Zoraptor

I'm slightly more upbeat about it as it will make it very difficult for anyone to argue to give (the) peace (process) a chance after this, which will greatly increase the probability of unilateral actions like recognising Palestine as a country. Realistically the past 15 years of peace talks have been stalling by Israel in order to get demographic facts on the ground established, neither Sharon nor Bibi had any interest in actual peace and it's now been made crystal clear to everyone. Once that is established it makes it far more difficult to stall, and far more difficult for the US to run interference. Who knows, maybe he's managed to annoy the White House sufficiently that some meaningful resolutions may even make it through the UNSC, certainly I can see them being more flexible towards Iran just to spite Netanyahu.

I'd suspect that they'd go for an agreement not to bring down the government with the Joint List rather than them being formally in government, that would cut down on problems getting other parties to join and is more compatible with what the arabs said prior to the election ie that they wouldn't join a government of any ilk. Even with just an agreement to abstain on confidence/ supply motions it would drop the coalition size required on the left to 54 from 61, assuming the Israeli system does not require absolute majorities on confidence/ supply issues. It may well come down to who ends up with the largest vote share, as they would presumably get first chance to make a government. Balance of opinion seems to be that Bibi has the advantage, even if it falls far short of being the great victory his speech claimed.

Not really what I was looking for. Batman got tied up/ captured pretty much every (bat) episode of the (bat) tv series, for example. The question was more about the reaction to being captured. Of those I would say that only the fourth one down comes close to being what I was looking for, which is something a bit beyond simply looking worried, the comparison would be more towards looking panicked or frightened as per the batgirl cover, and whether that tends to happen only* to secondary heroes, or women, or secondary hero women, or if it's more generally distributed. *I'd exclude examples like, say, Scarecrow from this, as their raison d'être is being able to panic even normally stoic characters.

To be fair, I can easily see that having a woman crying while being menaced by a (bad) guy with a gun in that manner has certain implications respective or irrespective of previous events- and that it would be unlikely that Batman or Superman or most other male superheroes would be shown crying in a similar situation. That might be because they're primary superheroes though, I don't know enough about the subject as to whether, say, Wonder Woman has been shown crying in similar circumstances or if she behaves more stoically as Bats or Supes would.

You're not obligated to agree with it, but it certainly isn't disingenuous. Plus you've been rather unfair in your implications, too. Sure, he says he did it 'voluntarily' having decided it was inappropriate, but that rather begs the question of why he made it in the first place if it didn't fit and was inappropriate- at some time his view must have changed, logically. That he has apparently been systematically blocking anyone who disagrees with his (new) view is relevant as it does not support that it's a decision he has come to by himself, but one he* has come to after listening to and being influenced by one side. Most significantly though, if it's disingenuous to post those tweets it was also disingenuous to imply it was a purely logical decision made by the artist alone devoid of external influences when it was certainly not*, and to imply that information had been left out when not only did the linked article mention it but so did the URL included in the initial post, to whit: '..comics-cancel-batgirl-variant-at-artists-request'. Can't blame the poster if people don't read the linked article, or even look at the url; that's the fault of the reader. *it's also basically impossible that it was solely his decision, covers are very heavily vetted by PR departments as they are usually the most prominent promotional material for a comic issue.

Yep, though that includes 'suicide'. Both the David Kelly ('committed suicide' in such an obscure way that many doctors aren't sure it's even technically possible to have done so) and Gareth Williams (committed suicide by locking himself inside a duffle bag, according to his employers the SIS, who didn't notice (!) he had disappeared for a week or more) 'suicides' almost certainly would have been labelled as political murder if they'd been in Russia- and of course there are those seven 'suicides' in six weeks that have happened in Ukraine, which their interior ministry have labelled as a good thing. Though that is also what nobody can quite explain about Nemtsov, why Putin would kill him when he has other means of control such as imprisonment, and why he'd bother assassinating someone whose only significance is that westerners liked him. Politically he was irrelevant and had been for 15 years, not really due to Putin either, western support is very much a poisoned chalice. Even the 2011 protests had very little support for 'liberals' despite what was said, unless said 'liberals' liked waving Russian Imperial Flags and Soviet Flags rather a lot. Still, it's rather a good example of how Putin is exactly as competent/ incompetent as needed to fit the narrative. Some days ago it was how the murderers would never be found and they should have been captured within hours, proof of Putin's involvement, now he apparently can't even find a proper patsy to take the blame, which is also proof of his involvement.

Yeah, he was looking pretty good for a dead deposed alien abductee when meeting the Kygryz President. Putin can troll without even trying.

Guess it's appropriate that on St Paddy's day we get mention of mythical creatures that guard pots of gold.

Or alternatively, you'd have Qatar, UAE, and worst of all by far, Saudi Arabia all with nuclear weapons a few years at most later. They'll all want the bomb if Iran has it, nothing surer. Yeah, other countries without nuclear weapons aspirations make 20% U235 as well. Pretty sure Brazil's annual production of it is a fair bit higher than Iran's entire accumulated stockpile was, too.

According to the IAEA Iran has converted its 20% stockpile and haven't made more. So they aren't enriching to 20%. So either Bibi or the IAEA (/CIA / Mossad) are spouting crap, most people's money will be on Bibi for that honour rather than the people who have been on the ground and who are experts in the matter. Not taking Al Jazeera as a reliable source in this case is pretty odd too, they have a very strong editorial dislike of Iran (due to being run and financed by the Qatari royal family; see their coverage of Syria, Yemen where they are stridently anti anyone friendly to Iran and- especially if you read/ watch their arabic output- pro some of the more dingbat sunni alternatives; though not quite as much dingbat fringe as Saudi), they aren't going to be saying anything positive about Iran just because.

Only one I haven't read is the last one. I'll probably read it at some stage, but at the moment I rather appreciate the feeling that there is something to come.

I tend to agree, hence why I stopped responding to all attempts to move the goal posts further some time ago. You can lead a horse to water, but sometimes you're better off leading it to the glue factory. Anyway, let's get back to the real topic: mysterious deaths of political figures. Apparently there has been an outbreak of 'suiciditis' in Ukraine, opposition figures appear to be particularly prone with six (or seven, since a prosecutor in Odessa 'jumped from window' today) succumbing to this unfortunate disease in the past six weeks. (Rather puts into perspective those Putin lists of a similar number over a 17 year period)

Well, it ain't every day your own intelligence/ security service basically calls you a liar, and I suspect that has done bibi a whole lot of damage. It'd be like MI6 or the CIA telling people that Iraq had no WMD in early 2003. Not sure Lieberman's comments about chopping arab israeli's heads off have helped either given ISIS is a thing, even given that he isn't actually Likud.

I rather suspect the German people generally didn't care much about politics at the end of WW2 as they had bigger things on their minds, and were far more glad that the war was over. In any case it would be difficult to prove their attitude as it would be unlikely they could freely express any lingering sympathy/ admiration for it under occupation even if they were given the opportunity of an opinion poll or similar. I cannot imagine there would be very much lingering sympathy for those who swore blind that Berlin would never be bombed and there would be 1000 years of glory after what that lead to in reality, the deaths of millions of germans and the levelling of much of the country in an incontrovertable and absolute defeat. It does also bear remembering that Churchill got voted out of office despite winning the war. People were sick of war and wanted a change, and there was far less war weariness in Britain than Germany.

No, actually you did, you just don't realise it because you plain aren't very good at maths. The percentage whether it be 25-30 or 40% [sic, misquoted] is a proportion of total devaluation. My figure is absolutely equivalent to that because it is the mathematical resolution of that proportion applied to the total devaluation it is a proportion of. It doesn't matter whether it's expressed as 25-40% of total or as 12.5-20% (absolute) in that case, because they're the same thing.

"Hey, you can do this and make moar moniez" is not exactly "pushing cultural sensitivity on you". That is how it would be seen by those with an opposing view, though, no matter the intention. Don't get me wrong, I do think it is in principle a good idea- to an extent, and in principle. But then that is pretty much my attitude to political correctness and the like as well. Something like telling Paradox that having a procedurally generated face for Muhammed in CK2 would be seen as offensive would be a good example of where it would work as intended, they could still have him with a portrait if they wanted to but at least would know ahead of time about it. OTOH, Crusader Kings is an inherently offensive term for many muslims anyway, and there's very little chance they didn't know that before hand. Change it to the inoffensive 'Generic Ruler Simulator Period 1000-500 Years Before Present' and it probably doesn't sell as well despite using purely inoffensive terms with no western bias. But it is certainly prone to being manipulated and subverted to suit political agenda, which is what most of the people disagreeing with you think will happen. That is to a large extent what people object to in the social justice field, not the policies themselves, but that they are taken too far and manipulated to try and enforce, entrench and enhance particular political viewpoints. I can certainly see some people arguing that 'black man' should be replaced with 'person of colour' as a descriptor in text or even in dialogue, while making the argument that you're more likely to get people of colour buying if you do so. Well, that conclusion in itself would be questionable, and you'd end up with some pretty odd sounding dialogue or descriptions at the end.

No, it doesn't. No. That just plain isn't how it works, you cannot add them like that. To illustrate, let's take a theoretical country that has 90% depreciation. What happens if you just add that 12.5-15% to that, as you want? You get a currency with 102.5-105% depreciation. Which gives you a negatively valued currency. Which is, well, impossible. You cannot do it that way. Doesn't matter how much you'd like to. Best you can is try to apply the 25-30%, or made up 40%, to those other countries' depreciations then add that. Which is also untenable, but at least couldn't generate impossible results. Shrug. I haven't misquoted experts, used graphs with fudged timelines that don't cover a quarter of the time I'm supposedly interested in and haven't wanted to do economically impossible transformations to data. You've done all three, in your last half dozen posts.

I wouldn't worry about whether it is going to fund or not when deciding whether to put money down as the worst that can happen there is that funding fails and you don't get charged a cent, same as if there had never been a kickstarter. That happened to me with the Fresh3D/ Outcast KS. Some of the crowdfunding sites have flexible funding where partial funding will be accepted, but KS doesn't. If you think it looks good and want to put money down do so, if you don't don't. Don't worry about whether it funds, there really isn't much at all that any single person can do to influence that unless your last name is Persson.

The trouble there is the same as with all sort of 'cultural sensitivity' type stuff. Who is getting offended, what is the threshold of offence, whether practical benefits outweigh the costs of second guessing everything you do, selective application etc. People will object to it for much the same reasons people object to PC, because it is much the same concept dressed up in much the same 'perfectly reasonable' language.

... That would prove nothing except how significant the oil price drop was on Russia's currency, which is what I've always said. You have to deal with empirical figures- until the oil price dropped the rouble had barely flickered in value, 20-25% of that, heck even your made up 40% would be utterly insignificant. I was doing you a favour taking it as an absolute, it's actually the thing that makes your argument look least silly- take out the oil drop and you get 25-30 or 40% of even less, for far less absolute effect. And as below, I was already maximising your claimed effects, not minimising them. [chart] Oh dear, 2014, really? Not from when sanctions were first applied (March 2014, conveniently) to now? That's what I did, since I'm not relying on Weaseling by using a convenient timeframe. Here's a handy link, March to March of a USD vs RUB chart. If you change the 'RUB' in the URL to other currencies' abbreviations you can generate charts for each of the top ten traded currencies, or any you like. Do so and you'll find that your chart is out by, well, a significant and painful amount, shall we say? eg, AUD has dropped about 17%, March to March, not 10%, NZD has dropped ~15%, not 7%, the Euro has dropped ~30% instead of 12% etc. And that's straight March to March, not the yearly max to min I used to generate Russia's currency halving in value, to be charitable and maximise the amounts your claim would generate. Again, your use of figures is at best extremely ill-informed.

Not exactly a surprise. One of the reasons I far prefer 'Cultural Stalinism' to 'Cultural Marxism' is the tendency to turn on those who don't believe enough, or those who believe slightly differently, or those who are just perceived to believe slightly differently, every bit as much as those who are the theoretical 'real' enemies. They're always going to disagree somewhat on what the real goals should be, who the real targets are, what the real philosophy is etc, and with a 'no dissent' environment all of them will think right is on their side.

Very sad news, though not really unexpected. Dementia/ Alzheimer's is just the worst thing. The run he had through from about 'Small Gods' (one of the books I'd unequivocally recommend everyone reads) to 'Feet of Clay' was one of the best sequences I've ever had the privilege of reading.

And it isn't. It's less than 9/10 of the top traded countries had, without sanctions. Whatever things were effecting them effected them more severely than the sanctions effected Russia, and without the oil price drop Russia's currency would have appreciated relative to 9/10 of them (or 7/10, if we remove Canada and Mexico for the oil drop having a negative effect on their currency), even with the sanctions- indeed, the Euro has fallen in value by about twice the amount sanctions caused, even with your made up 40% figure and no reliance on oil exports. And, of course, we have the dial back and redef which happens every single time you get caught out with hyperbole: "we used words such as painful and significant" with 'painful' suddenly disappearing... Now sure, with the effects of the oil price drop added it becomes severe, that is what I've been saying all along- and you've now started defending my 18 month (to 2 yr figure) for just liquid assets as well. So we're now at the stage where you agree with me. Progress has been made.

Nope. I used the term 'not severe' and indeed it's the term you've actually managed to quote me as using, as opposed to when you use Weasel Debate Technique #1: deliberately overstate the other person's opinion by claiming I said no effect. Yeah, I do. Can't say I didn't warn myself that maths would give you problems, but sadly I have no patience to explain proportions, fractions and their reciprocals to you in depth. As always, it was you who started talking about 40% [sic, misquoted] of the currency devaluation being due to sanctions, then complained about not using Putin's 25-30%. Well, the rouble has had an overall devaluation of 50%, it has halved in value, the proportion of that which matches Putin's estimate is 12.5-15% devaluation (0.5*0.25*100 to 0.5*0.3*100 so you can follow on your calculator)- and from Kudrin's- maximised- estimate, 20% (0.5*0.4*100); about half what the Euro has had against the dollar in the same timeframe. It doesn't show what you thought? 1) Quelle surprise and 2) tough noogies; you, again, picked the figure and defended it same as the 6-12 month claim and that agricultural imports that had appreciated 100% would help decrease 30% greater food prices- if someone is to blame for you picking rubbish figures it's you. And that so many of the worlds major currencies have performed similarly to that without the effect of sanctions is exactly the point.

So, more or less Galaxy Quest's premise (minus, presumably at least, getting picked up by real life aliens at some point) as a webseries? Sounds good.