Zoraptor

Baltimore was certainly an 'interesting' experience when I went there. Had a day there, the waterfront was nice enough if pretty typical for a medium sized city, so we went for a walk and seemingly about two blocks back from it you could have been in real life The Wire. Or more accurately, since it was while ago, real life Homicide: Life on the Streets. Quite an eye opener for a teenaged NZer.

Smells like a contract negotiation leak to get someone to up their offer. LOTR series already has all its major creative/ admin side roles filled, iirc, and is starting to release cast information. It's too far along for Friedman and Weiss to be parachuted in.

"in brightest day or darkest night lens flare shall offend our sight logic's fans should fear a lot Abrams power: haphazard plot" Though to be fair to JJ, he could scarcely do worse than the last Green Lantern movie.

I'd suspect that's the contamination they'd be worried about too. It's been pretty difficult to prove any practical effects of leachate- even the effects of something prominent like BPA/ bisphenol A is controversial- but it's a stupid risk to take without very good reason. UV, heat and plastic is potentially a nasty combination.

The ultimate problem with US debt is human nature and its tendency, when offered a good scenario and a bad one, to pick the good scenario no matter how unlikely it is or what the evidence is for the bad one. I'm 100% sure that most US politicians know that their debt is a problem, and a big one; but solving it will be unpopular, other politicians will insist that the problem isn't that bad and they'll be the ones getting elected because "everything's fine, no need to make sacrifices, in fact we can spend more on stuff you like" is a lot more marketable than "we're in trouble, we need to minimise the trouble as quickly as possible and that means cut backs". And no doubt there's a lot of too big to fail hubris as well. The US definitely has a fair way to go until it's literally overdebted though. I'd probably say in practical terms the US could fairly readily service twice the debt it has now so long as the overall economic situation is more or less comparable to today. End of the day a constant debt load will inflate away slowly and becomes more manageable so long as the economy is growing and so long as it is a constant overall debt. The big but though is the Confidence issue, and the probability of a rival trying to spike the US if she looks vulnerable. (I'd be pretty surprised if a lot of US politicians didn't have plans to 'take advantage of' any economic chaos though, at least in the abstract sense. The 2008 bail outs went largely to vested interests deeply connected to multiple politicians, and in many cases rather than punishing them for stupidity or irresponsibility effectively rewarded them as smaller and less connected rivals went or were allowed to go bankrupt, or were bought up by their larger rivals on the cheap)

There was some talk of it being let go if they guaranteed it wasn't going to go to Syria but it didn't amount to anything. Probably the most salient fact about the whole incident is that there isn't actually an EU oil embargo on Syria- yes, seriously. Closest is jet fuel exports, and imports of Syrian oil to the EU. There's zero mention of exports of oil to Syria being banned though (eg, UK.gov).

Not only have the Brits not released it they planned on holding on to it for the maximum time allowed before they legally have to make a decision; hardly a sign of good faith. The whole thing was calculated to inflame tensions- there's no way the UK was so naive as to believe anything else could result from it- probably at the insistence of the US so as to try and lever the other Euros away from the JCPOA. The UK rather laughably enforcing EU law (literally laughable given Spain which isn't leaving the EU DGAF about the tanker being in their waters beforehand) and seizing ships in the Straits of Gibraltar while trumpeting the Straits of Hormuz as being an essential international waterway where ships are inviolate was never going to go down well, nor is it credible that they thought there would not be reciprocation. HoonDing better post that Goering quote again, since it's apt.

Nevermind, we'll always have The Hexer to go back to if Netflix's Witcher is rubbish.

The suggestion the US shot one of its own drones down was the Iranian being snarky- and given it's Iran, a bit of a back handed reference to IranAir 655. And yeah, if it wasn't Iranian there are a lot of others it could be. Iran wouldn't really care if they lost a drone (they'd likely wave their arms about dramatically, of course, and shout stridently about imperialism etc) as their drones are for the most part very cheap and very disposable, unlike a Global Wotsit. They seem to lose a couple a month in Syria, and not really worry about it. Looks like the IRGC have nabbed a couple of British tankers in the Straits of Hormuz in the last few hours. Not exactly an unexpected development, given events at Gibraltar.

Way easier to film/ obtain for filming F18s than newer planes. The current F14 equivalents would be the F18 and F22 too, not the F35; but the F22 would be equally if not more difficult to get permission to use as the F35 I would think. And on the PR side, you presumably will have a fair bit of dogfighting in a Top Gun 2 movie and the idea is that the F35 won't have to do any of that and the F22 can just take out anything without being detected. You need the US military onside to film, and they won't want it implied that stealth isn't an automatic win; with a non stealth plane that isn't so much of an issue and you can have whatever enemy it is seem to be a far more compelling threat.

I'd actually agree, though I'd put a fair bit of the blame on the US media and the packed field. I'd be perfectly willing to accept that she doesn't think Joe is racist but attacked him as a calculated move because she knew it would get exposure (and whatever he did in response could not turn out well); and that is what was necessary given the way the Democratic nomination field is. That approach is another thing that is great for a candidate looking for a nomination, but a lot less so when an actual nominee. Ah, a true classic copypasta. Even a fat degenerate mass murderer can get things right once in a while.

Pretty narrow vote for her as well- not exactly a strong mandate. Trump wants the EU broken up or in a weak union as it is currently, with each bit contributing. A EU army is another step to a genuine rivalry with the US so far as he (and to be fair in all likelihood reality too) is concerned.

Emmy nominations are out, for anyone interested. [Edit: For the quality of S8 GoT got a ludicrous number of nominations including some bizarre options, but much like the Lord of the Rings movies the worst part seems likely to win most awards as a proxy for better times. If they wanted to give a Stark brother a nomination it should really have been Robb this year, and Lena Headey was barely even a supporting actress given Cersei had so very little screen time. Obligatory meme observation: Chernobyl got 19 noms; compared to expectations that's not great, not terrible. interesting forum bug with long spoilers: my comments at the bottom were outside the tags but got included, and they're uneditable too. Had to copy them out of the page before editing]

I don't know if it's the actual reason, but it may be to encourage new users to contribute. Typically the longer the thread the less likely a new user is to post on it due to feeling intimidated or not being able to 'catch up'. (Pretty sure actual academic research has been done on it too, but all my search turned up was, randomly, a bunch of stuff on pot)

Involved in the Argo script? I'm obligated to label him an utter hack by Act of Parliament. I'd go so far as saying that JJ has done some decent writing as well, at least if you separate the plotting elements from the script. Plot wise his movies tend to be derivative as anything and his TV shows convoluted for the sake of obfuscating the lack of genuine progress and mystery resolution, but they're not badly scripted. Having said that, a decent script and plot for (what were they thinking?) 'Rise of Skywalker' would be a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.

I don't see reasonable people having a problem with her being a Hindu, but, this is a political climate which has been pretty toxic; and a lot of people aren't reasonable. I mean, people criticised John Kerry for going to Vietnam when the alternative (sometimes) attended the National Guard; such things aren't really logical in the normal sense of the word. It's definitely not anywhere near the top of her current problems in any case, as with most candidates getting exposure in a crowded field (especially one with two credible women candidates) is her biggest problem.

IIRC the quote is quasi genuine and comes ultimately from one of Napoleon's marshalls' memoirs (though you'd think some of his marshalls were in completely different battles based on their recollections, so it may be made up by that Marshall), but was creatively translated to english as something Napoleon 'should' have said. It was in regard to the Allies pulling troops off the Prinzen (?) Heights during the Battle of Austerlitz to attack his flank, heights Napoleon then took so winning the battle comprehensively; one of his commanders wanted reinforcements to defend that flank and N refused based on it potentially meaning the Allies would stop moving their troops from the heights. Doubt Gabbard could win, as she's Hindu and religion still seems to matter a lot to many in the US.

At this point ASCII games mostly remind me of 2080Ti RMA memes. Had a lot of fun with various roguelikes and other ASCII games back in the day though.

All modern warplanes crash a lot, especially fighters- two Eurofighters collided a week or so ago for example. They're over engineered, but they still have very little margin for error. An F35 crashing is pretty expensive but not really unexpected. If they start crashing like John McCain is flying them it would be a problem, but a crash or two is literally inevitable. (OTOH the Israeli F35 being hit by an ancient S200 over Lebanon was probably a bit off putting, even if it wasn't brought down)

S-500 is designed mostly as an anti missile rather than anti air platform. Ballistic missiles don't generally go sideways, since they're ballistic, and the missiles that can 'dodge' also have to be slow or they can't dodge (for anyone wondering, it's the same principle as why a fast moving speedboat that tries to turn will broach/ flip/ tumble while a slow moving one won't- you can't have it both ways). If it functions like the S400 its abilities will also depend a lot on the missile being fired. I'm personally of the opinion that the Russians/ Indians/ Chinese have scaled down their stealth fighter plans because they aren't actually all that stealthy and against a decently teched foe will be little more useful than a conventional plane and in some situations, worse. I'd be surprised if the Chinese could not outright clone a F22 or F35 if they really wanted to. The US only has itself to blame for the situation with Turkey over the S400 though, they genuinely did try and buy Patriots multiple times and were rebuffed. Can't really expect them to use the antiquated and not much use even when it wasn't Hawk forever; and throwing a wobbly when the Greeks got the S300 is not going to go down well with Turks on principle alone.

Should have switched to Ion Lady first, then they could have had the Thatcher Estate sue for added exposure before settling on a permanent name.

The hand in process hasn't formally started yet- and there won't be 1.5M eligible guns anyway, there will be a lot less than that. But, those quibbles aren't that significant, practically it will be a disaster as there are mutually contradictory aims and a bunch of ideological hand waving/ wringing. Having rushed the legislation through parliament without thinking it through they now have to actually implement it and they plain cannot do it the way they've promised. Everyone knows it will cost a billion dollars- minimum- to do properly, but they cannot justify that when teachers and nurses etc want pay rises so instead they've budgeted $200 million- and topped it up, ludicrously, from the state 'insurance' fund (ACC) as there will be less accidents to pay out (there are very few firearm related accidents in NZ anyway). As such they either expect max 20% of the weapons to be handed in, are going to offer 20% of the value or are lying about the expected cost. Probably a bit of all three. Plus they decided to change the definitions again just before passing the legislation with no notification, which did not fill anyone effected with confidence. So they've lost a significant number of people who they want handing in guns already as they know they're being outright lied to. I have to admit I've found the reaction to the backlash kind of hilarious though. I'm not directly effected since I don't own a semi auto but I have had a lot of fun needling anti gun zealots with the unworkability of it and their own logical contradictions- laughably, illegally owned firearms are excluded from the amnesty for example, so literal criminals have no incentive to hand their weapons in. Amazingly, none of the people who thought buying a gun back for 70% of its value was a great offer would accept my equally great offer to buy their cars for 70% of their value, though to be fair most also accepted that the offer only sounded good if you didn't think about it for more than 5 seconds.

That's just the english, they'll also call kiwis australian, dutch germans and kanadians americans just to mess with them. They'll especially do it if you look annoyed about it. The Japanese always had the bulk of their external army in China rather than the Pacific, the soviet invasion took Manchuria in a week with the best part of a million Japanese losses and cut the rest of the 3 million odd Japanese soldiers off in China and greater Asia. There wasn't a realistic imminent threat to the Japanese mainland from the soviets and they lost a lot of men in the Kurils despite most of the Japanese defenders obeying orders to surrender; but strategically it removed the last vestiges of power and prestige for the Military Men who wanted no surrender and the last hope for those who wanted a conditional rather than unconditional surrender.

Technically, the US govt has nuked the US, at least twice. Threatening to do it again sounds like an attempt to pull a Trump and get attention- any sort of attention- by throwing outrageous claims about. Difficult to see that strategy work unless you already were a celebrity like Trump though and it obviously didn't work for Swalwell.

Marco Rubio copypasta, in 2019? Nice to see the classics being kept alive for new generations.