Zoraptor

Even if we took that demand at face value that's where it ends. It falls well below the absolute capital r Requirement to avoid the war crime of Starvation as Weapon of War. It's a performative demand to give a fig leaf to those whose populations actually believe in the Rules Based Order and are finding it increasing difficult to palm people off once they get pictures of starving children on their tellies. What's the next hard hitting demand from Trump, Palestinians be ethnically cleansed to South Sudan Libya in coaches rather than the preferred cattle cars? There have been a lot of performative demands over Ukraine too. Cutting down on them is not a bad thing. (Really though, if it were any place other than Gaza would there be any doubt at all that this was just more Trump quid pro quo to donors? The 'aid' group, its members and its modus operandi could not be any more suspect if it were run by Jared Kushner and- in a major surprise to no one- the net effect is to facilitate Israeli policy of creating concentration camps and having an Orwellian database and surveillance set up on every Palestinian. I wonder which company has been supplying the AI for their database... maybe I should ask copilot, see if it knows?)

Given Trump's ego you suspect he's serious about running at least once more so he can claim to be the winningest President ever, everyone says he's the best and won the most, and the burbling about it is at least partly getting people used to the idea. OK, winningest equal, and only if you accept he was the real winner in 2020. But all evidence suggests Trump doesn't do that sort of ellipsis.

lolwut. Pro Ukrainians come up with some beauties, but this has to be the... oddest take I've seen yet. Wake me up when the US is: (1) sending Russia billions in military aid (2) has an open chequebook on purchases (3) has sent Russia missile defence manned by US troops (4) committed US warships and bases to Russia's defence and (5) committed to a vision of Ukraine as Terra Nullia for Russian settlers. From the previous Trump run you can add (6) recognised Crimea and one other occupied territory as Russian (7) committed Perfidy to assassinate Budanov. Some incredibly tepid criticism of using starvation as a weapon of war- with the forced solution being a distinctly half arsed 'aid' program replacement run by, well, literal US mercenaries and involving mandatory biometric registration supplying a drop in the bucket as a means to get people to 'voluntarily' move into their concentration camps- hardly compares to all the practical positives Israel has got. And, of course lest we forget and we very often do, the first US president to send lethal aid to Ukraine was... Donald Trump. Not Obama, and not Biden. You can be grumpy about Trump being 'soft' on Putin all you like. You can be grumpy about him forcing Merz into a backdown on non restricted missile use (though to be fair, Biden did exactly the same thing to Starmer under identical circumstances). You can be grumpy about him treating aid as transactional, humiliating Zelensky (though not like Z didn't contribute heartily) and not being committed to NATO etc. All fair enough. But there's no way on god's green earth that he's put more pressure on Israel than Russia. There simply isn't that much more you can do to Russia, short of starting a shooting war. Not like the Euros 18th (?) round of 'crippling' and 'game changing' sanctions were revolutionary. The stuff from Russia the US hasn't sanctioned hasn't been for a reason- it's a net positive trade for the US.

Career politicians tend to have a particular speaking style designed to appeal to people who elect career politicians, ie selection committees and other politicians. Someone who doesn't speak like that appeals to people who doesn't like career politicians. It's particularly evident in Britain where every political leader I can remember talks like they're delivering a very obvious lecture, to 2 year olds. And the exception there is very relevant for Trump: Boris Johnson, who spoke like a two year old himself. Much like Trump that departure was widely seen as part of the charm by many people. And indeed Boris's 'stupid'- the ill fitting clothes, funny hair, wacky stunts etc- was all deliberate and part of him developing a maverick man of the people persona. From a bloke whose real name was Alexander de Pfeffel and went to fricking Eton. The only genuine thing he did was occasionally bulldozing small Japanese children playing rugby, yet people loved him. Trump tends to talk like people actually think, full of digressions and rambling and remember when I did something really cool and relevant even if it didn't happen. Politicians and people in the public eye tend to spend a lot of time making sure they don't make speeches like people think but make speeches like they're, well, making a speech. If you're sick of politicians you're sick of people talking like politicians. It is, overall, like the old chestnut of wanting a leader who you could have a beer with. For some people it will be far more important to have a leader who drinks fermented grain beverage rather than fermented grape beverage or god forbid, adam's ale. Stupid qualification for electing a leader, yes, but it's a genuine qualification for some.

There is also, well, just getting old and having a lot of stress rather than dementia. Stress especially can make literally anyone seem like they have dementia. If term limits got repealed and the Democrats trotted out the sprightly William Jefferson Clinton as a candidate in 2028 (and let's be honest, they probably would, if they could and he were willing) there would be some changes evident from 1992 and they wouldn't necessarily be from dementia. And for all the jokes about golfing Trump runs far more public appearances than Biden did and has far more opportunities to manifest dementia like symptoms. Mostly though, Trump doesn't strike me as someone with dementia, just as an 80 year old who has not had that much interaction with the actual real world and how it works doing a stressful job- a job which is hard on 50 year olds. Barack Obama entered the White House looking like Mandela going to Robben Island and left it looking like Mandela leaving it, 18 rather than 8 years later. And Mandela was at an apartheid era prison, for political prisoners. OTOH, Biden very much did give me dementia vibes towards the end. At least some of the Trump stuff is semi deliberate affectation as well. As much as his detractors hate his speech style and all the rambling and digressions a lot of people absolutely love it.

Did WotR ever get a dlc/ patch that upped the level cap? Because that's what did for my playthrough, not so much the slog itself but it being utterly pointless slog.

6x8 hour seasons should have been enough; there's a lot of condensation of storylines that could be done after book 6; plus New Spring could be entirely ignored. And a decent amount before that, no need to have the three functionally identical fights against the same guy that ended the first three books. Rafe Judkins was not the guy to do that successfully though*. Not entirely his fault though, he was definitely told he had to have a 'mystery' element as to who the Dragon was per Amazon's Metrics and in some ways having Rosamund Pike was unfortunate since she had to be kept front and center even when it made no sense narratively. *Indeed, for anyone wondering how badly it was run: they accidentally brought back a character in S2E1 who had literally literally died died in the S1 finale, without even a 'somehow Palpatine returned'. The real world reason? Two different writing teams. Not only did writing team 1 not tell writing team 2 that they'd killed Loial off, writing team 2 didn't know because, uh, they hadn't watched the previous season finale. Can't blame that on executive meddling or covid, that's just gross incompetence.

Alexa, play me "In the Arms of an Angel" by Sarah McLachlan. Oh who am I kidding, play me "Dancing on the Ceiling" by Lionel Richie instead. Amazon's WoT will stand the test of time as an example of how not to do an adaptation. Indeed, it will stand the test of time for how not to do a TV series of any kind. It might be easy to blame the showrunner- and obviously some stuff like giving his boyfriend a prominent role* was his fault- but the flaws in the show are in RoP and Citadel as well. Huge budgets, and they all look like they were shot with half of it with terrible fanfic (ironically even for Citadel, since it's a new IP) level plotting and dialogue. Very, very obvious focus group checkboxing whether it made sense or not and the two fantasy entries had showrunners who were very obviously and very, very predictably out of their depth. Seems they've got rid of the exec responsible for those appointments, and they should not be getting a job anywhere else, ever. The contrast with the really rather good Fallout could not be more stark. *he literally had more air time than Mat in S3.

I'd suspect there's at least one person in the WH who's all for AWB free speech, let alone the AfD. Trump should have produced a video about Ramaphosa's role in machinegunning striking workers. Except, of course, Trump and Musk probably see that as something to aspire to rather than condemn.

Handled rather better by Ramaphosa than by Zelensky. Given what happened with Zelensky Ramaphosa was likely far better prepared. Might have been interesting if Nelson Mandela has still been around. Trump probably would have put him back on the terrorist list and deported him to South Sudan.

No one said it was good. It is however better than, well, invading countries and getting a million people killed, training genocidal militia and getting a million people killed and the rest of the things France, Britain, the US and Russia have done. Some of them multiple times. No country accepts Taiwan as independent. It'd be like, well, Georgia deciding to invade reintegrate South Ossetia; except of course that would be an invasion because we like Taiwan and don't like China- and Taiwan makes rather a lot of computer stuff we really don't want China getting their hands on. In terms of actual invasions there's been one from China in the past 60 years which lasted six weeks and resulted in no occupation or similar. Which is just a tad better than those other countries mentioned. Though neither of those examples are exactly great since there are more than a few examples of the west kidnapping people. As well as extrajudicially blowing them up. And invading their countries, and murdering their citizens, then imprisoning the people who blow the whistle on that behaviour rather than the perpetrators. All depends on how you couch the terms of reference. When it comes right down to it most people only care about other people's governments when it effects them- or they're told to by the media. Hence, the use of 'internationally'. China's conduct towards certain ethnic minorities is without doubt genocide; though as we've continually seen recently genocide, torture, mass killing of protected classes like journalists and medics etc is not actually a bar to western support, if we like the perpetrator.

Always kind of amused by this sort of thing. It's truly shocking that China is an enemy to the west if, and only if, the west isn't an enemy to China. Which by any objective measure it quite clearly is. This sort of thing is entirely reciprocal but you're supposed to think that anything They do is wanton aggression, while us doing the same thing is purely defensive. Ever so very slightly Orwellian. Anyone paying attention knows that the west and the US specifically has been sending black boxed systems to China (and everyone else) for literal decades. That's tremendous- everyone says it's tremendous, people stop me on the street to say it- for our security, not so much for theirs. Well, it's tremendous for us so long as our interests coincide with US ones, and the US is a rational player, and has a rational President, and doesn't put its economic precedence first and only and, uh, yeah. By any objective measure China has been by far the best behaved of the major powers internationally. That just isn't saying much, considering how badly the other four permanent members of the UNSC have behaved.

Bethesda games are a great practical example of how good actors cannot spin crap dialogue into gold. To be fair to the people doing the remake, Bethesda faithfully recreate 320 year old bugs into their new games as well thanks to still using Gamebryo with renderer++.

Ironically, given their prior conduct he'd probably do better at the ICC than ICJ. Just wouldn't be able to turn up in person.

BruceVC is a very anglo name. He'd need to change it to something like Janie/ Fanie/ Faf/ Kepler/ Wilhansie/ Bakkies/ Reuben/ Jan or JoostVC in order to claim to be afrikaans. (Does my entire knowledge of Afrikaans first names come from rugby and cricket? Seems so)

My friend, have you not heard the good news about The Prosperity Gospel? God wants you to be wealthy, and if you aren't, it's because you're a dirty sinner. Let's be honest here, strip away the name 'Jesus' from the teachings and an awful lot of Christians would regard them as being 'woke marxism'.

Yep. Without the direct EU access the UK has been trying to make trade deals with anyone. They even joined the Trans Pacific Partnership despite, well, not being anywhere near the Pacific except for intrinsic and important parts of the realm like Pitcairn Island. They were very close to a deal with Biden's administration last year. Not a free trade deal like the TPP, but then this one isn't by any stretch a free trade deal either. It may even have been delayed specifically to give Trump an ego boost.

A search for 'indian rafale shot down' is extremely funny at the moment. All the top results are Indian fact check sites insisting it hasn't happened while it's blatantly obvious they've lost at least one since there's a Rafale engine sitting randomly in a field all over social media. Stupid approach, since it just ends up making you suspect that the Pakistani claims are entirely accurate. If it's done one thing it's made it a lot more likely for India to buy stealth jets as a matter of urgency, and ones that cannot be turned off by the US if they don't like the targets.

Israel approves plan to seize all of Gaza. Funny how Hasbara insisted that was never going to happen, but now it is. Good news for the Palestinians, they're going to go into, shall we say, high density temporary accommodation. For their own protection. And in other lack of news noted orthopaedic surgeon Adnan al Bursh's body has still not been released more than a year after his death in Israeli custody.

Talking about elections with lessons for elsewhere: Romania. Shock win in first round to anti EU candidate, heaven and earth moved to get rid of him first due to 'Russian interference' (turned out it was actually another Romanian party trying to game the system, ho hum, still gets labelled as due to alleged Russian interference by the media), eventually got rid of on financial irregularities. Great victory for democracy. Redo first round election... a different nationalist anti EU candidate wins, with 40% of the vote instead of 23%. Might be better to try addressing the cause, rather than the symptoms.

Even AI thinks Trump is a bad guy. James Weeks confirmed as most successful politician of all time?

The second anglophone election since Trump's 2nd inauguration has gone much the same as the first- previously unexpected swing towards the incumbent left (well, 'left'). Though Australia's Albanese never had the horrific polling of Canada's Trudeau he managed to increase Labor's vote share and it looks like a 2:1 landslide, with the opposition leader losing his seat same as Canada. Extremely funny given how many people on the right thought Trump winning would usher in similar governments elsewhere.

Colour sizes mean 2/3 of sweet fanny adams. It's not an intensity map. For that you want something like this. Though even that only has four levels. It's always easy to say something and paint it onto a nice raster image for people to Just Believe. Did you know New Zealand has the highest deposits of unobtainium in the known world and so much gold we use it for toilet paper? Would you believe it if I put it into a graphic? Back in the land of reality though from the USGS, 2024. ctrl f ukraine, no results. This is utterly unsurprising as that graphic is based on 'Ukraine claims'. No wonder the reserve amounts are, heh, 'classified'. Much like the Rare Earths claimed by Ukraine there's only slightly more evidence they exist than the tooth fairy or Prince Idris Kaore, the temporarily embarrassed Nigerian millionaire who just needs a few hundred to unlock his account.

Make a note of the date, I agree pretty much wholeheartedly with Gromnir. The concept of what inflation is is easy enough to understand. If politicians genuinely didn't get the concept they should have nothing at all to do with economics. But fundamentally the classic politician inference that if inflation goes down prices will go back to how they were- which is obviously a load of bollocks- exists because that will get them votes and allow them to do things they want more easily while the truthful observation that prices won't go back down but will just increase more slowly, won't. You can pretty much guarantee the party that goes for approach A will be the one voters think is more economically literate because it's what they want to be true. eg it's brilliant rhetoric for depressing wages. Inflation is 5% but going down, and when prices 'return to normal' you'll still have that 1.5% pay increase! So you aren't really 3.5% worse off year on year, indeed you'll be 1.5% better off after the prices stabilise! Again, obvious rubbish if you know what inflation actually means. But it's what a lot of people- including many getting that 3.5% effective pay cut- want to hear.

I know a man ain't supposed to cry, but these tears I can't hold inside. Watching WoT would end my sanity, because it's just that, uh hmmm, plain crappy? etc etc and with copious apologies to Marvin Gaye. Not that he's likely to take offence any more. I certainly put in more effort than the show's writers anyway. Except when it comes to finding extra screen time for their boyfriend. (Wheel of Time has the most obvious astroturfing campaign I've ever seen. Starts one week before release, ends one week after the finale. 98% of the 'people' who loved it seem to have completely forgotten about how awesome it was, outside that window)