Zoraptor

That number of fatalities is not that rare for the TT unfortunately, it's justifiably notorious for deaths. Been cancelled for covid the last couple years though I think, so it's a bit more headline grabbing. (eg the couple who bought my parents' house in Christchurch competed there regularly in the 90s, when half the years had 5 or more deaths)

It's just about the only historical example you can refer to, which is kind of the point given what I was initially replying to (below). Even if we take 'the front' to mean Stalingrad Front instead of more generally there were ~30 divisions (converting Brigades into divs) assigned there, excluding formations added for Uranus, not just an NKVD division. "My crane? But I don't own a crane" Not sure what the 2022 equivalent of asking about Ukraine immediately after a question about Ralph Nader is though. That's definitely why they're used. Same general reason why you had Golden Division and YPG fighting ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa rather than US regulars- nobody important cares if they get killed. Same reason the Russians were looking at bringing in Syrians too (as well as them being cheaper to pay). Supposedly Ukraine has withdrawn from Zolote and Hirske now, though given the situation how orderly it can have been is an open question.

1500 people is perfectly fine for sample size, that should be 95% confidence (ie 5% chance the figures fall outside the +/- range). If done properly (questionable, since it's double opt in from existing panels*) they'll also have done a proper age/ sex/ profession/ education etc distribution/ weighting. There's always a potential problem with using 'possible/ not sure' as one of the answers: it's certainly possible that Prince Phillip was driving the white Fiat that caused Dodi's car to crash having previously drugged the driver- though it isn't at all likely. You have to be quite careful with the wording to make sure you don't get people who are aware of the theory as opposed to taking it seriously. For 9/11 specifically 'Inside Job' would certainly include things like the US Government letting the attack happen to get more power; not just "Pentagon was attacked by a missile and jet fuel can't melt steel beams" type 'theories' that exclude AQ (and just for you Bruce, Saudi) involvement. *you'd expect conspiracy theorists to be more keen than the average person to be on such panels, so they'd have to be very careful to tackle bias.

Eh, problem is they've been saying that for three months now. Ukraine hasn't made any real progress after retaking some land around Kharkov (some of which they lost again over the last week, but it isn't strategically important either way), though they've had an excellent twitter offensive on Kherson for months. And yes, people have certainly been saying things like Severodonetsk is falling imminently too for ages, so it's not just one side doing it. It made sense under one single circumstance: you think you can force a political surrender rather than military victory, and you believe that the enemy won't fight. If they fight you've got nowhere near enough troops. If your primary goal is 'defeating Ukrainian forces' you do things completely differently and concentrate on, well, defeating their army. Which probably means you go up/down the east bank of the Dniepr to cut the country in two; since there are a very limited number of places to cross the Dniepr and most of the Ukrainian army was in the east. And on the list you made, really Bruce, most of those come from one guy who isn't even with us any more- and a couple I never saw here at all, though I did elsewhere. Might as well cite stuff from oby or LoF too.

The thing about casualty numbers are that they're generally based on (also generally, massively inflated) German figures. The soviet ones just weren't available. The classic example being Operation Bagration. 'Official' figures have the Soviets suffering twice the casualties despite it being just about the most lopsided land battle of the entire war- the German casualty rate was a staggering ~80% by most estimates, and some put it closer to 90%.

Depends how seriously you take Hitler really, as he was planning massive envelopments right up to April 1945. Kursk was the last time they had a semi realistic chance of doing it on the eastern front (and of course they also tried to repeat France 1940 in 1944 on the western front, though how realistic that plan was in late 1944 is... questionable, at best). If the soviets had kept up the 1941 tactics in 1942 they'd have bagged a lot of troops again though. Heh. Though fair enough too. Too much 'Enemy at the Gates' is shorthand for someone talking about well known 'facts' about the soviets in WW2, because that movie had rather a lot of them. It's not literal. There was a 'Not one step back' order, but it was very largely ignored practically- and rather ironically, it was based on a prior German order from Winter 41-2 which more or less worked for the Germans, but was a long term disaster for them since it convinced Hitler that they just had to stand and fight with enough vigour and everything would be OK (plus they supplied one pocket via air, which convinced Hitler Stalingrad could be supplied that way). But in mid 1942+, when the NOSB order was active the Soviets just kept retreating until they got to Stalingrad and to let the southern thrust outrun their supplies.

I don't really know why anyone would take those estimates seriously anyway. Russia was going to run out of stuff inside a week from the start of the war, estimates have been consistently inaccurate. Sigh. "Enemy at the Gates" is not a documentary. Much like, well, the Moscow Times it's intended to make westerners feel good about themselves. As a matter of actual historical fact the Germans achieved zero soviet pockets in six months (while still taking enormous amounts of land) under 'not one step back' because... the soviets continually withdrew, until they reached Stalingrad. Under the previous policy which was far closer to actual 'not one step back' they pocketed something ludicrous like 3 million soviet troops in 6 months. Last pocket the Germans took on the eastern front was, rather ironically, at Izyum in May 1942 during a soviet attack. Mostly ironic not because the current war is largely being fought around Izyum, but because sticking a great wad of troops in a salient with weakly defended sides is exactly what the dopes got roped into at Stalingrad. And if it wasn't for Manstein they'd probably have pocketed every single german strung out along 2000km of trans Don countryside waiting for supplies as well. If you want to play realpolitik, then do so. Preferably do so without the moral crusade and 5th grade propaganda though, and especially the blubbing about how and why the rest of the world just doesn't appreciate how very special and uniquely terrible crimes against the west are.

That issue is, so to speak, by design. First spoiler is more or less thematic and readily inferred, the nested spoiler is a bit more explicit. Non spoiler take home is mostly "don't sweat the details".

Dark ~~--> 12 Monkeys (TV), if it was German and aiming for something approaching a scandi noir aesthetic. Though that comparison relies on actually having seen 12 Monkeys which to be sure wasn't quite as popular as Stranger Things. Thoroughly recommend Dark by the way, though as might be guessed from its name let alone the first few episodes it isn't exactly the most bright and positive experience.

Yeah, so it's news for foreigners, not Russians. It also hasn't had physical distribution for 5 years now, and was already primarily web based multiple years before that. MT's entire business model is predicated on news that makes westerners feel good about themselves. We get exactly the same thing here with Chinese language stuff. Papers nominally written in NZ filled with pro CCP blather or for Epoch Times, pro Falun Gong anti CCP blather, distributed in Chinese orientated businesses.

I haven't seen any of S3, but they'd already stretched the credibility of Homelander not just evaporating all his enemies in S2, and brought in someone worse than him in Stormfront to distract and get their inevitable season finale comeuppance.

Didn't we do this a month or so ago? I guess at least the goalposts have been shifted to marketing Russia to foreigners though it's about as good at that as the Daily Heil is in the UK; albeit the Daily Fail doesn't deliberately make Brits look like a bunch of xenophobic inbred yokels. Its purpose is to have anti Russian news that sounds like it comes from Russia for, uh, people to parrot as if it's genuine Russian media. If the positions were reversed and it was the Helsinki Herald (which had no Suomi language edition for years and is owned by a Belarussian and written in Viborg- but it would be written in Finland if the EU hadn't banned Russian media!!!) I would guarantee absolutely that it wouldn't be seen as 'marketing Finland to foreigners'. To be fair, not quite as interesting a take as being told that RFE/RL is an unbiased and independent source on international affairs, as I have been before. Yeah, the woman responsible for that claim got sacked for being 'counterproductive'. Allegedly sacked in reality because the war crimes investigators got sick of her continually making accusations with no substance to them which were specifically designed to generate outraeg!!!1!! in westerners and nothing else. As for Lithuania, always amusing to get another example of the west bleating about how important it is to uphold the 'rules based order' while ignoring it themselves. Not that another example is really needed though of course.

That looks uncannily like Line of Duty's Steve Arnott* (Martin Compston) when he didn't have a beard in S1. *the actor who played his girlfriend in the later seasons is now playing La'an on SNW.

Last thing I saw Wil Wheaton in was, hmm, Dark Matter; he was actually pretty good in that because he was playing a creepy obsessed weirdo type. Really though, the Picard people should have trolled him by bringing back the actor who played grown up Wesley for 5 seconds instead of Wil. And speaking of Picard, I only found out recently that S2 shared a showrunner with 12 Monkeys (TV). You'd have thought that was near ideal for a time travel story.

Funny really, first real signs of some sort of multi episode plot arc and it brings out all the old problems Discovery had in spades. Though that episode would have been bad as a standalone anyway; while the idea itself wasn't fundamentally awful and has been used as an interesting set up before everything about the execution of it was abject failure.

Orville Ep3 I didn't like last week's episode as much as I should have, this one I probably liked more than I should OTOH SNW ep7 Yeah, this one didn't work for me, at all. I can't even be bothered putting anything spoilerish about it, I will just pretend it didn't exist and hope it isn't the start of the downward spiral. I suspect ignoring it isn't going to work out though, given the ending.

It isn't really an unreasonable approach in terms of expectations though. Part of the art of genuinely negotiating is seeing things from the perspective of the other side, and that is what they were doing (and expected in return). You also got the hints of what they wanted from them before they went all matey mcmatey impersonating Pike's style, and you could even infer it from them flying the flag of those they made agreements with. (If it had been a TNG S1 episode it would have been a Troi centric one, they'd probably have been made outright empaths and she'd have solved the problem in 5 times the time she should have taken. After a pep talk from Wesley gave her the vital clue...)

Yeah, the forecasts don't exactly fill you with confidence when the previous ones were out by a lot and consistently had to revised down significantly. The ultimate problem is how do you both control inflation yet avoid driving a significant number of people bankrupt with the interest rate rises you need to control the inflation; and hence tank the economy and risk the sort of bad debt storm there was in the GFC. The latter is particularly difficult after a sustained period of low interest rates inflated multiple bubbles fueled by the cheap credit. I don't think too many tears will be shed for the guy who mortgaged his house to buy NFTs at the peak of the market, but there are plenty of people who just wanted to own their own home rather than rent and suddenly find they're paying 4 times the amount of interest plus a lot more for fuel and groceries simultaneous with house prices dropping. End of the day one of the biggest responsibilities of central bankers is to maintain Confidence; indeed that's why they have a mandate to tackle inflation in the first place. You can't maintain Confidence while telling people the Titanic is sinking and someone didn't give it enough lifeboats, you keep the orchestra playing so people don't panic.

The body swap definitely wasn't for comedic effect. They pretty much broke the 4th wall outright saying that it wasn't ("that sounds too much like hijinks" or similar). Indeed, the episode was crafted masterfully to illustrate the central conflict between emotion and logic without pontificating about it, with the two logical humans trying to lighten up a bit, Spock between listening to a vulcan and a human to mirror his heritage, and the alien of the week using empathy in a non standard but logical way to get people to show they actually understand their reservations. Well ok, it wasn't masterful, but it's Trek, not Shakespeare (having said that, and in the spirit of the summary below: "haha imma drive my girlfriend to madness and suicide after murdering her father because I'm paranoid about my mother boffing my uncle after murdering my father; ps everyone except Horatio dies in finale which is a trope that gets drilled out of 10 year old writers"; days of out lives tier plotting there Will and you reused the 'everyone dies in contrived circumstances' ending multiple times too) Y'know, I'm pretty sure I can think of a dumber one. "Get frustrated at lack of progress, kidnap Pike and send him and their negotiator down to a hostile planet to fight an Invisible Enemy in the hope that Understanding Ensues and they don't end up at war when either the Enterprise tries to reclaim their captain or the negotiator, amazingly, dies fighting said Invisible Enemy and they think it's Picar^H^H^H Pike's fault". Which is, of course, the actual plot to a top 10 episode of TNG.

Everything is pretty simplified- so is saying that the US spent 100bn p/a on Afghanistan so they can spend 100bn on Ukraine when the vast majority of spending in Afghanistan wasn't actually on Afghanistan, it was on the US. Hence US military spending not reducing by 100bn on withdrawal (it's increased, of course). The average projected wage loss is 4%. Much as they'd like to they can't wave a hand and pretend it isn't, that's pure feel good sophistry. Median can be a better measure in some circumstances, it isn't here. Say that your example is correct and the 80% of people who live in cities aren't effected. Median then says everything is perfectly fine, there's actually positive effects. Even quartiles say everything is good. But, that practically means the rural 20% would see the small matter of a 20% decrease in wages to get the average back to 4%. Of course, they won't, because most rural workers are engaged directly or indirectly in agriculture, and... pass along costs to the people in cities. Either through increased prices, or increased CAP costs. Or they drop production/ go out of business. Either way, the people in the cities pay in increased prices, benefits etc; there may just be a lag. Try explaining this to an economist though and you'll get a puzzled look and instant proof of the old "there are one types of people who believe in [infinite growth in a finite system; typically]: idiots and economists" adage. Economists have a cheery faith in the financial system which challenges the guy sitting on the roof of his flooded house refusing rescue because "God will save me" (WELL I TRIED, BUT YOU IGNORED THE BOAT AND HELICOPTER I SENT...) Of course it's not going to be evenly distributed. I personally have the great advantage of having my income specifically pegged against inflation, and I have zero debt too so interest rates rising is a small advantage to me. I will get a 6% wage increase to match NZ's inflation rate, transport costs will be a bugger, but if anything I'm personally likely to do better than the last ten years despite that. But nothing is evenly distributed; everyone with debt is going to feel it in increased debt servicing costs and yes, the average person will be 4% worse off even if some aren't.

Yeah, but that's "the special military operation is going perfectly to plan!" type stuff. The EU/ ECB is not going to say "we're completely rogered, incoming financial apocalypse, buy shares in tinned beans makers they'll be the only thing left standing" because that's self fulfilling. They have to be upbeat about things. Just look at their difference between projected inflation and projected wage rises though. Everyone in the EU will have a practical average ~4% pay cut once inflation is taken into account. That's fine, if you're an ECB economist living in Frankfurt on a million Euros, not so much if you aren't.

Maybe with the exception of Mass Effect? I'd have said it had the absolute classic Bioware "I'm going to eat your liver, I will do it publicly, and I don't care if anyone knows it" type facial expressions. And I'm not even talking 'my face is tired' Andromeda either. Shepard_smile.jpg is perhaps the classic meme creepy game expression.

My best Stalker memory was doing the brain scorcher x lab for the first time. Atmospheric as anything, finished up with basically no ammo or medicine, but it would be fine since I'd killed everything behind me so could just stroll back out again. Good thing too, otherwise I'd be reduced to using harsh language. Turned the scorcher off, had a ten second feeling of Pride and Accomplishment that money can't buy then... hello, unholy hordes of Monolith. I must have killed about half of them with a silenced Makarov; never been so glad I'd played Thief previous.

I'm always amused by corruption measures that have New Zealand near the top. Guess we could be, but everywhere else would have to be terrible. Eh, that's super simplistic. And that rhetorical construct is abused all the time. "Don't be ridiculous. Palestine always has the option to just stop" <--> "Don't be ridiculous. Israel always has the option to just stop" The practicalities are that Russia has less to lose continuing than by stopping, no point wishing it hadn't happened. If you want them to stop then you need to reverse that calculus.

I should say as someone who was a bit down on Old World at first that I've largely come around to liking it after playing more. Probably not going to be an outright classic, but that is a pretty high bar. Its big weakness actually has nothing much to do with the game itself, it's being a game in the era where you don't have the 'big book' style manuals to read through any more. The number of times I've seen useful features mentioned in the loading screens that weren't mentioned in the tutorials and either weren't in or you didn't know to look for in the in game encyclopaedia is pretty high, and they reduce a lot of frustration while adding depth. I'm down to a couple of quibbles about gameplay/ documentation (eg 'trade luxuries via the manage luxuries button on the action panel'... uh, it's not there? Good thing you can mostly rely on people asking for trades anyway, but if you're asked to trade luxuries as a Goal it would be nice to proactively trade them) and a slightly more serious issue with the Goal system overall, though it doesn't really matter if you get given an ~impossible goal, it's just annoying.