Zoraptor

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.

Khorasan, not Kazakhstan. It's still far more likely to be Wilayat Kavkaz (ie Caucasus, supposedly one gunman has been captured and is Ingush); ISIS Khorasan is... well, not consistently credible at best. Their shtick is claiming everything and anything to get attention. The American warning was for an imminent threat (next 48 hours), on March 7th, more than two weeks ago. That was also the day Russia took out an ISIS cell, so it's likely the intelligence was acted on. Want to check if there was a more recent warning? Be my guest, but spoiler, there wasn't. per below John Kirby, they had no specific information to share about this attack. Source is direct from - and I'm fairly confident this isn't a pro Russian source, but you never know, could be wrong- the US Presidential Website Whitehouse.gov. Not exactly brilliant reporting, but sadly unsurprising that Bruce would take it completely at face value and draw an incorrect conclusion.

Ajnad al Kavkaz is fighting for Ukraine, and they'd be one of the more likely groups to have carried it out. Not the likeliest though, that'd probably be a domestic/ semi domestic Viliyat Kavkaz (ISIS, and they have claimed it, for what that is worth) offshoot- though AaK were affiliated with them at one point via the predecessor Caucasus Emirate. There are a few others fighting for Ukraine who are lesser chances (eg Sheikh Mansur and Dyodar Dudayev btns), but AaK is the most extremist and was best buds with Al Qaeda in Syria/ Jabhat al Nusra as well, so aren't exactly averse to a bit terrorism.

Bruce doing his best to bring the full Hasbara experience to the forums. Typical French, complain that the resolution was too weak on Rafah and sound like they were extremely unhappy with it, but vote yes anyway.

And the random shelling of Belgorod. One of their more effective looking strikes, the HES especially looks pretty totalled. Also, some sort of terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall though no indications it's linked to Ukraine. Probably predictable due to Biden wanting to be re-elected more than anything else. Gas prices influence votes, and it wasn't coincidence Biden went off to Saudi to ask for them to knock out the spigots before the midterms.

I can't remember any issues with resting/ healing but I didn't like the loot/ experience system being linked as there was just far too much trivial loot. Encased was clearly a very high effort game, though they'd equally obviously done certain things one way because that was different from how others had done them. Which would be great, if the old way wasn't done as it was for a good reason.

The last episode/ cliffhanger of Star Trek Strange New Worlds S2 was pretty close to/ derivative of Aliens and one of the 1st season (Ep9 "All Those Who Wander", apparently) pretty derivative of Alien; using Gorn instead of the Aliens. They were both good overall, or excellent for nuTrek.

Wasteland 2 may actually have more combat than W3. IIRC it's a lot easier to breeze through the trivial ones than in W3 though, so it feels like less. Stretch the common definition of post apocalyptic a bit and there's the Colony Ship RPG. Fits the bill otherwise (caveat: party size is dependent on the main character's stats/ traits).

Funny thing about Hamas stopping elections in Gaza is that there haven't been any elections in the West Bank, either. Easy to forget that though, since the people and media who usually evangelise about Middle East Democracy are... somewhat quiet about that fact. (Hamas would actually love elections since they'd win them easily, it's Fatah that desperately doesn't want them- and ironically, given the 'voted in Hamas' justification, support for Hamas in the WB is roughly twice that in Gaza. Mahmoud Abbas and by extension Fatah are seen as Quislings, and Abbas personally has statistically near impossible support, almost late stage Frankie Hollande level- one (1) percent. Fatah's is a bit better, especially without Abbas, but not that much)

Good news everyone, Israel is planning on putting the 1.2 (or 1.4 depending on source) million people in Rafah into 'Humanitarian Islands*'. How can anyone object to that? Sadly some do though, as with the latest incident of a Jollycopter donating Rainbow Projectiles to another group of 'people' waiting for 'aid' to be 'delivered'. They should be thanking the IDF for trying to do its bit to prevent obesity and overpopulation... *some might think there's a preexisting term for Concentrating civilian population into Camps, but I can't quite put my finger on what that term is.

The White Rex group (Russian Volunteer Corps) is dodgy in terms of being neo nazi, all of them are dodgy in terms of being Russian. Last time around we got a lot of Poles and Ukrainians appearing as Russians in their videos, and the propaganda videos this time around have featured such classic telltales as using the Ukrainian rather than Russian terms for Kursk and Belgorod- not exactly what you'd expect from an actual Russian Patriot in the RDK/RVC which is what he claimed to be. Not at all surprising, it'd be like the Russians arming a bunch of Ukrainians from Lviv and staging an incursion. No way the Russians would trust them enough to arm them so they'd be a bunch of Russians doing Ukrainian accents like they were auditioning for 'ривіт 'ривіт. If it's all to do with the Russian elections- pretty likely- we'll have maybe three more days then it will quieten down again.

Pressing also makes sure Ukraine can't rotate troops or accumulate resources for counterattacks or to maintain a reserve. At the moment it's Rasputitsa (well, sure looks it at least)--> little or no progress until it dries out, but you can certainly keep the pressure up. The AA losses are definitely due to the ever increasing Russian use of UMPK (Russian version of JDAM). The artillery discrepancy may be bad, but at least that's 'only' at the sort of 8-12kg of explosive per shell level, and you can make decent fortifications resistant to that. 100 odd FAB250/500/1500 per day at 150/350/ 900 kg of TNT equivalent versus a handful from Ukraine is not sustainable and will make a mess of any system of fortifications. That has to be countered, and the only thing with enough range to counter that are S-300 and Patriot, and S-300 would have to be practically on the front line to do so. The issue for Ukraine if they were Patriots is that they're bunched and were there long enough for an Iskander (and unlike others such as the HiMARS it actually looks like Iskander rather than Tornado) to hit them. They have to take some risks with them.

Looks probable that some Patriot launchers got got yesterday. While identified as S-300 they look a lot more like Patriots in transit than S-300 and there isn't anything else they could be apart from those two. The hits are definite, and they were definitely not decoys, maybe 70/30 that they were Patriots. Which is a lot better than most of the claimed hits. That isn't lecturing. We had plenty of equivalent theories when Jacinda Ardern was in power here of her imminently selling out the country- which no doubt foreigners regarded as being, hmm, a bit funny too. Yet their proponents thought were imminent and realistic. And yeah, it's kind of crappy to go at it this way because it's clearly something you genuinely feel strongly about but... well. If you're (collectively or individually) really, really worried about Hungary deciding to invade the last thing you (collectively) should have been doing is sending arms off to Ukraine instead of retaining them against the Magyar Menace. The obvious hyperbole of comparing Slovakia to Belarus- we are both agreed you won't be joining the Union State, I presume- really doesn't help with anything else either. (As I recall, you were about as convinced as me that Russia wouldn't invade in 2022; I doubt the act of making a prediction influences things either way. Doesn't matter anyway, the only thing certain if you make predictions about future events is that you will get things wrong. I'm certainly happy to go on the record that you won't get invaded by Hungary any time soon though, whether it's Fico in charge or not)

Somewhat against my better judgement... Yes, as close as Belarus. Slovakia going to sign up to the Union State then? Because that's how close Belarus is. That's getting beyond mere hyperbole and heading into ultrabole territory. Rest easy though, I'm sure as a country of Europe you could expect the same level of support against Hungarian invasion (more ultrabole) as that other non NATO Euro country Ukraine has got against its invader. After all, the Principles of Europe, the west and all that is good and righteous in the world would be at stake again, yes. Really though, if a majority of people wanted to leave NATO in a referendum where's the problem and what would you do to stop it? Roll the T-54s Abrams and Leos in? Might need a catchy name to sell it like, hmm, Bratislava Spring? Or you could accept that the majority of people wanted to leave and let them even if you disagreed personally.

At the risk of defending Abrams a bit more than is really warranted* 'somehow Palpatine returned' as done in RoS does actually have prior precedent in the SW universe, to whit Dark Empire (1992 comic). Palpatine's return there is near identical to the one in RoS, ie somehow his 'essence' takes over a clone, and there are several other similarities too. Indeed that comic has had quite a lot of elements from it adapted into Disney canon in general (I think Boba Fett's survival as shown in the Disney TV series is first shown in DE, but I'm not 100% certain of it and can't be bothered checking; also fairly sure it was one of the few comics it's known that George Lucas actually read). *especially since it means he's even more derivative than TFA made him look in the first place

That's the crucial difference with most other instances of bad writing; Abrams got written into a corner by someone else, not himself, and had to make the best of a bad situation. It's doubtful even a genuinely good writer (which Abrams is far from, though he certainly isn't awful either) could have extricated themselves from that situation seamlessly. Ultimately not even Johnson's fault, that blame lies with the extraordinarily slack supervision/ oversight/ planning of LucasArts/ Disney with respect to their billion dollar franchise. In contrast many other much derided examples of bad writing were entirely the writers' fault. Classic example probably being Euron's infamous dragon ambush in GoT S8 even more so than Dany going bonkers because of bells or Charles Xavier becoming king. Made no sense, required Dany to be a drooling moron who'd forgotten about the Iron Fleet (despite them being mentioned two? episodes earlier), needed her and her dragons to be blind and not notice an entire fleet and used a deus ex machina laser designated ballista which was ineffective both later and earlier in the series. At least Captain Cold and his javelin (and Palpatine, as mentioned) were supernatural.

You're not really independent if you're not allowed your own foreign policy. (Ironically the person doing the most damage to EU foreign policy consistency at the moment is arguably von der Leyen. The EU has a foreign minister and it isn't her, yet she toodles off to Israel to shake hands with Bibi against Borrell's advice. Why would anyone pay any attention to him now?) Zelensky awards SF soldiers at Odessa port, they're hit after he leaves. Probably better for them than another flag planting gimmick that ends in 80% casualties at least. Don't think it's coincidence Russia released footage of other meetings Zelensky has had with Russian drones watching him, obvious implication is that if they wanted to target him they could. Anyone who thinks he survived due to extraordinary Ukrainian competence was... somewhat hopeful, even without Naftali Bennet's confirmation.

Can't be decoys, only Russian systems fall for them. Dunno about there being no complaints about the Su-34 thing from Russians, mostly they seem to just refer everyone to FighterBomber (who's just a tad annoyed at constantly being asked about it, and hasn't confirmed any lost Su-34 recently) and spam videos of continuing FAB arrivals. When it comes down to it the only evidence Ukraine has provided is a video of some burnt grass whose original was uploaded days before the date of the shootdown they claimed from it and saying that the 'skies were clear' for the first time which is kind of disproved by the FAB videos. So there isn't much to actively refute; it mostly comes down to the truthiness level an individual associates with the Ukrainian MoD.

Some... rather odd translation choices in the Russian transcription. You'd think they'd take some pains to translate Sukhoi 24 properly at least rather than having chatgpt or the VK equivalent make a hash of it ('limiting factor is 24 shells/ 24 munitions' -->--> 'limiting factor is Sukhoi 24'). Certainly not as damning as the Russians are trying to make out, though equally not as innocent as others are making it. I did rather like the ~"The recording is Russian Propaganda!! but probably genuine" headline we got out of it though.

If that were the case it would likely be the reasoning in both respects. Though at that point we'd likely have to talk about things bilaterally rather than as NATO since it's clear that some members won't support it being troops sent under direct NATO command. Hence all the bilateral defence agreements Zelensky has been signing recently.

French mercenaries being there is absolutely definite. That isn't really an issue though, so long as they're not employees of the French State. Or at least maintain some plausible deniability about the whole thing. I don't think many people who are paying attention would be- at all- surprised to find NATO special forces present. You're just meant to pretend that they're not, and you're especially meant to pretend they're not doing things like entering targeting information.

That is the problem, what they're doing there. Don't need them to transport the missile, don't need them to attach it to the plane. OTOH, someone does have to put in the targeting information. SCALP/ Storm Shadow are flight plan based, so it's not a trivial task, and they're not supposed to be used outside of Ukraine. Plenty of reason to suspect that's what they're doing by elimination, because what else would call for boots on the ground and get the French and Brits upset when it's revealed? It's also unfortunate timing with Macron's recent comments about sending in the troops. Or to put it another way, imagine if a UK warship got sunk by the Houthis and the Russians were found to be not just supplying the P-800 used, nor just giving them satellite information, but were entering the targeting information. New Zealand may be near antipodal to London but even we would be deafened by the outraged squealing and demands for retaliation and invocation of Article 5 for the obvious Act of War. If it were a French ship we'd probably have a surreptitious giggle about the whole thing, given who committed the only act of international terrorism to occur here to that time.

The first Ukrainian Abrams has been fairly comprehensively destroyed. By what who knows, since the footage seems to have been shot by a potato then captured off the screen by a second potato. Identifiable and shown well and truly on fire though.

Kind of classic that. Very little coverage of it, and some pretty choice quotes too. "It is tragic to see the hate and incitement toward Israel expressed in such a horrific way". Indeed; my heart bleeds the River Jordan for you, poor Israeli consul. Perhaps the most moral army in the world could stop broiling people with White Phosphorus some time if you hate people getting burnt so much? No? Didn't think so. Also, praise the lord, the police chief confirmed the consulate was safe.. ...now try imagining Reuters' coverage of Bouazizi including a statement that "It is tragic to see the hate and incitement towards Ben Ali expressed in such a horrific way" from the local governor and the police chief confirming the statue he did it under was thankfully undamaged. Not quite sure what the equivalent of shoehorning in a mention of October 7th is though.

Most recent example of (politically effective) self immolation was the guy in Tunisia (Muhammed Bouazizi) who ended up bringing down Ben Ali and, uh, sparked the Arab Spring. Apart from that probably the most famous example was Duc (and other monks) in South Vietnam bringing down Diem just prior to the Vietnam War really kicking off. Also traditional practice in some places eg Sati in India, though you have to wonder how keen the women were as opposed to their relatives not wanting to have to look after them.