Zoraptor

Yeah, that's what the WP article is about, mostly, with a wholesome dollop of complaint about incompetent upper level leadership. It was quite an interesting read for me, because the video mentioned in it did the rounds a few days ago and was pretty much instantly dismissed as Russian psyops- still was by many even after it leaked that the Ukrainians had arrested the people in the video. And there are a lot more similar videos floating around too. You kind of have to wonder if the guy got arrested mostly for talking to the WP on the record rather than the video itself. Militarily they almost certainly should have retreated from Sverodonetsk weeks ago when the roads were (more) secure and they could have done so in relatively good order, now they have difficulty getting any supplies and replacements through at all as they are down to one road in and out that is within easy artillery range. If they retreated now it would near inevitably end up in rout, and a whole heap of people would be reduced to walking themselves out. It's worth reading, iirc you do get some free articles from the WP every month before the pay wall kicks in. Though per above it's not a positive read for the pro Ukrainian side.

SNW Ep4 I'm going to outright say it: SNW is not great, but I think it actually has the best first 4 episodes out of at least TNG/ DS9/ Enterprise. Probably Voyager too, though I remember liking the first two episodes of that a lot- but then being epicly disappointed when all the promise in the premise evaporated almost immediately. Not sure how many episodes that took though. Then again considering the decidedly rocky starts most of the Treks had that isn't exactly singing its praises.

That's why you carry out the search behind 7 proxies as well. Everyone knows the government can only penetrate 6 proxies. Though I do find it somewhat amusing to think of someone using Tor to do their searches for hot mudcrab mods because they're worried Mike from the NSA may be having a chuckle about it.

Supposedly the 3rd ISIS Caliph has been captured in Turkey. Not sure if it isn't being covered yet because the news isn't confirmed, or because the ISIS Caliph is so unimportant at this point that he doesn't even warrant coverage.

Yep. There was a certain amount of disbelief among the film industry here that Tom Cruise actually flew the helicopter in the one they shot in NZ (Fallout?) because it was... not exactly safe and exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to be CGI or at least a stunt double for all of it. Say what you like about Tom Cruise, but he's certainly no coward and commits fully to his films. Rogue One's protagonists suffered badly from Joss Whedon Ensemble Syndrome. Good thing the rest of the movie was decent, and they had a better than decent main antagonist with some actually memorable lines (plus Tarkin and Vader were good too, for that matter). Don't really blame them for doing a series via the one Disney era movie that fans (nearly) unanimously like or at least tolerate though. Overall, I'd prefer a Disney+ series on Mads Mikkelson's farming tips instead of Andor.

My Brother in Law liked Picard, as I found out at a family dinner. So there is at least one person apart from Wil Wheaton who does. Not in the June schedule, so sometime after that.

Economically (and by definition) they're a Cartel, not a Monopoly. They cannot set a universal price, nor universal production quotas as a monopoly can. They don't even have a majority of production in proper OPEC, though they do with OPEC+. The reason why they behave as they do is... pretty obvious really. If the countries they exported to set the prices and production quotas they'd do so to benefit themselves, not the exporters- and historically that's exactly what they did in many cases. Places like Iran had decades of their production and prices being dictated to them from London (and later Washington). So there's also the ancillary question to "why won't they help us out when we need them?" which is, of course, "why don't they want to help us out when we need them?". Most people and most countries only ever ask the 1st one though, as the 2nd has some uncomfortable answers. More generally, I'm decidedly unsure if it's in the best interests of the west to try and do away with Sovereign Immunity in any form, as it opens a very big can of worms in terms of, say, suing for the damage of colonialism, or invasions, or drone strikes, or agricultural policy, or intellectual property or... It's exactly the sort of thing which the west does as Special Cases with Unique Circumstances which don't effect the Rules Based Order, then find out that others aren't really convinced about the Specialness and Uniqueness of the cases and think the Rules Based Order should be applied even handedly.

'From' will be on Netflix outside the US.

Up to a point; serious gun crime has actually gone up here after the Mosque attack reforms. In part due to external factors but only in part. No mass shootings, but then we'd only ever had like three (?) mass shootings in 180 years anyway and the one previous to Christchurch was nearly 30 years prior. And as always, the Mosque attack itself would/ could have been prevented if the Police had done their jobs and actually interviewed the shooter's referees etc, so adding even more checks is pointless if they can't be bothered carrying out even basic ones (and don't face any consequences either). Think I've said it before, but from personal experience the whole police vetting thing was a bit of a joke, and mostly an excuse for a retired police officer to keep getting paid while getting tea, biscuits and additional expenses for minimal effort. At least, if I'd wanted to game the process I could have done so very easily- and my dad certainly never had the required safe storage for his gun.

There's very limited value in stripping bits off of tanks. If they were valuable as scrap they'd have been scrapped; and most western countries actively pay other countries to 'recycle' even 'high value' electronic waste (and Russia produces a lot of the stuff you get from recycling, eg copper anyway). Half the point of Ukraine ending up with everyone's old equipment is... the donors then don't have to pay to dispose of it. Most of the stripping is done for spare parts for other tanks. Russia has some modernised T-62s that were going to be sent to Syria a couple of years back before the war there quietened down, they'd be the ones they'd be using as they are better than a baseline T72. It would be odd for other reasons such as different ammunition and no autoloader so needs an extra crew, but not because they're rubbish. People are basing a lot on one (?) photo of a T-62 on a transporter anyway [out of date, there's more to base it on now than that it seems such as pictures actually inside Ukraine instead of Russia]. Same thing was being said 7 weeks ago, when the Ukrainians were mere hours away from taking Nova Kharkovka and Kherson city and isolating the entire Russian force west of the Dniepr- on the internet. (Well, mostly, we did get another 'misinterpretation' of city/ oblast from the Pentagon which may not have been initially intended as a misinterpretation and supposedly attacks were launched. But if so they failed without any appreciable gains) The Russians pretty clearly do intend to keep Kherson, so they will actually fight to keep it. Protecting the land bridge and the two crossings of the Dniepr are pretty important, though not absolutely critical. The other consideration is strategic, Ukraine doesn't benefit much militarily from taking land around, say, Kharkov because the Russian border is right there, and most of the troops taking that land have to remain to stop the Russians simply walking back in later. OTOH make gains around Kherson and those troops aren't needed for garrisoning/ border control and can immediately be used for an offensive again.

Oddest thing about AMD's publicity blitz is the claim of 15% performance increase- as that is what you'd expect from just the node change on an equal power basis (or 30% less power at equal performance per TMSC). They're kind of implying there are no arch IPC gains and the cache doubling doing nothing as well...

Russian Minister of Transport via opposition media and Ukrainian Pravda plus at least one translation isn't exactly convincing. There's certainly been a big PR push to suggest that logistics is falling apart in Russia with very little actual evidence for it since week 1- remember those "Russia will be out of [supplies] in x days" claims from, well, literally week 1? Nearly 3 months later and they don't seem to have actually run out of anything. Indeed, the failure to deliver even a proper default has lead to some... counterproductive ideas being floated, like capital I Instructing US bond holders to refuse payments from Russia. Which would achieve the result of a 'default', but only with the air quotes, and also achieve the result of telling everyone that the USD is an inherently unsafe currency to hold debt in since you're only solvent at the whim of the US. It would do far more damage to the US long term than anyone else, all for the purpose of being able to say that sanctions delivered a result.

Please people, off brand Alpha Protocol should clearly be called Omega Methodology.

Looks like Ukraine now has a real problem around Severodonetsk where they are in danger of being surrounded. While there is still a ~15km gap between the Russian attacks from north/ south there are only two roads in (with some swampy ground in between), and they're close enough to hit anything traveling along them with mortars or ATGMs- they may be close enough to the southern one to hit it even with HMG fire. Ukrainians have a lot of troops there as it is their de facto administrative capital of Lugansk and they really don't want to lose it. We've already seen some complaints from the troops there that they are running out of supplies too. It's also unlikely to last anywhere near as long as Mariupol if it is cut off despite having a similarly sized force since even Severodonetsk and Lysichansk together are nowhere near as big, and lack the two big steelworks as defensive focuses. Russia is also claiming 2400+ surrendered from Azovstal. Which is way higher than I'd have expected, but I've also seen usually pro Ukrainian sources say that there were actually 2700 there in which case they're a few hundred short. Certainly most of the leaders have surrendered now, as the Russians are making propaganda hay via showing videos of them.

Strange New Worlds Ep3- I think I've seen enough to say that if this series had been done in isolation from Discovery and Picard I'd be pretty happy. It's really hamstrung by the expectation that everything will inevitably become awful though. I also watched the Halo TV series, because... I'm not quite sure. One of the oddest televisual experiences I've had, really. Overall, not as good as Forward unto Dawn which I rather liked in a pulp scifi way. But there is some potential there. I don't regret the time spent watching it, but would not recommend.

Vangelis started the long and storied tradition of New Zealand political parties being sued for copyright infringement after the National Party used CoF for their 1984 campaign without approval*. Normally that might be the most stupid moment in a campaign, but that was the one where the National Party leader got drunk and announced a snap (or 'schnapps') election without anyone else in the party knowing, so it has to come in 2nd. Also Conquest of Paradise was both a great tune and completely appropriate as the theme for the Canterbury Crusaders rugby team. *having said that I cannot find a single reference to it anywhere online, only the internet era Eminem case.

Chechens, what are they going to do with Mariupol? It's not like the Uighurs moving into Jisr al Shugour in Syria; they literally have nowhere else to go. To be blunt that reeks of pretty blatant propaganda. Speaking of Mariupol since it's dropped out of the headlines, the surrenders there are ongoing for a third day. As of yesterday Russia was saying ~1000 and as of today DPR was saying 1700. 1700 would be towards the upper limit of what I expected, and may actually mean the 2000 claimed to be there is accurate- or it may be an inflated propaganda POW number to match an inflated Ukrainian number. The 1000 seems likely to be accurate though, given the count of buses and the 'evacuees' being uninjured so not taking up so much space. Also, no general prisoner swap deal was made* and the surrender was unconditional. Which is not overly surprising, as the Ukrainians may not even have 1000 POWs to swap, especially since they've done less publicised swaps multiple times before. *qualifier; for the uninjured. It's entirely possible the first batch of 264 are covered by a swap deal and were all injured, and that the Ukrainian MoD just let media interpret it wrong. That would also put pressure on Russia to adhere to an agreement they hadn't actually agreed to.

TLDR lol. OK, I actually read a decent number, and a depressing number of similar things apply to our 'left wing' government here.

The other issue apart from people using them as a source is that if the information is salacious enough other papers use them as a source. Then people quote the NYT* and The (London) Times and Grauniad to show that it's in all the 'respectable' press as well and thus has to be taken seriously. Case in point, Putin's phantom resignation in January 2021 where the ultimate source was... anonymous intelligence official, talking to The Sun; ie modern Kelvin McKenzie's left buttcheek. The flip side is state media, which isn't trustworthy but can be useful to see what the other side wants people to think. Tabloids though, the only thing you get from them is what they think will sell the most copy. *favourite newspaper of record moment: being told that a NYT article claiming unions were illegal in New Zealand had to be true because it was in the NYT who do exacting fact checking, and the legislation webpage of the NZ government saying they were legal had to be incorrect. Strangely enough the NYT reporter was actually wrong... and that was well after all the Nigerian Yellowcake etc fake intelligence laundering done through the NYT in 2002-3. There isn't any. It's possible that the UN or ICRC has some and they'd more or less qualify as unbiased, but they don't release such data independently and for the vast majority of information received will be aggregating biased/ controlled sources if they did release.

"Ukraine's defence ministry said that 264 defenders of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol had been evacuated to separatist-held territory in Ukraine's breakaway Donbas region" You can just say 'surrendered', Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, that's what it is when you're evacuated to enemy held territory. They're POWs who are going to be exchanged for other POWs, who also surrendered. Probably isn't quite over yet. Ukraine was claiming ~2000 defenders there fairly recently, and even though that was doubtless an exaggeration I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's another batch to come tomorrow. Not completely out of the question that some refuse to surrender too.

I'm kind of interested in watching that just to see how bad Picard has been. OTOH, nearly 39 minutes... that's nearly 39m more time than I really want to spend on Picard.

I always obey the road rules, but everyone else insists on driving on the wrong side of the road. Honourable exception: Sleeping Dogs. This is perhaps the most 21st century thing I have ever read.

Uh, yeah: "Shireen Abu Akleh: Israeli forces attack mourners carrying casket of dead Al Jazeera journalist". I mean, what can you say really?

Yeah, it's how long the 'near term future' is that is at question I guess. Three ways to interpret it: there will be (are?) some Arc graphics with piecemeal release for laptops earlier than the desktop line and they want to launch full suite XeSS with the desktop line They are having some implementation problems, or problems with the fallback implementations, andor it needs driver side implementation from AMD/ nVidia (which would be 'funny', but I wouldn't wholly discount it) Or, the big one: they promised XeSS and have to deliver it- but they only have to deliver it to Arc users. This would be the case if they've decided that they cannot compete with DLSS/ FSR. Despite my equivocation above the bottom option is the one I personally think is the case, but only on balance. FSR 2.0 being such a big improvement while still being easy to implement and Intel very likely getting some advance notice of that certainly makes option 3 a lot more likely. Hard to see any space for XeSS to slot into, now though to be fair to Intel/ Raja there certainly was previous, short of Intel splurging vast amounts of cash for actual exclusivity; and it's hard to see that considering how much they'd have to splurge. That leaves it very much looking like a tech solution without a problem to solve any more.

Kurds and Yazidis, right at this moment. What you say, it's not being reported? Weird that. Fun thing to remember: Erdogan's and his son made many millions buying oil from ISIS and hence funding them in their fight against... the US supported Kurdish YPG, among others. Indeed, one of the big reasons that Russia suddenly started bombing ISIS oil infrastructure and tankers back in 2016 after everyone had avoided doing it was that it massively hurt Erdogan in his personal finances, and he'd just 'personally' ordered Turkey to shoot down a Russian Su24.