Zoraptor

The GoT prequel about the White Walkers/ 1st Long Night has been canned. Not massively surprising given how much the whole White Walker issue was butchered in S8 and how badly that undermined the premise of and potential interest in that prequel. Development of the other proposed prequel series (Targaryens) is continuing.

Gamepass is the cheapest way bar none. Even if your region doesn't have the $1 introductory offer. And wow, it's EGS exclusive exactly as much as it would have been steam exclusive had it been on steam since you can even buy keys from 3rd parties exactly as you would on steam. He's an infamous forum DRM advocate as in the only people who have problems with DRM have to be dirty dirty pirates. Admitting to piracy himself would be perhaps the most amusing thing to happen here, ever.

Only work up to a point. A growing forest sequesters a lot of CO2 as it grows, but a mature forest is nearly in balance in terms of CO2 absorption and release. If you replaced every tree cut down in the last millennium you'd still have the excess generated from burning all the fossil fuels etc, and if you replaced every tree cut down in the past millennium half the world's population would outright starve.

Funnily enough and more or less relevant to current events: if the rest of NATO ever seriously wanted to kick Turkey out this is the procedure they'd have to use- everyone else leaves voluntarily and reforms as NATO2 with Turkey not invited. There's no procedure to expel a member. Not that it would happen anyway.

The soviets did ask for Dresden to be bombed multiple times, so the western allies can at least claim that. Area bombing theory was never a great defence/ reason for targeting civilians though, the Blitz experience in the UK showed that it did very little to break civilian morale, rather the reverse, and that resources were far more efficiently allocated going for military targets. Funny thing about Churchill is how apart from giving inspirational speeches how awful he was at everything else. His military decisions in WW1 & 2 were both almost universally bad or incompetent, he had dreadful man management, and was an inveterate and unrepentant racist. If there were a moderate and extreme solution to a problem he'd advocate the extreme one 95% of the time. He's incredibly lucky that he ended up as the personification of the British Bulldog Spirit as otherwise he'd be remembered very poorly.

ISIS 'Caliph' Al Baghdadi allegedly killed in Syria. Skeptical personally, since it was supposedly in Idlib- 3km from the Turkish border even- and while Idlib is rife with jihadis there's very little ISIS presence and as little sympathy for them, as the other jihadis wiped them out there after an extremely bitter struggle and they fought against each other very regularly. If most of the groups there got wind of him being there the US would not need to launch a raid to kill him, he'd be strung up on principle. Zawahiri and especially Joulani seem a lot more likely as a high value target in Idlib.

The 'guilt' was for the Continuation War though, not the Winter War and whatever the (certainly real) justifications for the Continuation War it was fighting alongside the nazis; and the western Allies did seriously consider declaring war on the soviets in 1939 in support of Finland but would not have been able to do anything; and which would have made for an interesting dynamic later. You did get out of it without an imposed political solution/ occupation or annexation which was significantly better than many countries got. In theory Finland's situation was identical to the Baltic countries that got reannexed, ie independent from Russia post revolution. Albeit Grand Duchy of Finland had a lot more autonomy even when she was part of Russia. I don't have to prove anything- I can't, as I cannot prove a negative- but you have to prove that the soviets were going to invade and that that was a major factor in the Japanese surrender, because that's your assertion. All I have to do is point out that your sources are fringe, and their facts incorrect. As for dog whistling, you've written far more than I have on the matter while saying... nothing. If it's a dog whistle you're the one hearing it.

Plans change when circumstances change and Japan surrendering is a big change that allowed consideration of a land grab because, well, Japan had surrendered so theoretically would not fight back. They didn't have the resources for an opposed landing, they knew it and the Japanese knew it. That's why their plan calls for them to, basically, cruise into a port unopposed rather than launch a proper amphibious assault. Your sources are using incorrect information. You've been told that multiple times and choose to ignore that. Wow, a supposed advocate of your theory and it's within the realm of possibility, and that's the straw you build your argument on? That's about 20,000 men, delivered piecemeal, and despite the claims of your sources they'd be outnumbered more than 5 to one- and that if they could be delivered in one go. And again 15% casualties- at a rate of 2:1 against them- taking the relatively unimportant Kurils with only a slightly smaller force and with the large majority of its 80k defenders having surrendered without a shot being fired; with 6 landing ships, 6. Yours is a fringe theory barely supported even by your own sources let alone by anyone mainstream.

I'm about 90% sure Stalin knew about Trinity at Potsdam- but thought the effects were being exaggerated. Yes, and you've produced the same debunked theories you did last time, linking to the post where everyone had got bored of debunking you as if it means anything. Yes, plan developed on 19th August 1945. As you were told last time, that's 4 days after Japan had already surrendered. OK, so that's a mistake whoever wrote your badly researched FP article initially foisted on you along with claims that Hokkaido's defences were weak, but you've been told before that that plan was for an unopposed invasion after the surrender, ignored it and gone back to the well again. That's also why the 'invasion plan' involved an intimidating regimental sized initial invasion force using a terrifying 6 (!) landing craft. More Japanese would have died laughing than in the fighting. The soviets had 15% casualties in basically unopposed landings. They didn't have the ships, they didn't have the logistics. Swoop in and grab Hokkaido unopposed? Worth considering, ultimately not tried. Try and grab it opposed? Didn't have the capability and wouldn't until... April 1946, maybe. Japan had more than enough reason to and did surrender 8 months before that.

Still peddling that fringe theory? The two things that got Japan to surrender were the loss in a week of their Manchukuo Army which left every remaining Japanese soldier in mainland Asia- millions of them- except those in Korea cut off, and the nukes neither of which they had no effective retaliation for nor realistic prospect of being able to retaliate against later. Claiming it was the purely hypothetical threat of a soviet mainland invasion sounds like, hmm, something a soviet asset would say. Kind of hilarious how a US invasion from a large, competent and experienced navy- 300+ large warships alone- and large, experienced, well equipped specialist invasion force would cost, quote, 'countless' US and Japanese lives but was not enough to get them to surrender while an invasion from the soviets was a simple matter terrifying enough to the Japanese to get them to surrender despite the soviets having very few ships available either civilian or military, a tiny logistical base due to having few ships with very low ability to project that base anywhere; few and untested specialist invasion equipment plus very few trained marines who were also inexperienced in invasion. All to cross a rough sea against a large, fanatic enemy in either hurricane season or the approach to winter and in terrain that massively favoured defence and didn't suit soviet military doctrine at all, even if they had a practical way to get their tanks, ammunition and fuel there and supplied in the first place. In the Kurils the soviets landed 15k men, over 5 days- and lost ~15% of them, despite the vast majority of the Japanese surrendering as ordered. Indeed, the casualty rates were 2:1 in favour of the Japanese despite most of their troops offering no resistance. The Soviet Military and amphibious assaults are about as uniconic a duo as you can get, and always has been.

Ultimately the bombing of Dresden is not considerd a war crime because the allies won. As a number of allied commanders observed during Nuremberg and other trials (Doenitz and unrestricted submarine warfare being the one I'm sure of), if they'd been on the losing side they would have been standing there instead. So far as I am aware there is no particular claim to the word holocaust specific to Jews beyond etymological ones- as the word used by them for The Holocaust is 'Shoah'. Genocide was a bit of a silly choice originally though too, as it was coined for the Armenian Genocide of 1915-6 and is and has always been used for mass killings of anyone whether Jewish or not. And as others have observed, while lynching outside the US is applied to any sort of mob justice execution Donald Trump is not from the rest of the world.

Russian Turkish agreement from earlier today on northern Syria. Basically current status quo maintained with some political cover for Erdogan. Most of the provisions will be cordially ignored by both sides, but at least they will be cordially ignored. Bashar isn't moderate in an absolute sense. Most moderate of the realistic alternatives by a decent margin and more moderate than most if not all in the government- that he is though. The only realistic alternatives were him, Maher, Joulani, Zahran Alloush and Baghdadi (or some sort of constantly fighting mix of the last four) since 2012. Not difficult to be the best of that lot, but it is what it is since the PYD was never a realistic alternative. And really, going to watch some artillery etc is what every leader does in wartime, probably even Donald Trump. Syria will always be a basket case- too many people, too poor, few resources, arid, mixed demography. No point believing there's any way to change that, because there isn't. All that can be done is minimising the extent. I also doubt Russia cares about Israel v Iran as they have decent relations with both, so long as they keep it separate from them. Only things Russia cares about are proving she's still got teeth outside her immediate neighbourhood and, if possible, levering Turkey out of NATO. Subsidiary to that, selling/ testing weapons, basing rights and proving to be a 'reliable' partner or broker.

It isn't. You occasionally get a decent long form interview on the publicly funded latish night shows that specialise in that thing but that is almost always the exception; and any panelist show tends to rapidly turn into a badly moderated competition to see who can talk over the most other people loudest- or worse, a soapbox for the 'moderator'. 'Dateline London' on the Beeb tends to be OK but yeah, panelist shows in general are not great. We don't have any indigenous 24hr news though, too expensive/ not big enough and we don't really have the 'culture' for it. (I'd guess PBS has some decent panelist shows in the US, but we only really get the crap cable networks. PBS' Newshour show was pretty good when I occasionally caught it)

The problem there is with conflating the overall Syrian government and Bashar Assad himself which is way too simplistic. The Syrian governmental apparatus overall use murder, torture and- even allowing for it being a civil war and being as generous as possible- their military tactics have been both harsh and far too often indiscriminate. Despite that they've also been the least worst realistic option since 2012. Bashar al Assad personally does not have enough power to be a despot, instead he personally is almost certainly the strongest moderating force in that government. Bashar is far more head of an old style oligarchy than a Amin/ Stalin/ Hussein despot who can and will happily murder anyone who they even think opposes them including friends and high ranking people in their own government. Yes as above the syrian government 100% uses torture etc but Bashar Assad personally is by pretty much every single account about as far from the typical despot as you can get. Indeed, his program of pretty genuinely well intentioned reform was stymied by his own government. He simply doesn't have the power 'despot' or even 'Assad regime' ascribes to him. In terms of Gabbard the one semi extended interview I saw with her after the 2nd (?) debate had her not refusing to condemn Syrian government tactics- indeed she did condemn them- but a refusal to condemn Bashar Assad personally. If Maher Assad were in charge otoh... For all its problems Syria should be glad that Bashar didn't die in a car crash along with his big brother or decide to stay an eye doctor since Maher would be far far worse than what we got. The only US news talking head panelist show I have ever seen that I would give the time of day is The McLaughlin (RIP) Group. Opinion shows only really work as being informative when the panelists have an opinion worth sharing and there's enough diversity of view to get their views challenged and defended. I'll be fair to CNN though, I saw that guy call Gabbard a Russian asset live, and he was at least challenged on it. I'm less than convinced he would have got the same challenge saying an equivalent something about, say, Hillary if on Fox.

That was pretty much exactly my experience with JE as well. I enjoyed it mostly, but somehow despite being fairly short for an RPG at 20ish hours it ended up dragging, and the combat quickly became boring. Plus the longer it went on the more overt Biowarisms I hit in terms of plot and characters. The one thing that really disappointed me though was that it had a 'unique' setting, but failed to take much advantage of it and ended up feeling like the standard Bioware game with a Chinese theme; and it really needed a bit more to differentiate it from being KOTOR/ NWN with a Wuxia reskin.

While I'll add 'dog whistle' to the list of excuses you make to deflect from your failures- and you still don't have to courage to actually call me a shill. Now, where's that Gfted quote... ah yes.

Still don't have the balls to call actually me a shill, eh? Fact is, the official reports are not credible where it matters and work back from the conclusion they want rather than go by the evidence. The OPCW-JIM report spends pages establishing a timeline for when the 'bomb' was dropped, and then in the appendices mentions that actually 40% of the victims turned up to hospital before that time, across multiple hospitals, multiple doctors. Because of that their timeline has to be wrong, anything else defies causality, but the OPCW-JIM report states that they decided to ignore that when making their conclusion. The other report on the Ghouta attack, of course, suppressed evidence from their own experts that there was no plausible scenario under which two chlorine cannisters were dropped from the air and replaced it with the completely implausible one of an unarmoured helicopter flying across a hostile war zone so low that it could be shot down with a fricking handgun- let alone any AK, rifle, rpg, manpads etc.

They are however confining more than a million Uighurs in 're-edurcation' camps, stealing their children, destroying their culture and harvesting organs for sale off those that cannot be re-educated. China has not fundamentally changed at the top/ leadership wise (population definitely has, but they're also being suppressed more effectively too via 'Social Credit Scores' etc) and they'd happily drive tanks over protesters in any of the big cities westerners haven't heard of, or Beijing which can be sealed off effectively. HK is a special case though, since most of its value to China comes from a western legacy that would be massively reduced in a Tiananmen scenario. Only other city that might get away with similar is Shanghai because it too is a sea port and financial centre with a lot of ingrained foreign presence (Macau which was Portugese is probably just too small and unimportant). One thing is for sure though, gaming boycotts are generally the most embarrassing and ineffective of 'protests', only beaten out by #Kony2012 style twitter slacktivism.

Lol Bellingcat. Their reliability can best be summed as being 100% certain the CW attack was via rocket. Right up to the point the OPCW-JIM said it was a bomb, at which point those saying it was a rocket became useful idiots for Russia instead. Funny thing being, they were right and the crater was definitely from a rocket, and the 'filler cap' was a part of the rocket engine and can be seen in wreckage from multiple grad impacts (eg). Chemical bombs are fused to 'explode' above ground, and have almost no actual explosive in them since explosion/ fire is a great way to destroy your CW agent, you want just enough to force the CW agent out through the 'nebuliser'. (If you're faking/ false flagging an attack you wouldn't fire a rocket or blow up your CW in any case as you'd lose much of it; you'd mix it with a propellant and release it via a standard compressed gas cannister and mask that with a conventional rocket)

She's definitively being Shareblue'd, if nothing else. Way too many potted responses whenever she's mentioned, and no matter how tangentially. Her polling at 1-2% and attracting so much negative attention is probably the best evidence she's being botted, rather than going against it.

I suspect it will get to GOG as it is a good fit and isn't MP/ steamworks etc, but yeah, minimum of a year even without any EGS exclusivity. IIRC the shortest time from general release to GOG release was Mafia 3, which took just over a year.

That's because the US isn't withdrawing from Syria any more, it's just withdrawing from the areas Turkey wants and staying not just at Al Tanf but at the oil fields and most of SE Syria too. That's why Graham has done a 180, he of course never gave two flying asterisks for the Kurds or betraying their allies and cared only about sticking it to Iran/ benefiting Israel. The happy Kurds are the happy ex ISIS arab guys Saudi bribed to swap sides who now don't have to suffer the revenge of the bits of their tribes that didn't join ISIS, didn't get slaughtered and got bottled up in Deir Ez Zor city. The ex ISIS guys now get to continue selling homebrew oil under the protection of US SF. Wouldn't be surprised if they'll go back to the old Turkey deal and have rump SDF sell the oil direct to Turkey just like they did under ISIS.

The agreement is definitely cover for Trump and nothing else, 'peacefully' handing the Sudetenland safe zone over to Turkey in what is to all practical a surrender as abject as Chamberlain's. It 'gives' the US nothing and Turkey everything. 'Gives' because it's also completely unenforceable as the US has no real leverage left over the Kurds and the only leverage they have over the government forces that hold most of the 'safe zone' and all its major cities now is sanctions relief which would only come if they drop the Russians and Iranians- indeed, with Saudi making positive overtures due to their loathing of Turkey leverage has decreased even more. Gives Trump a chance to salute a victory, and potentially blame the Kurds plus dump the mess into Russia's lap when the truce collapses. The one thing that absolutely has not changed is that for internal political reasons Erdogan needs somewhere to dump his highly unpopular refugees. They've managed to actually take one largish town in Tal Abyad/ Girespi, and that ain't anywhere near enough. (Bit of fake news just released too, saying the SDF has accepted the agreement. They haven't, they've accepted the ceasefire, for the active combat zones, only, and not the agreement. Looks like Al Jazeera Arabic truncated a quote from a Kurdish TV station, and others like Beeb picked it up from there) [added agreement text. 9&10 are probably most important]

Probably worse than that actually- open country on a Y shaped road with the ATGM team at the top of the Y and pretty close too, maybe 1300m distance judging by flight time. Tank crews looked like they were all chilling behind the lines rather than in a combat zone too but at least the road had a bit of a berm to it. (Turks now say it was an ACV15 having earlier said they lost a Leopard, and judging by the longer video which shows the wreck better I'm inclined to believe their correction)

Trump's letter to Erdogan has been released and it's an 'interesting' read. A beautiful letter, more beautiful even than the ones Kim sends to Trump... Turks have also lost their first confirmed Leopard tank since their invasion started, and it's unlikely anyone who was in it survived. Learnt nothing from their fight with ISIS in Al Bab, about a dozen targets (including rather bizarrely a self propelled artillery piece that ought to be way further back) almost all side on with no infantry screen in sight. If the YPG had a dozen ATGMs instead of one there would have been a dozen destroyed vehicles rather than just one.