War is a hell that reveals darkness in our hearts. Hate plus power makes a heady cocktail that turns people into monsters. Atrocities are committed by hotheads convinced of their own righteousness, and someone somewhere is always shocked that their child could have participated in a massacre. 

None of this is news to anyone with a passing interest in human history, but it is apparently something we all need to keep re-learning, over and over. The latest lesson has arrived in the form of Game of Thrones Season 8 episode 5, “The Bells.” Or, if we’re going to name it Friends-style, The One Where It Becomes Clear This Was Never A Game. 

Too many of us (I include myself and my power rankings in this) have treated Game of Thrones like it was the Super Bowl. We sit there with our popcorn and weigh the odds of a character ending up on the Iron Throne like we’re discussing stats, or hyping our favorite player. All this despite — or perhaps as a distraction from — all that garishly simulated screen violence. 

Dany’s horrific turn was baked into the character from the beginning, no matter how much we loved her.

In its worst moments, Thrones has fed this sports fan mentality. In recent seasons especially, it threatened to become merely a story about teenage superheroes with revenge fantasies, instead of what George R.R. Martin intended — a mirror that reflects the awful truths of our own history back at us. 

The greatest problem in this regard was Daenerys Targaryen. She has become a powerful icon in the geek community and beyond, beloved by cosplayers, practically a Disney princess. She filled a gap in the culture: We were crying out, and still are, for more portrayals of strong female leadership. Her blend of fragility and steely charisma — portrayed to perfection by Emilia Clarke — won as many hearts and minds in our world as she failed to win in Westeros. 

So much so that for years, it was hard to remember what she really is, and what she has always been in this story, worldwide fandom or no. 

The debate about whether Dany’s massacre of King’s Landing was sufficiently foreshadowed has been raging online since the episode aired, so I’m not going to rehash it here. This video does a pretty good job of collecting eight seasons’ worth of receipts:

SEE ALSO: ‘Game of Thrones’ series finale preview shows a city of ash

Sure, the showrunners could have given us a longer look at her inner turmoil. By killing off most of her main advisors, they painted themselves into a corner. Anyone she could have had that dialogue with was gone. Maybe she could have had a longer chat with Tyrion or Grey Worm. Regardless, it was still very clear that Dany was hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. As any addict or codependent knows, that state of mind portends the worst. 

But the strongest argument for the episode’s twist is this: It was baked into the character from the beginning, no matter how much we loved her.

Teens with nukes

Look at it from another angle. Let’s say you’re writing a story about a teenager. He’s the ultimate scion of privilege: white skin, blond hair, blue eyes. His family celebrates inbreeding the way the Hapsburg monarchs did, so he’s probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer. The family has fallen on hard times, and the teenager is constantly told he needs to take back control. He develops a penchant for revenge. All of a sudden, the teenager is gifted three magically reusable nuclear warheads. 

In what universe does that story end well? 

If your ending failed to fully explore the unintended consequences of using nuclear war to crush your enemies — and as Martin has often said, dragons are the fantasy-world equivalent of nuclear power — your readers would very likely laugh you out of the room. You would have committed the classic novice writer sin of being nice to your lead character at the expense of the story. 

We wanted Dany to win. We wanted Cersei to die. How does it feel to have everything you wished for? 

Introduce a nuke in the first act, as Chekov might have said, and it has to go off in the last. Write a story about war, and you have to show the true horror of war — the way plans go awry, the way the killing spirals far out of anyone’s control. 

Strategy never survives contact with the enemy — and in any case, as we saw at the battle of Winterfell, Dany’s strategy has never consisted of much more than the terrible “take my dragons out for a ride and burn stuff” tactic. (To be fair, Jon Snow’s patented “just charge at the enemy” tactic has fared even worse.) 

It is part of this story’s profound success that it suckered us into supporting and excusing Dany at every bloody step on her road to tyranny. She watched, unflinching, as her husband killed her brother with a cauldron of molten gold, then merely declared that “he was no dragon”? That’s okay, he was an abusive asshole. She locked Xaro Xhoan Daxos and his retinue in a Qarth vault to suffocate and starve to death? Well, he shouldn’t have participated in a plot to steal her dragons. She literally crucified former slaveowners, becoming no better herself? She burned a hut full of Dothraki leaders? They deserved it! They all deserved it! 

And then there was the burning of the Tarlys, one of the least noticed but most telling moments of season 7. I’ve seen otherwise reasonable people defend Dany for killing Samwell’s father and brother in this grisly manner with arguments that don’t withstand a second of scrutiny. They were enemy combatants! (Nope, they had surrendered; in our world, that would be a clear-cut war crime.) They refused to recognize her authority! (Okay, imprison them.) They were mean to Samwell! (So we’re burning people alive for being mean now?)

All along, Dany has been telling us who she really was, and we should have believed her the first time. “I’m going to break the wheel,” she said, and we thought she meant the metaphorical wheel that keeps the downtrodden down. What she actually meant was the metaphorical wheel that kept her family off the throne. She might as well have yelled “Targaryens forever!” 

There were voices in the wilderness. There were viewers who noticed the problematic “white savior” narrative that had developed by the end of Season 3, when Dany was literally crowd-surfing over freed slaves. Other viewers waved that away. Now we have good reason to reexamine it, and to be more wary of white savior characters in the future. 

SEE ALSO: Who will kill Queen Daenerys in the ‘Game of Thrones’ finale?

We also have an excellent reason to reconsider the nature of war, violence and power. For the better part of eight years, we have been cheering for death and destruction. We wanted more dragon action. We wanted King’s Landing to fall. We wanted Dany to win. We wanted Lannister soldiers to burn. We wanted Cersei to die. How does it feel to have everything you wished for? 

The path of nonviolence is celebrated precisely because of how hard it is. It goes against human nature. In our hearts, we want our enemies to suffer for what they did. Time and again, we confuse punishment with justice, and perpetuate the cycle. 

If your enemy executes your best friend in front of your face, and your best friend’s last words are an instruction to burn it all to the ground, even a saint would be tempted to pick up the flamethrower. To suggest that Dany would react differently is to place her on a pedestal. It isn’t feminist, it’s condescending — especially considering her history. 

Dany is a breaker of chains; Dany is a monster. Dany is impossibly elitist; Dany is all of us. All of these things can be true. When we truly understand that, we understand ourselves — and why our history has been one long heartbreaking song of oppression and revenge. 

SpaceX will launch 60 Starlink satellites into orbit on Wednesday, the first step in the company’s plan to build a global satellite internet network. 

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, launching from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, will carry the satellites. 

SEE ALSO: SpaceX just blasted a critical NASA instrument into space

The first launch window is from a 10:30 p.m. ET Wednesday until 12:00 a.m. Thursday. Failing that, a second launch window opens at 10:30 p.m. ET Thursday and closes at 12:00 a.m. ET Friday. 

The livestream of the mission will start about 15 minutes before liftoff, and you can watch it below. 

According to SpaceX, the Starlink satellites will be deployed approximately one hour and two minutes after liftoff, at an altitude of 440km, after which they will use onboard propulsion to reach an operational altitude of 550km. 

After stage separation, SpaceX will once again attempt to land Falcon 9’s first stage on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. 

In a press kit document, SpaceX also shared some new details about the Starlink satellites. They have a flat-panel design with a single solar array and multiple high-throughput antennas, and weigh approximately 227kg each. They’re equipped with krypton-powered Hall thrusters, a Startracker navigation system, and they can automatically avoid collision with debris. Once they’ve done all they can do, 95 percent of components will burn in Earth’s atmosphere, which SpaceX says exceeds all current safety standards.  

According to SpaceX, this mission pushes the limits of what the Starlink satellites can do, and that it expects to encounter issues on the way. 

“Our learnings here are key to developing an affordable and reliable broadband service in the future,” the company said. 

Boosted is known for its electric skateboards and longboards, but now the California-based company is getting into scooters.

The company’s first electric scooter, the Boosted Rev, is built to get you where you’re going even if you don’t have a car. With a 22-mile range on a single charge, enough power to take on 25 percent-grade hills, and a top speed of 24 mph, it feels more like a vehicle than a toy or gadget. It can fold up if you take the train and then scoot home from the station, making it perfect for just about any situation. 

It’s a hefty scooter at 46 pounds with wide tires, especially compared with the two-wheelers from scooter-sharing companies Bird and Lime.

The scooter is made for personal ownership (with a $1,599 price tag that can be paid in $70 monthly installments) and isn’t intended to be part of a shared, heavily used fleet. Shared fleets spend a lot of time outside and out in the elements between rides, so Boosted’s scooter won’t have to endure as tough of conditions – unless you want to stress test it yourself. 

SEE ALSO: E-scooters aren’t going anywhere — in fact, their numbers are still growing

For places like New York City that don’t allow scooters, you need to wait for the government to give the devices the OK. You can supply your own in San Francisco if you want to ride a scooter from anyone other than the two allowed scooter companies. Bird is also selling scooters for riders to own for $1,299 – cheaper than Boosted’s, but still pricey.

Boosted says its new scooter is weatherproof and ready to take on street conditions (but have they seen the potholes in the Bay Area?), and even offers a 12-month warranty. Shared scooters have been under fire for barely lasting a few months.

The scooter is available to order Wednesday and will start shipping this summer. Don’t forget a helmet!

Additional reporting by Ray Wong.

HP’s newest gaming laptop embeds a mini LED touch screen above the keyboard so you can view other applications while you play your favorite games.

The Omen X 2S is the world’s first dual-screen gaming laptop, according to HP. The device’s main screen comes in at 15 inches, but in the event you’d like to chat over Twitch or access Spotify while you game, you can easily do so with the help of the 6-inch screen below.

HP designed the product to appeal to gamers, particularly in China, who often use their smartphones to chat with friends, listen to music, or watch videos while they game over a PC.

The second screen—which has a 1080p resolution—can also be used to enhance your existing gaming experience. According to HP, you’ll be able to mirror any portion of the laptop’s main screen on to the smaller panel below. For example, you can make it display the in-game map to a strategy title or a first-person shooter. The touch screen can also let you view the Omen Command Center app, so you can view how well a game performs on the laptop and adjust its hardware settings accordingly.

Of course, the second screen will eat into the laptop’s battery life, but it can be configured to dim after a period of idle time to help save on energy.

The Omen X 2S will arrive next month starting at $2,099. As a high-end gaming laptop, it’ll come equipped with a Max-Q version of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card. You can also configure it with a ninth-generation Intel Core H-series CPU running six or eight cores.

Other configurable specs include the 1080p display, which can support 144Hz, 240Hz, or you can swap it out for a higher resolution 4K HDR 400 60Hz panel.

HP isn’t the first to unveil a laptop with more than one screen. In 2017, Razer unveiled a notebook with three screens, but the whole idea appears to have remained a concept. Before that, Acer came out with the Iconia 6120, a laptop that replaced the keyboard with a touch screen. However, the device received largely negative reviews.

So we’re interested to see if the Omen X 2S’s second screen is worth the high price. Stay tuned for our full review.

More Omen Laptops Coming Next Month

The company has also refreshed the standard Omen line with new Nvidia RTX cards and ninth-gen Intel Core processors. The cooling vents on the Omen 15 and Omen 17 are larger for better airflow, but the redesigned laptops are still 18 and 20 percent thinner than their predecessors, respectively.

The Omen 15 can be configured with a 1080p 240Hz display; a 240Hz option for the Omen 17 is expected to be available in October. The Omen 17 can be configured to support up to 3TB of storage and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 card, minus the Max-Q design.

Both products will arrive next month. The Omen 15 will start at $1,049 while the Omen 17 will go for $1,099.

If you’re looking for a new monitor, HP also has two new 1080p displays—the Omen X 25 and Omen X 25f—which both have a 240Hz refresh rate.

The 24.5-inch displays come with an adjustable stand, which you can use to raise, lower, and tilt the screen. The Omen X 25, which supports Nvidia’s G-Sync technology, will go on sale in North America in early September for a starting price of $549. The Omen X 25f, which offers adaptive sync, will arrive in late June for $449.

For Gamers Less Inclined to Spend

HP is also refreshing the Pavilion gaming laptop line, which is more affordable and designed for casual gamers.

Both the 15- and 17-inch Pavilion gaming laptops will be able to support up to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q design graphics card. Buyers can also configure them with ninth-gen Intel Core i5 or i7 processors. In terms of the display, choose from a 144Hz 1080p display or upgrade to a 4K panel.

Like the Omen series, HP redesigned the Pavilion laptops for better airflow. Both laptops will drop next month with the 15-inch model starting at $799, while the 17-inch model will go for $849.

This article originally published at PCMag
here

Stephen Colbert’s latest monologue is — you guessed it — all about Trump’s ongoing trade war/”squabble” with China.

But before he broke it all down, he got in a quick Game of Thrones-themed dig.

“Yes, it was a must-see television event,” Colbert says, mimicking a recent Trump speech in which the president spoke about November 2016. “Everybody tuned in to see me ride my dragon and burn Washington to the ground.”

Colbert’s referring, of course, to the events in last Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know why people complained,” he continues. “The writers had been hinting all season that that’s how we were gonna wrap up democracy.”

Twitter has become the latest social media company to address misinformation about vaccines on its platform. 

The company announced that it will redirect users to a “credible public health resource” when they search for specific terms associated with vaccines. 

“At Twitter, we understand the importance of vaccines in preventing illness and disease and recognize the role that Twitter plays in disseminating important public health information,” Twitter’s VP of Trust and Safety, Del Harvey wrote in a blog post. “We think it’s important to help people find reliable information that enhances their health and well-being.”

The update comes as Facebook and other platforms have faced public pressure to stop the spread of conspiracy theories and other inaccurate information about vaccines. 

With the change, Twitter is pushing an in-app message when people search for vaccine-related terms that encourages users to “know the facts.” In the United States, that’s via the Department of Health and Human Services site, vaccines.gov. Other countries will see info from sources relevant to their area.

Unlike Instagram, which recently announced it would block certain hashtags associated with vaccine misinformation, Twitter isn’t blocking any search results, but pointing users to verified information. The company will, however, stop automatically suggesting search terms that “are likely to direct individuals to non-credible commentary and information about vaccines.”

These new in-app messages will appear in Twitter’s apps and mobile site in the U.S., UK, Canada, Brazil, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, and in “Spanish-speaking Latin American countries.” Similar searches on Twitter’s desktop site will show a tweet from one of Twitter’s designated credible sources as the top result.

The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones gave us plenty of conclusions to years-long character arcs, but left one much larger question in their stead: What was the point? Like, of any of this.

Let’s be clear. The problem is not that the show concluded with the destruction of King’s Landing by one of its major heroes. Those who’ve been paying attention always knew this would end as a story about how people fail, and not about how heroes win or lose.

But in its clumsy execution of catastrophic proportions, Game of Thrones set fire to its own sense of purpose along with the capital, leaving behind nothing but the taste of ash in our mouths.

No one expected or even wanted a happy ending. We anticipated apocalyptic death, destruction, brutality, shock, horror, despair, and suffering from the end of this show. What we did not expect, though, was the utter hollowness of episode 5’s carnage. 

In “The Bells,” Game of Thrones buried the narrative justification for its ruthlessness beneath the rubble, becoming the worst version of itself as a spectacle of meaningless sadism. It’s a nihilism the story’s own author has even previously condemned.

SEE ALSO: How ‘Game of Thrones’ failed its women

Of course, there’s still one more episode left for the series to stick a landing that’d make the near decade of painful emotional investment we’ve poured into it feel worthwhile. But with each conclusion reached in Season 8 so far, whether it be episode 3’s Great War or episode 5’s Last War, Game of Thrones appears to lose further grasp not only of its plotting, but also of the overarching humanity that justified its cruel worldview.

Back in 2014, shortly after the Red Wedding left many viewers with something akin to PTSD, some critics started accusing the show of being nothing more than masochistic nihilism. But in a Rolling Stone interview, George R. R. Martin unequivocally refuted this characterization of its brutality:

That particular criticism is completely invalid. Actually, I think it’s moronic. My worldview is anything but nihilistic… Truth is sometimes hard to hear… Mortality is the inescapable truth of all life .

The difference between nihilism and hard truth is the difference between resigning oneself to a meaningless existence versus finding meaning in the difficulty of mortality.

Devastating twists and premature ends to character arcs have defined what made Game of Thrones captivating. But every time we watched the brutal fall of a hero — whether Ned, Robb, Catelyn, Oberyn, Hodor, or even Shireen — its unforgiving brutality came with the poignant shock of poetic injustice. 

Game of Thrones set flame to its own sense of purpose along with the capital, leaving behind nothing but the taste of ash in our mouths.

In contrast, “The Bells” reduced the show’s darkness to an endless deluge of futility and cynicism, inspiring tedious dread instead of anything close to emotional catharsis. With Daenerys, Jaime, and Cersei (not to mention Euron) arcs, Game of Thrones obliterated all hope that the strife we’ve endured throughout this long journey had any purpose.

What was the point of Jaime’s painful growth since Season 2 if, after everything, he just went back to being the same person he was in the very first episode? 

Well, some might argue, he represents the harsh reality of redemption’s limitations — how even if you make great strides toward growth, people are still bound by the flaws in their nature. Sure, we can buy that, despite the huge corners cut to reach that trajectory in two episodes. 

But what was most egregious about the character assassination of Jaime Lannister in “The Bells” wasn’t his abrupt 180 back into Cersei’s arms. It was his scene with Tyrion, who begged an imprisoned Jaime to ring the bell to save millions of innocent lives in King’s Landing. 

The same innocent lives, you’ll remember, that Jaime gave up his honor to save during Robert’s Rebellion, by breaking his oath as a member of the Kingsguard to kill the Mad King and inadvertently become the hated Kingslayer for the most heroic act of his life. 

So how does Jaime respond now in Season 8 to Tyrion’s plea to help him save those same innocent lives? “To be honest, I never cared much for them, innocent or otherwise,” he says, with no hint of irony. 

Maybe this was meant to show us how far Jaime’s regressed, somehow more morally degraded than even the arrogant Golden Lion he was decades ago. If that’s the case, we were given zero context as to how this happens, since his motivation for going back to Cersei amounted to him staring into a fire while Brienne slept.

Game of Thrones buried the narrative justification for its  ruthlessness beneath the rubble, becoming the worst version of itself.

Beyond that, we know for a fact that even the Jaime who loyally stood by Cersei’s side in Season 7 cared enough about saving those innocent lives to risk his own. During the Loot Train Attack, his suicidal charge at Daenerys and her dragon clearly came from a desperation to stop another mad Targaryen from enacting the tragedy he sacrificed so much to prevent.

Did any of this backstory, arguably the cornerstone of Jaime’s entire character, get even a passing reference in the 80-minute runtime of “The Bells”? Nope. Instead, we got an inexplicable fight between him and the plot-device-in-mascara that is Euron. One-armed Jaime bests dragonslayer Euron through sheer dumb luck, as if the loss of Jaime’s fighting prowess hadn’t been pivotal to his story for several seasons.

The empty hole where Jaime’s character development used to be culminates in a callback to the same old shit we’ve seen from the Lannisters countless times before: We’re all that matters. It makes you wonder why we spent eight years caring about their myriad of other inner conflicts if even the characters don’t think their struggles mattered. 

Again, you might say that’s the idea: People don’t change. Maybe the collapse of Jaime’s redemption arc shows a hard-to-hear truth about the inescapable cycle of abusive co-dependent relationships. But if that’s the case, romanticizing his love for Cersei in the end did nothing to communicate that effectively. 

By diminishing the complex interiority of his character to a single motivation, Jaime’s end robs us of what made Game of Thrones so powerful, grounding the fantasy in believable human struggles. Maybe Jaime didn’t deserve a better end, but it’s contrived nihilism to say that his struggle for goodness, his painful fall, his defining act of heroism, his entire life’s worth of experiences — they would be forgotten not just to history, but apparently by Jaime Lannister himself.

Then there’s Cersei.

No one could ever call Cersei a hero. Yet a huge testament to the show’s storytelling (and Lena Heady’s acting) was that even her most monstrous acts came from deeply human fears. Her character growth evolved in the exact opposite direction of Jaime’s, as she lost more of her humanity along with each child, becoming more dangerous as she had less and less to live for.

But even that intriguing character shift was walked back in Season 8, with a pregnancy that ultimately did nothing to change her behavior or deepen our understanding of her as a person. Cersei gambled her child’s life with reckless abandon all the time, despite everyone insisting that maternal instincts were the bedrock of her moral justifications. The show can barely even commit to the one-dimensional motivations they keep reducing their character to. 

For the first time in Season 8, Cersei comes across as a storybook villain — not because she blew up her own city once but because shitty writing forgot to give her even the most basic purpose for her actions and decisions. With an astounding lack of screen time, 90 percent of her role in Season 8 amounted to staring out at King’s Landing from a window with a sly smirk.

So what was the point of Cersei? Why take away all her children, only to give her the hope of another, only to have that change nothing about her behavior — only to kill her?

Like everyone else in Season 8, the complex person we knew as Cersei was replaced by a plot necessity. She exists now because Daenerys needed someone to fight. Or, if we’re being generous, perhaps her character highlights how villainy can sometimes do less harm than the promise of a savior like Daenerys.

Which brings us to the most pointless fallen character of all in “The Bells.”

As many have pointed out, Daenerys’ turn from Breaker of Chains into Queen of Ashes was far from unexpected. But even with several seasons of attempted setup, book foreshadowing, and straight-up prophecy, her moral downfall lacked both logic and meaning. The show gave her reasons for the sudden bout of “madness,” but their believability as a relatable human reaction was laughable.

The failure of Daenerys’ character arc cuts the deepest of all because it had the most potential to say something meaningful about the series’ overall themes. In theory, her fall from hero to villain could’ve spoken to the dangers of savior narratives, how absolute power is not the answer to disempowerment, or how no one person can liberate others from oppression.

Instead, the showrunners decided it was enough to convey the total collapse of a character’s morality through Emilia Clarke’s eyebrow acting. The distance from Daenerys’ experience during her most pivotal moment in the entire series was deliberate, too.

During the Inside the Episode, showrunner D.B. Weiss explained:

“We wanted her to just be death from above, as seen from the perspective of the people who are on the business end of that dragon… There’s a tendency to focus on the heroic figures and not pay attention to the people who maybe suffer from the repercussions of the decisions made by those heroic people. We really wanted to keep our perspective and sympathies on the ground at this moment, because those are the people really paying the price for the decisions she’s making.”

An admirable thought, I suppose. But this actually had the exact opposite effect. By exclusively focusing on nameless extras being burned alive over and over again, “The Bells” dehumanized the citizens of King’s Landing, desensitizing and numbing viewers to the tragic loss of life. More than any other Game of Thrones bloodbath, it felt like glorified brutality for brutality’s sake.

Whether “hero” or “villain,” this was a story about regular people’s capacity for evil.

Worse still, by making Daenerys just “death from above,” “The Bells” once again sacrificed what made this show so unique in the first place. Before, the violence on Game of Thrones purposefully avoided the black-and-white moral battleground typical of the fantasy genre. Whether “hero” or “villain,” this was a story about regular people’s capacity for evil — how human flaws, rather than a giant evil eye in Mordor, can cause extreme brutality.

Game of Thrones forced you to identify with villainy rather than allow you the false comfort of believing only bad people do bad things. As with Cersei, acts of unforgivable violence were contextualized by sympathetic motivations like trauma and a love for one’s children. As a result, we saw how the most inhuman atrocities of war could come from the most well-intentioned human places.

Robert’s Rebellion, which caused thousands to die, began as a clash of unrequited and forbidden love. Daenerys’ descent into villainy originated as a fight for a better world. The message is that our capacity for unthinkable evil is just as human as our capacity for love, empathy, and kindness.

But when showing that mattered most — when the hero we’ve been rooting for for over eight years become the story’s central bad guy — they decided to make her little more than a fire-breathing drone.

The biggest threat to humanity wasn’t monsters, but other people.

By refusing to let us inside the mind of the person enacting the violence, Game of Thrones sacrificed the personal stakes that previously made its gratuitous violence consequential and its villains meaningful.

Season 8’s lazy and frankly boring nihilism first become apparent in episode 3, “The Long Night.”

After the Night King was unceremoniously removed as the primary threat in a single episode, we all scrambled to recalibrate our understanding of the story’s purpose. OK, so this wasn’t about how fighting a larger existential threat must bring humanity together. So what was the point?

Well, as Tyrion suggested in Episode 4, eradicating the magical threat made it clear that the biggest threat to humanity wasn’t monsters, but other people. But instead exploring the human side of evil, the battle between Daenerys and Cersei made the overall purpose of their journeys go up in smoke.

What’s unbearable about Game of Thrones‘ turn toward nilihism isn’t the lack of happy or even satisfying conclusion. It’s that this newfound cynicism betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the story the show has been telling for eight years, the deeply human characters it made us care about, and the promise of a bittersweet ending that finds meaning in a difficult existence.

Instead all we’re left with is this futile exercise on meaninglessness of existence. And one more grueling hour of wallowing in it. 

Warning: Contains spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8, episode five.

The Simpsons has, undeniably, predicted a whole bunch of real-world events. When it comes to politics in particular, America’s favourite animated family seems to have a habit of hitting the nail on the head.

But not all predictions are as impressive as they first seem.

SEE ALSO: These 2 old ‘Game of Thrones’ visions basically predicted Episode 5

Back in 2016, a tweet claiming that The Simpsons predicted Trump’s presidency went viral — but the date on one of the images was later shown to be wrong, while another had been taken totally out of context.

On Wednesday, The Simpsons went viral yet again. Another prediction. This time the subject matter was Game of Thrones episode five, and the clip showed a cartoon dragon wreaking havoc on a city.

Does that shot look eerily similar to some aerial shots of Daenerys burning King’s Landing in episode five? Yes.

But the whole thing is a lot less spooky when it’s put into context.

The Simpsons episode that clip was taken from is “The Serfsons,” which premiered in October 2017. So it passes the first test.

But it’s crucial to note that the whole episode is a medieval fantasy parody, set in a magical world that includes amulets and “icewalkers”. It’s not only parodying Game of Thrones — there are also nods to movies like Lord of the Rings, plus a whole bunch of other references — but HBO’s show is certainly one of the main targets.

The clip with the dragon comes right at the end. Basically, the characters discover that if the dragon’s fire goes out, the magic disappears from their world. Homer revives the fire, and the dragon — in true Simpsons style — promptly burns everything.

If you read that episode’s description on its own, in other words, you’d probably think of it as nothing more than a classic Simpsons parody.

And as for shot of the dragon wreaking fiery chaos on humans? The inspiration could easily have come from a past Game of Thrones episode.

That clip shows Daenerys attacking the Lannister forces in Westeros. It’s from Season 7, episode four, which aired in early August 2017. “The Serfons” was likely well into production by then, sure — but that clip isn’t the only example of a large dragon burning things in Game of Thrones. Just ask the people of Meereen.

The Simpsons is undeniably brilliant at holding a mirror up to both real life and popular culture — and in some cases, that’s led to them including things in their show that have actually ended up happening.

But this one feels like a bit of a stretch.