Zoraptor

Expanse S6e6

They're WHO figures for 2018. [should say, I haven't directly looked them up to check, only seen them cited as such] Most of the world's socialist countries have the best food security they've had in their history, now. You can say what you want about Mao- and let's be honest, most of the negatives are richly deserved- but China hasn't had a major famine since his reforms despite very very regularly having them before hand. Of course that's partly due to the Green Revolution and international freight, but there are still plenty of places that do get famine. Most of which are, well, capitalist. The bigger argument is whether China is actually socialist or not. The main objection is the same one there is to most such simplistic quasi propaganda*. The lens is very seldom turned the other way, and either way you do it if you work back from the conclusion you want you can 'prove' anything. In an alternative reality where the USSR won everyone is reading articles talking about the failure of capitalism due to the truly staggering amount of starvation in British India, all the dead Chinese from Opium grown in India while said Indians were starving, all the food exported from other parts of India while other Indians were starving, how them dying was fine because "they breed like rabbits" (not one of Churchill's more quoted aphorisms, for some reason), and, why not; how the exquisitely capitalist opium trade lead to 80 million deaths in the Taiping Rebellion. Which is of course simplistic, but then you can hardly get more simplistic than Socialism -> Starvation. *Look at Belt&Road. At least with that you get the infrastructure you paid for, onus is on you to make sure you actually need it, eh Montegnegro. Always easier to whine about the contract later though. The IMF and WB on the other hand were notorious for lending to countries and having their leaders embezzle pretty much every cent. Even nowadays their lending is at least as much to prop up western economic interests as anything else. Get food insecure countries to grow coffee so they can buy the cheap, subsidised, EU/ US agricultural staples that are uneconomic for them to grow themselves because, well, their competitors are massively subsidised.

In order to have real changes you'd need some sort of attitudinal sea change in Australian politics where currently being hard on refugees is seen as a badge of honour by both major parties. Practically, that's very hard to see while Murdoch still controls most of the media because Labor would be the party to shift attitudes, and as soon as they show any signs of doing so the Murdoch media declares open season on them. Status quo also has a lot of inertia due to the involvement of various private prison/ security contractors like Serco, Paladin and friends who are making bank off of them.

I finished the DLC for The Outer Worlds recently. Objectively I'd have to say that they still had the same problems that the base game had- generic mobs, generic combat, generic loot, generic (albeit themed) locations- they did feel a lot better subjectively, and they certainly didn't skimp on content. OTOH, it had the same problem PoE2 DLC had; you hit the level cap way too early and while their plots are pretty good if you want to finish the main game there's a lot of, especially in TOW, generic endgame stuff to wade through without even the promise of going up any levels to liven it up. Still, the game has a lot of potential for improvement but the basics are there, so if they can carry and enhance the level of improvements from the dlc through to the sequel they should end up with a very good game.

At this point I'm not really sure why they aren't just allowing everyone back into Australia instead of limiting things. Restrictions make sense when you're covid zero (or covid near zero like us or Western Australia, so fair enough if they don't) but you'd need thousands of cases from returnees a day to make a blip when you're getting in the realm of 100k domestic cases daily.

It does have to be said, the Australian rules are pretty weird, now that they're not even approaching covid zero- 120k domestic cases, and that with saturated testing capacity so it may be a lot higher. They were meant to be going full let it rip on the international arrivals front fairly soon and one of the reasons omicron got out so quickly there was that NSW had already relaxed isolation rules for international arrivals. They have so many domestic cases active it's barely worth worrying about a few imported ones, especially for someone who could probably afford to build himself a hospital if he got sick. Still, you really need to dot the i's and cross the t's with Australia's Border Force, and anyone who has dealt with them previous should know that. Djokovic has already had covid, the media made a big deal about him organising a tournament (tournaments, as it turns out, though they were cancelled part way through the second of five) and it then having an outbreak there involving him and his wife. IIRC Australia does have an exemption policy for proven recovered cases based on natural immunity, but that would be (just, checked and it was late June 2021) outside the 6 month accepted time frame for an exemption anyway. Might explain some of the confusion and possible basis of an appeal though.

Technically that was just for playing at the Open, not getting into the country. Getting into the country is a Federal matter in Aus, and they're the ones making and enforcing the rules. Still, pretty stupid of the Open organisers not to make it absolutely explicit that that was the case, and there do seem to have been some... flexibility in terms of who the rules were enforced for at the Federal level. (I don't think there's any doubt that the whole thing was engineered to make Australian PM Scotty F. Marketing look decisive in the run up to an election where the last couple of weeks even had Murdoch press turning on him for his abject failures in dealing with covid. It's just way too convenient a set up)

Dunno, if we hadn't had S5 I would have been on the extra time needed bandwagon tooting the horn and waving a flag. It's certainly not a Wheel of Time type situation though where I'd be confident that extra time would just result in a longer bad product.

Expanse s6e05 Not a book reader so no book spoilers.

In order to have a successful transition to Democracy you need certain things to be present. Most of which aren't in Kazakhstan. You need lots of CIA involvement and slush money aid promises, a border with a western aligned country for agents provocateur to cross and a convenient figurehead to have been set up to 'win' the 'election'. See Guiado, Hadi, Karzai etc. Kazakhstan has none of that. Minus the sarcasm, in order to have a successful transition to Democracy you also need certain things to be present. It's kind of pointless listing them because none are absolutely necessary, and in this situation they're irrelevant anyway. The practicalities and realpolitik are that they cannot succeed. Revolutions work when the ruling party/ class either cannot or will not fight effectively, or when the military and police refuse to act. You can supplement either of those with not having a far more populous neighbour who is willing to prop up the status quo (or tear it down, though that doesn't apply in this case). In this case the leadership won't go, the military and police won't switch sides, and Russia doesn't want anarchy- and, inevitably, another islamist insurgency- on its southern flank and in a country where a quarter of the population is Russian. And Kazakhstan, especially with Afghanistan gone, is strategically irrelevant to anyone who would actually support them, except as a way to poison the well for Russia. And that means Syria 2.0, ie no real attempt to change things positively for the general population beyond lip service and self serving White Man's Burden fabulism such as the myth of the 'moderate democratic opposition' which would sweep to power on the wings of hot air and wishful thinking vs the reality of the opposition being nutbar islamists armed by the- and to be fair to them, they did a fantastic job of their actual aim of asterisking the country semi permanently- CIA with TOWs etc from day one; but an awful lot of anarchy generation and maintenance because it will cause trouble for others. Theoretically yeah, aux armes citoyens formez vos bataillons go chop up some kleptocratic oligarchs and hooray for all that good liberté fraternité and egalité stuff. Practically, anyone encouraging the protesters is supporting a bunch of people committing suicide, at best, or who are going to get another 250k people pointlessly killed at worst (though this won't happen though, for the above reasons).

Honestly, if they were going to go there I kind of wish they'd just gone at it full Spartacus style and just made everything ludicrously over the top and stylised. Apparently a lot of it was actually filmed too, and got cut for testing badly. The Gitara prologue definitely was and later got replaced with the obviously cobbled together prologue we got. Looks like it simply was not a very well run project even before covid.

The full draft script for WoT Ep1 has leaked, though a decent amount of it had already leaked over the last few months.

Elayne is pretty funny if taken as a parody of 'enlightened' nobles and how they see themselves*. There's certainly far too much of her for the depth of the plot she's involved in, and she's an awful person who gets a lot of people pointlessly killed because she thinks she personally is invulnerable. *And that's how I tend to think she is intended to be taken, especially with some of the in jokes about her (eg her constantly getting a veil caught in her mouth when others don't- because while she may think she's down with the common man she's actually looking down her nose at everyone, she just doesn't realise it).

That I actually find more or less likeable because it's completely relatable. It's also very easy to forgive such things when the stakes are on the 'badger released on the common during Bel Tine, hilarious or not?' sort of level and from people who aren't really mature. It's a lot less easy to forgive- and a hence a lot less likeable- when things are done for obviously selfish reasons and the stakes are massive after 2 years away from home.

Her looking Aiel is fine, their racial characteristics are 'blonds and redheads' and Tigraine was blonde. Going from a pampered princess in her early twenties to a proper Aiel fighter who can solo multiple armoured guys while having contractions a few years later stretches credibility somewhat and is only really acceptable for the standard reason that implausible things happen all the time in WoT- Rota vult. And even that is a stretch, given all she actually has to do is make it to Dragonmount and die. OTOH, it's exactly the sort of thing that I'd be ignoring if the rest of the content was good- in the books a different daughter heir becomes an accomplished tight rope walker completely randomly after all, and without even the excuse that it had to be due to prophecy... Obviously I agree pretty much completely with everything. The only caveats I'd have are with how hard it is to translate pov to TV, and that all the female main characters (counting Egwene, Nynaeve and Moiriane) in WoT aren't really 'likeable' early on, largely because they're viewed from the pov of Rand and Perrin in the books (exc Egwene, to an extent, though as I've said before I find her most likeable early on). Probably the best example of how pov effects things is Mat, who a lot of people don't like in the early books because he's seen through Rand's pov and is complaining and always saying he'd leave if he could- but, when you do get his povs he complains incessantly and is always on the verge of running off; yet somehow always ends up doing the right thing anyway. So a lot of people dislike Nynaeve in the early books because she's an authority figure to the boys and was a young woman authority figure in her village trying to order people three times her age around, or Moiraine because her intentions are opaque and the boys don't trust her. Some modification to their apparent personalities to make them more likeable is not a problem when you have a switch to a more omniscient pov because they actually are more likeable than the povs have them as. I'm not actually sure the show tried that at all though. It's far easier to make them 'likeable' instead of likeable by having them do all the cool things. And yeah, with that approach you end up with Superman very rapidly because you have to have them doing cooler and cooler things and get into a spiral of plot inflation. Given the content of ep8, power wise there already is absolutely nowhere for them to go upwards except into the completely stupid.

He was meant to be running honeypots for Mossad, though there isn't any actual evidence, just a load of speculation. Ghislaine has a very proximal relationship with Mossad though, through her father who was definitely one of their assets.

Not sure there really is a formula for economic success any more. At least raw materials (inc food, and for Russia, energy) are things that will always be needed. Most of the Service economies are bubbles waiting to pop, underpinned by fantasy and money printing.

Is Bruce a Star Trek Discovery writer putting his favourite obsidz board member into the show as a tribute? I think this is conclusive proof for that theory.

The 'Ukraine tensions' have literally happened every year since 2015. The 'direct communication' change is pretty much pure theatre. Russia hasn't had a permanent rep to NATO since 2018 because (iirc) NATO refused accreditation; and Russia recently withdrew (or threatened to) the remains of its mission in Brussels. In a months time the Russian soldiers will go home and the NATO leaders will pat themselves on the back about preventing the 'inevitable' invasion and pontificate on how relevant they are, and in a few months time after that the whole thing will repeat again with the next intake of Russian draft. As pmp10, they'll wait for things to, er, cool off, then certify Nord Stream 2 in a months time. They could also pressure Ukraine about nicking gas the gas- Russia's whole point is that they're sending the contracted amounts, it just isn't actually arriving as the whole amount- but if they do that (and they almost certainly already are) they'll do it privately as otherwise the US/ Poland/ Baltics would throw a tizzy. In terms of stealing money, it would only stop if the west actually cared about it but as always it's just lip service, except the self interest of trying to stop locals demanding bungs from western companies. Yulia Timoshenko stole literally billions in a few years but she's never been anything other than a western darling. Everyone understands that the aid Ukraine gets from the EU and got from Russia was used for influence peddling and not to benefit ordinary Ukrainians even if they don't say it. In 30 years they've gone from the richest soviet republic to the poorest nation in Europe, and at this point they're even 20% behind Moldova who held that title for decades. It's one of the most consistently poorly run countries in the world precisely because it's been in Russia's and the west's best interests to have crap leaders and advocate crap and ineffective policies.

That is, at least, the best season of Discovery. Anyway, I've finally finished Witcher S2. It was... good. Far more along the expected lines of an adaptation than WoT, albeit I'd read Blood of Elves ages ago and can't really remember much (see below), and played the games. And absolutely night and day in terms of apparent quality, scripting, CGI, sets, choreography, consistency and indeed pretty much everything else. End of the day, while I'm not familiar enough with the source material to say that it's a good adaptation it's good or better on the more objective fronts, as well as the subjective one of actually being entertaining- and it hasn't introduced any glaring internal inconsistencies that look like they'll come back to bite them either.

They had a fight about whether to use the British or French spelling. One of the few times the French won vs the British. Yet somehow it's positively beautiful compared to the MiG-31. Post 70s Interceptors are just plain ugly. (OTOH, if I ever win a ludicrous amount on lotto I would pay pretty much anything for the Su-47 prototype. And if [museumname/ VKS/ whoever] doesn't want to give it up Sukhoi can build me another one)

I've seen a lot of people saying they needed more episodes, but in these circumstances I cannot really agree. They probably did in the absolute sense, but I wouldn't be confident that we'd get better out of an extra 2 hours rather than just more of what we got. It really did look like a badly managed project where the wheels fell off completely at the end, and they tend to expand their crappiness to fill all available time. OK, there was covid, but end of the day if a builder builds a house and it falls down in a week you don't care that he was going through a divorce or whatever; you care that the house fell down. And maybe that your neighbours builder, also going through a divorce, managed to build a decent house despite that. End of the day they decided that Stepin and the warder bond which becomes important in probably 2 seasons time was worth half an episode instead of more immediately relevant world building, or giving the main characters five minutes each of character development or whatever. There's nothing to say that we would not simply have got 2 more hours of such writing genius. And they did so little effective world building with the time they had... The main issue they have is how much better Witcher did in similar covid circumstances and, supposedly, with less budget. There have been some issues with it so far (I've not seen ep8 yet) but it's night and day on apparent quality, use of time and world building, and a significant step up still on script and storyline.

It's easy for me since I don't habitually get Prime, I just won't resub after The Expanse finishes. I have to admit though that I have a fair bit of morbid curiousity about just how bad it can get. If it were free I'd probably watch it casually for a laugh. And speaking of The Expanse, and since it's 30 degrees and 85% humidity and I don't want to finish mowing the lawns: Expanse S6e3

No Bruce, I was being sarcastic, it is excellent and you should most definitely watch it. It rates a 110/100 on the globally respected "Do I want to drive Bruce absolutely bonkers via eldritch horror, why yes I do" rating scale. It's entirely possible I have hit the christmas sherry a bit early in a desperate attempt to expunge some recent bad memories.

WoT Ep8 TLDR; hmm. You may substitute your username for Marion. Be warned, watch this episode unprepared and you may end up as the SS equivalent of that gif, I know I did. Rating: 0/0. Because it's impossible to define how bad it was.