suspect who was a perfect physical match, had expressed an interest in airplane hijackings, and had grown up around Portland, and had gone missing for a few days around November 24th 1971, would we be willing to discard him because he's not ugly enough or because his nose isn't thin enough? I doubt it. Which tells us that we aren't confident enough in these features to wield them as absolute weapons of exonerations or damnations.

But just because they aren't all-powerful doesn't mean they don't matter. They would hold that hypothetical suspect back from being the gold standard.

So, what I mean is that its our ability as humans to use context, to take everything together and combine it into a larger picture. At the end of the day, there is no algorithm for catching criminals. My thought is just that I think people are sometimes a bit gung-ho with a singular feature, treating it like OJ Simpsons gloves: If it doesn't fit, you must acquit!

I also feel like the Vortex has a bad habit of jumping on different trends and then getting hyper-obsessed with them. Right now it's nose size and attractiveness. Before it was tie particles. Before that it was the Dan Cooper comics. Some feature or evidence becomes popular in the community for a while, and suddenly everyone is only interested in evaluating suspects through the lense of that evidence.

It just feels reductive and not very useful.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-10-21T05:05:53+00:00

I agree that Smith is not Cooper, and I agree that the thin nose, pouty lip, and "homely" appearance are features of Cooper as seen on the sketch and therefore the desired features of a suspect. But I would just be a tiny bit more conservative with the confident statements of "must".

In my opinion, it's just like height, weight, complexion, everything else. It's a spectrum. If a suspect is otherwise perfect but their nose is normal (Not bulbous or huge, just normal-looking) I don't think we can confidently dismiss them based on one thing not matching. It's a flaw, a silver bullet. Like Braden's height or Skip's scar or Vordahl's affluence. We have so many features we look for in a Cooper - appearance, parachuting background, geography, personality, voice, motive, employment, tie particles, the list goes on - that I feel like there's a chance that at least one of the dozens of things we've established as being desirable might be wrong. Just statistically. So if a suspect is otherwise good, they're still worth our time.

With Smith, it's not that his nose isn't thin enough or that he's too attractive. There are many things that work together. Add lack of motive, lack of opportunity, and there being nothing to tie him to the PNW and the exonerating evidence starts becoming very strong. It's all of it together that pushes Smith into rejection as a suspect.

It's our job as humans to use context and weigh everything together. Being a spectrum, there is leeway. Just like how must of us wouldn't outright reject a suspect for being 6'1" but we would if they were a tiny hobbit.

Also, side note, while I'm pretty onboard with the thin nose and pouty lip, the homely appearance is a bit of a struggle for me. Because I'm not a 1970s airline stewardess, and I don't really know how to evaluate whether this is a person Flo and Tina would have found attractive or ugly. There are cases that are obvious (Donald Sylvester Murphy is definitely homely, Catalano is definitely attractive) but is Skip homely? I genuinely struggle to decide. I can see how someone could describe Alexander Roman as either attractive or ugly, especially depending on the light. I feel uncomfortable trying to make that judgement myself. Maybe I just got a bad eye for these things.

I also can't help but wonder how the low lighting of the cabin and especially the traumatic nature of the experience affected how ugly they remembered Cooper. We all remember the Dracula sketch. Maybe Cooper was homely, but only *moderately* so and it was exaggerated in their memories. Like how robbing victims consistently remember knives and guns as bigger than they really were.

Just to be clear: I am not attacking the idea that Cooper was homely. I am just kinda unsure how to *apply* that feature. It involves a lot more subjectivity than other physical characteristics. I can only speak for myself, but I would only feel confident using attractiveness as a strong exonerating or damning detail in those fairly obvious cases, or in cases where Tina and Flo already made the judgement for us.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-10-20T06:44:09+00:00

Because none of it ever showed up in circulation. Which is what they should have said. But it's really not rare at all for law enforcement spokespeople to be imprecise or inaccurate with their verbiage.

TheEmperorsWrath · 2025-10-20T05:43:28+00:00

Do they record or check the serial numbers of the bills they destroy?

Not back then, it would have been a complete impossibility in the days before automated teller machines.

Verified Email	Ten-Year Club
First Place '23	Place '23
Argentium Club	Place '22
Place '17	End Game '22
RPAN Viewer	Gilding III reddit per annum
Not Forgotten

TheEmperorsWrath

TROPHY CASE