Zoraptor

For this, probably not. A no confidence motion failed a couple of days ago so he has six months (iirc) before another can be called. It may well have been designed to fail so he has some time in case things don't go his way wrt Iran immediately. This is just the natural conclusion of continually telling a sociopathic narcissist that he has your backing no matter what. The logical conclusion is and always will be an attempt to reshape the world as he wants it. That's just who sociopathic narcissists are. Yeah, nah. Though they were clearly informed they also effectively warned Iran publicly about the attack by making sure everyone knew they were withdrawing embassy staff. That's not the act of someone endorsing it, arguably it's the act of someone trying to prevent it. "This was always part of the plan" has been Trump's stock response to nearly every diplomatic set back.

Well, there was very little chance of an actual deal this weekend anyway so it likely wasn't preempting that. Though Trump kind of needs something to claim as a W after all the Ls he's accumulated. But really this is a massive slap in the face for Trump internationally. While he and Netanyahu have not been getting on well not even waiting for the negotiations to wrap up is a pretty calculated insult. Yep. Zero chance of the weekend meeting even taking place, now. Ultimately this is the problem with allowing Israel carte blanche and unrestricted support- you don't preserve your influence, you tell them that whatever they want to do they can do since your support is unconditional. Same goes for the other spineless blancmanges making up the Rules Based Order. If you're ok with genocide- and for all the virtue signalling they are- you're saying that you're fine with anything. (Got to lol at Bruce's reading list. Ynet and INN, just needs to add Memri for the balance of an 'iranian' pov...)

The NZ government wouldn't even do this much, if they thought there was any chance of action from the US in response.

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

If you want to avoid a migration crisis you should do what we do: be islands 2000km away from other significant land masses. Simple and efficient. (Does result in rather a lot of modern slavery from people importing skilled labourers like waiters, restaurant managers and liquor store workers for a substantial commission and paying less than minimum wage because no locals apply for the jobs (which are advertised in Hindi on the Times of India website). The irony being that the people mostly doing that are themselves immigrants. It is, of course, illegal but the result for a complainant is that they get sent back to India with their visa cancelled and minus the 'voluntary' commission, so there aren't many complaints. They should do things the traditional kiwi way of paying $500 p/w to your indentured fruit pickers/ farm workers and charging them $400 p/w in rent for a bunk in a shared container; food additional. Overall lesson: immigrants will always be exploited because they're easy to exploit and people are crappy even if you don't have an immigration crisis)

NWN2 remaster has been known about for a while unofficially eg it was found via steamdb back in February.

What did Delacroix do to deserve that desecration?

Owlcat does Mass Effect in The Expanse universe? OK.

Dunno about that; the potential effects are rather more than for Elon v Zuck posturing and for shareholders in Musk's companies. Elon might well be able to swing a few R votes against Trump's Big Beautiful Bill for example, and it probably only needs a few votes swung against it. It's hard to separate the narcissism from the actualities for things like Musk's effect/ influence on Trump's reelection but he certainly contributed a lot monetarily at least and there will always be those currying favour for reelection funding and influence.

It's a mystery to the media how all those women and children keep getting killed dying spontaneously (is it because they hate Israel so much they want them to look bad? hmm, worth considering); it'll also be a mystery how ISIS got weapons in an area with the most regulated border in the world. Insert Drake Greta Thunberg no thanks*, ISIS jihadi yes please meme. Maybe Hamas gave them to them? (For anyone not paying attention: Israel gave Hamas support including weapons to fight Fatah a few decades ago) *well, she is a bit old for him now.

Donald Trump now has the opportunity to do the funniest thing: deport Musk back to South Africa.

Yep. Then the remains were killed off in the finale... You don't really need the NCR for a sequel though, even if the talk isn't just using 'FONV2' as shorthand. A strict FONV sequel in the same way as, say, tWitcher 2/3 were sequels to the first game was never likely. You'd expect something similar to the first two Fallout games at most.

Honestly, our politicians aim for Winston Churchill, world statesman, and only ever manage to achieve Winston Churchill*, incompetent authoritarian racist. Then wonder why Maori feel disconnected from the political process and want their own parliament. It's a complete mystary as to why. Best thing that could happen is being laughed at internationally since that hits the one intangible they care very much about, their inflated and totally unjustified pride in themselves. *to be charitable. Eric Cartman riding a trike demanding people respect his authority is far more accurate.

Not that much of a joke, it's certainly one of the rumours. Though given the current trend FONV remasterised seems more likely. It has, after all, been 9 years since Fallout IV. If left only to Bethesda it'd be the best part of two decades between games. Would also potentially tie into the TV series.

Our parliament just suspended a bunch of its Maori MPs for three weeks for having a haka. To put that in perspective the longest previous was three days and literally punching an MP netted zero days- OK, it was Tau Henare getting the punch so that was probably justifiable. The puncher also became Speaker, to add extra hilarity. Driving a tractor up the steps of parliament netted zero days. Driving a ute up the steps having been told twice not to then lying about it repeatedly also netted zero days. Opposition MPs, voted out by the government narrowly along party lines, with Whip applied. Proud day for National, so proud only one of them had the guts to actually make a speech. Ironically, Chris Bishop. Who has been in the news for drunkenly telling a bunch of Maori to sit down and shut up at our local music awards and being told to eff off by one of his favourite musicians as a result. The chair of Privileges Committee that recommended the sanctions? Judith Collins, who was previously sacked after persistent allegations of corruption (currently a requirement for a Cabinet position and my local MP, both sadly). Going to be a great deal of fun watching this being repeatedly abused in the future with great gnashing of teeth from the freedom of speech brigade- who all, of course, voted for the suspensions because nothing says freedom of speech like a party line vote to deny people representation. Oh yeah, the guy who drove the ute up parliament steps and lied repeatedly about being told not to? One of the freedom of speech brigade and our current deputy PM who was just expressing himself freely as is his right. Absolute embarrassment to the country and everyone involved ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. But they most definitely won't be. [oh yeah, the free speech party's member of the Privilege's Committee- who is a politician specifically, and this is not made up it's literally her stated reason for it, so her relatives can get liquor licenses with fewer problems- took legal advice as to whether they could get the MPs jailed for the haka. Seems like a bit of a snowflake, eh]

Honestly man, youtube experts... Yes, they'd want to be salvaging the radar domes off derelict/ mothballed A-50s for sure. Indeed, the one thing all operational A-50s have is a 1991 era radar. Makes perfect sense, there have been no tech improvements since then and everyone else is using 90s era radar. Well no, the one thing all operational A-50s don't have is a 1991 radar. Radar emitters are cheap, it's the electronics that make them functional and which is expensive. The electronics in A-50Us is new since it's a full analogue/ digital switch and, well, as an illustration the top of the line consumer processor in 1991 was a 486SX. The spyware chip on AMD processors has more processing power than that. Even if it wasn't, electronics from a plane which still has the soviet star on its tail are, well, as likely to be usable 34 years later as that 486SX is today. The one thing you can guarantee is any 'new' A-50 is going to have is new electronics/ radar not something stripped out of another one. The radar itself might be useful for a decoy if it can still output radiation, but it isn't usable for its original purpose. Or EW. That would probably be cheaper overall, and certainly faster to implement. Allegedly the main reason the attack failed on several bases too. Wouldn't be the least bit surprising if it was meant to be on all of them but the money had gone missing between order and supply. Tires are and always have been a weird idea. If you want to try and obfuscate the shape there are far better options and they're only going to confuse very basic systems.

Kerch Bridge has some unique design features that ought to protect it. 50+ meter pilings, and they aren't traditional pilings but multiple small diameter ones designed specifically to transit applied energy. Mostly from earthquakes, but the principle for explosives is the same; and you'd suspect it was designed with the thought that Ukraine might try to blow it up at some point. 41 initially? Pro UA sources have managed to find 12 on satellite, and they certainly have been trying. Also rather a lot of- frankly pretty obvious- AI videos being laundered at the moment. One in particular the 'bomber' hit has the fascinating design innovation of having two cabins, there's another one where the 'bomber' has 2 engines on one wing and one on the other and all 'shot' at a resolution that would embarrass a cheap late 90s nokia. DCS/ WarThunder etc are not under threat yet when it comes to fake footage.

Probably won't do much of anything new, no. There's always some new stuff that can be done but it's mostly militarily irrelevant like blowing up the Rada building or Mother Ukraine or more difficult in practice than theory like blowing the Dniepr bridges. Depends a lot on what their losses actually were, but the delegation turning up in Turkey suggests they don't see them as being gamechanging. Targeting civilian trains is far more likely to have a tangible long term effect since it will increase Russian recruitment. Always kind of funny how civilian casualties against the bad guys will result in the population rising up, while civilian losses for the good guys just harden resolve.

The poll is this one. If you want to see the data (it's on p64) you'll have to download it from there, I can't link the pdf itself. Too Lazy, Didn't Download: it's the polled registered democrats. The results for Agreement with criticisms leveled at Democrats are absolutely brutal; +74 (ie 85: 11) on them having a leadership crisis. The really interesting thing is that there's one current politician they polled about who has a net positive from the full polling set, and it is... AOC. The only two other 'candidates' with net positives are Barack and Michelle Obama, though Buttigieg isn't an option in that particular poll Newcomb is and at -27 he's 29 points behind AOC. There is, of course, the possibility of gaming the results (ie R voters having a positive view of AOC as a tactic because they think she's unelectable and v/v for Newcomb)- I imagine if you pay for the results you get a breakdown of those numbers by affiliation. Politically of course it's seen as being far more important to appeal to people who don't vote for you as a candidate (but might) than to The Base, because you can take The Base for granted.

Eh, the Democrats last two primaried candidates (well, kind of in 2024) were Biden. Who was white, male, and while not jewish was an avowed Zionist.

Wow, and only 29 years after System Shock had them... Jesus, 29 years. To be fair, it is nice that they, for example, finally fixed physics being tied to frame rate. But you can't get around the feeling that it only happened because it was used for 'sploits in FO76 and if it wasn't you'd have a 2023 game with a 60fps frame limit. If that were the only issue I'd be impressed as in the end that is how most quests revolve in RPGs, though you certainly tend to remember the ones that don't a lot more fondly. And the windowdressing around it is very important, if you care about verisimilitude. Otherwise I rather agree- and I don't really dislike Bethesda's games per se, they're just so very disappointing which in many ways is worse than just being bad. They could be much better without that much extra effort. The classic example is the pre dlc end to FO3. The rest of the game was OK overall, but that was stupid, and they knew it was stupid but didn't fix (until the dlc).

The quintessential Bethesda style predates tiktok by a decade plus. Bethesda games are what you get when there are zero bad consequences- quite the reverse, you get rewarded- for putting out garbage. Why wouldn't you release low effort unmaintained bilge when it's guaranteed to sell anyway? One might hope the reaction to Starfield might lead to some sort of road to Damascus moment but who's anyone kidding. FO76 didn't, so you'll get TES6 on yet another rebadged 2005 vintage Gamebryo iteration with the same bugs and soulless low effort puddle deep world together with a bunch of literal decades old bugs.

No promo trailer; the Russian equivalent is Medvedev trolling on twitter. They've definitely been talking about buffer zones publicly, and already taken some border villages opportunistically all along the border. Funny though, the imminent invasion involves 20k less troops than Ukraine claimed were tied down by the incursion into Kursk. So it shouldn't really be much of an issue.

Even if we took that demand at face value that's where it ends. It falls well below the absolute capital r Requirement to avoid the war crime of Starvation as Weapon of War. It's a performative demand to give a fig leaf to those whose populations actually believe in the Rules Based Order and are finding it increasing difficult to palm people off once they get pictures of starving children on their tellies. What's the next hard hitting demand from Trump, Palestinians be ethnically cleansed to South Sudan Libya in coaches rather than the preferred cattle cars? There have been a lot of performative demands over Ukraine too. Cutting down on them is not a bad thing. (Really though, if it were any place other than Gaza would there be any doubt at all that this was just more Trump quid pro quo to donors? The 'aid' group, its members and its modus operandi could not be any more suspect if it were run by Jared Kushner and- in a major surprise to no one- the net effect is to facilitate Israeli policy of creating concentration camps and having an Orwellian database and surveillance set up on every Palestinian. I wonder which company has been supplying the AI for their database... maybe I should ask copilot, see if it knows?)

Given Trump's ego you suspect he's serious about running at least once more so he can claim to be the winningest President ever, everyone says he's the best and won the most, and the burbling about it is at least partly getting people used to the idea. OK, winningest equal, and only if you accept he was the real winner in 2020. But all evidence suggests Trump doesn't do that sort of ellipsis.