Zoraptor

Ordered, finally. Some slight differences from what I planned due to still poor availability and fluctuating prices, but I'm pretty happy with it. R7/1700 Gigabyte Gaming 5 MB 16GB Corsair LPX 3200CL16 Asus 580RX (not the premium one) Crucial MX 500gig SSD Plus EVGA G2 550W and case which I already had. Decided on the Gaming 5 as it dropped hugely in price (actually cheaper than in the US, amazingly) and it has the far cheaper than 3200CL14 RAMs Corsair LPX on its QVL. Plus Taichi went up in price again, and I do want something that will last. ASUS 580 as it's just about the only one available, and I got a discount for it, Crucial MX because the 300p price went up 25% and the big speed difference has marginal practical effect. End cost was about the 1200USD (2000NZD, inc GST) equivalent I planned on and not bad value I think, given that most components are simply more expensive here. I'll probably do the assembly next weekend.

Supergirl being stronger is (supposedly at least) comic accurate. Plus the show is called Supergirl. Much like the Flash* she tends to get nerfed down to the power level of whichever villain she is fighting each week, so a solid win with minimal shenanigans is kind of refreshing. *run straight at the gorilla's shield, Barry! What can go wrong?

Arrow's finale was about as good as you can get from a show of its type. There were a few minor criticisms to be had- the villain was too smart ('see you on the boat' from the previous episode was a little indulgent) but well enough written and played that it didn't detract; and I fundamentally dislike that type of ending, plus there was a little too much to squeeze in to a commercial hour- but they're pretty minor. The whole season was excellent overall, a complete change from the previous season which was dreadful. Spartacus reunion in a Suicide Squad/ Rogues type program, please. Supergirl was OK. Liked it better/ more consistently overall than Flash's finale, though I didn't actually dislike the Flash finale, but it wasn't particularly memorable. The Girl Power stuff (more show less tell please, it is already called Supergirl after all) and politics (no one cares that the president can't be president?) is still cringey. Gotham... hasn't had its finale yet?

Flash Finale Spoilers.

The only group his father is known to have been part of (Feb 17 Martyr's Brigade) was fully supported by NATO in 2011 and labelled as moderate freedom fighters etc, helped the US during the Benghazi attack in 2012 and is paid by the (sort of) official Libyan government. LIFG is defunct, has been for some time, was supported by the west, and per the Beeb it seems he wasn't actually a member of it anyway. For what it is worth, the Feb17 Martyr's Brigade is far from the most islamist or radical group in Libya, but that really isn't saying much given the state of post intervention Libya. Lol at Fox news though, Al Qaeda and ISIS are salafi, but no mention of Saudi or Qatar which are just as much so? Ostrich, meet sand.

Yeah, it's definitely an integration issue, though exactly why is a bit of an open question. I more or less agree though. Part of it probably is the tendency to focus on everyone being a 'special snowflake' and then, conversely, on how bad immigrants/ muslims etc are; from different segments in society and which are not really consistent concepts and makes society as a whole look hypocritical. 1st gen immigrants also tend to have direct experience of where they came from and are (generally, not always) grateful to be in their new country instead, while 2nd gen people tend to both romanticise the old country and resent their new home if they don't get the opportunities they expect. Searching for a purpose also seems to be a major factor, many people go through a phase where they become an 'anarchist' or 'communist' or whatever instead of a jihadi, but it's much the same concept- the "Catcher in the Rye" inspired 'anarchist' killer was a meme before there were memes. Add to that all the money Saudi throws at getting their particularly retrograde subsect promoted everywhere (and equally much to stop in being seen as retrograde in media) plus the promise of everything being wonderful in the next life and you have the recipe for home grown terrorism.

If the current information is correct then venue security was irrelevant anyway, since the attack took place outside of the venue security checks, not inside. 2nd generation certainly seems to be far more common in these attacks than 1st gen immigrants. Most of the Brits who went off to fight for ISIS had absolutely typical British accents as well. That's why the group 'Jihadi John' led was known as the 'Beatles', because they sounded like what they were, 4 people from the north of England.

Game shipped 2.5 million copies per EA's quarterly report. That's specifically sold to retailers though, not sold through (ie not sold by the store to end users) and in places it's already being sold at discount which suggests sell through numbers are sluggish. OTOH it also does not include any digital sales on PC or the consoles' online stores. For perspective, DAO shipped 2.2 million and ME2 1.6 million, though it's easy enough to make and ship additional copies if you do undership the initial orders for a company like EA.

The guy on the left is Egypt's president Al-Sisi, he probably is embarrassed to share a globe with the other two. I'd forgive King Salman for looking a bit off, he's widely rumoured to have Alzheimer's Disease. Trump looks like prequel era Star Wars' Palpatine in a fat suit and wearing a ludicrous hair piece.

Pretty sure TNO is not missing an eye per se, since you start with a default eye equipped. But yeah, you are certainly able to replace it (and get the original modified by Ignus or Mebbeth as well, iirc). The main link between Ignus and Sion is that they share a particular theme/ philosophy which allows them to survive circumstances which ought to have left them both dead. I've swiped a couple of quotes from the relevant fan wikis to illustrate: "This incarnation was a brutal teacher who believed that suffering is a necessity for learning, and subjected the young Ignus to many torments in order to teach him to master fire" and "Rather than die, though, Sion found that by calling on his pain, anger, and hatred, he could rise from certain death and achieve immortality, at the cost of all-consuming agony". Of course, we don't know who if anyone taught Sion that (though if you're a female Exile Sion seems to have a bit of a crush on you...), but it's very close to Ignus being able to survive his linkage to the plane of fire due to TNO's teachings.

I quite liked Shannara, though I have no attachment to the books at all. Not a great fit it being on MTV though, especially since they insisted on very pretty people over those who can actually act- Manu B and John RD excepted, and Manu Bennet was basically playing Crixus/ Deathstroke, again- I'd be tempted to say that being turned into a tree made the worst offender's acting less wooden. Still, for a minute budget its special effects were pretty good in general, and it was a far less overt LotR rip off than expected. As for actors for TWitcher, who knows. Really depends on budget and where it will be shot as much as anything. It's all very good wanting __ for Geralt, but if they're shooting on a tiny budget then you're going to get Noname McUnknownson instead.

There's also Nihilus <--> Vhailor and Sion <--> Ignus as well as Atris <--> Trias (and Kreia <--> Ravel*). You can go for parallels on most of the other new party NPCs as well, though they're less direct, eg Atton <--> Morte. It is mostly the thematics though, which fit PST a lot better than the rather vanilla 'standard' Star Wars. Mask of the Betrayer also has the strong thematic parallels to PST, though with less of the direct parallels. *Kreia actually has a strong philosophical parallel to the EU now non canon character of Vergere though, even more so than to Ravel.

A lot of the leaks are coming from the 'Intelligence Community' though, and they aren't generally political appointees, apart from a few of the very top echelons. Some of them do supposedly come from political appointees but, well, anonymous sources again. You have to take the media's word both that they said what they said and that they are in the claimed (always nebulous, since anonymous) position. Without a way to validate it every single leak could be coming from the career people either in the WH or the IC, rather than political appointees. And you still have to assume that the leaks are accurate and not spun, altered or made up.

It will be interesting to see if Rouhani and Iran gets any real dividends for his relative moderation. Last time they had Khatami for 8 years, got nothing out of it, and then had 8 years of Ahmadinejad. Fact is, he probably wasn't- that's the default position and as always it's up to the person who asserts to prove if they think that it was Hillary with a .38 in a dark alley. And that they won't be able to prove as there's literally no proper evidence of it. Still, 'proving' that it was just a run of the mill murder with half truths and fallacies is both worse and hardly conducive to silencing conspiracy theories nor combating 'fake news'.

Fake News. (1) Assange said that Rich was the source, so there isn't no evidence of it. Whether you believe him or not is up to you, same as it's up to anyone whether to believe anonymous leaks. (2) his laptop would never contain emails to/from wikileaks, as that isn't how wikileaks works. (3) Negative proved: "subsequent reporting by NBC News and other outlets confirmed Rich was not communicating with the group". Wow, proving he never communicated with them, now that's an achievement. Not from an internet cafe? via VPN? via TOR? through someone else's or open WiFi? nor through any of the sub 100$ devices you can buy with cash and chuck after using? (4) "..the cyber security firm hired by the DNC to investigate the breach say those emails were stolen by Russian hackers". Yes. "The DNC, the FBI, every U.S. intelligence agency.." No. The only people to actually examine the DNC servers were the cyber security firm, confirmed by Comey. What a load of old bollocks. Fake News. (there are times I wish xenforo had marquee tags...)

No. It's almost certain he told them absolutely nothing they didn't already know or hadn't already inferred. It's highly unlikely Trump knew anything that wasn't already publicly known or couldn't easily be inferred, so couldn't give anything away. It's also kind of amusing, people in general said that McMaster had a great deal of integrity but when he comes out and categorically denies the WaPo story suddenly he's lying, not the 'anonymous source', who doesn't have to face any consequences for lying and can say literally anything. Same general thing happened to Comey actually, when he declined to prosecute Clinton he was a democrat stooge, when he reopened the investigation he was a republican stooge. Partisan politics destroys critical faculties and renders everyone a little bit more stupid. It also was not an Israeli spy they got the initial info from. Which is one more reason to disbelieve anon sources in general. (UK and US got the info, Israel does not share with the UK but Jordan does. They also have no strategic interest in stopping ISIS, quite the opposite, their continued existence is to Israel's benefit, hence the presence of ISIS and Al Qaeda territory next to the occupied Golan Heights and have far better targets for their very limited human intelligence sources. Electronic monitoring, fine, surveillance, fine, standing over palestinians inside Israel, OK. None apply here. Al Jazeera is definitely right, it was Jordan's spy. All the talk of Israel is either deliberate misdirection to obfuscate the damaging info- ironically, which all publicly comes from the leaker, not Trump- or someone making stuff up for the lulz)

Flash penultimate episode was again typical for S3 Both Legends and Arrow have been better this year. Actually, Arrow S5 has been very good even without the comparison to a weak Flash season, and Legends was great for the sort of tongue in cheek fun Flash used to do (and to be fair, did do well last week).

That is actually one of the few Bioware set pieces that I'd (almost) unequivocally praise. Credit where due, for once they didn't pull their punches on dark side/ evil options. I'd have to admit to liking Mission though. If only you could have got big Z to throttle Carth instead, but no, he's got less courage than a 14 year old girl and just runs off.

And McMaster and a Russian photographer for some of the time, at least. Putin trolls beautifully. Everything from releasing the meeting pictures to offering a transcript is designed to get knees jerking through desks. And the funny thing is whatever he may or may not have done to 'subvert democracy' (lol) the US itself is doing a far, far better job than he could ever have imagined.

Why does anyone need another Witcher TV series when we already have the televisual masterpiece that is The Hexer?

Threadripper and Epyc? OK, you need names you can trademark but... The products themselves look great and threadripper looks better than Intel's enthusiast offerings on nearly every level, shame there was no real info on consumer level Vega though.

The spin off Battlefields have not gone well for the most part and recently, but the main franchise ones have all done well. They're not universally loved of course, but then nothing is. I still reckon they'll try a 'genuine' Mass Effect shooter game based on Battlefield at some point. And all this time I thought I was the only one annoyed by that. A lot of people dislike it- I've usually seen it described as a poor quality attempt to mimic Joss Whedon's humour. That sort of humour relies very much on having well written and well liked (in the appreciation sense, not necessarily 'nice') characters though, if you don't like the characters you tend to end up wishing they and all their 'charming' quirks would be fired into a sun.

Any F4-3200C14D-16GTZ_ TridentZ models should work. GSkill themselves have recommended the F4-3200C14D-16GTZR model specifically, but that's just an RGB version of the base model. I'd presume that Ganrich specifically got F4-3200C14D-16GTZKW since it's the black and white model and would match the Taichi colour scheme best, but I'd stand to be corrected on that.

There have been more than a few stories about McCain not being a model pilot and being bailed out by daddy though, and from sources other than RS. While some can be dismissed as at best highly unlikely- like him being responsible for the Forrestal fire- his early record was outright atrocious and included crashing three aircraft due to either inattention or outright hot dogging. While I would not claim expertise on the matter I find it hard to believe anyone without McCain's family connections would still be employed after that record. Still, 2000 era politician McCain was fine until Rove drove him bonkers. 2008+ McCain though, dreadful. While the story of him being pictured with Baghdadi is incorrect he did visit the 'FSA' and have his picture taken with multiple guys who became senior ISIS and Al Qaeda leaders, and the guy who was misidentified as Baghdadi is currently an Al Nusra leader. And his talking points on foreign policy uniformly come straight out of either Riyadh or west Jerusalem. Yeah, that's certainly the most believable general reason, and the main reason I think it's a beat up rather than genuine intelligence concerns. The most believable specific reason is still that I cannot think of a scenario where information on the laptop plot would actually compromise anything more than the already available info. (Indie article Meshugger linked is wrong though, source was not Israel. Indeed, chaos in Syria is a big plus for Israel and they have actively helped both (!) the ISIS pocket on the border of their occupied section of the Golan Heights and the Al Qaeda/ Al Nusra one, however counter intuitive that may seem. Source was almost certainly Jordan)

The Sims is an entire division at EA, equivalent to all their sports games put together. It's successful. The Battlefield franchise is certainly also successful. Whether you like them as games is subjective, but then whether you like their sports games is also subjective.