Zoraptor

They'll want more money for Bioware than they're worth. Even if they chuck in the IP, which for Mass Effect isn't a given. Sadly, a very good candidate for going the way of Bullfrog/ Maxis etc into the big EA dumpster in the sky. Few years ago MS might have been interested at least. Or maybe Greg and Ray will buy it back for a pittance.

That's not a downside, when the alternative is getting prosecuted for something else. In the end, that's the fundamental problem with weaponising hearings if you actually want to get to the truth of what was done right and what was done wrong: you aren't going to get that if you're actually actually trying to just get someone in trouble to score political points.

The proper question is probably why not take the 5th in that situation if it's available, rather than why take it. Doesn't really have any downsides. The only people who are going to be upset about it were rabid covid truthers beforehand who will remain remain covid truthers after, whatever is said. You're neither going to change their minds, nor do convince them of anything else. At this point, why even bother.

No doubt, though with that amount money would definitely have filtered down. No doubt Infantino knew that many assoc heads would see that as a lump sum offering, to them personally, to vote as Infantino wanted. The whole idea for the lump sum was that the proposal would likely be wildly unpopular in certain sectors- the richer confeds- and if wanted it to get through he'd need to make it popular in others. The people who it was popular with are if anything more likely to vote for him now though, and less likely to vote for a UEFA sanctioned alternative if they put one forward.

The recruitment problem is one Ukraine has had since near the beginning, to an extent. Then, a lot of people volunteered thinking they'd be defending their home town and weren't keen at all to be sent off to fight in the Donbass. However, many of those people dodging TCC patrols would still potentially be willing to fight, if it were their town threatened. That's more true the further west you go. The problem now is that those who signed up to defend Ukraine in general are in various ways unavailable and that only leaves those who don't want to fight at all, and those who'd only fight for their own area. Thing about Afghanistan is, you'd think with 30(++) years of technological advances the west would have done better than Vietnam at counter insurgency, and no doubt they thought they would have as well. Objectively, they very likely did worse, even significantly worse. That's with drones, satellite technology, far better communication and in theory far better munitions, no jungle (but mountains, certainly), the example of the soviets in Afghanistan prior and the Taleban using Vietnam era soviet kit for the most part and no capacity to hit aircraft flying above manpad ceiling. It's not really a direct homology to Ukraine, it's definitely analogous; but the attitude, expectations and the result when the opposition don't behave as you hoped is similar.

Wouldn't surprise me if he still has enough support to win the vote next year even after this, if he wants to. Europe in particular was never the target of the 30mn bribe and Europe appears to be the only place which was actually universal in rejection, and specifically of that proposal. You'd expect Africa and Oceania* to be near as universal in support as Europe was in opposition because they stood to gain massively in proportion to the richer associations. If he wanted to do it- and he obviously did- immediately after the WC during the post competition high was the time to try. And of course, while all the associations were anticipating getting their share of the cash from said tournament. *some people in the press asked why we didn't come out in opposition to it, answer is simple: that money would fund the game here for 15 years. You can only imagine how long it would fund it in Tonga or Samoa. That amount to the UK probably wouldn't fund the game for a week.

The poster child for it is probably still Afghanistan. Total air dominance, total technical/ technological dominance on the side of the west. Estimates for losses: 66-92k for one side, 53-82k for the other. Amazingly, the Taleban figure is the lower estimate. OK, different style of war and OK, the vast majority of the dead on the western side were Afghans, but still. If you're up against a determined enemy it's not easy by any means. Very easy to knock both the sides in Ukraine for being tactically unimaginative and wasteful, but it's not like anyone else has done very well recently; and the 'expert' advice that we know about from the west tended to consist of gems like "just drive around the minefields". Which was... well, it didn't come from a modern day Hannibal, Temujin, ibn al Walid or Alex the Great to be sure.

Getting out of Crimea in the first few days was extremely competent and lead to the biggest territorial gain of the war. Theoretically that should have been pretty difficult since it's a natural bottleneck that Ukraine had 8 years to prepare. Not much since though. Then again, neither side has showed much in the way of offensive ability since the first few months, which suggests that either everyone is terrible at attack or everyone is great at defence. Or more realistically, that attacking is indeed very hard in the current environment. Which is also bourne out pretty well by other conflicts where the nominally far stronger sides are not doing/ have not done anywhere near as well as they might expect.

Every time Ceuta and Melilla are mentioned I get to laugh again at Spain complaining about Britain holding onto an exclave in Gibraltar. Though I imagine the inhabitants there are even less keen to go back to Morocco than the Gibraltans are to go back to Spain.

It's the old chestnut that anything I/ we do is fine, because we have the best motives and justifications; and anything they do is awful, because they have the worst justifications and motives. Attacking or seizing ships in Hormuz is terrorism (though of course, so is breaking a bank's windows, at least in the UK. Not charged under terrorism, but that latter day Judge Jeffries Philip Parry wants to sentence them under it. Here's hoping he ends up in the Tower of London for his own protection like the historical Judge Jeffries) unless we're the ones doing it. At least I get a giggle out of all the outrage from people who never thought their tactics would be used against them by anyone. Hubris or stupidity, hard to tell really. Going to be hilarious when Ukraine brings their complaints about Russia shutting down Odessa and sinking their merchantmen to the UNSC. The 'grain truce' may not have been renewed, but it was still honoured up until a couple of weeks ago, now Ukraine's harvest is rotting in fields since there isn't anywhere to put it. Kind of appropriate that the Euros are going to end up footing an even larger bill to keep the lights on in Ukraine, just a shame it won't be the Ursula's, Friedrich's and Emmanuel's who are actually paying.

There might have been the slightest smidge, soupcon, iota/ the merest suggestion of sarcasm in referring to NATO as purely defensive. (Iran isn't going to send troops and Ukraine is probably out of range of its missiles anyway, which leaves firing missiles from Russian territory. Looks like Ukraine didn't get the reaction they wanted anyway, since their FM has phoned Iran to apologise. A very... Ukrainian apology, but still)

I'd suspect they're after Israeli help, rather than US. The US patently doesn't want a resumption in fighting with Iran while Israel patently does. NATO won't respond. NATO can't respond. It's a Purely Defensive Alliance, isn't a threat to anyone who doesn't attack it, and Ukraine isn't a member. I'm sure Mark Rutte/ Jens Stoltenberg etc etc wouldn't lie to us about that.

Tariffs are one of the things where I'd suspect the timing is purely coincidental. His temporary tariffs are expiring, so he needs to replace them with something at least theoretically permanent. (Though of course it's hard not to see these 'new' ones as being a spurious way to reapply the old ones, because that is very obviously exactly what they are. Which no doubt will last until the next successful legal challenge, at which time another set of 'new' tariffs with a different spurious reason- IP infringement, maybe?- will be trotted out)

Officially, the US doesn't even accept that Israel has nukes. (It's far more likely that Saudi just buys Pakistani warheads for their DF3s, if push came to shove. They did after all finance the Pakistani nuclear weapons program by most accounts. But yes, the US attitude to Saudi ambitions is probably best summed up by the fact that very few people know that Saudi has a stockpile of nuclear capable missiles- DF3s aren't much use for anything else other than nuclear given their lack of accuracy)

Reminder: Iran has been 'months' away from getting nukes for a decent bit more than 300 (three hundred, 3x10^2, 100101100 binary) months now. For a fair bit it's been weeks (about 1300 of them since the first claim) or even days (call it a generous 10k) The claims are not just old enough to be having sex and getting drunk; they'd be out of uni, have a career, maybe even children and a mortgage. At this point, it really is a claim that appeals to those lacking two brain cells to rub together.