Zoraptor

Shrug. "why did doctors feel it were prudent to have trump take the MoCA?" or " but that fact is not actual relevant to the significance o' a doctor determining a MoCA were warranted" assumes- without evidence- that the doctor wanted it. It happened because Trump wanted it to. Maybe, just maybe, it being spelled out in an actual quote from the horse's mouth- Donald J Trump himself- might help? from April 12, 2025. He even got what the test was right, then. Sure, Trump could be lying about his motivations just because it's Trump and he lies. Chances are significantly higher that he was telling the truth- otherwise, why mention it?- and wanted it specifically because Biden didn't take one, as he stated. The chances of him being 'forced' to take one by his doctors are also shot to pieces by Biden not being forced to despite his obvious decline. Indeed, in some sources he is said to have refused to take one.

14 specialists examined Trump in 2025, and 20 (!) examined Biden in 2024. That is far beyond a 'comprehensive physical' already. Maybe, if your surname was Bezos/ Musk/ Ellison. Maybe. Drawing conclusions from mislabeling a cognition test is at very very best tenuous. Trump boasting of passing an 'intelligence test' for a cognitive test is absolutely par for the course with his behaviour since forever. Not just in getting what it was wrong (ie thinking he's highly intelligent and this proves it, as a narcissist that is absolute par for the course) but also because he's getting back at his predecessor since Biden infamously didn't take one in 2024 when prompted to; and Trump is very much about being 'better' than Biden (and Obama). The answer to the question of "why did doctors feel it were prudent to have trump take the MoCA?" is pretty clearly explained by him having demanded Biden take one, and that is actually a pretty good reason for taking it. (I know perfectly well what cognitive tests are as my dad has dementia and I too sat in a room while one was administered. He didn't take a MoCA (or at least, not the one Bartimaeus posted, it was out of 20 and apart from the clock what he had to draw was different) but a very similar one. That and the simultaneous chat with the specialist was enough for a diagnosis of dementia on the spot. Note: I actually can prove that since I still have the formal diagnosis in my files, though for obvious reasons I won't. What the cause/ type was needed an MRI, but that was all. And knowing it was mixed ischaemic/ frontotemporal meant basically nothing anyway, except in terms of knowing what to expect)

Eh, I'm not sure we can draw too many conclusions from what was done in Trump's medical exams. Especially so given what happened with Biden. Not just the apparent mental decline with no (medical) explanation but also having advanced prostate cancer. Diagnosed after he left office for sure, but he definitely had it while president and it was not picked up on. Whatever else, Trump isn't just a normal 70+ year old just as Biden wasn't. He's not just getting his bp checked, maybe a blood test and a listen to the heart plus a quick chat about any ongoing issues and review of medications; and you wouldn't expect that to be all they had even for relative youngsters like Clinton/ BushGW/ Obama. And in this case, and I can't believe I'm going to end up 'defending' Donald Trump, Trump did insist Biden should take a cognitive impairment test way back in early 2024 (which Biden didn't) so he's actually being consistent taking one himself. Really though, Executive Leaders ought to be obliged to take cognitive tests. Otherwise you'll end up with something potentially disastrous like announcing a declaration of war as a sound test (thanks, Ronnie).

Pretty good example that unconditional support results in no influence, really. After all for all the supposed influence and goodwill and backing Israel to the hilt the Israeli's voted against the US position, not for it. Anyway, time for a related summary. So far Israel has (1) not opened the border crossings it was required to (2) not allowed in the aid it was required to (3) not set the 'yellow line' where anyone else thinks it ought to be. Indeed, it hasn't set its version of the yellow line where it claims it ought to be itself on its military's own website, but well inside what should be Palestinian territory. Resulting in (4) continuing low level attacks on Palestinian civilians, continuing starvation and malnutrition but most importantly political leaders and media can at least now pretend it isn't happening.

You can't read anything into Medvedev. Five years ago it would have been Zhirinovsky making the exact same sort of post. It's partly to rally (nationalist) Russians but mostly to make sure everyone knows that (or 'knows', more accurately, since it's definitely in large part performative) Putin is a moderate compared to the alternatives.

Ha, weird. Maybe they've obfuscated the main exe to make the launcher compulsory then. I've previously used custom shortcuts for EU4 to avoid the launcher and (not Paradox, obviously) FO4 to direct to a mod/ ultrawidescreen enabled exe with no problems. I've also used the argument function to skip those annoying long and unskippable startup videos some other games have. I don't have vtmb2 though so can't check my end. (Since you're having problems running it otherwise I'd suggest verifying the install if you haven't already, it's always possible- not likely though- that something has gone wrong in the download/ extraction)

It's pretty trivial to avoid Paradox's launcher if you want to. Redirect the shortcut (for non galaxy) to the main game executable rather than launcher.exe or use manage installation-->configure-->features-->custom executable (from the game's page) in galaxy to do the same.

I'll never not be amused by media rewriting history to suit their own narrative. Another of the perpetual 'this time it is different!'s is an extra bonus. Slovakia's government was stridently anti-Russian up until 30 September, 2023. Which is roughly 18 months into the war, and definitively not three years ago as Politico claims. Even the most basic of backgrounding could have found this out, if one didn't already know. But while the previous government was fine with giving away S-300 and MiG-29s they were not all that keen on turning off the spigot gas wise either, since one of the reasons for their collapse was inflation/ cost of living. It is after all not just a matter of having alternative sources like, lol, Azerbaijan* but them not being expensive. It's very easy to claim it's 'just' an extra 10%, when you're an EU bureaucrat with a property portfolio and on 500k a year. And when you pretend that that 10% rise doesn't compound since so much relies on gas. Orban isn't pro Russian. If he were he'd have vetoed stuff, irrevocably. He's entirely transactional- which is probably why Trump seems to love him so much. Blocking sanctions gets his country lots of concessions, no different to how the UK used to operate or how Denmark got concessions to finesse the EU's loss in its referendum. Similarly to the Brits, it really really annoys the federalist executive side of the EU that wants to rule by decree. *always hilarious to see Ursula and pals fanboying over Aliyev, who is everything they accuse Putin of being. As always, if the EU didn't have double standards they wouldn't have standards at all. And, of course, they largely sell rebranded Russian gas. When the EU isn't buying Russian LNG directly and (technically correct!) claiming it isn't gas.

It's not like Trump hasn't been a weather vane before. He's been pretty infamous for repeating the views of whoever he talked to last whatever he seemed to believe beforehand. In that particular case though Trump's previous 'support' for Ukraine/ Zelensky always looked very bluff like as well as being heavily transactional. For all the shouting about tomahawks no one ever explained how they'd be launched* or programmed, least of all Trump, so they never made for a very good stick to get concessions from Russia/ Putin. *aside from just fire them from a container bro, she'll be right. Super simple, barely an inconvenience. Which one suspects is ever so slightly a simplification of the problems involved.

Kind of hilarious watching Sir Kid Starver try and get Maccabi fans- unapologetic genocide enthusiasts who have both provoked and committed violence wherever they've gone- allowed in over police objections while banning Palestine Action for considerably less violence. Plus, of course, not wanting the Palestine Action decision to be subject to Judicial Review. Always a sure sign that you're confident you're in the right, when you're concerned that a judge is going to throw your decision out.

Having played both they're pretty much entirely unconnected, except for having a similar establishing concept/ mechanism. They're both also better Star Trek than most of the recent TV shows despite lacking the licence.

Ultimately it always boils down to Us vs Them, and Israel is incontrovertibly Us so far as the vast majority of political elites in the west are concerned. For that, Ukraine doesn't matter, at all. Whatever Israel has done previous* criticism has been extremely muted, if present at all. If it weren't Russia, it would be China, if it weren't China it would be someone else. As an obese former flying ace with a penchant for women's clothing observed, it's easy, effective and extremely tempting to use fear to manipulate the population wherever you are. Elites always need enemies and if one is not apparent it will be invented. (Dunno how successful the UK government has been. Designating Palestinian Action as big t Terrorist and having Brave Bobbies regularly arresting 80 year old grannies among the thousands of others for literally holding signs has been an international embarrassment moderated only slightly by the domestic media not being able to say outright how stupid it was because, of course, that would be... Supporting Terrorism. Now, just imagine if it was Russia doing... actually you don't have to imagine, because Russia has an equivalent law and we've seen the media reaction to them using it the same way) *excluding 1956, but that was mostly the US/ USSR wanting to make sure Britain and France were permanently Broken as world powers, Israel's invasion of Egypt was pretty much an afterthought and it was only the US part of the west objecting.

Didn't take Israel very long to start abrogating the agreement. The Palestinians are meant to have 72 hours to return bodies (specref:part 4; and also the Hebrew text published in Israeli media), or give all the information they have on them and Israel is already refusing to open the Rafah crossing, halving the trucks allowed in and, quelle surprise, killing more civilians returning to their homes based on them not returning bodies. "Israel Agrees To Go Back To Killing Palestinians On Less Frequent Basis" indeed. Don't think Ukraine made any difference to be honest. You'd have hoped, if Europe's 'ideals' were actually ideals, that a campaign of indiscriminate bombing, collective punishment, mass destruction of civilian infrastructure, mass detention, mass torture, systematic sexual violence as part of that torture and mass starvation would garner some sort of functionally negative response whoever was carrying it out. There's no reason to think it wouldn't have got crickets without Ukraine, and several reasons to think Ukraine should have actually galvanised a response from them if only to avoid embarrassment at the obvious double standard. Id est: it was a highly embarrassing comparison having Ursula and Kaja (but notably, not Josep) burble on about the indiscriminate Russian bombing campaign in Ukraine while tacitly applauding/ being silent about Israel doing far worse in Gaza; or complaining about Putin and Lvova-Belova being accused genocide fugitives from justice who'd kidnapped (a few hundred, lest we forget) children while not even closing EU airspace to Netanyahu who'd outright killed far more than 10,000 Gazan children. It would have been far less embarrassing if they'd done the absolute bare minimum against Israel as well, but even that was too much. End result: there's yet another example of a double standard to be thrown in the faces of the Rules Based Order for the next 20 years.

Eh, Trump's original 'solution' was relocating all Gazans. Specifically so he entrepreneurs could build hotels along the foreshore. Like it or not you don't get any more US than its President, and you don't get any more 'West' than it either. That that did not happen was mostly due to the resistance of the arabs and, unsurprisingly, no one wanting 2 million angry and permanent refugees. The Euros- with a few exceptions- were perfectly willing to throw every moral qualm and supposed principle out the window.

Dunno, has majestic actually watched S2 of RoP or S5 of Discovery*? There may well be a limit to the ability to hate watch. *in the end a perfectly adequate of its kind season, though I think half of that was Eve Harlow (also true for Not the far superior Night Manager, But Something Named Similarly on Netflix). It did have easily the most self indulgent last 3/4 of a final episode of all time! though, and there's some stuff competition there. Something I never thought I'd ever say: I kind of wish we got S6 of Discovery, since all its problems seem to have migrated to the previously far superior SNW along, presumably, with the attention and 'talents' of the management/ producer team.

May sound harsh to outsiders but actually far, far, far too kind to our current bunch of clowns.

Oh no, Trump didn't get the peace prize. How sad, I'm sure there will be no intemperate toy tossing from the big orange baby. The Committee really is an absolute joke though. Not quite a Kissinger/ Obama tier pick, but we did for a brief and glorious period have Machado's well cited support for foreign armed intervention in Venezuela and the Nobel citation for 'peaceful transition' literally adjacent on her wikipedia page (before, inevitably, a power user came in and removed the former while Protecting the edit).

Having had a look at the pictures on Telegram I'd be very skeptical about it being in proper serial production based on them. Albeit it's been shot down/ crashed, but the electronics look to be very ad hoc and non standard.

No. A lot of the pr0nesque games on GOG are already Steam refugees that were rejected from there long before the current controversy. Which kind of gives the lie to it all being the fault of VISA/ Mastercard/ Australian Christian Taleban pressure groups like some of the Steam/ GabeN apologists would have you believe.

Fear factor has literally never worked. All it ever does is galvanise the populace behind its own leaders. Given that the company that produces the flamingo is under investigation for embezzlement it's far more likely that Ukraine isn't producing anywhere near the claimed numbers- assuming, of course, that they aren't actually being made in the UK as some have claimed. Mostly though it also has the same launch problem as the tomahawk, even more so since it's more than twice the length, three times the wingspan and four times the weight (it's also 4x the weight of a Storm Shadow/ SCALP for comparison). You ain't going to be firing a 6t missile off a modified truck- or at least, not more than once- you're going to need a specialised launch vehicle, or (a) fixed position(s). Those are going to be extremely vulnerable, and make it very difficult to achieve any sort of saturation. (who really knows, there's clearly a lot of either obfuscation or rubbish released about it. The one strike that's been attributed to it in Crimea was short range, and the damage caused was absolutely not consistent with a 1t explosion)

Tomahawks as the latest wunderwaffe is pretty bizarre. Are they going to be given submarines or destroyers as well? Because that's how the vast majority of tomahawks are launched. OK, there are some Typhon's. But it's new and the US itself isn't close to filling its own orders for that system yet.

Only seen S1 of RoP, and it was OK, unless you care deeply about the established lore as that it absolutely butchers. It did have some of the modern writing issues (shoehorning mysteries, including set piece spectaculars even if they made no sense, nobody talks like the dialogue in reality/ no one ever seems to directly answer a question) Personally, I'd compare it to Star Trek Discovery in many ways- and I did end up watching all but one season (S4, and never watched the last ep of S3) of that, despite my reservations. It's mostly... frustrating in that it ought to be better than it is. If it were a choice between that and experiencing WoT, RoP wins out by a country mile though. Then again, getting injected with 2mL of 5 in 1 sheep vaccine under the kneecap was a better experience than watching WoT. I haven't died of pulpy kidney or an other clostridial disease (er, yet, so as not to tempt fate) after all.

Halo got good ratings (and is apparently doing very well on Netflix now) but not as good as they wanted. It was very expensive to make, had a... divisive critical reaction and was of course a 3rd party IP owned by and licensed from MS rather than being owned by Paramount. Rough first season, much improved second, and I thought it had a decent conclusion for a series that was clearly hoping for another season. I'd say it was 100% better than the Wheel of Time adaptation but 100% better than zero is still zero.

I'm not sure anything above a tiny minority expect the deal to actually work and a vanishingly small one for all its points to be fulfilled, including almost everyone who wrote it (maybe not Trump, depends how much his delusion is apparent rather than real). The hope from the vast majority- and almost all the politicians- of the west is that it goes back to status quo ante. For the non politicians so they can stop feeling bad about it and for the politicians so they can stop being criticised about how the situation is now and how weak and hypocritical their response has been.

Yep. Might be the first time it's been 'confirmed' though. All those Global Surveyor flights followed immediately by Ukrainian sea drone attacks were meant to be purely coincidental. And of course for the non US we have the Germans outing the French and Brits for doing the target programming for Storm Shadows/ SCALPs.