Game of Thrones: Starting Season 3 Soon

Now that I've cleared my blog backlog, including blogs on Season 2 of Game of Thrones that got delayed for a few weeks, I'm ready to start watching Season 3! Of course, I was ready this weekend but didn't prioritize spending hours in front of the TV, so IDK whether I'll actually start watching tonight or next week.

And they moved my cheese! You know that feeling when you're doing something and the end seems to keep getting farther away? Sometimes it's real, like when you're watching a TV series and they add a sequel. Or, in this case with House of the Dragon, a prequel. The first episode got such strong viewership upon its initial drop that HBO has already funded the second season. So by the time I finish Season 3 there'll be a whole 'nother season tacked on at the end, with at least one more still to come. I've avoided spoilers about the later seasons of GoT... except for the fact most people think the ending sucked. I hope I can continue to avoid spoilers and enjoy the series at my own pace.

Enviable? Speaking of enjoying the series, when I was chatting about GoT with a colleague a few weeks ago he said, "I envy you."

"You know HBO Max is only, like, $15/month, right?" I asked. 😅

He explained what he meant is that he envies me being able to watch it for the first time. He watched it from early on. I figure what he really meant is that he wishes he could go back and do it again.

In a way I actually envy him. If I'd taken up the show when it was still airing I could have enjoyed chatting with more people about it in real time. I could have enjoyed the week-to-week discussions about "What did that mean?" and "What do you think will happen next?" I could have enjoyed reading fan sites without assuming there's a spoiler on every page. OTOH, the benefit of watching a series once it's complete is that there's none of that agonizing wait between seasons. I really can watch it at my own pace.

RIP, Mikhail Gorbachev

Mihkail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, died today. He was 91.

For those of us who were kids of the 80s, or already adults in the 80s, Gorbachev was a household name. He became the Soviet leader in 1985, at the height of the Cold War. Turn on TV news any night and you'd see news involving the USSR and/or Gorbachev.

From a Western perspective, Gorbachev brought stability to the fraught US-USSR relationship of the Cold War. At age 54 he was the youngest Soviet premier, rising to the position after 3 predecessors in 3 years had died in office under circumstances deliberately obfuscated by the ruling party. Even with the USSR being the US's sworn enemy, it felt marginally more reassuring to see that it was at least led by an actual, living person instead of a secret committee publishing obtuse communiques in someone else's name.

Gorbachev soon became a darling of the West as he introduced the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). With the USSR more willing to sit down for nuclear negotiations with the West, and with sporadic humanitarian progress such as the release of political prisoners and allowing some religious liberties. BTW I say sporadic because the progress was not steady. There were backslides, including times Gorbachev sent troops to crush rebellions. I see this through the lens of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous observation, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

From the birds-eye view of history I see Gorbachev as a wise but flawed reformist. He knew that the Soviet Union, as it was structured coming out of the 1970s, was doomed. Although it held a lead in certain areas of manufacturing it was losing ground to the US and Western Europe in every economic area because of the inherent inefficiencies of its command-and-control system. Ronald Reagan's foreign policy that leaned in from containment to something more resembling rollback would hasten its demise. Gorbachev saw the writing on the wall and strove to reformulate the USSR to survive. He misjudged things, though— perhaps, most notably, that all the USSR's satellite states hated the USSR— and lost control of the broad changes he set in motion. Mikhail Gorbachev ended his term as premier with his announcement of the dissolution of the USSR on December 25, 1991.

In the 30 years since then and now, Gorbachev has been remembered more fondly in the West than in Russia. To the West, he's the leader who helped "end the Cold War without firing a shot." To many Russians, he's the horribly failed leader who destroyed their country's position as a glorious and powerful world leader. ...The latter view, of course, has been seeded by Vladimir Putin, Russia's autocratic leader of the past 20 years, who repeatedly boasts of the glory of the USSR and czarist Russia.

RIP, Mikhail Gorbachev. You were far from perfect, but right now we could sure use another leader like you.

Update: comments will be screened. I will not be giving a platform to strangers peddling drive-by disinformation.

Marijuana Use Now Outpaces Cigarettes

I've seen a few articles in my newsfeed today that cigarette smoking is down and marijuana use is up in the US... so much so that the latter now outnumbers the former. Rather than cite the articles here I figured I'd go the the source. The source is a Gallup publication, "Americans and the Future of Cigarettes, Marijuana, Alcohol" published 26 Aug 2022 from a poll conducted in July. I read that study and the more detailed breakouts it links to. (Yes, I just cited primary source documents to support my opinion online. That's how I roll!)

One Gallup survey question was, "Have you, yourself, smoked any cigarettes in the past week?" A record low of 11% answered yes. That's a big drop from 16% a year earlier and rates of 40%+ five decades ago.

Some news articles reporting this Gallup release cross reference it with another recent publication, "Global Smoking Report" from NiceRx, to show how smoking rates vary by state within the US. (It's not a primary source, per se, but it does disclose its methods and sources— which include the World Health Organization and Our World In Data.) This report finds that, globally, the smoking rate is 22.3%. Within the US it breaks down smoking rates by state. The smokiest state is West Virginia, with a smoking rate of nearly 24%. Kentucky is only a hair behind at #2. The least smoky state is Utah, at 7.9%. Gotta love the Mormon faith that abjures alcohol, tobacco, and even caffeine! The second least smoky state is California, with a smoker rate of 10%.

Back to the Gallup poll and the headline about pot use overtaking cigs. While cigarette smoking has dropped to 11%, the same survey found that 16% have used marijuana recently. And that's despite marijuana being not only illegal at the federal level but also classified as a Schedule I drug— nominally the most dangerous and addictive drugs, with a "high potential for abuse". 🙄 I'm not a marijuana advocate, but there's no medical evidence pot belongs in the same category as heroin. I mean, even fentanyl, about which there's been much wailing and gnashing of teeth the past several years for its highly addictive nature and mortal danger, is only a Schedule II drug (primary source document again).