Zoraptor

I don't think alliances automatically mean someone is a stooge- it has to be someone willing to do something which is primarily in the interests of the other party with either bad consequence or no benefit for their own. So it would be hard to define France as being a stooge of the US since they've had notably different positions in the fairly recent past; otoh Britain frequently puts its own interests behind those of the US while they're both US allies. The thing that would make handing Putin over the act of a stooge is that it would be illegal and thus a terrible way to start for Russia, and under Complementarity a new broom President ought to result in Putin being tried in Russia*. Handing him over at that point would just be to curry favour with the west, it would be actively against Russian interests. *ICC is only meant to step in when the authorities in the country aren't able/ willing to investigate themselves. Which is, of course, why it has such a bad reputation outside the west- it allows western countries to investigate themselves and find themselves innocent because they have 'reliable' judicial systems while African nations, obviously, have unreliable ones if they do the same. And then they tend to look at situations like the Australian SAS murdering civilians in Afghanistan for fun, initiation rites etc which their government knew about for ages and actively tried to suppress information about on grounds of, lol, "national security". But hey, competent and reliable legal system (and to be fair, one person has been arrested, as of yesterday. But he only got arrested after the attempts to suppress everything failed. If they hadn't he'd still be walking around regarded as a hero... and I think the chances of Scott Morrison being arrested for trying to suppress that information aren't exactly high)

Funny, I was sure they initially said they couldn't just take them from army stocks as they'd take nearly as long to prep as to build new (and would have to have a lot of stuff stripped back to export model standard too). Guess it depends what medium to long term means. But yeah, as chilloutman says, still considerably more complicated than the 2A4 for maintenance at least. Ironic that that is one case where more complexity is a big negative.

It's against the Russian Constitution to extradite someone in those circumstances- and not due to Putin, the law was drafted in 1996 under that idiotic, but very much pro western, sot Yeltsin. Would be suitably typical if the first thing the west asked a new broom Russian President to do was to violate their constitution for their benefit. Even worse, it would instantly establish him as a stooge of the west. In this case, probably fair enough though as they're meant to be making the Abrams from scratch, hence the long wait time. Leo1s are, ultimately, a design only 4 years newer than the T-62s people derided Russia for reactivating. Most of the Leo2s are 2A4s, which are 30 years old. They will definitely be less complex.

Funniest thing about the ICC is watching people's heads explode when you point out Senior Senator D-Delaware (a certain Joe Biden) voted for the Hague Invasion Act. That rules based order, eh, Joe.

Yes, Bruce isn't wrong about jurisdiction, he's wrong about ratification* being necessary. Of course Bruce and wrong is a bit of a tautology anyway... Indeed, Ukraine is in the exact same position as Afghanistan, which has an active investigation (well, last time I checked) despite not having ratified either. *And indeed indeed you don't actually require the location/ target country to be a member either. eg the ICC rather tepidly investigating the Brits for the Iraq invasion, since the UK is a member.

Clinton, everyone involved in the School of the Americas or Talon Anvil, the Brits for Diego Garcia and Kenya, the French for Algeria etc etc. There's a reason the US won't cooperate providing evidence. Euros probably will, they actually believe their own press. Turkey also got a plane shot down by Syria early on in the civil war and did SFA. Pretty demonstrably hit in Syrian airspace though since even the US said it was AAA used. More pertinently, the US has repeatedly shot down Syrian drones in Syria's airspace when they get too close to their occupation forces. Anyone care to guess which other country hasn't ratified its membership? Hint: it starts with 'U' and ends with 'kraine'.

The second Rebel Galaxy game has full range of motion. Even the original was one of the better Elite/ Privateer (especially) clones I've played.

They were definitely trying to down it; or at absolute minimum doing stuff they knew might well result in it. You don't have to physically hit it to do that though (--> wake turbulence). At least it was a cheaper drone than the Global Hawk Iran actually shot down a couple of years ago in similar circumstances.

Live service game based on Discovery*. Oh wait, all those jokes were done last time around, dammit. Um, guess that Paramount doing the Halo TV show makes a ST game from a Microsoft studio more likely? *otoh, Elite Force was good despite being based on the distinctly average Voyager, so who knows.

Watched the Luther movie as well. It was OK, rather contrived but probably better than anything from the series itself post S2. Which isn't saying that much, to be fair. Did kind of laugh at the ending ending though.

Why not just buy some more Virginias then since the US is obviously willing to sell them? (I know Australia has a bit of an obsession with having its own arms industry- we were, after all, strongarmed into buying ANZAC frigates to support it. You'd think after the unadulterated mess that was the building of the far, far simpler Collins' class that they might admit that subs were a step too far though)

How on earth do they get the unit cost to be 10x that of a Virginia class? A bit higher, fine, since it's a smaller production run. But ten times?

Troops in the field massively over estimate their own effectiveness- and always have. If you don't take that into account you'll always have wildly over-optimistic estimates. You can also stack the numbers by various means though they don't seem to apply here. Classic case: if you include ANA casualties the Taleban had a positive K:D ratio and the US led coalition had a negative one in Afghanistan 2001-21. Which on the face of it seems completely implausible when the 'losing' side had utter air supremacy including drones; plus had almost as much dominance in artillery and armour as well. It also seems implausible based on the news we were supplied with, because those figures never included ANA losses to make it look like we were winning when we weren't. 1:1 seems likely, now. It's just not a very good defensive position any more when you have enemies on the high ground on 3 sides. Oh god yes. We've had both wildly pessimistic and wildly optimistic press/ technical analyses of Ukraine's performance/ future there over the past day, let alone the last week. Positive stories have also been mutually contradictory at times, same with the negative ones. You can make some conclusions from looking at maps and the like plus seeing on the ground comments, but you can't know what the losses actually are and how far either side is willing or able to go on them.

7:1 is direct from Ukraine; iirc Zelensky yesterday. Might have been the army chief of staff (?) though since their names are similar. There's still a lot of footage coming out of Ukrainian tanks and ifvs in Bakhmut, comparatively speaking, though you're never sure how old it is- and at least one source* has a mechanised brigade still in Bakhmut proper (and one brigade of Russian regulars, rest Wagner). Perhaps the most interesting part of the whole thing is how little you see any Russian armour there, seems to be very disproportionately infantry. Don't think VDV are present there any more, their footage recently has been from further north around Kreminna (which is also where the above source has them). They do seem to distribute VDV in multiple places though. *which also has historical maps so you can actually look at how quickly the Ukrainian forces are rotated, which gives a good idea how quickly their combat effectiveness is depleted. Then again, you're always guessing a bit on how well researched such things are...

Conscripted prisoners <--> Russia's last professional soldiers Half of Bakhmut taken <--> no urban warfare/ house to house fighting yet. [..] Think tanks <--> oxymoron Literally the only reason why some people think there are professional Russian soldiers doing most of the fighting is because the good quality professional Ukrainian units doing the counterattacking- which have singularly failed so far- are doing so poorly. That can't be against conscripted prisoners, it has to be against professional soldiers.

Kind of, even those aren't literally impervious though. An 'unassailable position' is an inherently hyperbolic phrase which practically only implies that it's very difficult to take, not impossible. But even with that taken into account it doesn't describe Bakhmut. A well defended city or fortified line on top of a steep ridge with multiple supply roads and a large river or swamp in front of it plus its flanks secured would be close to unassailable, and even then it would be 'unassailable' (ie figuratively, not literally, so) in practice. Bakhmut fulfills (fulfilled) some of those but far from all.

No way was Bakhmut unassailable. It's a small/ medium city in a valley with a river running through it- better than what's behind it up to Slaviansk/ Kramatorsk but it was never a great defensive position. Now it's outright bad- high ground on both sides held by the enemy and most supply across a muddy field. Which of course also means the Russians shouldn't have so much trouble taking it... It can still be argued it's worth it to hold strategically to protect elsewhere and they probably can hold so long as they're willing to apply disproportionate resources there; the question is whether those resources would be better used elsewhere especially if they're eventually going to have to retreat anyway- throwing good money after bad, basically. Strategically it protects Slaviansk/ Kramatorsk and the flank of Kostiantinivka (which anchors the southern defence around Toretsk and right down to Avdivka) and Siversk to the north. The Russians would have a hard time taking Kostiantinivka though, its position is similar to Bakhmut's.

Plenty of tropes do still have reference names, eg Astronauts vs Cavemen for an inconsequential hypothetical argument carried on passionately far beyond the point it makes any sense to*. Think they've changed the ones where they think a reference name is 'mean' or controversial, mostly and by its nature that includes reducing most character types to tropes. *why do I know this one in particular? it's a mystery...

Not a massive fan of Sherlock*, but I actually thought the communication of thought process was fine. The fundamental problem is similar to trying to communicate synaethesia to someone who doesn't have it, ie how can you portray someone who 'sees' colours when hearing music? vs how do you portray someone with savant like deduction skills to someone who doesn't have them? However you portray it it will look odd because to a 'normal' person it is odd. I always find the hating characters thing to be interesting because for me it's only an issue if they're also badly written, otherwise love a good villain protagonist. In particular, I'm kind of baffled by the people who insist Walter White or Tony Soprano are good people just because they're the protagonist and are well written, and constantly make excuses for them on that basis... *like most Stephen Moffat series** its ability to maintain a plausible story got progressively less as time went on, and his version of the Reichenbach Falls was the epitome of seems very good on first viewing, but was an utterly awful idea in hindsight. **and a lot of other similar British series to be fair to him; eg Luther and even, eventually, Line of Duty.

Wait, so is the theory now that Russia infiltrated western intelligence sources to plant a story about incompetent Ukrainians blowing Nord Stream up in order to make the media look stupid when it's debunked? The keen Ukrainian amateur enthusiast with access to a hundred+ kg of underwater functioning explosive plus detonators and the ability to professionally forge passports is the equivalent of the Donbass miner building a T-72 in their backyard in 2015 and exactly as believable; and if you go by the media it's certainly not the Russians planting the story it's direct from our old friend anonymous source(s) in western intelligence/ law enforcement. And of course Lavrov thinks it's bollocks, it's very obviously the work of big p Professionals from an armed or clandestine service and they've already publicly stated it was the Brits. Agreeing with it it would be evidence it was planted, yet if he disagrees with it... yep, still evidence it was planted.

Oh no, 597fps in TF2 instead of 600! and I don't even play TF2. I'd say can't put a price on happiness but that is of course incorrect as I'd have to buy a new PSU and a new case as well. Nearly 200USD under MSRP on an XFX 7900XT Speedster Merc here now. If it weren't for the above I'd be severely tempted since it's only just above my upper ceiling on price. May have been an awful value proposition at launch but knocking a quarter off the price- and that for a pretty decent AIB- makes it look so much better. Which may well have been the idea of the high initial price, of course. Suppose I could take an angle grinder to my case, not like I've actually used any 3.5" bays...

Said it before, will say it again, I'd 100% buy a Yeston card if they were available here. It'd be like a little ray of sunshine peeking out of my case.

That describes about 90% of games journalism opinion pieces about as succinctly as it's possible to do. I don't think I've ever seen a sub profession as consistently unable to articulate their thoughts well- or alternatively, not having any meaningful thoughts to impart. In this case it's... pretty well written. His central premise though as expressed in the article title is certainly not supported by the evidence as presented, and is outright sensationalist in nature. (OTOH, discussion successfully generated and views successfully got, and ultimately that makes for a successful article) Andromeda at least had a heap of organisational issues due to poor oversight and leadership of a new studio trying to make a massive game on an engine that wasn't designed for what they were doing*. And whatever people say of C2077 it was a massive financial success, just not as massive as a bubble market- literally literally valuing CDPR more than Ubisoft on ludicrous projected sales of one game ffs- expected. Plus as was mentioned in the article it was saddled with some really dumb management decisions too, like support for previous gen consoles. *either ordered to or strongly suggested that they use it by EA management, too.

LDPR types love the Imperial Flag. So yeah, can't get much more crank-y. Which is ironic, because their own party's flag makes them look like Ukrainian larpers.

Ah yes. You can tell people who are deeply committed to western liberal values, democracy, freedom of speech etc and are implacably opposed to extremist ideologies like nazism immediately by... their desire to fire people they disagree with into the sun. Ho hum. Some videos coming out purportedly* showing the last road into Bakhmut now... and road is an extremely generous description. Knee deep mud and a lot of abandoned vehicles due to bogging and damage. And why not; time to check back on a popular theory ~a month ago- "Prigozhin and pals have been banned from mention in Russian media". Unsurprisingly, yeah, nah. *one at least has a geolocation, but I wouldn't count it as being overly reliable.