Zoraptor

Côte d'Ivoire was last year, and probably a bit unexpected since France had still retained enough influence to arrest Laurance Gbagbo after a disputed election only 15 years ago, and the beneficiary of that move (ie Alassane Ouatarra) is still in office. 15 years, and four 'elections' later*. Senegal, Mali, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso were the others that went earlier. *Some might say that a 95.3% vote for a candidate is a tad suspicious but I'm sure that he was- was- just that competent and popular. Though the more cynical might have just the most tiny little thought that maybe, just maybe, his legitimacy is going to be called into question at some point in the future by the same people who'd been ignoring it previous.

Funny thing, the bigger one, 14 years ago, was when the region was under French domination. What were the French doing to stop it, it's all their fault, why haven't things improved in 130 years of French domination etc etc said Bruce, never, ever. Funny thing as well, that was due to the primarily French decision to topple Gaddafi to unselfishly and generously try and keep then President Sarkozy out of jail for accepting definitely not bribes from Libya. Which flooded the area with unregulated arms and the completely unregulated support of anyone anti Gaddafi lead to AQIM getting a lot of them. A painful lesson- well not really, since the people who suffered from it weren't the rich white euroweenies who caused it, they patted themselves on the back while ignoring the open air slave markets etc- which at least was learnt from when it came to Syria. Where, of course, ISIS caliph al Baghdadi's deputy and head of Al Qaeda in Syria is now feted by people like... the French President at the Elysee. Ho hum.

Eh, if it's just suspension from 'important positions' it's a bit of a nothingburger. You cannot suspend members of NATO, there simply is not provision for it and everyone would have to agree to alter their charter. Which, presumably, the targeted parties would refuse to do. The Falklands thing is probably more significant, with Millei being a Trump bootlicker and all. Especially since Starmer caved over Diego Garcia, a deal Trump approved of, hated, approved of again then finally stopped. Just wait until some troll from Morocco mentions Ceuta and Mellila to Trump... The EU already has collective defence outside of NATO (since the Lisbon Treaty 2007/9, and there was a precursor even since benelux days, iirc). They also have a set of agreements with non EU European and other countries, though they generally stop short of outright alliances, even defensive. The 'realistic' scenario for NATO without the US is pretty much literally NATO, without the US. ie dissolve or mothball the alliance, everyone* else joins the North Western HemiDemisphere Treaty Organisation. It's not all that realistic though, even with Trump. *for a certain definition of everyone; would not be a surprise if Turkey were not invited despite their military strength.

The increased expenditure is largely at the behest of the US though. That German rearmament document is also still very... US compatible since they talk about the Asia-Pacific theatre (in the context that they want to do away with having formal military theatres, but still) which is basically antipodal to Germany and where, realistically, they will have essentially zero independent power projection under any circumstances short of spending their entire military budget on their navy. That's very much something which is meant to back up the US. OTOH, with Germany wanting to hold the Olympics in xx36 and wanting the strongest military in Europe by xx39... you never know.

Those are the sort of things computers ought to be good at since most of them amount to database queries and rote responses- two things people are notoriously bad at especially if they aren't very motivated. Chat bots tend to be notoriously bad at anything outside the box or unpredicted though and tend to 'break' easily; eg the local supermarket chatbot would make 'recipes' using a variety of different noxious or poisonous ingredients like motor oil instead of vegetable oil, if prompted to. Which is funny if you know motor oil ain't edible, not so much if you don't, and some people don't. ('AI' use in employment stuff is something I find quite interesting though, because it's one area where there's been quite a lot of pushback on both sides here. Employers hate having hundreds of obvious AI slop CVs and covering letters to wade through; potential employees hate being interviewed by 'AI' chatbots for jobs instead of real people. It's also rather funny thining of one 'ai' writing all the cvs and covering letters only for another 'ai' to judge the results)

The only one of those examples that is near equivalent is the air travel one since most air travel is not really necessary, it's convenient. 'AI' isn't really necessary either it's just convenient (and makes some people a lot of money). It's probably closest to something like littering, maybe: sure, that one piece of plastic wrap you dropped won't make a difference but it certainly would if everyone starts doing it. (On a narrow economic basis: The trouble with 'AI' energy wise is that it already uses the same- maybe more, now- energy as the UK. That's not much less than a year/year increase either. While no tears should be shed for Gamers crying about Jensen making it uneconomic for them to buy dual 5090 Titans any more all those AI cards go into data centres and are run 24/7/365 at 1kW a pop. That mounts up, rapidly. To use a vaccum cleaner comparison it is the equivalent of running 8 low model Dyson's simultaneously, and in perpetuity, per card. Also buying up all the RAM effects people who do need computers, like for education or just because their computer broke. They now have to pay more, same as they do for the electricity going into those 8 Dyson equivalents, in a rack, in a hectare sized site. With 20 employees. Plus of course all the economic consequences of people getting sacked so 'AI' can take their jobs. Which really ought to be the big worry. All those people not contributing to taxes, being on welfare, not buying stuff because they have no money etc. It's the last one that is really the kicker, because that will put non 'AI' service economy stuff out of business. Which will all look nice on a corporation's balance sheet, right up until it doesn't any more. And all because you decided to use AI to set a reminder rather than just putting it on your calendar. Shaking my smh my head)

Watched Ponies. Or I suppose it should really be PONIes. US spy widows try to find out what happened to their husbands in Moscow in the late 70s, shenanigans ensue. It can't really decide whether it wants to be a serious take, or a silly one; the premise itself is both very silly and quite serious. They'd never be allowed to become spies. One of the widows cannot speak Russian, yet spends half her time wandering around Moscow (meeting people who all speak English), an untrained woman can wander into multiple KGB facilities, the KGB apparently never does any sort of basic background checks. Then again, nor does the CIA, when the plot needs it. Yet there's a high bodycount with some 'dark themes' and the other spy stuff feels authentic enough. Generally. Sending the (black) section chief to do basic surveillance in Belarus seems a little unlikely since he's important and quite possibly the only black man in Belarus in the 70s. The overall effect is half Jonny English, half The Americans. If it were 100% Jonny English with a couple of women failing successfully through everything it'd be one thing, if it were two highly competent trained women being highly competent and trained it'd be another; as it is it's an uncomfortable mix at times. Shame the plot isn't half as good as The Americans though. It has the problem that if there are two options for someone being a traitor, and one of them has a big neon sign over them pointing an arrow anyone familiar with scripting will think it's option 2. And it is. And, to be fair, being half as good as The Americans is hardly an insult given how good that was. Overall, worth watching and potentially very good if they can iron out the crinkles and decide on the tone better. The guy playing Vasiliev could have doubled for Ignatenko from Chernobyl. Don't think there is a single ST show in active development now. Not only that, every series ended before it was supposed to/ got cancelled, except Picard. Looks like even the Captain Kirk spin off from Strange New Worlds is canned, and if that's gone it's hard to see anything else getting the green light.

I'd say that democracies are as good as autocracies at withstanding pressure, economic or otherwise, so long as there's a good reason for it. The problem is when the economic issues stem from something unpopular and especially something seen as being a choice which isn't going to bring improvement nor have a defined end*. That would be things like Afghanistan, Vietnam or the French/ British attempts to keep colonies. Places like the UK in the world wars or Ukraine currently coped ok with sustained (economic) pressure, because it was seen as being forced on them. There may be some argument about the democracy definition since since they didn't hold elections when scheduled, albeit with widespread support for the prorogation; but for the UK at least elections were held as soon as possible after the war ended (slightly before, technically, for WW2, since Japan hadn't surrendered in July 1945). Elections would likely be a Requirement for any ceasefire/ peace deal in Ukraine as well. *which very much looks to be the case with the current crisis. No pressing reason for it, war of choice, no signs of resulting in actual improvement nor of having a defined end. So, it's unpopular.

Presumably they could just use EW as is since it isn't (directly) lethal anyway. That article is massively overstated (or perhaps more accurately, doesn't note the problems with Ukraine's approach) but NATO not adapting doctrine shouldn't be any surprise to anyone who followed the Ukrainian 'counter'offensive and the very useful feedback and suggestions made by NATO trainers and analysts*. Which made it pretty clear they only really wanted to learn stuff from Ukraine that they want to learn, when necessary lessons are very often the ones you don't already want to learn. *Just drive around the minefields, bro lieber. The solution to your armoured assault columns getting blatted since they can only proceed along narrow corridors is... to put even more of them into those narrow corridors. Just like the Russians did so successfully north of Kiev. Put more troops in bigger groups into the kill zones. No diversionary attacks, concentrate everything in one place. And the all time classic from the British MoD: progress is slow due to pro Russian shrubbery. If those had failed of course it would have been 'should have used smaller groups and diversionary attacks' instead...

Yes indeed. There really isn't a 'moral' way to use LLM's. Even non commercial use has the environmental and other* issues. Sadly typical that it's allowed/ legal in the first place really. If you or I ignore copyright, we get in trouble. If some multi billion dollar corp does, it's fine. Indeed, many of the same corporations flagrantly stealing** other people's work for profit are the same ones that lobbied for harsh copyright and patent rules, and litigate stridently under their aegis. When it's their IPs being violated, at least. Doesn't help that the enforcement companies have absolutely no balls either. They'll happily go after some store playing commercial radio for royalties due, but when an 'AI' vendor hoovers it all up for commercial repackaging... crickets. Just a bit too hard for them, intimidating Meta/ MS/ OpenAI/ Musk's lawyers instead of Archie's Burger's owner operator, I guess. *flabbers still well and truly ghasted that our government here thinks 10% of our electricity supply for up to 50 (fifty) jobs at an AI centre is a good investment. It's going to drive up electricity prices for everyone else, for basically no benefit. Except, perhaps, some politicians post political career board prospects. **it isn't of course, it's copyright infringement, but since many of the same corps sponsored those obnoxious "you wouldn't download a car!!!" type ads it's fair game to incorrectly use it back at them

That's kind of obligatory, with The Witcher being licensed. ie how Sapkowski wrote the source material and who Sapkowski is meant it was always going to be highly slavic. If you didn't want that you'd not have licensed it in the first place. Pre Witcher 3 success at least, to take aspects of the TV series into account. Of course it is self reinforcing, with CDPR being Polish as well. (Technically of course they could have gone with some other more generic western aesthetic but that would have been, not to put too fine a point on it, stupid)

While often referred to as a blockade, it's not technically a proper big B Blockade. A Blockade has to be a physical, well, block. ie have ships or whatever enforcing it. The US embargo on Cuba is enforced by, for example, threatening Mexico with tariffs if they continued supply or invading Venezuela, rather than physically interdicting its tankers. Cuba was under Blockade (and even then they avoided making it official and using the actual term since it is automatically an Act of War) during the Missile Crisis. That at least in theory had ships going to Cuba inspected for listed items such as missile components.

The US claim was that two destroyers transited the Strait (some sources have them immediately reversing course and leaving, which may be where the confusion arises). Centcom shared a photo of it*. Sad to see that US destroyers can only afford a Potatomatic 1200 for their propaganda shots... May be the al-salamah islands in the background, which are in the middle (east-west wise) of the Strait. If so the destroyer(s) would not be in the shipping lanes though, but hugging the Omani/ Emirati coast about 10km further south. Which might technically count as a transit, but it's unlikely you're going to get supertankers or bulk carriers taking the same route. Haven't seen anyone geolocate it, but my very quick and not overly confident estimate would be here(ish) looking roughly north. *For those who aren't habitual users of preparation h Arabian Gulf = Persian Gulf much as Gulf of America = Gulf of Mexico.

Uno_reverse_card.jpg Guess he'd tried the decapitation strike part of Venezuela on Iran, now it's time to try the seizing ships part and see if it does any better.

Vance heading back home from Pakistan after failed peace talks with Iran. I hope the Iranian delegation thanked him for the effort at least.