A Random Group of Short Items

-- Author George R. R. Martin weighed in with an opinion about the hit movie Captain Marvel, which he liked quite a bit. He's also a big fan of the character, saying she could "eat Iron Man for lunch and have Thor for dessert, with a side of Dr. Strange." Now, could she finish Martin's ever-expanding, never-ending, A Song of Ice and Fire? Probably not -- but having Thanos finger-snap half of its 1.7 million words away would probably have us a lot closer to finishing than Martin ever will be.

-- In anticipation of the upcoming release of Avengers: Endgame, CableTV.com is running a contest. The winner will watch all 20 Marvel movies released to date, live-tweet about it and meet with some of its folks to talk about the experience. These are Marvel Studios movies, only, of course. None of the Sony Spider-Man movies, the pre-merger Fox X-Men movies or Fantastic Four flicks. My counter-offer: CableTV.com gives me $200, I watch The Avengers, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Dr. Strange and The Black Panther, we all pretend Guardians of the Galaxy 3 has a reason to exist and then Marvel Studios leaves us alone until it's taken enough time to write a movie that's more plot than hole.

-- Today I Found Out: The Queen of England could not legally be prosecuted for a crime committed while she was Queen, so she is immune from the consequences of her actions like British monarchs before her.
Oliver Cromwell: Hold my beer.

-- Since Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation seems not to have uncovered any concrete evidence of collusion between President Trump's 2016 campaign and the Russian government, there will be some fallout among different groups and people depending on what they wanted to see come from that investigation. Tyler Cowen outlines some of those winners and losers here, but he concludes with this very welcome idea:

The biggest winner of course is the United States of America.  It seems, after all, that we did not have a president, or even presidential staff, who colluded with the Russians.  Maybe you wanted Trump to go down on this one, but that is most of all big reason to celebrate.