Zoraptor

I see the number strings only as well (due to Firefox's anti tracking nuking fbcdn and similar, I believe), but meh, not an issue. I quite liked the text descriptions of the missing images that occasionally cropped up since about half the time I could guess the image from that and the other half the time they were amusingly random, but they seem to have stopped.

There's till plenty of decent spec RAM around without RGB, and lots of fans/ cooling without them too. Motherboards and video cards... not so much. Think they presume that you'll either turn the RGB off using their software or buy a closed case if you don't like it.

The really embarrassing thing is that there's a non zero chance of Trump actually believing Erdogan's twaddle which is why he's tried it.

No active cases here at all now, and no new cases for more than 2 weeks. So all restrictions (except those on international travelers) are being lifted at midnight. Time to pop the cork on the Lindauer, at least until the inevitable asymptomatic Avatar or America's Cup person brings it back in again despite the 2 week quarantine.

Buying excess military stuff is a bit of a trap- it's pretty cheap to buy but extremely expensive to maintain (which is partly why it's cheap to buy, of course). Ultimately it's to do with 'tough on crime' rhetoric being popular with voters in most places and you can't visually get much more 'tough on crime' than cruising around in a vehicle designed to survive being blown up by an IED in Iraq even if it has a gallons per mile stat instead of miles per gallon one.

Bad news for the follicly challenged, it appears that baldy Ballmer types are significantly more likely to get covid19 than hirsute Fabios. (Ironically, it's because baldies have more androgens and are thus more 'manly' than girly men with flowing locks)

Lancet didn't pull support for the article, the authors of the article withdrew it as being unverifiable due to not being able to distribute the raw data for peer review.

The study we were talking about previous page in The Lancet has been withdrawn as the data cannot- or 'cannot'- be sent for independent peer review due to licensing/ privacy concerns. Or alternatively because it's a load of old bollocks. So we're back to status quo ante with HCQ not really doing much of anything at all about covid19 instead of it being actively dangerous and increasing risk.

Kane is already a mayor. Of Knox City, iirc.

Finished Deus Ex Human Revolution. Overall I liked it a lot and it's a worthy predecessor to the original game, though there's tons of minor stuff to criticise like the stupid cutscenes for so for so many in game actions. A 5 second break for every takedown was nearly enough to send me homicidal instead especially when you needed to do something else after it quickly and couldn't be sure when you'd get control back. Boss fights were utterly pointless, but on the positive side even on the hard difficulty were pretty trivial to win once you knew to employ tactics cheesier than the Encyclopaedia of Curd Based Dairy Products. For some reason the sniper rifle scope was out by about half an inch too (I'd suspect 1440p ultrawide to be the culprit, except everything else with a scope worked fine). The plot was, of course and as is tradition, a pastiche of pop culture clichés held together by some puffed up pseudo intellectual dialogue, and was all the better for it. The one thing I absolutely cannot excuse was Dr Kavanaugh's New Zealand accent in the DLC. Made the Ocker 'thinks fir gitting mi een' girl from the original sound like a true blue ridgy didge Sydneysider in comparison. Overall though it had a good dose of all the stuff I loved about Deus Ex, and most of the complaints are minor annoyances and nitpicking. Having said that, perhaps the most serious problem with it was a bad case of Cutscene/ Scripting Derangement Syndrome. I'll spoiler it just to be safe

Well, akshually... "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." -- Donald Rumsfeld So sometimes you do know what you don't know.

Pretty much the same, and Beth got away with it multiple times before Human Head made it public. Likely that this isn't the first time 2k has done it either.

https://twitter.com/FAARMYOfficial https://usa.liveuamap.com/ Would have thought that the ultimate remedy was the willingness of people to follow legally questionable orders, especially in the armed forces. It's one thing to filch money off other projects to build the wall Mexico was going to pay for, it's quite another to try and order in the troops to do something they clearly aren't needed for and know they aren't intended or equipped for. Most likely all rhetorical anyway, don't see it as anything other than posturing by Trump to look tough. Kind of ironic that so many little government types approve of the threat because it's Trump making it, but then Trump Derangement Syndrome works on both sides of the aisle.

He'd be using the underlined passage as justification. [Hang on, has the 'remove formatting' button gone now, because I loathe dozens of dangling links making my posts look untidy? Honestly, Xenforo is going to end up with just a 'submit reply' button in a couple of years at this rate. Seldom used feature bro, just stick it into notepad bro...] I would not have thought that the criteria were met, but then I'm not an inveterate narcissist with a fragile ego. Would be interesting to see if the army actually obeyed any order to act, but chances are this is just limp richard posturing from Trump trying to look 'strong' (like clearing the WH environs for a walkaround because China made fun of him cowering in a bunker over the weekend) rather than something he's actually going to do.

At the moment the worst damage to, er, faith in science comes from deliberate politically motivated misrepresentation. Some from the Chinese, especially the local Wuhan authorities, and some from Trump types trying to cover their own arse. Plus some at least theoretically apolitical conspiracy theorising. A certain amount of charlatanism and snake oil selling is to be expected in any crisis, and it isn't like all scientists don't like money. I don't think it will matter if they come up with an effective vaccine. Even without a full peer review you'd still have to make it past the editorial board or equivalent of a journal like The Lancet, and they should be able to pick up most fakes at that stage. The old joke- such a knee slapper, makes me smile just thinking about it- is that Gregor Mendel's work on genetics would not even have made it past a modern editorial board because his data was too perfect and they'd assume it was faked.

Why not both? (The 'review' is a serious one; for the price and acknowledging that my expectations were not high (and I obviously haven't played it much it is a new release) it has been a decently pleasant surprise)

At the moment scientists should be raising questions about any published study involving covid-19 since none of them will have been rigorously peer reviewed and most will be using non ideal to somewhat shonky methodology due to being rushed, not being independently selected datasets/ not being able to take all confounding factors into account. Having said that, they're certainly not the only study to have found higher mortality from HCQ, just the biggest and most recent.

Have to admit, while I was expecting a car crash my initial impressions of Covid the Outbreak are... mostly positive.

2020 is... a bit of a strange year. "The scheme of the world powers is to cause disunity in order to keep all societies under control. The killing of #GeorgeFloyd was deeply disturbing & upsetting & is the result of the current world order which we all must unite against. "Pull the trigger kill a [black person] he's a hero""-- Mahmoud Ahmedinejad Complete with Tupac quote. I think someone needs to reboot the matrix.

In other news, Donald Trump is withdrawing the US from the WHO. Probably won't make much immediate difference as the US has been in arrears for its contributions for ages, but it's always interesting to see the dichotomy of Trump simultaneously raging about the US not being backed up enough and losing international influence to others like China then turning around and tearing up agreements and leaving organisations; often handing the most influential mantle over to China in the process. At this point it's difficult to see even Trump being stupid enough to not see the connection between the two, guess it's politically expedient though in focusing the us vs them attitude.

Nothing wrong with being a steel plant worker or whatever, I really couldn't care less what job people work 99% of the time- but the vast majority of such workers will not be retraining in the way Hillary suggested or you seem to be suggesting because it's fricking impossible for them to and there simply aren't enough Economy 2.0 jobs out there. The fantasy that there are is convenient because it places all the blame on those who fail. Everyone doing an online course to become a web designer or starting their own business is utterly impractical. Most importantly, the situation with Steel Towns in the US is identical to what we have here with single industry towns like the Freezing Works Town- once the big employer goes the vast majority of the money is gone too, immediately. Good luck opening up hundreds of new businesses in a town with much of its workforce unemployed, or competing as a self taught web designer against tens or hundreds of thousands of others. As for the handyman, trades are an absolutely fantastic option for many. My brother in law is an engineer- and after 4 years at uni he'd be making more money for less hours worked if he'd stayed as an electrician. But, you can't have the entire steel plant retrain to be electricians or builders when there's no money in the town any more, what are they going to build or wire when no one has any money? End of the day if you're in a service type industry you have to be serving people with money or you are going to fail.

Now playing Covid: The Outbreak from GOG. Not sure I like the game, but as an outrage generator it's the best thing since Epic Exclusives.

Everyone being able to pull themself up by their bootstraps is a complete fallacy (as intended by the idiom itself). The US does have a lot of potential social mobility, but you absolutely require some luck to go along with the hard work, and a lot of people who work extremely hard never make any progress for reasons way beyond their control- like, say, a global recession caused by a pandemic putting you and 38 million others out of work, most of whom are looking to get into very few available replacement jobs. Ironically, the fantasy of all the redundant steel plant workers and auto assemblers of the US bootstrap pulling to become web engineers and making tech start ups won Donald Trump and lost Hillary Clinton the last election because it was so obviously a fantasy. Sure you do. It's almost always the most marginalised groups that behave that way. In France it's typically north africans from the banlieux (not black africans; arabs/ berbers) and in the UK it's typically 'asians' (by the stupid UK usage of term; from the Indian subcontinent). Elsewhere it's typically poorer people from the dominant ethnicity. The common factor is being poor and marginalised, not any tone of skin.

Rat cannabalism is really common. They'll eat their own young if they're a bit peckish and want a snack. You also tend to get 'rat home invasions' every autumn/ winter when it gets cold.

Ginsburg has had some pretty significant health issues over the past year though, hasn't she? General poor health isn't great for longevity especially with covid19 around. (I have to admit, a situation where Trump is trying to appoint someone to the Supreme Court with a few months left on his term and the Democrats are trying to Garfield his nominee would be hilarious for the role reversals)