Zoraptor

Considering who the leak was to it was pretty obvious the Israeli government wanted to say no, but did not want to actually say no. Dunno how much of that is what people actually believe, versus what it's convenient to believe. Quite often you'll get a very detailed, if skewed, historical analysis out of such people if you challenge Hamas being the problem. The pro Israeli stance tends to be a mass of self contradictory positions (so is the pro Palestinian one, of course, though to a lesser extent since they lost) designed to make Israel simultaneously the perpetual victim forced into doing bad things yet also strong and powerful and making independent decisions for her own protection. The typical conversation goes something like: M: well Israel took Gaza off Egypt after attacking her. That's where the trouble with Gaza specifically started I: Egypt attacked us in 1967, and they don't want the land back M: Egypt attacked you? They blew their own airforce up and invaded Sinai from Israel? I: ...well, they were blockading Eilat! That's a casus belli! And were going to attack at some point! That makes it OK and super smart! M: hmm, so a blockade is an act of war and retaliation for it fine? I: Yes! M: OK, so Hamas is justified in attacking Israel because of their blockade of Gaza? I: No not like that! I: ... uh, anti semite! Hamas starting everything is particularly difficult to defend when Israel supported it in its infancy as a counter to the PLO/ Fatah precisely because it was radical and unsympathetic. Mostly though the idea is to force any criticism of Israel to come with a Hamas Bad attached; without the reciprocal Israel Bad whenever Hamas does something bad. That's a rhetorical/ propaganda framing device to make everything Israel does bad just a response to something Hamas did that was bad and thus All Hamas' Fault.

There's security camera footage of the actual (three) hit(s) as well. One is a clear miss, one's a near miss and the third is pretty much spot on. Militarily, nearly completely irrelevant though. Not going to do anything to stop kalibr's since there are plenty of alternative launch platforms. Replacement cost will be the main issue. Though I think 'heavily armed corvette' is a bit of a contradiction in terms, corvettes as a designation are simply too small to be heavily armed. Someone also sent one of Zaluzhny's colleagues a boobytrapped present, according to him. That's the second friend of his to die over the course of a few days in questionable circumstances.

Finished Picard S3. Far from perfect, but I liked it a lot overall and not all just due to nostalgia. So much better than S1 was. Definitely more than a few nuTrekisms and general sloppiness- plus various plot points seeming to have been cobbled together from other shows; ironically despite all the references not 12 Monkeys- but it was enjoyable.

Past 10,000 dead Palestinians today. Interesting fact: 4104 of those are children, killed by humane precision western backed weapons per the Rules Based Order fired by the most moral army in the world. This amounts to almost exactly 40% of the casualty figure, and is ~the proportion of children in the Gaza strip vs the whole population. ie, it's exactly the proportion you'd expect statistically if Israel were firing off weapons blindly, or deliberately targeting the general population. Weird, eh? 31 Israeli children died out of 1400 to the indiscriminate/ deliberate terrorists of Hamas. That's ~2% of the 1400 Israeli deaths, the overall proportion of children in Israel is 28%. So the indiscriminate/ deliberate attacks managed to kill 1/12 the number of children you'd expect as a proportion for indiscriminate/ deliberate attacks. Weird eh? Israel has managed to kill 135x more children than Hamas did in absolute terms; and using the most generous measure (ie normalising for demographics and relative casualties between the two groups) more than 10x as many in relative terms. That's super duper weird, eh? Can't wait for all the baffled looks from western politicians next time they burble on about someone they don't like committing war crimes and wonder why the rest of the world won't fall into line behind them.

An ambulance was hit outside Gaza's main hospital. We know it can't have been Israel though, because no 5-7m wide crater and they only have munitions that make 5-7m wide craters... oh wait, they admitted to hitting it, very strange. Maybe they got some new weapons that don't just make 5-7m wide craters? Some sort of retribution based name might be appropriate, hellfire maybe? Or perhaps their presentation on the Al Ahli hit was complete bollocks designed to convince idiots who'd accept anything. Not just that absolute trash impact comparison but also a missile break up/ interception that took place over 2km away from the hospital, plus the magical launch sites 4km apart and the amazing pidgin arabic comms interception. Also, rather a lot of new incidents of civilians being shot up along the 'safe routes'. Yet Netanyahu keeps telling people to use them, for some reason. No doubt it's Hamas wasting munitions on making Israel look bad, Or Something. The only 'funny' thing about this is how every single 'Russia bad' trope from Mariupol, Bakhmut, a Leppo, Ghouta and every other 'siege' is being carried out by Israel to a far greater extent, to geopolitical crickets when not outright aid from the Rules Based Order. My personal favourite was Biden suggesting that the Palestinian casualty figures were exaggerated when he knew (well, it's Biden so...) that they were regarded as accurate by the US. Have to wonder though in a chicken/ egg way which came first, France deciding to host a conference for humanitarian aid to Gaza, and Israel deciding to hit AFP (Agence France Presse) and the French Institute as 'terror targets'.

Been going through some of the Prime catalogue since I've got a free month. The Boys S3- liked it pretty well overall, quite a lot more than S2. Mostly because I think I've accepted that the main plot progress is going to be glacial and there are going to be... clichés: ie have to make Stormfront worse than Homelander, have to make [S3 antagonist] worse than Homelander as a way to put the Big Confrontation off. Also, lots of [currentyear] allusions. Did you know both Donald Trump and Homelander could shoot someone and their approval ratings would go up? Not exactly subtle social commentary, but then can't really expect that from a show that has octopus sexy times and a guy with a bigger dong than any Vietnamese financial institution wandering around. At least it's fairly even handed given that there's the homicidal AOC analogue as well. Rings of Power- well, I didn't hate it. The problems are myriad though. Some I suspect are Exec Interference/ Focus Group based- the Mystery Plot doesn't work here and didn't work in WoT S1 either. Others... is Galadriel 4000, or 14? It's often shot like an adaptation of a stage play. There's some truly awful CGI (wtf was that Elven ship G jumped off of? I might be able to do better than that, and I have the artistic talent of asphalt), the scale is at times ridiculous, the dialogue is a bad combination of stagey and stilted and the overall plot is disjointed and tries to set up confliction that cannot actually occur. And 2 episodes into Picard S3. I've skipped S2 as everyone says it's crap. Now this, I like, so far. Not quite unreservedly, but fairly close. Did you know that this season's showrunner also ran 12 Monkeys (TV)? It's pretty subtle but I caught on after the actor for Shaw, the reference to James Cole and a drug called Splinter...

That'd be the Houthis, not rump Yemen. They've been sending drones along the Red Sea for about a week. One hit the Egyptian town next to Eilat Israel a couple of days ago and a US warship shot another couple down a few days earlier than that. Houthis actually have "'Death' to Israel" as part of their motto which is on their flags. Rump Yemen can't use the toilet without asking Saudi- or the UAE, if it's around Aden/ Socotra- permission. They're more likely to declare war on the faction backed by the other country than on anyone external.

Open secret beforehand. May not be official policy but, well, if the Palestinians leave they aren't ever coming back whatever official policy may say. Guess the question remains whether Austria knew what it was lobbying the EU for when they took the plan to get Egypt to accept refugees to them, or not.

There's certainly been claims of that happening for a while. All the way back to SveroDonetsk which was a year or so ago now (iirc at least one international unit refused to cross the river after a previous one got wiped inside a day). Couple that with many units now being full of not overly enthusiastic draftees rather than volunteers and you have a problem, at least when attacking. Lots of Leopards lost over the last week, at least 7. They didn't seem to be being used at all for months previous.

I didn't think you personally were arguing it was OK either. Plenty of people do think that way though, and there's a good reason why that thinking is shonky at best quite apart from the baseline ethics- ie you can easily reverse the 'logic' to use it to justify attacking Israel- which is what I was pointing out. When it comes right down to it it almost certainly is as primitive as "the side that is like me is the good guys, because I'm a good guy". Which is, of course, ironic given that both Palestinians and Israelis are semites and you wouldn't actually be able to tell them apart easily if you removed the context.

Egypt keeps the border shut because the US pays them to. Quite literally. And of course, that's the same Egyptian government that the Rules Based Order was 100% fine with machine gunning thousands of people during a coup to depose the democratically elected government, lest we forget. As for electing Hamas, half of Gaza wasn't alive at the last election and half of those who were were too young to vote, and 56% voted against Hamas. So you're down to... around 1 in 10 of the population where it would be a valid excuse, if it were a valid excuse to kill people based on who they voted for, which is... questionable, ethically. In any case you can thank geopolitical mastermind George W Bush for the result. How stupid do you have to be to think that a US sponsored pro Abbas campaign would help him- GWB "we'll be welcomed as liberators" level stupid. Mostly though, if it's OK to shoot up Palestinians for electing Hamas (17 years ago) surely it's OK for them to shoot up Israelis for electing Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu, Gallant and all the other religious nutbars in the Israeli government, last year? No it isn't? We're in agreement then. So, guess we need to find a reason why it's OK to shoot up Palestinian civilians then- and we're back to them being brown and having the wrong religion.

Hah, nobody out jargonic wankers me: SVBIED (Suicide Vehicle Based Improvised Explosive Device for anyone wondering), technically, assuming the driver wasn't going to try bailing or whatever. Though the nitpicking/ pedantry is kind of irrelevant since it clearly isn't a (S)VBIED at all. I'd be vaguely interested in how the Hasbara types tried justifying the driver doing a 3 point turn and heading away as SVBIED behaviour, but only vaguely. End of the day it all resolves down to "Israel is the good guy" and variations on the Narcissists' Creed anyway.

More children have been killed by the IDF in three weeks than in all other conflicts combined since 2019, per Save the Children. IDF attack on Reuters reporter in Lebanon was deliberate and followed established pattern, per RSF. Also deliberate campaign to target journalists- and their families- in Gaza. IDF says to evacuate along road, sticks tank there and fires at civilian vehicles, geoconfirmed by BBC. Not surprising they wanted to keep the phone/ internet blackout going really. Guess we won't get the moral outrage for the brown people with funny religions though, unlike similar events in Ukraine which got played over and over. More likely to get told how sad it made the Israeli crew feel, how they were forced into it and how that makes it a Hamas war crime. IDF is most moral army in the world and everyone should unite to fight the barbarians, says modern day Gaiseric.

Media are grumpy at the refereeing. Personally I agreed with just about every decision which is way more than usual and think the media are whining. Wasn't surprised Cane got a red, wasn't surprised Kolisi got a yellow. It was a close match, but I'd struggle to call it a good one partly due to the rain. ABs did a lot better than I expected at the start of the tournament and could easily have won with a bit of luck, but thems the breaks.

That sums up half the MoD's assessments. Reduced to fighting with shovels and the 'counter' offensive failing due to grass... their SM guys aren't going to be mentioned in the same breath with Clausewitz et al any time soon.

For anyone wanting to visualise it CNN has some handy satellite before/ after comparisons. They're a couple of days old now though.

Right hand drive truck on right hand side of the motorway? Would be fun getting it back onto the correct side.

In the town itself it's probably lack of systems as well. You're not going to be towing in any m777s along that road, nor unarmoured SPG/H systems. Which leaves tanks and the relatively few SPGs with decent armour and speed- which will still constantly be within ATGM range let alone artillery, lancets and commercial drones. Since you're in a ~6km deep bottleneck the enemy artillery will always outrange your equivalents too, except for small mortars and the like. They can fire at your front from 6km behind the rest of the front line, you can't do the same. Ukrainians seem to love fighting in bottlenecks for some reason. Loved it in 2014/5 at Ilovaesk and Debaltseve, loved it at Bakhmut, loved it in Avdivka. Love it so much they even created their own around Verbove. In all the early three they should have retreated far earlier than they did too.

Sounds pretty much exactly like the 'counter' offensive. Right down to the 'pointless' flag planting. Attacking prepared positions is hard for both sides, more news at ten.

WoT S2E8 On the positive side, it's far better than the previous season's finale, despite my multitude of complaints. On the negative side that's largely because of just how bad s1e8 was. Worst episode of the 8, though it's always hard to judge season finales fairly. Series negatives: number 1 by far is the persistent lack of care to detail and what changes actually mean going forward, plus the related issue of all the nonsensical drama. Nothing seems to have been learnt from GoT either, where that sort of thing ended up collapsing the series into a complete thematic and narrative mess. The OC additions are not compelling and time could have been far better spent elsewhere. They want to use iconic book moments but don't want to do the work to make them work. It's far too much the Egwene and Moiraine show. Positives: far better overall than last season despite that and I'd go so far as to say I more or less enjoyed most of it despite the fristration. Lanfear and Ishamael are good, though Lanfear is always exactly as 'evil' as the plot requires. The acting is pretty much all good, most of the sets are a vast improvement and it certainly doesn't look like Xena despite the massive budget most of the time, unlike S1. The scripting in terms of words said is also generally fine, it's just the context of them which is too often bad. They really, really, have to work on the plotting and planning, and maybe just maybe cut out some of the fanboying for pet characters. Just a tad, lest we get a million jokes about renaming the 3rd book The Egwene Reborn. Will I watch S3? Probably, at least if they give me another free trial period for it. Actually paying might be a stretch.

It's genius really. Get rid of the people you don't want, get them and another bunch of people you don't like to kill each other, and all after those two groups got on relatively well for 1500 years. Then 80 years later you can pat yourself on the back and proclaim how tolerant and progressive you were and how you can't understand why people don't like you, must be hatred of your freedoms not that you gave land where people were already living to another bunch of people. You can also say how Jews and Muslims have always hated each other, so it was all inevitable and Jews needed a homeland to escape Muslim persecution.

The books also had a cliffhanger ending that lasted 3+ (real life) years when a building fell on Mat and he then wasn't in the next book at all... It isn't really the cliffhangers that are the problem, it's that such events too often don't spring organically from the plot. I've had this problem with a bunch of TV shows recently where they just want maximum drama and think it doesn't matter how little sense the set up makes to get it.

WoT S2Ep6&7 TLDR: they're just about OK, in isolation. I have seen Ep8, and it as with S1's it makes the season retroactively worse though to nowhere near as great an extent. Indeed while I couldn't in good heart recommend the first 7 episodes I don't feel either affronted by them or that I wasted my time watching them. By this point there's no getting around the plotting again being distinctly and obviously wobbly in places though. The plot weaves as the plot wills, I guess, but it would be nice if the plot weaved because the characters and events were consistent instead. General observation: there's an infamous clip of a late Dr Who (original) episode where Sylvester McCoy as The Doctor decides to climb out a window and stand on a ledge for no discernible reason except to create a 'cliffhanger' ending. The equivalent happens all the time on this show.

They did the same to their Jewish population as well. Irony being that a lot of them went to Muslim countries since they were more tolerant. Still pretty relevant, since Israel is clearly trying to remove Palestinian Christians just as much as Muslims hence their systematic bombing of churches as well as mosques. (actually a pretty good example of history based propaganda too: a lot of sources say many of the Jews expelled from Spain went to 'Greece', which didn't exist for another 300 years. They went to the Ottoman Empire, but it sounds better saying 'Greece and Italy' since they're Christians and show how tolerant Christianity 'really' is. Of course, England and France had already expelled their Jews to steal their money/ cancel loans...)

It's clearly an upper case K rather than a lower case k though. Upper case K --> Kelvin, or absolute temperature so it's Good Guy Intel accurately representing that their chips run at 2+ times the surface temperature of the sun. (Some might say it's that way because they just use all caps because they want to shout about how good their chips are and it actually is the abbreviation for kilo. To short circuit any such discussion may I point out first that the chips are lower case i5/7? Checkmate, Inteltheists)