Zoraptor

I'd be pretty confident that if PoE2 didn't have full VO at launch it would not have got it later since it was not an immediate financial success unlike DOS and Elysium. Doesn't bother me personally either way. I'd suspect the full voiceover was more an issue for JES and than the devs in general since it would have been a lot of extra supervision*. End of the day most of the dev work for dialogue had to be done anyway- dialogue scripting, any triggers or other scripting, branching and dependencies all have to be done whether voiced or not. So in theory it would 'just' be adding the triggers for the sound files with appropriate timings. Easy for me to say of course when it's not me doing the extra work... *even something as 'simple' as making sure the polynesian type names would be pronounced correctly and consistently. My experiences with tourist pronounciations here is that they can be creative, even with a guide. Asking the way to Ka-ee-tah-ee-uh took a little while to process despite all the sounds being correct (Kaitaia, a town in Northland). Not the sort of thing you'd want to be dealing with with it being extra work you didn't think was necessary and when already rushed.

It's not just a French decision whether they engage in combat. They'd be being sent to a war zone and would make a tempting target. It's very easy for a Think Tanker to say the Russians would never dare, but with no NATO involved most of the deterrent is gone and the calculus on the Russian side may well be that the best way to get the troops out is to kill a lot of them and make it politically untenable. That's the thing Think Tankers tend not to consider- at some point, escalation becomes less of a risk for Russia than not escalating. Kill a few hundred Frenchies, decourager les autres; do nothing, encourage others to sends troops... If the French Sector of West Berlin was held unilaterally by the French you can guarantee it'd have been the Soviet Sector very quickly, especially when the French didn't have nukes.

While Article 5 is what gets invoked it's actually Article 6 that is relevant. per NATO: So France couldn't invoke Article 5 for the Sahel as it isn't their sovereign territory under their jurisdiction- also the case for Ukraine, of course, they'd be in or over the territory of a Non Party. For that matter, also true for the Falklands War since it was south of the Tropic of Cancer so Britain couldn't invoke Article 5 even if she wanted to. Lest we forget, there are already NATO troops on the ground anyway, just unacknowledged. Wasn't that long ago people were yelling at the Germans for revealing it with their rationale for not sending Taurus. It's extremely likely some have died already too, and been passed off as 'training accidents'. The talk of French Foreign Legion troops being sent is fundamentally because, well, no one cares if they die.

Well now. You can read the actual Bloomberg article on the matter here, via MSN to avoid the pay/ nuisancewall. If you do you'll see why JPost fails to actually link to its source. I mean it looks like it links to Bloomberg, but it actually links to another JPost article, and says its source is the nicely nebulous 'Bloomberg TV'. Which is a slight red flag for it having been manipulated by the Military Censor. A red flag hardly dispelled by the rest of the article*. The actual Bloomberg article says repeatedly that the 'Axis of Resistance' including Hezbollah has not been significantly degraded and retains its contacts/ coordination etc with Iran. *in actuality the Syrians absolutely loathe the Israelis, especially so the Syrian government. They might be compromised/ the intelligence source via other means, but all Bashar al Assad would give anyone for leaking that meeting to the Israelis would be a one way trip to Sednaya. If they even bothered with that. There have been a lot of extremely badly sourced and to be frank utterly delusional 'Syria/ Russia forces fight Iranian proxies' articles, tweets etc over the years.

They didn't even think IJO actually existed at the time but was just used by anyone attacking the US and France in Lebanon. It was all a bit fraught given the genocidal rampage by western and Israeli supported Phalangists at Sabra and Chatila had happened only six months prior. So the obvious candidate was a Palestinian upset the US was running interference for 3000 civilians getting murdered. Plus ça change, plus ça même chose there. In any case it's fundamentally a poor example because there was retaliation once they'd decided who had done it. The guy who they think ordered it got blown up in Damascus by a CIA car bomb, and there was also another infamous incident (which the US denied involvement in; the CIA had 'just' trained and supported with intelligence the 'anti terrorism' task force that did it) where 80 civilians in Beirut were killed by a car bomb aimed at another person they thought was responsible.

That isn't even the correct wikipedia article Bruce. Which about sums that post up in terms of its accuracy. The US did nothing about its embassy being bombed then because... they didn't know who had done it. Arms wise, a pending ICJ judgement of genocide against Israel would be a massive problem for Germany (and Britain, France) as it would mean they'd been abetting it, especially since the ICJ prelim was that there is a case to answer. Though I'd suspect Lexx's objection is more moral than legal. In any case, the retaliation seems to have been a damp squib, and almost literally so. Hopefully that's the end of it.

Would probably drive a fair few people mad with its clunkiness (especially early on) but it's hands down the best RPG based on ~1400 Bohemia I have ever played.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 has been formally announced: Jesus Christ be praised, a trailer has come to see us, god bless you trailer etc etc.

Finished the Fallout TV show. TLDR: not as good as the Amazon Marketing Blitz™ has it being, but still pretty good and gets a fairly strong recommendation from me. Mostly consistent with the games too- some issues with Fallout 1 especially, unsurprisingly it's less consistent with the west coast Fallouts than east coast given it's set near LA. I'll use nested spoilers for the big stuff

The trouble is that this is fundamentally a lose/ lose situation for Biden. If he's hard on Israel he'll lose votes, if he ignores Palestinians and Israeli war crimes he'll lose votes. There's very little at risk for Trump who can say what he likes on the issue; anyone pro Palestine or (unironic usage this time, to be clear) Rules Based Order or nuanced responses to international affairs is never going to vote for Trump anyway, and he isn't in power. In this case I don't think Biden has a smart play, from a purely political perspective, only bad and worse. (While a lot of people including myself would like Biden to make a Moral Play and actually use the US influence to, well, stop the starvation, collective punishment, destruction of educational institutions, deliberate targeting of health sites and workers, targeting of journalists, targeting of diplomatic structures, targeting of aid workers, targeting of civilian structures etc etc instead of mildly pontificating about it I struggle to think of a single time a US President has actually made a genuine Moral Play, ie (try and) do something because it's simply the right thing to do, knowing that it'll potentially hurt him politically)

David Axe forbes sites/blog is the source, so no it isn't a serious assessment. (actually not sure he's the ultimate source, but it's the title of his April 7? article. Either way, he's a clickbait merchant and his articles tend to be either 'the sky is falling' or 'everything is coming up Roses' with little in between)

Yep, should keep Netanyahu safely in power for another few months so Mission Accomplished from his pov whatever the result. Completely predictable, especially when the US made it obvious they'd back Israel under any circumstance.

Watched the first two Fallout episodes. As a big fan of the game series all the way back to its roots in 2008 and having played all of Fallout 3, 4, Shelter and 76* I am fairly pleased so far. Definitely looking forward to watching the rest of the episodes, and that is not as common as I'd like. TLDR: 1st episode is disjointed (it's a Prime TV show, after all), 2nd is a lot better. Probably comes about as close to capturing the mass market fallouts as anything could, and has some encouraging signs of 1/2/NV too. *I feel vaguely dirty typing that, but feel vaguely compelled after the number of "played all the games: 3,4 and 76!/ Captured Bethesda's genius!" that I have read.

Yeah, I actively avoid fps/ drone stuff too though I will generally watch non drone stuff if I think it will be interesting. I don't really care about gore/ death, personally, since it's obviously happening but... there are way, way too many people getting their jollies from fps or dropped drone footage and I really don't like associating with them even tacitly. Quite apart from Israel's policy of destroying all infrastructure so that civilians cannot take cell phone footage and cannot upload it there has also been a systematic policy from media to either actively or passively suppress Palestinians SM. Any combat footage --> 'terrorist' source, and passive footage 'cannot be verified'. Indeed, just about all the evidence of summary executions, torture and the like come from idiotic Israeli soldiers who are proud of themselves. That too is largely suppressed by media. Eh, I'd go out on a limb and say that article is of, hmm, limited accuracy. The only limitation either side has had for thermobarics on fps is weight and the munition generally being too heavy for a fps drone, eg the generic RPG-7 frag payload is 1/10 the weight of a RPG-7 thermobaric warhead. But there are some fps drones that will manage 2kg and there's at least one (43mm, for GM94 launcher) grenade that has a thermobaric variant in use by both sides that weighs 250g, only 60g more than a rpg-7 frag does. One suspects both sides have been using that fairly extensively but it simply hasn't been publicised.

They don't draft the young due to having the worst demographic crisis in the world. (Specifically, the population age 'pyramid' looks like a 13 year old boy's drawing of Pamela Anderson rather than a pyramid; death rate 15.2, birth rate... 8.6; no census since 2001 due to losing around 20% of its population in the 90s; and all that before the invasion. Essentially they're desperate to keep young workers alive and, well, breeding as much as possible while there are far more older people who will generate less tax and start claiming a pension sooner)

Meh, AP is still running interference for Israel- still got to have the obligatory reference to how everything was started by/ is justified by Oct 7- it's just very hard to run interference with something so very obviously a war crime beyond an implicit "it wouldn't have happened if Hamas didn't exist". Also a lot harder when those killed are mostly nice westerners rather than icky Palestinians. To put it in perspective, even Haaretz is running tougher articles than those AP blancmanges are. And Haaretz is actually subject to the Military Censor, AP just censors itself. The very definition of, to quote Bibi, "unintended", that. I often unintentionally do something three times in quick succession with deadly results. That's why I'm posting this from a high security prison/ insane asylum/ am a Major in the most moral army in the world. I'm very very sure Israel is utterly appalled and despondent that WCK has suspended operations and that wasn't the aim of the operation in the first place... yeah right, the only 'unintended' thing was there being people from friendly countries in the vehicles. Even then, not like those spineless jellies like Sunak Trudeau or Albanese will actually do anything about it apart from verbal diarrhoea about the tragedy of it all.

3 Body Problem being good isn't that much of a surprise. The parts of Game of Thrones B&W did as an adaptation of the books was excellent. While the ending does tend to retroactively stink up the series as a whole the praise they got for the adaptation part was justified. Since 3 Body Problem is also an adaptation it ought to be closer to GoT S1-4 quality than GoT S8. Plus, no Star Wars films on the horizon any more that they want to rush off to.

Ukraine doesn't invade Russia because this isn't Hearts of Iron IV, and wars aren't won on the battlefield of reddit and facebook. (Militarily the first attack was pointless but probably worth a try, the second was the kind of stupidity people accuse Russia of all the time, zerg rushing prepared defences for photo ops. That they got so few photo ops out of it is indicative of how very very badly it went. They're not really limited by any impositions from outside, everyone knows the troops involved are not majority Russian despite their name and both attacks featured western supplied equipment. They're limited mostly by being PR operations that have a high resource cost Should probably add, since it's key to why the whole thing is counterproductive: the advantage of 'forcing' Russia to station troops there is decidedly double edged because in reality it doesn't happen in a vacuum. What practically happens if Russia has lots of troops there? So does Ukraine. They have to, to guard against Russian invasion from their troop build up. So no net advantage)

No. There's a difference between being enforceable and binding. The wording and it coming from the UNSC makes it 100% binding, that's intrinsic, what it requires is a subsequent resolution for enforcement if (when) ignored. John Kirby is being dishonest when he says it isn't binding, because what he means is that the US will not support enforcement- which, of course, as a paid up member of the Rules Based Order he cannot actually say, lest people wonder why the US only wants enforcement of international law against its enemies, not its friends. Same situation with the ICJ. Its decisions are 100% binding, but it has no enforcement mechanism. That is meant to come from the UNSC.

I don't think anyone expects Israel to do anything different, nor for the US to do anything beyond theatrics if they don't. Their relations would have to get catastrophically worse- almost certainly unrealistically so- for them to allow a Chapter VII invoking resolution. It's still a binding resolution though, and under the, heh, Rules Based Order there is no higher authority. The incidences of resolutions being ignored- or interpreted creatively- doesn't actually change that, it just makes the system look farcical. Which is at least in theory something the west ought to be stridently against. In any case, pretty difficult to see how the wording is 'non-binding': 'Demands' doesn't leave much room for a non binding interpretation. You can still have John Kirby and press report it as being non binding, and have the US/ Israel ignore it as if it were, of course, but it very obviously is.

This time around all the RDK achieved was one selfie by an administration building. Otherwise their best confirmed footage was, what, a guy firing a dud RPG at a tank? Everything else was shot in Ukraine or embarrassing like the 'white flag' (neither white nor a flag, almost certainly a trench telescope) being 'waved' by Russians in a trench or them running over an AT mine with a tank while, heh, still in Ukraine. At least last time they took a bit of ground in between releasing footage of them larping in Pripyat. The imminent Orthodox/ Muslim civil war in Russia is unlikely to be kicked off by 4 Tajiks any more than the imminent race war in New Zealand got kicked off by one Australian shooting up two mosques. I'd doubt they're even going to do much for ISIS; they're not exactly the leading edge of the inghimasi sword and just seem kind of pathetic really. Alleged is fair enough since they haven't been convicted so are legally just accused of the crime, but in this case there's no reason to doubt that they've got the right people. The evidence is pretty conclusive. (You could fake it, technically, but... really, you'd have to get 4 people to shoot up a concert hall, leave and depart in the same car, and then get four identically dressed people caught hundreds of km away in the same car (or same model, with jiggered plates). You'd also need to get both Amaq and an ISIS telegram to post pictures of the same four people who were caught posing in front of the Seal of the Prophet and more. You'd also have to come up with a good reason for faking it. Clearly Russia would prefer for it to have been Ukrainian, or sponsored by them. If they were going to fake it you'd expect them to find, dunno, signed instructions from Budanov or Zelensky? Most they've got in that respect is that they were heading for the Ukrainian border)

"It's a non-binding resolution, so there is no impact at all on Israel and its ability to go after Hamas" -- John Kirby hmm, does John Kirby think they voted for (abstained from for the US) a General Assembly resolution...

The issue with the ISIS claim is that the attackers clearly aren't the usual Salafi nutbars. No suicide vests or fight to the death, at either point; no takbirs ('allahu akbar'); non halal beards/ clean shaven- indeed, seemingly wearing fake beards for the attack of all things- and they were definitively heading for Ukraine. Which was moronic since that's the most monitored border Russia has, as was not swapping cars or taking even the most rudimentary steps to avoid capture, but... there's effectively no doubt it was them. They may just have been dumb enough to do it for 10000 dollars promised by some random on telegram.

4 suspects supposedly caught in Bryansk oblast. Some decidedly odd details though.

That, or they're just conflating two unrelated things to try and create a particular narrative. Media reports consistently mention the warning, after all, but consistently do not mention the time limited/ imminent nature of it... Facts are the warning was from more than 2 weeks ago, for a potential attack (direct quote from the US embassy) "over the next 48 hours". Not open ended, and it's easily verifiable that the warning was not extended. Fact is that the same day an ISIS cell was eliminated by Russia. That this was acting on US intelligence is certainly an inference, but a pretty convincing one. And of course the direct John Kirby quote from the whitehouse press briefing about whether the two were related was, with just a tad of added emphasis by me: Until someone goes on the record to gainsay that, ie no 'anonymous source', there's really nothing more to say: the warning was for an imminent attack around March 7th, the same day Russia eliminated an ISIS cell, and the US Presidential spokesman thinks that warning and this attack are unrelated.