Zoraptor

Personally, I'd be voting out if I were voting- but I fully expect stay to win. That their campaign has been so unremittingly negative says as much as needs saying about how rubbish the status quo is, but status quo is certainly the safe choice.

Epidemiology (basically medical population statistics) requires examination of gun data to do properly and gun injuries is also a health issue. CDC is responsible for both epidemiology and more general "health threats" (direct quote) than just 'disease', and despite its name. Theoretically at least good statistical analysis leads to unbiased information and hence informed decision making; theoretically. In most other countries that sort of public research would be done by the Ministry of Health or similar, which is more appropriately/ less narrowly named.

Massive counteroffensive with like 2 tanks and with both sides' forces numbering maybe a thousand. Not that the government wasn't embarrassing in their attempt to get Raqqa and that it wasn't a stupid idea on a fundamental level, but a few Russian helicopters would make a real mess of the ISIS counter attacks much as they did in Palmyra and by all reports not a single one has turned up.

No, they're not required to- official sales numbers are usually released as PR, if they are at all. They do have to publicly disclose certain information as public companies but it's usually aggregate info, specific details are considered commercially sensitive. You can actually download most of the big games companies' annual or quarterly reports to read and only a fraction of their games even get mentioned specifically let alone have any sales numbers.

There were a fair few articles when it was removed a few weeks ago, eg PC Gamer. The Steamspy notice should definitely say removed at the request of the publisher though. It's probably related to Paradox going public and not wanting their new shareholders to get unvetted independent information more than any 'inaccuracy' though. Steamspy is generally fairly accurate as their methodology is robust, there's no reason for Paradox games to be special snowflakes whose numbers are persistently wrong.

Bit weird how many Scandinavian entities there are in there- there are a fair few Norwegian ones as well as Swedish. The Gulf ones were pretty much as expected, having Norway's government in the same tier as Saudi, not so much. (Neither are quite as odd as Michael Schumacher contributing, let alone so much. Unless there's a different Michael Schumacher who is head of JP Morgan Chase or something)

Surely the pigs would vote out, since that way it would be Dave that is well and truly asterisked this time? (Suppose I could work in an allusion to 'Animal Farm' to counter 'Lord of the Flies', but lazy)

More DNC/ Hillary hax docs released. Pretty much zero doubt that it's genuine at this point, ain't nobody going to fake that number of documents, plus no one seems to be claiming that it's fake just that the hacker is 'Russian'.

eyyyy That seem bit failed study. Because data pointed towards Clinton winning over Sanders. Even I was able to predict Clinton most likely taking nomination based on poll and vote data in early March. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/85040-us-elections-2016/page-10?do=findComment&comment=1786341 But of course there is always possible that poll data from all polling sources was fraudulent. And that there was country wide conspiracy in Democratic primaries, with thousands of participants. Exit polls are generally reliable, at least in 'safely' democratic countries where you don't have the po-po's eavesdropping for wrongthink. Phone polls aren't necessarily- you can stuff up the weightings, oversample groups that end up not voting much (eg young people; which is what happened in the UK where the polls were miles off) not use or misuse cell phones so exclude many young people or sample people who won't vote, about every 20th poll is statistically rogue by definition etc etc. Exit polls though, unless someone turns up to basically troll you know that they don't merely say that they voted, you know that they have voted. There are still inaccuracies and potential biases, they could still lie because they're embarrassed about voting Hillary (though that would say something in itself) or refuse to answer questions etc but then they can lie or refuse to answer on the phone, too, so phone polling has the same biases, plus more. If you have a phone poll and an exit poll, and if both are properly conducted then the exit poll is fundamentally the more accurate of the two.

I think Dorne epitomises the TV show's problems. The equivalent part of the books was not well received and elements of it (Darkstar, he's of the night, r00fles) were pretty cringeworthy. Show has managed to make it look like the height of tight, believable plotting and characterisation. At least we got the 'fire and blood' speech and promise of better to come from Doran as pay off in the books, in the show the plot line was taken out behind the wood shed and dispatched summarily, excluding perhaps the single most ridiculed part of the show in the Sand Snakes. That may have been a good thing given how poorly executed (heh) the plot was but it looks clumsy at best given how much time was wasted in Dorne last season. I still think we'll get Manderly eventually for the same reasons I did previous- the Freys have to be dealt with and going full Mrs Lovett on them has shock attraction. Maybe Jon will send Davos to visit them and we'll get the 'full' Davos/ Manderly plotline, just delayed and with little logic since the Boltons aren't a factor any more. But it's the sort of thing that should be a slow burn and not randomly appear an episode or two before it becomes relevant- introduce Manderly, have Davos meet him, have some Freys visit. Doesn't take much preparation. And really, the battle would have made so much more sense if it had been Manderly, a (more or less) local guy who Ramsay was expecting to turn up with his army as an ally, instead of Petyr 'mass teleportation' Baelish who can apparently avoid Bolton scouts and supply his army etc despite not being local in any way. It would also have the added value of being how Ramsay won Winterfell in the first place, by stabbing someone who expected him as an ally (General Sideburns) in the back. You could even retain feeding him to the dogs if you wanted to.

Yep. I think India was the example I heard being suggested as a post brexit trade target that would be hard to impossible under the EU. It's also kind of telling who is supporting the stay side- basically all the status quo corporates who have been lobbying extensively for deals like TTIP in Brussels. The small business side is far more divided. Then again, I'd pretty much definitely be voting leave if I were still in the UK.

Well, that clears up the ISIS link, in that there isn't one and the fealty is entirely self declared. A true Caliphate follower would surely pledge to 'Caliph Ibrahim', not some 'Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi' bloke... Pretty moronic redacting the transcript in the first place though. It's not like anyone with two brain cells couldn't guess instantly what the redactions were, and that they'd get unredacted real quick.

I don't really like the Cannae comparisons. Sure, it's a shorthand reference but Cannae was genius because of the numerical imbalance, remove that and it's 'just' an encirclement/ double envelopment. Which is far, far more common since a larger army 'naturally' outflanks a smaller one by simple dint of being larger. Mainly though, a comparison to Jon or Ramsay would be insulting to L. Aemilius Paulus or G. Terentius Varro, let alone Hannibal. Both bastards were abject morons, at least Varro had a plan based on the little that worked at Trebia and Trasimene and was fighting one of the greatest of all time. Of all time!

That works fine in an "'infinite' expansion'" situation like the industrial revolution, not so much in the current situation. In this situation they'd be illegal jobs they got in a lot of cases; underpaid, no job security, prone to exploitation and depressing the local labour market even more- worse, those conditions would bleed through to the legitimate workforce as well since you could always replace that pesky entitled citizen with some immigrant who has literally no option but take what is offered or... starve, be expelled, turn to crime or whatever the end game is for a no social program system. We already have a situation here where a lot of workers are imported for generally quite unskilled jobs (fruit picking, agriculture, sheesh even waiters plus perhaps the worst example, fishing where outright slavery sometimes happens) which the internal unemployed could easily do. Why? Because the imported workers will accept really bad- or dodgy as- conditions and there's a lot of nudge nudge wink wink exploitation like employers renting accommodation to their imported workers at multi 100% mark ups, where an actual citizen could easily complain about it as being 'extortion' but all the imported worker would get is their salary withheld to defray the cost of the flight home or not employed in the first place. Thing is, immigration is actually great. If you have a shortage of skilled workers you can fix it quicker than X years of training can, and the inflow of new ideas and concepts is crucial to a healthy as opposed to ossified society. But it is a balance. It's not great when we import all of Fiji's nurses while all ours go to Switzerland, the UAE and Qatar because our pay is so low but higher than Fiji's, not great for us since we subsidise the education of our nurses and not great for Fiji as, well, where do they get their nurses from once we've nicked theirs? But there's absolutely no forward planning except of the most inane kind to make sure that we have enough carpenters or whatever we're short of this week. But cutting off social programs is not the answer to problems with immigration because it will exacerbate some of the underlying problems such as outright crime and illegal work and not really solve anything, it will just shift the costs elsewhere. Solving it requires a proper approach that limits numbers to those which are maximally beneficial for the country, with room for legitimate humanitarian cases; that is not exploitable and which does not make new immigrants prey to the unscrupulous who would use and discard them in an unending chain. And it all has to be enforceable, and enforced. Blunt force approaches appeal because they are simple and make an emotive point, that's their strength but in practical regards it's also their weakness. No subtlety nor nuance, just blanket application. Of course it's easy for me to say that, I'll never be called on to put my vision into action and New Zealand is about as remote as you can get for illegal at least immigrants, short of Iceland.

Yeah, one can't help but get the feeling that if there were three options available in the referendum with the 3rd being basically 'European trade bloc only, thanks' that 3rd option would win with a landslide; and certainly not just in Britain either.

How does that solve anything? It probably doesn't solve anything or at very best 'solves' some bits while making other bits worse. But doing something makes people feel better, and that's what's really important. It's one of the great ironies that the 'right' accuses the 'left' of doing and saying impractical things to make themselves feel better and then does exactly the same thing themselves- and, of course, the 'left' does the same. That suggestion also has the advantage of being self fulfilling. If there's extra crime or whatever from immigrants who cannot send their children to school or get healthcare or whatever then that 'proves' immigrants are criminal and the policy is justified. It's also utterly useless at best and almost certainly actively counterproductive in doing anything against someone like Mateen, or most of the French attackers etc, who are citizens already- unless the policy were made retroactive or something but I doubt you'd get many supporting active disenfranchisement, at least. For terrorism there isn't much at all from 1st gen refugees/ immigrants as they are by and large both worried about being sent back and grateful for being somewhere safe where they can live decently, it's the 2nd generation of citizens from whom almost all terrorists have come. The real problem is that the world is run by politicians, and politicians focus on being elected so have awful forward thinking for anything not related to their (re-)election. There isn't much in the way of practical alternative to that and it may be pie-in-the-sky idealism speaking but I wish that there was a bit more honest discussion rather than soundbites, catchphrases, massaged statistics and focus group mediated press releases so that the undoubtable good bits of immigration can be balanced against the bad bits while recognising there isn't a magic wand to tell who is 'good' or 'bad' any more than there is for existing citizens. And yes, that includes things like Merkel (though she's certainly not alone) admitting that Germany needs immigrants to maintain pensions and the like a few years longer for an ageing population that votes for her party or our government admitting they need immigration because otherwise our economy is shrinking rather than growing, house prices would drop and they'd lose the election next year. And specifically for Radical Islam it doesn't help that politicians simply will not deal with Saudi elephant in the room and ignore their export of a deliberately retrograde sect which is deeply intolerant of everything not itself, because Saudis have lots of money and aren't shy about spending it.

For a few months, maybe. There's still Hillary vs Donald to look forward to and I'm confident they can attain patheticness that will make Dave, Boris, Nigel et al look like they've been taking part in an Oxford Union Debate.

Do Americans have a problem with Radical Christianity and what is the FBI doing to keep arms out of their hands? Thing being, of course, that if it were one of his congregation who did the shooting instead of a 2nd gen Muslim Afghan you'd have most of the people who want it to be all Radical Islam insisting it wasn't a religious issue this time and most of the people who don't want to mention Radical Islam insisting this was a religious issue, this time. Weirdest panel conversation I've seen in ages was over the question of whether the Orlando shooting was ISIS inspired or an attack on the LGBT community, as if they were wholly separate concepts and it had to be one or the other but not both. Because apparently ISIS isn't anti gay or something andor someone cannot be inspired to be anti gay by them or join them because they were already anti gay, I couldn't follow either side's 'logic' but they seemed utterly committed to it. And, of course, both sides insisted that the other was politicising the issue...

In 2004 (?) Hulk Hogan got fired by Vince McMahon and a bloke called Mr America turned up next week who was masked, had an America asterisks yeah shtick and skin like an overcooked low quality sausage. Many suspected he was actually Hulk Hogan- but he wasn't as he passed a lie detector test! Indeed, many years later he was shown to be some bloke called 'Terry Bollea' (ridiculous, made up sounding name that it is) instead of Hulk Hogan.

Obviously the next blockbuster epic fantasy has to be The Witcher. Given the huge amount of source material and enthusiastic fan base it would be a slam dunk in quality and success.

Cameron saying he'll resign makes me wonder if he's secretly for an exit. Especially since Osborne would have to go as well if that happened.

I presume he means that any indictment would be politically blocked. Get the federal prosecutor to decline to prosecute? Say that the emails are inadmissable since they were obtained illegally? Claim any incriminating emails were planted by hackers? I'm sure they could come up with something. You'd kind of hope that even a recommendation to indict would kill off a presidential candidates chances, so maybe something prior to recommending an indictment... There are certainly plenty of people who'd happily spike the investigation for political reasons. In any case, not like Wikileaks has actually released anything yet. Except chemtrails, I hear reliably they're up to their necks in that little attempt to mass medicate the world clandestinely. Why else would Assange spend all his time inside, hmm? Unless he was trying to avoid the chemtrails! Quod erat demonstrandum.

Overall I have to agree strongly with Guard Dog on the press coverage. I'm no Trump fan and no fan of the GOP but trying to blame them* is politically inspired contortion of the most extreme kind. When it was Dylan Roof shooting black people because he was a self confessed racist that was accepted as his reason without question- maybe not as the only reason since plenty of people are racist without murdering people and you'd suspect an underlying mental issue separate from __ in most mass shootings, but it was certainly the reason he chose the people he did and why Mateen chose the people he did. Yet when it comes to Mateen we're supposed to accept that he pledged to ISIS as an irrelevant delusion or something, if it's even mentioned at all. They seem almost paralysed by the possibility that using the words 'radical islam' will be used as an attack against non radical muslims or boost Trump. The closest direct parallel is probably the Australian Shia (!) Man Haron Monis who joined ISIS and took over a cafe in 2014. There were other underlying issues, but you cannot simply ignore their own stated reasons as if they don't exist. *exc gun control, perhaps

Somebody claiming to be a (non Russian) hacker of their server has stuck some files on wordpress. The pictured docs at least seem plausible so if faked it's a pretty decent effort, though there's nothing in the known universe that would get me to click unsolicited links to doc files from a self confessed hacker to check those. He says he's forwarded the haul to Wikileaks too.

I've said pretty much all of it for Sansa, and there it is mainly a matter of semantics as to whether she was foolish/ naive or stupid. I may sound stridently in the "she's dumb" camp but I happily accept she was also naive, or that it was her naivete that made her dumb. One thing I would say first for all of Jon, Dany and Cersei is that it would have worked better with the originally planned '5 year break'. We could assume that Jon/ Dany's/ Cersei's accumulated stupidity was meant to be spread over a far more believable 5 year stint rather than condensed into months. GRRM needed stuff to happen and for it to happen there had to be a lot of teh dumb occurring over a now condensed timeline and there could be commensurately fewer things that they did well. Cersei, hmm. She's probably the most interesting case actually. My presumption has always been that her POV chapters were meant to humanise her in the same way that Jaime's chapter's humanised him. You don't end up thinking that Jaime's a paragon of virtue but you understand where he is coming from, that he has a- to him- justifiable framework for his actions and that he is, in his own way at least, both honourable and misjudged. But Cersei doesn't really end up humanised because she comes across as vindictive, venal, quarrelsome, conceited and paranoid every bit as much as she did without the POV. The revelation that Aerys planned on blowing King's Landing up and barbecued Starks justifies Jaime's actions at least in that case, but the equivalent for Cersei is the revelation of The Prophecy and that just reinforces that her journey to stupidity and viciousness started early. If there's one thing that the show has done incontrovertibly better (imo, of course) than the book it's humanising Cersei. Book wise though she takes the Lannister's from pretty much uncontested to near war with former friends in a matter of months, and without any balancing successes. Possibly excluding Robert Strong but that seems... unlikely to end well, ultimately. For Dany and Jon it's a lot less clear that they're stupid because they're both in far more difficult situations than Cersei, so their mistakes are more easily justified and you'd expect them to have larger, less reversible consequences. For both though I would say that while they managed a decent balance between expediency and principle and were highly competent on their rise to power (Dany scammed the Unsullied off their masters as eg, Jon infiltrating the Wildings) their balance in power was off terribly and both were inconsistent in such a way as to maximise the dumbness, and ended up antagonising both their allies and their enemies unnecessarily. Jon in particular should have done better as he had plenty of direct leadership role models in Eddard, Mormont and even Mance he could have emulated.