Zoraptor

Read the wikipedia article on the Siege of Mariupol, since it's likely to be where a lot of people get their information in the future- and because there was one very obvious piece of incorrect information last time I did and I wanted to see if they'd corrected it over the last 3 weeks. Needless to say, they hadn't. Also needless to say I'm not that disappointed they haven't, personally, as for anyone paying attention it reinforces how bad wikipedia inherently is as a source for anything recent (and politically controversial, though it's not directly related to that in this case). It's the classic 'trusted source' trap where someone found a cite for the number of Ukrainian defenders in a trusted source- 3500 total- and added that number. In retrospect that number was very, very clearly a big underestimate, but they still can't remove it. Ukraine had them losing more than 3500 POWs, alone, with KIA additional. Indeed, you get to 3500 POWs just from verified surrenders from Ilyich and Azovstal, let alone the Port or anywhere urban.

I've played a bit of Old World now, and it's good. I don't know how well it's going to last though, there's a sense that they've decided to aim for the best bits of Civilisation and Crusader Kings but (understandably) aren't as developed as either, so it's a lot less... gripping, I guess. I'm also fundamentally not a big fan of one unit per tile; doomstacks suck, but there are far better fixes to that. Someone also mentioned King's Bounty Dark Side- good game, but for me at least it regularly crashes my computer to an out and out hard reboot. Says something that I still played it for ~60 hours despite that. HoMM III is a very highly regarded game- it's GOG's out and out top seller for example- so for most people anything following it would have to be a decline.

I'm sure it would be one of the top picks from GOG's pov. Maybe they'll be bothered enough to relicense, or replace the licensed music with "Increase Volume Setting on Wireless" style muzak. Don't think there's much chance that Sega will be though.

Strange New Worlds Ep5 I may actually have genuinely liked this one. If you'd told me they would do a 'comedy' episode of nuTrek 6 weeks ago I would have given any odds against liking it, and would have expected to actively hate it. There is no doubt a decent dollop of liking it because everything else they've done in the other series has been massively overwrought grimdark serialised angst, but still. They even took the mickey out of themselves a bit, something I never expected to see from that set of writers/ showrunners. At this point the question has to be asked: if they were capable of writing a decent standalone episode based series why on earth did they waste so much time writing painfully mediocre- at best- serialised stuff?

Yeah, and the thing is, of course, that Israel, RoK, Spain etc won't starve. They'll pay inflated prices; they'll do so even if it means buying Russian grain. And they'll 100% do both even if it means Africans starve. The grain supply data shows just how pie in the sky the British 'plan' to get Egypt to run the blockade into Odessa for them of two weeks ago really was, even ignoring Montreux. Look up on wikipedia which African country gets most Ukrainian grain and find that it's Egypt, and hooray it also has the largest navy in Africa. Very promising so far. Don't check where it gets the vast majority of its grain from though. Anyone care to guess? Hint: It starts with an R and ends with ..ussia. So yeah, Egypt will risk war with the country it gets 80% of its grain from about the same time Russia hands Rostov and Voronezh back to Ukraine. Yet another Truss special. (1) Venezuela's oil infrastructure is shot. It isn't just a matter of turning on the spigot, it would take literal years to ramp up production. (2) Venezuela's oil is, mostly, crappy. It's got gigantic reserves, but it's got very little light/ sweet. Most of it's dark, heavy and hard to refine. (3) People have been saying that Venezuela- and Iran for that matter- would have sanctions lifted for, well, 100 days. There's no goodwill, no trust, and no desire to do the west any favours. The last could be worked around, but they'll make the US squeal for it, and publicly. So far that's far too bitter a pill politically for Biden. Hence him going off to Saudi to kiss MbS's ring, since that's more of a personal embarrassment having cold shouldered him over Trump/ Kushner/ bone sawing. The first two though, cannot be worked around.

Yeah, you're right. The actual finale was... something to do with time travel? or alternative universes? and had the old security officer back from Prodigal Son as a guest star. After 3 years you'd think they could have at least had the other two seasons streaming for catch up/ reminder purposes.

The contracts with Netflix weren't renewed due to Paramount+*, but they weren't all synchronised. So Discovery and TNG + OS? left a few months ago; DS9 and Voyager? are leaving soon. I'm not sure anyone cares enough about Enterprise to check its status. *don't know about elsewhere but all the legacy Treks are now back on Netflix in NZ at least. I'd suspect it would be the same for anywhere else that doesn't have P+, though they may have shopped them around to other streamers (eg Discovery isn't back on Netflix, it's on the local TV channel for broadcast and streaming same as SNW and The Orville since we don't have Hulu either).

No recap was a problem for The Orville, especially as it was only S3 available here and it's been three (!) years since S2. The battle was end of S2 though, that much I do remember. Exactly the sort of episode I'd think was overlong, overwrought and self indulgent if it was nuTrek, but carried off well enough I only really considered it so when looking for things to quibble about. I loled at the new cast member, though I probably shouldn't have. There's a certain uncanny resemblance there.

I always find people's more positive reactions to stuff I dislike pretty interesting. I didn't hate Picard up until the ending, but that ending just screamed "this is what it is, and it's not going to improve" at several million decibels. Which is impressive, for a logarithmic scale. The only thing with any emotional weight was Data, and that wouldn't have happened if Spiner hadn't insisted playing an ageless android as an old guy was stupid, so was something the writers were forced into. Said it before no doubt, but the ultimate issue with Picard and Discovery is that they want Epic Cinematic Moments without realising that what makes them epic is the build up to those moments. They're the sort of writers who'd have Picard become Locutus and yell at Jon Irenicus about lights in the same episode because they wanted those two iconic scenes and couldn't fit them in anywhere else.

2051 is 29 years away, so we've at least improved by a year on the 'in 30 years' estimates! This is the power of positive thinking at work.

I'm not clicking a Mirror link even for the lolz. Yes, but the plan is now to have them be escorted by the... Egyptian Navy, at last update. Surely that is enough protection? Indeed, one of the more amusing things in the last week has been the evolution of the Lithuanian 'plan' to run the blockade as it got picked up and run with by the British political Brains Trust (or Brains Truss, since she seems to be keen on zero preparation ad libs) on a quest to distract from Boris Johnson being caught being a massive hypocrite about lockdowns again. That's the negative of getting Turkey to declare things as a war; per Montreux you too cannot send ships through the Bosporus on war missions. Running a blockade is a war mission. They could have, if Ukraine were in NATO, but she isn't. They can't even send the Egyptian Navy in.

Personally I wouldn't describe anyone here as being a goof*, but plenty on the internet in general are of the opinion that anything 'anti Ukrainian' has to be fake news Russian psyops posted by shills from a bot farm- no matter what the evidence. They deserve at minimum some mild mocking for making it so difficult to get actual information. As would anyone who thinks everything is going perfectly to plan for Russia too, but there aren't really many of them except in the minds of the more rabidly pro Ukraine. Stories about Russian supply issues get a lot less traction because we've been hearing them for 3 months and how they're perpetually about to run out of everything. Pretty much all the stories about Ukraine have been about the massive supplies being sent by the west and how well they're doing; anything running counter to that therefore gets a lot of attention. *the only one I probably would have is not here any more, and was, well, pro Russian.

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.