Zoraptor

They say that because their options are (1) Russia did it! or (2) the pilot got pressured into landing by the President's staff, and against the advise of the Russian ATC, and flew far too low. One is Russia's fault, the other is due to their President's intransigence and pilot's mistakes. Easy choice to make, especially if you're twin brother to one of the dead. For anyone wondering: 2010 Smolensk air disaster. There's a pretty good episode of Mayday/ Air Crash Investigation on it too which I can recommend.

They don't have to agree on everything. Even when they were on good terms there were disagreements, they were just kept in house a lot more than under Trump. The US and EU have different interests, but that doesn't mean they have to be enemies. In the long term that there will be a permanent split, but that's just the inevitable nature of history. In the end the EU is deeply risk averse with a lot of decision making inertia, and in the short to medium term a split from the US is way too risky. As always it depends on the initiative- if the US was relying on say Britain or Poland to push their agenda, alone, then they were never in a great position anyway, when the EU relies on consensus for many decisions. You can still be friends- or at least friendly- with countries that you disagree with on some things and both blocs still have plenty of common interests and a lot invested in maintaining the general status quo of world affairs. End of the day the EU and US supported each other on the vast majority of things even under Trump, it was just that the differences started being made public.

So, the EU had been threatening to block vaccine exports to the UK, including making (false) allegations that the UK has an export ban- in actuality they just got a guaranteed delivery contract instead of the EU stupidly going for a 'best effort' one because they thought they'd have domestic offerings. The response from Pfizer has been to point out that they receive critical ingredients from the UK, and any reciprocation of ban would see the EU with way less vaccine rather than more. Pretty much sums up the overall competence of the EU's response- make an empty threat backed up with outright lies, when the vaccine you're relying on requires ingredients from the country you're threatening. And they seemingly didn't have a clue that that's the case despite vaccines being perhaps the single most important acute need strategic resource on the planet at the moment. The previous crop of EU appointees weren't exactly inspiring except the thoroughly competent Mogherini, but the current crop are making them look like Solon.

Yep. A permanent break could have happened if Trump had been reelected but still would have required something like NATO breaking up to add that permanence. As it is it's pretty easy for a Biden US and Europe to go back to status quo ante Trump even by something as simple as not actively sniping at each other and keeping disagreements in house more.

An online gaming tournament between various Presidents and Prime Ministers would certainly give new meaning to the term Leader Board. The thought of Jacinda Ardern gibbing noobs while spamming #BeKind and #Aroha in chat fills me with a certain amusement. Though if rumours are true Kim Jong Un would almost certainly win even without the Best Korea stereotype.

Funnily enough the reason for offering the debate is exactly the same as the reason for Biden calling Putin a 'killer', ie playing to the audience. Make yourself look strong, and your enemy look weak. Biden draws a line under perceived Trumpian weakness towards Russia, Putin knows that Biden won't debate him... back for round 2 in a couple of years/ months/ weeks. Any other interpretation of either man's position is fabulism. And no, no one underestimates a mark's ability to be duped, especially when they're hearing something they desperately want to be true. Hence people actually believing- well OK, to forestall argument, on this forum just posting articles and defending such articles literally for years, purely as an academic exercise that expressed no personal belief- that Russia would be bankrupt in 6 months back in 2014.

As speculated on in the previous thread Turkey is now moving to ban the Kurdish HDP party in the wake of their disastrously inept attempt to increase Erdogan's popularity and maybe as a secondary aim rescue some prisoners from the PKK. Strange, 'real' Kurds are happy in Turkey and don't support the terroristler PKK because they have Kurdish language TV, according to Erdogan, yet the parties they vote for should also be banned for... supporting the PKK. Hmm.

The trials for Sputnik are as good as any approved vaccine except, ironically, the AZ one and have been peer reviewed by western academics plus published in The Lancet. Ironically ironic, a lot of the criticism of AZ comes from them being far more detailed with their information than anyone else including Pfizer, Moderna and J&J; and people mining that data for criticisms (eg the whole "can't use on over 65s" is not because it didn't work, but because not enough in the control got covid for that demographic. Couldn't tell if that were the case with others though, as the stats aren't detailed enough). At this point criticism of Sputnik is 100% FUD, unless you're criticising the others for the same things, and it has the best balance of efficacy and cost of any of them- and loses out marginally only to the J&J one when it comes to practicality due to that one requiring a single dose.

The common factor with all the bad Gothics was JoWood's publishing. Neither G3 nor its add on was in close to a finished state but got pushed out the door anyway. Gothic 4 was a pretty abject attempt to hijack/ rebadge the IP to ArcaniA since they were going to lose it back to PB. Sure, but we're game players and not managerial MBA types. If you wrote a shorthand list of the attributes of the typical Gothic game and the typical TES game on a piece of paper they'd appear almost identical, to someone who hasn't actually played them. They're both open world single person non party RPGs, how dissimilar could they be...

I think they did that literally ten minutes after I posted, so it was probably my fault. Not likely to be a badly manufactured batch, the relevant European regulations are extremely strict. If it's a 'bad batch' improper post production storage, improper dosing/ training, or- at a pinch- deliberate tampering would be far more likely causes. They're all far less likely than other explanations though.

In theory Gothic has got all the attributes of a Bethesda game done far better, except for actually being a Bethesda game. As with most publishers, Nordic suits want the next Skyrim, and a Gothic remake is a cheap way to try for it. That's also why we won't get a faithful remake by a passionate developer; because a faithful remake would be niche and ignore all the 'advances' of the past 20 years.

I liked most of the NPCs overall, though there was one in particular that really dragged things down with his elitism, snarkiness, silly pointy ears, dumb class and [redacted] conduct in the final battle. Indeed, I think I've never had such a negative reaction to a collection of dialogue trees applied to a digital image. Yep, I don't like Sand.

Fair call, not all the national health agencies have followed the herd despite there being quite a lot of pressure to and those that haven't deserve credit too.

It's actually kind of worse than antivax, since these people are meant to be scientists capable of checking facts and with intrinsic credibility while the average antivaxxer is worried about falling off the side of the earth if they walk too far in a straight line. Example text for anyone running into the NYT paywall (w/ emphases mine) So the exact same symptoms/ effects come from both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines as well. Indeed: So it also occurs not just with other covid vaccines, but with vaccines in general including non covid ones. Ho hum, or it would be if it wasn't so utterly irresponsible and stupid. Any day now one of the antivaxxers blessed with the ability to read will draw exactly the same conclusion, and apply the 'danger' of the AZ vaccine to vaccines in general- and those idiot experts have provided perfect ammunition to argue that if AZ is suspended then all vaccines should be. Can't believe I'm going to say this but the only body coming out of this with a scintilla of credit in Europe is the EMA, the national ones are having a follow the moron stampede.

Ironically the figures from the UK suggest that Pfizer is more likely to cause blood clots than AZ, albeit marginally and within statistical margin of error. In reality neither does, statistically both show lower blood clot prevalence than expectation from general population. Therefore if we took the reasoning to its logical conclusion the vaccines actually lower clot risk slightly and you should take them regularly for that purpose... Not really of course, but you can do anything with statistics if you're motivated enough. The more detailed justification used for the AZ suspension is that the clots are of an unusual type and there's some interference with platelet function, eg the German justification: Couple of notes: normally lack of platelets would usually lead to blood not clotting, eg as in haemophilia. And yes, the big criticism is that death rate from the clots is way, way below the number of deaths from covid that would be prevented by not suspending the vaccine; and statistical prevalence of clots in general is still below expectation. One specific type has gone up while others have gone down leading again to the inescapable conclusion that vaccines lower the incidence of blood clots in general. The absolute worst thing is that in a months time the same people will be baffled about why people aren't getting vaccinated, and probably rail against anti vaxxers for their bad statistics and knee jerk reactions.

No idea on the quest needed. I agree it's misleading to say available now when it isn't technically, but at least it will only be misleading for about a day. I can understand not being bothered with that distinction. Dunno exactly what is happening now, steam users seem to be getting a 10GB general update instead of the 54GB on GOG, and whether or not they've bought the season pass. So that's either a patch, or everyone is getting the dlc installed but it only gets unlocked if you've bought it.

It'll be installed, you just won't be able to run it yet (ie it's preloading, will unlock on the 17th). The 54GB 'patch' is multiple GB larger than the download of the game and first dlc was, so there's definitely extra content there.

54 GB (!) update from GOG too, so it looks like season passers are getting it two days early.

Meh, Litvinenko did a pretty good job of destroying his own credibility since according to him everything was a Putin run false flag- 2005 London bombings, Beslan, Moscow Theatre Siege etc- and Putin was literally a pedophile vampire. He was also 100% employed by arch oligarch and Putin arch enemy Boris Berezovsky, while simultaneously running the anti corruption unit of the FSB; a position which was consistently used to bolster his credibility in western press. You don't tend to get much about those aspects in the typical hagiographies though. The evidence that the apartment bombings were false flags is- at best- equivocal since they rely on chained contingencies like the bombs both being rdx and the only source of that being the FSB (which is completely untrue), and they really weren't needed as justification anyway since Chechens had been invading Dagestan and Ingushetia for months prior. At worst it's the anti Putin equivalent of 'Bush did 9/11'.

Not quite. Nikita Krushchev (a Ukrainian) transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954* so it was well before the USSR broke up, though at that point there was no practical effect at all to the transfer. The proximal issue though with the USSR's break up was that Crimea had voted the previous year to leave Ukraine but that never got properly applied. In 1994 the Crimean parliament and presidency tried to formalise them leaving as had been confirmed in the initial referendum and a subsequent one, and Ukraine sent in 70,000 troops in to crush it and abolished its autonomy. So yeah, Ukraine's actions were not exactly democracy in action but rather the reverse. *much as Georgian Iosef Jugashvili transferred Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgia despite them not wanting to be part of it 20 years earlier. Always amusing to see people defend Stalin and Krushchev's decisions in those cases who'd never dream of defending any of their other decisions just because it suits them geopolitically.

Good thing I know you're just doing an ad absurdum impersonation of an astroturfer Bruce, or I'd be worried about your ability to walk and chew gum simultaneously. Of course, those blessed with the ability to, uh, read know that Snowden got stuck in the Moscow transit lounge after the US cancelled his passport and while en route to [not Russia]. For some reason he just didn't want to go through any vassal states, perhaps because he weas worried about his plane being forced down. Ironically, if the US had let him get to Bolivia he'd probably have been handed over last year by- 100% democratic, 0% coup and 0% fascist- Jeanine Anez.

They could do a full menu of 100% invented in Russia and nowhere else foods and add Vodka and Borsht too. Then maybe distract everyone by asking which is the correct name Lviv Lvov Lwow Lemberg should be known by. Thanks are due to Bruce for running with the stereotypical astroturfing examples, though they weren't really needed. Quite apart from giving me the opportunity to point out, again, that the only reason Snowden is in Russia is because the US deliberately stranded him there by cancelling his passport to make him look bad to drooling cretins I can also remind people about Evo Morales' plane being forced down in complete contravention of the Vienna Protocols on the mere rumour that Snowden was aboard. Then I can also make a pithy observation about how all the pontificating about the 'rules based system' of international relations only ever gets applied when it's [not western] countries or their buddies (hello, Muhammed bin Bonesaw and his ongoing mass starvation in Yemen) breaking them.

Prey is great. Never had any issues with the big chungus as he was easy to avoid and only lasted two minutes. Plus, spoilered, since I suspect you aren't up to it yet

Dunno if the US Government won the PR battle. It was a battle they never wanted to fight, and I'd say they lost just from having to fight it. If the US Government came out and admitted to all the bad stuff they'd done there would probably still be a majority of people who would justify and defend it because tribalism runs deep. But that majority would be smaller than it is now, and any reduction is a 'win' for the Snowdens of the world. It also exposes the other tools they use, like astroturfing. Post Snowden there's a lot more people willing to look at, say, people tweeting in support of the coup in Bolivia, and noticing that apparently there's a very large ex pat Bolivian community in some small town called Langley, Virginia.

You Austrians should just vote yourself the least corrupt country in the world, then such things would never happen*. You certainly wouldn't be able to have a coal mine with plastic bags over the methane sensors explode killing 29 people, the owning company declare bankruptcy and the managing director be let off because the government- coincidentally, nothing to do with the huuuge political embarrassment a trial would result in- decide not to investigate the mine itself so the director was allowed a plea bargain 'compensation' payment instead that has since been found to be an illegal bung, and which didn't even involve all the insurance money. Also coincidentally, the government part owned the company at question, and the 'prosecuting' agency was also another government agency which would have been part liable for shoddy to non existent safety oversight. Oh yeah, actually on topic, we've got a review on for our bulk drug buying agency Pharmac at the moment. Coincidentally, one of the main beneficiaries if it goes bye bye is Pfizer, who have given us preferential access and a 'great deal' for its vaccine despite having had about a dozen covid cases here in the last six months. Eagerly awaiting the decision to axe Pharmac and move to a US model following absolutely no payola and lobbying. Personally I'd rather have Sputnik/ Janssen/ AZ/ Novovax and $250 million in the bank rather than Pfizers overpriced offering. *Pike River Disaster, Supreme Court Ruling on 'plea bargain' since the wiki article is missing it for some reason.