Zoraptor

WoT S2 E2/3 Well, Nynaeve has chosen her Mythic Path now as well. I bet no one would have gone for Lich... TLDR/ non spoilers: not bad. I'd be struggling to say it's good, but at the same time if the whole thing was this quality there would be a lot fewer complaints. Not much outright praise, but a lot fewer complaints. The main issue is with them generating conflicts 'artificially' to get emotive scenes. And aspects of the visual design.

Had a chance to look at Israel's evidence on the Al Ahli strike in more detail and... they have the missiles launching from two different places 4km apart. Pretty much zero doubt about it to, completely mismatched description and location provided*. The cemetery mentioned is almost next door to the Ah-Ahli hospital. Its furthest extent is ~120m away. Their trajectory info however shows launches from about 4km away, in a ?Olive Grove? next to the coast (rough location; the Israeli circle is not exactly precise, the cemetery is just visible at the northern extent on a 1440uw monitor, so that will vary as resolution does). Something agricultural anyway, and there are no cemeteries nearby. We now also have confirmation from the Archbishop of Canterbury that Israel ordered the hospital evacuated the day before, a point that was in dispute with some. Credit to Britain's Channel 4 too, for remembering that Israel also has air burst munitions, not just ones that leave big craters. *The reason for the mismatched locations are pretty obvious and already stated: the launch has to be close by or the propellant has all been burnt up accelerating the rocket and you don't get the big immediate fire observed. Hence the nearby cemetery as location. But that doesn't match any other details since the rocket would not be moving quickly if it had traveled only 120m, so no whistling sound- maybe an active rocket sound, but we didn't get that- hence the more distant location. Build your own scenario out of bits, even if they're mutually contradictory. May also be a vestige of their previous release of missile launches with a failure that was meant to show the incident but was actually from 40 minutes after.

Should have left in the "don't bother replying part" in. The trouble with someone who always believes they're right is they're utterly pointless to engage with because their only actual purpose is maintaining their ego. Good laugh quoting someone from Bellingcat. They still have articles up insisting that the Khan Sheikoun CW attack was from a missile (ctrl f 'rocket': all the eyewitnesses), and that anyone who said it was a missile was a Russian plant spreading disinformation. Physician heal thyself. At this point is it really rhetoric? You can certainly argue the 'want' part, but comes a point where if you're continually making things worse the 'want' becomes irrelevant. To use an analogy the practical difference between a surgeon who is incompetent and one who fails deliberately is non existent, for the victims.

A story as old as time. Or at least as old as Chris Avellone's Arcanum Let's Play.

Hmm. Watched WoT S2E1 and it was OK. Non spoiler tldr: too many threads as people are in too many places but mostly made sense and introduced a bunch of actually recognisable book characters pretty well. Note: for the spoilers I'll be ignoring any prior knowledge I have of S2, but not prior book knowledge Also: good news! Nynaeve is no longer an assassin/ cleric multiclass.

No, it's really easy. You just say it wasn't actually your narrative, it was someone else's and in any case you were just repeating it for the sake of academic discussion. Then they're wrong, they jumped to conclusions and you can keep your ego intact, which is after all the important thing. See "Russia will be bankrupt in 6 months" in 2014 for how that works. Or you can admit you're wrong- when you are wrong- and not be worried about the crushing ignominy of it all because... there isn't any crushing ignominy.

Yeah, the break up theory doesn't really work though. You run into two fundamental problems. That the explosion is already too small, yet if it's a rocket that has broken up then, by definition, there's even less of it. You also have the question of what it's broken up into, ie, has the warhead fallen off? Has the rocket motor fallen off? And the fundamental issue which applies to every rocket based scenario: people don't really think about how rockets work. They look at numbers and think: this is plausible, based on that number. I mean, if every bit of propellant went up it'd make a big boom, wouldn't it? Yes it would! Well kind of, but that forgets that every bit of altitude or velocity gained by the rocket uses... propellant. Once it's used it can't explode or ignite on the ground. In order to get fast it has to fire its rockets for a significant period to generate either velocity or altitude, the propellant does not respawn as the rocket falls. (What Israel really needs to do is show that a lot fewer people died than the number claimed, if they can do that then you can also scale down the explosion size etc and put it down to dark making it look larger. Difficult though, since the hospital was run by the Anglican Church/ Episcopalians and you thus have to convince people that they're lying about it, not just Hamas. As it stands the failed rocket is utterly incompatible with the number of victims)

Eh, you could drive a truck through the Israeli story. Literally. That's why you had them blaming both Hamas and PIJ. Essentially: Hamas announced they were going to attack Haifa. This requires Fajr-5 or equivalent, due to range; about 140km. That has a lot of propellant, and a big(ish) warhead (see below for size) and would be a plausible candidate. This was too early for them to have struck the hospital though. Similarly, evidence for the missile falling posted as evidence was from after the attack (and later deleted by Israel) PIJ launched Qassams (technically Quds-101, their version of the Qassam) at about the right time. Can't be a Fajr-5, because they are big (6.5 m long, 1 tonne weight, so not man portable) and the firing site per Israel was a cemetery. That's quick set up with no launcher, so ~2m Qassam. But a Qassam is, well, comparatively tiny. Typically 1/14th the size of a Fajr-5, and similar proportion of range, and up to 50kg total weight. It's shorter range and smaller payload than a grad rocket and it's easy to look at the damage one of those does in Ukraine or wherever, lots of options. Not even slightly comparable. In order for their Israeli version to be accurate the missile has to be big enough to cause the damage observed, so it has to be Fajr-5. This is why you have Regev blaming Hamas and citing the claimed attack on Haifa as evidence, and IDF blaming PIJ who did not announce any such attack: it allows the two to be conflated into PIJ launching a Fajr-5. Now of course some would say that the difference is that after a failed launch the propellant is still there, and that did the damage. Well OK, in theory, but it does rather beg the question given the scale difference in damage: why bother with a warhead at all if the propellant is that destructive? Just pack the thing full of that instead, and don't bother with the warhead... Israel does not just have two air launched munitions that make craters 7 and 9m wide they've got plenty more including some designed not to crater (to prevent collateral damage, ironically). The phone(?) intercept is almost comical. Thank goodness Israel was listening in as they said exactly what they wanted them to and handily repeated all the salient points. Shame Hamas and PIJ didn't do the same thing 11 days ago, eh? And of course there's the plethora of other ancillary evidence: the warnings to evacuate hospitals made by Israel, Bibi's SM advisor posting it was an Israeli strike then deleting it, Netanyahu's light vs dark tweet from just after the attack. Doesn't have to be an attempt to kill hundreds either, just a 'door knocking' equivalent intended to force those demanded evacuations of hospitals gone badly wrong because in those circumstances a car park was not a low collateral location.

I think I have to watch and report back about S2 now, should be tremendous outrage bait at least.

Double post, but it's looking very likely that it was a JDAM. Pretty close to an exact match on sound and explosion size- and none of the scenarios thrown up by Israel or others (errant missile, disintegrating missile) come close to a similar match. and from Gaza ('missile strike' is [sic] if it's JDAM)

They've got a few Kiwi players with Dutch heritage playing for them, like Logan van Beek himself. None of them particularly close to making our side though, and with only a few thousand domestic players it's a big upset. Irony is, if the ICC ('world cricket') had had their way the Dutch wouldn't have even been there as being not good enough. Tangentially related, but it will be interesting to see Cricket at the Olympics. Kind of odd that the US/ LA of all places pushed so hard for its inclusion but I guess nearly 2bn extremely committed subcontintental fans have a lot of pull.

It's pretty much par for the course for Paradox. Their main studios tend to do well when they stay in their lane making the same strategy games over and over and their forays outside that are at best variable, results wise. How many major hits have there been from non PDS studios either under Paradox directly or with them publishing (not just distributing, so no PoE or Mount and Blade)? Cities: Skylines and... that's it. Maybe Age of Wonders, if you stretch the definition a bit? Magicka maybe, a decade ago? Not many, in any case. They just don't seem to be very good at managing external projects.

No proof, but Israel's made an utter mess of the response. Can't decide on who launched the supposed failed rocket (IDF says PIJ, Regev says Hamas, Netanyahu apparently blamed ISIS(!)) and the video of the missile shown by Israel's official state twitter account is from nearly an hour after the hospital was struck. Plus most of the Hasbara got stuck saying it was a legitimate hit and casualties were all due to secondary explosions from stored munitions for the first two hours- when the hospital was run by US Episcopalians and British Anglicans, so not exactly Hamas. All the telltale signs of scrambling to find a narrative that works. The explosion shown could have been from a palestinian rocket but it's... very marginal. It looks too large by far (albeit in the dark, which always makes explosions look larger) and would be like 1.5 M31 HiMARS rockets destroying a decent sized building containing high hundreds of people; it might just be possible, but it's not at all likely. Far more likely it was at least in the multiple hundreds of kgs range so was a GBU/ JDAM (or marginally, rocket like a Popeye), and that means Israel. Pretty embarrassing for Biden. His meetings in Jordan are just 'postponed' according to the US, but the other parties (King Abdullah, Abbas) say they're cancelled. So it will just be going and shaking hands with Netanyahu, which isn't going to get his meetings uncancelled any time soon.

From that, you may not want to watch S2. Based on spoilers/ memes rather than watching, but I'd be pretty confident even just from them.

~1700, officially. Always 'funny' when civilised 'surgical precision strikes' manage to kill at a far greater rate than 'indiscriminate and deliberate' targeting of civilians. Yep, Israel is killing civilians at more than 4 times the rate Russia is. And that's as conservative an estimate as possible: using Ukrainian government figures for civilian deaths rather than OHRCR (use them and it's close to a full order of magnitude) and Obama'ing it by assuming that not one single man killed by Israel was a civilian. Also, not including the dead from the hospital blown up today. At least those 500 (if confirmed) can take comfort knowing they were killed precisely, I guess. To be fair to Mr Harris it is a transcription of a podcast, and what works when said doesn't always work well when transcribed.

Meh, that's complete garbage. Basically a long 'essay' designed to make Mr Harris feel good about how much better the Israelis are at killing civilians. I particularly like the human shield accusations. Israeli soldiers regularly use Palestinian children as human shields, Mr Harris actually thinks that's morally superior because they aren't using... their own children. Yeah, such moral superiority. (On the more general issue, I'm always amused by accusations of one side 'not fighting fair' by hiding among civilians. Well ok, and maybe Israel should destroy its planes, drones, missiles, tanks, helicopters etc in order to also fight fair? No? Well then. And I'm fairly sure the dead don't care that they are 'collateral damage' from precision weapons; the people who care about that distinction are people who want to feel good about themselves for supporting it. I'd be interested in Sam's view on the moral equivalence of cutting off water to 2.2 million people, I suspect it'd put Simone Biles to shame with its gymnastic dynamism)

I'll probably watch it at some point when Amazon gives me a month free Primevideo or something. Consensus does seem to be that it was somewhat better, while repeating a lot of the same mistakes (and with an equally nonsensical final episode, which would be quite an achievement).

It's exactly the sort of overwrought title you'd have got from the press at the time- for our press the All Blacks are either incredibly awesome and just intrinsically better; or they're disastrously mediocre and their form a sign of the coming Apocalypse, never anything in between- so I'd definitely believe it happened. Just longer ago than remembered.

If it was Australia it would have been more like 20 years ago I suspect. We have a bilateral trophy (Bledisloe Cup) with Aus that we haven't lost in ~20 years now but which they regularly won in the ten years prior to that, usually very narrowly and in the last minute or so. They also knocked us out of the 2003 World Cup- not narrowly- triggering one of the greatest sporting sledges of all time (of all time!) from George Gregan: "Four more years". Some people still carry the psychological scars from that. Anyway, South Africa won yesterday so it's RSA- England and NZ- Arg in the semis. The meme final would be England vs Argentina in a Las Malvinas On a Pole match- and Argentina to win, obviously- but that's least likely to happen. Doubt either of the semis will be anywhere near as good as NZ- Ireland or RSA- France were either.

Well, I did say we'd likely make the semis, and we've done that. We ought to make the finals now, I can't see even this team losing to an Argentina that has been as erratic as us but from a lower base point. Would be a laugh if it happened though. We played pretty close to our practical potential. Ireland didn't play badly at all, but were nowhere near their potential. Never winning a quarter final and coming up against the ABs --> bit of a choke, sadly, especially since they were a man up for 20 minutes plus a penalty try. Real shame for Ireland that the draw was complete crap, they'd have beaten Fiji/ England/ Argentina/ Wales pretty handily most likely and then the quarter final bogey would have been gone when they met better opponents. As it stands, the best four teams at the tournament are playing each other in the quarters which pretty much sums up the competence of international rugby management.

The main problem with that reasoning is that you can always apply it in reverse. If you're going to blame Gazan civilians and make it all their fault then you can also blame Israeli civilians and make it all their fault too- even more so since the Israelis voted in their religious whackjobs, repeatedly. Half of Gaza's population wasn't even alive last time they got a vote. And of course it's completely irrelevant as a defence against war crimes. You can't remove protected status from civilians because they won't fight your war for you.

Gaza City is still 600k which would be a city most places. Roughly Homs sized, if we're talking places that have been bombed fairly recently.

At the risk of taking a HoonDing post seriously, they aren't going to be wanting superannuated F16s or prehistoric M113s or Leo1s back at all, let alone for Israel. Best thing for them is to catch a lancet or kornet since it spares the scrapping costs. OTOH, Israel has supposedly burned through a year of war in Afghanistan's worth of munitions (specifically air launched munitions) inside a week. You'd suspect them and 255mm ammo will be in even shorter supply. Gaza Strip is 2.2 million people, that's Mosul or a Lepo sized so definitely not a town, and it took the US a year and Syria 4 years to 'level' them.

The use in Lebanon may well be legit. Use as a smoke screen etc is fine, and the Lebanese border isn't built up. In Gaza though, not so much. The still photo AP had up is pretty damning since WP's dual use that makes it 'legal' is smoke, and there really isn't a legit argument for a smokescreen in the middle of Gaza city. The Russian 'WP' isn't White Phosphorus but is actually thermite. As always, since they don't actually have WP munitions. Its legitimate secondary use is that thermite will burn through metal and is therefore effective against armoured vehicles, cf if you want to 'spike' artillery nowadays to make it unusable thermite is often used to burn out the breech. While you wouldn't want to get hit by any its chemical effects on humans are considerably less than WP's. Funny thing seeing people insist Israel isn't using WP because "it doesn't look the Russian WP". Yeah guys, there's a reason for that. Easy way to tell the difference: thermite burns incredibly brightly and is extremely hot but does not smoke much (until it hits the ground). WP doesn't burn as bright but always smokes extensively since the phosphorus oxides are all extremely hygroscopic (water absorbing) and it and they react aggressively with that water- hence its use as a smokescreen. That hygroscopic property is also why it's banned in many military applications since it sticks to anything damp like, well, a person, and will eat its way straight through to the bone while releasing a lot of energy.

That all kind of depends on how often there are threats/ warnings but no follow through. If Egypt reports imminent attacks multiple times a year without them happening then complacency creeps in. Indeed, I'd expect any reasonable strategy from Hamas to include a lot of deliberate false alarms. eg send a lot of mass nonsense texts like 'the dog needs walking on the boulevarde on Mars' or 'the seagull follows the trawler because it thinks: sardines' to operatives multiple times so 'climb Mount Niitaka' looks like just another false alarm. Not really a very sophisticated strategy, but very effective due to human nature and people acclimating to threats when they repeatedly don't eventuate. The issue is more that there didn't seem to be any substantive back up to the fence more than anything, and that's a result of hubris. You should always plan for people to get complacent and Israel certainly seems to have decided that they'd 'solved' the problem with the barrier and didn't need extensive back ups. So it was complacency all the way down. Very much doubt there was any 'collusion' at work. Closest analogy is probably Yom Kippur 1973, and Golda Meir resigned after that. Of course she had more integrity in her fingernail clippings than Bibi has in his entire body (no great compliment to Golda's excess keratin though, anything is greater than zero) but still, last thing Bibi wants is more calls to resign and indeed you'd suspect such situations are #1 on his Not To Do List. He's probably got carte blanche (despite some rumblings from Lapid) until the immediate crisis is over, but then all bets are off.