Zoraptor

Yeah, Elex 2's environmental graphics is far superior to 1's on PC. I actually replayed 1 not that long ago, and in some respects it's really really obvious how large the improvement is- Elex 1 has some very low poly objects and environments which clash with the rest, there's almost no grass and the water quality is night and day better in 2 etc. 2 has got a lot of extra engine overhead though and runs far worse (but nowhere near as badly as, say, Gothic 3 did at a similar point) And also yes, the human models are... well, they probably should have stuck with the Elex 1 models in most cases, the E1 flashback cutscenes actively look better. They do now seem to have had the bump/ normal maps applied at least, but the mouths are still gateways to hell and the eyes still imply that an eldritch horror has taken up residence in a meat puppet. Also one or two funny dialogue bugs, like rescuing a merchant who is grateful to some dude called 'Calahan', instead of 'Calaan'. I'm about 20 hours in and the biggest difference is still difficulty curve. Instead of being the traditional "run away from literally everything you can't kite" PB gameplay most of the starting enemies ('young' 'sick' 'old' __) are easily dispatchable with even starting gear, very unlike getting stunlocked and killed by the tutorial area biter in E1. It's actually more difficult now than in the beginning, which is a big change.

The ETA for an omicron specific vaccine was March, though it had been pushed out a 'couple of weeks' from that, apparently. The issue with natural omicron immunity is that we already know it doesn't even protect fully against other omicron strains- if you've had BA.1 you can still get BA.2, and much like delta was BA.2 is also worse than BA.1 That's also immunity gained after being sick, not really comparable to immunity gained after a bit of a sore arm after a trip to a clinic.

I think the war crimes statements are in the context of [future western friendly Russian government] handing him over for some reason (or joining the ICC). Which would require two fairly fundamental alterations to reality- a western aligned government willing to join the ICC, which is a pipe dream after Yeltsin, and a change to Russia's Constitution to allow extraditions. As for the more general point of why the concept of international law has to be applied to everyone even handedly or else is pretty much pointless, if not actively counterproductive: what we have is a system where only the weak and poor can be punished. Imagine claiming that is a good justice system in any other context, and it's fine because "at least some people are getting punished". Well sure some are getting punished, but others are getting away with it not because they're innocent, but because they are too powerful or threatening the judge and police. That's probably the single biggest sign of a bad justice system.

Sure I'd be happy with that too- I'm happy with anything with anything so long as it's applied even handedly without fear or favour. The problem is we all know it won't be applied even handedly.

Most of the 'silly nonsense' is about India and China not supporting the western position, not them supporting Russia. Unless you take ComradeYellow seriously, and you really shouldn't. Might not be relevant for India, since most western countries like to pretend it doesn't exist except to contain China, but China really couldn't care less about western impressions- after years of Yellow Peril scaremongering and trade wars what impressions are there to squander? Thinking anyone else is going to do anything to China over Ukraine is just... laughable. Most of them won't even do anything to Russia besides vote in the UNGA. I mean, if we are going to go by official statements rather than twitter scuttlebutt from unnamed sources we get: Definitely distancing themselves from Russia's position there. Once again, fighting diplomatic battles on multiple fronts at the same time is monumentally stupid, and they won't be paused just because it's convenient to the west if they are. Oh yeah. How many Important People were going to be imminently arrested/ sacked by Putin so far? Gerasimov, Shoigu (plus he was going to launch a coup...), the head of the FSB and SVR? as well... Confirmed number actually arrested or sacked so far is, well, zero?

Yeah, nah. You can argue the legitimacy of the invasion making Russia responsible and that's fine, so long as you apply the reasoning evenhandedly. Which, let's be frank, most won't since it makes them responsible for ~1 million dead Iraqis (meh, via excess deaths/ population difference, but still). If you don't apply that then you end up with the definition of military vs civilian targets, and soldiers hiding under a building makes it a legitimate target. Indeed, it seems likely that someone has pointed that out to the BBC as the bit with the soldiers sheltering under the building is no longer in the report. Yeah, nah. There's a Marine Brigade and a regular army Brigade in Mariupol. Azov won't surrender, Azov has tried to escape at least once already, the rest? The 'martyrs of Snake Island' actually surrendered rather than fighting to the death. Russia has air superiority*. I know 'experts' are claiming they don't, but that's pure propaganda. What it doesn't have is air supremacy**. The situation is murkier because Ukraine is continuously being resupplied, but... well. We've had maybe 10 TB2 videos despite Ukraine being resupplied with them at least twice- and that's less than one video per drone that they had 6 months ago, let alone including resupplies. There were days in Artsakh with twice that many. And to draw a comparison, the Yugoslavs were still flying sorties at the end of the Kosovo intervention. I don't think anyone would dispute NATO having air supremacy there though. *"degree of dominance in [an] air battle ... that permits the conduct of operations by [one side] and its related land, sea and air forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by opposing air forces" **"degree of air superiority wherein the opposing air force is incapable of effective interference" Both definitions are NATO definitions, incase anyone wants to quibble.

That's a really good comparison. If I had to compare my reaction to Midnight Mass to a book something like The Stand would be closest. I really enjoyed the build up, and was a bit disappointed by the ending- but I'm not quite sure whether that was because the ending was 'bad' or because it simply couldn't match the quality of the build up. Slightly OT, but literally the only ending to a Stephen King book I unequivocally liked was The Dead Zone's. I was going to say that that book doesn't make many King top 10s except mine, but apparently it makes just about all of them...

Phantom Doctrine was way too long and- for the most part- way too samey. Had some absolutely fantastic ideas though and some of the more unique missions worked great too.

It's 75% of Russia's 'deployable' army, and yeah, that's highly up to interpretation. If they dipped into reserves it's ~10%. Same type of figures you see for tanks- 10% of Russian tanks destroyed. Well kind of, it's just that Russia has something ludicrous like 10x that number in reserve. Also, Dear BBC, I'm not sure your reports on the devastation of civilian areas carry quite as much weight when you're literally following Ukrainian soldiers around and show them, well, sheltering under a civilian medium rise. Lack of progress is... well kind of. The trouble is that the lack of progress is double edged. Supposedly there are ~14k Ukrainian troops bottled up in Mariupol. And with two brigades there + Azov that figure is not overtly unrealistic (personally, I suspect it's rather less). What happens when Mariupol is taken or surrendered? That's 14,000 Ukrainian troops gone, more than twice the claimed Russian losses, at a stroke. And it frees up a bunch of Russian/ DPR troops too. Russian tactics are clearly to do exactly what worked in Aleppo, and it did work. Get the enemy to break cover and obliterate them with artillery.

'Spanish' Flu actually went back to 'normal' flu pretty quickly. Influenza is an extremely mutable virus- coronaviruses are highly mutable, but to nowhere near such an extent. To put it in perspective, Russian 'flu' (very likely a coronavirus now a component of the common cold, not influenza) lasted ~6 years in 4 waves, while Spanish Flu and other H1N1 pandemics lasted ~2 years (and Spanish Flu had 4 waves in those 2 years). So there may well be another 3+ years to go. Spanish Flu also had a very different... method than covid as it killed a very large number of otherwise healthy young people (their immune system went into a positive feedback loop, irony being that those with weaker immune systems were protected from that). Plus it occurred directly after/ during WW1, so its economic etc effects were masked both by the effects of that conflict directly, and by the press being controlled. Infecting billions makes a difference if it imparts permanent or long/ medium term immunity, but covid doesn't. Someone infected with OG covid has very little protection against infection from omicron (though will have retained some protection against serious infection)- and in the case of Spanish Flu being reinfected was for many a death sentence, per above. In Australia they're even getting reinfection across two different strains of omicron. You also are relying on the general rule that pathogens get more infectious but less lethal but for covid delta was both more infectious and more lethal than the preceeding viruses. Not really worth worrying about though, it's endemic now and nothing can be done even if there were something that could be done.

Watched Midnight Mass and Sweet Tooth on Netflix. Sweet Tooth was better than I expected really and overall pretty good. Very weird 'feel' to it though, the whole premise shouts Young Adult, but the content really isn't. Decidedly ropey CGI/ prosthetics at times, but after what high budget WoT I'm not sure there's too much scope for criticism. Also ends on a cliffhanger, which I'm not overly keen on. Took me approximately 5 minutes to work out that it was filmed in New Zealand too; obvious McSuburbs, Auckland Hospital, beautiful establishing shot of Wyoming was recognisably Beech Forest. And of course the bevvy of ex Shortland Street actors in bit parts (including the obligatory bad/ variable american accidents [accents and I was sorely tempted to leave that typo as was], and a few who'd been told not to bother even trying). Midnight Mass was excellent for the first 6 episodes, but rather fell down at the end. The acting was very good, as was the scripting; and the episodes were long but felt short which is always a good sign. Oh well, ending a series like that well is always the hardest part, and it was still a very good watch overall. Eh, that would be plagiarising Doctor Who. (And I'm not even sure whether I'm making a joke or serious there)

Got to be logged on to the codex to read the OT stuff and have a year old? account, so linking is of limited use. Could always gave archive.__'d it but meh, political discourse on the codex isn't really even worth the effort of that.

Yeah, oil isn't. USD transactions on the other hand are one of the big targets. Hence the net achievement is... making sure that the Indian/ Russian trade doesn't use USD. Whilst delivering a somewhat hypocritical lecture on how history will view things to a country that views recent history rather differently to the US.

I find it hilarious that after decades of backing their regional rival, including threatening direct intervention over Bangladesh, less directly with Kashmir and nukes the US expects anything from India apart from direct quid pro quo, at all*. It's quite clear that the US does not regard India as a 'friend', for as much as that designation means anything in realpolitik, but just as a country that is useful as it also doesn't like China. It's like you're supposed to forget anything and everything in recent history as soon as it becomes convenient for the US. I'd also have to say that for all his faults Trump's bromance diplomacy worked a lot better than Biden's pontificating on people like MbS or Modi. Who would have thought powerful people don't respond well to being lectured by people they see as their equals? *Not as funny as Britain expecting anything, but still.

2 British Iranian prisoners freed today. Quite possibly another sign that the nuJCPOA is moving closer. Though by the purest of pure coincidences, Britain also recently paid back the 400 million quid they stole from Iran for tanks Britain never delivered. These were parallel events though, and completely unrelated. Much like that Iranian tanker seized off Gibraltar being coincidentally released when the Iranians nabbed a british tanker in the Straits of Hormuz.

Nah. Biggest miscalculation was cosying up to NATO in the early 2000s- if he wanted to stop NATO expansion he should have invaded the Baltics when they moved to join instead of waiting until now with Ukraine. Of course if he had done that that would be seen as his biggest mistake by westerners instead, but all the problems with Ukraine and Georgia go away if the line in the sand was drawn earlier. lol moment, India won't be sanctioned for buying Russian oil. Hot on the heels of Saudi moving to accept Yuan, it also won't be paid via dollars. Guess they've finally worked out that the Oprah Gift approach to sanctions is, well, monumentally stupid.

5800x3d looks more of a proof of concept/ for early adopters than anything else. AMD is certainly all in on the big caches for everything given the design of the RDNA2+ cards. The benchmarks may be interesting, the last big jump in cache forced one of them to be redesigned as it gave unrealistic impressions due to actually fitting inside the cache.

Why certainly Bruce, just for you a nice, big, png.

Slightly better documented Ukrainian strike on Kherson Airport today. Certainly started a nice big fire.

Great news everyone! The insurmountable technical difficulties that prevented 5000 series on b350/x370 (but somehow not super budget a320) motherboards have been surmounted! Well done AMD, I'm sure it has nothing to do with Intel finally being competitive again and it was just your top engineers working tirelessly on finding a solution! (dunno wtf has happened to processor prices here but I can actually buy a 5800x for not much more than I got my 1700 all those long years ago instead of +50% too. Even a 5600x was more expensive last time I checked. Maybe it's that competition thing?)

Meh, Bayraktards would claim Russian soldiers stubbing their toes was caused by drones. It's as always plain old artillery, mostly, though almost all those deaths are still unconfirmed. As for why Wali might have been at Yavoriv, it is a training facility. If he can't speak Ukrainian or at a pinch Russian well or at all he may be of more use training people who he can communicate with. Same reason I'd be very skeptical of those reports of Syrians being recruited as snipers and the like, the more complex the orders they have to receive the more difficult it is to use them and the greater the scope for mistakes. Hence they'll be used in bodies on the ground roles where minimal instruction is needed.

'Wali' was supposedly blown up at Yavoriv, the training facility close to Poland that got hit by cruise missiles yesterday. Large grain of salt to be taken on him specifically since he's famous and was in a load of media stories when he volunteered, and his death makes a good PR story for Russia*. Though the statement that literally no foreigners died there from Ukraine's PR also seems... unlikely given the number of CMs used. There has also been at least a bit of a media push even among pro Ukrainian sources to moderate expectations for volunteers post Yavoriv. *For that reason I suspect if he is alive we'll get confirmation fairly quickly.

They've also demonstrably funded so called 'islamofascists' whenever it was convenient, then been surprised at the consequences. Most of the School of the Americas militias get described as 'right wing' instead of nazis, but that's mostly because the west doesn't want to associate with the term nazis, not because their ideology was different. I am always amused when people read diplomat speak. It's specifically designed so that people can interpret it to support whatever view they have. Chinese FM: "We told the US that it's a big doody head, they dress funny and their mother told me they have a very small winky when I was over last night. Please, bring on the sanctions you pathetic bag of suet" is something that will never be said, even if it were thought. Me. "Fight militarily to the last Ukrainian, fight economically to the last Euro". But then Sergei Lavrov stole it, the plagiarist. Who would have thought he read these forums? The whole situation in Mariupol is way worse than the Ukrainians claim. It's the one place where there's a lot of pro Russian footage due to the DPR troops, and their videos have been getting geolocated closer and closer to the city centre from the east. That hospital is also well behind the 'official' Ukrainian front lines on the western side. The defenders have also attempted a break out two days ago where they claimed to have retaken Volnovakha (though that claim wasn't even accepted by pro Ukrainians)

Don't know about creative. Much like Putin having Parkinsons you're not supposed to actually remember such rumours anyway, you're just meant to remember the endorphin rush from reading them. Like an intellectual (well, 'intellectual') candy bar. The China resupply rumour is probably more 'creative', but also far more counter productive if you actually want co-operation from China. The Iran deal is probably a large part of why MBS is grumpy and doesn't want to pump more oil, per below. Add a dollop of failure in Yemen and public distancing from that by the west and no doubt some feeling that they're only wanted when convenient and for their money/ oil plus pining for the glory days of a glowing palantir illuminating the saintly visage of Donald T... High prices are good for KSA anyway, but by some accounts (albeit skepticism level --> pretty high) the nuJCPOA would have been literally signed last week- with weaker provisions than the original- if Russia hadn't tied sanctions relief to it. Yeah OK the R side in the US has promised to ditch it again as soon as they can, but there'd still be ~3 years of it. And all that with hardliner Raisi at the helm rather than a nice(r) moderate President like Rouhani. And just imagine being Juan Guaido now. Not entirely blameless himself since he managed to completely mess up an attempted coup very publicly but he'd have gone from being fêted via standing ovation at a SotU speech and recognised by most of the western world to political liability and squashed possum on the road of expediency in... 2 years?

'Allah, Russiya, Putin w bas' chants and an 'Allah Russiya w Putin' remix incoming? Not even sure if Rami Kazour is alive for the 2nd... NDF isn't really Russian backed, if anything it's Iran backed. 5th corps is though, but is also mostly made up of ex-rebels used as assault troops (cynically, because who cared if unreliable ex rebels died?). Kind of irrelevant anyway, they wouldn't have much difficulty getting recruits since the average monthly wage in Syria is something like $5 (ie five dollars) and there's a lot of unemployment. They'd be in bodies on the ground roles, maybe some snipers but nothing else specialised. One of the things Syrians/ Libyans are notoriously bad at is, well, speaking Russian, so that means they'd be in roles that don't require much instruction and especially not much immediate instruction. They'd still free up other troops though. Hmm. Hmmm. Hmmmm. "Gandhi, what do you think about western civilisation?" "It would be a good idea" Gandhi was not exactly keen on Britain especially or the west in general. On the current situation, who would have thought that consistently backing Pakistan and sending a CSG to attack India in 1971 would have negative consequences for the US? Who would have thought that Russia vetoing everything on Kashmir/ Indian nukes and the soviets sending a fleet to shadow that CSG would have positive consequences? Not US diplomats, apparently. Repeat, with China, Iran, Venezuela etc. If you're going to pick fights pick them sequentially, not simultaneously. If you pick them simultaneously don't be surprised when they aren't put on hold according to your demands, schedule and needs.