Zoraptor

Yes indeed. There really isn't a 'moral' way to use LLM's. Even non commercial use has the environmental and other* issues. Sadly typical that it's allowed/ legal in the first place really. If you or I ignore copyright, we get in trouble. If some multi billion dollar corp does, it's fine. Indeed, many of the same corporations flagrantly stealing** other people's work for profit are the same ones that lobbied for harsh copyright and patent rules, and litigate stridently under their aegis. When it's their IPs being violated, at least. Doesn't help that the enforcement companies have absolutely no balls either. They'll happily go after some store playing commercial radio for royalties due, but when an 'AI' vendor hoovers it all up for commercial repackaging... crickets. Just a bit too hard for them, intimidating Meta/ MS/ OpenAI/ Musk's lawyers instead of Archie's Burger's owner operator, I guess. *flabbers still well and truly ghasted that our government here thinks 10% of our electricity supply for up to 50 (fifty) jobs at an AI centre is a good investment. It's going to drive up electricity prices for everyone else, for basically no benefit. Except, perhaps, some politicians post political career board prospects. **it isn't of course, it's copyright infringement, but since many of the same corps sponsored those obnoxious "you wouldn't download a car!!!" type ads it's fair game to incorrectly use it back at them

That's kind of obligatory, with The Witcher being licensed. ie how Sapkowski wrote the source material and who Sapkowski is meant it was always going to be highly slavic. If you didn't want that you'd not have licensed it in the first place. Pre Witcher 3 success at least, to take aspects of the TV series into account. Of course it is self reinforcing, with CDPR being Polish as well. (Technically of course they could have gone with some other more generic western aesthetic but that would have been, not to put too fine a point on it, stupid)

While often referred to as a blockade, it's not technically a proper big B Blockade. A Blockade has to be a physical, well, block. ie have ships or whatever enforcing it. The US embargo on Cuba is enforced by, for example, threatening Mexico with tariffs if they continued supply or invading Venezuela, rather than physically interdicting its tankers. Cuba was under Blockade (and even then they avoided making it official and using the actual term since it is automatically an Act of War) during the Missile Crisis. That at least in theory had ships going to Cuba inspected for listed items such as missile components.

The US claim was that two destroyers transited the Strait (some sources have them immediately reversing course and leaving, which may be where the confusion arises). Centcom shared a photo of it*. Sad to see that US destroyers can only afford a Potatomatic 1200 for their propaganda shots... May be the al-salamah islands in the background, which are in the middle (east-west wise) of the Strait. If so the destroyer(s) would not be in the shipping lanes though, but hugging the Omani/ Emirati coast about 10km further south. Which might technically count as a transit, but it's unlikely you're going to get supertankers or bulk carriers taking the same route. Haven't seen anyone geolocate it, but my very quick and not overly confident estimate would be here(ish) looking roughly north. *For those who aren't habitual users of preparation h Arabian Gulf = Persian Gulf much as Gulf of America = Gulf of Mexico.

Uno_reverse_card.jpg Guess he'd tried the decapitation strike part of Venezuela on Iran, now it's time to try the seizing ships part and see if it does any better.

Vance heading back home from Pakistan after failed peace talks with Iran. I hope the Iranian delegation thanked him for the effort at least.

Given Trump's obvious desire to add land to the US it would be ironic if he ended up giving land away instead for an Avignon equivalent. Pipelines are very vulnerable to attack. There's little doubt the Iranians could have hit the current trans Saudi pipeline had they wanted to. The infrastructure is also very vulnerable at each end, and much of the oil would still have to transit a contested Strait anyway, ie the Bab al Mandeb.

Supposedly, there's an Iranian 10 point plan floating about. Wouldn't be overly surprising if it were written by the Pakistani PM in the hope it works on both sides by osmosis. Otherwise looks like Trump hitting all his classics.

Personally, I thought Picard S3 fell apart near completely at the end. That's a flaw a lot of shows have though, and was far less a flaw than... well pretty much anything and everything in S1; where the plot (such as it was) fell to pieces well before the end. Maybe around TNG S2 sort of level for Picard S3 ; wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again, don't regret the time spent though. Now to something I do regret watching. Or do I? The new Robin Hood show- with Sean Bean as the sheriff. Does he die, or does he not? Until you watch (or look it up on wikipedia) who knows. I'd kind of actively avoided watching it, since the promos made it look awful. Watched the first episode to see how bad it was and ended up watching the whole thing. As expected, it felt rather like it was cobbled together from bits of other shows- and one presumes deliberately, a certain Fellowship of the Ring scene featuring Boromir- but was okay enough that I can be bothered writing something about it and given the dross a lot of shows put out in their first season. Indeed, I'd even go so far as saying it was enjoyable. Probably needs to decide whether it's going for the old Robin of Sherwood approach or something a bit more... Spartacus* and stick to one or the other. The Herne the Hunter analogue is a hot naked blonde, so it's somewhat less PG than the old series. OTOH, the violence is pretty Hercules/ Xena most of the time. Norman mail is about as useful as stormtrooper armour it seems. Pedant complaint: saxons converted to Christianity about 500 years before this is set, so christian vs pagan is a bit odd. Plus Henry d'Anjou (Henry II) and Eleanor d'Aquitaine were not Normans- it's in their names, to coin a phrase. Also, you can charge a walled town's gate successfully with cavalry, ho hum. There's certainly a lot to take issue with but I'm feeling generous. *also watched Spartacus: House of Ashur, which I outright enjoyed in a guilty pleasure sense. Plus it's always nice to see local actors having a great time dressing up and overacting. Slight departure from history in the last fifteen minutes or so, but made me lol so I'll allow it.

Come on guys, it's obvious what has happened. Trump has clearly consulted the Delphi of Oracle for advice, and been told that if he attacks Persia a great civilisation shall fall. He's just relaying that in his own inimitable style. It would also be extremely on brand for Trump to ask an ai for cool sounding quotes from the richest guys in history, then miss the lesson on hubris.

Terry Matalas took over as show runner He had some experience on old(ish) Trek- Voy and Enterprise- and ran the far better than it should have been 12 Monkeys TV show. While technically he ran S2 as well due to the shooting schedule he had limited influence, but had far more on S3, and it shows. (In slightly related news, the planned Mass Effect TV series has been sent back to the writing room to make it 'more appealing to non gamers'. Much like Halo was made more appealing, or The Witcher more appealing, or Wheel of Time more appealing, no doubt)

Australia has finally arrested someone (non whistle blower) involved in their SAS's Afghanistan war crimes, Ben Roberts-Smith. Probably going to try and claim now that his (failed) defamation case makes it too prejudicial for him to be tried. It would at least make his defamation suit make sense, though hubris is at least as likely.

Despite what Trump said he almost certainly meant pre-existing armed groups rather than the protesters. Remember all those rumours that the Kurds were going to imminently invade in the first week? It'd be 100% on brand for anyone Barzani affiliated like KDPI to take proffered money and arms then sit on their hands; even more so for PJAK having seen their sister organisation in Syria get shafted by the US less than a month earlier once their usefulness was done. While quite a lot of security forces died in the unrest as well as protesters there's no evidence that was from protesters being armed by outside forces.

You know he's serious since he used three exclamation marks.

That's probably the best evidence that the US thinks Iran has got their pilot (well, crewman) so far. Fits exactly with Trump's mentality that he'd want something for a swapsies.

Not at the point that it matters yet. Anything the Ukrainians could realistically offer- and what's listed is pretty close to what everyone says Ukraine has been offering- is not enough for the Russians to realistically accept. So things will continue. I'd be less than convinced that the main obstacles to peace would be Ukrainian soldiers though. It's not 2022, most of them are not volunteers, and a lot are not there voluntarily in any meaning of the term. If anything that makes it less likely that the more... pagan symbol enthusiast elements could decide to derail things. Politically it'd be very hard to win an election running on a realistic peace deal though since it would involve compromises that would annoy everyone.

A-10 crashed as well near Hormuz, albeit according to unnamed official. Seems to be being treated as genuine though. And really, the A-10 is a sitting duck in anything approaching contested airspace. Would be Classic Trump if it were shot down as well: proclaim the enemies' anti air as totally destroyed to the nation; proceed to lose 2 planes to it in the next 48 hours.

Hegseth more so, I'd say. Leavitt is probably next though if she doesn't end up 'quitting' due to her pregnancy. Trump seems to have decided that people not seeing the US as being the winningest side of a war ever is down to bad communications more than anything. Which is about the only reason I can think of for his speech yesterday; so the great communicator could show them how it's done (badly. It must be incredibly frustrating and difficult trying to run PR for a guy with a shambolic mish mash of concepts of plans and views that change every few hours). Gabbard, like Vance, clearly didn't support attacking Iran in the first place and has said the bare minimum. Those who opposed it are probably in a safer position than those who supported it at this point.

Some allowance made for the obvious losing of voice, but he certainly sounded drunk or similar. Really though, what was the point of that? It was the political equivalent of your 'outspoken' uncle having a rant after one too many Christmas sherries. Nothing new, nothing genuinely important and the only people who'd be impressed are people who are already impressed; everyone else verges from appalled to incredulous. At this point those impressed are likely to be the sort of person who'd applaud Trump eating a boiled egg because it's Trump doing it Be interesting to know if he was using a teleprompter or not. Guess he must have been in part since he wouldn't have had war lengths right (?, well they didn't seem miles off as they would have been if he was just making them up; also didn't mention Afghanistan there) but how on earth it was handled for all his weird digressions and circular sentences I don't know. Unless he actually sat down and wrote it all out, which seems... unlikely. I personally particularly liked him singling out all the Gulf states for praise for all their help, then very next sentence wondering why the Iranians were attacking them and saying that was proof of how dangerous they were. Good thing for him Trumpists aren't renowned for critical thinking.

If Trump really wants to leave NATO there are ways he can, irrespective of what the law says. Like invading Greenland or Canada. Invading a NATO member is a pretty effective way to destroy the alliance without having to do anything formal about it. Usually you'd think it's bluster to try and get them to help him out, but there has been an awful lot of very similar bluster from him in the past year(s). You might also have thought the issues with Iran might have tempered Trump's military adventurism, but it's Trump. If anything his self created crisis seems to have convinced him even more that the Euros are simply weak rather than not willing to bail him out of a pot of hot water he willingly jumped into. And the weak deserve to have their lunch money stolen. (Ultimately, it's the problem of von der Leyen, Rutte and pals completely misjudging things and folding like a napkin to every bit of early pressure. You might think you're 'building up credit' or similar by signing massively disadvantageous trade deals or financing Ukraine's weapons instead of the US or agreeing to up your military spending to ludicrous levels or agreeing to buy overpriced LNG but all evidence is Trump simply doesn't see the world that way. He sees you as a serf who should fight in his armies and be hung upside down and shaken to make sure they haven't got some coins hidden from the taxman. And of course as a serf, you don't really own anything except the stuff your lord lets you have...)

Iran will pretty much 100% blow it up themselves, if it looks like the US is going to seize it. At that point, why not. Hence the 'set american troops on fire' threat. That's the Russia 1812 comparison, Napoleon simply could not comprehend that the Russians would burn down Moscow to deny it to him and was convinced they'd negotiate. Indeed, he was convinced of that even after they'd burnt it down which is why he sat in the ruins for 4 weeks twiddling his thumbs. Blowing up desalinisation plants and power stations is certainly the easier option in the sense that it can be done and would have an effect. But even Trump would likely baulk at being remembered as the guy who depopulated the middle east out of pride. The best option/ approach would be to not be in this position in the first place. No good answers now, no one wants to bail him out, and Trump isn't handling it well. Best option may actually be to just declare victory and leave the mess to others (which as of now he seems to be suggesting; then again a few hours ago it was something different) and that is still an awful option.

Hard to see how that could be done. If you go by what the US claimed earlier it's mostly sitting under tons of rock, after all. Going to fly in some excavators and backhoes on a Globemaster you land on some back country Iranian road? Yes, that is answered in the article, but taking up to weeks to set up a temporary airstrip in the middle of Iran would seem to have one or two minor potential problems associated with it. Even if they don't think of Dien Bien Phu they could always think about Hostomel. And for below, Russia in 1812 or the USSR in 1941. Kharg Island makes more sense. Not much sense either, since it's near inevitable the Iranians would blow all the oil infrastructure up themselves if the US tried to seize it, and then it's just a very hot flat rock. (I actually wondered what had happened to Hegseth yesterday, since he seems to have disappeared. Then I saw an article saying that they seem to have given up on doing briefings about two weeks ago)

There is no border weirder than Oman and the UAE. Two Omani enclaves*, one with an Emirati enclave inside it. Whoever came up with that must have been taking the mick. The most likely scenario for Trump using a nuke is so he can claim he's 'destroyed' any Iranian nuclear material. By distributing it and a bonus amount over a large area of Iran, but still, it's Trump. Tactical nuke, not a strategic one. Plenty of people around who think they're fine [for their side] to use, and it's very likely Trump and Kegseth are two of them. Which is why it might be an actively good thing if Trump is bored. *as demanded of a true pedant: one is technically an exclave, since it borders the sea. Quoting myself as I forget to mention: also rather begs the question that if that AWACS is just 'damaged' what other stuff labelled as 'damaged' is, well, missing the equivalent of a third of its fuselage and all the equipment essential to its role. Labeling that as 'damaged' is actively damaging to PR, since it's very obviously destroyed to all practical purposes.

Another bunch of refueling planes and an AWACS (! total loss, couldn't have been done cleaner with a Ginzu) appear to have been hit at Prince Sultan Air Base by Iran. This is separate from the incident a while back where half a dozen were hit, and separate from the collision (or 'collision') that killed one of the plane's flight crew. That's as much as 10% of the total fleet out of action now, and even though they're being replaced a completely unsustainable rate of loss. (one might opine that it was highly incompetent leaving a dozen or so planes in a beautiful ordered formation on the tarmac after the experiences of Russia and Ukraine... but it probably isn't. If you don't have hardened shelters you don't have them; and they're big planes. Does make you wonder if a site as well defended as Prince Sultan is getting hit what other places are as well that we aren't seeing)

If Trump really is 'bored' by his war then at least the chance of him using nukes is at least reduced to negligible. He'd be more likely to just declare victory- for the howevermanyth time- and tacitly leave the mess to everyone else. Then invade Cuba; or Canada or Greenland. Given it's Trump those ors could easily be ands instead. If he decides to send in the troops there's a decent chance he'll take the inevitable fp drone videos of marines getting gibbed very personally* indeed. At that point things may get interesting. *not on behalf of the dead soldiers of course, but because it's politically embarrassing for him and will inflame both the pro and anti war sides of his voter base