Zoraptor

I've heard of half of them at least enough to recognise the names andor faces. That list is pretty weird to be honest, especially if it's actually for most famous. Both for order and for roles played... Zendaya is far better known than most above her, and a most famous list but no mention of Spiderman or Euphoria for her? Indeed, no mention of Davis in the DC films/ Peacemaker (OK, that was a cameo) or King leading Watchmen. Which didn't rate that well, but was critically acclaimed. Maybe the writer doesn't have an HBO sub? Perhaps the oddest is Candice Patton being only one place below Lupita Nyong'o, who has won an oscar.

There is the potential for other unannounced systems to be there as well as the two announced ones. Probably not though*. No one seems to be sure how many launchers per battery there are, I've seen 4/6/8 all stated with absolute authority. At least some** of the missiles are PAC-3CRI which would potentially be 16 missiles per launcher and (marginally) it could have been one (patriot) launcher present. If they did supply PAC-2 and -3 missiles the launches could all be Patriots, but I'd agree that something else seems likely for the smaller ones. Also, you'd really hope that they'd have been told not to bunch the systems the way that video implies. In any case, it's fair to say that the 100% interception claim from Zaluzhny is pretty much, uh, shot down at this point. At least three confirmed hits. *So no chance of any in Mikolaev as per MW (though also, the video implies the supermarket was storing something a lot spicier than borscht) **and if you want evidence of PAC-2 being present too that first kinzhal 'downed' was meant to be via PAC-2 due to the damage done to its warhead. Though obviously I'm not exactly convinced personally by the value of that evidence that is what is meant to have happened. Or using the term 'system', like the US military did. Designed to imply slight damage to a single launcher, but could just as easily mean half the battery is gone but the rest is still working. I'd say the default from the video is that something else (NASAMS? IRIS-T?) got hit and a Patriot took some damage

One other thing that is worth mentioning about that 'Patriot' being hit- it very likely isn't a kinzhal doing the hitting whatever the Russians say. That isn't a very big explosion for 400+kg, especially when night typically makes them look bigger, not smaller, than daytime. Also, wreckage of the Patriots seems to confirm at least some are PAC-3, which might reduce it to a single launcher present. Two still more likely though.

Not really possible to tell anything for certain from that video- but if it was Patriots it seems extremely unlikely it was a single launcher due to the volume of shots. I think I'd be more worried about how the Russians were able to target it on the fly more than any actual damage, since that suggests it's repeatable. Not really possible to say. A kinzhal doesn't fly hypersonically for its full flight path and there are multiple missiles of similar size but slower top speed. Assuming they aren't out and out lying then they'd know they brought down something- but, well, to put it another way: German pilots always shot down Spitfires, never Hurricanes; Russians hit HiMARS and Patriots, not Grads and IRIS-T. Even debris isn't exactly foolproof. That 'warhead' from a couple of days ago was hollow even in early pictures and bears an uncanny resemblance to a (decommissioned) BETAB-500 dumb bomb. Which weighs the right amount for a Kinzhal warhead, but is over 2m long and decidedly not hollow. And designed for subsonic penetration, not hypersonic with 25x the KE minimum. Indeed, a couple of days ago where the motor engine is on that tweet MW linked is where the warhead was (and if it were the warhead then that is where it would have to be). Perhaps more 'objectively' the Russians/ Syrians did a very similar thing after US/ Brit/ French airstrikes and the claim then was that no missiles were shot down and the debris was from missiles that hit. If I were the Russians I'd be jury rigging old (ish, don't think the 75km models would cut it) S-300 missiles to MiG-31s and firing them off every night since they're same size and ~same speed but essentially 'free' since they're so old- and there are a lot of them. Certainly a lot cheaper than the interceptors that would be fired at them, and the production rate for Patriots is not that high.

That is... not very convincing. Yeah... nah. They'll have better optics than most Russian tanks, and better speed especially in reverse. To be fair to it, the Leo1 is a bit better armoured than a sardine can, but not actually by that much- and it stores ready use ammo in the turret. (You can penetrate a Leo1 with a sniper rifle round from a decent distance- something you can't even do with a T-34. Not from the front, but there you could at least in theory be in trouble to... the WW2 era 50mm pak 38 or equivalent. The Panzer IV had more armour, so did the Ronson Tommycooker Sherman and neither was renowned for their armour even in WW2. We also saw exactly what happens to Leo2s with ammo stored in the turret in Syria- ie big boom, turret goes flying- and at best Leo1s are in the same situation for that as the Leo2s)

The funniest thing is all those Turks living in the west, yet voting for Erdogan. Sheesh BBC, couldn't you have checked your own graphic, in the same article? AKP lost 28 seats, to 267. Still the largest party, but not a majority.

The Avon/ Vila/ ORAC 'partnership' is the best from any sci fi show bar none. AVON: How much more weight must we lose before we can achieve escape velocity? ORAC: Seventy kilos, Avon. [..Vila leaves] ChatGPT ORAC: Vila weighs seventy-three kilos, Avon...

Ironically, most of the 'just Turkey things' done before Erdogan were done under CHP rule. The start of the war with the Kurds, invading Cyprus etc. You only really get degrees of nationalism with Turkish political parties*, and CHP wouldn't tear up Montreux or start arming the Kurds against Assad (more likely the reverse) no matter how Not Erdogan they are. Nor will they buy Patriots if they're going to be stung for missiles at $10m USD a pop like Saudi. *not necessarily Turkish nationalism, given the HDP exists.

Yes, though the practicalities suggest it's unlikely. The old S-300 missiles have a range of 75km, and PAC-2 patriots about twice that. But the S-300 would have to be within marginal artillery range (and likely more of a concern: very easy lancet range) of the border to fire that deep into Russian territory, and most sources have the Patriots limited to sitting around Kiev- they'd have to be somewhere like Konotop to get 50km into Bryansk. That would make interceptions over Kiev... difficult- and at least supposedly there are limitations over using NATO supplied weapons in Russia proper. Find Patriot wreckage and it's hard to argue that it was Russia using it. The video of one Mi-8 suggests something far smaller than either (but probably bigger than manpad --> Tor?/ Pantsir? or similar and thus friendly fire). Lukashenko has looked genuinely ill for a while, far more so than Putin has at any point.

The US ambassador has "apologised unreservedly" in private according to the South African government. Publicly and as cited in the beeb article As yes, the old 'correction of misinterpretations' of something that really couldn't be interpreted any other way- to whit: "We are confident that weapons were loaded into that vessel, and I would bet my life on the accuracy of that assertion" Not unsurprising since he got hung out to dry by Kirby.

It's already renewed, so we should get some sort of answer. (my prior viewing of us political thrillers suggests that, statistically, the answer is likely to be 'the vice president did it' as part of a plot to get the top job)

I watched the preview of it, that actor would be absolutely fine for a native Egyptian. Guess Hatshepsut isn't as much of a household name as Cleopatra though (and would generate a lot less controversy and people checking it out due to that, too). edit: mostly not going to watch it because Netflix's historical documentaries tend to drive me bonkers via nitpicking anyway. I did rather enjoy the cast of kiwi ex Shortland Streeters playing Caligula et al though. More ham per capita than Denmark.

Has no reviewer tried installing a linux on one? If not I'd guess there's a contractual reason in order to receive a review unit. Wonder how much they paid for the Win11 licenses and how much cost it adds.

I'd guess the point is that that doesn't work towards being pleasantly surprised in general/ actuality. End of the day, the bad dialogue is funny and entertaining because of the context, and if you remove that then you're back to just having bad dialogue. Not like prior Bethesda games haven't been successful/ entertaining despite that though, of course.

Well, more or less: he supposedly put the plums where the apple usually goes, shall we say, in some sort of totally not homoerotic initiation ritual (--> "piggate", because every political scandal needs a gate suffix). But I couldn't take David Cameron seriously as PM even before that revelation. You're meant to take Nicol Trowbridge fairly seriously in a Boris Johnson/ Donald Trump type sense- though I'd strongly suspect the choice of actor was made deliberately to play on expectations. For anyone wondering the Black Mirror episode actually predates the (news of the) real life equivalent.

Yeah, nah. If you'd said it was ironic me snarking at Oryx for snarking at the parade it would have been fair enough as there's a fair bit of irony there. Not really so for that part though since the reactions actually are that binary. It's not even that much of an exaggeration in terms of language used.

May well have. It's blindingly obvious a lot of twitter accounts are run by multiple people and not just because even the saddest of the sad twitteratti need some sleep- sometimes the same account has wildly divergent and almost contradictory views of what is appropriate or constitutes proof/ evidence depending on time of day. Geoconfirmed was the most obvious one recently. Positively bipolar when it came to that Pavlograd explosion.

Oryx is: a completely unbiased and authoritative source who can be trusted 100% because of his impartial analysis. Oryx: lol look at me own the RuZZkies with my sarky comment about a T-34 (in a completely unbiased and authoritative way, of course). Updoots to the left! .. Not really much of a Goldilocks zone for the Russians, they're either militaristic goons thumping their chests and threatening the peaceful west by displaying too much hardware in a parade, or, they're pathetic wieners who can't put a decent parade together to save themselves. Which pretty much sums up the whole exercise really; on one hand they're arming conscripts and prisoners with shovels and marching slowly towards Ukrainian Maxim guns (ironically, the only accurate part) to be mowed down like grain, but also have to be defended against by buying billions in military hardware because lord knows they'll roll straight over 500 million europeans and be at the Rhine by lunch time. Waiting for the list of who did and didn't attend now, that was good for a laugh last year in the midst of Shoigu/ Gerasimov are dead/ fired/ launching a coup hysteria.

I don't think they've ever specifically said which missiles they used* but I'd be very surprised if they didn't primarily fire Patriots. Iron Dome is mostly used against relatively slow rockets and is itself both short range and slow compared to Patriots- and hence a lot cheaper per shot. An S-200 is up to mach 8, so twice the max speed of even a Patriot (and 4x that of Iron Dome). Alternative would be David's Sling. If they used that though, well, it would have failed both times it's been used in anger which would be slightly embarrassing. *of course, next article I had cued up does say which system they used, and it was the Patriot.

Or the Patriot doesn't perform as well in real world scenarios as it does in demonstrations. Demonstrations are after all designed to sell the product, not test it, and you don't sell the product by having it fail in demonstrations. It's hard to believe the Saudis would spend billions on missiles and launchers, then gimp them with a bad home brew radar. That certainly makes for a good excuse though. There have been a fair few well publicised failures specifically in Saudi Patriot missiles too, failures Raytheon et al can't blame on Saudi incompetence. And an actual factual 1960s vintage S-200 missile also flew most of the way across Israel from Syria and landed near the Dimona Nuclear Reactor without a successful interception.

Finished The Diplomat. Pretty slick, and the second Netflix show I've more or less unreservedly enjoyed in two weeks. The main problem is... it just kind of randomly ends in media res, to coin a phrase. Literally nothing is resolved. Secondary problem I've already mentioned: Rory Kinnear. Who is absolutely fine, but if you tell me he's the British PM I instantly think of him, well, porking a porker in Black Mirror's first episode. end spoilers, be warned

Raw expense isn't the whole consideration though. It's also balanced by mitigation. Take the Shahed/ Geran drones- a Stinger used to shoot one down actually costs more than the drone does. But if the drone is going to hit something worth more than that Stinger then it's a worthwhile trade. Same with Hamas bottle rockets and Iron Dome only there's even more disparity with the interceptors costing 100x the cost of the rocket intercepted. The Saudis had at least one particularly unpleasant experience early (2015) in their war with Yemen from Scuds that informed their apparent profligacy- their head of the air force was killed at King Khalid AFB by one. They'd happily have swapped 50 million for the embarrassment that caused, let alone any other damage caused to the air base. The UAE had a similar experience when their barracks near Aden was hit and they lost something like 100 troops by far their biggest loss in the intervention and which caused a pretty big stink in Fujairah because it was their troops doing the actual dying for Dubai's ambitions. The Burkan (the specific Houthi scud variant so yeah, there might be some complaint about my use of 'ancient scud' at least in some cases since it's relatively advanced) is also pretty hard to deal with intrinsically, since the warhead separates from the fuselage. Really though they're paying well over the odds, especially if they're getting old PAC-2s. The consistency with which that happens specifically to them is one of the reasons they're not so keen on the US any more.

Standard ballistic missiles are intrinsically predictable, precisely because they're ballistic: they go up, they go sideways, they go down. It's what they do. There's no reason you can't shoot down any missile, it's a matter of probabilities and the faster and more manoevrable they are the harder it is. The Saudis were at times firing entire batteries of Patriots to take down one ancient Scud though, hence their constant requests for more missiles. A Kinzhal is basically an Iskander missile fired horizontally from altitude, and is not ballistic* in the normal sense despite what many articles say, it's far closer to a glide bomb, just not gliding, obviously. Or a very fast ATGM maybe.They say it was ballistic though because, of course, the Ukrainians said at the time a ballistic missile was fired. In any case, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and, well, people would be ridiculing Russia if they claimed something with the level of proof Ukraine has for that shoot down which amounts to the most generic 'warhead' imaginable with a hole in it and a... pipe which is even less identifiable than the warhead. It's particularly funny after we had a drone toodling over central Kiev for 20 minutes during which time the Ukrainians hit one of their own buildings with a missile again (having initially said it was... a drone attack, of course). Thank goodness they found some good news the same day. Note also: this is not the first time it's been claimed that a kinzhal has been downed- it was also claimed with no evidence on 26 Jan 2023. As always, one suspects you weren't really meant to remember it a few months later though. This is, of course, the first time the claim has been made, when, hmm, a US firm stands to benefit. I wonder if the NYT sources work for Raytheon. Oh well who knows. *technically of course even a rifle bullet describes a ballistic trajectory, just a very flat one. If you said you received ballistic fire and meant rifle rounds though people would think you were taking the mick, or being incredibly precious. Since the kinzhal is fired horizontally it's far closer to that rifle round in terms of trajectory.

Don't think he needs the equivocation since that's very obviously thermite. Some claims that a Patriot downed a (hypersonic) Khinzal near Kiev yesterday. Very much in the 'more evidence required' though; one of the pictures provided is literal lol and could be anything. May well be distraction from the drone fiasco too.

It's a fantasy movie with barely a vestige of historicity about it. Not actually too bad either so long as brain is parked in neutral. The cast was... not very historically accurate in terms of ethnicity from what I remember, though that was the least of its issues. The only really out of place one was the blonde Isis(?) Even with that though, well, Ramses the Great was pretty much 100% confirmed a ginger (yes, seriously). Doubt we'd see Rupert Grint playing him any time soon though.