Zoraptor

Reckon Starfield was a bit of a perfect storm. It was never going to have a good story or dialogue and was always going to use their shonky 20 year old engine, and even another TES would have had those two issues. Worse was, while it may have seemed like a good fit in theory it was intrinsically not a good fit for the 'Bethesda style' and made some of its limitations very obvious. Probably the worst though was that just about everyone would have preferred a TES* or Fallout title which meant that a decent subset of the target audience was predisposed against it and unwilling to cut it the slack they might have otherwise; that also meant no built in/ existing enthusiasm for modding. Perhaps as a result, marketing was also unusually tepid. *fair enough really, not personally a fan of the series but it's already 13 years since Skyrim, and a new game is not close. Best part of 20 years between titles of your flagship franchise is going to stretch people's patience in the best circumstances, if you're going to take 7 years doing a new franchise it'd better look the part.

Eh... that actually illustrates one of the core theoretical differences between Islam and Christianity. In many ways more so even than "render unto Caesar" vs not having an equivalent, though that has had more practical effect. If you're Christian you're- at least theoretically- meant to capital B Believe Revelations as being The Word including the arrival of the Great Dragon (? it's been a while) etc. Of course practically, much like God creating the earth, some people take it more literally and some less so. Islam doesn't really have an equivalent to Revelations' apocalypse, in the Koran. The apocalyptic stuff similar to Revelations is mostly from Hadiths which are... religious guidelines may be most accurate, and not necessarily seen as being canon. eg the Mahdi isn't Koranic except as a title for Mohammed and isn't included in half the Hadith collections, so his canonicity, uh, depends. Which is fortunate given how hard some of the prophecies would be to fulfill, now. (Selective usage of Hadiths was one of ISIS' favourite tactics for justifying themselves, since there are a lot of of them. Then again, not like there aren't Christians who take "love thy neighbour" and append an "except if they're ___" to it based on something Saul wrote, or even something in Leviticus. People gonna people, religion just makes them feel good about it)

Short version of The Apocalypse: The Antichrist arrives when Israel rebuilds The Temple after which there will be a big battle at Megiddo --> "Armageddon". After after which, to show how much Evangelicals really care about Jews, all the Jews can either convert or, well, go to hell. Plus lots of repetitive and contradictory imagery about Signs and Portents/ Enemies that allows for liberal interpretation. In short: Revelations should have been left as the ravings of a Qat addled hermit* who was a bit upset about the Flavians burning The Temple in 70AD or whatever. Always kind of funny to read The Bible assuming it was just written by people rather than being The Word. Big irony: muslims however are a definite death cult for believing the big battle will be at a random village in Syria (Dabiq) instead of a random village in Israel. Otherwise it's pretty similar** for their end times as well, maybe a bit more specific and anachronistic (eg taking 'Constantinople'). *might not have done any good of course. To whit: the Prosperity Gospel. Did you know that the rich man and the eye of a needle aphorism was actually literal and about a gate in Jerusalem, not about how being overly wealthy is bad? Actually, Jesus "Gordon Gecko" Christ thought accumulating wealth was, well, good and means that God loves you in particular! **iirc they're also Hadiths, so not 'full' canon.

Fairly sure I'd heard similar. I think it was DGaider? on his blog or in an interview saying that they'd developed the setting prior to DAO via pnp rpg or similar? Can't find a reference with a quick search so can't be certain I'm not mixing it up with something else though.

It doesn't come with a prescriptive description of what the obligations actually are, practically, but the obligation to collective defence is explicit in article 5, to whit: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.." Exactly what the response would be is non prescriptive for good reason; an armed attack could consist of anything from an errant rocket from Ukraine hitting Poland to most of the North Atlantic going more radioactive than an Imagine Dragons number 1 and anything in between. As with most such treaties the obligations, implications and wording are open to extremely liberal interpretation and have been multiple times previous. The whole of Article 1 will sound like a bad joke to much of the world given the west's collective record when it comes to peaceful solutions and not threatening military action for example.

Brought to you by the same legal system that holds Iran responsible for the 9/11 attacks too.

Could get another Syria like situation where branches of the US government are fighting each other by proxy. US military bombing the cartels, ATF arming them...

Joining NATO was wildly popular among Ukrainian politicians, and they're the ones who really count. Whatever the popular sentiment the list of Presidents of Ukraine who opposed joining NATO since 2000 only has one name on it: Yanukovich. Kuchma, Yuchenko, (Yatsenyuk), Poroshenko and Zelensky all supported it along with pretty much all the President adjacent types like Tymoshenko.

That definitely wasn't just a US thing. At very least our government got blamed for inflation/ cost of living, the British and the French ones too and all lost elections in large part due to it. Pretty difficult to win elections when most people have had their disposable income cut by half.

Wonder when the Democrats are going to work out that trotting out the Liz Cheneys of the world isn't going to get them votes and may actually cost them some- and definitely will cost them enthusiasm among those who should be voting for them. Yeah, never, since the leadership prefers ludicrous neocons to their own supporters. Or that not being Trump isn't really an actual strategy. At least the last one isn't likely to be in play in 2028. Still think Harris was a decent enough candidate hamstrung by bad party policy and strategy plus no one being willing to have the Difficult Conversation with Biden a year ago; though she's certainly done a lot worse than I expected. At least I'm not a professional pundit, a lot of them should be re examining their career choices, again. Another relevant TPM quote about Trump's Presidency

From the outside* Harris seemed a far better candidate than ClintonH and to make a pretty good fist of it. Definitely hamstrung by the shorter lead in, and not having a primary. Don't think being a woman was the deciding factor for either, assuming Harris does lose- I mean, if ClintonH had won in 2008 and Obama lost in 2016 we might be saying the deciding factor was skin colour instead of lack of Y chromosomes. The biggest issue on the Democrat side was that their leadership didn't seem to learn anything from 2016 and just decided they lost because of sexism and berniebros rather than anything to do with them. That's typified by going all in on Biden who was obviously having difficulties that were... unlikely to be lessened by campaigning. The biggest factor overall is that Trump is a terrible candidate in the orthodox sense, but manages to turn that into a bonus when campaigning. Or at least when campaigning as a non incumbent, bit difficult to be an 'outsider' when you're president. People also don't really realise how effective his speeches are because the political/ media etc classes- and most people here- tend to be taught to write/ speak a particular way which is not how you actually think the relevant thoughts you're expressing. Trump speaks a lot more how people naturally think, with a load of digressions and odd elipses as things come to mind. Which seems terrible to pundits and speech writers, but to a lot of people it's a communication style that instants connects because it is the way they think. *just take everything with that disclaimer so I don't have to type it every time

The final results take two weeks here because of Special Votes, which we have a lot of (more than 25% of total). That's people voting out of electorate, from overseas, registered too late; and we also allow on day registration. All of those have to be manually checked, and generally skew enough to change the result by a couple of seats since specials always bias Left, which has been significant in a 120 (ish, often have overhangs from Maori Party winning electorates disproportionately) seat parliament. Last election despite being a 'landslide' the specials meant three parties were needed for a coalition rather than two.

There was also 'never any mandate' to use Frostbite for Andromeda or for DA2 to have such a short development cycle. And Bioware did exactly what it wanted with Anthem too! (Funny thing being that just makes both sets of execs dumb; the Bioware ones for consistently making bad decisions, the EA ones for not intervening in the bad decision making. At least EA execs imposing the bad decisions could have the Bioware ones being competent but overruled)

The Inquisition actually ran through to the 1830s though, and was very very active around the time of the reformation. Despite the Templars being (mostly) suppressed and the Holy Land lost the church still had a bunch of military religious orders* extant during the reformation and founded the Soldiers of Christ- ie Jesuits- in 1540. The brutal suppression of native belief in the colonies was directly contemporary with the reformation too, but generally doesn't get talked about so much because, well, nobody now or then cared about it as much as Europe. *bit of a, uh, double edged sword when the Teutonic Knights (mostly) switched sides of course. Always an interesting 'what if' to speculate what happens if you didn't get Prussia founded on the Teutonic Order's legacy of militarism and genocide. Evidence certainly suggests people will always find a handy excuse to fight each other and religion isn't the problem. Ultimately Henry had a point. He should not really have been allowed to marry Catherine of Aragon under church doctrine since she was married to his deceased brother which would make it technical incest. If you grant an Indulgence for one you can grant one for the other too. And every ruler had a point about the enormous tracts of land that were accumulated, and still being accumulated, by the church and returned nothing to the crown and very little to the people they were meant to be helping.

Yeah, I think the Arians, Gnostics, Nestorians, Paulicians, Cathars, Lollards and Hussites might dispute that. So to the Nahuatl, Inti etc. Might, if there were any left after the Catholics killed or force converted them all... Main difference between those and the Protestants were that the Protestants didn't lose. (Indeed, it's stretched on occasion to very recently- see the enthusiasm with which Franco's death squads were supported by the Spanish catholic church less than a century ago or the Maronite Church and the Phalange in Lebanon. Definitely got a lot more rare since ~1650, thankfully, and plenty of recent counter examples of the church actually opposing what they would previously have supported such as Pinochet the pedant in me forces an edit because, technically, the Hussites didn't exactly lose either)

I'm not sure the average Telegraph reader hates education per se- their experience at Eton/ Rugby/ Harrow then OxBridge was simply tremendous after all- they just tend to think that Britain's colonialism was a glorious Mission to Civilise and that should be obvious to the properly educated. Just look at that Sunak chap, got the opportunity to make the most of himself by marrying a billionaire heiress; wouldn't have happened if he was back home worshiping cows. (Though the average Telegraph reader probably doesn't read the website as that internet thing is a bit new fangled and wasn't decently invented by the english, like paper and printing)

I'd be skeptical of anything reported in the Israeli press, based on something claimed by a TV company run by a prominent Phalangist family. Funny thing, Hezbollah people have this really weird tendency to talk to Israeli and non Shia Lebanese media and say exactly what said media wants them to say. It's almost like they aren't actually talking to real Hezbollah people... And for anyone wondering, yes, the Lebanese Phalange named themselves and modeled themselves after Franco's Spanish Falange, and are, literally literally, fascists who want to Make Lebanon Christian Again. Which is why they got on so well with Begin and Shamir's Israel. They were responsible- along with another former Israeli PM, Ariel Sharon, and the IDF- for the judicially proven to be genocidal Sabra and Shatila massacre, among many other atrocities. Far from alone in perpetuating atrocities of course, but theirs tended to be the largest and most memorable ones targeting civilians. Though as with their moral compatriots Al Qaeda in Syria they prefer to be known by a different name now, so as not to offend tender western sensibilities (--> 'Kataeb').

Giveaway for Return of the Phantom. Which I've never heard of; but free is free. Also FEAR for a dollar, which is quite possibly my favourite 'pure' shooter of all time.

While about 95% of Bioware 'evil' has always been low effort chaotic stupid moustache twirling they have occasionally come up with something genuinely dark as opposed to grimdark. The other 5% is (part of) what kept people hoping for something better. Personally I'd definitely put forcing a wookiee to strangle his best friend, who was also a 14 year old girl, via his life debt to you as being above anything in the Dragon Ages in terms of 'good' bad and you can't get much darker than that as a concept. Indeed that was not just good for Bioware, but good for any video game. Sounds like Bioware really is getting back to its roots.

Seems pretty par for the course for the utter blight that is 'enlightened centrism'. Just look at that other saviour of the people from fascism, Macron. So terrified of lefties* he's forced- forced I say!- to cosy up to the very people he was meant to save France from. The electoral calculus is always the same. Maybe the muslims in Michigan won't vote for Harris because she tacitly supports burning Palestinians alive in hospitals. Maybe, since she's at least 'better' than the guy who actively supports it. But if she condemns that some people who think the sun shines out of Israel's fundamental orifice will vote for Trump, and those votes aren't just lost to her- they're gained by Trump so are effectively worth double. *Had the same thing here with Ardern. So terrified of alienating the mythical 'centre' by doing anything economically left that she ended up running off to the speaking circuit to avoid the embarrassment of having her vote literally halve in 3 years; and achieved quite literally nothing that lasted despite her unprecedented (for mmp) absolute majority. Ironically, her socially progressive stuff has almost all gone now too having frittered her goodwill away getting it passed. Even the much lauded overseas gun reforms are going. And she still got called a commie by talk back radio mouthbreathers.

Before the US intervened the Taleban didn't control all the country, after the US intervention- or, lest we forget, a month before the end of it, in actuality- the Taleban controlled all of it. The question that the US needs to ask is why and how they managed to make things worse and how they made the Taleban look more attractive to Afghans than they did in 2001. Ultimately the problem was that as with every recent intervention the US spent its time building "a legitimate and internationally recognized government"- ie one that would do what the US wants- but very little into building a legitimate and internally recognised government. If you start everything off by saying that they could pick anyone for a leader so long as it was the US candidate (Karzai) you've told the country that the wants and needs of the US will always be paramount from the get go, and that the leadership will always be beholden to the US. Far and away the best strategy was to allow them to pick their own leader even if it wasn't the one you really wanted. Not like they were trying to install Hekmatyar, after all. Unsurprisingly, not many Afghans wanted to fight for US interests instead of their own so much so that many of the first provinces to fall to the Taleban were not the pastun heartland of the south but the old bastions of resistance in the north.

I mean, the US could have started by allowing the Loya Jirga to do what they wanted. Which was to bring back ex king Zahir Shah, not have US stooge Hamid Karzai imposed on them. Telling the Afghan's they had to have a system the US wanted, lead by the man the US wanted permanently established said system as imposed on the Afghan people and owed no loyalty, and its leaders as Quislings owed no loyalty. Not like keeping the emperor played out badly for post war Japan, eh. But optics trumped practicalities because of the overriding need to cater to US domestic politics where having a king return under the US aegis would have looked bad.

Nobody outside ROK and Ukraine are talking about the North Koreans for multiple reasons- but mostly because at this point they exist as much as the 40k Syrians from 2022 did. ie there may be some there (definitely been some Syrians soldiers there, but we're talking dozens mostly, on and off, and mostly none; indeed there are still significantly more Russian personnel in Syria than v/v) but not many. It's doubtful the west in general wants to talk much about having a few troops on the ground as well because... they've got some there too. As for the rest: “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” Having been bombarded with how badly Russia is doing; all its casualty figures, equipment losses, morale collapses, corruption, and yes, how it needs to beg 10k troops off of Kim there's a certain irony in being told by the Supreme Allied Commander (lol) that actually all of it will make them stronger at the end. (for a more detailed example; when it comes to new equipment we're simultaneously told that sanctions are so effective Russia can't even make tanks any more- a genuine example from 2022- plus all the other stuff like the multiple times they were running out of missiles etc yet per Cavoli they're going to be re-equipped with new, better gear at the end as well? I mean, it's pretty obvious what the truth is- the sanctions aren't very effective, and have mostly resulted in Russia in housing the production chain- but, we get told that they're resorting to stealing washing machines for parts and having to fight with shovels, and that they're going to be better equipped at the end...)

Leaked (or 'leaked') intelligence on Israel's plans to attack Iran. Few days old and not exactly confirmed, but consensus now seems to be that it's genuine with the main question being how deliberate the leak was, and what the motivations behind it were.

Things you aren't meant to remember for today: 40,000 Syrians registered to join Russian forces in 2022. Of course, there are still and always have been more Syrians fighting for Ukraine to this day than fighting against it. Bonus, just for Bruce as commiseration for the cricket result: Christopher Cavoli, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, 20 October 2024. Utterly pro Ukrainian sourcing too. So, desperate enough to need North Koreans, yet simultaneously stronger than ever... as always. Given the way the war has been it's far more likely that the Koreans would be learning/ observing drone warfare stuff than having any direct involvement.