Game Of Thrones (since season four) Thread - Everything in HERE!

[Minty]

Loved that article, & that comment someone made about the long winters being such a deciding factor was perfect. It's no coincidence that technological progress stalls in climates where every day is a fight for survival.

Not sure about the knowledge hoarding by the Maesters being a factor like the church in medieval times. The destruction of the monasteries was an educational disaster that wasn't rectified if I remember until Cromwell flung money at universities & opening schools centuries later. Even so, there were still the universities existing long before that time. Meanwhile in the mosques of the Ottoman lands - which served as educational research places as well as of worship, innovations were there, but little was made from them.

The mother of all inventions is necessity. In a land where magic is real, there is little room for industrialisation, not yet anyway. Also you need an agrarian revolution before you can have the luxury of an industrial one. Once people are no longer needing to work the land 12 hours a day & the fruits of those labours are more substantial (what we take for granted as carrots are about 7 times the size of what they were up to the 18th century), both Lord & serf have time to think about innovation & the luxury of being able to risk experimentation without it meaning starvation if they guessed wrong.

Latest episode was plodding. Poor Tyrion's getting sat on again. I really don't like the new characters brought in. Oh, & could Littlefinger be any more of a scary obsessed creep if he tried - it's so obvious that he wants to get into Sansa Stark's knickers as a substitute for her mum, although I suppose it at least means he won't be getting his agents to fetch Cathryn Stark's body so he can have it kept stuffed in his chambers. I wouldn't put that one past him.

He still doesn't make my skin crawl as much as the Lannister twins ever will. They really scraped it this episode.

More Arya & the Hound though. I'm glad they're padding this part out & are using them as a way of debating the rights & wrongs of Westeros: Arya is the viewer's sense of justice & the Hound represents the reality of a vicious world where life is nasty, brutish & unless you can defend yourself also short.

I like the way they keep the Danys episodes so nice & short. They're finally realising how boring the whole "meanwhile in Essos" part is. "I am the Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, Freer of Slaves, Washer of Dishes, Milk of Magnesia" zzzzzzz, she & her army wandering around in endless desert land (but somehow managing to find food) no longer interest me I'm afraid.