Zoraptor

They'll do an InXile and kickstart SS3 before Underworld is finished. Practically they'd start work on something else before Underworld wraps even if it were not announced. I'm pretty happy with the announcement, far better than Night Dive trying to make it themselves or other likely scenarios, and some unlikely ones like Ken Levine making it at 2k.

Ironically, I rather think that Erdogan wants to be Putin. Some Syrian Army soldiers got blown up by an air strike, US blames Russia (ironic, since most of their media output is accusing the Russians of bombing only the 'moderate opposition' which doesn't exist in the entire Deir ez Zor governate) and everyone else including SOHR which is usually wildly pro west blames the US. Probably a mistake either way unless Saudi Arabia/ Qatar/ Bahrain has reinstated their bombing of ISIS, in which case it would have been a 'mistake'. The stated facts don't really match anyone entirely.

Kind of annoying that they had the Doctor kill a guy with a gun just to establish that timelords can randomly become different races and sexes. Obviously Capaldi's Doctor will regenerate into Colin Salmond, and Craig's Bond will regenerate into Idris Elba. Absolutely typical Moffat episode, chock full of good ideas which were stitched together into a bit of an incoherent mess. His tendency to set things up and then handwave the conclusion is deeply annoying much as it was with the last series of Sherlock. Guess it shows how much the Doctor hated Adric, too, since he couldn't be bothered to go back and save him.

Walid Jumblatt is a weathervane, and perhaps the most skilful politician anywhere in the world. He's parleyed the very weak position of his tiny minority into constant powerbroker status in Lebanon for decades. Which side he backs is an extremely good indicator of who has the upper hand, so he really isn't 'pro-Hezbollah' or 'pro Hariri', he's pro winning- and definitely a pro at winning. He's in a difficult situation wrt Syria though because the Druze in Syria almost exclusively back Assad, indeed Assad's most successful and high profile general is Druze. Not that that article really says he's backing either side, doesn't really say much at all of note. I could see elements in the US, perhaps, giving an OK to Turkey but NATO overall? Hollande at least would have been peeved at Turkey derailing his grand coalition and would never have gone along with it.

He definitely had a north caucasus accent, him being a chechen is unsurprising. And if anyone sent him as a spy it would likely be Kadyrov. There have already been reports of russian boots on the ground doing actual fighting, though only spetsnaz types.

Friends, Obsidianites, internauts, lend me your eyes, I come to bury Oby, not to praise him, The evil that posters do lives after them The good is often interred with their account So let it be with Oby. The noble Monte Hath told told you that Oby was a troll If so, 'twer a grievous fault And grievously hath Oby answered it Here, under leave of Bruce and the rest- For Bruce is an honourable poster; So are they all, honourable posters- Come I to speak at Oby's funeral. He was a poster, mildly obsessed but more than just to Russia But Walsingham said he was a bot; And Wals is an honourable man. He hath brought many posts to Obsidian.net Whose content did the forum fill; In this did Oby seem ambitious? When the ****poster hath cried, Oby hath wept: Trolls should be of sterner stuff Yet Chilloutman says he is an alt, And he is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Orthodox New Year He didn't actually realise the date He was thrice offered a Putin avatar Which he did thrice refuse, was this Trolling? Yet Gromnir says he is a troll And Gromnir is a man I speak not to disprove what these posters say But here I am to say what I know You all did vaguely tolerate him as Lord of Flies, Krezack, Cycloneman, BruceVC, Qistina, Zoraptor, not without cause, What cause then withholds you to mourn for him? O judgement you are fled to 4chan and teh codexxx And men hath lost their posting privileges Bear with me My post is in that moderation queue there with Oby's, And I must wait 'til it comes back to me

Write in vote for Awesome Brotocols sequel. Or Omega Methodology/ whatever to avoid Sega.

They're getting significant manpower support from shia groups from Iraq and Iran (plus Hezbollah, though they've been there ages) which will help a lot, while theoretically ad hoc those are often better formations than regular Syrian Army. The big problem they've had is not direct lack of manpower but having it in small dribs and drabs trying to hold lots of land which allowed the rebels to hit and run almost at will and which made it very hard to make any meaningful attacks themselves since reserves and the effective formations were constantly being rushed around to respond to the latest attacks, plus some bad morale and relying on low quality conscripts fighting highly motivated (if often as lightly trained) jihadis. An effective airforce helps massively with the first problem, it makes it a lot more difficult to attack the dribs and drabs when your column of pickups can get taken out in full by a Hind, or seen and the target warned by a drone/ artillery support/ air strike support delivered; while conversely making it a lot easier for the government to concentrate their forces. The morale problem is helped a lot by success and new equipment, plus the obvious and apparently long term commitment from their allies. On the ground the government is, broadly speaking, winning at the moment when they were losing two and a bit months ago, badly enough that they'd managed perhpas one significant victory all year. In contrast they've had two significant victories in the past two months- relieving Kweyres airbase and taking a big chunk of the south Aleppo countryside.

Mi-28 is pretty impressive too, though I can't imagine it being all that useful in Syria. I actually mentioned TOS-1 earlier, IIRC- there's a video of a buratino lighting up a hillside in Latakia on youtube. Quite impressive, I certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end; though it's pretty far from MOAB level impressive. And in rather unsurprising news, apparently the arab side of the 'coalition' hasn't actually bombed ISIS in multiple months. Even Jordan, who got one of their pilots burnt alive hasn't bombed them in 4 months. It's more than rumour, some extra deployment is definite. The 120 certainly isn't confirmed though and would almost certainly be 'copters and planes combined, perhaps also including strategic bombers based in Russia. That would also require more SAMs and troops to guard the air bases- certainly there have been a lot of new weapons deliveries since there are T-72Bs and even T-90s* in theatre and in actual action instead of just glorified guard duty now, including ones with improved protection against anti tank missiles (modern explosive reactive armour and the shtora soft kill system). *which are really just rebadged modern T-72s, russian tank builders are as bad as nVidia at rebadging old stuff as new. He's almost certainly just some unfortunate chechen/ dagestani who has pissed off an emir or tried to desert and is being made an example of to make a point. He's a russian from the north caucasus, as is the guy doing the beheading for that matter but I doubt Russia or anyone else (potentially except some arab states) has much human intelligence at all within ISIS, far too easy for them to get randomly killed given that there are multiple different groups bombing them. If anyone has much human intelligence it's probably Assad's Mukhabarat and their contacts within the civilian population. Summary execution of 'collaborators' 'spies' or 'fifth columnists' in graphic manner is pretty common even in more moderate rebel areas- not that Assad is actually much if any better in that respect, they just tend towards secret torture and executions rather than public.

I own about a third of the mystary games elsewhere, so I basically never buy them. I really don't need a third copy of Hearts of Iron 2 or EU3. I'd guess that some people would be interested in the LucasArts/ Film bundles though, with two Star Wars bundles and an adventure bundle. Again, I own about half of the titles retail, and the individual discounts aren't so great. Unless there's something great I'll almost certainly wait until after Christmas to buy anything further.

We actually got ISIS's accountant, he was called Abu Sayyaf and the US killed him plus captured his wife and records during a raid on Deir-ez-Zor. While nothing official has been released about their contents all the leaks have them confirming large scale links with Turkey and plenty of oil smuggling. And those petrol tankers? Obviously not petrol tankers, they were for... baby milk, yes, that's it! Russia is deliberately starving babies in Syria! When will the west take action to stop the madness of these barbarians! Kind Uncle Tayyip supplying the literal milk of human kindness even unto his mortal enemies in ISIS and that horrible bear riding exhibitionist from St Pete'sburg blatantly and callously attacked them. Won't someone think of the children? Syria does buy (though 'buys' is more accurate) oil from ISIS, strange as it may seem. It's a consequence of the government holding most of the electricity generation infrastructure but ISIS holding most of the oil and gas fields that supply it- ISIS still supplies them with fuel and gets electrical power back in return. Since the alternative is neither side having electricity that arrangement is likely to continue until such time as the gas fields in particular are recaptured. The US does accuse the government of actually buying [as opposed to swapping/ bartering] oil as well, but that's very questionable since they can very easily get petrol/ diesel supplies from Iran, if not Russia as well, without funding their enemies. Natural gas is far harder to supply though, if you don't have the existing infrastructure for supply, hence it pretty much has to come from ISIS.

I'd only feel like a hypocrite if I advised people to ignore your trolling and deliberate provocations then spent pages responding to your drivel myself, Bruciekins. As it is I content myself with the occasional one liner.

Your idea of Western Culture is a state with neoliberal ideals? Bruce's definition of the fantastic characteristics of western civilisation is, well, what Bruce himself believes (or purports to believe to get responses). Utterly unsurprising. Though I suspect in this case he'd be far from alone in that.

On the annexation front, Turkey has already stolen a bit of Syria previous; the part of 'Turkey' where the Su-24 was shot down was part of Syria until France gave it away and there was a referendum held to annex it which involved bussing large numbers of Turks in to ensure the right result was found. Indeed, that is a very easy way to claim that Turkey's airspace was never violated, simply say that it's occupied Syrian airspace (same for Golan Heights, where no one except Israel recognises their annexation). But in any case, getting Turkey out of any safe zone would be a big problem, anyone thinking otherwise can look to Cyprus.

Wonder if they're R-77-1s then, I would have said that they'd swapped from bomb only to carrying AAMs at all but there are pictures of Su-34 returning to base carrying missiles so some at least had air-to-air capable load outs before; if they are new weapons then they'd pretty much have to be R-77-1s. I'd bet everything in my bank account that Turkey wouldn't have attacked anything other than a Su-24 anyway, since it fundamentally cannot defend itself against anything approaching a modern fighter. Su-34 isn't really designed as a fighter either but it is actually modern and based on a fighter design, it wouldn't be the equivalent of sneaking up and king hitting an old lady like attacking a Su-24 was.

God ancaps are embarrassing. Not that ancaps aren't embarrassing, but I'm as prone to believe that actually happened as I would be to believe a story from Bruce about him getting beaten up by SJWs when he goes to one of their meetings and tells them he's an old money banker who loves Saudi Arabia. Story is too cliche and nobody is that dumb.

The deal doesn't really mean anything significant. There was no way that Turkey was getting into the EU under the CHP, there's less than no chance it will under the AKP. The cash is nice, but less than the refugees would be costing. It's basically the Tukrish leadership and the EU pretending to like each other for political and PR reasons plus a sop to Erdogan's ego. Could be something interesting coming up though, there are multiple reports of hundreds of tanks and AFVs being moved from western Turkey towards Syria. Heh, that's more or less exactly what I said about the Turkish version. Can't say I'd be in the least bit surprised if their analysis of the Russian version is correct too, for all that I believe Turkey was looking for an excuse to act it seems unlikely they'd do something for which there could be conclusive evidence of them outright lying since that would mean at least theoretically no NATO backing.

I'd consider it the worst of the IE games as well, but still consider it a good game overall and worth playing. It has a distinctly mechanistic feel to it that the others lack and feels far more linear and 'grindy' than even its predecessor.

Yep. Same with Facebook games. Farmville was the next great thing and Zynga had a licence to print money- right up until they didn't- and everyone thought FB games would be the next big thing. In reality 'Discovery' is even harder on mobile platforms, one or two titles do very well but most, don't. Who knows, maybe Game of War or whatever the big mobile game is at the moment will have such successful sequels that they can hire Mariah Carey and Kate Upton to do adverts simultaneously instead of sequentially, but I won't be betting on it.

Merkel is on the left? If she is, it's only on the refugee issue, and then only because she wants to kick the can of Germany's impending demographic crisis further down the road instead of dealing with the issue.

The US hasn't ever (deliberately, some air drops have gone astray) directly supplied ISIS as its ultimate origin is from Al Qaeda in Iraq who was their most implacable enemy there; some of the Gulf States did supply them, though not openly and both supplied 'moderate' groups who defected to ISIS in 2013-14. But most of their US equipment stocks come from the numerous Iraqi and Kurdish bases they overran in 2014. ISIS having stocks of US ammo isn't an issue unless it can be shown it was a recent acquisition, and from a 'friendly' state. Even then we won't hear about it, there would just be some fist waving on the quiet.

They've been getting US+ a few others (Germany at least) small arms for a while now. I wouldn't expect anything more significant than that and targeted air strikes though, even when under their new umbrella organisation. The problem with anything more significant is that they'd be increasingly likely to be used against Turkey- who strongly dislikes even small arms supplies- and their proxies rather than ISIS; and have almost no chance of being used against the Syrian Army. Indeed, fighting with Turkish proxies like Al Nusra and Ahrar ash Sham is directly helpful towards the Syrian Government since it massively narrows the rebel supply line into Aleppo as well as dividing the rebel forces. Plus, the Syrian Kurds are fundamentally reluctant to expand outside of Kurdish regions and cannot politically be the main force attacking places like Raqqa/ Deir ez Zor or especially the big population centres held in the north near to Turkey like Manbij or El Bab. Same general principle applies for Russia as well since the YPG isn't strictly their allies, though they certainly aren't their enemies, if they want to trouble the Turks they'll put SAMs into government controlled Hassakeh rather than arm the Kurds directly as that would annoy the Syrian Government [and Iraq, and Iran] too much.

Is Hilary related to Bernie Wiliams? (She was, after all, named after world famous Hamiltron apiarist Edmund Hillary, who reinforced his fame by climbing Everest a few years after her birth)

I don't think POE2 being made was ever a question, I'm just wondering will it be via KS or did they make enough money for a sequel. Unless KS (or equivalent) has been too much of a pain in the arse it makes a very useful pre-order system, less cut taken, no need to have Paradox publishing at the start, built in and sustained early publicity etc. I'm not entirely sure they've found the overall 'kickstarter experience' to be worth those advantages though, at least for a sequel.

That would be moronic, it isn't even slightly legit and would be a clear article 5 situation. A Turkish 'copter having a ping at some YPG around Hassakah as happened yesterday, that's fair game for a warning then shoot down. There are pics of the S-400 at Hmemeim airbase from today. Some ambiguity is possible since S-400 is a direct evolution of the S-300 and certain elements of each system are interchangeable, but it certainly seems legit. In these circumstances the Russians are not going to blink, that's why shooting a plane was fundamentally stupid; if they say they're going to deploy something at the moment then they will deploy, anything else sends exactly the wrong message to Turkey. To quote Barbie "Math is hard!". The radar trace has the Su24 at a near constant 300kph or slightly above, including during intrusion (300kph == 5km/ min or 1km per 12s, so intrusion speed was 300-375kph). Two other relevant bits of information too, the Russian navigator claims the Su24 was following a normal flight path home, which would allow for setting up of cameras to capture a shoot down*, it would just be a matter of waiting; and allegedly (ie not confirmed) communications between Russian planes and coalition ones are not supposed to be on the standard Guard frequency but on a separate frequency. Both are unconfirmed but plausible, since ISIS could easily monitor any Guard communications and the Su24 had finished bombing and was returning to base. If true the 2nd would explain why the Russians were potentially not monitoring Guard**, they'd have been monitoring the other channel, and potentially why the Turkish planes did not contact the Su24, only the radar station and why the Russians made that specific statement. *that's how the Serbs shot down a F117 with a venerable Sa-3 despite it being theoretically incapable of targeting an F117, the plane used the same return path on a regular schedule so they knew where it would be. ** it's unclear if they should have been anyway, it's for use in international or foreign airspace and is not usually required to be monitored if you're in the foreign airspace by direct invitation of that country, at that point it becomes friendly airspace.