Zoraptor

Is the tragic Homelander backstory different from the one they gave him in S1? That really was all the explanation needed for him. It's probably rate as a decent TNG S1 episode, which isn't a bad rating for Discovery. You're certainly not going to be thinking about it for years to come but it was OK. Ironically, the TNG episode they're using for the framing is one you kind of did think about for years, because it was one of those episodes that should have had major consequences but didn't like warp drives degrading subspace or whatever it was. My main gripe with the Discovery ep was the mandatory shoehorned action sequence; drone technology has gone backwards massively since today if that's the best they could do and the whole scenario was over contrived to get them into that situation. At least that is a major issue in all Treks though. I kind of presume they aren't going for a Kirk/ Picard comparison with their new command pairing but something a lot closer, ie giving Burnham a taste of what commanding her was like to her superiors...

While there are no doubt a few people who think Homelander is the good guy I suspect Amazon Marketing regularly embiggens their number and effect. They know Homelander is a massive draw for the show, and that sort of controversy will get people wanting to see what he's done now to garner such a reaction.

I wish reporters would sort out their phrasing since using patriot missile, patriot system (battery) and launcher as if they're interchangeable is confusing at best. (I'd suspect most patriot missile production, which is the actual subject, is already going to Ukraine. It was one of Saudi Arabia's complaints that they had to jump through hoops to buy old missiles at a 250% mark up to defend against the Houthis while Ukraine got theirs for free- or 'free' since I'm not sure whether their cost came from genuine aid or via loans. Guess from their perspective at least the Houthis have found someone else to lob their missiles at)

Despite everything he did for years I recognised him mostly from Kate Bush's video for Cloudbusting. (From the same album as 'Running up that Hill' from Stranger Things, which I imagine a lot of people would be familiar with)

What can I say, just thought You Oughta Know my views on Bloodlines 2. You Live You Learn, after all.

Don't think there's any reason not to take Paradox at their word on this; they're a bit more polite in their phrasing but the gist is that it was not saleable, and not likely to get saleable in a reasonable timeframe. Which does happen, especially if the game is ambitious. They're probably keen to avoid another PR disaster too. Kind of ironic that the previous post is a trailer for a game by The Chinese Room, given Paradox has them trying to rescue something from Bloodlines 2. Though whether it's rain on your wedding day ironic or actually ironic will be known in a couple of months. I'm not sure anyone expects Bloodlines 2 to be good at this point but you never know.

Neither Serbia nor the Dutch are close to being the worst. Luis Suarez probably wins the title, solo, for Uruguay. Diego Garcia and Kosovo, obviously. There's even an ICJ ruling for Diego Garcia, plus one of those embarrassing UNGA votes where the noes are close to single digits (six).

Huh. I'm now kind of wondering if Ann Way was Matt Smith's grandmother or something, because that's an uncanny resemblance.

The only one which is in the least bit surprising, and not much considering its geographic position, is Serbia. Though they'd also be pretty surprised to find that they're now in the EU...

Nah, it's what the average person says when you show them a south african url and ask which country it's from. Sounds like the company is now managed much the same as Zimbabwe though.

The Swiss list includes the Council of Europe, European Commission, the European Council* and the European Parliament. Technically of course that's only the EU three times over, plus each individual country, but it's lol time anyway since the Swiss claimed they were- direct quote- "countries" who supported the communiqué. Of course population wise the combined 70 are dwarfed by those who turned up but didn't sign, let alone those who didn't turn up at all. They couldn't even get the Vatican to sign it. *yes, there is a Council of Europe (this is the one not quite the same as the EU, eg it has Norway, UK and others) and European Council for anyone wondering.

The core gameplay loop of Stardew Valley's first year is just about perfect for me. There's always something to do, and often slightly too much to do per day. Then it rains, and you spend the day catching fish or 'clearing' mine levels instead. There's always something that needs upgrading and you feel like you're making progress every few days. The trouble is by the 2nd year it starts to feel like make-work instead, or becomes trivial because you've automated everything, and you've done most of the tasks in the community centre. I've never even made it to Ginger Island or whatever it's called, I always stall out sometime in spring year 2. Still one of my favourites though since getting to that point is, well, great.

I particularly like how the list of "countries" supporting the proposal includes the EU, 4 times. Probably the only theoretically Russia leaning country to turn up that supported it was Serbia, the others (Brazil, KSA, India etc) did not. Almost exactly as expected in every respect really, though Ukraine's energy infrastructure must be in a real mess if item #1 is them getting the ZNPP back.

More like indentured servant/ serf than welfare recipient. An awful lot of western 'aid' is in the form of loans after all, not actual aid. Just talking about peace doesn't really do anything if the talk isn't realistic- and the talk was a lot more realistic 2 years ago from both sides, before Boris Johnson got involved. They spent 20 years talking peace in Afghanistan or Vietnam and in the end victory was made by facts on the ground and that despite actually having peace agreements there; and well, Palestine has had the odd talk about peace over the years. For as much as people think drop feeding military aid/'aid' to Ukraine is about boiling frogging Russia it's also very much about doing the same to Ukraine. Just one more wunderwaffe and you'll be at the doors of Moscow, keep fighting; they're out of [equipment type] now, keep fighting etc...

It's not exactly surprising. If you go from importing 90% of your cars to making 90% of them yourself (specific figures made up) it's theoretically great for your economy which is why 'bringing the jobs home' is an attractive election slogan. Making lots of weapons is great for your economy too, hence why everyone is so keen to make and sell them. Russia has a lot of specific advantages that mean it cannot be smothered economically around producing almost all the raw materials it needs itself; sanctions encourage them and in some cases require them not to export as much and to make more value added stuff at home. They also have the advantage of having had obvious western enmity for years and learning from the like of Iran in how to cope. End of the day sanctions don't really do anything apart from being an annoyance, if they worked North Korea and Cuba would be obedient US clients and they aren't. (Nominal gdp figures are rubbish anyway. If Britain made and sold Big Macs at a million dollars a pop and sold precisely two of them it would be better for its GDP than Russia selling 1.8 million at a dollar each, and it would look like Britain was doing even better if they stuck prices up 25% and still sold the same two big macs. Practically the 1.8 million Russians are doing better though; hence the use of Purchase Price Parity GDP where Russia is ahead of the UK and 4th overall per the new data (currently 6th on wikipedia's list). Of course, for most actual people the relevant measure is GDP PPP per capita...)

Hmm. I Haven't played BG3 either, but on the evidence of OS/2 I'd have to hand the award for more memorable companions to Dragon Age as well. I played both Original Sin games more recently than any DA game, yet can remember nothing about the OS1 companions and very little about those in 2 (lizard man had a girlfriend, skellington was written by Chris Avellone, dark passenger in one of the girls?). There are also a lot less of them, so they ought to be easier to remember even if they were less the focus in Larian's games. I didn't like Inquisition much as a game- if it were a colour, it'd be beige- but I can remember more of its companions, and not only that Sara's (?) face was melted into an eldritch horror. I haven't played Origins for ages and can still remember almost all the companions there, if not all by name ('old lady mage'). Of course being Bioware there's a fair bit of cringe that the memories hang on like Leliana singing or Morrigan's granny undies or Sara's face, but then the worst sin in writing is not being bad per se, it's being boring/ forgettable.

We've been hearing about the imminent implosion of the Russian economy for 10 years, and the Chinese for 20. It's the geopolitical equivalent of fusion energy; always imminent, will probably happen at some point, but has never actually arrived. Looks like the Russians may have lost a Su-57 to a drone strike which would be hilariously incompetent. It's at least damaged according to Fighterbomber, and since he has to be a bit careful with his wording it seems likely it's going to be irrecoverable. Either way, still moronic.

Supposedly one of the reasons Dreadwolf Veilguard took so long was that it was redesigned to a primarily live service/ GaaS model at one point, then redesigned back again once it became clear GaaS was an invitation to flop more than a Uruguayan striker in a world cup semi final (ie post Anthem). There are likely some terminology hold overs and the like, and it wouldn't be EA if there wasn't some nickel and diming at least.

No special thanks required, I have to admit I watched S5E1 out of curiousity last evening as well, so I have been appropriately rewarded. At least it was weirdly entertaining I guess, probably due to the complete lack of any positive expectations meaning I could just laugh at everything. Funnily enough I too thought of podracing during that one scene. Overall, an episode written like an AI learning from all the worst clichés of the last twenty odd years.

Phantom Menace is a pretty good analogue for Discovery. Lots of flashy set pieces that don't make much sense if you think about them for more than a second and ultimately not so much actively bad as just disappointing- both could have been a lot better- and RotS was decent while Discovery got a lot more time to improve and never did. The main difference is TPM being shorter. (Really it was the disappointment that got me. They had some actual interesting ideas, but they seldom (only once that I can remember, and that in S1) went anywhere interesting with them. It had more than hint of the horrible 'modern screenwriting style' about it where you suspect they wrote down cool scenes they wanted to put in and wrote the plot around them, even if it made no sense. The only thing that was genuinely bad was the Direction. Now, I'd suspect that they'd generated a lot of the actors with CGI as that would explain why they looked like aliens that had been explained human emotions (with a couple of exceptions, like Captain Malfoy. Much like, though to a greater extent, Ian McDiarmid made a load of Palpatine's theoretically dumb sounding lines great). And the action scenes... they'd work better as a parody of JJ Abrams' style in a Flying High! Airplane! like spoof Best sum up: you got more characterisation of the bridge crew in Strange New Worlds in a few episodes than for Discovery in 3 seasons. And that really counts if you want to make a big deal about killing one of them off. One works emotionally; the other, complete indifference)

So, when do we get the review of Star Trek Discovery S5 then? (Prime was absolutely desperate for me to watch Invincible when I subbed for Fallout last month. Ended up watching The Expanse s3+ again instead- no regrets, and the later seasons were much better on a rewatch. Now TVNZ+ is absolutely desperate for me to watch Discovery, the algorithm cannot understand how someone who'd watch just about anything vaguely science fiction keeps ignoring it)

Dunno, France had more direct blood trying to hold onto its empire as in Algeria or Vietnam, Britain had more indirect blood from incompetent? malevolent? map making and the like. Wouldn't exonerate them just because it wasn't British troops doing the slaughter and religious cleansing in India or Biafra.

That would be a completely rubbish definition of imperialism and definitely would support the claim of conclusion shopping. If you do imperialism tied to a specific leader Rome wasn't an imperial power, and they literally gave us the term. Funnily enough I read that almost immediately after making the comment. Russia embiggening the videos, yeah. It's in their interest to. And there is certainly reasonable questions to be asked about whether someone claiming to be Ukrainian actually is when the source is (mostly) telegram. Same skepticism has to be applied both ways though, including, say, a video of a purported Russian claiming his unit has been almost entirely wiped out. Mostly though the problem with the Ukrainian claims about the TCC's conduct is how many are able to be geolocated. If Russia is able to shoot propaganda videos of people getting beaten up and chucked in vans by recruiters actually and identifiably in Odessa/ Kiev/ Lviv etc... well they wouldn't be using infiltration like that to shoot shakey cam videos of women swearing at them.

Not the USSR? Or the UK? Or any of the pan Arabists? Or France (ok, maybe they haven't quite given up their imperial ambitions) Some selective choices and almost certain conclusion shopping going on if the author thought the last two were Germany and Japan. Ironically the Ukrainian TCC (ie recruiters) are probably the closest. Kind of telling that despite all the media blackout laws in Ukraine we get vastly more videos of their citizens getting obviously press ganged than Russians.

Easy to sum up what was actually wrong with JA3 in one phrase: it just has no Buzz.