Zoraptor

Didn't want it to leak or thought she might change her mind would be the obvious reasons. I don't think it was that much of a surprise though, UN ambassador for the Trump Admin must be about the most thankless task in politics and she has been forced- presumably, since she must have had a good idea how the wind was blowing- into some pretty stupid and embarrassing situations there. Getting caught begging countries for supporting votes and worse, failing, is pretty untenable and must have been personally difficult especially if any advice to withdraw rather than force a vote was ignored.

AMD certainly offers a more value for money long term upgrade proposition with Zen 2 still coming, plus their aggressiveness of pricing is way beyond Intel's in general. Counterintuitively though at the moment Intel has probably encouraged more upgrades- if you bought a mid range or above Ryzen at launch (1600 or greater) there's little reason to upgrade to either new Intel or AMD offerings (yet), if you own a year+ old i5 you're likely to already be getting limits from their 4 threads, and even if you bought an i7 you could now get double the cores/ threads from AMD or Intel. But yeah, Intel's 10nm problems have resulted in 4 'generations' of Skylake with no IPC improvement. All the IPC improvements were set for 10nm designs which still aren't able to be produced.

Intel has launched their new i9- for the low cost of one kidney*. Wouldn't normally be relevant for here, but... Not like the other two points are exactly stellar either. 9570 was as mainstream as the 9900k, and soldering is returning something that should never have gone from the top end. *here you could buy 2x 2700x or a threadripper and MB (albeit a cheap one) for the same price.

Never said he did, it's the Polish author who made a stupid deal for the rights to his IP. Meanwhile Lucas made a steal selling the rights to his numerous times. They both have an unfortunate lack of quality with their later works. George Lucas's big plus was that he didn't sell the rights to his works though, until DIsney, and if anything he tended to the micromanagement side of contracts etc. So every time someone bought a Boba Fett action figure it was Lucas getting the money, not Fox, and he could renegotiate everything including future movies from a position of strength. If anything Sapkowski is like the Fox execs who were so sure that Star Wars would fail that they didn't even bother doing a proper deal for it. Plus, even the worst of Lucas's movies were better than most and far more successful than almost all SW licensed products. Maybe a few people bought the movies because of KOTOR, but it was way disproportionately the reverse situation of people buying the licensed game product due to the movies. For Twitcher it's the exact reverse outside of eastern Europe. There isn't really a readily available equivalent situation to the one Sapkowski finds himself in because most people aren't as, well, stupid as he was and in most places you don't get a second bite of the cherry as he's trying for. If the games failed he wouldn't return the lump sum, and he's been an idiot retrospectively but most importantly by his own choice with no trickery involved. There's no point even offering a lump sum payment if the rights' holder can just go back and relitigate later if it does better than expected, everyone would take a lump sum secure in the knowledge that they can go back and demand a percentage later. He made a calculated bet that the games would fail, and lost. This situation is exactly what limited term deals and percentages are insurance against and he seemingly ignored both.

I thought the true ending of Stalker SOC was a fairly 'happy' ending, though the alternatives definitely weren't. Clear Sky on the other hand must have been about the most negative ending ever in a game, though I guess FEAR 2 comes close and with The Nameless One being disqualified by dint of being a knob and just getting what he signed up for. Dead Space and FEAR (1) and even System Shock 2 would probably qualify as well, though they're more sequel hooks than genuinely negative endings. Technically the ending of NWN2 would qualify as well, can't get more non happy than rocks fall, everyone dies...

The official grading(s) of academics used for things like performance reviews always are pretty one note- mostly because that is easy to do; and there's a dislike of publication grading other than a few at the very top like Nature. Objectively there really isn't much else to gauge apart from publications (volume of work) and citations (significance of work). It's a pretty rubbish system prone to being gamed, but try coming up with a better one that is actually workable and you'll find there isn't one.

I have a Strange Brigade steam key to give away if anyone wants it. Drop me a PM if so. (Since it's a newish game I'll give it a day or so and ballot if multiple people want it rather than 1st come 1st served. Sorry, no Single Purpose Accounts)

It's a bit of a surprise Vic2 isn't there already since it was the last of their 'classic' games not tied to steam. There are meant to be a fair few 'big' releases (Bioshocks, Onlivion etc) coming in this sale, but a lot of them have been rumoured for ages so may or may not actually turn up

Well maybe, though a lot of rapists get plenty of consensual sex as well, but... he certainly ain't 'self confessed' as an incel or a rapist by any stretch. His self confession was that he overstated his experience to others but was quietly proud to be a virgin- which would be voluntarily celibate or volcel, if such a term existed. He did say he had and has a lot of female friends, but that's not exactly diagnostic of anything except having a lot of female friends.

That's understandable though. One of the points of cross examining- same as for anyone who gets cross examines in an antagonistic setting- is to get the witness/ suspect to make inconsistent statements. They may be perfectly innocent inconsistent statements but the idea is to get him demonstrably 'lying' at which point you can call into question the rest of their testimony. Sticking as close as possible to prepared answers is the absolute best policy to follow. People have a natural instinct to embellish stories and fill in gaps, and that isn't a great policy when you're being put under the microscope (see Hillary under sniper fire, or Brian Williams being shot at in helicopters as prominent examples; and they weren't under oath). I rather zoned out at all his religious stuff but isn't he a self confessed high school 'volcel' instead of incel?

To an extent you can blame Google for that. Youtube monetisation favours one 10 minute plus video over lots of little ones, so you get 10 minute plus videos.

Thronebreaker is meant to have a good, 'proper' story, you just resolve stuff with the card battles instead of rhythm games like TW1 and mouse 1 or roll spam like the other two. So not at all like the previous main branch witcher games except potentially story wise, unless you're playing with the mod that already turns all the combat into Gwent battles... Also, GOG exclusive on PC. I'd buy it just for the lols the reaction to that has brought to some quarters.

Haha no. China doesn't, by and large, go around semi randomly invading people on the other side of the world- just their neighbours- but they 100% indulge in every other sort of interference the US does. Just about everything I've ever seen Graham related has been a bit rich. But yes, assuming Kavanaigh is innocent the Republican senators certainly aren't an injured party when they blatantly played for time last time around, and IIRC for considerably longer and with less justification.

I'd be pretty reticent about taking anything Wardell related at face value anyway as he's a bit of a bête noire of the popular gaming press. If he made a post saying that he loved puppies Polygon would write an article asking why Wardell obviously hates kittens, bunnies and hamsters. He's definitely a bit of a knob, highly opinionated, and his personal politics are a fair distance from mine but the last accusation against him that got tested in court was a pretty comprehensive win for him including a mandated apology.

He's probably talking about them targeting swing states' products with their counter sanctions, which is definitely happening and which the EU is doing as well to a lesser extent with their response to the steel/ aluminium tarriffs. If China wasn't interfering in other ways I'd be amazed though.

It's a horrible affair, as far as I hear she comes in to the story in the later books and he doesn't really redeem himself. Can't remember if he got her pregnant or not, but I know I was even gladder for having dropped it. Of course she got pregnant. He also got his daughter indirectly killed in the 2nd book, and the woman he raped died saving his life in the 3rd book. He does get substantial character growth and ends up saving the world twice though, so there is that. I really liked the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant because he's pretty much exactly what you'd actually get dropping a random(ish) person into a fantasy land- imagine the average xbox kiddie being dropped into one, they'd make Xue from Outcast look saintly- more so when they're obligated to be constantly under control in the real world and think they're hallucinating. It's also a series very much built on allegory, and from that sense the rape was narratively essential as a parallel. The prose though certainly crosses well into over stylised territory fairly frequently. It is kind of funny though, because nowadays a lot of people go far beyond tolerating a(n initially) villain protagonist and actively sympathise with the Walter Whites and Tony Sopranos.

Flawless code? That depends on whether quantum mechanics and relativity are intentional. You'd also never in a million years deliberately design bellows system lungs for your favourite creation having designed the far more efficient parabronchial system in birds beforehand. Checkmate, theists.

I'm not ignoring it as Hannibal was undoubted a superb tactician, I just didn't mention them as they weren't relevant. (I am highly skeptical of some parts of the battle narrative though due to Livy and Polybius both being more than a touch prone to spreading what might now be referred to as 'fake news'. Paullus was almost certainly not blameless- his family was immensely powerful however- and the supposed cavalry ruse in Livy involving a fake surrender doesn't work well timing wise and I suspect exists to give a reason for the terrible cavalry performance blaming perfidy instead of them just being atrocious/ cowardly since a lot of prominent Romans escaped in said cavalry. That it was one of if not the single most complete victories of all time cannot really be doubted whatever the exact details)

..but the last battle would have been so much more epic had Jordan had the chance to write it. I still haven't come across a book/series that has battles/action scenes as...well...EPIC. Yeah, you could tell that Jordan was ex military and had experience with actual war. I give him a lot of credit for having incredibly complex writing/ narratives but also some of the most consistently plotted writing, there was just far too little plot progression in the middle stages for my tastes. But, in general, if he put the gun on the mantel said gun got used, and you could look back and see exactly how it was set up earlier and makes perfect sense later. Rand watching cavalry manoeuvres which turn out to be for use with Gates is probably the one that sticks most immediately in my mind because it's exactly what logically should be done with magic teleportation + conventional warfare, but you still have to think about it and set it up as the author. I'll keep an eye out.

The 'roman' (mostly allied) cavalry was just rubbish, and always was. All the large battles the Romans lost against Hannibal (Trebia, Trasimene) except Cannae involved their centre holding cohesion while the flanks got slaughtered and said centre just chopping their way through the Carthaginian line to escape, at Cannae they lost cohesion everywhere after their initial success and couldn't do that. No quarter given and the winning side having more than 20% casualties themselves led to the massive death toll, usually the losing side either surrendered or ran away. Borodino is usually cited as the bloodiest day in Europe since Cannae. Even with a moderate estimate for Cannae's death toll it's still 1/20 that of a Verdun or Somme, with swords and spears, and over far less than 1/20 the time scale of those battles. And to be somewhat on topic, Vin Diesel as Hannibal in the movies he was pitching would have been a sight to see.

It was probably the reverse of Jordan losing control- his mid series books bear all the hallmarks of not having a 'proper' editing pass by an external editor, likely because of the success of his previous entries and the desire to get a(s many) book(s as possible) out to market quickly. He's pretty much the reverse Martin in that regard, while Martin needs an external editor to tell him to pull finger and stop tinkering Jordan needed one to stick a big red pen stroke through pages of his writing, or at least ask if it was all necessary. Sanderson did a pretty good job of finishing up WoT, but they're the only books of his I've read. Checking a list the last one I liked was The Dead Zone though I didn't regret reading 'It'. I liked The Stand as well, but a lot of the things I disliked about his writing were coming out even then. Carrie and The Shining had the problem of me having seen the iconic movies prior to reading the books. Anything after is like Dan Brown novels, I'm sure I've read some of them but cannot remember which ones nor anything about them. Then again I definitely wasn't reading them in release order as I'm too young for that.

This whole season of FtWD has been pretty stupid- think I've only really liked a couple of the early episodes and the Charlie/ Alicia one in the latter half. Which is a shame as S3 showed a lot of potential. I could understand them retooling it more directly towards its mother show when tWD was a ratings juggernaut, but now they've just brought over all the same problems tWD has and which ultimately caused its ratings to haemorrhage. The S4B villain has to be close to the worst written main villain I've seen in anything but has Negan level plot armour, the grey filter isn't artsy but just annoying and a visual drag, they've given no reason to care about the new characters while killing off established ones for shock and the patented late season tWD lack of even the most basic consistency in the plotting is in overdrive. I doubt I'll watch farther further unless the finale is stellar. To be fair to them though I very much doubt Kirkman would let either show deal with someone being immune or a cure until and unless the comics do, so that bit of potential progression is off the table.

I don't really see how. The details of the complaint are very sparse and rely entirely on 35 year old memories, so there simply isn't much to empirically verify/ refute. There isn't even much threat of perjury given the time elapsed so not much leverage to compel any bad faith actors. The first complaint has almost no details at all surrounding the incident itself and seems to have been denied by everyone else, and in the second the complainant seemed to be unsure it was definitely Kavanaugh until part way through the interview. The whole thing is a classic no win situation for whoever is being honest, with the caveat that all may believe they're being honest after that amount of time. Cannot remember details? Dodgy. Remember too many details? Also dodgy. Can't remember at all? Dodgy. And the goldilocks zone of just the right amount of details being remembered will vary wildly depending on which party you back as well. In that situation I cannot see any sense in having the FBI involved instead of just following the usual Senate protocol which is also under oath.

Is there any realistic way to tell the truth of such accusations from incidents 35 years ago though? If Kavanaugh is a serial sex pest then he's not going to suddenly have qualms lying under oath- and IIRC he's under oath at the Senate hearings anyway. And if they did happen and people were lying to protect Kavanaugh could the threat of perjury have any weight after that time? Perjury does have to be deliberate, and after 35 years proving deliberate lies instead of being mistaken is pretty much impossible. In other news looks like Syria is going to be getting S300 anti air systems from Russia. They've allegedly been there waiting to be delivered for months but the latest Israeli issue seems to have forced things. If what they've said is accurate they'd be non export PM2 systems as well, rather than nerfed PMU2.

Journalists act outside their expertise all the time, especially with interns and lower staffing levels in the internet age. With fake news and SJWs and the rest the immediate response when called on it is to go hyper defensive. That's not really elitism, more just circling the wagons around a non expert 'expert' as they know they may be next. And for this specific case PCMR types tend to hate pseudo expert Casual Tech types way more than outright consolers. Of course, the reason that video got so much traction was that it makers almost every single potential build mistake possible to still end up with a working product like a parody, but was actually dead serious about being an 'expert' guide, and The Verge went defensive and eventually pulled the video just as the 1st wave of laughter and memes was dying down. That's a great 2-in-1 combo of Poe's Law and Streisand Effect. (My favourite part is his anti static device being a completely useless plain plastic wristband, though the thermal paste application is more memeable)