Zoraptor

Malc has pretty well covered the law part, guess that leaves... ..the law and penalties actually being applied. I doubt the fine levied by the "Commission for the Protection of the State Language" would be considered particularly egregious, but labeling use of Russian as "profane" is certainly indicative of where the commissar wants things to go.

Zelensky has banned opposition parties and proposed banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as well as bringing in penalties for speaking Russian (ah yes, I remember well when persecution of Russian speakers was 'Fake News' and would never happen, after Maidan...). He's not even relatively progressive. You can get away with an awful lot when you're western backed and the media won't report on anything negative.

That argument only works if one side actually kept to the agreement. If both sides ignored it you can't play the holier than thou card, because everyone's in the dirt. Nobody paid attention to the Budapest Memorandum, nobody paid attention to Minsk. If they had we wouldn't be where we are now, but that applies to everyone. Even if it was only one side in those cases there's a mutual history of breaking/ ignoring other treaties and agreements that fostered massive distrust. And not just on one side.

Yeah, going to change my mind after checking out the aggregate benchmark results. Big enough difference in performance that it needs a different model number. Also even worse value, somehow.

1) Not a treaty 2) Everyone broke it. Indeed, the US and UK are still breaking the Belarussian version of the Budapest Memorandum- which prohibits economic coercion. Georgia at least is a pretty poor example though. Ethnically cleansing Ossetians and Abkhaz in the early 90s- per HRW- and actually started the 2008 war by attacking Russian peacekeepers- per OSCE.

Trying to scalp a 7900XTX --> nice idiot detector since there isn't as much demand and a lot more supply. I don't think there's anything wrong with the naming of the 7900XT, but its pricing is certainly bad since price/ performance is nearly linear to the xtx. Maybe should have been the 7900 and 7900XT, but that's still just a couple of letters different. OTOH if it's anything like the 6800/XT vs 6900 it will end up almost discontinued once the manufacturing kinks have been worked out. (and unfortunately I'm now in the market for a card. Not, one suspects, a 7900XT/X though since 800NZD is about the most I'm willing to pay)

There's a decent amount they could do, in theory. Even the 96CU (will WGPs ever stick?) could be got around*. OTOH, there's plenty of scope for potential memory improvement without HBM- go from 6x16MB to 6x32MB, and/or bring in vCache. The latter surely has to happen for GPUs at some point, and you could draw a parallel with the vanilla cache 7000 CPUs being released first and 3d cache versions later. I don't think we've got anything even approaching semi official on cards above the 7900XTX even existing yet though, so it's all doubly in theory. *7990 was a dual GPU card last time and that approach fundamentally makes more sense if the design is 'proper' MCM. Likely... no, especially for Navi31. Outside, outside, possibility of 2x64 from Navi 32 though.

Kind of a weird release which makes me wonder if they've had something Go Wrong somewhere; at AMD/ radeon specifically, not the reviewers. From the hardware it ought to be close to half way between 4080 and 4090 (raster) performance wise, and it's a fair bit behind that. It is still better value than a 4080, but it is also a bit disappointing it isn't better value/ performance. Will be interesting to see if they can claw back that 'missing' performance with drivers or AIB cards, though in terms of marketing it would largely be irrelevant. Also interesting to see if the speculated 7970/90 eventuate.

Love Actually is the only Christmas movie I can actually recall watching (exc Die Hard, I guess) and... I didn't like it. Even as a kid I can't remember watching any though I surely must have. Watched plenty of TV specials and the like though. I think Christmas being in the middle of summer here really cuts down on movie watching- big difference it getting dark at 9pm instead of 4-5 and being warm.

Israel started the 6 day war when they bombed the Egyptian air force. The Israeli claim they were attacked by Jordan and Syria so seizing their territory is fine is rather like saying that France and Britain brutally attacked Germany in 1939- you have to ignore Germany attacking Poland first. Of course, Germany/ Israel only did that because Poland/ Egypt was planning on invading them... Even worse than Poland the Egyptians were so prepared for that imminent invasion that they lost in, well, 6 days hence the name of the war. Not really the same thing, since Palestinians 100% existed- and have essentially none of the freedoms Israeli Jews have. I'm not a great fan of BOTs or the British history of colonialism in general, but that comparison is not even close to like to like. Indeed, as you can tell from the names most of the islands that weren't terra nullius had the initial colonisation (and inevitable atrocities vs natives) carried out by France or Spain, not Britain. Gibraltar has been part of the UK/GB longer than it was part of Spain and by a pretty hefty amount too, about +50%/ one century. The troll option would be to give Gibraltar back to the Moroccans so the Spanish can complain about that (while, of course, they are still maintaining Ceuta and Melilla as exclaves in Africa, for maximum irony). Falklands is already held by its native population, as are all the other ones that were genuine terra nullius. No one to hand them back to, all you could do is give them to someone geographically close. Pitcairn etc would probably be fine going to us, I doubt St Helena would be keen on going to... Angola? though. And they're too small to be independent.

About half of those were genuine terra nullia and have no native population (Falklands, St Helena, Ascension, Pitcairn (and friends; natives died out before european discovery), South Georgia and South Sandwich). Most of them have devolved rule too, even Pitcairn and pals with its few dozen people. You can supplement that with Diego Garcia though, since the treatment of its native population- well within living memory- alone more than compensates for any claims of having left the colonial legacy behind. Even worse, they were depopulated specifically to benefit the US, not even the UK. Should also add that the 'some people' in the case of the Falklands amounts to literally three people out of near 2000 voters, according to the 2013 referendum.

Had no less than 4 half drunk bottles of vodka in the house* so made limoncello. Ants managed to get into the white sugar, so ended up making it with brown sugar instead. Wouldn't score highly in terms of looks, but still tastes great. *not a fan personally, but people know I'm not so bring a bottle themselves, and they accumulate. At least I noticed one was feijoa vodka before adding it.

Rodents may be the default lab animal for testing but they're intrinsically poor when it comes to aspartame- they actually lack the receptors that make it sweet to us, for example. I've always liked dioxin toxicity as the go to to show how big differences in effects can be; hamsters and guinea pigs have a 1000 fold difference in toxicity and that's despite both being rodents. (Aspartame is one of those chemicals where bad effects make a lot of sense in theory as it will dissociate to methanol, aspartic acid and phenyalanine all of which may have bad effects. Aspartic acid and phenylalanine are both essential amino acids though so will be present naturally, and the amounts of methanol you get from it... well, don't drink beer or spirits, or eat bread, if you're worried the levels of methanol you'd be exposed to from a typical dose of aspartame. Aspartic acid causes anxiety and that is where that effect comes from. Really though, who drinks 1.5-2L of diet soda per day anyway?)

'Reasonable' is completely subjective- I voted for decriminalisation here, so my personal opinion on punishment is obviously different from, say, Singapore's. Very difficult to argue that my personal opinion of what is reasonable trumps Singaporean (or Russian) law though, especially when they are well publicised. End of the day, if you're going into a country it's fundamentally expected and reasonable that you are bound by their law. If you don't like that don't go. You'd be surprised how little sympathy some people have for their compatriots. IIRC a plurality of Australians actually supported the execution of two of the Bali Nine (Australians busted for exporting drugs from Indonesia, in Indonesia; looks like it was 47% approval for their execution from wikipedia). The most realistic interpretation is that the 9 years was never going to be enforced anyway and she was always intended to be swapped. Indeed, there was pretty clearly some leverage applied too such as the reports she would be sent to a gulag which were probably designed solely so that there would be a 1:1 swap.

https://www.yenisafak.com/en/world/serbian-defense-minister-one-spark-is-enough-to-ignite-everything-in-kosovo-3656869 https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/tense-situation-in-north-kosovo-following-explosions-attacks/ Though according to those there were 'provocations'/ provocations in the form of explosions. Certainly wouldn't be out of character for the kosovan government to just make them up though.

Yeah, just don't bring the drugs with you seems to be the actual answer to her problem. Doesn't seem to be any doubt she actually did the crime, the only disputation is whether the punishment was politically influenced. (Probably a location thing, but NZers who get caught with drugs internationally get very little sympathy in general, because you get it drilled into you that most nearby countries will at absolute best stick you straight back on a plane with a return ban and fine if you're carrying any. Otherwise you know you'll face anything from rattan caning- compulsory in Singapore for drug importation, for example- to months or years of fun in an Indonesian/ Malay/ Brunei/ Filipino/ Thai jail. I can personally attest that all of those except the Philippines- never visited- make it incredibly clear that bringing in drugs is illegal and will earn some extremely bad consequences for you)

Kotick has awarded himself rather a lot in bonuses over the years though, and will continue to do so if Activision isn't sold. Even if he somehow gets forced out it will be with a platinum plated golden parachute. The rules of the game are written so whatever happens, he wins. But yeah, end of the day MS are most definitely buying Activision to add to their gaming/ xbox division, there really isn't any other possible reason; and if they're doing so it's because they believe that will drive profits via exclusivity. Their actions with Bethesda certainly will not be putting them in a good light for claiming otherwise either.

I didn't think Time could get more cringe than awarding 'you' the Person the of the Year in 2006, but that at least comes close. (Zelensky is a perfectly fine choice, but jesus f christ the Star Wars Poster Format should only ever be used ironically guys)

Wikipedia is precisely as good as its references. Which for simple stuff like numbers are usually* as good as any other source. I wouldn't go to wikipedia for anything close to an 'opinion' based analysis for anything remotely political or current though; at that it's generally useless- and far too often worse than useless. *with some notable exceptions. It will always be amusing looking at the casualties for Operation Bagration as ultimately all its 'credible' estimates are based on German sources (which mostly resolve to... Joey Goebels, in the end). All the glorious victories kept getting closer to Berlin indeed.

Yeah, dissing on wikipedia when the alternative is Arestovych is... an interesting take. Especially when it isn't difficult to check. 66 Tu160s and Tu95s per new start (different link from the one above, no download req) The weasel word is, of course, 'active' though more likely 'damaged 20% of the bombers present' is way closer to the truth. Could even be one of those translation errors. As Gfted said, in this case old stocks so no cost. Also, since they were intended for a nuclear payload +/- a few hundred metres didn't matter so they just use bog standard inertial guidance which is, at heart, the same thing a V-1/2 used in the 40s. More generally, any dummy will not be a 'smart' missiles, and rocket fuel is also very cheap unless it has to be something unusual (which of course you wouldn't use for dummies). Even machining isn't expensive if you don't need precision, no one will care if the odd dummy goes off course. Israel has been using the same sort of thing in Syria for years to overload Syrian AD, their ratio has sometimes been as high as 9 dummies to 1 live. Dummies just need to look like 'real' missiles on radar; which is trivial to achieve since they are missiles, they just don't have a warhead.

People who support Arsenal are so mentally destroyed by the constant disappointment that they take it out on the national team.

Despite holding a British passport I shall be vehemently allez-ing for les bleus. Good lord the English supporters would be obnoxious if they won; at least everyone else would be obnoxious in a language I can pretend to not understand.

It's not to do with that at all. There's a fundamental difference between interpreting greatest (-->'best') and greatest (-->most significant). The media mostly interpreted it the first way because... that's what made a catchy headline; the actual question posed was as the MT had it though, as who was most significant. ie, Stalin was being voted most significant by Russians, same as he was given two Man of the Year awards by Time for being the most significant man in 1939 and 1941, not for being the best person. It got mistranslated to greatest. Not the first time either, see Ivan the Terrible where Terrible is technically an accurate translation of Grozny, but it's in the near archaic sense you get in Battle Hymn of the Republic's "Terrible swift sword". Tempestuous or Stormy is a far more accurate literal translation and 'righteous' probably the closest figurative one. For an unrelated example, unsurprisingly Chinggiz Han/ Temujin was voted most significant Mongol in history, by Mongolians (and most of the top 10 were associates/ successors of him). That doesn't mean that current day Mongols are endorsing the depopulation of much of Asia. It's just pretty difficult to argue that any other Mongol leader has been anywhere near as important and those that it could be argued for like Subotai or Kublai Khan have the same baggage.

Did you know Time magazine was a big fan of Stalin too, as they named him their Person of the Year for 1939? That's a year after, uh, Adolf Hitler won it, and two years before Stalin won it, again. Plus, of course, Vladimir Putin won in 2007... And that's why you should be very skeptical of headlines. Stalin actually got named most influential (or, if you prefer a reference from a decidedly anti Russian source like the 'Moscow' Times "most remarkable" or "most notable"*). Though of course the MT has- like everyone else except those fine fellows at NPR- managed to make Josif Dzugashvili Russian instead of Georgian. So there were 4 foreigners on the list. Shame Sophie of Random German Principality Cate the Grate wasn't there, or there would have been 5. Oh yeah, and Hitler came... last, anyway. Along with Napoleon. *not a clue why the url is about vaccines for anyone doing a mouseover, as the article is about the poll They aren't all from there*. The Parkinson's one was, after all, from unnamed sources talking to... The Sun. They all are beautiful examples of recursive reporting though, where a volume of people saying the same thing gives them apparent 'authority' when they resolve down to originating from one pretty useless source. *unless that telegram channel is Solovei's I guess since it seems he was The Sun's unnamed source.

Shingles vaccine is free to over 65s here in NZ. Same for flu vaccine, though you have to pay for that one if you're younger or don't have a relevant medical condition ($25; a lot of employees get it for free through their employers though). The covid ones and childhood ones (MMR diptheria etc) are all free as are the ones that need later boosters like tetanus (as I got one myself recently).