Zoraptor

Dry docks themselves are easy to repair since they are, basically, just a big terraced concrete basin that is fundamentally hard to damage and easy to repair with a door at one (or both) end(s)- and this wasn't HMS Cambeltown ramming the gates at St Nazaire while packed full of explosives. The issue would more likely be if any vessels in them were damaged enough to be irrecoverable then they'd have to be scrapped in situ or repaired enough to refloat either of which ties them up for a decent period of time to no actual benefit. Either way the only actual significance is the sub getting hit, and that's pretty minor if they aren't actually going to/ don't need to sink vessels going to Ukraine. At this point the landing ship is completely irrelevant. ... and I guess it shows how well the 'counter'offensive is going since at least in theory it's Ukraine blowing up a dock they were meant to be reclaiming imminently.

There's definitely a US league, though I know nothing about it nor about streaming or other options in the US. Think the US has a bit more emphasis on the 7s, since that's an Olympic sport and the US were champions and undefeated at the Olympics for 84 years. Otherwise there's a load of regional/ national club championships like Super Rugby for Aus/ NZ/ Pacific islands or Pro14/ URC for Europe. We did win our last WC in 2015, so it's been a bit less than 20 years. The serious answer is that back then we had a bunch of all time great players and we don't now; and they haven't changed coaching 'style*' in nearly 20 years so have been well and truly worked out. Indeed, we were well and truly worked out in 2019 and got absolutely smashed by England as a result. Realistically, 4th best team at the tournament behind South Africa, France and Ireland and that's that. *ie they've successively picked the previous coach's assistant as their successor. Last one was a beauty, since Foster had a mediocre coaching record as head coach and we'd lost badly in 2019 in part due to the coaching style being the same as in 2008. But the poor confused old chaps couldn't understand the guy who'd coached three winning domestic sides in a row (now 7; and maybe once had the best team on paper). Then six months ago they decided to appoint him, leaving Foster understandably peeved about being effectively sacked before the World Cup. Coincidentally, we got a report this week saying rugby here is run by a bunch of incompetents, no clue what they based that on. Maybe they didn't like pink gins and ladies, a plate please?

I'd expect France to win. Apart from the home town advantage we're pretty rubbish and only looked liked we were doing better than last year because Australia really are complete rubbish and South Africa didn't care. I'd like France to win the whole tournament and not just because at least then I can "no speakay le frenchay" to anyone being smug- they've been the best team not to win it yet. Otherwise, South Africa or maybe Ireland. We will probably make the semis but that's the best I'd expect, and I wouldn't be surprised if we lost in the quarters. One thing's for sure, they have to rejig the tournament draws, doing the seedings 3 years out was moronic. Two pools are ridiculously easy, one is ridiculously hard. Funny thing about our record loss to South Africa, I didn't think South Africa even played that well, and on another day they could have added another 20 points to that already record score.

As always with this gen the issue is the price inflation and associated naming scheme stupidities. Comparing like to like the '7800'xt is a pretty decent improvement over its actual equivalent, in the 6700xt. Trying to sell them for the same price you could get a 6950xt for a few months ago though, as here? Taking the absolute mick.

Quite apart from some emotional bargaining ('apparently destroyed') he also manages to get at least two things factually wrong, which is impressive for a short article. The Challenger 2 does not have blow out panels. The previously destroyed one actually deturreted due to ammo cook off (see below), though not spectacularly. Then again, fricking massive/ heavy turret to be lifted at all and a pretty significant fraction of a T-72s entire weight; and blowout panels don't protect Leopards when the ready use rack is hit. They'd also lost 7 Leo2s per Oryx at the time of publication, not 5. He forgot the mineroller last article as well. David Axe writes for clicks, his target audience is people wanting reassurance that everything is OK. To be fair, he is at least far more rational about it than others.

BBC source claims the Challenger was destroyed (or 'heavily damaged' in the same article, just 'damaged' in the earlier article) by a Lancet after an engine fire from a mine. Either of which would be a bit embarrassing- the HEAT versions of the Lancet aren't exactly massive and smaller than almost all ATGM ones and the normal AT warhead is a bog standard shaped charge, plus you'd surely have your valuable tank on a cleared path or following another vehicle precisely to avoid mines. Most Russian sources claim Krasnopol (laser guided artillery) instead and that seems far more likely- and better for the Challenger 2 as well. None of those have anything near the official recognition Ukraine gives Bandera, not even close. That's the difference: the Bandera worship is sanctioned- to practical purposes often actively encouraged- by the Ukrainian government at multiple levels. While you'll find, for example, British nazis you'll never get Dishy Rishy or Sadiq Khan renaming Park Lane to Oswald Moseley Boulevarde* nor will you find British Union of Fascists flags adorning war cemeteries in roughly 50:50 proportion to English/ Union Flags. There may be a few nazi tattoos and patches in the armed forces but not many and you'd also expect anyone found with them to be drummed out pdq. That certainly happened to one idiot here. *just Oliver Cromwell, Winston Churchill, Robert Clive, Cecil Rhodes...

There's zero chance of Bethesda actually using one of those Intel libraries, though it would make for superb lolz.

It would be funny if the CPU performance delta was because they were using one of those Intel libraries that pretty much literally does exactly that. Otherwise, you don't really need to depart from a variation of Poe's Law* when it's a new title from Bethesda. Though as above, considering the engine's age that it just works™ at all is a bit of a miracle. *Howard's Law: any performance issues in a Bethesda game can be adequately explained by it being a Bethesda game in the first place.

The Nazism isn't really suspicion. Ukraine's fetishisation of the OUN/ UPA is pretty blatant, and they were, well, nazis. Despite a pretty concerted attempt to launder their image. No one forced Ukraine to name so many streets after Stepan Bandera, no one forced them to have so many UPA flags in their cemeteries (that's the red and black ones that just about outnumber the official Ukrainian ones in the top photo) and no one forced so many of their guys to do nazi salutes, wear nazi regalia or get nazi tattoos. No one forced them to integrate Azov into their army either. Those were all choices. Just imagine Germany with multiple- literally dozens of- Adolf Hitler Strasses, swastika flags outnumbering official tricolours, totemkopf/ SS/ sonnenrad etc patches and tattoos... wouldn't be much doubt then, eh? There's always a certain amount of nazism in any country's armies but Ukraine's has... considerably more than most. (UPA's favourite modus operandi was bailing up civilians in buildings and setting them on fire, eg Wola Ostrowiecka and Ostrowki Massacres. Which was, of course, the same method used in Odessa by Right Sector and pals. Also ironic, all those anti fascists on reddit and twitter with their Slava Ukraini/ Heroiam Slava's are- quite literally and verbatim- parroting the UPA's slogan) I don't think anyone with any sense thinks Russia invaded because of the nazism, but just because it's a Russian talking point doesn't mean it doesn't exist. They were also never usable by Ukraine, but in any case if you're going to count Ukraine specifically for that then you also have to count Belarus and Kazakhstan as well. Belarus especially tends to get forgotten about, because in that case it's been the west abrogating the Budapest Memorandum and the Rules Based Order (but of course only with the best of intentions). If the question is which country gave up its nuclear weapons voluntarily the answer is:

Odessa Trade Union Hall fire (of 2014), presumably. You'd need some pretty specific conditions to have 70 unarmed warheads hit. The arming distance isn't that far, nor is reliability that bad. Then again, the only way the 70 claim was remotely feasible would be if they lined up to fire only at the frontal armour, or weren't using AT rounds. Or were ww2 era Panzerfausts or... But really, the 70 claim was always a load of bollocks and about as credible as any other obvious propaganda puff piece. And yes, dreadfully designed tank with awful visibility andor incredibly poorly utilised if the enemy is hitting it 70 times.

Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact, presumably. To be fair, it wasn't precisely a myth. One hadn't been destroyed by enemy action until whenever that video was shot, just one destroyed accidentally by the Brits themselves. (OTOH, them surviving getting hit by eleventy billion 70 RPG rounds in Basra always seemed to be about as hyperbolic as, well, calling 70 eleventy billion)

First Challenger 2 knocked out- and pretty comprehensively so. Doubt even the most hopeful Ukrainian supporter thinks that one is getting towed back to Poland for a quick fix.

Reznikov (Ukrainian Defence Minister) has been fired. Not surprising though. First rumours he was going were back in January due to corruption (iirc not specifically his but in the ministry/ armed forces in general), so not 'counter'offensive related.

Volition is shutting down. Probably a combo of the SR reboot not doing well and the problems Embracer has from blowing up like a balloon on (now not so) cheap debt then failing to get a bail out from the Saudis. Shame, quite apart from the people losing jobs they made some great stupid but fun games.

The timing is wrong for that. Turkey lost their Leos against ISIS in 2016, they attacked the Kurds in January 2018 and Germany refused to upgrade them in January 2018 also. Once they'd been upgraded they wouldn't have been 2a4s any more; they'd have been 2a7s. A 2a4 supplied to Ukraine is not significantly different from those Turkey is/ was running, if they were they would have a different model number (2a4M, 2a4r for the Finnish supplied minerollers etc). Turkey admitted that tank was destroyed- not much way to deny it- along with 5 crew dead, in Sheikh Haruz.

There's also at least one picture of a deturreted Leopard from Ukraine, and if it's deturreted the ammo has 100% gone up. On the positive side, was definitely disabled first and exploded later. The classic from Syria: yep, more bijis than a playlist at a 70s disco. The tank explosion is fairly classic too I guess.

David Axe is awful, and probably less reliable than either MoD in the war. Which may seem impossible, but he tries so very very hard. His previous article on the Leopards used methodology that would have the mythic Polish Repair Yards giving Einstein conniptions by managing to create new Leopards from thin air*. I have a slight suspicion he may be doing the exact same thing again... (My personal favourite, a storm shadow strike "may have destroyed a hundred or more [russian armoured] vehicles". For reference, a 65kg S300 warhead managed, well, one tractor, in Poland and the warhead on the SS is not much larger at 100kg. There's being hopeful, and then there's David Axe. In case it has to be said: sites.Forbes is blogging, not journalism anyway) *same Leopard damaged twice and repaired twice --> 'both' re-added to active count. So if you had 80 you would end up with 81 and the Polish Repair Yard has broken conservation of energy laws.

WoT had Harriet McDougal and Brandon Sanderson as producers, for all the good it did. Witcher had Sapkowski... How on earth they gave Rafe Judkins another series (not Bladerunner, to avoid any implication) to run after WoT I don't know unless the whole thing actually is an elaborate tax fiddle. WoT was an expensive series and it looked like Hercules/ Xena half the time.

Comparing the uplift from 7600/ 6650 is misleading in this case though. 7700/ 7800xt have a proper node improvement (-->5nm) to take into account, 7600 is still 7nm. Or at least, what we would have called 7nm+ a few years ago before every node improvement needed a new number for marketing. While 7-->5 wasn't the greatest node improvement in the history of the world it was still decent. Launch pricing very much looks like a 7900XT/X situation with the weaker card being priced to make the stronger look better rather than on its own merits.

I doubt there's much dedication- 99% chance they've just written a script/ bot to do it for them. Which I guess takes some effort but not 6000 manual one star review class effort.

Not everyone in anglo media is saying that it was a missile either, though it was certainly popular with certain groups. The ones who are* are tending to use evidence they wouldn't use in a more neutral situation and doing so because it makes a nice tidy story though. *maybe were, now, since the US came out and said it wasn't a missile. I haven't really been paying attention to it today.

To be fair in this case whether it was a missile or not is peripheral rather than fundamental, it's just indicative of some bad reasoning. The only fundamentals are if it was an accident or deliberate, and if the latter who did it. But; people do desperately want it to be a missile because that's definitive on both counts ie that would make it deliberate and done by Russia. And there's been an awful lot of experts working back from the conclusion they want rather than working from the evidence over the course of this war over multiple different issues and with multiple examples of experts ignoring or not knowing stuff they really ought to. You thus end up with two conclusions; either they're not experts but 'experts' or they're being deliberately dishonest. The first explanation seems more... charitable.

Well that sucks. And everyone thought he was finally recovering. Yeah, vast majority of people who die from 'dementia' die from pneumonia (or malnutrition when they lose their swallow reflex or for Alzheimers lose all interest in food, or from a plethora of other secondary effects). Unlike HIV it's possible to die directly from the disease itself via the breathing reflex being lost but it's pretty rare to survive that long.

If this war has done anything it's finished off any vestigial respect I had for 'experts'. Which to be fair, wasn't much at all, but still. Bodies of people who die in bomb incidents on planes are very seldom either burnt or exposed to high temperatures as a result of a bomb*; they almost always have just blunt force/ impact trauma. This is a common mistake people make when they've seen a lot of LE/ propellant explosions which are, basically, a big fire created from something that is designed not to explode violently. Same for fuel: there's a reason your cabin is pressurised at 8500m and engines require a compressor- lack of oxygen- which is exactly what fuel needs to ignite. Despite the reputation of jet fuel it's generally about as ignitable as diesel (indeed the main jet fuel, kerosene, was used as fuel for tractors just like diesel is now and some diesel engines and jet turbines will run on the other fuel fine), not worse than petrol. HE otoh does not create much 'fire'** as that would be counterproductive to its main task. Fire involves a lot of relatively slow and incomplete/ inefficient combustion (hence smoke--> unoxidised carbon) while you want very rapid and complete 'combustion' for a HE; and all it has to do in 99% of cases to bring down a plane is punch a hole in it. If you really want to do that and you're a state security service there are a plethora of ways to do it that will leave no traces on any bodies and no obvious traces on the aircraft anyway, not just bombs. Still could be a missile of course, and I'd agree if it were there's no chance of it being a case of mistaken identity. If it had been a random plane then with what we've seen the suggestion would be either bomb or far more likely a mechanical issue but it wasn't a random plane. *on the ground is more likely. Think of it this way, while our experience of flying is in a high oxygen low (apparent) velocity environment in which a fire would flourish as soon as a hole is made in the plane by a bomb all the air gets sucked out and at very high speed--> fire in low oxygen environment and with very high velocity winds --> fire goes out. **hence HiMARS having aluminium powder added to their explosive warheads to enhance heat/ incendiary effects. Which, of course, was forgotten completely when it came to the Olenivka Prison explosion. Especially when the target was Prigo. One suspects all the hand wringing over the poor flight attendant and pilots would stop pretty damn quick if Ukraine claimed responsibility. Though one doesn't really need to suspect given the completely different attitude towards the truck driver Ukraine atomised in the Kerch Bridge attack. At least the FA and pilots were Wagner employees...

Name change (or two*, perhaps something educational sounding after the musical name?) for Wagner and then status quo for Africa, assuming Prigo is actually dead. Which he probably is, but that guy loves/ loved a good troll. In any case nice deniable groups are far too much use for geopolitical shenanigans and Wagner was far too successful to be wound up as a concept. *I will never fail to be amused by Jabhat al Nusra/ Al Qaeda in Syria and Blackwater using the exact same strategy to whitewash themselves