In case you didn’t know already, Asawin Suebsaeng, Mother Jones’ movie critic and I, do a semi-regular podcast, A Movie And An Argument. Our latest, and most depressing edition, discussing the Oscars, Dennis Rodman’s trip to North Korea, and human rights violations in movie-making, is up now!

And on that note, have a great weekend!

Mother Jones’ campaign ads from Game of Thrones are pretty genius, all the way down to quotes pulled from WesterosNetDaily—and present a genius case against Daenerys Targaryen:

They’re also a reminder of an interesting and underdiscussed factor, I think, in A Song of Ice and Fire: the fact that only few people have access to a very limited set of accurate information. There aren’t town criers or rudimentary publications. The public forums we see are largely organized by religious factions: rumor is spread as part of prophecy and preaching, rather than presented as news. Elites who can send and receive ravens are among the few people who get reasonably timely reports about events, and news is expected to trickle down from there. When Stannis Baratheon challenges Joffrey’s legitimacy, he sends ravens to noble families, and assume that’s what needs doing—there’s no thought of or means to spread the news publicly and to the masses.