Zoraptor

Embracer/ THQNordic have been one of the better publishers. No idea where they're getting their money though, they've bought more studios than Microsoft over the past few years. They're a lot more likely to accept that maybe 5 million copies sold isn't the absolute disaster Square always seemed to think it was and not waste time with garbage Marvel microtransaction delivery vehicles that are meant to sell 20 million copies (but don't). Or NFTs/ blockchain, since apparently that's where SE wants to invest the 300 mill they get from the sale...

Let me guess, all the same problems Discovery and Picard have, but less serialised? As predictions go I suspect that is close to 'sun rises in morning' tier. It's on free to air (well, free to internet) here so I may as well see for myself.

Simple answer is a complete lack of critical thinking married to an intense desire for 'their' side to win. And if you start out believing it you'd feel kind of dumb if you were wrong, so it can 't be wrong. Fortunately that doesn't really describe many people here, but it describes an awful lot of people, in general. Plus some media actively promoted the story as true for clickbait eg the Mirror; though I'm definitely not linking them to avoid giving them clicks. Unfortunately, those sorts of media are also where a lot of people get their 'news'. You'll still find some people who think Jessica Lynch fought off waves of Iraqi fedayeen while critically injured because they believed it and the alternative is that the US government made the story up- and that's despite her always maintaining that the initial story was a load of old bollocks and saying so pretty much from the instant she got rescued. [And on the subject of propaganda: Sarex mentioned a claim that the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army had been injured. Ukraine has confirmed that Gerasimov is fine. But they've upped the deaths caused from 20 to 200 to compensate...]

Ukraine confirms Ghost of Kyiv didn't actually exist. Not so much relevant here, but good lord there were a lot of people who thought any hint he wasn't real had to be Russian disinformation. Think Ukraine (and the Beeb) got tired of him being killed off more times than Shoigu's been arrested/ sacked/ had a heart attack just so the British tabloids could sell more copies. Best article quote, and approaching peak passive aggressive: "Military experts told the BBC they doubted that one pilot could have downed as many as 40 Russian planes"- oh, really? [The Daily Mirror (British tabloid) killed him off two days ago, and that's where the 40 Russian planes shot down quote got published]

There are two factors at work there- you only tend to hear about police work when it goes wrong. That's especially true if it involves a foreign police force, when it generally has to go spectacularly wrong to get attention. Second, yeah, police forces have considerable influence in how they're portrayed on TV. Even here* back in the 90s we had a police commissioner order a halt to cooperation with a TV production because it wasn't showing police in a good light (for bonus points, the show was actually a satire sketch show whose biggest crime against police was depicting them as being mildly stupid and utterly humourless; go figure). To this day you still get a massively disproportionate number of plainclothes officers portrayed on NZ TV so that the Commissioner can't pull the cars or uniforms if he doesn't like how they're portrayed. *where police totally don't frame people for murder** or lie about the circumstances they shoot people in, never happened once. Or at least when we do it doesn't make it out of the country. **personal favourite, the Police Commissioner going to the funeral of a bent cop (Bruce Hutton) because... one incident of framing someone for murder doesn't outweigh all the good he did as a police officer. To be fair, that was back in the bad old days of, uh hmm, 2013, when a bit of light framing people for murder was still tolerated no doubt things have changed in the intervening 9 years.

It isn't particularly noticeable here, though there is a bit of related stuff- "The Russians are barbarians, they did this to Finland in the 1700s" --> The British are Barbarians, they starved tens of millions of indians to death and fought a war to sell opium to the Chinese in the 1800s (and depopulated Diego Garcia plus merrily tortured their way through Kenya and other colonial possessions well within living memory). It's mostly on the internet in general (and broadcast media) where official says --> media report --> it must be true! happens. But I don't really want to get into that specifically because it's been done to death and even I get bored of it eventually. Publishing most certainly does imply belief*, the way that those claims are published. It's like asking someone if they think the opinion- and what is opinion on such things, but weighting of facts?- they're stating is the correct one; of course they think it is, or they'd state a different opinion. Journalists are people and will always frame it as stuff they believe vs stuff they think is false, and 'unnamed US official' pretty much always seems to get treated as truth, even when stating things that aren't consistent to even a cursory examination. And the people publishing know that many will simply repeat those claims as if they're true because they see them on the news. For the point above there's also a very strong irony/ dichotomy and indicator in that. The 'mainstream' media shouts loudly about how terrible it is that alternative media gets believed over them and how there are a lot of idiots around who have fallen down the rabbithole or whatever, but try to have their cake and eat it to by saying that they don't influence people to their beliefs but just do 'the news'/ 'the facts'. *ok, it doesn't for trash/ agenda media, unfortunately just about all media can be trash media- and especially agenda media- under the right (wrong) circumstances.

When it comes to Ukraine it happens pretty much everywhere, and for everything. The US even admitted that it was releasing low confidence intelligence- ie stuff they either suspect or know is garbage- and it still gets repeated acritically (I mean, that's literally in the article numbersman linked). But hey, I'm sure those 2 Il76s Marco Rubio swore were full of paratroops and got shot down really did, despite there being literally no evidence of them for 2 months and all the others being brought in by helicopter... (I gave the example of the cruise missiles but of course I only used two parts of that and there actually is a 3rd- their failure rate is super duper high. So not only have they run out of them yet are shooting them at homes for orphaned bunny rabbits but the Russians have managed to selectively fire working ones at said kitten hospitals. Extra bonus if the evidence for the high failure rate provided is... a smersh rocket engine, which isn't meant to explode)

UN sanctions aren't unilateral since- at least in theory- the sanctioned party is obligated to obey them as well. Sigh. Haven't we done this exact same thing before? (0) it's not a treaty and no one has treated it as if it were (1) even if it were a treaty the EU is not a signatory and (2) the US (and UK, ie the actual western signatories) abrogated the memorandum as well, to whit parties should "Refrain from using economic pressure on Belarus, Kazakhstan or Ukraine to influence their politics" Just say it's against the UN Charter, using the Budapest Memorandum as if it means anything is reddit tier. And really, I'm going to have to start charging people for reading international agreements and correcting them. Nice easy way to tell if you're being fed propaganda: if you replaced 'unnamed US official' with 'unnamed Russian official' how much weight would be given to it? If you're not even willing to put your name to something it's 90% chance it's bollocks. Especially when they're mutually contradictory at least half the time: (1) US officials insist Russia is running out of precision munitions like cruise missiles, since week 1 (2) Russia is also using cruise missiles to indiscriminately but specifically target non military targets just to cause civilian casualties. You can believe one, or the other, or neither; but not both. Though there's a kind of amusement watching the sort of people who think all Russians are braindead and lack critical reasoning proceeding to believe and repeat without question everything they're told by their governmental officials.

I've never seen that picture either, and my skepticism of it is... high. The latter rumours were all of Iraqi misconduct though, not US, as the Iraqis were the ones that hanged him. The decapitation was definitely real- and absolutely deliberate- though possibly more humane than the alternative 'mistake' 'accidentally' used when hanging someone you don't like. I'll spoiler it for safety:

Not that funny really, 'international justice' being a joke isn't really funny. And sadly, it isn't very surprising either. The number of things the international justice system has already managed to legalise in defence of western geopolitical aims is pretty staggering- and all done without thinking about the consequences more than two minutes ahead. Want to take action over, say, ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia Western Backed System of Rules? Sorry, you can't any more as your verdict on Operation Storm legalised it- well, if it actually were a system of rules instead of a system of patronage. And as it is patronage those type of names who held those sorts of positions being involved in defending a western client is simply inevitable.

Ah ok, apologies for the snark then.

Yes, I too managed to find the wikipedia article for the Moscow Times, though it was certainly a struggle. Doesn't really dispute anything I said though, does it? To whit: "Chinese military bases are purely defensive, and only built with the permission of the countries' governments. Why is the US so concerned? After all, the US says nato bases 800km from Moscow are nothing for Russia to worry about and purely defensive, and their deployments are entirely between them and their partners, so what's the issue with a Chinese base 3000km away from Canberra approved by its partners? The US has 700+ overseas bases, including multiple in countries that don't want them there." Thankfully here in NZ we have the Auckland Bugle, a genuine Kiwi journalistic institution since 1992 (OK, it's never been owned by actual New Zealanders- but it's had english translations from Chinese for the past two years! That makes it kiwi as pavlova and buzzy bees!) which has the bravery to publish this truth instead of what the NZ Government wants them to... Yeah, nah.

Of course they would. The Russians think that Ukraine and Romania are going to invade Transnistria, not the other way around. If they were going to invade from Transnistria they would have back in February when it may have made a difference. Yep, this is Day 0 stuff/ military logic 101 type stuff That's why I thought they were there too. Basically just throw in all the talking points even if being a pro gay anarchist fascist neo nazi makes no logical sense at all. Haha no. BBC Russian is as genuinely Russian as the 'Moscow' Times, and that isn't Russian either. The Moscow Times is, and always has been, a publication aimed at people with english as their first language, ie not Russians. Anyone care to guess when it got an online edition, in Russian, as a paper called the Moscow Times? It was... 2020, and they had 4 years where there was literally no Russian language version of the paper at all. It's target audience is, was, and always has been foreigners, not Russians, despite its name.

Said it before, but I seriously do blame von der Leyen. Non stop virtue signalling on every issue; and everyone knows she's German. If- god forbid- she were Chancellor she'd be doing the exact same things as Scholz for the exact same reasons though, same as Merkel. Funny really, after years I still don't know who the EU 'foreign minister' is* because he's been such a non entity; last time around it was the von der Leyen's predecessor who I had no idea about for ages (Jean Claude Juncker, so I did eventually manage to remember, though it may have actually been after he left office) while Mogherini was far more visible. von der Leyen seems to insert herself into literally everything though. *I do, but pretty much literally the only thing about him I can remember is the infamous incident in Turkey where they only provided one chair between him and von der Leyen**. **... ok, that was actually Charles Michel, apparently. So I can't remember anything Borrell's done, and I like to think I pay at least passing attention to foreign affair type stuff.

Yeah, personally I'd add that the Direction for them seems to be awful, too. The ones who did well with what they were given tended to be the more senior pros of the crew- Captain Malfoy, Pike, Georgiou, Saru. Most of the younger ones... I doubt they're all bad actors, but they consistently have a weird uncanny valley effect about them, like they've been CGIed in and their expressions animated by pre Gollum tech. It's so consistent that I don't think it's their fault, but the only younger actor who (mostly) escaped it was Tilly's. Unfortunately there really isn't much point speculating on answers to the spoiler questions- I very much suspect you've already given far more thought to those characters than the writers did. And sadly, that's a literal statement, the whole thing was set up for the future skip (and potential spin offs) and who they as writers wanted on the crew.

It's kind of funny, they managed to keep most of the issues with continuity and consistency that the more standalone episode Trek series had despite moving to a strongly serial format and having fewer episodes per season. It's understandable having some issues when you have to write 26(for TNG?) episodes over a year with lots of different writers and a very tight filming schedule; not so much when it's half that number. Makes it very obvious they had no proper planning going on*. Case in point from S2: if you're going to have a tragic storyline about a bridge crew member it helps- a lot- if they've been, well, developed above more than a cardboard cutout or glorified extra outside that episode. Otherwise you end up with what we got, being told how important she was and how you should feel about it and how much the crew loved her rather seeing having seen it yourself. Sad thing is that much like a lot of Discovery it didn't need that much change to make it work a lot better. As it was the whole thing came across as nothing more than an excuse to up the angst scale to 11. *or perhaps more accurately but more critically: deciding to write all the 'cool' scenes, and not knowing/ caring how to connect/ set them up properly and whether they made sense in context.

At least this time only 8.5% of people bothered to turn up just to spoil their ballot, that's 1 in 12 instead of 1 in 8 last time. I'm still quite impressed that that many people would turn up to make a paper airplane from or draw smiley faces on the ballot paper instead of just... not turning up. Though of course the number who didn't bother voting went up by 2.5% in absolute terms, so you had almost exactly the same historic high level of disengagement in total.

hmm, maybe the slightest scintilla/ smidge/ soupçon of sarcasm, after all one doesn't like to bludgeon the reader over the head with it. (I always thought the Oceania Football Confederation was a great example- when Australia was in it all the other members consistently voted to do things specifically designed to piss them off because the Ockers weren't shy about thinking it should all be run for their benefit and that everyone else was irrelevant; yet consistently failed to make the finals. Fast forward to after Australia goes into the Asian Confed, and suddenly all the other countries are doing their best to annoy the new big dog that thinks everything should be run for their benefit, New Zealand. Hold qualifiers outside of the international window? Don't mind if I do says everyone; except us...)

Of course not, don't be silly. We wouldn't invade, we'd "regretfully deploy peacekeepers from responsible regional powers to protect the legitimate grievances of the people of Malaita who are being brutally oppressed by the Sogavare regime, and restore the democracy and freedom they deserve to the people of the Solomons". Of course, that's having spent the last decades, uh, sending peacekeepers to protect the legitimacy/ primacy of Guadalcanal and maintain the suppression of Malaita; including under the previous Prime Ministerial reign of, um hmm uh, Sogavare. But let's not mention that, since hopefully everyone won't know about it, and it makes us look bad. Let's also not mention every other time we've asterisked up a small country for our own benefit, like Nauru. On an unrelated matter I've always wondered why Australia and (to a far lesser extent) New Zealand have a reputation for throwing their weight around and being massive hypocrites in the Pacific. It's really weird. (If there's a lesson from Ukraine here- apart from how selective the concept of freedom to choose allies is- it's that the Solomons would be very wise to get those Chinese troops in as fast as possible, because we sure as sith are exactly as capable of invading a neighbour as Russia is, so long as we dress it up right)

To be fair, it's probably got as much journalistic vigour as "Putin has Parkinsons and will retire in January [2021], intelligence sources say" which was made up by The Sun then reported by everyone else. Mostly, that meeting was just staged weirdly/ awkwardly- possibly to make Putin look tall compared to Shoigu; but Tom Cruise Complex isn't a medical condition. For whatever reason they've used chairs which aren't the right height for the table they're sitting at (easily visible in one of the stills the Kremlin released, and no I'm not game enough to hotlink from The Kremlin's website). Pretty much everything is explained by... Putin leaning back in his chair. It's not like Shoigu looks better either, he's just leaning forward instead of sitting back. Then again, guess he looks pretty good for someone who has suffered two fatal heart attacks in the last month... My completely non medical opinion on the desk gripping- Putin has carpal tunnel. Because I do exactly the same thing when I have to sit at an awkwardly set up desk/ chair combo where I can't rest my arm properly and doing my usual stretches isn't appropriate. (Lord knows what the press would make of my behaviour at a desk/ table, I spend at least half my time doing stretches) If you think the worst then every surprise is a positive one...

Haha, yes, the story that keeps giving when it comes to cognitive dissonance. Irony, thy name is, uh, pretty much any western politician espousing the absolute freedom of countries to associate with and chose mutual defence with whoever they like, so long as it's the west and no one else- then wondering confusedly why the rest of the world thinks you're a bunch of arrogant hypocrites... Though to be honest, I very much doubt we share the same red lines as either the Ockers or Yanks since we get on a lot better with the Chinese than either. Our position would be far closer to "no military bases in the region, full stop (we'll just ignore the US ones all over the place, including here despite ANZUS being defunct)". Also, the rules lawyer in me notes that Scotty specified no Chinese Naval bases, so he'll be fine with an airbase instead.

It isn't really a change for US strategy, per se, though it is an upping of scale. Just about every single thing done in Ukraine happened in Syria previous, it was just clandestine because Syrians are too brown and non european, so the war there isn't popular enough to do things overtly. But the US/ France/ Britain were training the moderate rebel head choppers, and supplying them with arms (eg the CIA program Timber Sycamore), and intelligence, and consistently ran diplomatic interference. They had a lot of ATGMs, they just didn't use them well (and they were mostly older models; but then even a well deployed Malyutka can take out Leopard 2s and at least export Abrams. Still, the handful of modern Kornets they had knocked out two Abrams). It would be a lot less fun for the US now, post Afghanistan and Syria. There are other implications though- Israel has remained pretty much neutral despite all exhortations because they want Russia to maintain its soft ban on advanced exports to Iran, for example, and it's a reason- apart from their dislike of Biden- why the Gulf Monarchies aren't being very supportive of the west either. I'm pretty sure the idea at least is to just steal Russian money to pay for it, and saddle them with 'war reparations' to permanently cripple their economy. Double benefit, get the Russians to pay for western companies rebuilding and that way they can also justify keeping reliance on Russian hydrocarbons too- after all it would be paying for Ukraine to be fixed! Case Study: Iraq. Saddled with massive debt to Gulf countries from fighting their proxy war with Iran for them, Kuwait stealing their oil (like a milkshake, they drink it up), and then massive reparations on top of that. Then get the Gauleiter Colonial Administrator Paul Bremmer to award lots of no tender contracts to US companies for reconstruction to be paid for by the Iraqi state.

"If you've ever looked at the mess that is Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 and thought to yourself, "I could do better than that," here's your big chance to prove it." Not sure if Paradox going open(ish) license on VtM really implies anything for VtMB2, but given the prior press and lack of news it's hard not to read it negatively.

Ah yes, Strelkov/ Girkin. The guy who thinks Putin is... far too soft. Highly unlikely he'd actually win this war in Ukraine either- as he would already have started WW3 years ago after bombing US troops in Syria. [Good luck though, if Putin actually goes in a coup he's exactly the type of person who'd follow, and he'd quite literally nuke Poland/ Slovakia/ Romania to stop arms supplies]

Can't wait for the media to spooj themselves over another 'landslide' Macron election win and how that means everything is right with the world; a win with... historically low voter turn out and a staggering 1 in 8 people actually bothering to turn up just to spoil their ballot. Shame it isn't Le Pen vs Melléncon, as I forgot to make my quadrennial Jean-Cougar Mellencamp's joke as that really would have had the global elites' heads exploding.