Zoraptor

Remembering all the times people were told that the US President wasn't really that powerful because of all the limitations in the US constitution so we didn't need to worry about Trump that much is almost enough to raise a smile. Until, of course, you remember it's actually deadly serious that suddenly all those limitations seem to have been thrown out the window. Maybe at least, maybe, having some balaclavaed brownshirt with a badge and a schlong that can only be detected under an electron microscope execute a woman on video may get a proper reaction since it was an actual factual american woman; but I don't think anyone will be holding their breath. Still, kudos to that mayor for telling Trump's off brand sturmabeitlung to eff off, and the non forum friendly version of the term too.

I mean yes, but... that isn't really the root of the problem. Or at least it isn't really ignorance, per se. As with so much the root is that people love to convince themselves by telling stories. Especially ones that have positive outcomes (bonus if they make you a hero). That's basic evolution and a great asset if you're sitting in a cave in winter with no food and your alternatives are starving or going out to hunt, since convincing yourself that you and your buddies are great and will single handedly butcher a mammoth is better than definitely freezing to death due to having a more realistic take. Similarly, going and nicking stuff from the Thog tribe is fine, because they worship the local stream and obviously we're the favoured ones because we're us (and sensibly worship the sun). Europe has capital C Convinced themselves both that they are the heroes- cue Borrell's beautiful garden that must be protected from barbarians analogy- and that the US is their Friend. Everything they are geopolitically is based upon those two premises. So, Europe is desperately hoping that this really is a one off, like Noriega, despite everything Trump says. They'd kowtow if it was 'just' Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Cuba too, because end of the day it doesn't really effect them. Denmark or Canada though- that would break their entire system of belief. It's like asking the Pope to repudiate Christianity. Even if Jesus himself appeared and said that Mohammed was right, and the world should be converted at the end of a sword you wouldn't expect the Pope to Believe it and order the world's catholics to convert. Appeasement is a fundamental misjudgement of Trump's character as so well illustrated by the surrender over tariffs earning no actual goodwill (indeed, being seen as the abject surrender it was and proving that Europe has no spine), but one that is understandable when the alternative calls your entire world view into question. That is may well end up with Little Green Men taking over Greenland like it's Crimea... just believe it won't happen, and hopefully it won't. The 'funniest' thing is the dichotomy of it all. Americans clearly elected Trump and knew what they were getting, but aren't really responsible for his actions. OTOH, Russians didn't elect Putin, but are responsible for his actions. Appeasing Putin is a new Munich Agreement, appeasing Trump is a sensible geopolitical play. China loaning money to countries in return for resources: terrible! US saying they'll just seize them instead... crickets. The last one in particular stems from not condemning Trump's Pillage of Syrian oil, a literal war crime, in his first term.

Sigh. hmm. heh. r00fles! In the spirit of asking disingenuous questions: why do you personally support machinegunning civilians? You approved of Marikana- possibly the only positive thing you've ever said about part owner Ramaphosa- and don't seem to find it disqualifying for Morsi's legitimacy after all.

What's even the point of that question anyway? Apart from trolling. Morsi in Egypt, MbS, the al Thani's in Qatar, haven't had proper elections or anything approaching it and are considered fine. Morsi was considered fine and his elections free after blatantly machinegunning thousands. Even Zelensky has prorogued his term and is refusing to hold elections. The US won't invade any of them, removing Zelensky by force wouldn't be justified using his overstaying his term as an excuse and Maduro being 'illegitimate' is not the reason for his kidnapping; it's just an excuse for those for people who cannot stomach 'narcoterrorist' as one. That's obvious to anyone with critical faculties. The real question as in all these situations is: if I considered the above, or Trump, an illegitimate leader and had the power to remove them, would it be ok if I did so? Would it have been ok if Putin had removed Maduro (even without burbling about stealing their oil)? Not a great hill to die on, defending Trump's decision on the basis of 'democracy'. It's a defence solely based on positive feelz about the perpetrator, and negative ones about the victim. It's also, of course, an utterly terrible idea because it encourages Trump and says that anything is OK, so long as it's him doing it. Trump's also implied that if Venezuela's leadership doesn't play ball he'll kill them. Truly, democratic values at play there. Same as threatening Honduras if they didn't elect the candidate he wanted there. If you've got rules they apply to everyone. They prevent people you like from doing things they want to as much as they prevent people you don't like. They also provide protections to those you don't like as much as those you do. If the sole basis of what you approve of is whether you like the perpetrator or the victim then you're a awful person- or an awful country. The sooner the collective west wakes up to that the better.

It'll be hilarious- for a certain definition of hilarious- watching some of the usual suspects contort themselves into justifying the US invading Mexico, or Canada, or Greenland. In particular Kallis/ von der Leyen. I'm not sure even invading Denmark would be enough for them to grow a spine. Giving any sort of justification for invading a country for 'regime change' is incredibly short sighted because even if you say it's a special case every other case is also special, to someone. Recent history is littered with such short sighted stupidities. It's even worse when it's Donald Trump, a man with an enormously fragile ego and an obvious need for a capital L Legacy. You don't need articles like the one above to know that Venezuela will not be a special case. This is how you end up with Iran, Brazil, South Africa and a dozen other countries with nuclear weapons; and they'd be entirely justified in it. You can kind of understand someone like Zelensky cheerleading it despite the potential... implications, for him. A willingness to justify it from Kallis and von der Leyen and other members of the- and it really is a laugh out loud designation at this point- Rules Based Order while not at all surprising is as stupid long term as their abject surrender in the tariff war. Same as for Netanyahu all you're actually saying to them is that you're fine with them doing anything, so long as it's them doing it.

I wonder if anyone has told Trump just how bad Venezuelan oil is? Canada's tar sands aren't great, but they make the vast majority of Venezuela's stuff look like light sweet Brent comparatively.

Kind of appropriate for Bandera's birth day. You'd have to suspect the timing was deliberate. I very much doubt they got any bounty. For all the talk about fooling the Russians the response from them was very muted. Not sure it even got any official comment at all? and most of the unofficial comment was equivocal about whether he was even dead or not.

NAFO types think tricking the intellectually disabled into planting bombs and then blowing themselves up is fine, so long as it kills Russian police as well. They think using an Azeri truck driver to deliver a bomb and getting him blown up is fine, so long as it's targeting the Kerch Bridge. And yes, they shed tears for a literal literal Russian nazi, so long as he's fighting for Ukraine and killing Russians. There's pretty clearly quite literally nothing they wouldn't excuse so long as it results in dead Russians. They are the living (eh, rather a lot are most certainly bots) embodiment of 'no bad tactics, only bad targets'; many have a previous record of supporting ISIS, when it targets Russians. It is thus utterly unsurprising that most of them are absolutely fine with dead Palestinian children, tortured Palestinian prisoners etc etc. Not very high quality human beings, to be sure. Fair chance Kapustin got whacked by his own side anyway. His organisation was largely irrelevant once the figment of the Belgorod incursions being home grown was gone, and he personally was embarrassing. Plus if there were a peace agreement he'd be an excellent chance for trying to mess it up. Always a good candidate for an 'unfortunate accident' as happened with a number of pro Russian militia leaders.

Trump has announced a new fleet of US battleships: the Trump class. Yes, battleships, the class of ship that has been obsolete for 70 years and defunct for 20. The first ship will be the USS Defiant, and be launched in 2.5 years time. I was so very tempted to put this in the funny things thread instead as there's literally nothing about the announcement which isn't hilarious. Trump class? funny. USS Defiant? funny. 2.5 years to build a 30000? 40000? ton ship, and with no actual design yet? hilarious. Should have hidden those intel reports about the Nakhimov finally having its refit finished, one suspects. They haven't even built the weapons systems he wants put on it yet so another Zumwalt type catastrophe of having a weapons system with no ammunition made for it would be on the cards; if it weren't obviously going to be cancelled by the next President without any work having been done.

Well yeah, everything is going swimmingly for Ukraine, according to Ukraine. Russia has definitely gone backwards in Kupiansk, but meh. I'm not a doom and gloomer claiming Ukraine is finished; they can generally hold areas they really want or need to, still. Just at the expense of other places- in this case Vovchansk, Siversk and Huliapole. And yes, Pokrovsk and Mirnograd. Really though, acritically repeating Ukraine's casualty claims is at this point extremely shonky reporting. At best. The latest body exchange via the red cross this week was 1003 Ukrainians to 26 Russians. Of course the actual ratio isn't 40:1 in Russia's favour but there really really isn't an explanation for that ratio- which has been pretty consistent for 18 months- which doesn't involve Ukraine either lying about retreating, or lying about the casualties it's inflicting/ receiving. Or both. The satellite imagery on the attack on the sub was also pretty conclusive that it was a clean miss. You can bet if it were a conclusive hit he'd have the satellite images in the article but it clearly hit the pier about 20m away from the sub. Still embarrassing, but if embarrassment was enough Ukraine would have won in 2022.

Their defence budget alone is meant to be ~60$bn, annually. Which sounds ridiculous and is, but may actually be an underestimate of the true cost. A 4 unit Patriot battery has around 400$mn (!) worth of pac-3s loaded (16 units/ launcher, 6mn per rocket. Not quite as bad as it sounds, it's 10 million for the old pac-2s, if you're Saudi Arabia). Firing them off once a week would be 20bn, alone; and Ukraine has more than one battery. Even if you go back to the cheapest pac-3 cost listed it's still ~13bn to fire one battery off weekly. That's partly why Europe has been so awful at ramping up actual production: it costs monumental amounts of money to make and run the fancy gear which everyone in the west has been conditioned to think is necessary. Then your 30mn euro shiny new Leo2 gets popped by a $300 drone using a $50 cold war era rpg warhead for everyone to see. The money overall pays everything from salaries for teachers- and soldiers- to generators to keep the lights running. The 'funny' thing is that 45bn p/a isn't even close to enough. It covers the theoretical budget deficit, but is only about 2/3 of the amount actually needed. And of course it's for two years. In two years time they'll need another 90bn.

Random gamers are probably about as accurate as Syrsky or Gerasimov to be honest. Yes, but that was all privately owned/ state company stuff. And was done reciprocally; eg the rather orwellian named company 'Securing Energy For Europe' was previously Gazprom Germany, seized by Germany, and nationalised. No one has seized actual governmental money- bonds and the like- and no one will. Indeed, while talking big about it, the UK has confirmed today that they won't either, and the amount they'd be risking is something like 1/10th what Belgium would be. The problem with 1 & 2 is that they really cannot work that way. You cannot legally seize the money; you can just freeze it. If you do seize it it will have to be returned, and with penalties. If they could, they'd do it, and all the hawkish people like Merz and von der Leyen would be willing to write out actual guarantees. That they won't guarantee it speaks volumes: they're keen on it, but only so long as someone else takes all the risk. It's not like Belgium is 'pro Russian' in any other respect; they don't want to do it because they know they'd be the on the hook for a hundred+ billion- and the EU, Germany, the UK and the Baltics wouldn't. The only place likely to have runs on their banks would be Belgium, when they inevitably have to find something like 25% of their entire GDP (plus penalties) to pay Russia back.

The Middle Earth games seem to sum up WBGames pretty well: the second game didn't perform as well as they wanted, and that was that. I'd guess the proximal reason for it is the abysmal performance of the DC live service game they had Rocksteady do which sank so badly I can't even remember its name offhand (Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League per wiki). You can kind of understand it; games now have ~the budget of a blockbuster movie, but take longer to make, for less return. Only takes one turkey- 200mn lost on it according to their filings- to make the whole thing look high risk low reward.

Probably not as much of a surprise as it could have been. It seems neither Netflix nor Paramount regard WB's games division as an asset, rather more as a liability, so it seems likely to be shut down or sold off if/ when WB is bought. They'd have got some cash from EGS to do it and most people who would pay decent money have it already.

That will buy a lot of gold toilets. Really though, doubt there could be anything which epitomised the EU leadership more than that funding saga. Weeks of being told that the sky would fall in if Belgium didn't unilaterally seize Russian money, with no guarantees from the EU or anyone else against the consequences of it*. Inevitably leading to fricking Belgium being compared to Hungary and Slovakia and what should be an embarrassing climbdown by the leadership labelled as yet another great victory. Now we can start the next cycle: how the 20th round of sanctions will bring Russia to her knees and how it's really really necessary to allow the executive to levy and maintain sanctions without having to have unanimity to protect against the unfettered radicalism and selfishness of those perfidious Belgians. Sorry, Hungarians and Slovaks. So easy to confuse the three. *which of course never happened even for literal literal Nazi Germany because seizing state funds is very obviously capital I Illegal under multiple agreements. That neither von der Leyen's EU itself nor any of its equally shouty constituents would do so when invited illustrates that they also knew perfectly well that was the case, and it was all performative. Because they want an excuse for yet more unpopular 'loans' that they must by this time suspect is never ever going to get repaid. In this case they couldn't blame Orban so instead blame Belgium. Literally literally one of the protoEU's first three members, lest we forget.

Naming things after himself is the closest Donald will get to Alexander the Great. Just wait until Blair suggests the new name for Gaza city... (Honestly kind of surprised Ukraine or Russia hasn't offered to name a town after him to curry favour. After all, Israel named one of their illegal settlements after him)

Stereotypically you'd expect Argentina to elect the descendant of a literal literal nazi who fled Germany as president instead of Chile.

The problem with the hobbit/ gandalf plotline is that you fundamentally cannot really do anything with it to justify the time spent. Gandalf ain't going to kill Sauron or the Balrog or whatever; and it's got no overlap so far with other events*. I have some sympathy for the mystery box aspect, silly as it was, because that was clearly mandated by Amazon because the algorithm told them it drove engagement. Wheel of Time had exactly the same issue. The only issues I have with Numenor and Lindon/ Grey Havens is the scale factor I described earlier- just not enough people there to make them feel real. Plus weedy evil numenorean is complete caricature. I do have another Celebrimbor complaint after watching another episode. Firstly, I'm not sure why Sauron even needs rings if he's already powerful enough to make an extremely prominent and powerful elf- Feanor's grandson, iirc- quite literally hallucinate that everything is fine. And secondly, at that level of control why not eliminate the root problem and make Celebrimbor hallucinate that the Dwarf Rings are all fine, or that actually humans deserve rings- or why not make Adar hallucinate stuff and prevent getting ganked originally; the possibilities are endless. As previous, the plot has to happen in order for, well, the plot to happen so Celebrimbor has to be deceived somehow; but the way it's being done introduces a lot of unnecessary problems. *given the current trajectory I have a sinking feeling we may get a hobbit baby towards the end, who grows up to be buddies with Deagol.

Fallout 1 even had multiple timers. Water chip one and the 'invasion' one. And of course both could be modified by other actions too. There's a worse example from the same game, ie chapter 6. Your very soul has been stolen! But %charname% has all the time in the world to go do (nearly) every single side quest you could have done in Chapter 2 as well as a few C6 specific ones before doing anything about it... You can justify not going after Imoen quickly quite easily, even for a non evil character. You're clearly not strong enough just after escaping and need more resources; which works for either a good or neutral alignment. It's probably more difficult to justify going after her at all, if you're evil or selfish neutral. "Idiot gets herself captured again immediately after escaping? Sounds like her problem, not mine". Bit harder to justify being slothful or even tardy in C6 though. Does also have to be said, I think, that when you do have an imminently critical issue as a plot driver so make tardiness have consequences you do get a lot of people complaining- eg the Spirit Meter in Mask of the Betrayer.

Rings of Power S2. 5? episodes in. Since it's free here for the time being, doubt I'd have paid for prime to watch it after S1. It's an absolutely massive improvement over S1, which lifts it to being ok, more or less, and I'm not regretting the time spent watching it which I- more or less- did for S1. I'm still going to complain a lot of course, but they are far more minor complaints at least and moderated a lot by the improvement shown. So it's still got the flaws of S1, but they're less prominent and mostly more... excusable, I guess. Many conversations still sound oddly circuitous but not bafflingly obtuse, there's still some feeling that everyone is a stage actor declaiming to the audience in front of static backdrops rather than being in a 'real' world but a lot less pronounced and less frequent (ie, the world feels a lot more lived in*), there's a load of slightly illogical minor drama for drama's sake** rather than it being basically all there was and you still find it difficult to credit the elves as being thousands of years old when Elrond and Galadriel act like they're teenage siblings half the time. The pacing is also still off a bit too due to too many threads- Eregion, Khazad-dum, Lindon, Numenor, Pelargir, (Adar/orcs); and the still not very good at all and extremely pointless seeming Gandalf and hobbits odyssey. Despite the number of threads a lot of things feel like they're happening far too quickly because there's too little time for things to develop. But it is, at least, reasonably engaging. Overall, if it continues the trajectory from S1-->S2 then S3 should be really rather good. *though it is still quite bad, which it really ought not to be. Spend millions on CGI, don't spend a relative pittance on extras to make the world feel like it has actual people in it is a baffling decision. **big exclusion: Celebrimbor acting like he got pithed between scenes specifically to up the drama..

Can't agree with that. There have been a lot of complaints- including in that article- about people being forced to go straight into combat after short training and the low life expectancy that brings. Or at least, there is the strong perception that that happens, which is probably more important than the objective reality in this case. And a fair few complaints at various times that even skilled/ specialist personnel are being forced into front line positions due to manpower shortages. End of the day if the majority were going into drone units or logistics or other 'cushy' jobs- or if that were the perception- they'd have a lot less problem with desertion in the first place. Not sure they can legally. Or if it was ever intended as a practical suggestion as opposed to a sort of 'aspirational' idea intended to put pressure on Russia and pander to anti immigration types. Don't think it really worked at all in either respect if it was.

The most surprising thing is the low incidence of violence towards recruiters. You'd think that a lot of the deserters at least would be armed even if the ones who were 'just' draft dodgers weren't. Similarly, only heard of one incident of fragging at a training center. Though I guess in both cases it'd be the sort of thing people would want to keep under wraps.

While the Houthis have not (mostly) been attacking shipping in international waters they have been attacking shipping in other country's territorial waters- mostly Djibouti and Eritrea- since shipping tends to hug the non Yemeni side of the Bab el Mandeb. Out of context that would usually be seen as being 'worse' than using international waters; but that does require ignoring any context. Of course outrage about those sorts of acts is highly selective. Unless, perchance, I missed Bruce's condemnation of Ukraine's recent attacks on neutral oil tankers in Turkey's territorial waters? I suspect I didn't though.

The Japanese PM is a pretty strident traditionalist and nationalist and for Japan there isn't much more traditional and nation defining than war with China. China is unlikely to do anything so long as she thinks that Taiwan will inevitably return peacefully or in a Crimea like low bloodshed manner.

Donald Trump should order strikes on the headquarters of the entity responsible for starting up crack cocaine importation into the US, and label it a terrorist entity. Save a bit on the fuel bills for the jets too.