Zoraptor

There are definitely some anti US sanctions. Russia has some, China has quite a lot and IIRC Iran still has an open warrant for Scott Lustig, who shot down IranAir655. Nowhere near as publicised though, and not as effective either. It's a typical Bruce argument anyway, since the Coalition killed at least four times as many civilians 'accidentally' in Mosul than Russia killed 'deliberately' in Aleppo, at around the same time, and that had basically no press coverage, let alone political opprobrium or sanctions. Indeed, the coalition likely killed more civilians in Raqqa too than Russia did in Aleppo, and it is a fifth the size.

Eh, there are plenty of reasons for that. Not least that there's been a very well publicised apology this time which you don't usually get and which makes it very difficult to use the usual deflection strategies, though it didn't stop them trying. The typical cycle is to claim it was absolutely a correct strike, followed a few days to a week later by saying it was a 100% correct strike but is now under investigation because the locals insist an innocent target was hit but everyone should be patient, maybe followed months later by some sort of admission that maybe it wasn't quite as correct as had been made out, buried as half an column inch on p57 of the NYT if carried at all. And in between the first and last step you have a horde of people saying how it had to be this or that because a ginsu was used so any explosion had to be secondary, then that prejudgements are being made and you need to be patient, and the like. Usually, the coverage just goes away and literally no consequences are faced, instead of literally no consequences apart from having to make an apology on camera that goes on CNN/ BBC et alia. When the subject of bad US drone strikes comes up this one will be the poster child for years to come, precisely because they had to very publicly admit this one at least was wrong- when many suspect that it's the tip of the iceberg. They clearly knew they'd hit the wrong target pretty early*, but continued saying it was a righteous strike because they'd previously got away with obfuscating it until everyone forgot and hoped it would work this time. This time though the whole thing was tied into a very unpopular and chaotic withdrawal in which hitting an aid worker instead of an ISIS guy was... all too emblematic, and there was ample motivation to actually report on the matter instead of letting it go. *there's some mitigation for the initial mistake because there actually was an attack involving a white Toyota (sedan) the same day and the aid worker did drive a white Toyota as well (albeit station wagon/ estate, not sedan). While it did not involve a suicide bomber but a makeshift rail of grads fired at the airport (missing by a couple of kilometres; who would have thought firing a notoriously inaccurate rocket from a sedan boot wouldn't work well? Not ISIS, apparently. Biggest achievement was setting the car on fire) it seems very likely that the basic intelligence was correct, but they misidentified the vehicle. Even if they lacked that newfangled tech known as 'the internet' (maybe they still called it darpanet and got confused?) where the correct id of the target was made within minutes multiple flags should have been raised when a similar vehicle did carry out an attack very soon after.

Yeah, looks like Skarpen may need to brush up on some remedial stats. FTR, just reverse those Irish stats and it becomes obvious how silly that argument is- 44% of admissions are unvaccinated. You'd Expect 10% unvaccinated --> 10% hospitalisations if the vaccine had no effect; as it stands it's the small matter of 4.4x that. In reality vaccines don't stop the virus wholesale, but they do reduce symptoms and as a consequence transmission- fewer symptoms such as coughing, and the virus is cleared a lot quicker so you're also a lot less likely to spread it.

Vaccines do prevent getting corona, they just don't stop it in all people*. They also do prevent the spreading of the virus in most people, and greatly reduce it in almost everyone since there's significant symptom reduction (which includes main vectors like, well, coughing or sneezing). The flu vaccine also doesn't stop people getting flu and doesn't stop spreading that virus either, and it's in every single metric worse than even the worst approved coronavirus vaccine; it's efficiency varies year to year but is typically in the 45% range. No vaccine works with 100% efficiency, even the ones people think as being 100% effective are only that because enough people get vaccinated. There is also statistically far too much improvement in mortality rates when vaccinated for it not to be preventing deaths. *It's notoriously difficult to vaccinate effectively for respiratory diseases. Most 'lining' tissues such as found in the throat and lungs use a different antibody (IgA) from the 'general' body (IgG), and vaccines tend to not stimulate IgA as effectively, and not for as long as they do IgG. So you can get high viral loads in the upper respiratory tract even if vaccinated because there isn't much covid specific IgA there at the start of infection. But, the immune system is still primed, and you do get rapid production of specific IgA when stimulated so you seldom get infection reaching the lungs (--> pneumonia) nor moving into other organs (--> myocarditis, 'long covid' etc) as you'd get if not vaccinated and relying on the generalised immune response (--> inflammation, fevers; correspondingly, if you get infected when vaccinated it will probably be asymptomatic with no fever or inflammation). That's why you can still get infected and be infectious after a vaccine, but also why the symptoms are much reduced and you're a lot less likely to infect others. [I'm pretty sure that that's also why there's so much interest in aerosolising vaccines for covid, as that directly targets the relevant cells rather than being injected intermuscularly]

How do you get worse than a submarine that could (allegedly) be heard from the surface without using sonar? Did they buy F-111s airframes but not the engines. (New Zealand's worst purchase is probably the HMNZS Charles Upham, which at least didn't cost us too much since it got sold back to civilian use after 5 years of doing nothing but refits. Mostly a bad purchase because the real Charles Upham was a monumental badass and the ship was never fit for purpose, and had very little purpose for us)

So not only did canon Jax pick Caja instead of Nasty, but he also got her up the duff and is now a deadbeat dad? #notmyJax Still, guess the apple didn't fall too far from the tree...

Australian military procurement is lousy-see the aforementioned Collins class subs for a pertinent example- but countries in general seem to tolerate an awful lot of stuff from military procurement that they'd never accept for civil matters. And speaking of things that make countries highly popular: New Zealand cancels cricket tour of Pakistan half an hour before play starts in the first match. Not really much choice when the government spooks tell you to due to an imminent terrorist threat, but Pakistan is a country that loves cricket so much that their elected PM is also their best ever cricketer. We could hardly have made ourselves less popular if we'd turned up in 'I ♥ Modi' shirts and changed our National Anthem to 'Gods Defend Bharat'.

Well, that's unexpectedly good news, even if the trailer is 90% random dance party for some reason. Some may say that Elex is the most jank of eurojank games, but Outcast was in a class of its own. And it had the best soundtrack of all time.

I know most of the anglo press is doing VinceMcMahonMeetsStaceyKeibler.gif over the deal but really... It's managed to annoy the french (and the EU) pretty badly and at least partly completely pointlessly. Which would usually be a bit of a bonus for me at least but in this case is counter productive at best if your goal is to contain China*. It's difficult not to have some sympathy for the french, as they seem to be expected to bend their arms deals to US sensibilities disproportionately- such as the cancellation of the Mistral sales to Russia- and the timing either showed ignorance or was deliberately obnoxious, made a few hours before the EU announced its Pacific policy. Along with the mess made in Afghanistan the Biden reset in relationships seems a lot more like a continuance of Trump's policy, just with more completely empty expressions of fraternité and kamaraderie tacked on for effect and a few less overt policy stupidities like trying to force Europe to buy US natural gas. It's also somewhat annoyed Canada and the fourth part of the quad, India, because the US doesn't want to share tech with them. But most importantly, Aukus <<< ANZUS. ANZUS sounds cool, Aukus sounds like great value Tolkien. *and is a great illustration of the fundamental problems with modern US foreign policy. Pointless and counterproductive stuff done so you can get more money for your arms industry. And in the end this is a miniscule step towards containment given that the three countries involved are all allies already. If they really want to contain China they have to tackle the elephant in the room which is rapprochement with Russia. There is no effective containment of China without Russia. Still, at least it's more effective than the old tactic previously used on Japan; trying to get China to appreciate its currency into a permanent recession which for some reason the Chinese declined to do.

Australia is going to build new nuclear submarines after an agreement with the US and UK on tech transfer. Hopefully they'll at least be as meme worthy as their previous effort, the Collins class. Not quite the massive leap that the media is making it out to be either, since it shows that the attempts to turn 5eyes into a military alliance instead of just an intelligence sharing one have failed. Ironically, while it would have been a very long shot to get NZ into any alliance post Rainbow Warrior anyway the reason Canada isn't there is almost certainly because the US would have to give Canada the same nuke sub tech, and they don't want to. Best moment: Joe Biden completely forgetting Scott Morrison's name and having to refer to Boris and '... ... that guy from downunder... the.. .. Prime Minister'.

Don't think an interview citation or whatever is needed, it's pretty obvious from just playing the game that a lot of 'problems' were being pointed out. It isn't that big of a step from not liking The Force/ Jedi Moralism to not liking SW considering how big a facet it is in it; that's why a lot of people think disliking that aspect has to mean disliking the whole thing. A large part of the Jedi criticism in K2 comes directly from how they were set up in K1 too, and that set up was decidedly ambivalent already as to the validity of their Moral Stance. That ambivalence was central to the plot since they needed a 'good' reason for good Revan to have behaved as she did and a 'bad' reason for bad Revan to behave as she did, so you had to be able to paint the Jedi as good or bad/ right or wrong. That was also, fortunately and accidentally, a good set up for the Avellone approach to deconstructing tropes. (bit of an aside, but I don't think Avellone had too much problem with the Sith's take on the Force, just with them typically being Chaotic Stupid)

Avellone certainly didn't hate SW, and ended up doing a lot of stuff in that universe apart from K2 to prove it. Planetscape: Tournament did much the same deconstruction of the general RPG staples as K2 did for SW, and he certainly didn't hate RPGs either. You're far more likely to get good big C Criticism of something someone likes than something they hate. Probably fair to say that Avellone has some significant dislike of the moral system of the Jedi though, as would most people if they thought about them for a few seconds

Now looking like the intelligence was actually complete and utter garbage. [alt link summary for anyone hitting the NYT's paywall] If true not only did they not hit a suicide bomber, but they managed to hit someone they'd previously worked extensively with themselves. And it's quite difficult to see how it isn't true. The great shame about these things- in addition to the completely innocent victims getting blown to chunks, of course- is that all most people will remember is Biden striking back at ISIS, not that he struck back at someone completely innocent. If the latter part made more headway there'd be a lot less strike first think later going on in the first place because there would be actual consequences for mistakes.

Epic has (temporarily at least, not like there won't be an appeal) won their lawsuit vs Apple. Which is kind of like Pol Pot punching Hitler in the balls, but you kind of have to support that on principle no matter who is doing the whacking.

Paradox owns the Tyranny IP.

Bunch of 2000 era Activision Star Trek games released. Includes Elite Force, which is the only thing about Voyager I genuinely liked.

Vince McMahon has been a case study in "no, it's the kids that are wrong!" for at least the last decade. The most telling factor is how much happier literally everyone seems when they're, uh, performing elsewhere in the sports entertainment universe shall we say. Despite being over managed you can hardly say that it's well run either and not just because they insist on a load of stupid branding catchphrases. Be interesting to see if WWE is really up for sale. At some point the balance between keeping a very vanilla product line to not offend potential buyers and losing market share will shift.

Funnily enough, the Russian fleet in the Russo Japanese War actually did far better than it had any right to do given the atrocious political leadership and their strategy may well have worked if not for the incompetence in the army- and it had some of the worst luck possible. Best admiral blown up by a mine, winning a battle- that no one expected them to come close in- until their admiral and everyone on the bridge got killed by a one in a million shot that crippled the flagship and jammed its rudder. Obsolete, badly maintained ships sure, but also handled with almost ludicrous bravery, especially at Tsushima where they must have known they had no chance of winning.

Too many external flops, too many dlcs, too many bad and unstable dlcs. I mean how could you approve and see Stalin vs Martians or Ship Simulator Extreme through to the end? Fake edit: whoops I accidentally wrote down the problems with Fred Wester instead. The problems with Ubba L were no doubt completely different, like her having a background in phone apps; as well as overseeing too much dlc, too much bad and unstable dlc, and too many external flops.

Yeah, that's a pretty good trailer. You'd be forgiven for thinking the series was Moiraine centric from it, but apart from Rosamund Pike being a selling point you also can't do 'thought exposition' in a TV series effectively, so you need to do a lot more showing of the world building. The ajah colours are too obvious, but meh. You could have them wearing shawls as identifiers instead (and to be constantly adjusting when not tugging braids/ sniffing/ smoothing skirts/ crossing arms) but if you're going to do that then might as well just dress them in the colours. Same as having Moiraine more dominant, you can't rely on character thoughts to remind people of ajahs and the like so you need more visual cues. Liked the myrdraal, in that case a certain amount of uncanny valley is a veritable asset, notable lack of detail on the brief/ action shots of the trollocs though (unless the Leshen looking thing was a trolloc, and that looked more like Herne the Hunter from the old Robin Hood TV series than I imagined a trolloc to look). The only real criticism I'd have is a stylistic one in that it looks perhaps a bit too derivative of LOTR. I know that that's a 'problem' with the source material with EotW being explicitly Tolikienesque, but Tar Valon ends up looking like Minas Tirith with a river and the environmental shots... that shot of them in the limestone croppings could have been straight out of FotR. Still, if you're going to be derivative of something being derivative of FotR is a pretty good pick.

It's meant to still be extremely hot running despite finally being 10nm? Intel7? SuperDuperFlipFlop? and the 'advantages' of big/little (I'd imagine marginal for desktops, might be interesting for laptops, but then laptops have had a native 10nm architecture for a while now). There isn't too much positive to say about Intel's desktop consumer chips except that they (have recently) priced them sensibly so they are good for price/ performance, I'd guess that the 12900k will be faster than the 5950x and get the money no object crowd on board- at least until the vcache 5950x refresh drops in a few months. Intel really needs to get the efficiency back up as it's costing them server sales and that's where the big cash is.

Dunno, I think the most that I get out of those SR trailers is that it's another game (or product in general) that would probably be significantly better received if it wasn't piggybacking a pre existing brand. You don't really get any sense that the game is as self aware as its predecessor either. GTA clones are inherently silly if you spend any time at all thinking about them and SR2-4 was pretty good at leaning into the stupidities of the genre. SR2 a bit less so but, well, septic tank missions... But, nobody liked SR3 just because the Deckers/ Morningstar/ Luchadores wore silly costumes and no one will like the gangs in the reboot just because they wear silly costumes, it's all the other stuff that made people enjoy SR3. And while those games were absolute replete with appalling stereotypes (and all the original games' Saints were appalling people by any objective measure) the appalling stereotypes were applied completely without fear or favour. Ironically, the new cast already seems to be made up of stereotypes, just without the self awareness. (I wouldn't want an out and out parody, SR4 went too far that direction as it is, but one of the big appeals of SR2-4 was that they were aware that the whole thing was inherently silly, in much the same way that a good Roger Moore Bond film knew the whole premise was kind of ridiculous but leant into that as an asset rather than a handicap) To be fair, that was clearly meant idiomatically- ie you'd invite them into your living room, by playing the game with them in it rather than literally have them over for a cup of tea and biscuits or whatever.

They have a new developer working on the game, and they also did a new (free) tourism update a few months ago. (I've only played Surviving Mars with the existing dlc, but it must have been the biggest drag of a game in the the mid -> late game without Green Planet, and it will still benefit a lot from some more fleshing out)

No greek letter designation and the WHO saying it isn't spreading significantly suggests that Murdoch could possibly be exaggerating somewhat. They do give greek letters to those that are simply variants of interest as opposed to proven problems (eg iota and lambda are currently variants of interest, theta and epsilon are no longer even that).

Nah, I mean, I certainly wouldn't advise taking ivermectin without having taken medical advise and anyone doing so should seriously re-evaluate their thoughts on the matter, but I did check beforehand and the advised dosage for humans is comparable to that for most other animals. eg I could go out to the shed and give myself a drench applicable for a 75kg sheep and it would be almost exactly the recommended dose for a 75kg human as a dewormer. It'd still be moronic to do so anyway, but all other things being equal taking an appropriate dose won't do you any harm and there are far more dangerous chemicals to self medicate with. The problem is of course that people are dumb in multiple ways, and buy horse dewormer and give themselves a horse sized dose despite not being the size of André the Giant, and that will do you some harm. Or they buy topical ivermectin and... eat it. That isn't a problem with ivermectin though, that's a problem with taking a horse sized dose and not knowing that there's a difference between external and internal application. Of course, if you;re the FDA or whoever you just say not to take animal products, and that's entirely justified. But there are certainly worse things people could be taking that would actually kill them.