Zoraptor

Corn is certainly a fruit, but then wheat is also a fruit*. Which is unsurprising, since wheat and maize are in the same Family so are pretty closely related. Monocot fruit is pretty much always referred to as either cereal or grain to disambiguate/ specify. As for the rest, yes you can certainly eat maize 'fresh' if it's sweetcorn and some (not much, nowhere near) is eaten that way- but it's highly unlikely that maize being exported by ship is corn on the cob. It's dried kernels or pre ground meal; cobs add extra weight/ volume and sweetcorn goes off quickly, plus it's far more difficult to load. Don't need to worry about dried kernels or meal bruising, after all, just chuck em in a silo. *as are a lot of vegetables, like pumpkins. Common usage doesn't tend to be rigorously taxonomic.

Fair enough on the sunflowers since they, well, flower so aren't technically grains. Same with soya and rapeseed/ canola for that matter. Maize/ corn is about as typical a grain as you can get though and has +50% production worldwide on either wheat or rice- and for the relevant data +100% on wheat. There is most definitely a big problem with articles reporting as if wheat is the only grain produced, and there are massive discrepancies in reported numbers due to that.

The issue with an 'all in' approach is what it has always been- the effort required to comprehensively defeat Russia would absolutely require direct intervention, ie war, and while Russia would undoubted lose a conventional war under those circumstances there is zero chance of it remaining conventional, in those circumstances. Of course, some people have convinced themselves that Russia's nukes won't work- the same people also convinced themselves that Ukraine would stroll through Russian lines to Mariupol in a week- or that they wouldn't use them even in extremis. But they would use them, that's the whole point of having them; unless people can convince themselves that the US/ Britain/ France/ Israel wouldn't if someone was aiming for their comprehensive defeat.

Dunno about the last bit, I suspect they'd still be getting most of the arms supplied so long as they had a stalled front and weren't obviously about to collapse. The justification for it would just shift to helping Ukraine defend herself rather than helping her recapture territory.

You'd have thought they would have learned to be skeptical from twenty years of 'our latest approach will work!' every six months in Afghanistan, really. As for the article itself: if they actually thought that for the reasons stated it was monumentally stupid to let them (well, not like they could have physically stopped them if they were insistent) try. Don't have enough equipment, so let them fritter it away pointlessly instead of building it up, not enough training* so let's get those who have been trained killed and the one thing you thought they had was morale which is prone to collapsing if you (1) over promise results and (2) get a bunch of people killed for no advantage. The latter is particularly bad if your well trained/ experienced and motivated troops are now being replaced by poorly motivated conscripts who have been avoiding the draft rather than volunteering, and it potentially weakens your defence if Russia were to launch another attack. To be blunt the implication of the article is that they were encouraged to go for an offensive that the westerners didn't think would work, now, because the situation would be worse not better, later, and a hail mary was the best option. The implications of that get even worse if the offensive fails. *that in particular was funny after hearing for months about how superior NATO training was going to carry the day. Then the tactics were actually exactly the same as people derided Russia for. Circle complete with Western Analyst throwing Ukraine under the bus, in the article, for not actually using advanced NATO tactics when the problem is obvious and mentioned explicitly exactly one paragraph below- basically no air support, and NATO has never fought a war where they didn't have air supremacy.

It is technically true: as in the article Ubisoft can delete your account for basically any reason they want at any time*. Crap article though, because so can Valve or anyone else. Indeed, as below they may be required to do so. *seen people say that Ubi has to delete inactive accounts with no games after a while due to GDPR, and that certainly seems legit since GDPR data retention policy does legally require eventual deletion.

They can't because as above how the proportions resolve separately look awful if you're claiming Africa will starve when the deal ends. Knowing Turkish media somewhat they've almost certainly got their figures from a Research Institute/ Think Tank that has- absolutely deliberately- fudged them rather than done it themselves. The contribution resolves to ~94% Russian, 6% Ukrainian ie for a country that got half its grain from the two 47% of its total would be Russian on average, 3% Ukrainian. It's more for some, (Egypt, Kenya, Libya) but a lot lot less for most others. Indeed, Russia exported more grain to Africa specifically than Ukraine's total exports to everyone full stop. It's basically the same reason the EU aggregated their grain deal figures to developed: developing, it looks a lot better than 93:7 as it would be for RoW: Africa and there are no awkward questions about why Spain with 50 million people buys considerably more Ukrainian grain than Africa's 1 billion does... (There are a few issues such as not being able to directly compare like to like, now- the closest being the Al Jazeera article linked in the previous post which is a year old. Can't see any way they'd be enough to alter things significantly though)

lol. I didn't expect anything from Erdogan media but at least it's got a laugh. Number of Olympic gold medals won by Michael Phelps and me = 28. Number of Nobel Prizes won by me and Albert Einstein = 2. Number of Oscars nominations for me and Walt Disney = 59. Now, some might point out that my contribution to each of those totals is zero, but still, they're technically true and make me sound awesome... ...same as for those grain figures do for Ukraine. We have the break down of where the Ukrainian grain was going, and of "Djibouti, Burundi, Mauritania, Togo, Cameroon, Senegal, Rwanda, Congo, Libya, Tanzania and Namibia" which "all depend on the warring sides for 50 to 70 percent of their wheat imports" only one makes the list for Ukrainian destinations: Libya, with a population of a few million. You can add one of the four with even higher proportions than 70% in Egypt, but even there we know that Russia contributes 80+% of its imports. Conclusion: if those figures are true then Russia contributes the vast- vast- majority and the Ukrainian contribution to that 50-70% is not much more than my contribution to those medal/ Nobel/ Oscar totals. Feel free to worship me as a sporting/ scientific/ cultural god if you want though. For the record, for 2019 the last year I could find records about half of Russia's grain exports went to Africa. For Ukraine, as shown, it was ~7%. And that's without taking into account Russia exporting twice as much -->--> Russia exports around 14x more to Africa than Ukraine. The good news is that if Euros don't buy Russian grain then they can handily cover Ukraine's contribution from that.

Number of African countries in the top 18 export destinations for Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea deal: 3. Which includes Libya, which is rich. Sorry, sorry, was rich, forgot it underwent a completely avoidable disaster that ruined the place and set it back decades for a moment, easy to do when there are so many similar examples I guess. That accounts for... 7% of the exports. If you count Egypt and Libya as Middle Eastern instead of African, there's one (1) African country on the list, at #13 (Kenya) and Africa accounts for just over one (1)% of the grain supply (source). Though at least I got a laugh out of the EU's propaganda arm aggregating the stats into two (developed/ developing) because any other way of doing it looked awful for them. Added bonus: Turkey cucked yet again by being included in the 'developing' tier. Now, its potential to annoy the #1 recipient of Ukraine grain might be a problem for Russia, since that's China... (Of course there is the problem of potential price inflation but... any problems for Africa there could also be avoided by Euros y'know, not eating as much meat and not needing so much grain to feed to pigs/ cows/ sheep so they can eat burgers while Africans starve. Shame they can't eat lectures about how much they should care about Ukraine, if they could world hunger would be solved)

That was more than enough for Xena/ Gabrielle... (Moiraine/ Siuan book is entirely read-between-the-lines, as is the case with much of Jordan's stuff. Oddly enough Sanderson was a lot more direct despite being a Mormon. Partly that's due to the limited perspectives employed, ie Rand is a pretty conservative country bumpkin type who assumes two women he disturbs are plotting something when it's pretty obvious they were euphemistically 'plotting' 'something' and doesn't question why an important noble has never got married. You had a lot of aes sedai commenting about how close M/S were as novices/ accepted though, and inferences that a sexual relationship was believed, by them, to have been part of it. They were common enough that the rebel aes sedai ordered, um, Meidani? to resume her relationship with Elaida to spy on her despite it not having been active for, presumably, decades at that point. Not exactly conclusive, but at least a plausible read which is better than most of the wot s1 alterations were. The relationship continuing into the present though, pure garbage. The book versions would never take such a stupid risk for no advantage)

I'd have a fair bit of sympathy for withholding information on lost nukes since you specifically don't want people other than you going looking for them; though no doubt its used for informational suppression too. Funny how Broken Arrow just sounds so much cooler than Bent Spear. Don't think it's just an effect of the movie either.

That at least is semi canonical- 'pillow friends' was the Jordan euphemism for Lesbian Until Graduation at the White Tower and there was a decent amount of evidence for Moiraine/ Siuan being a legit read in that regard. Of course in the books they then went to great effort to avoid seeing each other after said graduation, and didn't have apparently pretty regular clandestine nookie in a sex dimension like in the series. Plus both ended up married to blokes, so were technically bi. Obviously not a show I have much hope for, but it does seem to have a couple of the more memorable book scenes included- the Darkfriend social and Nynaeve's accepted test. I probably will end up watching it when I next have a Prime sub, with expectations set low.

Dunno, at least for the ICC if the rules only apply to the weak you'd expect Putin would be fine. It's got far more to do with whether you're in with the cool crowd than power. The ICC, like many things to do with international law, is a great idea on paper. But that stipulation about only having jurisdiction when the offending country is unable to adequately investigate makes it fatally flawed in practice- because the assumption will always be that some countries can be trusted to investigate properly and so become effectively exempt when they inevitably find that they did Nothing (criminally) Wrong. I really don't know if it's better to at least have something, or not to have anything when the system is as flawed as that. Because something like Tony Blair being complicit in a million deaths yet giving stultifying speeches to this day justifying himself while charging a six figure fee for the privilege, while the slightly darker skinned and more african Laurent Gbagbo got dragged off to the Hague for something that killed about a thousandth that number but the French didn't like (quel dommage on that; though at least Gbagbo got exonerated, it just took 10 years of imprisonment). It makes a mockery of the whole idea; it is fundamentally a good idea, but... that ain't enough when the in practice of it is so poor. If you had a cop who'd only pick up drunk drivers who were poor/ black/ they didn't like while letting others breathalyse themselves (never over the limit, strangely) you'd think they were at best corrupt, not that they were at least keeping some bad drivers off the road.

I'd be very surprised if the ANC actually believed in the ICC, in that sense, at all. They've been one of its most strident and consistent critics for being a court that only goes after brown people* and people the west doesn't like. Generally speaking you don't try to/ threaten to withdraw twice from something you have a very strong sense of belief in (indeed, first time it was only stopped because a court found it unconstitutional to withdraw). They just don't want to be hit by all the toys that will come out of the cot, which is fair enough since Ukraine is on the other side of the world from them so they have no reason to care about some little Euro war. *Indeed the AU voted to withdraw en masse at one point, though that was non binding. Case in point: you still have the Australians who were chucking civilians off cliffs for initiation rituals and shooting them because they wouldn't fit on choppers in Afghanistan walking around free with nary a murmur from the ICC because, basically Australia is a western country and thus has a robust legal system capable of handling things- which, of course, mainly consisted of trying to go after the whistleblowers on national security grounds, ho hum.

I could have sworn he ended up dead. But apparently he survived being shot in the head by Deidranna... More interested if Calvin Barkmore is in, especially if he's recruitable. Those titanium bones would make for an excellent merc even if everyone else in the squad hated him.

Strange New Worlds S2e5... now I kind of wonder if the writer has seen Blackadder, because the dinner/ ceremony scene reminded me uncannily of Edmund having the Whiteadders over for dinner for some reason*. Sadly no Spock singing a song about Goblins and no Devil's Dumplings though. Probably just someone with a bad experience with the in-laws... Otherwise a decent enough "transporter accident, shenanigans ensue" episode whose biggest bit of originality was that this time it wasn't actually a transporter accident used for the framing. Like most of the episodes this season you're not likely to be fondly remembering this in a few months, time, but it was absolutely fine while watching. * Well ok, I may remember the dinner scene a bit longer.

I would have said that a "meh" reaction was pretty much the consensus for TFA- a completely generic SW movie seemingly built out of bits of better movies. It was just a meh reaction with the thought that it might get better. I guess in some ways it did get better in retrospect, since the two sequels made you long for something merely generic and soulless. OTOH Rogue One, while not exactly high cinema and about as original as inventing a circular disk for aiding transportation of heavy goods across long distances did get a lot of stuff right and that despite being based around perhaps the absolute classic done to death SW topic, ie how the Death Star plans were stolen. It was probably worse for Disney than anything else apart from Solo though, on paper, since it needed extensive reshoots and retooling. But it had good villains, passable ensemble good guy cast, a more or less coherent plot (eh... it's SW, at least it needed a bit of thought to find its flaws) and was memorable. And it has to be said memeable as well which as the prequels have shown is good for longer term reception; and unlike the sequels. Except "somehow __ returned", but then that one hardly reflects well on Rise of Skywalker since it's shorthand for pulling a plot point from your butt.

Hmm. Having checked* it's definitely Sam Kirk at least informally for SNW- but presumably it is still George Samuel Kirk formally. Pretty sure it's actually specified in ep3 in some sort of detail, but I didn't like it enough to bother watching it again to check. *via Kirk's favourite search engine, duckduckgo. Makes a change from MS paying people to shoehorn Bing references into programs, I guess.

Might need to specify that La'an smooched Kirk, James T. since Kirk, Samuel T*. is crew on the Enterprise with her. I more or less liked episode 3 as well. It really ought to have been awful and doesn't sound great on paper, but worked pretty well practically. Also saw SNW ep4. I can scarcely recall anything about it except that I did watch it. For some reason I have the odd feeling that that's like having 10,000 spoons when all I need is a knife or something... Classic 3.6/5 not great not terrible episode, though I really have forgotten just about everything about it apart from the basic premise so not one that is going to stick in the mind for long. *heymentiionedhismiddlenameintheepisodebutiforgotit. Slightly disappointed it wasn't Commodus or Elagobalus or Nero or something nice and classic and easy to remember like Tiberius.

Well now, that is roughly the idle consumption of a 7900XTX, to be fair. Though the XTX obviously has a bit more... oomph when not idling. If it actually is a fully home grown card it isn't that bad of an effort. Rather like Intel it'd not doubt improve if they were able to fix up the drivers.

Ah yes, the notoriously understated Ukrainian Government which claims to have outright killed 240k Russian soldiers is underclaiming gains by 50%. It'd be one thing not to give specific areas taken for opsec, but area taken generally is not at all specific. Perhaps ISW is taking a leaf out of the Ukrainian book with Crimea being liberated in spring, and that extra land has been liberated, in their hearts? People may have laughed at the Russian progress in Bakhmut but at least it had a decent population, not 40 (forty), as one of the settlements Ukraine announced liberated had. Also, taking a leaf out of the Syrian Civil War playbook of breathlessly talking about liberating territory in Aleppo when it's actually some hamlet in rif (provincial) Aleppo, not the city itself. They haven't taken* any heights over Bakhmut city, even according to pro UA sources, they've taken some heights over a bit of Bakhmut raion (ie district), which is an area of ~2000sqkm. *they hold the heights over Khromovo which does overlook Bakhmut city, but then they never lost those. 250km range for the ones supplied to Ukraine.

Eh, Hemingway's great for a pithy comment but he was incorrect factually there*, but it's not a great fit as it turned out the Italians were infamous for not being willing to actually fight for Il Duce (or anyone else's imperial ambitions, hence them losing to Ethiopia 40 years earlier) under pretty much any circumstances; though they were a lot better when fighting for Italy proper. I also doubt the average Brit/ Frenchman or whoever was particularly keen on doing it all for old blightly/ la belle France while ejecting their intestinal lining from cholera for that matter... Mostly though, everyone dies heroically in war, according to their side, it's a basic tenet of propaganda that you join up to be a hero not a zero- and to be fair, most families probably want to believe that rather than the general reality that they got killed unpleasantly by something they never saw fired by someone they'd never seen (or historically, fried their organs from malaria or similar). *Indeed it was only ~a year later Musso's supposedly most fervent supporters managed to lose the Battle of Guadalajara to an army that won precisely zero other large battles in the entirety of the Spanish Civil War. See also Italian-Greek War (up until German intervention), Operation Compass (4x as many Italians captured as British total strength) and perhaps even worse, the east African campaign where a quarter of a million Italians surrendered (vs ~1000 allied combat deaths, with most troops involved being Ethiopian and other Africans). A few formations fought very well and some to practically the last man- in particular the Ariete Division saved most of what was left of Rommel's army at Alamein2 by refusing to surrender when surrounded, an act which earned them especial praise from him. But they were very much the exception.

I'd be skeptical that something with 33g of explosive (ie the m42 submunition) is going to be all that effective against well prepared trenches. They do claim to be able to penetrate 60+mm of rolled steel though, so maybe, but I'm pretty skeptical given it's a multi purpose munition.

Oh yes, my personal opinion is that it's detrimental long term to civilians and the supply is incredibly hypocritical when professing to a better standard, in particular parroting manufacturers claims when the government's own research has a minimum failure rate ~5x the claim, and ten times the allowed amount for export is very obvious propaganda. Same goes for depleted uranium ammunition too. Despite that it isn't illegal in international law if you haven't signed the CCM, just morally questionable and rather two faced. So, par for the course for geopolitics in general really. One can imagine the reaction from a US administration if someone used CM or DU on US territory. It would not, one suspects, be quite as clinical/ logical as their justification for using CM/ DU elsewhere.

Completely irrelevant, since the munitions being sent are, what, M864 155mm shells (hence the "running out of conventional ammo" justification which would be bizarre if ATACMS/ Cruise Missiles were being supplied) from... 1987, not ammunition for cruise missiles or ATACMS. And their failure rate, per your own Congressional Research, is up to 30%. Unless that too is pro Russian propaganda. I'm not one to usually defend mealy mouthed PR officers but in this case she's being completely accurate- if they're used specifically against civilians it's a war crime, because using any munition used specifically against civilians is one by default whether you have signed the CCM treaty or not, since civilians are by default a protected category that should not be specifically targeted. There is, as always, rather a lot of wiggle room where military targets and civilian are mixed and that's always the claim made when they are used in civilian areas. Same with thermobarics since they were mentioned as well, though there is not additional treaty effecting their use. Its use on civilians is specifically banned by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (1980; specifically ratified by the US in ~2008). Fine to use against military targets though, but unlike WP/ thermite it doesn't have other uses you can use as justification to get around the CCCW's more stringent/ specific protections for civilians than the default.