Zoraptor

After 30 years and not far off a dozen appeals New Zealand's most infamous case of satanic child abuse/ Moral Panic has been quashed. That case alone remains responsible for the dearth of male teachers here even three decades later. I was at school in Christchurch at that time and the two things that I remember vividly were how few people- even those you'd expect to, like the stereotypical anti gay rugger buggers- believed the accusations and how extremely badly regarded the parents of the 'victims', the experts and police were. While the evidence was never presented to the jury the highly bizarre allegations of things like blood orgies in the (physically and literally non existent) basement and babies being microwaved leaked extensively. The jury, of course, only heard the parts of the children's interviews that were plausible. I'd also note that despite what that article says the parents were actually mostly 'liberals' rather than conservatives of either big or little C type, though the police were deeply conservative. Including, ironically, the lead detective who bonked multiple mothers of victims- not a joke, he had relationships with two and Police Emergency Retirement Funded when a third complained about him propositioning her while drunk; and years later was still talking about how the case came about because of people ignoring christian values. Nothing says Christian like using accusations of sexual abuse and your job position to get your end away, I guess. Peter Ellis, the guy convicted, died three years ago. In an uncharacteristically sensible move the appeal was still allowed to be heard despite that. Sadly, while many of the 'victims' recanted (or were "in denial", according to most of the prior appeals' findings) some are still convinced they were abused thanks to incompetent experts and, to be charitable, overly protective and gullible parents. To be uncharitable, around 500,000$ was paid out in compensation to the victims' families, while those who refused to take part in the witch hunt got nothing.

It's a bit more than that. Erdogan is a big fan of neo Ottoman irredentism/ revanchism and its antecedents/ precedents (eg Misaki Milli). That's a claim on big chunks of Iraq including Kirkuk and Mosul, big chunks of Syria including Aleppo, a lot of Greek islands, a big chunk of Armenia and Georgia and Bulgarian Thrace that he sees as perfectly legitimate. Turkey has already invaded Syria (twice, and outright annexed Iskanderun after a bogus referendum predicated on Misaki Milli), Iraq and Cyprus; two off those under Erdogan's leadership. It's very unlikely any of them are getting the Turks out any time soon. Turkey is always threatening Greece though, and nothing ever comes of it. Erdogan is a lot more shouty than normal because his economy is imploding as he counters runaway inflation (a mere 83%) by, uh, continually cutting interest rates. That has also resulted in the Lira losing 80% of its value vs the USD in the past 4 years. He's lost control of the three largest cities in Turkey and needs to appeal to nationalism to not lose the upcoming general election.

Great, now I'll have Creedence Clearwater Revival stuck in my head for the next week. At least it's a great song (and pretty relevant too). Guess I should be glad the tooth collecting clan wasn't called 'Barbie Girl' instead.

EGS exclusive, sponsored by Intel's GPUs and the PC version is a back port from the mobile game. Just a shame it can't be Stadia exclusive instead.

Eh, Russia is losing at this point, difficult to argue otherwise. Month ago, probably still winning, but not now. Whether mobilisation will make a difference is an open question, the current situation really isn't. Not a good video though, and the only part worth watching is the first 40s because that's the only bit with any objective merit (TLDW, there's no actual evidence for who did it so far, which there isn't). It's just not a good video for reasons other than that. (Why? Three factors. Firstly, the model he uses is used to give a veneer of 'science' to his conclusions rather than inform them. Destroying infrastructure is by its nature going to cross a detection threshold if you wanted to cut off gas for weeks they will detect it, and they will come up with a reason for it. Saying that the US would use a (eg) cyberattack instead is... yeah. Detectable, and in some cases attributable as well (see stuxnet). What he actually is arguing about is just motivation. So, secondly, he pretty much ignores any and all reasons the 'US' might have for doing it by saying it would just increase uncertainty, which the US doesn't want. Which is true, kind of. Except of course the US is itself a natural gas exporter and already exports 39bcm/ month of LNG to Europe; and would very much like to export more. It's also, already, significantly more expensive than Russian gas. Remove the option of Russian gas though and you sell more US gas, and at a more appealing price point since prices have spiked, and you remove any prospect of Germany etc folding over winter because there's no longer an alternative anyway. Three things that are very much in the best interests of the US. And not at all in the best interests of Russia (though general uncertainty is in their best interests) And thirdly, it's blatantly obvious that whoever did it Russia would be blamed by most people. That removes almost all the risk of blowback for any alternatives since you can just blame Russian shills, Russian bots, useful idiots or whatever for any other theories)

Countries not recognising annexation doesn't mean much at all when it comes to relations- see Israel and East Jerusalem/ Golan. Even after 4 years of Trump (and Biden not reversing the policy, so recognition is outright US policy now) the number of countries recognising either is, uh, not high at all. Indeed, even among those who are otherwise stridently pro Israel active condemnation was prevalent instead of just saying it wasn't recognised.

They are in Syria, at least when it comes to Assad vs the west which is what that is. Due to Qatari FP if it's the west vs Turkey they pick Turkey- pretty much have to, since Turkey guaranteed their continued existence v/v Saudi Arabia- but also due to Qatari FP AJEnglish is pretty pro West in everything now that Afghanistan is settled. Apart from Israel/ Palestine and to an extent Saudi Arabia (/Yemen), though that's primarily anti Saudi rather than anti west. AJA is anti west at least in rhetoric, but then that audience is inherently stridently anti west... Finnish figures are probably a good guideline. More so for Ukraine than Russia, since they're fighting on their own ground. Soviet figures include around 18 million civilian deaths as well as ~9 million military, the only way you could get the equivalent numbers in Ukraine would be if nukes were used- and pretty indiscriminately since that would require killing ~everyone in Kiev/ Dnipro'/ Zaporizhe and Ukraine to have 2 million men under arms to kill. I'd bet that both would need weighting for demographics as well. 1940s populations were typically a lot younger on average than now so could stand higher losses, and Ukraine especially has had a pretty significant demographic collapse post USSR.

Just wait for the inevitable 'S in NSDAP stands for Socialist --> --> Nazis have to be left wing!' arguments.

I suspect I could metagame the encounters in WotR to play on Core Rules. It's just way too much effort to do the first time through. Far easier on a replay. I think technically the weirdest difficulty 'curve' I've seen is still something like Oblivion. Nothing like having bandits dressed in armour that they could simply sell and then retire for life from the proceeds of; and the 'best' character development strategy being never to formally level up past 2. To be clear, I'm 100% expecting that to be misdirection, at least in so far as it being the 'big secret'.

Still working my way through Pathfinder WotR. Turned down the difficulty, and inevitably blow through just about every combat in five seconds flat (though see spoilers). Had the same issue with Kingmaker, at lower (character) levels the difficulty is very granular and you need to know the right order to do everything in to get the levels up at the right time, at some point on the lowered difficulty nearly everything becomes easy. Liberated a city, splattered some demon armies, now I'm anarchist Jesus or something. I'll probably start posting in the actual Pathfinder thread for the next update, since I'm getting a bit further through.

For signatories their use (or ownership, development etc) is completely illegal but since none of the parties are signatories.. .. it doesn't apply anyway, as they have to be explosive submunitions- and steel/ tungsten are purely kinetic. Definitions etc from the relevant convention, for anyone interested.

Master of Magic (classic) giveaway for nearly 3 more days. Plus Skyrim SE released. Which was one of the oldest games with a gog database entry but no release- see also (the still unreleased) Civ V.

RIP Stadia November 19, 2019 - January 18, 2023. A google product line abandoned, surely a first. On a(nother?) positive note at least they're refunding games bought etc.

The NZDF has to think carefully before firing off a single Javelin in training. Our biggest contribution by far is the intelligence and training people we've sent over (~200). lol. You don't half take things absolutely literally when it suits. In terms of the 'just asking questions/ posting articles' stuff I'm actually pretty glad that CNN interview was posted, and have no problem with that. The guy ought to be an expert, fair enough posting his views. He's either not though, or the interview has been editorialised significantly, or he's deliberately being inaccurate. I tend to go for the first because first impressions from the kiloton gaffe- and the generalised suspicion that brits with double barreled names got their job because they went to Eton or Harrow, not from any expertise.

Not really. You can actively maintain most of that older stuff, can't really maintain something clandestine at the bottom of the sea. That's going to get silted over, lose its magnetism, leak, get hit by trawler nets etc etc. And you'd still need to get relatively close to trigger it. And I say that as someone who suggested timer or remote control was used to obfuscate the timing, it's just that obfuscating by years is... lol really. Not necessary, unreliable and that's without the other factors like it removing rather than increasing Russia's leverage. It is however incredibly funny watching people who spend most of their time saying all Russia's equipment is a joke that doesn't work suddenly deciding that they're highly competent and it worked fine in this particular instance. Doesn't really matter for the point being made. There's simply no shortage of reliable delivery vehicles as he claimed. If anything that makes him look even more stupid, since he said the (warheads and) missiles were probably maintained OK and more or less reliable. It's like he forgot the air force existed and thought the entire tactical nuclear arsenal was defunct tochkas. (If anyone is interested there's a list of delivery systems here, and for the non strategic ~tactical~ ones most are deployed by Russia in or around Ukraine)

Ah yes, the Russians. Their nuclear delivery vehicles have all fallen apart, but they can put limpet mines on underwater cables and have them detonate remotely years later. Truly they are exactly as competent or incompetent as needed for whatever story is being told. "Tactical nuclear weapons meanwhile are much smaller warheads with a yield, or explosive power, of up to 100 kilotons of dynamite" Excellent way to establish your credentials as ex head of CBRN for NATO and the UK, that. TNT, not dynamite. Doesn't get any better from there. "The warheads and missiles are probably in reasonable condition but the vehicles they are mounted on are, I believe and have on good authority, in poor condition." ... The Russians have been using tactical nuclear capable delivery systems from the outset, and not just one or two. A dozen, +/- a few depending on how you classify tactical. Not like they weld nuclear missiles/ bombs to an Iskander or Su-34 anyway, you can give them a nuclear or non nuclear load out. In particular a Khinzal could be fitted to a MiG31 and fired from Moscow to handily hit anywhere in Ukraine.

Arc A770 priced at 329USD, launch Oct 12. If it actually performed like a 3060Ti that would be at least a decent price. But it will probably perform a lot more like a 3060, and worse in dx11. Also some Intel benchmarking for their upcoming processors. Fairly clear the 5950x is not actually AMD's premier gaming chip but I guess 'performs ~the same as or worse than a 5800x3d in 5 out of 9 tests' is not the best marketing. Plus mark though for starting the y axis at 0 instead of 0.90 like nVidia would have.

(1) not even von der Leyen is that dumb and (2) Neither Nordstream is active energy infrastructure Maybe, but it's not like it's come from a vacuum. "There will no longer be a NS2. We'll bring an end to it."-- Joe Biden Feb 7 2022

For a Bob Ballard/ Titanic type situation, sure. But that was both ~40 years ago now and literally multiple km deep in the Atlantic instead of ~80m. The general rule is that if you can get a squishy meat sack to something you can get a mechanical object there more easily, at least physically, since you don't have to protect the squishy meatsack part. While the squishy meatsack is generally more flexible in what it can do if you just want to blow something up then mechanical is perfectly fine. In this situation you don't even need necessarily to rescue the drone afterwards, you could use the underwater equivalent of a 'suicide drone'* and chuck it off the back of any old ship, a yacht, a speedboat. You definitely have the problem of needing some sort of recovery vessel/ means if using frogmen too. Realistically though either way you can obfuscate timing by using a delayed or remote trigger, so presence or lack of ships at a specific time means little. *--> ~torpedo really, much as most aerial 'suicide drones' --> ~cruise missiles.

Divers others have mentioned, but the other main alternative to a sub is a Remote Operated Vehicle, ie underwater drone.

Even the 65W BIOS setting supposedly gives ~80% MT performance (and still 100% ST) compared to the unlocked/ ~240W one. Suppose you can't really blame them when the Intel equivalent looks to do the same but at +100W, and that performance is what people use for comparison.

7000/ Zen4 reviews are out*. Mostly positive (except Linus). Main caveats: expensive system costs and hot hot hot! (though you get 95% of the performance from 50% of the wattage, so solution is obvious) *Looks like everyone got 2 SKUs to test, so there isn't a single comprehensive review unfortunately.

I'm still not sure how quoting the relevant rules direct from the treaty('s list of definitions) is deflecting. It's like pointing out that an 'assault' isn't an assault by citing the legal definition; you can argue that it should be an assault morally, but legally... Fundamentally I think there's a pretty basic misunderstanding of how such treaties work at play. Treaties are written so as to get the maximum number of people to sign up, not to get maximum enforcement. Indeed, in order to get the maximum sign up enforcement is always weak, and there are always numerous loopholes. See any climate agreement, any agreement on military weapons, the UNSC etc. Though that is not what happened with Chernobyl: Russia wasn't uneffected, but other places were far more effected. Europe doesn't really have prevailing winds in the sense many places do. Look at the same data for Fukushima and it's a stereotypical plume heading out over the Pacific, for example.

Hmm yes. I wonder what Olaf Scholtz has been doing this week. It would be slightly ironic if he was off in Saudi Arabia begging Saudi/ MbS for energy...

That's not directly Ukraine related, the proximal reason is tax cuts funded by £72bn more borrowing. I guess, technically, if they get ~4% GDP growth out of it they'll be ahead on the debt to GDP ratio balance, but it doesn't seem like anyone except Kwarteng and Truss expect it to work out like that. (for anyone who doesn't check the article zerohedge blames the mini budget as well. The £150bn in already announced and Ukraine related energy cap costs will definitely not be helping though)