Zoraptor

I certainly wouldn't believe what they say, in the religious sense, and they clearly have a particular political position to impress upon. (with such things it's usually a question of how much you can independently verify, and for intelligence leaks that isn't much, usually not even whether they were genuine leaks let alone genuine information being leaked. There have been persistent rumours of high level defections, but that's been the case for a year+, we know (more or less) that the Chinese rolled up the CIA network in China... but anything apart from that needs more than just an anonymous source who may or may not exist. There's also the question of sources gilding the lily, like the infamous Curveball of 'mobile Iraqi CW labs' infamy, and why a leaker would chose that site to leak to when they'd have to know that many would dismiss the information based on who was saying it. More or less wait and see, if the defector exists and is giving the information stated others will start getting leaks soon or (some of) the information would be shared with the public)

Meh, the article is pretty much the epitome of false equivalency. The three theories of SARS CoV2 origin simply aren't equivalent, even just listing them as if they are is deeply misleading. We've had detected coronavirus crossover events 7 (!) times in the last 20 years (including SARS1/2 and MERS), and there are almost certainly other non detected ones too; so that's the default option because it's happened provably more than once every 3 years. That's especially so when there is no evidence- let alone compelling evidence- for anything else, beyond 3 people being sick, which was intelligence laundered through someone who has been used to legitimise false intelligence before, multiple times. (Most amusingly the so called 'smoking gun' evidence of SARS CoV2 being engineered is now admitted to be a flash in the pan instead, said by someone going off half c0cked. And even that is being a bit generous with the fusilliary metaphors)

People say that vaccination doesn't really do anything, but my wifi has improved noticeably and the amount of buffering I've got has dropped a lot so I'm theorising that the vaccine makes you act like an antenna or signal booster at very least. You can also tell who the microchips were manufactured by, if you get a fever after the injection you know it was an Intel based dose since their chips are well known for operating at 100 degrees. Yep, the fundamental thing about standard (ie non medical grade) facemasks is that they may reduce the risk to others, but they don't come anywhere close to eliminating it. Same for social distancing. If you're constantly exposed for a long period in an enclosed space then nothing except for innate luck will stop you getting it. And yes, if you're in the typical light industrial or production type workplace it will spread like wildfire because even a large reduction in incidental chance of infection gets overwhelmed if the contact isn't incidental but is systematic. That's also why so many medical personnel get covid, despite all the precautions and training; constant low chance of transmission adds up massively over time. To be fair, I'm sure there are papers on how industrial type working conditions contribute- and reporting too, certainly at the start there was a lot of reports on spread via abatoirs and the like. Fundamentally, 'industrial design' isn't fixable without redesigning the entire economy though which cannot be done short term whereas wearing a mask or social distancing is a quick 'fix', so one gets picked over the other. And it also has to be said, if you did fix that problem it would likely be via increased automation, leaving the former employees without work.

Nothing more than Putin and Hillary really not liking each other and Trump using softer rhetoric. Maybe also a bit of rhetorical payback for all the self congratulation from the US when they got that incompetent sot Yeltsin re-elected in 1996 and he promptly continued running Russia into the ground, though Trump was nowhere near Yeltsin levels of incompetence. It is rather amusing seeing western journos who had worked themselves into a frenzy realise that Biden isn't going to try and german suplex Putin through a table or whatever they seemed to be expecting him to do.

Which is why they'll almost certainly try and leverage Russia away from China*. That's going to take some compromising though, and that won't be popular with some. Obviously that's also not going to be said outright, especially at a NATO meeting. But you can hardly argue that containing China is a part of NATO's purview, since there are only a dozen countries further away from the North Atlantic than China. Finding Putin's price is almost certainly why Biden is meeting him though, it's certainly not just to posture about things and read through a grievance list, as the press seems to want people to believe. *not like they're actual friends and allies anyway, it's far more of a 'enemy of my enemy..' situation.

Speaking generally; you have to have enough virus there for the test to detect. If you've been exposed and are incubating but have a low initial viral load you'll still test negative. The good news though is that that also means you'll have extremely low infectivity since you need a decent viral load to be shedding it. That's why you have sporting or other events where you need a negative test result before going; you may be infected and get sick later but you won't (shouldn't) be infecting people at the event with a viral load low enough to get a negative result. That's the idea behind the testing regime we have for our quarantine. You have a test before traveling from most places and can only travel with a negative test. That doesn't guarantee that you don't have it, but if you do at least you're not infectious while aboard a plane and infecting more people there. They'll then do a series of tests during a two week isolation, and if you test negative to all of them you're free to go. There have been some unlucky people whose incubation has been longer than two weeks, but it's very rare.

TOW's trailer certainly got people talking a lot more than a 'serious' trailer would have, and was a great idea for a 90 sec video when you have basically nothing to actually show- and I do rather like a bit of meta (Throne of Bhaal's gamer party, the fast simulation scene from Person of Interest's If-Then-Else etc). Happy to focus on Stalker 2 having a bunch of negative indicators like skins etc since it's probably a steam exclusive, so I'll assume it's a buggy mess riddled with mtx.

Ended up being 60-59, though the Joint List would have voted for the new government if needed so practically there was more margin to spare. I think it would have to collapse pretty quickly to get Netanyahu back. Apart from the build up of legal troubles that he will have difficulty deferring now he's also accumulated a lot of enemies, not all of them outside the Likud bloc, and his style has been to use his position to play them off against each other and placate those he has to. That's become a lot more difficult now he has less favours to grant.

That's kind of inaccurate, since ISI and Al Nusra never operated together- Al Nusra was literally ISI's wing in Syria so if you were ISI in Syria you were by definition JaN; Jabhat al Nusra == the Support Front (of ISI to Syria). I know why it's put like that in the timeline since they split relatively soon after, but at that time there was literally no difference. (The conspiracy theory with respect to CIA == ISIS is a classic 'interesting series of facts' conspiracy theory. All three ISI(S) leaders were captured by the US at various points and released- both Baghdadis and the current leader- indeed most of ISIS' leadership full stop was at some point in US custody and released. ISI(S)'s brand of Islam was closest to that of Saudi Arabia and much of its financial support came from there, and KSA is a noted US ally. Capture and release is an excellent way to recruit assets and get them into an organisation. Of course, that interesting series of facts doesn't really mean much at all, practically, like most interesting series of facts. The big regional irony is having the US claim that Assad deliberately 'poisoned' the moderate rebels in Syria by releasing radicals like Zahran Alloush and his brother from its jails, when the US released all three ISIS leaders- and the Alloush's release was demanded by Saudi Arabia, who went on to provide them with massive support)

ISIS has killed more muslims than any other group, via terrorism. Of western aligned nations the US definitely, and Saudi probably (via Yemen) have killed more muslims under 'normal' circumstances (Syria too, but it isn't western aligned). Pretty easily, really, if the Australian SAS is any gauge. The Australian government initially swore blind it was all a media beat up by the unpatriotic and arrested ABC journalists for reporting it then we got stuff like: "we have 7 prisoners" "sorry cobber, only room for 6 on the heli" *bang* "we have 6 prisoners..." or them killing 12 civilians to cover up murdering one civilian. If anyone thinks that was a uniquely Australian problem, well, they're wrong (New Zealand's minute Afghan contingent very likely killed civilians too, but not judicially provable because they weren't moronic enough to keep explicit photos; they and the commanders just systematically lied for some random reason totally unrelated to war crimes). Easy to have very low civilian death totals when you just call everyone you kill an enemy combatant and no politician wants to question that.

Kingdom Come Deliverance soap must be specially designed for use when you're bathing while still wearing clothes, if the game's any guide.

The funniest thing about the Australian Constitution is the clause describing which colonies were (meant) to become Australian States: "New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia, including the northern territory of South Australia". New Zealand OTOH has no constitution. There was an attempt to make one in 1989-90 with the Bill of Rights, but it ended up becoming just plain old law since they didn't want to weaken the idea of Parliamentary Supremacy with something constraining like a Constitution.

Don't know about Denmark but for Australia at least detention of illegal immigrants is outright mandatory, and they also last month brought in literal indefinite detention, without trial, for those who aren't granted refugee status but cannot be returned due to danger in their home countries. Which is slightly illegal under international law, but probably plays well to Scummo's electoral base- and there's an election due within the next year. Anybody with a serious belief that refugee centres cannot also be concentration camps should have a look at Australia's Manus Island abomination and try arguing seriously that that doesn't fit the definition. They even use nazi style descriptors for the policy- Papuan Solution and Pacific Solution, foisted upon their ex colonial territories. Particularly egregious for Nauru, since it got absolutely ruined by catastrophic phosphate strip mining with no remediation, all so Australia could have cheap fertiliser- and of course now the phosphate is gone they have little choice other than to accept Australia's 'offer' of refugee processing since they desperately need the money.

Thief: Definitive Edition? Well now, that sounds like a deal. Will be great seeing how the 16 years of graphical improvement effected seminal levels like the Boneyard or Cathedral for the better.

The main reason for joining the clerics is that they have by far the best exclusive power, since it stunlocks targets.

The current main WSJ contributor on the Chinese covid 19 theory- and the guy who broke the story about sick workers- has been used extensively to launder dodgy intelligence in the past. When he worked for the NYT most of the inaccurate information given by that paper was bylined by Judith Miller andor Michael R Gordon. At least he wasn't involved in outing a serving CIA officer because her husband was politically embarrassing though, unlike Miller.

For companies it's simply PR, everything that comes from their official accounts is designed to buff their image and let them sell more stuff. I do wonder if Raytheon has the same profile if seen from, say, a Saudi IP and companies that believe strongly in human rights, free speech etc seem to make an awful lot of 'mistakes' that just happen to censor things that powerful countries and customers don't like. Indian terrorists spreading terror by criticising Modi's covid response being 'accidentally' banned from twitter, a prominent search engine owned by a prominent US company 'accidentally' blocking images of tank man on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square... George Bush would have just dodged the slap with a sith eating grin afterwards.

In terms of being potentially hilariously inaccurate movies Vin Diesel's interpretation of Hannibal would have definitely been interesting to see, at least, though he did at least seem pretty invested in the idea on a personal level- but then again, so did Gibson with Braveheart and The Patriot. You just know that some people would be disappointed if he didn't eat Flaminius' liver with some fava beans and a chianti after Trasimene though. Much as I dislike Braveheart on general principle I'd say he in particular got screwed over by the old and more general adage of victors writing history. He wasn't portrayed sympathetically in Braveheart, but it wasn't massively off since he wasn't portrayed sympathetically in history either due to ultimately losing- and the victors had to justify the crime of crimes of murdering a king theoretically appointed by god.

Yeah... That kind of reasoning is the classic sort you see in military scenarios- the Russians won't mind their capital being nuked, because we say it's a proportional response and... we used an IRBM instead of an ICBM? People don't work like that, and neither do countries. If you're nuking Moscow then Washington gets nuked back, at very very least, and then you have the absolutely classic cycle of escalation under way. Realistically, given that Moscow has something like 20% of Russia's population and economy a proportional response is hitting everything from New York to Richmond; and the US can cling to its belief that it acted proportionately and honourably for the 6 hours it continues to exist as a functional country (and of course in all likelihood Russia will be doing the exact same thing). That is, in fact, exactly the sort of de Gaulle situation described; but you're expecting the US to sacrifice Washington and probably the entire eastern seaboard for Warsaw instead of Paris. So, a retaliation would likely be somewhere like Smolensk, Rostov na donu, at the outside St Petes, instead, since you can claim them as quasi sensible military targets and they're far less likely to lead to a runaway escalation, and Polish wishes mean 2/3 of diddly squat. And they're also well within range of pretty much anything nuclear capable without IRBMs. You'd have to come up with a reasonable scenario for Russia nuking Warsaw anyway, and that's probably something like NATO invading Kaliningrad with the obvious intention of keeping it. You're not going to get it in any realistic scenario in which there's not a shooting war simultaneously, and if you're invading a nuclear country then... the whole point is that you don't, because ultimately that's why you have nukes in the first place. Russia would nuke Warsaw as a last resort, and, about as definitely as you can in a hypothetical, after tactical nukes had been used extensively previous. The sort of situation in which nuking civilian targets gets considered is one in which there is already an uncontrolled escalation under way, it's just a step along the path to a full scale exchange. As for stationing, the classic example is the ABM stations. The only thing they do for the host country is make sure that they will be the first targets of any strike. It's also not like, say, Turkey has control of the nukes based at Incirlik or Germany controls the ones at Rammstein, but if those bases cop a mushroom cloud it will certainly be the US deciding any retaliation, not Ankara or Berlin. That's ultimately the reason basing US nukes in Europe has always been unpopular with a lot of people, all it really ensures is that Europe gets targeted, without a say in any retaliation.

That's not a great example since Russia doesn't need to use IRBMs to nuke Poland as Kaliningrad oblast directly borders Poland. Any scenario in which Kaliningrad no longer borders Poland is one in which things have already escalated beyond where you can apply direct logic- as is one in which Russia is using nukes for asterisks and giggles as a first strike weapon. The broader point is that that applies generally- there's already other options for any sensible scenario. If things have escalated so far that 'genuinely' medium range targets like Paris or London or Brussels or Vienna are being considered then using ICBMs can scarcely be an escalation, especially since at that level it isn't just about whether the US will retaliate. Otherwise, close targets- and tactical nukes on military targets, not hitting cities- make a lot more sense. And in any case INF did not apply to air/ sea means that you have a suite of medium range options available, they just aren't land based. On the more fundamental level, there are near literally no sensible targets for mainland US based medium range missiles, so they'd be deployed to 3rd party countries. For most of those that will mean their chance of being reciprocally targeted goes up massively, not down. If you're sticking IRBMs in, say, Japan, it isn't to defend them. That'd instantly make Japan a target for China, first strike or retaliatory.

Apparently all the putative government's MKs are getting heightened security due to death threats. It's a tiny theoretical majority so an assassination is being treated as a real possibility.

Looks like Netanyahu is gone as Israeli PM. Pretty big achievement being so polarising that near diametric opposites Naftali Bennet and Joint List join forces just to get you removed- and almost no tears being shed internationally since Bibi was near universally loathed by everyone. Next step for him, prison, with any luck. Then again, 8 parties and with the Joint List outside the formal coalition doesn't exactly scream stable government. You can pretty much guarantee there will be attempts to split one or more off starting 5 minutes before the deal was formalised.

Funny really, Sony, MS and Samsung will all have RDNA based 'APU's before AMD itself releases one to the public, Samsung's in something as small as a phone. I'd kind of presume the 5000 series desktop APUs are stopgaps for a Zen3 refresh- there may not be much point going RDNA2 with the integrated graphics if they're just going to choke on insufficient cache and shared DDR4 RAM. The stacked cache and (maybe) DDR5 support should move any bottleneck out a bit. They may also want to avoid people trying APU raytracing until there's more bandwidth, that performance will not exactly be great even in perfect situations.

You don't need any IRBMs if you have ICBMs, that's ultimately why the US and Soviets agreed to eliminate them. In any case, they could be (and were, the first test held by the US was literally days after leaving the INF) reinstated almost instantly, and almost certainly as nuclear too since some warheads never seem to have been actually destroyed as they were meant to be, just decommissioned. That was one of the bones of contention- frankly, breaches- of INF with the land based AEGIS anti missile stations Obama built, they used tomahawk launchers so it was trivial not just to refit them for banned conventional weapons but for banned nuclear weapons too. OK, tomahawks aren't ballistic, but there's nothing special about medium range ballistic missiles that renders making them difficult. US tanks are 'old' and require vast amounts of maintenance and resources but are fine otherwise at doing tank stuff- unless, they're export models driven by Saudis. But even then after getting blown up by some shoeless Houthi goatherd amped up on Qat using an antiquated Malyutka or Fagot the crew usually survives the direct consequences of their incompetence thanks to good design.

Zen3 and production starting end of this year according to Ian Cutress. May well be part of a simultaneous rebrand to Zen3+ though. That and the DLSS equivalent should really improve the gaming performance of their APUs. Didn't see it mentioned, but I presume that it will get used for GPUs as well at some stage, given them looking at MCM and having such a large cache on the 6000 series.