Zoraptor

lol no. It was 100% Ukraine that did it and many of the sources for that are sources you'd otherwise take as gospel- like UPravda and UNIAN. Then of course there was Kuleba admitting to it in a prank call; and that's without getting into the litany of anonymously sourced western articles. If it was intended as a 'justification' by Russia they'd have picked something of a lot less strategic importance. The only credible efforts so far as disputation goes is trying to avoid it being a suicide/ homicide bomb that was used- and those often aren't very credible at all per the BBC's "maybe it was a remote control boat [with, uh, 65kg payload, lest we forget]?". Which was either monumental stupidity or active misinformation- as an aside, absolutely hilarious that that obviously and ludicrously incorrect claim makes it onto wikipedia because it comes from a 'credible' source, but that's wikipedia for you. The targeting switch was almost certainly planned right from the outset and before even that. Indeed, they will also have a plan for targeting just about everyone's infrastructure- and targets for nukes for that matter. That's the nature of planning. They don't really need a justification for it and as above even if they did the Kerch Bridge is an awful choice.

Two factors at work there one suspects. Firstly, a lot of the earlier attacks were designated as being 'accidents', sometimes even when they very obviously weren't. If you deny the attack happened/ say it's an accident then you don't need to retaliate. Secondly, and probably most importantly by far, an airbase and even the port isn't critical infrastructure and is, for want of a better term, a 'legitimate'* military target. The Kerch Bridge is absolutely critical infrastructure, and was near immediately attributed to Ukraine by the Russians -->--> resulting in them switching to targeting Ukraine's critical infrastructure. I'm always a bit skeptical about translations/ interpretations too, it's surprising (or not?) how often translations are a bit... well, the wording, context and phrasing is chosen to make a more 'attractive' story. Kind of like how 'go to hell' can be literally interpreted as wishing someone not only dead, but for them to suffer eternal torment; but generally it's an expression of (often fairly mild) annoyance. Taking Armageddon (or Judgement Day, as some translated it) literally is great if you want to sell papers/ clicks and are telling people the Russians are imminently going to start throwing nukes about though. You'd hardly expect a Russian politician to say that Crimea was fair game after all, any more than you'd expect a Ukrainian to say anything of theirs is fair game. *or understandable, or non escalatory, or reciprocal or whatever. Specifically not being used as legitimate in the war crimes sense. Obviously they are legitimate in that sense, but then so is everything dual use including the bridge and electrical/ power infrastructure and this is a motive/ response explanation.

Could well be nothing? There is not a major increase in supply, though that will potentially come. There is only a major increase in supply to Europe. Europe is getting its 'new' supply mostly by... inducing the breaking of existing contracts with other countries. Indeed, one of the more amusing things is watching Europeans pat themselves on the back and pontificate on their moral superiority over the rules based order and cutting down on reliance on Russia by, well, stealing what they need off others- morally, if not legally. Then of course having the mega hypocrisy of criticising those they've deprived of gas- and this is the kicker, since there's no major increase in supply, only supply to Europe- for going to Russia; and wondering why those countries really don't like them and see them as massive frauds. Euro Response Roulette: Russian bots? Russian disinformation? Hating our freeeeedom? Weeds who want to ruin our Perfect Garden (thanks Borrel, hilarious you said that in the institution Mogherini runs; you're not fit to tie her shoes when it comes to diplomacy). Not really, in this case it's the old "it's legal and necessary as we're doing it, you need to accept that your people just aren't as deserving of energy as Euros". Energy price deflation happens all the time. It's just a fancy way of saying... prices will drop. I doubt anyone including Russia expects the prices to stay as high constantly as new supply (and new infrastructure carrying it) will be developed/ built. That works both ways though. As for retaliation to stuff happening in Crimea, the change of focus to hitting energy infrastructure happened directly after the Kerch Bridge attack. Might not exactly be armageddon- at least now, when it's relatively warm- but then hyperbole isn't exactly unknown in military matters. "Mission Accomplished", Operation 'Enduring' Freedom, etc etc.

Do they not do free keys for educators in the US? They certainly used to do that here, since that's how I got my current OS.

Apparently the Smashing Pumpkins were big fans. I always wondered where that sample in the video for 'Tonight, Tonight' came from and now I know.

OTOH, could have been Luke for the even lower profile option. Not surprising, as there have been significant... creative differences between Cavill and the showrunners which have leaked out around the edges. Enough that a lot doesn't seem to be rumour at least*- though stuff like Cavill wanting some sort of creative control/ influence isn't confirmed. Superman gives a convenient excuse, but it could easily be two years or more before that goes into actual shooting. Would be funny if Cavill popped up on Hot D for a season; shame the current Stark isn't a Brandon or he could have played another Lord Brandon after his role in The Tudors. Guess they couldn't really replace the entire series leadership... but then is anyone watching for Lauren Hisrup's writing and showrunning? Mighty have been better to just cancel the thing. *recently one of the ex writers cited TWitcher as a project he worked on where a lot of the writing staff 'hated' the source material, which would definitely have annoyed Cavill. That writer didn't seem to have any reason to lie about it.

Caught up on House of the Dragon. Overall, a strong start, though certainly a lot of room for improvement in certain aspects. Which probably ought to happen, since S1 was ultimately scene setting over an extended period which doesn't lend itself to coherent storytelling on TV. I have a strong suspicion Aemond may have hijacked my keyboard once or twice there, looking back.

IgorsLab has a good write up of the current issues around 4090 power failures/ fire hazard . tldr; nVidia's 12VHPWR adapter has a significant design flaw that can cause the connection to break/ melt/ catch fire at high voltages. It isn't a flaw with the standard in general as some have suggested, just nVidia's implementation; so anyone using PSU supplied/native cables should be fine.

I'm getting the sense that advocating for a dlc of nothing but puzzles was actually sarcasm? Hit a bug at the end of Enigma which leaves me unable to leave. Not the only bug I ran into in that last fight either, which isn't great given it has an intrinsically annoying design. Good news is that now I get to replay it, if I want to! Also hit the level cap at the end of that fight, which I generally loathe in RPGs. The puzzles were... far from the worst, though they're also very, very far from good. Most adventure games I've played had less intuitive ones, though that's not exactly a high bar to pass and that's kind of adventure games' thing. The real negatives are the masses of repetitive monsters (many with annoying abilities) and a lot of backtracking. I'll spoiler the last bit, since I wouldn't want anyone else to miss out

The issue there is that her UI is treated like the other animal companions which of course cannot cast spells, ie collapsed by default. And no, I didn't go and check if Thog the horse and Dino Nychus the velociraptor could cast spells last night, because that would be silly. You also don't level her up as you do for everyone else so you don't get to 'see' her getting spells. It makes perfect sense that she does from a lore/ world point of view though so yeah, but the game doesn't exactly give you much reason to think about that in context or on a more meta basis. Also did some more Act 5 stuff

80 hours with her as my companion and it's now I find out Aivu can cast spells? (Not like I have any cause for complaint, she's a dragon and can talk, of course she can cast spells)

Nelson Mandela actually said it was fairly significant at least in terms of the sense of solidarity being shown, and the SA government put a lot of effort into attracting rebel tours and the like for their rugby and cricket teams at least (football of course being popular with the wrong people for apartheid RSA to care). Practically, all it achieved was the boycott of the 1976 Olympics and triggering a near civil war in New Zealand. Don't think there's much chance of FIFA doing anything to Iran, just look at who they've got hosting the thing. Probably the most ironic choice for a replacement would be Azerbaijan...

Iran isn't manufacturing drones in Syria. What they would be doing is assembling them from component parts sent from Iran (which is, indeed, what the SOHR says). They will definitely not be assembling them then sending them on to Russia, nor shipping them to Russia via Syria. Those will just get flown in over- or shipped via- the Caspian.

I really must catch up on HotD.. The commentary I've seen around ep9 certainly makes its end sound like a throwback to later GoT's penchant for 'cool' scenes that made zero sense. (I almost certainly will catch up since it's now only a months sub; guess the two free eps did work in the end...)

Barrage balloons used a similar principle. Supposedly- personally, I am extremely skeptical of the claim- they brought down several hundred V1s over Britain in WW2. Nets are impractical though as you can't balance the size/ weight/ strength requirements.

I liked her work in Saints Row 3. Was kind of disappointed whichever twin it was that survived* didn't make it back for SR4 (well, excluding the very beginning). *Viola apparently, and Kiki was voiced by someone else despite them being identical twins

The aircraft are expensive, and pilots take a long time and are expensive to train- and yeah, if the planes cannot fly or crash too much they're potentially worse than useless- so reliability is certainly as major factor in a successful military aircraft as well. It just cannot be the main focus, as it often clashes on an absolutely fundamental level with being a good military aircraft. That fundamental difference is... well, for example a safe and reliable civilian jet might have a max speed of .8 mach or similar. A fighter might have 3 times that. Even by base physics (ie excluding fluid dynamics, and at high speed that plays an ever increasing role as airs behaviour gets increasingly water like as speed increases) you need 9x the power/ thrust to get 3x the speed. That requires highly engineered jet engines and specific design adaptations which are inherently less stable/ safe at low speeds (esp landing/ takeoff) like delta wing or significantly swept wing designs (--> reduced wing area/ edge to reduce drag at high speed -->--> reduced lift at low speeds, no way to avoid that except to an extent swing wing, and that introduces other potential issues which is why it's more or less abandoned as a concept now). You can of course design a fighter that flies at .8 mach instead, it will just be near useless, as a fighter, against any design that places safety as a lower priority. Still plenty of subsonic planes in other roles though. It's a balance, but militarily a plane that can do its job properly rather than maximising safely has to be #1 priority. As much as it cannot do its job if it's crashed or is constantly being serviced it also cannot do its job if it's useless for its job- and that's true even if it's 100% reliable and requires almost no maintenance.

They'd probably do better if they used the full alignment spectrum for the choices rather than just good/ evil/ lawful/ chaotic. "It's the law here so slavery is OK with me!" is pretty clearly far closer to the Lawful Evil approach than the LG, might as well specify it as such. Especially when they already have multiple options for the same alignment in some conversations. I did a fair number of evil choices in the Abyss- when in Rome, do as the Romans do after all; and many of the good options seemed dumb in the context of the abyss- and most of them weren't particularly stupid, certainly not the way they were in Baldur's Gate. Obviously there are a lot of "murder everyone while cackling maniacally" type options too though but that issue would be 'fixed' if they were CE options rather than just evil.

The primary concern for civilian craft is not killing the people on board- if for no other reason than anything else is bad for business, per Boeing's MAX fiasco or the later DC series. Then you have size, efficiency, reliability etc but safety really is top priority 99% of the time. The main concern for a military craft is that it does its military job. If you're designing a fighter you want fast and manoevrable which are intrinsically less safe than slow and sedate and allows for less margin for error in pretty much every design and response parameter. That's balanced out somewhat by rigorous training and a vigorous maintenance regime but it can only be balanced out somewhat. Many modern fighters literally cannot be flown if the flight computer fails and the only option if that happens is to bail out. Takeoff and landing are when most crashes occur whether civil or military, since that's when you have least margin for error. [non exhaustive; there are a bunch of other factors too like having to simulate war conditions which contribute as well]

That is one hell of a lot of dialogue/ cut scenes to start chapter 5 proper.

Military aircraft crashes are pretty common. eg John McCain the presidential candidate lost 4 aircraft as pilot- though you could forgive him for two of them. He nearly lost one more as well.

I have run into the same bug Gorth had in the Midnight Isles. And, of course, that is despite checking that the patch notes where the first item is that issue being fixed... On the positive side that is the first out and out bug I've had (thought I had another, but that was just a quest with unclear instructions and not being flagged as needing to be done before the chapter end. Yes Owlcat I'll randomly chat to a generic Baphomet Cultist in a random room in the brothel to progress it despite 99.9% of generically named characters having nothing to say). Finished Chapter 4. I think I liked the idea of the Abyss a lot more than the execution, it probably sounded pretty cool written down but tended towards annoyance after an hour or so.

There clearly were some issues with WoT that were more or less unavoidable due to covid and the actor for Mat quitting. The other two excuses of needing more run time and a bigger budget though... they didn't use the time they had well and they didn't use the money they had well. More of either probably would have ended up with a bad show that had 10 episodes instead of 8 and was more expensive to boot. You're not going to fix bad writing with more time, you just get more bad writing. Case in point, most of an episode being wasted on the utterly peripheral Stepin plot. (Ironically the one thing that may well have helped was if it wasn't an Amazon series. The Witcher was a far better show despite having similar problems, and so were the HBO shows (and I'd include stuff like the His Dark Materials there, not just the GoT series). The bad showrunner for WoT is 100% Amazon's fault, and ultimately most of the avoidable problems stem from him being picked and being out of his depth in pretty much every facet. If you're going to do a big budget complicated series nothing beats experience)

1200-1400 would definitely have been higher proportion wise thanks mostly to Temujin, Timur etc. There's also a cost in terms of the near 600% (!) mark up on US LNG being sold to Europe. A mark up so large that contracts with other buyers are being systematically broken because the penalties are far less than the windfall profits. Then of course there's bafflement about not getting wholesale support from those effected... The US is also, as always, leveraging its currency's status to protect its own economy while shafting everyone else's. Typical 'socialise the costs, privatise the benefits' from Yellen really; if we're all in this together that means not running everything apart from aid to Ukraine as a sole benefit to the US.

Not many people know this, but originally RoP was going to be a young Aragorn series and that actor was brought on board to play young Boromir rather than Elrond...