Zoraptor

If that comment is related to the recent news stories of the US exfiltrating a spy from Moscow note that while the story broke in the last week or so- slightly suspiciously timing, in retrospect, since it's very easy to draw a straight line between the two- that agent was exfilled in June, 2017. So definitely not an urgent issue in 2019 and he cannot have been burned in a conversation on July 31st of this year. On the more general level, one of the most common complaints about Trump is that he has zero interest in briefings and details and wants everything to be as short and simple as possible. Him leaking details is unlikely, as he's unlikely to get or ask for the details in the first place. Making ludicrous promises though, sure, that's perfectly in his nature.

There's very little chance of the Chinese supplying anything without the approval of the Iranians and it's doubtful if they even could. It would be far more likely they'd supply the Iranians and then Iran would on supply the Houthis using their back channels. But even then the Iranians cannot get much at all into Yemen through the blockade and 99% of the stuff the Houthis use is still old Yemeni army stuff and ghanima off raids. The wreckage doing the twitter rounds is close to definitely of a Quds-1 Yemeni cruise missile rather than a drone, though the pictures are unverified and it's marginal whether the Quds 1 could have that range. It near definitely isn't the native/ acknowledged Iranian version of the same missile though as there are distinctive differences including size. The Quds-1 is probably an Iranian design as well, but there's no evidence that they provide anything apart from engines (extremely likely) and guidance (very likely) nor that Iran itself has any as opposed to supplying proxies. And the satellite pictures provided as evidence that Iran attacked directly from their territory are kind of lol too. Direction of impact is very marginal evidence when guided munitions are used anyway but WNW impact is more consistent with coming from Yemen or Iraq at a pinch than Iran, which is to the NE to SE . Plus any missile fired from Iran would have to go very close to competent military forces- US bases or fleets basically- instead of just toodling across desert while Saudi radar operators are playing minecraft or online poker on their screens. Still, whoever did it their accuracy was impressive and it would definitely be goodbye to most of Saudi's oil infrastructure, power plants and desalination plants in a shooting war.

Yeah, but it's so simplistic an example of reverse psychology that it really ought to only work on children.

I'd genuinely say it's an attempt at 2 year old psychology. Refuse to get in the car? Well, Hillary wants you to stay out of the car too so you're doing what she wants! Refuse to eat your broccoli? Just like Obama, he hates broccoli too!

China is blaming Hillary because it plays well to Trump, who loves a bit of a conspiracy theory and probably believes Dorian not hitting Alabama was due to Obama andor Hillary frantically releasing butterflies to deflect its path. Meng's detention was due to the overall stoush the US has with Huawei and 5G and she was detained via Canada for the same reason that they got Britain to detain that Iranian tanker rather than seized it themselves- chilling effect, and it brings another country directly into the mix and you can usually rely on that other country not to fold to pressure due to nationalism and not wanting to appear weak. Well, unless 'lol, no help for you' is your response when they need help after losing a tanker in response at least. The only conspiracy theory* for Meng's detention relates back to Huawei and its 5G system and why the US dislikes it- that there aren't Chinese backdoors beaming everything back to the 100 Acre Wood but that they are instead refusing to install NSA backdoors. Otherwise her detention is pretty much par for the course for US foreign policy. *very likely not a conspiracy theory, since the Huawei hardware has been extensively tested at this point with none of the claimed Chinese back doors found.

For a rich person a lot of that is purely theoretical tax though. Wasn't it Warren Buffet who said he paid less actual tax than his secretary despite the wealth disparity? If you're rich enough to afford good lawyers and good accountants you tend to end up paying very little tax because you can afford the good accountants and lawyers that most people cannot. Same is true for companies, which is why there's such a concerted push in some places to actually tax companies by gross revenue rather than profit after the subsidiary 'licenses' technology at gross profit -50k to its 'parent' in a tax haven. If it were a linear relation to the Australian and (projected) NZ buy back programs it would be ~15 million guns for the US; though the situation certainly aren't directly equivalent with the US having higher overall ownership and legal handguns, but a narrower range of weapons likely to be involved in a putative US buyback scheme than the Aus/ NZ ones.

Character development wise there is a whole new 'ability tree' introduced in one of B&W's questlines. It's not directly advertised in its quest description though, and first time through it ended up being one of the last quests I did.

At the moment there's no faith to keep. It's not like the US stopped attacks on the Taleban while the preliminary negotiations were taking place; so there's no reason for the Taleban to stop attacks either. Negotiation can work in Afghanistan- the case of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an example of a unrepentant 'terrorist' who stopped via a negotiated settlement. The big issue with the Taleban is that unlike Hekmatyar they are if not actually winning at least doing well enough that they have significant leverage and expectations from negotiations; and they aren't a wholly monolithic entity so there would be a likelihood of extremists not accepting any negotiated settlement. As for keeping faith after an agreement, it certainly wouldn't be a Vietnam 1975 type situation even if they 'broke faith' because the Taleban never held the entirety of Afghanistan even at their strongest; and while they aren't getting weaker they're still well behind how strong they were in 2001. They would run into the same issues they had last time, ie the ex soviet stans would support their minorities and Iran would back the shia. But, End of the Day, if the Taleban could stroll back into power after foreigners leave despite 20 years of nation building then there's no realistic prospect of them not being able to do so in a further 20 years anyway.

Sure there are, but if that's a consistent metric for talking to people you'd be refusing to talk to dozens of countries including multiple US allies and China. The question with such things should always be whether the 'cure' for the oppression is worse than the oppression itself. In this case 18 years of conflict with no improvement from 15 years suggest it really doesn't deserve even an air quoted 'cure' description. And talking to the Taleban doesn't mean agreeing with them, or giving them all of what they want. Practicalities are that the Taleban have significant support in Afghanistan even after 18 years so the options are some sort of status quo where lots of people die every year for the forseeable future and the country is permanently destabilised or talking with them and maybe getting at least their more moderate wing into the political process.

Sacking Bolton by tweet is the least of the admin's faux pas and him going should make their foreign policy more coherent, not less. Indeed it would probably be more coherent if the next National Security Advisor were Bernie Sanders, given Bolton's hawkishness was way too much even for Pompeo and Bernie actually has more FP similarities to Trump. Bolton just ran around kicking anthills andor threatening to bomb people as if that by itself was a cohesive foreign policy, and he did so before they'd finished dealing with the previously kicked anthills. Pompeo/ Trump may be disliked by most foreign diplomats; but Bolton was actively loathed, didn't really work even as a 'bad cop' to make Trump/ Pompeo look more reasonable, and didn't have a single foreign policy success. Talking to the Taleban is fine. If you want peace you have to talk to your enemies; if not prepare to either have a perpetual war or to kill them all.

Mmmmmmm, yes. I'm not normally one to bask in the misfortune of others but I shall make an unrepentant exception for moustache man. So much so that I hope he gets appointed by the next administration, just so that he can be fired again.

$1- no typo, and 1 NZ dollar even- seems pretty cheap and significantly cheaper than it would ever be on steam. (MS Game pass, currently $1/ month in New Zealand. And I thought Origin Access was good value. People may cry buckets about subscription services- well, with one prominent exception that gets a pass for anything for some- but you can't beat them for their value proposition. Even if it's $1 month for a years subscription that's still extremely cheap.)

I suspect Corbyn is pretty keen on an election but the bulk of the rest of his party isn't. And it is a rare chance to humiliate the leader of his main rival party, end of the day most politicians are going to take that chance when offered before an election rather than taking the election without the ritual humiliation. Trouble being, of course, that many voters will be Single Issue when it comes to Brexit and assuming the Tories are the only big party to support leaving they will get all the Brexiteer votes while the remainers will be split. In a FPP system 40% of the vote is usually enough to win, and there could easily be 40% brexiteer vote.

I took the ISideWith quiz because I didn't have anything better to do for five minutes- and with the state of some US voting machines maybe I could end up voting, if I really wanted to. Watkins 98% Harris 93% Warren 92% Bernie 91% Biden 61% Trump 41% Not sure exactly how I got Biden so low- closer to Trump than the other Ds- with the others so high. Guess it's more evidence Biden is the real stealth Republican DINO candidate.

I had no technical issues with the GOG version of FEAR Platinum. I don't think they looked as nice on modern hardware as the original or FEAR 2 but they ran fine.

Haven't seen B&tB but I'd wager money Watson was at least a better singer than Russel Crowe- who actually does have singing experience- was in Les Mis.

So, Parliament in the UK is getting suspended until after the Brexit deadline, so there's one week of sitting left. Will there be a no confidence vote? Will Liz refuse to suspend parliament? One thing is for sure, lots of heads will be excitedly talking about it on BBC and ITV.

For sheer contrivance value none of those come close to comparing to Gollum falling into Mt Doom- highly dextrous guy gets his heart's desire, a ring which has some semi direct ability to influence circumstances/ its holder and first thing he does is fall into lava, the one thing that can destroy the ring and the one thing it would avoid at all costs. If that ending happened in something less well regarded and more consistently badly written like the SW sequels it would be utterly pilloried, especially if Space Don Henley and friends turned up ten minutes later to rescue the heroes from certain death. It gets forgiven in LOTR because the rest of the story is good enough to forgive its flaws. Similar sort of thing in Breaking Bad when Gus gets blown up and walks out of the room apparently unharmed, it's a highly unrealistic event in an otherwise highly 'realistic' (= maintaining verisimilitude) series which is forgiven because the rest of the series is good, and because it doesn't have long term consequences. Have the same thing happen in GoT S8 however and people would be screeching about it for years even if it ultimately had no impact on the story. In LOTR I'd generally agree, since they were established in The Hobbit (well, book wise; movie wise not so much). Besides, anyone with any sense knows that instead of flying the ring into Mt Doom on an Eagle it would be far more sensible to trebuchet it in. Even the physics agrees, if a trebuchet has the force necessary to fire a 90kg projectile 300m then it can, ipso facto, fire a 25g ring for a distance of ~1000km. Indeed, you might actually want to add a bit of extra weight.

I though they did a pretty decent job of establishing force powers before they became plot relevant, most of the time, which is a pretty good defence against them being classic deus ex machina. eg Luke and the training drone foreshadows the Trench Run and Darth Vader and Obiwan establish that force users can sense each other. There's lots of plotforce moments though which don't really involve The Force as such- the Millenium Falcon breaking down near to Bespin where Lando just happens to be, Han finding Luke in the snowstorm on Hoth (potential force = deus ex machina there) and some more general plot issues too like the time it would take the MF to reach Bespin at sublight. Coincidences and even dei ex machinis aren't necessary indicative of bad storytelling anyway. The Eagles turned up very conveniently in both The Hobbit and LOTR (and the goblins clearly hadn't read apochryphal Napoleon quotes either and conveniently turned up just before the dwarves and elves came to blows); and Gollum just happening to grab the Ring and accidentally fall into Mt Doom was more convenient than anything I can think of Force related in any Star Wars. (slightly off topic for this thread but the TV series Legion poked fun at the deus ex machina concept by having a character literally build machines to act as plot devices/ plot drivers multiple times)

Yeah, jimmying the poll questions etc is pretty easy to do if you want to do it as just about nobody will check, and you can always fudge the weightings if needed too which even fewer people will check. It only really comes back to bite you if the result demonstrably ends up contradicting your polls like with Brexit or to an extent the last US Presidential race. Didn't Obama supposedly not have the most enthusiastic (non official) reaction to Biden running either? Something along the lines of "you know Joe, you don't have to do this...". Had a quick search, but not an easy query to narrow down.

Have to admit my initial reaction was that I'd missed a new Mass Effect game featuring Tali and Garrus' love child who was not a fan of daddy's fashion sense, and that Bioware was ignoring the lore since only Asari can be Banshees. I'm so out so touch with MP gaming I thought it was probably Anthem due to the seeming slight embarrassment and had to look up that it was Warframe.

None of that is really relevant though, at best it's an argument for Aegis Ashore not violating the 'spirit' of INF which is- at very best- a nebulous concept when it comes to international treaties. Fact is that the INF banned intermediate range missiles and their launchers from land deployment, and the Mk41 deployed to land is covered by that. The INF is prescriptive enough that both sides accused each other (with just cause; it is a prescriptive document) of technical violations due to land based testing of naval systems, dummy/ target missiles etc. There simply isn't a loophole the Mk41 can slip through as violation of the INF only required two basic things: (1) a launcher capable of firing banned missiles, which the Mk41 definitely can do, deployed on land and (2) said potentially infringing missiles to be available. A bit OT, but deployment of cruise missiles to an inland facility in Romania does make potential sense for certain scenarios. Montreux puts severe restrictions on US ships in the Black Sea, albeit those restrictions must ultimately be enforced by Turkey, a nominal US ally; and a inland site hundreds of km inside sovereign territory is a lot more 'safe' and secure than a few ships that can only be 12nm away from potential monitoring at any given time. Sure, if it's a general conflict it's irrelevant, but that certainly isn't the only scenario.

I did exclude here from that criticism, as I'm 100% certain we're all real and genuine people united only by our wholly amateur interest in great RPGs whose superb quality is only bettered by their tremendous value for money, fantastic production values, deep and involving storylines, easy to learn yet hard to master game systems and long term replayability.. ..but overall while I'm sure there are many many people who are genuinely excited I've seen an awful lot of "wow as I real and genuine person I find the low low subscription price of Disney+ coupled to exceptional and varied offerings from Marvel(TM), Star Wars(TM) and the core Disney(TM) business and back catalogue to be exceptional value and as a real and genuine person I shall certainly be giving Disney my business. And as a real and genuine person who cares deeply about everyone experiencing such great content at a bargain price I urge all fellow real and genuine people to subscribe to Disney+(TM) as well. I shall also be cancelling my Netflix subscription post haste as they have poor content and are too expensive!" type stuff as well. (to be fair the latter is pretty accurate, there's literally nothing on NZ Netflix that I would classify as must watch and they've just upped prices. OTOH Marvel TV and recent Star Wars doesn't give me much confidence in the key adultish Disney+ offerings either)

Taika Waititi is directing an episode, so I'd expect at least some humour. I don't think he could do 100% serious under threat of anything. I think I'd be a lot more interested in Disney+ if it weren't for the obvious astroturfing going on (specifically elsewhere, not here). I'm getting pretty good at spotting templated "hello, fellow Disney fans" comments and they always make we want to do the exact opposite, on principle. They're also pretty clearly going to go for a more traditional approach to holding subscribers, ie weekly episode releases and staggered series instead of dumping the whole season at once. The Kenobi announcement was an unexpected occurrence, certainly, albeit pleasant; and is more evidence we've reached peaked meme.

We had this argument before and I suggested you go and actually read the INF Treaty then. It literally doesn't matter if the Mk41 is 'much more than just its launcher'. If it can launch intermediate range missiles like the tomahawk it was illegal to deploy on land whatever the context, because that's what the INF said. There simply isn't an exclusion for "doesn't have the right software" and similar situations. It's not exactly a revelation that the Mk41 can be used to fire tomahawks, all the test did was confirm that it can do so on land (duh) and thus was a banned launcher under INF and illegal to deploy in Aegis Ashore. And let's be brutally frank, if the situations were reversed and it was Russia deploying Aegis Ashore in Mexico we could 100% guarantee that would be regarded by the US as an infraction against INF. My opinion of INF is not particularly high as a document since it certainly does, technically, also apply to stuff it wasn't intended to- but it's that way specifically because it doesn't have exploitable loopholes for 'software not installed and we pinky promise not to deliver tomahawks' situations.