Zoraptor

The serious answer is that they repurposed a MERS vaccine that they'd already developed, since the virus that causes it and covid are closely related. It's also why the concerns about it were far closer to the FUD side of things than the genuine worry one- it was based on proven, safe, technology. Nobody has done any serious industrial espionage on the matter as it's pretty pointless. The critical factor is the RNA sequence of the virus, all the approved or near approved vaccines were in a finished or near finished stage literally a few weeks after that sequence was released. It's the approval and production phases that take all the time, and that can't be stolen.

The scarcely concealed vaccine jingoism on show has been one of the less edifying aspects of the coronavirus response. 'Funny' thing being that leaders who really ought to know better have been indulging in such stupidities to cover their own shortcomings and for narrow political/ economic reasons. Ironically, given how he was spun, progressive dream banker wunderkind Macron has been barely better than Donald Trump, and when it comes to vaccine rollout considerably worse. France has low trust in vaccines, and slagging off Astra Zeneca pointlessly because it's a brit company, Boris was a big meanie and the UK left his pet project is completely counter productive. The EU also tries to have it both ways by ordering a massive number of 'best effort to supply' vaccines rather than a smaller number of guaranteed ones because they were late to the party and the big number sounded better- but, oddly enough, those with guaranteed contracts get theirs first because that's what guaranteed means. They also turned down an offer for additional vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, as being too expensive, and stalled on licensing vaccines for production because they hoped domestic companies (eg Sanofi) would make their own. End result, the two top vaccinated countries in Europe aren't in the EU and, to quote the great philosopher Buzzfeed News, one of the two will shock you. The two most vaccinated countries in Europe are... the UK, and Serbia which doesn't even have domestic production facilities. When it comes to coronavirus response pretty much every single euroskeptic talking point about paralysing bureaucracy and out of touch Brussels/ Strasburg elites in the EU has been proven correct.

Google Stadia has shut down its internal game development studio. Not exactly a surprising development.

Yep, at this point definite coup. Dressed up a bit as being legitimate by the military man VP taking over as President and authorising it, but that's a very obvious fig leaf.

Snowden was in Hong Kong when his stuff was released, and the US stopped his passport- almost certainly as a calculated move- while he was transiting Moscow; that and him being allowed to stay in Russia are about the sum total of the 'evidence' he had any collusion at all with any international parties. Depending on who it was it was opinion stated as fact, or deliberate slander.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been arrested by the Myanmar military. Not clear yet whether it's an out and out coup or not. I remember this scene from Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Cut out the stupid and use allied Chechens (Kadyrov sr) against enemy Chechens was about the sum total of the 2nd Chechen War. Nothing quite like an internecine struggle for unpleasantness though, and Kadyrov wasn't shy about taking revenge on his enemies. Can't argue with the effectiveness, there are a few rebels hanging around in Georgia but not much else, and virtually the entire Chechen rebel leadership is dead.

US strategy in Syria was pretty consistent at least from 2015 onwards. Prior to that it was messy to say the least, with Pentagon and CIA backed groups literally fighting each other at times, and a bunch of CIA backed groups joining ISIS. But from 2015 when the CIA was permanently sidelined apparent inconsistency was mostly because the publicly stated strategy and actual strategy were different. There's no doubt the US could have beaten ISIS far far quicker had they wanted to, but politically backing Iran backed shia militia and anarchist Kurds was too hard. The stated aim was to destroy ISIS, their actual aim was to contain it, and funnel it towards government held areas. With a funnel strategy either ISIS would end up in Damascus, making a proper intervention both inevitable and publicly acceptable or the government and ISIS would dissipate each others strength against each other, allowing US backed forces to pick up the pieces. That was predicated on Turkish sensibilities towards the PYD and assurances that the Turkish backed rebels would be an effective anti ISIS force- which they weren't- and Erdogan being Erdogan he managed to alienate the US pretty effectively so making the Kurds politically palatable. Since it was then a choice between the Kurds or Assad it was easy for the US to choose. There were plenty of inconsistencies in the Russian approach too. Both the US and Russia claimed to be going after ISIS financing hard, but neither struck at the their extraordinarily obvious main revenue source- oil- significantly, until, the Turks shot down the Russian Su24. Then the Russians obliterated ISIS' tanker fleet in roughly two days. Why? Despite the statements both sides knew that Erdogan's son was facilitating the oil trade with ISIS, was getting a lot of money from it, and didn't want to rock that boat. Once Russia wanted a way to retaliate at Erdogan though his son's side earner was fair game. It helps that the Russians treat the Syrian deployment as training too, they're not worried about dropping lots of ordnance and doing lots of flight hours because they'd just be dropping the bombs and doing the flight time on ranges inside Russia if they weren't there and it comes out of the existing training budget.

He's not wrong, it's just hilarious watching rich people get upset when the tables are turned on them. Especially when they've been getting massive welfare almost uninterrupted since 2008 in the form of quantitative easing, bailouts and interest free loans which has seen their net worth soar while everyone else's has at best stagnated. "Won't someone spare a thought for the unfortunate billionaires of the world?" is not exactly a rallying cry for the ages, and the thought most people would spare is not exactly a sympathetic one.

Certainly doesn't require it, but the best strategy for maximising returns is to (artificially) inflate the price, then short it at the start of the dump phase. A coordinated sequence of bad news is a good way to make sure that happens.

They were pumping Gamestop specifically to asterisk with Melvin Capital, who were dumb enough to expose the fact they'd shorted GME stock in public documents. The normal pump and dump strategy is for the Big Players with media contacts, AI trading and massive portfolios to target the small players by artificially inflating prices with orchestrated good news then crashing it with orchestrated bad news; this is the spiritual reverse of that. It doesn't even really rely on the normal good news cycle since there isn't any way to spin Gamestop positively; the stock appreciation is being driven by the stock appreciation, and that is the 'good news'. It's also only making news because it's a Big Player being targeted, not a bunch of individual investors as it is 99% of the time. ('Fun' fact for the day: half of Joe Biden's biggest campaign contributors are fund hedge managers, and 3 more worked in related fields.)

Yep. And Hillary herself was far more keen to support the whacky islamist militants in eastern Syria that were palatable to Turkey than the YPG/J up until she stepped down as SoS, with the support for the Kurds all coming under Kerry's aegis. Most of the those whacky islamists, of course, defected to ISIS in 2013-4 and ended up being fought by the Kurds and the US. Those that didn't defect developed a penchant for lobbing chlorine at Kurdish enclaves, after conventional attacks had failed. Somewhat suspect those little details will be omitted though.

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton to make TV series focused on Kurdish women militia. I had some difficulty deciding where to put this. World Politics? Funny Things thread? Anime thread? One thing is for sure, it will be a measured, respectful and balanced examination of the YPJ and not a cringey masturbatory embarrassment of neoliberal self justification that is unintentionally hilarious and somehow less nuanced than Call of Duty's take on the issue.

Truth certainly seems to be that the Euros are having a terrible time distributing the vaccine they already have properly, and are looking for someone else to blame for the poor roll out. So the alternative would be throwing all the toys out of the cot and threatening to put export controls on any AZ vaccine produced there while complaining about the evil UK 'hoarding' doses produced there. I wonder which one they will choose to go with, the option that apportions blame to them for poor distribution and production woes or the option that apportions blame to someone else; the suspense is killing... oh they've blamed the dastardly anglos. Quelle surprise. (not really sure how you get low yields of that vaccine without some sort of incompetence. The whole point of the more traditional type vaccines is that they're pretty simple to make in bulk and don't need exotic conditions)

Didn't the polls have Lula winning versus Bolsonaro, until he got barred?

The trickle down theory for healthcare works exactly as well as the trickle down theory for economics. The mRNA vaccines will never scale up to worldwide levels and are intrinsically too expensive for poorer countries- a 'normal' vaccine very basically requires a big fermenter like for brewing beer, mRNA ones require specialist equipment. 40USD for a vaccine course, with vaccines kept at -70C in, say, India? Even the cheaper/ less stringent Moderna version is still way too expensive. The only viable options for poorer countries are the more orthodox types- AZOxford/ Sputnik/ Sinovac. That's probably not the reason why South Africa etc are making complaints though. Under medical emergency provisions normal patent and licensing provisions can be set aside and medicines produced without explicit approval from the IP owners; they're legally establishing that there isn't enough and the situation won't change in a reasonable timeframe. Once that is done they can simply make vaccines themselves via compulsory licensing.

If we had a Trump Tower he'd probably end up here, like James Cameron, Gabe Newell, Peter Thiel and the rest of the billionaire boltholers. In more positive news, looks like START at least will get renewed, as both Biden and Putin agreed to it in their first presidential call and a renewal doesn't need congressional support. Interesting transcripts too, Russian one doesn't mention Solarwinds, Navalny, Ukraine etc while US one does; US one doesn't mention JCPOA, OpenSkies etc while the Russian one does. The translation from passive-aggressive suggests there's still a decent amount of things to talk past each other about.

OK so I rewatched Darmok. Pre-emptive pardon asked the quote formattings which will inevitably break at some point... It wasn't the first strategy, the first strategy was whatever passes for the standard diplomatic approach in Tamarian*, as they ran through a bunch of metaphors while everyone got progressively more frustrated- and which they mentioned had been tried and failed 7 times before. Then Dathon states 'Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra' to his 2ic after an argument, presumably similar to the one Riker and Picard would have if Picard suggested something similar. *--DATHON [on viewscreen]: Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Ubaya. Ubaya of crossed roads at Lungha. Lungha, her sky grey. Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai and Jiri would be analogous to Darmok and Jalad, but a metaphor for a more 'normal' diplomatic meeting. Presumption yes, but I'd say it's a fairly safe one. Definitely did, it's as explicitly confirmed as you could get with a metaphorical language and Picard asks Dathon the same question* after he's been injured. The story is that Darmok and Jalad did arrive separately, but that isn't really important; the important part of the metaphor is "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" "The beast at Tanagra" "Darmok and Jalad on the ocean" ie co-operation to defeat a common foe followed by them becoming if not friends at least continuing to co-operate to get off the island. *--PICARD: You hoped this would happen, didn't you? You knew there was a dangerous creature on this planet and you knew from the tale of Darmok that a danger shared might sometimes bring two people together. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. You and me, here, at El-Adrel. --DATHON: Kira at Bashi. Temba, his arms wide.

Air Cavalry is pretty relevant in most situations. Large scale paratrooping would only be relevant for certain situations, but then it was always only relevant for certain situations.

Now I'm going to have to watch the episode again. (I'm certain that the whole reason for kidnapping Picard was to try to mirror the 'Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra' situation/ metaphor of two 'enemies' uniting against a common foe and eventually succeeding per 'Darmok and Jalad on the Ocean' but I can't remember how much of that was stated and how much implied/ metaphored in the episode)

It's unlikely he could repeat such a thing, since he's stuck in a cell in Paremoremo (?) basically incommunicado for the rest of his life. The whole point of using it during the Mosque shooting was that once done the media would compulsively push the 'white power symbol' thing into the mainstream, no matter how objectively dumb it was.

Zoraptor, his ire irrationally raised. But seriously, Darmok benefits hugely from at least one rewatch, since you can tell what the aliens are saying. And kind of pertinent to other discussions, but Darmok has gained particular relevance now since it can be seen as an analogue to meme communication. If you said "Anakin, with the ground lower" "Drake, his approval gained" "Dexter, an unexpected maternal based accusation" etc just about everyone would know exactly what pictures were meant and what was meant to be communicated by them.

Somebody == Rupert Murdoch, which is the only reason why I'm not in complete support of Australia, just 99% in support. Wish our politicians had the balls to do the same here, but most we can expect is Jacinda looking very concerned, maybe. There's literally no evidence that 750 people were killed. It's been maybe 2 weeks since the initial reports too, so there's been plenty of time for any evidence to be released. There's lots of propaganda floating around about Ethiopia, due to the Grand Renaissance Dam. Trump even suggested that Egypt "had to do something" about it, with the example being literally blowing it up. The most likely people to be used to blow it up would be near local Ethiopian rebels, ie the Tigrayans, since anything else would be an overt act of war. It's not really any surprise that Trump's comments were on October 25, and the ceasefire in Tigray was broken by the- marxist, by the way, though you'd never know it from the reporting- TPLF attacking an army base scarcely a week later on November 4.

Brenton Tarrant was a member of 4/8chan, that's literally literally why he chose the OK sign to use. The whole point of him using it was to show how easy it was to take something with a perfectly innocent meaning and make it signum non gratum. Treating it as a white power sign is exactly what he wanted. The counterexample would be something like Pepe being a 'white power' symbol based on, well, Hillary Clinton's campaign not understanding the maymays and her media supporters wanting to back her even on something so patently stupid. Which ended up with some people thinking the Hong Kong protesters were white supremacists (!), since they used Pepe extensively.

I'll be right, again, though; it won't amount to anything so long as it's just Navalny. And really, you've posted 6 times on the subject, not 'a couple'.