Rachel Leah, Salon

Alas, winter is here. For those who still believe that not watching "Game of Thrones" is a personality, this means that the long-anticipated final and eighth season of the HBO series returns Sunday, April 14 at 9 p.m. The ever-complex and interconnected storylines and characters, combined with the fact that "Game of Thrones" does not care about your feelings, has always allowed for any number of possible endings. In all likelihood, everyone will die, since the closing scene in Season 7 showed the Army of the Dead — least 100,000 strong and counting, including a dragon and several giants — successfully destroying The Wall that has stood for thousands of years and which has marked and protected the borders between the Seven Kingdoms and the unpredictable, frightening territory and its inhabitants that exist beyond it.

Taylor University, a private evangelical Christian college in rural Indiana, has selected Vice President Mike Pence as its featured commencement speaker this May, and many from the Taylor community are deeply upset and alarmed. For those on the outside, the news that a largely white evangelical Christian school in Pence's home state of Indiana would invite him as its graduation speaker seems hardly surprising, considering that for decades white evangelical Christians have constituted the largest religious bloc in the Republican Party, according to the Washington Post. But as Taylor alumni, faculty and students have told Salon — some of whom asked not to be named — the invitation has been met with substantial dissent and backlash.

I had been convinced that there was no odder couple than my parents, who've long been separated and whose personalities and livelihoods could not be more divergent, until conservative lawyer turned chronic President Trump critic George Conway began to gain popularity for his fervent and relentless Trump takedowns, on social media and in op-eds, despite the fact that he is married to Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump's closest aides.

Actress and businesswoman Gwyneth Paltrow is many things. She's the face and mind behind the expensive and controversial beauty and wellness empire GOOP, which has featured products like the Jade Yoni Egg and Psychic Vampire Repellent. She's a mother to Apple and Moses Martin. She won an Academy Award and Golden Globe for best actress for her role in "Shakespeare in Love." And yet, Paltrow has become best known in recent years for pretentious, elitist one-liners that situate her so far outside of normalcy and reality that "unrelatable" does not feel like a strong enough word. Like when she took credit for popularizing yoga, or once said, "I’d rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin." In her words and actions and brand, Paltrow always appears not quite human — until now.