Zoraptor

No you're not blind, the article was about the attempt to blow up Dugin. Two different issues in the post, 1st was about Dugin, 2nd was about the Grey Zone stuff- they've been posting again as of yesterday. The former... yeah, nah. He's spoken out extensively against Putin in very similar vein to how Girkin/ Strelkov has- he's not going far enough, too populist, too conservative and averse to risk (should have gone to Tblisi, should have invaded Ukraine in 2008 too etc), listens to liberals (like, uh, Medvedev*) too much- something he's repeated many times. Much like Girkin/ Strelkov probably not enough for Putin to bother doing anything about though, as he just isn't very important. Which actually actually makes him a near ideal target since he's got a ludicrously undeserved high profile in the west, but is nowhere near important enough in reality to warrant special protection. The latter... yeah, that's kind of lol really and one of the reasons my opinions of media coverage are so low. He's got far more in common practically with, as above, Girkin/ Strelkov than Putin. Far, far, far more, and despite the fact he'd probably hate the comparison. He's also not an 'aide' or confidante as described in multiple articles, he- by his own admission- has actually barely even met Putin. He's also wildly divergent in terms of even how much 'intangible' influence he claims to have, ie how much he claims Putin follows his dogma. Sometimes contradicting himself on that question in the same interview. Which is because Putin, of course, isn't really following Dugin much at all, it's just that Dugin described the blatantly obvious Eurasian strategy in a book the media has picked up on. Problem is journalists reading asterisking wikipedia and referencing each others' bad references instead of actually reading/ listening to Dugin himself. *ok, technically arch nationalist and complete fruitbat Zhiro was an example of an actual Russian Liberal, but he was talking little l liberal, not big L

Yeah, that was referring to the Grey Zone people (who have now posted something) not Dugin. Yeah, guess it would be fine then if someone blew GWBush up with a car bomb? Probably wouldn't be fine if they blew Jenna or Barbara up instead though, now would it?

Looks like someone tried to assassinate Alexander Dugin, but only succeeded in killing his daughter. Seems they didn't get them either.

The military stuff doesn't really sound like suicide missions. If you don't want to do dangerous missions then staying home is the easy solution- or read 'Homage to Catalonia' or a history of the Spanish Civil War for experiences in prior ad hoc/ international formations to get your expectations right when it comes to leadership. Though there were certainly contemporary rumours that some international units suffered 80% casualties in a day in Severodonetsk that article doesn't really substantiate it much at all. The more 'civil' stuff like looting is not much of a surprise. Even if it weren't illegal it's really, really stupid when one of your big worries is civilians giving away your positions to the enemy to give them more reason to do so. Overall though, does kind of make you wonder how that (supposed) Polish fraudster didn't get shot by a 'Russian infiltrator' or accidental discharge at some point. Also kind of has to said, much as this is being trumpeted as showing how great freedom of the press is in Ukraine to put some positive spin on, the report had apparently been sent to a bunch of international organisations too- so it was going to come out whether they wanted it to or not.

Orville Finale- non spoiler version, I liked it a lot more I should have May have had my criticisms but overall a very good season which only really suffers a bit by comparison from having some competent Trek competition for the first time. Hope they manage to wangle a S4.

We saw him yesterday. Guess they really wanted to dispel that rumour, since he's on the rubble of the building in Popasna that was hit.

Like most artillery Ukraine has they're being fired outside spec pretty often. Saw a video today of a 2S7 going boom because of a critical malfunction from over use. While they have a lot of call on their limited amounts of artillery it's counterproductive to fire it too much as the thermal expansion of the barrel will make it very inaccurate, you get way more wear firing too hot so even a cooled barrel doesn't function as well, and far more critical malfunctions (in the case above, explosion of the shell in the breach --> destroyed piece, and dead crew; less rapid firing and more care and they'd still have both). OTOH 100 shells per day would be... rather poor performance. That's a shot every 15 minutes on average.

It's all rumours and completely unconfirmed. Only confirmed fact is she left suddenly. And didn't do too badly since she got a role on another show quickly (which just so happened to be another Fox show 'Prodigal Son').

That was more snark than a serious suggestion. Hardly matters whether they get fined anyway except for the embarrassment factor; it's like .2% of their profit so not even a rounding error. (would have thought the potential issue would be all the cards they sold direct to miners rather than Joe Bloggs using his 3080 for it, they could hardly claim no control/ knowledge of end use then. Relies on if nVidia had said that crypto wasn't significantly impacting their business like they did last time though)

10th anniversary of Sleeping Dogs today (well, technically it was yesterday here due to date line shenanigans). I'd be kind of hoping that Nordic/ THQ/ Embracer do a sequel of that sometime instead of nobody asked for this remakes of Gothic, except I seem to remember that Sleeping Dogs was one of the few westernish series SE didn't sell.

Orville s3ep9 spoilers

Dunno why anyone uses Rotten Tomatoes for reviews anyway, loads of shows end up with 100% ratings because all the reviews are 'positive'. I still haven't seen the last episode of Orville S3 (depressingly difficult to find 75 minutes time to sit down and watch something) but I suppose I should do some comments for ep9 which I have seen

The only reason I think they might- and I agree, it's certainly not likely- is because there's now an oversupply of fab capacity. Per the recent rumour about nVidia they're going to be charged for that capacity whether they use it or not. In that case it may make sense to do a refresh, claim fastest/ coolest/ whatever console etc. The counters to that are far stronger though- with the design/ production lag they'd have had to have guessed there would be excess capacity quite a while ago and done the work as a contingency for it to be ready on Zen4. And if they'd guessed that a while ago they'd probably just not booked the fab capacity in the first place. It's also, obviously, not a great time to be trying to sell a premium product during a recession when many people are worrying about spending money on the real basics.

The +50% perf/ watt alone ought to be a big improvement for something like the Steam Deck, certainly. Since Zen4 have integrated graphics albeit RDNA2 we'll also get some idea whether stuff like 3d cache is going to provide extra graphics bandwidth, and longer term there's layering memory in to the APU too... I'd presume any RDNA3 APUs will be a while away, maybe Q1 2024, and probably reserved for Zen4+/ refresh or Zen5 unless MSony* want to do a console refresh. AMD certainly hasn't seen integrated graphics for gaming purposes as worth doing as a priority- outside of the consoles- up to this point. They were still using Vega up until recently after all, and retaping is expensive. *does of course depend on what volumes Valve is selling of the SD, and whether they're willing to pay R&D costs like MSony did.

I don't think I've seen what is known about RDNA3 summarised well before but there's a pretty good summary here. Not much on actual performance though of course, since it's not dealing with rumours.

That scene looks decidedly impractical for live action, but that doesn't mean you have to use CGI. The other option is to rework the scene or cut it completely if CGI can't do the job well. In some cases not having it at all is the better option. (Have to say, that wasn't the worst CGI animal I've seen by a long shot and was nowhere near as bad as I expected. Out of context the scene does seem rather silly though, which I certainly wouldn't expect from a Predator movie...) Someone needs to set his feet to the coals so he actually watches/ obtains that first cut tape of Event Horizon which someone supposedly found before he starts anything else.

That's an impressive attempt at goalpost shifting at the end. Let's run through the relevant sequence though, shall we? "They also betray a pretty crappy understanding of humanitarian law, ie it applies to those you like, not just those you don't. Ultimately the reason why you shouldn't use protected civilian infrastructure for basing and why it is a warcrime unless it's of military necessity is because it erodes the protection for every school, including those that are still used as schools. That's why both Hamas and Ukraine using schools as bases is bad, and a war crime, and despite Hamas' bases being a lot closer than the one at Bakhmut." -- me in direct response: "You know what else is a war crime? This entire Russian war against Ukraine. Nothing of this school-schmool thing would have happened if not for Russia's imperialistic delusions backed by tiny waxy garbage man's issues." --bugarup to which you replied "This is a very salient point. All the other atrocities stem from Russia's initial atrocity.." This does not exactly mesh with your example of a car accident, now does it? If someone said Bob punching Fred after a car crash was assault and the reply was "all the other actions stem from Fred crashing his car" not just as a point, but as a salient one it would be obvious that that was justifying Bob's actions. If you think it's just common assault for which Bob is responsible then you don't mention the car crash- or at very least say it doesn't justify Bob's actions in any way. If you mention the crash then you're obvious trying to reduce Bob's responsibility for the crash by saying that without Fred the punch wouldn't have happened. And again, this is specifically not how humanitarian law works in the relevant situation anyway.

OMG hitmen would be an odd complaint anyway, since that's basically been Mossad's MO for most of their assassinations. Better than trying to blow up the captain of the Vincennes with a car bomb (and almost getting his wife instead) anyway.

lol. I note you elided the explanation, I gave OK, and... The whole cascade of events has been triggered by Russia --> Ukraine basing at schools is one of those events --> Ukraine basing at schools has been triggered by Russia --> since Russia triggered it they're to blame*. Seems a pretty logical progression, no? And really, what's the point of bringing it up if the purpose isn't to say "doesn't matter, it's really Russia's fault anyway"? That sort of construction is used all the time to justify things- from playground fights on up. Per above, you have. If "Russia triggered the whole cascade of events" then Russia triggered any Ukrainian war crimes- as they're included in the whole cascade of events. You're clearly not doing it deliberately though. For the vast majority of people such thinking is also not in any real way deliberated. That would be the case for the vast majority of journalists, I very much doubt they deliberately sit down and think "how can we lie about the situation?" They've just far more likely to give good interpretations to the actions of those they like; hence situations like the huge difference in interpretation between Hamas using schools vs Ukraine using schools. *the real salient point is, under international law they aren't. The blame is solely on Ukraine- for this at least. Defender gets plenty of extra 'rights', Aggressor has plenty of extra obligations; but this isn't a case where either applies. It's not subject to provocation/ they started it as a defence and the obligations are the same for both. The 'correct' defence is military necessity, and that is very hard to argue when you're using Protected facilities well behind the front lines. The only real question about it is whether there's no practical alternative to using schools as barracks, and there clearly are.

Good RTS mechanics, yes. Awful save system though.

Currently running Creative in the WWF.

I mean, it was literally a few posts ago you were agreeing with the 2nd one and naming it a 'salient point', quoted below. 1st I'm absolutely sure you would have seen too. Take the videos of Ukrainians shooting Russian PoWs (or Georgians beheading them) after the "it's fake!" defence you usually get "So what if Ukraine shoots PoWs, the Russians do it to and they have more PoWs to shoot!". Indeed, demanding an iteration of Russian war crimes in a report about Ukrainian ones is itself an example, and that too happened within the last day or so here. The purpose is clearly to mitigate anything Ukraine does by pointing out that Russia is worse, and that's not how it works* "well they started it, therefore everything is their fault so we cannot commit war crimes" is not very far off that at all. It's just rather more towards the "doesn't matter if Ukraine commits war crimes, it's still Russia's fault" end of the spectrum. *if we want to brutally honest how it actually works is that you get a load of talk about the bad guys doing war crimes and a load of excuses for the good guys doing them right the way up the chain to the ICoJ (and its predecessors) itself. See the Operation Storm verdict which legalised ethnic cleansing as perhaps the relevant example.

Eh, it's a figurative list, not a literal one. Talk to any journalist(s) as a collective group though and you'll get talk about honesty, getting the truth out for/ informing people, being balanced etc. You won't get much about clickbait, sensationalism and agenda driving though and that's the majority of journalism nowadays. There are plenty of professions that do, more or less, live up to their claims. Drifting rather off topic, but you can always do an english language search for most/ least trusted professions- in which journalists reliably are only beaten by politicians as least trustworthy; in contrast those involved in science and medicine are typically most trusted. Plenty of journalists do work with integrity, plenty don't- and plenty think they do but are simply not very good at ignoring their own biases. It actually isn't, at least so far as the question of war crimes goes. It isn't either a zero sum game where "well, they killed 1000 people unjustifiably, we only killed 100, therefore they are guilty of killing 900 and we are innocent!" works; nor can you go "well they started it, therefore everything is their fault so we cannot commit war crimes"- though both are frequently tried. Consider the 2003 Iraq war- is the US responsible for everything stemming from that? Maybe in theory- but not practically in terms of war crimes. The people responsible for those are the people committing them, not the US because it invaded.

No, there's a blanket ban on using protected civilian infrastructure for military purposes without an exigent threat, ie the military benefit/ necessity must outweigh any danger to civilians. The question is what constitutes an exigent threat, hence why all the criticism of AI states that Ukraine are using 'front line' facilities- that inherently makes the threat exigent, and the use justified. I simply pointed out that their interpretation of 'front line' varies massively depending on whether they like the entity basing at schools or not, which makes them partial rather than impartial. (Using schools is also a form of Perfidy prohibited under GC1/37 "the feigning of civilian non combatant status". You can pretty much guarantee Ukraine didn't tell Russia about the change of status, and they and reporters have complained numerous times about schools in Bakhmut being targeted while knowing they were using schools in the city as military facilities. Doesn't actually matter if that specific school was used or not, Perfidy is a warcrime specifically because it degrades legitimate protections for protected entities like schools or hospitals, or protected individuals like PoWs or medical personnel) Per below it was specifically stated that not all Ukrainian civilians were removed from the Bakhmut school environs that was being used by their army. Lol. He was most definitely one of those complaining. I'd have a lot less against journalists if they actually lived up to their self proclaimed list of virtues, but they don't.

Ukraine has plenty of suitable missiles. A decent number of the 'HiMARS' attacks are actually from tochka instead. And the Russians have been using anti ship missiles as makeshift ground attack for months. Well, if you insist. Let's apply the logic of Tom Mutch and friends per the school they visited to other situations, eh? Bakhmut, in May, ~20km away from the front line, but a 'front line' town that justifies using civilian infrastructure for military purposes, despite even the journalists admitting that there were still civilians present. Right, so the definition of front line is 20km away... the width of the Gaza Strip is 6km. Will Tom and friends justify Hamas using schools etc when the furthest distance they can literally, physically, be is about 10km from the Israeli border (and if you count the sea ~5km)? Will they say that they're not disproportionately endangering civilian lives because those civilians have nowhere to go? No, of course not, because they aren't impartial and they'd be terrified of getting an AI like backlash and being called anti semitic. Describing Bakhmut as a front line town now, sure. He was saying that in May though. There's military necessity to occupy civilian infrastructure on the front line because if you don't the enemy will, there isn't when they're 20km away, unless they've invented teleportation in which case you've got bigger problems. Would you like a list of all the schools hit in Bakhmut that were presented as being indiscriminate attacks on civilian infrastructure, by western journalists, starting in May? Because there are a lot, and they're all presented as indiscriminate attacks, by said journalists, many of whom like Tom presumably knew outright that Ukraine was using schools as bases- but somehow failed to mention that relevant fact. You'd think that if they were actually impartial they might have though... They also betray a pretty crappy understanding of humanitarian law, ie it applies to those you like, not just those you don't. Ultimately the reason why you shouldn't use protected civilian infrastructure for basing and why it is a warcrime unless it's of military necessity is because it erodes the protection for every school, including those that are still used as schools. That's why both Hamas and Ukraine using schools as bases is bad, and a war crime, and despite Hamas' bases being a lot closer than the one at Bakhmut. You aren't going to see that mentioned by most journalists though, because they base their understanding of things like the Geneva Conventions and warcrimes on what they feel they should say, not what they actually do. I mean in theory that's what they do. Exactly the same as, in theory, politicians serve the people who elect them- if you listen to the politicians. In reality though... "But it is good that you think reporters are reliable to tell what is happening and are trained to document and retell things and it is their job to seek full picture and report happenings with details, that is attitude you should keep when you read reports from AI's reporters" Not very good at the zingers, are you?