Zoraptor

The Syrian Army is definitely moving in and has been for a few hours, it's been acknowledged by everyone now (Turks, SDF/ YPG, their civilian leadership and the government itself). What exactly that means for the future is decidedly murky. It's also unclear whether the US withdrawal is a complete one from Syria entirely or if they're just moving back further back from the border as they did last week since Esper (Trump) and rump DoD are saying different things. Their supply route is basically gone though, unless they get transit via Turkey, so remaining would be difficult. They'll likely stay at the Al Tanf border post in southern Syria though, even if it is kind of pointless without also holding the post at Al Bukamal. Lots of rumours at the moment, including mutually exclusive statements from usually reliable sources. It's unclear whether the Russians are going in too, SAA sources are definitely claiming they're moving in in small numbers (eg 3 vehicles (!) in Manbij- but those were almost certainly already there, under a prior agreement and they would say that Russians were moving in as it would make Turkish attacks less likely). Whether the Turks will actually attack the SAA who knows but their proxies will anyway which is the intrinsic risk of using loon jihadi mercenaries. Reports of a US airstrike on an SAA column (debunked), reports of US troops blocking SAA troops from entering Manbij (unlikely, not enough of them there without SDF backing and they could simply be driven around), Turks are definitely going to attack the Syrian Army, Turks are happy with the SAA deploying...

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More relevantly to it being 'empty words' they are already 'banned' in China (despite the tencent stake) so there isn't anything for them to lose by annoying Xi Jinpooh. Still, not likely for them to get unbanned in China with that attitude either so there is that.

Lindsey Graham gets prank called by 'Turkish Defence Minister'. Results, unsurprising.

A partial pullout does nothing for them, if it's replaced by a Turkish occupation that will be permanent. A full withdrawal might have benefits that outweigh a Turkish occupation but this is just a swap of one bad option (for them) with one that is almost certainly worse. From their point of view all of the really important areas- the Conoco refinery, Omar oil field, Tabqa Dam or the Al Tanf border crossing- still have US troops occupying them. The other important areas like the biggish cities of Hasaka and Qamishli already have government troops in them. A reconciliation between the PYD and Assad was eminently possible based on events around Afrin and Aleppo- where Kurds maintain an insurgency against the Turks under government and Russian protection and have an Aleppo suburb with its own Kurdish flavour including an independent police force. There was no reconciliation with PYD areas in general because the US threatened to withdraw and let Turkey invade- which has happened anyway, of course- and because some of the arab forces in the SDF sponsored by Saudi won't reconcile. For the Turkish Settlement and Cleansing Buffer that possibility is gone now, and given Turkey's record probably forever.

He's trying to find something, anything with traction to cover a deeply unpopular decision which has managed to unite Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Syria, Republicans, Democrats, Pelosi, McConnell, Graham, Sanders, neocons, neolibs, anti war people, left, right, Europe, Russia and more in opposition; many of whom usually have diametrically opposed views. The general point that the YPG was not primarily helping the US but helping themselves is valid enough- and true, as realpolitik- but advertising your approach as being purely transactional certainly isn't a great idea even if it is (though to be fair to him, about the only thing Trump's been consistent about is viewing everything as transactional). He's probably right about it not being mostly a massive issue with beltway types and not so much with general voters as well. End of the day though, running away so one of your allies can ethnically cleanse a different ally is not the easiest sell in the world for very good reason. If you want some really absolutely bonkers logic though, here's the Turkish Defence Minister's statement on Operation Ludicrous Propaganda Name which reads like an attempt at parodying what a Minipax press release would be. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGeIxz2WoAEICKz.jpg:large Unfortunately, there are no mountains in northern Syria as they clearly didn't expect to be betrayed this time. They let the US escort Turkish troops around the border and demolish their border fortifications, and had an antagonistic attitude to the Syrian government (largely mandated by the US, but really, that makes it worse so far as the government is concerned) which if backed by Russia was the only other group that could have stopped Turkey. PYD is philosophically/ theoretically the closest group to me in Syria by absolute miles, but their conduct has been so naive as to be indistinguishable from stupid and they've massively overestimated their own leverage, and after Afrin that also needs an 'again' at the end.

Ryzen/ Navi with hardware raytracing also confirmed since it isn't mentioned in that article, and the dev boxes actually are the same as those leaked previously which were discussed a bit here. Don't think they've mentioned whether they will be using GDDR6 or the new cheap HBM RAM, or some sort of hybrid solution.

It isn't really 'kneejerk' per se, Trump has tried to withdraw troops multiple times before. It's an extremely 'bad' decision for multiple reasons, but it's not really sudden or unexpected and may well be the best decision available, at least for the US. While the announcement was peremptory it had clearly been planned for a while as transportation started arriving days earlier*. If the Turks were set on invading with or without US approval- which they probably were since Erdogan desperately needs to solve some internal problems- the choice was literally fighting the Turks, not fighting but withdrawing during actual fighting or withdrawing before the fighting broke out. One of those is an obvious better (or at least way safer) option than the others. I can't see any US President in living memory making an ultimately different decision so long as they were convinced the attack was definitely coming. *It's clearly not popular with most of the military though, as they ran an arms convoy through from Iraq, tonight- with the Turks attacking that border crossing as soon as they heard of it Serious posting? A man of your talents? (of course the Turks were worse than doing nothing, they allowed supply and new recruits through their territory to ISIS, and provided much of their external funding via buying their oil)

The launcher is definitely present in the GOG version anyway. As with most of the older Beth games you can launch the exe directly if you want to, but the default for the GOG version is still being started via its launcher.

And that's an utterly perfidious green light too, since the US has been dismantling border fortifications for the past month as not being needed and showing Turkish troops around and blocking reconciliation agreements with the government. An utterly predictable betrayal and one any US leader would make in the end since there's no comparison between the strategic value of Turkey and some eminently disposable anarchist militia but that's scant comfort for the people who fought ISIS across hundreds of miles thinking the US had their back; even if that belief was ludicrously naive. Still, at least the literal (yes, literal, 1/2 the local tribe was loyal to ISIS then Saudi Arabia paid them to switch sides...) ex ISIS militia in Deir Ez Zour will still be protected by the US, as that is where the oil is... Meanwhile Erdogan will ethnically cleanse the whole area same as he did in Afrin, settle it with the -literal literal, including the literal literal child decapitators of Harakat Noureddine al Zinki- head chopper jihadis that make up the pro Turkish Syrian factions that will no doubt be the kernel of ISIS 2.0 in a decades time, and then North Cyprus it. While I know it was a comparison to US policy mentioning the NVA or Ho in the same breath is insulting; Erdogan's a genuinely malignant person with zero redeeming qualities for anyone who isn't a mouth foamingly rabid Turkish Nationalist or seeking to sell him weapons.

Potentially meant to accomplish is easy enough: contain China. China was clearly the coming rival, and she's way easier to contain if Russia isn't pushed into her pocket by antipathy to the west. I'd suspect Obama himself at least was actually genuine about wanting a better relationship- a reset doesn't work for establishing statesmanship credentials if it fails spectacularly, rather the reverse- but yeah, the foreign policy aims of the US and Russia are fundamentally too different and incompatible. Managing to write 'overload' in Russian instead of 'reset' on your big cartoon button gift was hardly a good start either, whether deliberate sabotage or not.

If Russia had just installed a pro Russian government in Mexico or Canada I doubt there'd be any question of who had restarted the Cold War, however the US reacted. And practically of course Crimea had voted to leave Ukraine twice in 1991 and 1994-5; the latter crushed by 70k Ukrainian troops being sent in and resulting in the Ukrainian constitution literally being rewritten to exclude any vote ever happening again. That's two more votes than, say, Kosovo being split off of Russia's ally Serbia, after a western invasion under Clinton, that was totally unrelated to restarting the Cold War...

Judging by the one Democratic debate I saw a decent amount of she's going to get absolutely crucified on her prosecutorial record. That may not be such a detriment when it comes to running against Trump, but she's going to have to deal with it a lot better to get anywhere near getting the D nomination first.

No room service/ food/ minibar/ internet/ phone ins/ on demand movies etc. Which unlike the room itself are almost pure profit. You're already paying for the cleaning staff and laundry services in bulk anyway and that's the only negative of a room being occupied. Someone booking a room and not using it is only good if the room was not going to be used, otherwise he'd usually get more profit from a real person.

McConnell should probably have expected that to be honest. Best way to make sure the Repubs don't break ranks on impeachment is the threat that Pelosi becomes President. And it's 100% totally in character for Trump to make sure that if he goes down he's taking as many others with him as possible.

I'd imagine the GOP's- and presumably Gfted's, though I wouldn't want to put words in his mouth- position is that while it's impossible to prove any actual voting change with the influence campaign someone voting who shouldn't intrinsically alters the result since, at its most inherent level it's an actual and real vote which shouldn't be there. And that is more important than some purely theoretical mind changing. There would also be the question of how atypical Trump's behaviour is. Hence why they've spent a lot of time suggesting Biden and Hillary did similar things. 'But everyone was doing it' is not the most convincing of defences though of course. But if you accept that narrative then you view things like Mueller's report as part of a partisan witch hunt. In terms of foreign intervention there are other potential examples from prior elections too, they just haven't really been investigated as such- eg Netanyahu favouring Romney in 2012.

That's cyclical. I got three (permanent) games last year with my Vega (AC: Odyssey, Star Control 3 and Strange Brigade; and could actually give 2 of them away unlike some of nVidia's offering which are tied to a specific video card) when nVidia was offering only one game- and for a while that offer was valid nVidia were offering none at all. That was a pretty amazing offer actually considering it was valid even with a 4GB 570. AMD should probably be making sure their high end processors are actually available before bundling anything with them though. In a lot of places they're semi permanently out of stock and they aren't even managing to fulfill all the accumulated back orders when they do get new deliveries.

Is there any evidence at all that any voter changed their mind due to 'Russian disinformation' though? Or that it changed the result of the election? And I mean actual evidence, not wishful thinking and conjecture. Russia running a 'disinformation campaign' and divisive content, sure. It having any actual and concrete effects on the electoral results... that's not so sure at all. The vast majority of such content is never seen by the undecided but by those who have already made up their minds. (History suggests it's actually rather hard to influence elections using social media and the like. Probably the best example is Yeltsin in 1996, his campaign overspent the legal limit with estimates starting at an overspend factor of around 100- not 100 percent overspend, 100 times overspend and that's minimum amount, upper estimates are in the 1000s of times overspend- but his unpopularity was such that he still required massive electoral fraud to 'actually' win, and that against a literal communist)

OG Deus Ex was definitely a campy game in 2000, though maybe not 'action' in the Doom/ Quake sense. It referenced every conspiracy theory under the sun, and its dialogue was (presumably intentionally) even more stilted and stylised* than the SW prequels, and it was extremely difficult to take the story seriously, and the voice acting is notoriously 'bad' in such a way it must have intentional. That's largely what makes it memorable though of course; if Gunther's vending machine complaints or JC noticing an explosive device or Simons & Page having a discussion about their world spanning conspiracy in a building lobby were objectively well written or voice by normal sounding people they wouldn't be anywhere near as memorable. *'stylised' is probably the best description for VtMB actually.

There's no misconception on my part. I'd suspect that lobbyists are a bit loose with dotting the i's and crossing the t's at times (I very strongly suspect Manafort was far from alone in failing to declare agency in service of a foreign government, for example) but the idea of them offering payola for votes directly I'd be very skeptical of. It's just that if you compare the short two sentence summary of the supposed LaPierre/ Trump conversation and a short two sentence summary of any hypothetical lobbyist/ politician conversation where support for a position is sought they would end up sounding pretty much identical. "Joe Biden met with health insurance lobbyists and reiterated his opposition to M4A. They were pleased they could continue supporting his campaign" morphing to "Biden met with health insurance lobbyists and asked if they would finance his presidential campaign. They said they would if he continued resisting M4A" are functionally the same exact statements, the latter is just slanted to make it sound shady and potentially illegal. If such a summary were actual evidence of payola the jails would be full of lobbyists and politicians. Fundamentally, a twitter exchange of summarised and already 2nd hand information is not likely to be an accurate representation of reality.

Yeah, I wouldn't rely on an elided one sentence summary of a law to determine the legality or not of a one sentence summary of a conversation. You'd think the jails would be full of lobbyists if the law practically functioned as that summary implies, since their job is inducing public officials to do what their paymasters want.

That bus driver analogy for brexit really is stupid. Passengers on a bus vote to go to London, with the minority voting to go to Edinburgh. Those that vote to go to Edinburgh spend the entire time whining about how the bus driver is constantly going in the wrong direction and shouting and throwing stuff at the driver, and when the question is asked whether to take the M1 or M6 to go to London they constantly vote to go north instead, all the time insisting they're reflecting the real will of the people. And of course the motorway authority really wants them to go to Edinburgh as well, so actually they can't use the motorway and have to use diversions instead, and- amazing coincidence, surely- the diversions always send them back towards Edinburgh. The original driver worked for the motorway authority, drove the bus into a cul de sac he couldn't back out of then ran off to hide like the most pathetic of spineless pathetic insult to the wormiest worm cowards (and was literally a porcine necrophiliac, lest we forget), only emerging to snipe at his successor drivers despite being the absolute cause of the whole mess and there was absolutely nothing realistically the successor drivers could do to rescue the situation. But of course it would all be solved by another vote, which would surely get the Right Result this time and we'd be eating deep fried pizza with Glenmorangie chaser at the Fringe Festival a few hours later as the motorway system mysteriously clears up. And, of course, no more pesky votes ever on how to get to Edinburgh so we can avoid all the pesky idiots voting to go there via Milton Keynes.

Ultimately all the negative performance claims resolve to Marokovsky. And there's still question as to whether he or his (wholly anonymous) source was simply pushing the Tor as an alternative given his claims that that system was effective, so at best Saudi should buy Tors instead of Pantsirs. I'm also about 99% sure the version of the Pantsir deployed by the Russians at Hmeimem is S2 rather than S1- that is certainly what russian sources like RT/ Sputnik etc have consistently reported with the S1 versions being solely Syrian. They are clearly using EW preferentially given the number of drones they're simply remoting then landing themselves, but then you would use that so long as it works since it's 'free' while even 30mm cannon rounds have a cost. In contrast to Saudi Arabia there has also been only one successful attack, and that was likely to have been (and is certainly claimed to have been by the Russians) via an infiltration team with mortars rather than drone; despite being on the receiving end of in the order of 50 drones per month at the moment, plus rocket attacks albeit those are ballistic rather than CMs. Putin suggesting the Saudis should buy S400 to defend against drones was certainly 100% pure trolling though. Would be a great idea for Russia, but utterly pointless for Saudi.

Maybe? I don't know how they could do it discretely though, and there would be plenty of countries- Turkey, Qatar, Iran and Russia at minimum- with a stake in exposing its real origin. I can't see Israel being willing to sell them to Saudi though, nor Saudi being willing to buy them due to the potential political blow back on either side.

Jacques Chirac. Not the greatest President in French history, but a veritable colossus compared to the pygmies who have succeeded him. And history will no doubt judge him a whole lot kinder than Tony Bliar or Bush at least.