Zoraptor

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)

To be fair, you'd still have to be pretty unlucky to get bogus parts at least when they're from core Amazon and they are still pretty cheap, I'd just hesitate to regard them as 'trustworthy' at the moment and that was a stipulation. And they are certainly trustworthy in terms of fixing any substitutions that have been made. Situation has probably improved a bit at least for graphics cards with crypto dying down so prices aren't so inflated.

The German sub site may be better than others for all I know but unfortunately parts often aren't just parts when ordered from most Amazons at the moment, probably 90% of complaints about bogus parts are from 2nd hand buys but 90% of the rest seem to be from Amazon reselling returns without checking that someone hasn't swapped out the graphics card for a GT710 plus some bolts or the processor for a Pentium III or a brick and not properly labeling marketplace sales as coming from 3rd party vendors who are directly scamming. The return policy makes up for it a bit, but it's Russian Roulette as to whether you'd be waiting for genuine or fake parts to turn up far more so than most places and more so than is really justified. Mindfactory would certainly be the best known specific German site, and so far as I've seen has a good reputation.

That's pretty much what happened at Cannae, and that was numerically the worst defeat the Romans ever suffered (not as bad as others like Adrianople or the Allia in terms of actual consequences though). Might even still be the largest death toll in any single day European battle up to and including WW1&2. Oh sure, there's a level of "rule of cool", break from reality, it's just a movie thing going., suspension of disbelief.... But you'd like just a little effort and thought put in when it's a subject you know about and/or are interested in. The problem I have with it is that it always seems that the writers decide to write stupidly and expect you to be OK with them writing stupidly so long as it there are Bayesque explosions or worse, stultifying speeches involved. The Avengers example is far from the worst though, to be fair to it. The end criminal v cops battle in Dark Knight Rises where the criminals decide to charge the cops for hand to hand combat instead of just shooting them with said guns ends up not being 'cool' but just being stupid as a consequence of the writers writing themselves into a corner where any realistic ending involves the good guys getting shot up badly or worse, winning but in a non spectacular way. Or the Walking Dead where Negan and his crew come out into the open to chat with Rick and pals and Rick and pals eventually open up with their assault rifles into the windows above their heads instead of just shooting the entire leadership and winning right there. All because of the meta justification that the writers wanted an excuse to have Rick and Negan chat to each other face to face and couldn't think of a believable way to do it, didn't care to find one and didn't care that even the most cursory examination of that scene would have it not making a lick of sense. That's especially a problem for TWD as a regular TV series rather than a 2-3 hour movie.

Yeah, for absolute performance money no object it would be 2080Ti, but with at least some consideration given to top end value it would be the 1080Ti. For top end power performance balance a 2nd hand 1080Ti from someone upgrading to rtx would be even better. 2080 non Ti on the other hand... would not touch even if I wouldn't rather dissolve myself slowly in aqua regia to a Celine Dion greatest hits soundtrack than contribute to Jensen's leather jacket fund. 0% conventional performance increase for 25% extra cost plus possible dead end tech that will be superceded by a 7nm model next year is plain poor value. If Bruce does want a 1080Ti though he'd better get in quick, nVidia has stopped shipments to peripheral countries to drive 2080 sales.

He was a refugee in/ immigrant to Egypt along with his parents. He was an emmigrant/ refugee from Palestine, who later returned.

It's for sale for the low low cost of a lifetime of haircair products for the Caen brothers? They've systematically sold off anything with any residual worth so it can hardly cost much. They can't really claim the name even has any Goodwill left to it and the revenue stream must be near literally half a dozen people buying Citizen Kabuto every other GOG/ Steam sale...

Dunno how much of it is 'deliberate' as a policy so much as a documentary on Patton single handed reconquering Europe selling better in the US. People love to be told they're uniquely heroic and special, nuanced takes about how the godless commies did the bulk of the heavy listing isn't such an inspiring tale. Most serious docos handle the eastern front fine, but the dissonance between something like 'Soviet Storm' or 'World at War' and some of the puff piece History Channel type WW2 documentaries could scarcely be greater.

I can probably tweak the fan curve, sound isn't a massive issue with headphones. 90% of the time it's completely silent and cools passively, if it's above 50 degrees it's pretty much on full revs but as a result it barely scrapes above 60 degrees even when it's being thrashed. I'd assume the Vega version would be similar. It's still quieter than the Intel stock cooler I had up until a year ago though, it's just super jarring when the computer is usually completely silent. I like the monitor and doubt I could go back now. I thought it was gimmicky too initially but things like straight lines work fine when you're used to it- I'd suspect a non curved ultrawide would have problems there anyway since there's a decent difference in distance to the eye from centre to edge. It did have some teething problems but it's working fine now. That's what freesync is for, essentially. Even a 1080Ti will struggle getting 4k/60 on many games, but if you've got adaptive sync the reduced frame rates have a lot less effect. Vega64 is roughly 1080 level performance so a decent amount faster than a 980Ti- if a 980Ti gives 60fps a Vega ought to give around 80. I also hate some of the more demanding gimmick sfx and would turn them off anyway. I wouldn't try running TW3 on the 580 at that res though except on medium settings. It copes with Kingdom Come Deliverance, just, and actually does pretty well on Mass Effect Andromeda but TWitcher3 has too many gimpworks features baked in to do well on AMD.

Yep. Samsung C34F791 3440x1440 100hz.

Richard must be the most inexplicably well regarded king in English history. A compulsive warmonger who nearly bankrupted the country having fought multiple rebellions against his father previous and who got himself pointlessly and stupidly killed.