Zoraptor

Dunno about that. Any successor can just blame Trump for any problems. Some sort of 'committed to our commitments, even if we disagree we must honour them to maintain the integrity of other agreements' sort of spiel. These things tend to have a great deal of inertia. Would a future President be willing to pay out all the investors? Or would they try and force Venezuela to do so? What happens if Venezuela repudiates the deal (and it can hardly be claimed it hasn't been signed under duress)? Ironically, the only recent President who ignored that sort of inertia is Trump himself, who'd have no problem leaving precipitately if it were Obama or Biden's pet project. In a similar vein, even if Obama Somehow Returned to the White House it seems unlikely he would be able to change the Iranian situation. Because much as the Iranians might trust ('trust') him personally compared to Trump there's no trust for the US as a whole. You can't unpop a balloon. (The agreement will commit Venezuela to protecting US interests, so the expectation would be minimal US boots on the ground and, they would hope, minimal bad publicity in the form of US troops shooting civilians/ people disgruntled about their natural resources being 'stolen. That would be done by the fine upstanding chaps in the Venezuelan police/ army. Yes, the same army and police who a few months ago were villains suppressing freedom etc. There is also, per above, the appeal of obligating Venezuela to buy overpriced and irrelevant military gear to do the protecting. All of those factors will make it far from a foregone conclusion that even a new D President would change tack significantly, as opposed to trying to dress up the neocolonialism a bit better)

At current production rates the stated royalties would be pretty decent (30bn raw value, 8bn royalty pa). At projected production rates though, and in what should be a surprise to absolutely no one, awful; even if you take into account most of Venezuela's oil being rubbish and hard to extract. Plus you'd expect there to be a lot of, hmm, 'catches' in the royalty payments like having to buy helicopters specifically off US companies for 500mn a piece. 16 of them, and you have no royalties left. One might think that is cynical, but given the people involved thinking otherwise is far more likely to be hopelessly naive. Such is the life of a colonial adjunct and enslaved state. Will be interesting to see if the 'deal'* and occupation outlast Trump or not. *I'd make a Star Wars reference about praying deals aren't altered further since Delcy Rodriguez has a passing resemblance to Lando Calrissian, but I'd feel a bit mean comparing Darth Vader to Donald Trump.

Fun times in Capetown, South Africa. If anything, the thumbnail understates how close they got to a stadium with 55k people inside. StreamableWatch merged-1788020730987 | StreamableWatch "merged-1788020730987" on Streamable.

Mystery Meat turns up while wild horse herds are being culled. Whatever could it be?

Funny thing about economically right wing political parties: they're almost always worse than the left for running up debt. Mostly because they've collectively gone for a approach which has quite literally never worked once in 'austerity' and all the phrases they desperately use to try and avoid saying 'austerity' now that it's tainted. What you get is always a variant of stagflation, with increased debt. The belief that you can cut your way to growth is basically religious- and like a lot of wacky religions, predicated more on capital B Belief that This Is How Things Should Work than anything objective. Most of the left wing parties are still basically Keynesian- spend out of recession, pay down debt in good times. Which is basic common sense really, when you've got debt at governmental interest rates. And so long as you do pay the debt down in the good times. Right wing ones stifle growth by cutting then use the dead cat bounce to justify tax cuts for themselves. They never actually pay down the debt as any surplus has to be 'returned to the people'. Or their large donors. Cut jobs--> take money out of the actual economy where people go to restaurants, see movies etc--> be surprised when nobody has any money to spend and all those businesses go bust and their employees can't spend --> things get worse. But hey, have you seen the numbers on the sharemarket? (Same thing will happen with AI, all those enthusiastic politicians getting bungs from lobbyists to promote that snake oil will be amazed when the economic benefits don't eventuate. Or, at least, 'amazed')

Every issue Heroes had could be traced back to the last episode of the first season. Even the writers' strike only exacerbated the existing problems. They had to at minimum kill Sylar off. Instead, we got season after season of storylines about him that made no sense, went in circles and were massively contrived.

I hadn't paid much attention to that and assumed it was stuff coming out about the carrier that had spontaneously combusted a few months ago (ie USS Ford) rather than a completely different one (Lincoln). Can't wait to see Hegseth claim that sailors are literally jumping overboard in the hope of getting to grips with the enemy, which shows that morale is so high, so very very high.

That's as shocking as the sun coming up or it being a day ending in the letter y. Even before she left for maternity Trump made it clear that the problem with Iran- and multiple other issues; so far as he was concerned- was that his message was not being accepted because it was not being communicated effectively. Which was Leavitt's job to do. He also went through rather a lot of press secretaries during his first term. If anything it's surprising she came back at all after having the baby. Obviously, the actual communication problem isn't hers any more than it was Spicer's, Sander's, Grisham's or McEnany's from the first term but has a different common factor.

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.

Wiki says it was turn based, and that's what I remember as well. Marketing thing I think, where they wanted to imply its combat was more like Baldur's Gate's 'real time'/ simultaneous turn based system, since it was the big seller.

I suspect many in the Trump Admin unironically blame Iran for 9/11, not Saudi. The rest are happy to turn a blind eye for some pecuniary advantage.