Okay, good morning once again to Political Science 303, ladies and gentlemen. This morning we shall be starting our new case, the US case. We have so far covered a discussion on scope, method and comparative politics. Then we talked about the modern state, then democracy. We've completed our discussion on Britain and France. And next week you shall be writing a midterm exam on Britain and France compared. And this morning we're starting off with the US case. And with the US case we're going to do exactly the same what we've done so far. That is, we'll start with some history, critical junctures, state tradition. Okay, how did the US state come about? Historical legacy of the past for contemporary politics. And then we'll talk about political economy of economic and social policies. Thirdly, we'll talk about governance and policy making. Fourth, interest representation and participation. And finally, we'll talk about current challenges. So that's going to be the plan for this case, for at least four to five lectures. Okay, so let me start off with the map, as usual. We have a large country. It takes about half of the North American continent. The US territory wise, geographical spanning wise. It is almost as large as Europe, as a continent. Europe, if you divide Europe from the Ural mountains and the rest. Okay, so I don't mean Europe, just European states. But this includes a big chunk of Russia, contemporary Russia, and plus the European states. So it's a large country. We've got the Russian Federation, China, then US, then Canada, in terms of the geographical span of 48 plus two states, 50 states, therefore, or hence, the United States of America. And the population is, excuse me, any ideas about the US population? Three, more than 300 million, no, it hovers around 315 million people. Two neighbors, both of which are part of a trade deal, which is called the North American Free Trade Area Agreement, Canada and the US. What do you mean? Well, Trump says we'll build a wall. Mr. President-elect Trump says we'll build a wall. A beautiful wall. And the wall will be built and paid by Mexican government. So yes, there will be a wall. This is one of the electoral pledges. But will there be a wall? We'll see. So both neighbors, up north, Canada, down south, Mexico, friendly relations with them. The northern border is, I think if I remember correctly, it's the longest border frontier, national border, which is not protected. So the Americans, nor the Canadians, neither of them expect an attack from one another. They have sealed their fate about 200 years ago in 1812. And the outcome of which, if you ask Canadians, they want. If you ask the Americans, they want. So it's a little bit iffy in that respect. So no border disputes between Canada and the US. Mexico will see whether how things turn out. But I don't personally expect, personally, out of personal experience, a tough reaction to whatever is happening. Rich natural resources, coal, oil, and all kinds of metals. Large arable land, navigable waters, as you can see. And protected ports, natural ports. So abundance of land, abundance of resources. Therefore, when you look at the political economy of the United States, it's a country known as a resource rich country. It's massive. It has a lot of resources. Let's talk about some critical junctures that make up or that have a lasting influence on contemporary US politics. Let's start with the Revolutionary Era, 1777 until 1779. 13 American colonies off the East Coast. They're called the American colonies under British rule. But they say that we want to secede from British rule. So we are tired of paying taxes for the British Empire. And it did take a war, which is sometimes referred to as the American War, or sometimes referred to as the War of Independence, or sometimes referred to as the Revolutionary War, for the American colonies to fight against King George III of England. So there was a war waged between the 13 colonies versus the British colonial imperial power. But at this time, there was a civil war in the sense that parts or some parts of the population wanted to remain loyal to the British Empire. They were called the Loyalists. And the 13 colonies, there were the elements within the 13 colonies who wanted to become independent. These forces were known as the Patriots. So Patriots versus the Loyalists. And the Patriots won by the end of the day. And they declared their independence on July the 4th, 1776. And with the Declaration of Independence, they declared a constitution, which was called back then as the Articles of Confederation, which dates back to 1788, which was ratified by the Congress in 1789. So this is basically the first governing document. Think of it like the Constitution of the United States, which gave powers to the states. In fact, the powers of the states expanded. And this meant that national government was dependent on voluntary contributions of the states. So the national government was dependent on the voluntary contributions of the states. And without the state's approval, the national government would not be implementing foreign policy, taxes, and regulating trade. So yes, this document gave all kinds of powers in the areas of commerce, foreign policy, and military policy to the national government. But also it said, look, I'm not going to do or act independent of you. So you see a compromise between the states and the federal authority, with all kinds of expansion of rights at the federal level, but also expansion of rights at the state level. Then a few years later, we see the introduction of what's called the Bill of Rights. These are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution that was just or that had been just passed by the Congress. The Bill of Rights is all about protection of citizens, civil rights, and liberties from the government. So it's basically a list of limits and powers of the federal or central government. It lists all kinds of rights. It's short. It's concise. It says, OK, these are the rights that we grant to our citizens. The idea behind the civil rights or Bill of Rights was to provide these rights to the citizens so that they would be protected from any arbitrary power or arbitrary use of power by the government. So basically, this is the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, which came as one single unified coherent document known as the Bill of Rights. Financing of the federal government, independent of the states, was one of the issues in the Constitution. The president would be independent of the legislature. The president as an institution, as a post, is now independent of the legislature. And there is limited citizens voice, indirect election of the president, indirect election of the senators. And here, women would be not given voting rights. But all these rights were expanded by the Bill of Rights in about a few years. Then another critical juncture, another milestone 100 years later almost, is the Civil War and what's called the Reconstruction or the Reconstruction Era. The Civil War grew out of a struggle of power between the national government as opposed to the state governments. So there was much debate with respect to the issue of slavery, which had all kinds of ramifications about the agriculture sector, trade, and all that. But the struggle for power stemmed from expanding the rights of slavery, I'm sorry, expanding the slavery mode of production to the Western territories. So slavery was a huge question. Then there emerged a civil war on this very issue. For about four to five years, 1861 to 1865, the Union North fought against the secessionist south, which is called the Confederacy, or Confederate of American States, Confederation of American States. So the North was saying, hey, we want to abolish slavery. And the South says, we don't want to abolish slavery. In fact, we want to expand slavery to the Western territories. And the Civil War ends with the North defeating the South. With the victory of the North, the unions, the unionists, slavery was abolished in the entire country. So this was a landmark decision for a young state, which was not even 100 years old. Then the entire country was under reconstruction between 1863, right in the middle of the Civil War, until about 1876, 1877, in which we see the restoration of national unity. And in addition, we see the strengthening of the national government. So reconstruction, excuse me, relaunching of the state, indivisibility of the nation. And with these, immediately after, we see the emergence of another amendment, what's called the 14th Amendment, which basically said, we're expanding the rights of all citizens to include all freed slaves. So 1868, late 19th century. Therefore, we see the Bill of Rights now being applicable to or covering or addressing states, all states, as well as or in addition to the federal actions. And all who were born in the US were declared as citizens of the US. So this includes, once again, the freed slaves for the first time. So there was a decision, a landmark decision, with the 14th Amendment, 1868, granting of citizenship rights to all who were born, all citizens who were born in the US. Another landmark or milestone was the New Deal era. Now we're jumping, first we jumped for about 80, 90 years. Now we're jumping from 1860s to 1930s, another 70 years or so. World War I ends. The US does not participate in World War I, but the Great Depression hits. 1928, stock market crash, New York and elsewhere. It becomes contagious. It spills over to worldwide dimensions. And we have unemployment skyrocketing to 40%, industrial activity plummeting. So we have the United States of America industrializing massively with great speed. But there is a huge decline in worldwide demand for US manufacturers. This meant unemployment rising. It's an export-oriented economy too, even back then. And then President Roosevelt coming to power says, OK, I'm going to respond in a novel way. And he installs what he calls and his followers called the New Deal. So we build a New Deal in response to the world economic crisis and also Great Depression at home. With the Great Depression, after the Great Depression, with the New Deal, I'm sorry, we see an expansion of the federal government in many areas. So the federal government now regulates or has the powers to regulate interstate commerce, expands social security for the first time to include, in a way, a universalist ideal of social security with the ideas of all kinds of social security programs ranging from some kind of health care, some kind of pensions, labor's rights, and new legislation directed toward that. And subsidization of agriculture. That was also a policy that was implemented to resist or to tame the agricultural cycle. The agricultural cycle is exposed to fluctuations. So we want to tame that cycle by providing subsidies to our farmers. So the federal government, in a way, asserts its dominance, especially in the area of social security, over state governments. So expansion of the federal government at the expense of state government. So this was an era in which we see strengthening of the federal government, the national government, at the expense of state government. And the idea was, during the New Deal era, with the social security expanding as a program, as a major field of state activity, as a major field of state intervention, the idea of national citizenship was expanded. 1930s, 1933, 1940s. So all throughout the 1930s, we see the expansion of the social security and also the idea of national citizenship, which ends up with World War II. During this period, we see the powers of the president expanding, but still the Constitution says it's the Congress, which is the central institution here. The president never has any legislative power, as we shall be talking about. But his powers to push through his agenda had been expanding since then. This was a period, in a way, an early consensus period. Remember, we talked about the collectivist consensus in Britain and the transglorieuse in France? There was an early consensus back in the 1930s in the US, a democratic consensus, that there was some kind of a class compromise. So class-based politics was kept to a minimum. So that was interesting to observe in this country. After the New Deal, we jump to another institutionalized regime-like milestone. Up until the 1960s, we had Democrats coming to power in consecutive terms. But from 1960s onwards, we see the emergence of an institution called divided government. When we talk about divided government, we should refer to the separation of powers. So here, we've got the executive organs of state, the legislature, and the judiciary. The legislature is a bicameral legislature. We've got the Congress here. And it is composed of the House of Representatives. We'll talk about these in more detail later on. But I just want to show you what happened in history. And we've got the Senate here. The executive is the president. And the judiciary is Supreme Court and the lower system of courts, or the system of lower courts. When we talk about divided government, this means that, and we know that there are two major coalitions or political parties in the country, if we have a Republican president, a Republican House of Representatives, or Republican-dominated House of Representatives, and Democrats, you know, Democrat-controlled Senate, then this is a case of divided government. We can do all kinds of permutations, of course, Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Democrat, Republican, and all that. So this means that the executive versus the legislature, so it may be divided, there may be a division with respect to who controls which organ of state, which branch of government, or that there would be, because of the bicameral nature of the system, we see divided government or divided Congress with respect to the House or who controls the House and who controls the Senate. So since 1969, we had only five instances of the opposite of divided government. The opposite of divided government is called unified control. So the presidency and the Congress had been dominated by one single party only five times until this year, until the end of this year. So Democrats controlled till, I mean, or since 1968, Democrats controlled all three institutions, i.e. the president, and both houses in the Congress, both chambers, from 1977 till 1980 for about four years, from 1993 till 1994 under Clinton, I'm sorry, yes, under Clinton, then 2009, 2010 under Obama. So one to three instances, and if you add up the numbers, do the math, it's just a few number of years. The Republicans controlled all three positions or one position and the institutions, the two chambers at the same time. In 2001, 2003, 2007, with Mr. Trump's election, with the Senate as well as the House being controlled by the Republican Party, will be witnessing the sixth time with a Republican president, a Republican House of Representatives, or Republican-dominated House of Representatives, and the Republican-dominated Senate. And this would be called what's the opposite of divided government. It's called unified control. We refer to divided government in the US. What would be its counterpart in France? So what would we be calling, in the case of France, we have one party dominating the legislature and the other party dominating, I'm sorry, one party, yeah, of course, one party dominating the legislature and hence the lower arm of the executive, the cabinet, that part of the executive, and the other executive, i.e. the president. So when we have a prime minister and the president not coming from the same party, not representing the same party, then we'd call that collaboration, which may be a good question in the exam. So the sixth time will be next year, where we will have a House of Representatives dominated by, with a majority of Republicans, the Senate with a slight majority, 51 to 49 or 52 to 48, we'll see, and the president all representing the same political party, the same political faction. So it'll be the fourth time under Republicans, and therefore what's important to remember is that unified government has been an exception since 1968. And I think from 1928, yeah, we had this also, but we had quite a number of years being, I mean, the Republicans dominating all these three organs, or two organs at the same time. And we'll see that the judiciary, the Supreme Court, may also be dominated by the Republicans in the sense that we now have four justices who are liberal, who are more pro-democrat, another four who are more conservative, who would be thinking along the lines of Republicans. We have one missing justice, or who will be appointed by, who was thought to be appointed by President Obama, but now we'll have President Trump appointing that judge. So we will also have a conservative, dominated Supreme Court soon too. So at the end of all these elections that have been taking place a few days ago. So 2017, things will be like with respect to the House of Representatives, 239 seats, Republican, 193 seats, Democrat, Senate, 51 to 52, Republican versus 48 to 49 Democrat. And the presidency will be controlled by the Republicans. And the Supreme Court, we have once again four conservative justices, four liberal-leaning justices, and will have most probably the fifth one as either a moderate or a conservative too. All of the idea of divided government means that the government is exposed to all kinds of lobbying. So it becomes easier to lobby when you have especially divided government. So it really boosts interest group activity. Then comes September 11, 2001, 2001, and its aftermath. There have been some concerns about expansion of the federal government at the expense of state governments and infringement of or on rights and liberties by individuals. So there has been some concern about what's called in the American jargon big governments, expansion of especially the federal government. But we never had a national consensus of which way to go, whether we should expand the privileges of the federal government or the state government, or we should keep it as such or expand the privileges, the rights of the powers of the state level. So there was no consensus. But the idea of big government was welcomed after the September 11 attacks. So the government, the Bush administration in that respect, had a strengthened hand with respect to all the policies. The invasion of Iraq was a watershed that it really started to polarize the country. Up until then, from 2001 till 2003, the US was one. The idea or the ideal of a pluribus unum out of many one, united in diversity, was very much there. But after the invasion of Iraq, things got upset a little bit. I have a question here. In the first quarter, the chief of attorney in the Supreme Court of Iraq was? Chief of attorney. Die. OK. Oh, had died. Had passed away. Yes. Justice Scalia. Yes. Headlines we saw the moment was going to nominate his own candidates for the violation. And I guess the Republicans are writing the question here is that why they are so concerned for this nomination? Why are the Republicans so concerned? That's a good question. Of course, yeah. As far as I know, I don't think. We'll talk about this in more detail later on. But the Supreme Court has a huge weight in the system. The Supreme Court rulings will or have to be obeyed by everyone. So what the House as well as the Senate did was to in a way play a game, take the risk of wait and see until who comes or who becomes president next. So they thought or they bet their money on the Republican candidate. And they won in the sense that they wished to say, hey, President Obama, if you want to push through your candidate, your nominee, we may overturn that. So unless we will discuss this in more detail, but the most important aspect of US politics is that you have to negotiate. And you have to coordinate. You have to collaborate. Unless you negotiate, unless you collaborate, that is, if you push through your agenda unilaterally, you can't do that. You don't do that. You don't become successful because of all kinds of institutional features of the system. We'll talk about this in more detail when we talk about the setup of the government. But these are all co-equal branches of government. And there are checks and balances. So the separation of powers also mean that you have to collaborate no matter what. We'll discuss all of these with examples. Yes, please. Efficiently, I don't know. Effectively, yes. Efficiently, this is known as the most inefficient government type. Efficiency means that you can, in public policymaking, it means you can pass legislation quickly. And then once there is everybody OK, it becomes law. Yeah. But effectively, yes, it's an effective system in which we see checks and balances. But I just wanted to give you highlights of some history. We'll talk about the details later on. I know you're all excited about talking about this. And we think about this all the time in this country, too. But just be a little bit more patient when we discuss the organization of the state, co-equal branches of government, checks and balances, horizontal checks and balances, as well as the vertical checks and balances. We'll discuss all the details. But give me a moment to complete this historical critical junctures so that we are all on the same page with respect to these other themes that really bear their mark on contemporary politics. Invasion of Iraq then comes the USA Patriot Act, united in strengthening America by providing appropriate tools to intercept and obstruct terrorism act. So again, this was, first, there was not much domestic response to it. But later, it became an issue of contention. The act brought a dramatic expansion of the federal government with respect to surveillance, with respect to law enforcement, and limits on civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, or in the name of the fight against terrorism. So this was another critical juncture in the sense that the act allowed the government to expand its powers, to push through its agenda, vis-a-vis its citizens. Then Invasion of Afghanistan, first international support. Then it had been waning throughout. And the difficulty of the Bush administration after Hurricane Katrina, 2005, August. And there were problems with Bush's re-election, which we may talk about later. And opposition from allies, not only, I mean, in France, what's called, you know, what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld back then called Old Europe, but also Heartland Europe. So everybody was against, at some point, what many saw as the overextension of the United States. That there were foreign policy in the eyes of many. There were foreign policy mistakes, as they saw. And many still see the US as overstepping into the Middle East and elsewhere in its neighborhoods so that whatever we're having today has something to do with whatever the Bush administration did back then. That was one of the reasons why the Obama administration wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan, but also from Iraq and elsewhere. So these were basically the landmarks or the critical junctures in which we had the expansion. As you can see, you see the expansion of the state, state power, national government vis-a-vis, at some points, at some critical junctures or at the expense of state-level jurisdictions. So basically these are the critical junctures in US history which have ramifications for our discussions when we talk about the organization of the state and also we'll talk about social policy. So we'll come back to the New Deal era. We'll talk about interest representation and participation. We'll talk about divided government, lobbying, iron triangles, and all that. So basically think of this as a preview of coming attractions, as you see in the movies, but as you see what's important here is that there has been a continuity with respect to the expansion of the federal government, the role of the state, the penetrative ability of the state, the centralized state or central state, federal state in the lives of its citizens. I think that concludes my discussion here. Next class, we'll start with, well, first we'll write the midterm exam. And next Friday we'll start with political economy of economic and social policies. I'm sorry, no, of course not. We'll start with the organization of the state. OK, I'll see you next class.


ke, what should we do? That's why it's this, though. Clegane Bowl, no. Let's have them fight on the stairs because why not? And then fall in the fire. It's not going to happen that way, but it's definitely going to happen. In some former fashion, absolutely Clegane Bowl is going to be a thing. Did we figure out what brand three was, by the way? Red Eyes, The Mountain in brand three, which is like super early in the book. Wait, what? He has a dream. Let me see. What's the exact text? Jimmy's mind has been blown. I mean, I didn't know this.  It's definitely going to happen for real. Yeah. First of all, anybody just joining this, whatever the show told you, there may be plot points that happen. Grom's going to do it way better if he ever actually writes the books. It's going to be way better than the show did it. Okay, just first of all, because the show makes no goddamn sense. But let me see what this does. Cal Drogozen is probably my favorite, very emotional chapter. Yeah, Cal Drogozen is very emotional grant. Drogozen is great. Drogozen is phenomenal, dude. He's so good. Another good casting. Just to make that character not be at all, to be like a two-dimensional character. He's a good character. Bran vs. Rika. But let's just forget in the book how creepy it is for a second, because it's real sus. It's his first crowdream. If you remember that Danny's 13 in the books, and I posted, I put it in my Discord. I don't know if I put it in Instagram, to you guys. There's a scene right after the whole heart eating when she's pregnant, and she like bathes in the lake, and then Drogo comes up and she's like talking about his manhood, and I'm just like, 13, 13, and he, sorry. Jurits even says he picks her up as if she was a child, and I'm like, bro, she is. Yeah, you said that, and I said, yep. So that's a little weird. Man, this Bran thinks crazy. Bran 3, though, is when the three-eyed crow tells Bran that he must choose fly or die. So that immediately sparks the whole like you're going to be a three-eyed crow, you're eventually going to fly, which totally doesn't pay off in the show because the showrunners are morons, and they forgot. What are you trying about? It totally pays off. He becomes king. Yeah. When in season eight, episode three, he just fucks off in a nowhere land and never comes back. Yeah, that was great. I don't see this exact thing, but I'm sure Ben the Knee knows, and they could tell us exactly what he's talking about, but I don't remember the exact thing that he was talking about because there's a ton of foreshadowing. Well, I mean, that's almost the entire purpose of a lot of what Bran does. Right. He doesn't have a whole lot going on, but what's going on with him is like peeks into the future. Yeah, and Bran has a lot of dreams about being a knight and riding a horse, and one of the best scenes in this entire book, and I think it's whenever you start to root for Tyrion a little bit more than just wondering what's up with him, is whenever he gives Bran the saddle and Rob treats him like shit, and Rob even knows he did it, Rob kind of like said, well, actually you can stay here, Tyrion, and Tyrion said, I know when I'm not welcome, I'll stay at the inn, and then that's when he gets captured by Catlin. Yeah. Which makes you sure. Thanks, Mom. Yeah, thanks, Mom. Geez. It makes you sure.  Yeah, and he's like, spare me your false courtesies, I think is what he says.  Well said, Alex, well said. I couldn't have said it better to be honest. I've stumbled over a few words myself tonight.  That is some mountain reincarnate foreshadowing. Jesus. And here's the thing.  I think every individual can make a decision on how big of an impact that has, but can we appreciate like just in general? It's so good. Like the experience of the books that we have are so untouchable, at least for me, they're untouchable. It's so good. But they really are like top tier storytelling and he inspired a whole generation. Like Joe Abercrombie is very inspired, right? Like I don't know if we would have the Joe Abercrombie we have today without Joe. We absolutely would not. Or at least, I mean, it would take someone, if not George, then someone like cluing Joe into the effect that fantasy doesn't have to be Tolkien. Yeah, I appreciate your patrons calling me drunk. Okay. Daria has a mind of her. She's also an Alan patron, so we can we can shift it over to him. I just have to blame Alan for all of my scribes. It's so good though for I mean, if we never get a win to winter and or a dream of spring, like these books are fantastic. Everything, I mean, we've been talking for two hours plus already. About one book. Mostly. One book. That's generally how I feel like King Killer too when people are like, well, book three is never happening, so why would I read it? I'm like, because what we do have is phenomenal. Yeah. And we have to, you know, in a lot of ways, the song by some fire and bodies this, but like in life, we don't always have neat endings. We don't always are. We aren't guaranteed anything, right? I feel like we're sitting at the feet of Grandpa and he's giving us some life lessons. You know, but I just think about these things. There was a very talented kid I went to high school with. And funniest guy I've ever met. And he passed away in a car accident last year. And I thought about that in a lot of senses because I've always wanted to see what he would do. Matt was a really good dude. And I could think about how much of a shame it was that we didn't get to see his full potential. But I think of all the things that Matt and I got to do whenever he was around. And I think about like the impact he had on me. And I think about that a lot of the way with the authors that we see, like there's a lot of different authors, not just George. Like Scott Lynch is another one that people bring up a lot of the times. And sure, we can be disappointed. And I think it does matter when we rank them with the greatest of all time. But in a personal situation- Wait, when you say disappointed about it, just not being finished. Yes, not being finished. Yes, I'm sorry. Because there's like three or four more books that he has to write. And that's been forever. And those mean a lot to a lot of people, right? So I think there is a general weight that comes with finishing a series that a lot of people will not be able to forgive. But I do think about the first time I read a storm of swords and my heart pounding. I don't know if I'll ever read a book that does that to me again. Because now I'm two in the know, right? I've read so many books that I kind of see things happening as it comes.  I was born cynical, so. Right? Well, fair. I'm pretty dead inside, so. But I think about these things and I think about like when George passes or Robert Jordan passed on, right? And I imagine that was a dark day for like a lot of people, but no one ever questioned what they felt at the end of Eye of the World or Shadow Rising or The Great Hunt or things like that. And I think that we can obviously meme about George and we can joke about George. But at the end of the day, George has provided us, not just us, but the genre was something that changed a lot about what we think about storytelling. And at the end of the day, like a Game of Thrones rereading this with you guys has been excellent, obviously. But it also reminded me of how much of a game changer it was. It is. Like, especially in the time period it was written. Well, I feel like Game of Thrones, like a Song of Vice and Fire has done in the modern day, but we often kind of have to remind ourselves about other older classics. So when you read something like Frankenstein, you're like, well, it seems trite now.  I've seen this done a whole bunch. And then you have to remind yourself, well, it's been done so much because they did it. And so like when you read, when you think of Song of Vice and Fire, like, oh, so like so basic, so cliche. So like obviously a Song of Vice and Fire. We were like, no, but I mean, a Song of Vice and Fire, because like that's literally what spawned everything that came after it. So no credit where it's due. Yeah, I think we have a lot to appreciate. For sure. I think it's pretty excellent. Chris is talking about John, which Chris put in the chat, if that's what you're talking about. I'm looking through literally the chapter summary of brand three from Game of Thrones. I can't believe that I even glossed over some of this, that how much is in this chapter? He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea to the free cities, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to a shy by the shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise. He foreshadowed the ending of Game of Thrones. He foreshadows the three-eyed crow and everything. Like, Brand looks down again. He can see the whole realm and everything in it. Like, he sees everything. It is the goat. He sees the mother complicating a bloodstained knife aboard a ship sailing on the bite, and his father pleading with the king near the trident. He sees Sansa crying herself to sleep and Arya holding secrets in her heart. There is so much in this book that George is like, y'all don't know what's about to happen. And Brand is just a little baby. And also when we're talking about the legacy of an author, I feel like there are so many authors that also try to take the easy way and the quick way where they'll have something like that, you know, where someone has a prophetic dream.  And they're like, I'll figure it out when I get there. Or it's so on the nose. We need, this is why we need the books to finish this because all we have right now is five books with an unfinished series and the show with potentially some of the things that Girm had in mind. Like read this. So this, it's a summary of the chapter, right? But when you look at in the, so this is chapter 17 of book one of A Game of Thrones. Brand is sitting in the Far East. Brand sees dragons staring in the fable shadow lands, which you just mentioned. Brand turns north to the wall where he sees John sleeping alone and growing cold and hard. You see that happening. Then Brand looks beyond the wall. Okay, so we're already beyond the wall. And beyond the curtain of light at the edge of the world into what he calls the heart of winter. There's the others or the white walkers, whatever you want to call them. What he sees there makes them cry. So like totally, like you don't even know like what he's exactly looking at. Is it the white walkers getting like the baby sacrifices? Is it the end of season eight? And that's why he's crying because it's terrible. Is it the white walkers storming Winterfell in terrible lighting? Who knows? The Crow tells Brand that now he knows why he must live because winter is coming. Like book one, 17 chapters in. So like 200 pages probably because I don't remember exactly how short the chapters are. He's already setting up this entirety of like here come the others.  Yeah. And like you don't even think about it at the time of reading this. Like imagine reading this upon release before you even, you only have a game of Thrones.  And there's all this speculation. Now like we have hindsight. We have the books to look back on. We have the show. It's so obvious he's talking about. And we see it though.  Yeah, the foreshadowing is honestly, it's wild. It's pretty wild. And I like what Chris said and Chatty said, I find George's foreshadowing particularly impressive given he's a self-admitted planter rather than a plotter and being able to take those general foreshadowing. And we know that he had an outline that definitely did a lot of different things. And to be able to repurpose those things is pretty impressive. Pretty impressive.  And he chooses to fly. And that's when he wakes up. So people say ride or die. Is that also like a fly? Epic moment. So literally though, it's like Bran, that's the moment where he's almost subconsciously giving in to the three-eyed crow. And he doesn't even know that yet. But that's like he's choosing to fly in that moment. Yeah, it's interesting. And he doesn't even understand it yet. I think that Bran and Daenerys both have Paul feels from Dune in a way. Yeah. You know what I mean? There is a desert, so. Yeah, it's true. And she happens to have a, she doesn't know it yet, but she's going to have a nuclear bomb at the end of the books. Also, the end of the books are phenomenal. For the first time in whatever, what is it? Centuries, I think he says. Dragons flew across the sky. The sound difference again. Which again, so because we have to credit the show, right? Y'all remember how every single intro to the show, the theme was always the same, but the credits were different. And like the building of King's Landing and like what was going on was different. Oh my God, I never let anybody skip the opening credits. I was like, they're different. It was super early on in season one, the shadow of the dragon flying over King's Landing. Like so good. Just that little plant. You know, George told me. But also in the show, her hair didn't burn off because that would be ugly. Yeah. That makes sense though, right? Like she, her hair is not fireproof. It should be bald. It is stood in a pyre.  Interesting in what way? Because he's supposed to be a Targaryen. Like are we, again, are we going down the, everyone's a Targaryen? Well, I think we all agree that John is at least half Targaryen. Maybe he's not full Targaryen. That's why it is one. Okay. So if we're buying into the R plus L equals J theory, which makes sense, it would make sense that grabbing a literal fire would hurt him because he's only half. But also, also, we know that Viserys is full but a Targaryen and he was still burned. So it might not guarantee. He was not full on. Viserys was not burned. He had melted gold poured over his head. That is not burning. So you think he suffocated? But it's still heat. He literally had melted metal poured over his brain. Like that's not, he wasn't putting the fire. I figured he would have suffocated. That's kind of what I took from that. But I do think, and Chris said, I don't think Targaryen's are just fire proof. Except for Daenerys because she literally stands on fire and comes out fire. Well, that's what I'm saying. Daenerys seems to be special in that regard, right? Well, which is why I almost regarded it as, this is a thing. It kind of like in Hobb, when being witted or having the gifts like this, it doesn't just because you have it maybe in your family and you might get it. It doesn't mean every single person in the family gets it. If you have even like the smallest drop of blood, like this is a thing that happens in this family a lot. That they tend to have this trait, but you may not get it. It might be recessive. So you need to have both, like, you know. Yeah, and Chris brings that.   Well, sure. Because they burn the witch. Yeah. So that's really interesting as well. That Dany kind of let murder go through, you know? But God. She met well. You know, we talk about Ned's tragic death.  Please let him catch you.  That was some wish master stuff, right? Yeah. Like she made a wish and it didn't come out. Like George is very much about the classics. Like he really enjoys. Yes.  And that's Rhaegar Targaryen. He lost to the big bully Robert Baratheon. And that's what kick starts Game of Thrones, right? Did he, though? Maybe he floated down where he became Rance. We don't know. But I think we know. I think we know Rhaegar is dead. So Christian's point real quick about the Starks being wargs. Yeah. That's a much bigger thing in the books than in the show. The show kind of abandoned that. But the whole concept of warging in the books plays a much bigger role. It's a really old new brand that's like, that that's a thing within the show. Yeah, it's the old John in book five, though, potentially. I'm saying in the show. The show, it's really just brand warging. No one else really plays into it at all. But yet it's just the wilder in the show, which is much bigger in the books. And it plays a more important role because of the foreshadowing in book one, where John is like, look, you guys are Starks. Your house schedule is the dire wolf. Like you're meant to have these wolves. And then, oh yeah, by the way, like you all have magic powers that you can like work into your wolves, which again, we'll get to it in books to come about Rob. In book three with Arya, yeah.  And yes, and Dary has a good point in chat. Arya in particular, though, with her senses borrowed from the cats with the scenes with the cats, with Illyrio having them trained. Or chasing the cats, yeah. Yes. Through Kings Landing. Yes. And also, if you remember, there is a Sir Pounce very, it's an interesting theory. How it's got. Yeah, it's very interesting. I think it gets explained a little bit more in Clash of Kings or maybe it wasn't a Game of Thrones. I can't remember. The cats have an interesting role in Kings Landing. That's cool. Yeah. Arya is definitely, I think, second most magical behind brand. Like she, or... Well, I mean her plot like where it goes since we're clearly not just sticking to Game of Thrones. I mean, like when she goes on... Yeah, we read. It's going to be impossible to not just like talk about future stuff. And also, I mean, we just read the shortest books and we are almost, you know, two and a half hours and we've stuck pretty good, I think, to book one. Can you imagine the details we've forgotten from a Clash of Kings, Storm of Swords, Feast for Growers? Especially...  No. I'm a fake king. You want to confirm.  The Pounce is a Targaryen. Exactly. The Pounce is actually a dragon just caught in a cat's body. Common has no idea what's in store. Things just going to burst into a dragon at any moment. Yeah, I mean, have we... Because I know we're at two and a half hours, but have we missed any like really important characters that we want to talk about? We talked about Tyrion. We briefed... So like from like who's in the book the most? We've spoken about most of the Starks, as far as I'm concerned. We've been touched on the first year of Tywin. Seriously. But so Tywin's like not in it that much though. Yeah, Tywin is really... I mean, Cersei also actually like... The existence of her is important, but she doesn't actually do that much. So again, I think in the show, the show did a great job of introducing Tywin and making Charles dance just the most imposing thing ever. Exactly, Gerson. Correct. Cersei was, you know, Lena Heady fully embodies that role in the show. But again, like in the books, you don't... You get a little bit of Cersei. But mostly, Charles dance is Tywin. Yeah. But like you get Cersei in Winterfell. You get a little bit of Cersei in her interactions with Robert. And then her interaction with Ned. And then again with Ned, when she's sitting on the throne... And with Sansel. With Joffrey. Immediately after that. So like you get the whole scene where like Ned thinks that he's got it in the bag. He's taking, you know, the little finger. Have we... Have we not talked about Peter? We did a little bit. I mean, we did it, but we just talked about kind of him in relation to Ned. Okay. So real quick on Cersei though. So like the biggest Cersei moments are Ned's one-on-one with Cersei in the garden when he calls her there. And she's like, why are we meeting here? And he's like, oh, I'm sorry, Robert.  And then it's just like, was like, please take a bodyguard and like leave because I'm going to tell him everything. She's just like, you have no idea how this world works to you. Like that whole scene is great. And it's almost like verbatim for the show, right? It's great too because even though you're in Ned's POV, you're like, I see the truth here. Why don't you? And then when he marches into the keep and they're sitting there and just they, you know, introduce Joffrey.  Like, this means nothing. And he's just like... What are you going to do, bitch? And then the whole little finger like, I told you not to trust me. Like that whole scene was fantastic. So like we get, like that's the most Cersei that we get is like through Robert's eyes, through Ned's eyes. Through Brown's eyes, briefly. Yeah. And I mean, Tywin, you don't get a lot of in general. I mean, you get some pretty key interactions between him and Tyrion. But you immediately know how he feels about Tyrion. And not just how he feels about Tyrion.  And when you meet him, you're like, no, he really is everything they say about him, where he lives up to the legend. And yes, Charles dance like fully and wholly embodies everything about Tywin Lannister. Like, I don't, that is the perfect casting for that character. He's so good. He's phenomenal, dude. Oh yeah. Charles dance narrating the books would be way better. Just throw that out. That would just be too sexy, wouldn't it? Roy is good. Wait, have you seen Charles dance reading 50 Shades of Grey? Yes, I have. I have. Because he basically sits in the chair that you have behind you. I know. Imagine I'm Tywin Lannister just sitting there reading a Game of Thrones that's sitting right there. Or 50 Shades of Grey. It'd be phenomenal. But so Ben, the niece of Littlefinger. So what else do we need to say about Peter Baelish? I think one of the show. Well, his history with Catlin is already so well developed, even though it's not really info dumped at you. It's just hinted at enough to where you've got a pretty solid idea of what that history is and how that's affected. And they talk about his scar. Yes, so one of the best things about the show before we get into Book Littlefinger, I love the fact that the show beyond, Theon's barely in the book. What are you talking about? Yeah, he's really not. Exactly. And he becomes later important because of veins and reeds. I love the fact that the show really gave you a full POV of Peter Baelish because it really makes you. And Varys. And Varys. Because those two characters, you only see sporadically through other people's eyes. So having their full POVs in the show was fantastic. And I think a great, fantastic change from the book to the show. On the show too, you see Jamie and Cersei a lot more completely from the beginning. But I mean, Baelish, you already know immediately from the go, you're like, what is this guy's game? What is he really after? Also great casting. Perfect. Like, you know he likes Cat. You know he wants Cat. You know he loves Sansa. Like. Because she looks like Cat. I'm a stand-in for Cat. You know. I think the most.  One of the most telling lines in the book is whenever Varys says that Peter Baelish should be the king of ashes if it meant that he could be king. Yep. And I think the whole idea behind Littlefinger is that it doesn't matter what happens. He'd love. I mean. Unlike Varys who really does kind of want to keep the peace. I mean, I think Varys definitely had like, obviously he's going to, anyone that's going to be in a position. For the realm. Yeah. Anything that's for the realm could result in disaster for somebody. Yeah. Whereas I believe Peter Baelish. He wants his, his goal is the least amount of disaster. Peter Baelish is a vengeful nerd. That is the story. Yes, the letter, sir.  And speaking of Theon in book one, I think Theon is really set up really well in book one because he's such a pompous ass in book one. He's just barely in it. Yeah. He's just great pompous. Once you get past it, like unless I'm completely wrong, like the scene with Bran and them in the woods when, when, you know, Asha and the wildings come up to that, like it's not even in it much after that. Well, he talks back to Lady Stark, whatever they're talking about, how to get through the neck. They're, he's, he's saying, let's just siege it.   Yeah. They're like, they're like, by the time he did that, the lannisters would come around back and they, you know, they, you know, but like, because that's the most impactful thing that sticks out to me at Theon is that moment when he pulls the bow and just shoots the wildling and Rob's like, what if you would hit Bran?  And he's just like, yeah, but I didn't tell you to use like, where do you get off on trying to be a hero? And he's just like, because I just saved his life. Yeah. It kind of shows that there's a little descent between the Starks and Theon.  Yeah. And I think that was obviously planned out for book two, right? Because Theon gets way more fleshed out as we go into books two and three. Well, so I mean, what it does, it does enough to establish existing tension and doesn't really need to be more than that. Like Theon you get is kind of like, there is some friction, but that's really it. Because they tell you like they put down the rebellion, they set the Iron Islands in their place and then they took him as a war. Honestly, like when I was reading the books, I was just the Iron Islands was one of the things that I found the most fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know a lot about them either. Other than they rebelled and they got put down.  But like the Iron Islands, I was like, oh, this is fascinating. Until you learn more about them and like the Kingsmoot and everything. And then it's really cool that they didn't include the show because it was terrible. So, somebody said it's so Ben Lannis is Sir Alistair Thorne. Alistair Thorne. Alistair Thorne's interest, obviously, he's the antagonist for Tron. I love that casting in the show too.  And he's just, I mean, that's who he is, right? And I think one of the reasons why, and it's kind of a commentary on The Night's Watch becoming a joke, is that Sir Alistair Thorne, right? He's a knight? Yes, he's one of the last noble people to join. Yes, sir. You have Mormons. You have the Thorns. But then after that, you get some more. You have Bear Island. You've got knights. And then you got this, that doofus Sam that's like, I know, I knew. You mean Guerm, right? Because that was him writing himself in the story. He said, yeah. 100%. Of course. I mean, so out, I mean. Again, Sam's casting was also really good because it'd be so easy to make that character be a caricature. Yeah. Oh, he played that really well. I mean, I think the whole, everything about The Night's Watch, I think translated well. Alistair in books. Except for John. Stop. Alistair in book and show was great. He played that, you know. And Mormons is perfect casting. Mormons, great. So that's where like, I appreciated the aging above characters because Mormons and the show, you really get the feel of like, he's been through this. Like he's been there for a while. Yeah. If you think about it. Amon Targaryen. Exactly. He's been there a few decades. If you just take the books, ages at face value, like they're all really young. So it's like, were you all doing this when you were 15? Like you've been veterans for 20 years and now you're 35 when you're an old man. It makes more sense to like a general audience that no, he's like 60. Like that makes more sense of like, oh, he's been around for a while. Like this is ancient history.  Because like The Night's Watch is in shambles. And all they're getting of the worst of the worst.  He's an outcast of his own family. They don't want him.  And Alistair's like, okay, y'all can protect him if you want.    You completely understand that mentality. Because he knows what's at stake. So like you can't help it. Almost simp about it. Which is why again, as a young lad, John being like, well, he can be useful. And this is how and this is what you should do. And here comes the kid Harrington casting hate. I mean, it's great. I love John in the books. I really do. Who wants the kid Harrington hate? I was going to say nothing about it. I think that just as long as I keep saying in the book, John, in the book this scene. Yeah. And I guess I did, Thorn was a Targaryen loyalist, which is interesting because John ultimately. Again, I think I've covered this. That's interesting. You know, and also Mormont, the one of the coolest things about Mormont is that he ties us to Essos with Jorah. Yeah.  And now he has Ned Stark's bastard. So it's not taking. And he's being kind to him. Yeah. And if you think about 1996, you know, and we don't have a clash of kings, right? I'm not six.  I mean, given the conversation he has with. Well, he does give him long call. Which is huge.   So it's not necessarily one motivation, one motivation only governs the decision to make multiple factors. But I think more so.  But I think, I mean, that is it. Like he's like, you are useful here. You're useful to me. You're useful here. And I don't want to lose you to some other fight that I know you feel invested in. And there's other reasons for your own self that you shouldn't do this thing. So I'm not being entirely selfish because this is also true. But also you are valuable here to me. So he's kind of the successor. Like he'll take over the night's watch when Mormon falls. Yeah.  Yeah. They mentioned Valerian Steel in the prologue and all the boys in the night's watch are like, can we see it? Yeah. People don't even like John. They say, can we see it, dude? It's like when you get the Pokemon card, you know, when you I was thinking more like that when Harry gets the Firebolt. Sure. I mean, yeah. Great. That's phenomenal. Oh, my God. You have a Nimbus 2000. Wait till your rival gets the Nimbus 2001. They're always making new phones, you know, hard to bond. The Littlefinger replica. Oh, yeah. Timmy has that. It's back here. As you can see. It's right. The cat's paw. I'm pointing at it, but. Yeah. It's here. You can see it. It's right in the middle of this. I guess I should have had ice out rather than appropriate. You have ice, too. I have ice, long claw and needle. It's not a dork. I am a dork, bro. Is it like actually legit? Like a long sword, though? Bro, the ice is 20 pounds. And did the two when I hold it, like it's hard. It's hard to hold, man. Where is it? Ellen Payne had a good stroke on him, man. So maybe I won't come over because I don't fancy being beheaded. Well, you know, it's a risky run. Don't don't don't commit treason. Tim's going to get a little bit too uncared or do, but be slick about it. Yes. Yes. It all depends. Oh, man, this is dope. Oh, my God, no. No, we're not going to be real. This is a Harry Potter discussion. So who who have we not talked about? Have we missed any like major characters that we need to talk about? I think we've talked about pretty much. Again, like there are people that become major later on, but for Game of Thrones. I think we touched on pretty much. Talk about Arya that much. We haven't. And we also did. We talked about her being an outcast and about her with the cats and about how she's painted as being this bastard in her own family, just like John. That was like an hour and a half ago. Oh, in the last hour. No, we haven't talked about Arya. Well, we talked to Smidge.  Because who would have known that she would have become an actual ninja with 25 feet ups where she could just leap bounds over whites and white walkers and stab the eyes. And you know what? One thing that is foreshadowed we already know in a third party way is that Arya reminds Ned of Lyanna and in the way that she looks. And then they say that John looks like Arya because he's long in the face just like Arya. It's like a link to a link to say. Well, that's one of the things that bothered me the most about casting even though I thought even though I thought the casting was like very brilliant. Sean Bean has kind of reddish hair and so when they keep talking about how Rob looks like Catlin and John looks like Ned that's not true in the show. Yeah, listen. Stop focusing so much on the casting. The casting is irrelevant to what's happening here. We know you hate Kit Harrington. I like Sean Bean and Richard Matt. He's got a lovely wife. He married his wildling. They're having kids be happy for him. Back to the book. It's set up so early. It has to be a thing, right? What? Liana giving birth to John and being the target. Oh, for sure. Nothing else makes sense there, right? Is there anyone that doesn't think that that's the thing? Well, there actually is. And there is. There is actually another theory that does make some sense. And that is a Shara Dane in Ned had a baby. And we can talk about that. Would you actually buy into that though in Ned actually? If we didn't have the show, if we didn't have the show, if I'm being honest, if we didn't have the show, I would say I would be like a 70, 30, 70 being for RL plus L equals J. When we get to, I think it's a storm of swords, we should go over that theory because it's actually really interesting. Sure, we'll talk about it every live stream. Well, Ned loved the Shara Dane, but he married Catlin out of duty. Yeah. I mean, he says that right off the bat. Yeah. It's fascinating. And he even says it like they learned. Well, there's no reason for him to be secretive about that. Exactly. So again, everything about, because all roads with Ned, everything about Ned, he's honorable, right? True, true. He married Cat out of duty because Brandon was dead. Neither of them really wanted to marry each other. They married, they eventually fell in love over time. He comes home with his basket. He's, by all sense of the words, is the most honorable person in this entire book. Yeah. Series. To a fault. But he has this bastard, but he's never willing to talk to anybody about it. Even Robert. Not even Robert or John. He will not talk to anybody about it. And when he's finally like, look, John, when we meet again, we'll talk about it. Yeah. Of course, they never meet again, right? Because we all know that. But what does Ned think about? Constantly, his sister dying. He always, so that's what the book hammers that point home. Yeah, it's right in your face, doesn't it? He thinks about Liana and the promise me Ned. Promise me Ned. And you get the Tower of Joy. You get the Targaryens guarding that tower where she clearly gave birth in no other context, but it's like it constantly hits home. Like you are protecting this child from Robert and his wrath. Like the only sensible thing is that she and Rhaegar had a child and he is protecting that. That's why he never speaks of the mom. He never speaks of anything beyond.  He's to his grave protective of that child because he knows what's at stake. But then sends him to the wall. Yeah. So, super protection. Maybe that's to keep him safe. Where else?  How do you say in Winterfell? No, where is safe in Winterfell? Maybe he goes to war. At least at the wall, he's out of everyone's, you know, thought in mind. But then again, it's like, if he's for sure, the Azor Ahai or he's, you know, R plus L equals J, like, he's at the wall. He's got, oh, so he has to, in less, I'm getting way ahead of myself. Because again, it's foreshadowed in the book one, right? So when we get to book five, we know how that ends. We know what the show did, and then sort of abandon the plot line, but also trying to have the plot line exist, but then like forgetting the plot line. The books clearly set that up as like, here's this thing that's gonna happen. Book five, when we get to it, like we'll talk about it. Like we know where that ends for John. Like that's got to come around at some point. Hopefully in the wins of winner, if and when we ever get it, that pays off, but like, come on. Can I defend myself real quick? From what? Dairy is saying that there's no context for Ned and Ashara having a thing together, and that's not true. Barristan actually thinks about that in, I think, a dance with dragons, and he talks about maybe if he hadn't been a part of the Kingsguard that maybe Ashara wouldn't have looked towards Ned. We also know that after Sir Arthur Dane died, that Ned took the star, took the sword, morning star, backed the dawn of whatever star fell, whatever it is. For sure.  Yeah. And he also danced with her. After she caught a baby. Yes, who knows. And he also danced with her at the, I believe, the tourney of Heron Hall. I could be wrong about that portion of it, but it is absolutely foreshadowed in a game. It's there. It's per se. Yes. And then on top of that, Barristan's also, he was thinking about it. I believe Arya also remembers hearing a story about it or something like that, and then Meryl Reed talks about it with Bran at one point. So while we never get Ned's thing, You didn't ask her, did they show Forgot About? And you went for real. But I mean, if you're telling me that no, Ned ever said, I love Ashara, that is true, but it is not true to say that there wasn't absolute foreshadowing that Ashara and Ned had a bit of a attraction to each other. That is totally true. It is, it is in the facts. As Dominique says, it's not quite as fleshed out as a series. And to be clear, R plus L equals Shea. I'm not telling you that. If I don't believe that he planted all of that to subvert that when it's like, it's there. And the only reason that there's this much speculation is because it's been so long since the other books have been out that like nothing else makes sense. Because I mean, the very first time you would game of thrones, you're not like, well, R plus L equals J. Because you wouldn't have any idea what you're talking about. Like that's not a thing that would exist in your mind at that point. It seems on the nose now, but that's only because you have knowledge. Like it's not actually on the nose. It's very subtle. Yeah, yeah. And there's definitely like, you know, promise me Ned, like I should have been able to realize that when I read it, right? But I didn't because I was trying to keep up with all the names and the houses and because it's so rich and dense. So like pretend that our R plus L equals J is not a thing. What else even makes sense in that context? Like what else is she saying? Promise me that like you're not going to reveal to everybody. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What else in world in context would even make sense in that? Yeah, for sure. For sure. Whether she like was a Pokemon collector like this. It's very clear R plus L equals J. She plays D&D in her spare time. Like there's only like what else because she had been hiding that he takes to his grave, that he is not willing to speak to anybody. Yeah, it's definitely R plus L equals J. So I'm glad that tonight we could confirm that R plus L equals J. The theory is that's what this is all been building for. Pretty much presented by everyone for like 15 years. We are reconfirming here. Yes. We came up with it tonight. We confirmed it tonight. You heard it here folks. I absolutely caught on the first read. That's impressive. I definitely didn't catch on to it. Also, Catlin Marry's Ned out of duty. She was supposed to marry Brandon. So to think that Ned wouldn't have had, especially after everyone assuming that him and Nishara got it on at the turn of her and all. To think that Ned may not have had his own interest, I think is naive. Also, Catlin loved her and all. Like how many people were at that? Turning of Heron Hall is the catalyst. I mean, it's the catalyst for everything, right? Also, I don't know if everybody knows this, but Guerm is writing a Broadway play for the attorney of Heron Hall, which does not have time for this. Well, that's fine. He's on contract for it. But here's the thing, Leanna. He has time for everything, but the series that he needs to finish. So that's the best rate. But he said he's going to tell us what happened at the turning of Heron Hall. So we will know about the Night of the Laughing Tree. We will know why Rhaegar picked Leanna. Everything. We're going to know. But we're going to know that through a Broadway play. I'll be front row. Hey, look, Joel is in chat. Let's ban him. Because there's a child. I didn't know we were talking about that. That decided to join three hours into the series. I mean, it is three hours anyway. So shall we have some closing thoughts? I'm surprised it took that long to get a troll, to be honest. I think that if there's anything to get out of this three hour stream about a Game of Thrones is the fact that we got a three hour stream about a book that's 30 years old that has been talked about to death and we're still finding things to rant about. And we've had almost 40 people this entire time. And I think it's just, it's all, I mean, it's great. It's one of the best. But who's counting? Me. I mean, I certainly have had a great time at rereading Game of Thrones, and I'm excited to reread the rest of Song of Ice and Fire with you. Lovely lads. That's been amazing. So what are we doing the next one though? Are we shooting for like the end of the next month? Yeah, I think so. Didn't we talk about this? I don't know. I think the end of every month is fine. But so I mean with Thanksgiving being a problem, like, I think I- What do you have against Thanksgiving? I don't think we can do this on Thanksgiving. You just in general have a problem with Thanksgiving? So I mean Thanksgiving is like the last weekend of November, so. But Monday and Tuesday nights at the end of November?  No, you do. You do we? Right here, right now. The end of November. Bounce it to the world. That's what we're committing to. Someone said they wanted to see a Song of Ice and Fire adapted in Muppets. There's actually two characters that are named after Muppets in a Song of Ice and Fire, and it's Tullies. There's a Kermit Muppet, and I can't remember the other one. That's because the Tullies are literally Muppets. Elmo. There's Elmo, Kermit, and Oscar Tullie. Those are all the jit names, and Girm confirmed it's because he's a huge fan of the Muppets. So I think it's funny that you suggested that. First week of the following up? No. We will not be talking about the Clash of Pings in a week. I think she means December. I think end of November is fine. K plus V equals G. Kermit plus Piggy. That's what I want to know. I like this. Let's get down this road. So it's been a lovely evening. We got to log off, guys. We'll be in contact with the next one, but everyone start Clash tomorrow. And it's going to be on Alex. It doesn't matter, Jimmy. It's on Alex's channel, officially. Who knows? He said his name first. Okay, I'll do it. So that's we're flying to Alex's house. He has to go to Jimmy's Fire and Blood on his channel. I get Storm of Swords, which is actually the bigger deal, right? Congratulations. You can have it. You can have it. So we'll do it on my channel. Yeah, honestly, we can do them all on your channel. It's fine. Regardless, by the end of this, we're going to finally realize, again, that the wins of winner is still nowhere to be found, even though... Maybe the final live show will be us, in real time. Reading the preview chapters? No, co-writing wins of winter, just how loud or ultradition. We will exhaust every avenue. We will go through all of this. We will read it. Night of the Seven Kingdoms. We will read the Fire and Blood. We will read the World of Ice and Fire. We'll do a podcast for three and a half years and hope that the Winstainer somehow happens between now and then, when Girm is like 79 years old. He's already almost there. Isn't he like 74? How old is he? He is 74. In Game of Thrones years. In Game of Thrones years, he's Walter Frey, ancient demon. Hey, Walter Frey can still get it, so... Apparently, he's not shooting blanks yet. Okay. Which is like low key the grossest thing in the book. We're going to start talking about Walter Frey's sperm count. I think the stream has ended. Well, as I said, it's been lovely reading, lovely chatting. That's definitely the best thing to add on. I'm so glad that that's where we reached that. That's the one character we didn't really talk about in case you knew you were asking who we didn't talk about. We didn't talk about Walter Frey. It took us three hours midnight east coast to bring up Walter Frey's sperm count. But Jimmy, being the hero that he is, decided to bring it up. Yeah, I think we did cover by every inch. And the 11th hour. I'm proud. All right. Well, I mean, it is pretty early here in LA, where I live, you know, but um... Ask Willie Rock over there. Christian did say we can do it on his channel. He does have a ton of subs. He'll just host it. Dude, I'd be down. It's just us. See ya, Chris. All right. So good night, everybody. And we'll see you next time on some channel, on some day, at some time. Check out that community tab, boy. Wow.


La charla, bueno, ahora está ahí de al lado del laptop. Sí, sí, sí, sí. Ojalá puta la cámara. Sí, sí, sí, sí. Ya estoy aquí. Vale. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, good morning. We can start now. My name is Javi, Javi Garcia. I came from Spain. And today I want to talk about the high level synthesis. What's the status of this kind of technology in respect to free open source software tools? The point is that, as we will see, we have not very, a lot of alternatives to do this by using only free open source software. And the main topic or the main idea of this talk is to rise the flag of all the issues we have right now and to try to mobilize to push the community in order to take all this issue from our company. We have started to do some work in order to reach this kind of things. But as we will see, there is a lot of work to be done yet. OK, let's start. I want to make some comments about the state of the art, about high level synthesis. Why is this becoming very, very important right now? Maybe you are already aware of this, but in the last years a lot of different algorithms are starting to gain a lot of traction. And these algorithms require a lot of computational power. For example, we have embedded speeds, we have embedded vision, deeper machine learning, big data, data mining. All of these kind of algorithms are not very complex as per design, but they require a lot of computational power, a lot of much operation and extreme power links with the data. In this situation, the von Neumann CPUs, the well-known CPU, that used to be accelerated by the path of Moore-Laut is not scaling anymore. We need to design or to develop alternative architectures in order to take all these kind of tasks. Well, this is where FPGAs come to the rescue. Most of these kind of tasks, these very computational intensive tasks, right now are take off by using GPU tools. For example, it's very well known, the NVIDIA CUDA, so that you can program in a very high level and they provide a lot of floating point parallelings, a very powerful, very, very powerful one. Sorry. The point is that, for example, this looks like very promising, but there are some algorithms in which this approach doesn't fit very well. For example, we have the inference in artificial vision, that you might suppose that using floating points arithmetic is a very good idea, but it's not a good idea. It's empirical test, so that by using fixed point arithmetic you might improve the most all of the metrics. You save silicon real estate because the logic, you need fewer logical gates in order to implement the thing. You also have fewer power consumption and even, and surprisingly enough, even the algorithm is more accurate by using fixed point arithmetic that using floating point arithmetic. This is maybe counterintuitive, but it's all the things that really works. Some of the, some vendors and some hardware vendors, for example, Google, are starting to develop their own very new hardware architectures, but if you develop a chip from the ground up, the costs are very, very high. So, in this kind of algorithms where you are, you can change the algorithm, the software is constantly evolving, your flexibility is a must, and this is where FPGA comes to the rescue because, per definition, you cannot find any more flexible than FPGA. And the thing is that the whole industry is looking at FPGA for answers. Let's see some examples. For example, we have a Wintel, it's a striking back, Wintel is Microsoft plus Intel is where we used to call that, and it's a striking back. I don't know if you were aware of this, but Intel has just bought Altira, this was the second brand of FPGAs in market share, and it was funny enough that a couple of years ago, in the first EDA death room, in the digital design panel, we started to talk about RUMOR, about Microsoft getting involved in FPGAs, and so on, and about Project Catapult, that is an SDK that Microsoft has released in order to accelerate software by using FPGAs. They are partnering in some way with Intel, and for example, they are already using this in the bean searching game, and they are planning to use this also in Office 365. In this feature, I really like it, do you have a Xeon processor in the same package, we have the multicore CPU, and Altira, FPGA, all packages in the same socket. So this kind of technology is going to be pushing the data center, a lot of, but not only the consortium formed by Intel and Windows, or sorry, Microsoft, is using this approach. There are some other examples too. For example, we have Baidu, or Baidu, I don't know what is pronounced, that is accelerating SQL at the data center by using silence, context, ultra scale parts. I don't know if you were aware of this, but it's very interesting. As Phillip has said before, Amazon Web Services are already offering some units in which you can accelerate the software by using Apto 8 ceilings FPGAs, and IBM and with this intelligence augment concept started to work with silence by using the, in order to integrate their PowerPC CPUs with the FPGAs coming from silence, sorry. And even more, they have designed their own chip for deep learning that is called TrueNorth and what is, no more people know that this chip is actually designed by the Cornell University FPGA expert. So what is really in this chip so after these examples let's focus on how level synthesis works. Well, the target is to accelerate software algorithm by using an FPGA. What does this mean? Ok, we want to automatically generate a code for a high level definition. For example, OpenCL the language that is using in QDA sorry, the language that is using for NVIDIA another hardware platform for acceleration is becoming the de facto standard for most of the FPGA vendors too. Namely, silence or Intel, formerly Altira. The idea is to take all these growing community of GPU based programmers that are very used to use OpenCL and this kind of technology and take them and provide the FPGA tools in order to allow them to program an FPGA without noting that they are using an FPGA. These are very complex and expensive commercial tools in which you provide an application, the application gets profiled by a bad green machine or something similar and the most computing intensive task are identified and there is an automatically generated of the FPGA code that cover these parts of the software that is most intensive. Then the software part is compiled and the hardware part the gateway part, the part that is going to be deployed in the FPGA is also compiled and generated. And then another piece of these tools is a special kernel module that is in charge of loading and unloading the FPGAs cores as they are demanded by the algorithms. How are we approaching this kind of staff from our company because there is not in the past there have been some tries to develop high level synthesis tools in which you can program almost anything and it gets basically profiled like in the tools that the vendors, the FPGA vendors are providing but this is very complex. Actually there is no any free open source tool that is working right now in this way. So our idea is to provide a set of hardware accelerated libraries for a specific purpose. Let's see, for example if we are going to program digital signal processing we want to have a set of libraries in which the most common operation are already pre synthesized so that you can use the call function and what you are on the thing what this is doing is taking this pre synthesized thing. This is also has application for other libraries such as embedded vision inverse kinematics and so the provided libraries must include a software side providing a wrapper like API in order to link with the standard software so that you can program a standard program and call these kind of libraries and a gateway side, the FPGA side in which the optimized HDL code is already pre synthesized. This must be transparent for the programmers so that they can just call use the API make some includes and use this function and and the system in the previous case needs to be in charge of loading and unloading the FPGA part as the as the code of the binary that you are executing the program in the CPU is needing the the FPGA part in order to accelerate the thing. How do we can integrate the FPGA into the operating system in order to get this kind of thing? For sure, first of all we are only focused on Linux, I am not going to talk about Windows or nothing at all and what we need as I have previously said is to have some hardware accelerated libraries with their own associated bitstream for the FPGA we need to know that different library versions talking about libraries in the standard software in the software point of view might require different bitstream versions too so we need to match the software part and the bitstream part so what we are doing is to package the associated bitstream for each of these libraries as a Linux package so that you can we can establish interdependencies between the FPGA part and the software part so that you need to install a software by instance of these kind of libraries the bitstream is also deployed and matches the version of the software library too and it's very important also there's a comment that the bitstream needs to be pre-synthesized and why this is also important well, because synthesizing a bitstream is very time consuming task you can lose a lot of time you cannot be synthesizing on the flight and even more important because only x86 processors are able to run the most of the synthesized tools that are available today maybe Yossi is an exception but we can talk later about this because if you are using an ARM processor you cannot synthesize the thing inside the chip we are using Yoctoproject as the building system so that everything including the bitstream or the different bitstream associated to the libraries are managed and we use HDLmake in order to integrate the bitstream synthesis inside the operating system generation so that by using HDLmake we can generate some resizing we specify Yoctoproject, the building system how it needs how it needs to handle the HDL code in order to generate the package the package including the bitstream as a couple of examples we have used this with the ARM open hardware kit in order to provide just for internal use by the moment to provide the automatic to provide automatic support for all different different module different hardware that can be inserted in a in a carrier board. Sorry I have not explained this because I am doing a little bit out of time this board is a board in which you can plug different hardware modules each of them have different functionality these are controlled by an FPGA and if you dependen of the module you are plugging into you will need a different bitstream on the FPGA2 so by using HDLmake we have generated different packages different linus packages for each of these different modules that not only include the kernel module but we have also package for the user spied program and also for the FPGA so that we want to make a linus runtime in which one of these modules needs to be support by just installing one of the packages all of the different ones are generated and installed the user spied the user space program the kernel module plus the FPGA system another very interesting example that we are using is for robotic controls I don't know if you have heard about ROS, the robotic operating system that there is one of the parts of this project that is called ROSIndustrial that is the vote to applying robotic operating system to industrial manipulators and it's also a free open source SDK in this kind of robotic controls there is a need for massive computational power we are part of this consortium and we are in charge of trying to accelerate the most intensive algorithms that these robots use by using FPGAs and for example the most appropriated examples in order to do this is the inverse kinematics that is as you take a robotic arm tell it where they need to put the tooltip and it automatically calculates all of the movements of the different servers it has it has a very computing intensive task and in order to planify a path or a movement a robot may lost about tens of seconds tens of seconds maybe even a minute is complex enough another one is point cloud that is more related to artificial vision and so on and we are working in applying the previous the previous approach to these kind of to these two examples we have a missing feature that needs to to get into the FPGAs in order to be able to use these approach of having library accelerated by FPGAs that is the partial reconfiguration maybe of you have already heard about the Pareto rule that applies to libraries in general so that not all the libraries are used at the same time most of the libraries are in the processors are loaded in the cache cache memory as they are required in order to perform or to implement these approach in an efficient way in FPGA in order to accelerate libraries in an FPGA in efficient way we need a way in order to reprogram only slices of the FPGA not all the FPGA we need to handle the FPGA in memory used as the CPU handle the cache memory there are already some tools that are able to do this but they are but they are very expensive but they are not commercial alternatives and they are only supported in high-end devices and they are very expensive some conclusions there are not a lot of flaws free library open source tools in order to do this HDL make is a very interesting tool that allows us to manage all the pain of handling handling FPGA and libraries together and we need also an HDL library standard maybe IP exact can be a good candidate we need maybe another alternatives and we is very important also IP integrator and maybe few so can be a very good idea in order to use in order to do this kind of things finally to have a workaround for partial reconfiguration that is sorry you had a video right? yes but I I was marking your minutes without the video ok ok ok I have told you before I have told you before about the HDL make I have told you about high level synthesis but this is my core my core tool and this is an assistant to a command line 2 in order to make the life easier for FPGA designers I have some stuff but I want to show you a video about how you can about the brand new graphical user interface I am developing for HDL make let's see sorry ok, can you see that I am in this video I am just going to create to clone an HDL make project taken from the open hardware repository as I maintained by sir once why I have already download this repository because HDL make is very useful in order to to use control version for your HDL code I have already now loaded the silence ISC tools and then I am going to launch the HDL, what right now I call the HDL maker is like no javascript wrapper for HDL make so that you can open it in a web page so that you can run the synthesis even in your own computer and open the graphical user interface or even run it in a server in a server with all the tools installed and just accessing with any other computer we have some different controls now I am fetching the code because it automatically fetch the libraries it needs the IP core libraries it needs in order to make the the synthesis I can make a pause because synthesis process is very very time consuming a very time consuming task and now here we have running the we can see that the synthesis is running well the fetch is running and now I am going to make the auto so that a make file a synthesis make file has been just generated synthesis make file generated and now I am going to run the make command because HDL make produce make files we are running in local mode and then all the ISC start from silence start appearing in the in the screen now we need to stop because this is very time consuming and after some minutes should be going to be faster right now finally ended ok ok the synthesis has finally oh I thought the video was shorter sorry ok now we have a programming file we have already generated bit stream and then we could go to the to a file browser and get the to grab the bit stream and to download it this is very useful if you are running the synthesis in a different machine so that you can access through your web browser and the synthesis is performed in another big machine and you can just grab the bit stream and one of the cool things we can do with this maybe this is the most interesting one is that when you have already parsed the design and you have the relation between the inner parts of the design itself we have added a project navigator so that you can see the whole structure of the of the design itself you can browse the design you can close you can close and collapse and expand the different branches from the design I think there is not much more to explain in this we see that we can zoom and to navigate and we can collapse the different branches also in order to focus in the parts of the design we really want to focus on and I think the video is a minute left but it's the same, I did not move from the browser