Zoraptor

Foot binding etc was done to other Chinese as cultural practice, not to other nationalities. Uighurs are a good example, but formally they have exactly the same problem that Taiwan has- they are acknowledged as being Chinese, by everyone. Not colonial possessions but part of China proper. Which is kind of fortunate for Taiwan too, as it has its own skeleton in the cupboard in that respect (their treatment of indigenous Formosans). Does have to said that the Chinese benefit historically from being insular for ~4 critical centuries, which minimises the chances of inflicting harm on other nations. Sure, and Europeans also did that a lot to other Europeans. Africans didn't colonise Europe though, outside of BNP type fliers.

Meh, given the mention of Zaire Hoonding is almost certainly referencing the Belgian Congo (--> Zaire, under Mobutu). Which had a slight problem with, well, Belgians killing, mutilating and raping the populace. So much so that they had to stop. Not because it was a Bad Thing morally speaking, but because they were quite literally running out of people to mutilate, rape and kill so profits were being effected. As embarrassing as colonial history ought to be for most colonial powers they can at least bask in the glory of being better than Belgium. Say what you like about the Chinese but they aren't building pyramids of severed hands because their loans aren't being repaid quickly enough. And indeed, they haven't fought a war for the right to sell opium while starving millions of people to death in the country growing the opium either.

Historically you could do a far worse list for those fundamentally western institutions the IMF/ WB. The thing about Chinese projects, even the infamous Montenegran motorway to nowhere- or gold plated Sri Lankan ports, and a host of other things elsewhere outside of Africa- is that at least they actually do get built*. They may not bring the economic returns the countries' hoped for, but they did get built. In contrast... Zaire, Mobutu and the IMF, as just one example. Though if you read that it's pretty obvious that it really is just one example. Real "Want a simple way to lose weight quickly? Then buy this cheap $100mn saw on credit and amputate your leg!" type stuff. Amazing how consistently the IMF/ WB lent money that not only didn't produce anything positive at all, but the stipulated policies associated with it made things actively worse. For decades. Almost like it was deliberate policy, which of course it was. Most of the money lent to Zaire went to Mobutu, and everyone knew it. At least he wasn't a godless commie though. Now they've just switched to "here's money to grow bananas, coffee and chocolate; don't worry about food you can just buy our cheap subsidised grain! What could possibly go wrong?" *and just blaming China unfairly excuses the home grown politicians who approved the projects. What kind of numpty accepted that Montenegran project and how much cash ended up in his Cayman Is bank account? Oh yeah, it's their current President, who's a bit of a western darling.

Running the show from the shadows would still be a bit step down from him being there and micromanaging/ rewriting stuff up to the last minute. Dunno though, I kind of suspect it may be more permanent/ real than might otherwise be the case due to a bunch of circumstances. (1) You'd have to suspect that the WWE's and Vince's personal lawyers are telling him to Stay Away, in all caps, bold, underlined, 72pt font. (1a) Especially so if there are more accusations to come... and let's be honest, it's extremely likely there are. (2) There was the very Successionesque managerial bloodbath which saw Shane, HHH and Stephanie all sidelined and which may leave the latter two a lot less inclined to play cat's paw now they're back. (3) There were the rumours that he was going to sell and that was why the roster was getting gutted, so he may have been prepared to quit anyway. (4) He's got a lot of other skeletons in his closet which would make for some not so great headlines. (5) Johnny Ace being involved as well, and him very much being a Vince guy. (6) Hulk Hogan. Time used to a great healer for reputations in wrestling. Last time Hogan showed up though he was roundly booed, even years later. And for what I think most would consider a lesser offence. While it's allegations at the moment they're pretty damning. Bryan Krzanich got fired from Intel not for how badly he ran their core (hoho) business, but for merely bonking his PA- albeit he wasn't its main shareholder, but... Vince supposedly not only did that, but passed her on to Laurinaitis too, plus used his position to demand sex from wrestlers (and fired them when refused). If that's true then it's going to be impossible to come back from, and very hard even to come back from the allegation of it.

Vince McMahon has retired from WWE after a string of sexual misconduct allegations. Who would have thought that someone who pitched an incest angle with his daughter and thought Fabulous Moolah was great would go out like that? I honestly thought the only way he'd go was when they'd nailed shut his coffin, and given his mother is still alive at 100+ that could have potentially been decades away.

8-12 Russians. Funnily enough the source for hundreds of Russians always resolves to... Girkin again, who wanted a war between Russia and the US, preferably nuclear. Hundreds may well have died, but they were locals trained by Wagner. (Basically the rebels in rif Deir ez Zor all defected to ISIS in 2014 and the loyalists were under siege in Deir ez Zor for 4 years; around 200k people. The US supported forces took a very long operational pause in the hope that Deir ez Zor city would be captured by ISIS- indeed the only ever major strike in the area by the coalition was the infamous 'mistaken identity' attack of September 2016 where they spent an hour attacking... Syrian government forces- and that would cut off the alternative land route to Iraq/ Iran along the Euphrates having already taken Al Tanf from Jordan. Didn't really care about the 200k civilians, but then they were also fine with drowning them as well. When Deir ez Zor city was relieved by the government forces Saudi bribed the ISIS aligned locals to swap sides to the SDF (coalition) with the carrot that they could keep the oil fields in the area. Oddly enough the half of the local tribes that were loyalists didn't like that much, and employed Wagner to train them up to go after the Omar field. So it was 95% local anti ISIS fighters being killed there to protect... ISIS fighters who'd swapped sides for the 3rd time)

Officially it isn't the final season and the show isn't cancelled. Since they've released the actors from their contracts and Seth M is working directly on other projects there certainly won't be a S4 any time soon though whatever is said. Re Wheel of Time: Prime (hoho) example of someone with very little talent trying to improve something written by someone with far more talent. Why Amazon thought someone whose main claim to fame was being a competitor on Survivor and had zero show running experience was a good idea for running a big and expensive show who knows. And it was incredibly expensive, but looked cheap, felt both rushed and padded for length and at times would have been embarrassed by 90s era Hercules for both sfx and- lol- battle scenes even without mentioning the non sensical plotting. Then again allegedly 10% of the entire budget goes towards paying Pike... Funny thing is that the one thing that has been universally praised and iirc has got an Emmy nomination is the one thing the show runner had basically nothing to do with and actually follows the books- the animated shorts.

Only bit they really could have cut was the very start, and the obligatory 20/21st century pop culture reference. Orville s3e8- liked this one just about unreservedly.

Orville S3e7 Another good episode, but has a similar problem(s) to the rest of the season so far, just to a greater degree. Overall this season has felt a bit underwhelming but I'm pretty sure that's because Orville is in the reverse position to SNW, ie I was expecting a lot so there's just a lot more scope to be disappointed vs was expecting nothing so there was a lot of scope to be pleasantly surprised.

Not really news, but confirmation it's still in active development at least Pretty much the barest of bare minima information... and it's now approaching two years since Harebrained got the chop.

Malay. Well, ostensibly. If politico-religious disagreements count then Trump's Muslim Ban/ 'Muslim Ban' was more recent (iirc). Bit of a one man band on the pro Trump side, but then so was Qistina.

To be fair to The Boys that's a description of maybe 90% of TV in general. It's amazing how many short 'premium' series end up feeling padded just as much as a 22 episode season on CW or whatever. It can get really weird too, Wheel of Time felt padded yet objectively clearly needed more time- from better writers though. Have to say, as someone who hasn't watched Boys S3 most of the commentary around it does not sound overly good for someone who was already rolling their eyes at the contrivance of not having Homelander just kill everyone in S2. From a mechanistic pov you know why, because it can only happen once and after that the main premise of the series is gone... My personal peeve about subscription shows is how many are obviously focus grouped into having constant cliffhanger endings to get engagement up. It's like watching things out of phase, with the last five minutes of the previous episode tacked onto the next. 'All of us are dead' (may be slightly wrong, Korean zombie show on Netflix) had this to an almost parody degree.

Yep. He's the EA CEO who bought Bioware/ Pandemic off Elevation Partners (whose immediate former CEO was... also John Riccitiello) for 860mn. Now that's what I call monetisation.

Seriously, they turned a couple of the ones in the Solent into luxury hotels (!). Called, uh, Solent Forts Luxury Hotels. Used to go past them fairly regularly on the IoW ferry, and there are a couple more that have people living on them too I think. Environment is probably a bit more conducive to that in the south of England than in the north east though.

per WP per WP as well The comparison to Uvalde for the Tarrant arrest was about bravery and competence, not being directly equivalent. That you keep on about it not being directly equivalent instead... point to me.

Right. You're moving onto the purposeful misinterpretation part then. I never said the cops at Uvalde were cowards, though it's certainly a valid interpretation of their actions. Indeed, I said it looked mostly like situational malaise/ paralysis. Always amusing to have strawman accusations as an actual strawman though. The police description makes it clear Tarrant wasn't significantly stunned by the initial impact, he just had a gun trained on him within seconds. Him not being stunned was why the cop whacked him with the gun butt. It doesn't matter either way, because whether he was stunned or not it was because of an act the cops took instead of metaphorically sipping lattes like they did in Uvalde*. Similar, doesn't matter if he wasn't wearing a suicide vest and was alone if the cops believed neither were true- and he did have two ieds. *The shooter left the classroom at one point to try and break into another, shooting several people there, and they weren't even set up to take him out then. And that was ~15 minutes in. That renders all the excuses about him being barricaded etc moot. He was actively shooting into a room they knew had students in, was outside of any barricades/ traps in a corridor and... crickets. There comes a point where it doesn't really matter if they weren't set up because they were changing their trousers after a collective code brown or just were that incompetent. Yeah, it's not directly equivalent. You can compare the competency, effectiveness and apparent bravery of non directly equivalent incidents though.

So, still haven't read the article with the 1st hand report from the arresting cops then? My surprise is a 1x1 transparent gif somewhere on this page. It's exactly the kind of completely irrelevant guff you always spout anyway- so what if he was dazed from the car crash, initiated by the police? If the Uvalde cops had biffed in a stun grenade would you be saying 'oh but the gunman was stunned'? Nah, you'd be waxing lyrical about their competence and bravery.

"..precise 'cause Gromnir don't know details, and am not making assumptions.." Classic Gromnir, complain about someone else making assumptions two posts back, then goes right ahead and makes assumptions himself two posts later. You could always have, y'know, read the handy article I linked to with first hand accounts. Which mentions that one of the cops smacked Tarrant with his gun butt to stop him setting off an IED. That's why he looked dazed. The small town cop excuse is particularly amusing. One of the cops was based at Arthur's Pass. Population 48. No typo, forty eight. Pretty much literally cannot get more small town than that. The other was from Lincoln, population ~9000. NZ Police also don't even regularly carry firearms, unlike US police. You may take it as read that the situation was not directly equivalent to that at Uvalde though. Doesn't really have to be to make a comparison of competence; and the cops at Uvalde had plenty of advantages as well as disadvantages- like there being 10 cops there immediately.

Maybe if they'd had the course the same day?*. It was weird that the initial police group arrived looking all gung ho, then turned around and bailed out so quickly, and not just because that wasn't what they were trained to do. It mostly looked like organisational malaise/ inflexibility ie the decision was made initially that the shooter had done his damage and to wait for more tacticool gear and they weren't going to budge from that determination and just keep waiting for more and more stuff. I do kind of wonder if the botched response in Waco was a factor even after all these years. Maybe Beslan too, though I doubt that made anywhere near the impression Waco did in the US. *the cops who apprehended the Christchurch Mosque shooter had been at a relevant training course the same day. They also had nothing defensive but basic vests and still went in, while believing there was more than one person and he was wearing a suicide vest. The rank amateurs didn't even kill the guy.

Probably about what might realistically be expected from a first gen release. Positives... hmm. It clearly has driver issues (not at all surprising), that may get fixed? and at the top range of its performance arc (hoho) it's worthwhile*? The other cards in its price range aren't exactly inspiring either, and have weird design decisions like only using 4 PCIe lanes? Not great when the takeaway is ~ buy a 2nd hand 580 though, but then that isn't exactly an endorsement of nVidia or AMD either. Bad news for Intel if both are oversubscribed for wafers too, as that would likely accelerate the release of new lower end cards. *of course at the bottom it's an overpriced power hungry 1030, but I'm trying to be positive.

Might as well prepare to take back Kosovo now that splitting bits off other countries by force is illegal again. Comparing Ukraine to Hamas, seems a little... counterproductive, Bruce.

Sheesh, it's pretty simple. Don't barrack your soldiers in amongst civilians. That's what Ukraine did. And yes, it wasn't just the Russians saying it, which was the point of quoting the BBC article. Going to say that they're the equivalent of RT? Going to say that the locals were lying and the picture faked? No? Then just accept the fact that that is what Ukraine did. In this case there was actual proof of that happening, which may be uncomfortable if you're of the opinion that Ukraine can do no wrong, but there's a reason you're not supposed to do it under the Geneva Conventions and why it constitutes a potential war crime- so you get as few dead 9 year olds as possible.

I'm not sure I'd be laughing much. 'Iranian' drones (well, officially Houthi drones) have been ludicrously cost effective against Saudi Arabia and embarrassed a whole lot of western tech. And not always western tech operated by ludicrously incompetent Saudi welfare cases either.

That's still likely to be before AMD, I'd reckon. If it is an overstock issue rather than a design or manufacturing one then they can still release a 4090/Ti/ Titan before any AMD release, and probably would. Especially so if they suspect AMD actually is faster. AMD has also over ordered 5nm as well, so they're partly in the same boat. They've got the CPU side to mitigate things though, and less stock on hand. That's one 'advantage' of them being supply constrained on 7nm for so long, even at boom prices GPUs were the least profitable option (excluding consoles, but those are contractual obligations). They can probably just accelerate 5nm releases and do some stuff they weren't initially planning like AM4 compatible 5nm CPUs. ARC looks pretty dead this gen, just taken far too long. Releasing into a glut market in bad economic conditions with two big improvements imminent from its competitors is just about perfect storm for them.

They're also supposed to have a massive over order of 5nm wafers, which TSMC won't let them reduce because everyone else has over ordered. Glut of stock, lots of 2nd hand ex mining equipment depressing prices and paying for manufacturing capacity you aren't using is not a great combination.