Zoraptor

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.

Not inherently a war crime since the US is not a signatory to the relevant treaty (nor are Ukraine or Russia); unless they're used indiscriminately/ disproportionately in civilian areas. So merely sending them isn't 'illegal'*. But yeah, it will be a war crime since Ukraine has regularly been using cluster munitions in attacks on Donetsk city since 2014 (per NYT, so not exactly pro Russian). Probably more embarrassing than the two facedness of the posturing is the rationale: running out of conventional ammunition to send. *internationally at least because there's a well akshually about the whole thing: sending CM with a dud rate of more than 1% is illegal under US Law (Consolidated Appropriations Act 2010, for anyone wondering, signed by notorious peacenik GWBush), and even the Pentagon claims 2.5% for the munitions being sent. A recent Congressional Research Service report however gives, hmm, 10-30% as observed dud rate.

It's be Kurd related, if it's a quid pro quo situation. May not be though, the whole delay may just have been Erdogan posturing for electoral benefit- and that election is been and gone. Most of his supporters are stupid enough to believe him if he says it was a great victory with major concessions achieved, even if in reality he folded like a deck chair.

Super awkward <--> bizarre, and I'd say it was super awkward, not just run of the mill awkward like Miranda butt shots. It was the most bugged part of the game, the models were uncanny valley, they were very obviously intended to be a bit more, hmm, Witcher 2 than they ended up being to keep a lower rating hence the absolutely ludicrous underwear, they didn't really work if you were a dwarf and the overall reaction to the scenes elicited either outright laughter or staring incredulously. Or both. End effect: Barbie and Ken doll (or half scale equivalent, for a dwarf) sex scene, but done oh so deadly seriously. Certainly not as disappointing as the inability to enslave nations with necromancy, but just as certainly not the grimdarkesque atmosphere they were trying to go for otherwise and more something you'd expect as satire from Team America.

Can Larian out bizarre Dragon Age Origins sexy time? It's quite a challenge... (I guess I could watch the video in question to judge for myself but it's far more fun to just lol at the description)

That fight seems to rely entirely on luck. Probably the most annoying of my entire playthrough. Most of the time even if you lost you got some useful feedback, with that one the feedback was that nothing worked. (IIRC when I did win after, uh, one or two party wipes, no one had died so it was entirely an all or nothing result*. Just not a very well designed fight at all *not sure if I posted about it here, and I'd stand to be corrected if I did)

You'd be taking your life into your hands since it would be a Fatal 4-Way. Though maybe that term is TM'ed by the other lot. Wait, so you were women's champ then became men's champ?

Witcher S3 pt1: I could have sworn that someone here had written something about it I 100% agreed with, but apparently not, or my powers of observation have deserted me... Anyway, this was a frustrating watch. There's something decent trying desperately to break out of a shell of mediocrity, and failing, again. Spent most of the first episode trying to remember what happened in S2 despite watching the extended recap, and really, there was about two episodes worth of actual plot for 5 episodes/ 5 hours run time. The dialogue itself generally isn't awful, and the acting is actually pretty good for what they had to work with but the overall direction (and to an extent Direction) lets everything down. Way too many threads in too many places, and it's largely a self inflicted problem since the core trio are constantly getting pointlessly separated which bogs everything down further. Also lots of ham handed character introductions; even with knowing most of the characters beforehand it's confusing and must be far worse if you weren't familiar with them. Overall it gives that feeling you get when something is very badly paced of being simultaneously too long yet also too rushed: absolutely needed someone with a bit more competence in charge but at least it's better than Blood Wotsit. It's also done no favours by being split into two halves when it's pretty obvious- I'd expect even to those who haven't read the books or played the games- that everything will kick off in the second half.

Ah, so they've maintained consistency with the source material then, excellent for immersion. (I suspect being a writer for a wrestling game is a lot more difficult than people might think, since so many promos etc rely so heavily on the wrestler(s) delivering them. Mark Henry 'retiring', Steiner Maths or Hurricane/ Rock depend utterly on the people delivering them with utter conviction despite them being... just a little silly when you write them down)

Played in the movie by Jeff Goldblum, and hides an alien defeating trojan inside a version of Skyrim for Samsung Fridge Alien Navigation Devices... Did anyone really expect the engine to be anything other than Gamebryo++ with a new renderer?

Cognomen system > any ordinal system. Really shows you've achieved something in life- and you get well known but probably apocryphal stories told about you 1000 years later, eh Basil Bolgoroktonos...

OK, seen the first two SNW episodes now. First one is... ok. Dragged down a bit by the very silly framing used to get the Enterprise there and has some pretty overt nuTrek tropes too, but still, ok despite that. It's not going to be an episode anyone remembers in a few weeks/ months time though. Second one is, yeah, well written- probably even very well written- for the vast majority. Got to say though, it has a lot of the same Trek flaws that a lot of otherwise good episodes have. Note, not specifically nuTrek flaws in this case, since the same thing tends to happen a lot in every Trek show except (to an extent) DS9 with its more rigid narrative. So not an absolutely top tier episode in my eyes because some of the consequences don't ring true, but not far off.

It doesn't, since I accepted the gift and romanced her. (Annoying Iomedae was an absolute bonus)

The accusations of the Brits using colonials as cannon fodder aren't really well supported at all. Well, except for the Sepoy Rebellion, and that was a different kind of cannon fodder. They were extremely profligate with colonial troops on many occasions but they were almost always more profligate with their own (eg Gallipoli, 3x as many 'real' Brits died as Australian/ NZ). That wasn't, of course, because they were nice and cared deeply for the colonies, there was a healthy dollop of them thinking that coloured colonials would be useless troops anyway* and worse, the Sepoy Rebellion had shown they could be... unreliable, and you need to be very careful arming people who might decide Germany (or whoever) isn't the enemy they want to be fighting. *then they got repeatedly spanked by Lettow-Vorbeck during ww1, whose main force was Askari, not German...

If that's Murdoch related distrust Sky (UK*, which sky.com is owned by) hasn't been owned by him in ages, Comcast bought everyone else out in 2018. They certainly don't have the same overt agenda that Uncle Rupes had, more a standard corporate one, and though Sky News (UK) aren't 100% reliable they certainly aren't anywhere near the Daily Heil or Scum level to just make things like that up or massively misrepresent them wholesale. *He still owns the (utterly awful) Sky Australia though.

Once Upon a Time was actually pretty good within the limitations of a US network TV show; ie went on far too long, kept characters way after their sell by date so all the plots felt recycled pretty quickly and used up all the good ideas in the first couple of seasons etc. But that's what happens when you're trying to write 22 episodes a year for 7 years or whatever it was. OTOH, Fear the Walking Dead went right down the toilet when its OUaT writers/ showrunners joined, so mileage obviously varies more than a Volkswagon. Haven't seen either SNW episode yet due to time constraints. Watched the 2nd episode of Dead City though. Not bad at all, and a lot more my sort of thing than either the main show or Fear had given in years. Mostly due to Jeffrey Dean Morgan I think, who has 5 minutes of the best scenery chewing I've seen anywhere in years.

Not usually the biggest fan of our local papers' political cartoonists, but I love their one today with Prigozhin crossing the Rubicon and doing an immediate U-turn back to the other side. Alea iacta fuerat, or something. Of course they immediately lost my goodwill by making it impossible to link to directly...