Zoraptor

That actually does exist as a statement, kind of, though the specific interpretation of the statement is definitely and clearly misinformation rather than contextually correct: [source] So it's "In contrast, the Delta variant seems to produce the same high amount of virus in both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people" being taken as an isolated statement out of context.

Hard for Intel to do that though. The modern TSMC nodes are all expensive and oversubscribed, and that is what they're using so the pressures will be the same as they are for AMD- to use your limited capacity to make the stuff that sells for the most money first. And that isn't budget lines. At the moment that pricing is still the natural home of the 14nm era Polaris and 16xx cards as it has been for years. They'd still be being produced but there's no/ little GDDR5 available any more (??? IIRC it's almost entirely deprecated but I can't remember the source of that...)

I'd argue that their CPUs need a (new) brand name more than their GPUs do. Xe is fine- OK, it reminds you of Blackwater constantly changing their name to escape bad press, but on the positive it also reminds you about a handy currency conversion website. In contrast even Intel engineers and PR people doing presentations have no idea what their CPU branding actually means any more.

We don't really know what advice they were giving Biden (or Trump). It's entirely possible- probable- that they were simply getting very bad intelligence at the base level, ie all their sources, the NATO trainers and the Afghans, thought that things were going to go far better than they did. Personally, I have little doubt that the US believed the Taliban were a lot weaker than they actually were because they've tended to avoid directly fighting NATO forces as much as possible- which was of course a sound strategy from them, but can easily lead to the belief that they won't/ can't fight any other way. Under those circumstances convincing yourself that even if your allied Afghans aren't that good they'll be good enough to last against a hit and run insurgency that will melt away at the first hint of a response isn't much of a stretch.

One suspects that the media may, at some point, remember that the withdrawal was originally a Trump policy which Biden just delayed before implementing. Of course, when the policy was popular and the ANA was going to hold out for months or years it was all Joe's idea, but they can just ignore that if they try really hard. The Taliban have generally been decent about actual prisoners- at least comparatively. Though if the comparison is to Abdul Rashid Dostum... Ismail Khan for example was captured by them last time too and held for two years instead of executed, and he was captured rather than executed this time. OTOH, those like Dostum who have some, hmm, history of unpleasantness to Talib prisoners, shall we say? are not likely to rest easy. They're probably more brutal overall when it comes to civilian prisoners than military ones. There will be inevitable score settling to come, but a lot of that will be intra and inter tribal utu for those who backed the wrong side. That at least was sensible. Last stands and heroic pointless resistance make for good movies, but Kabul had Hekmatyar lobbing artillery into it for years in the 90s and all it really achieved was setting the scene for the Taliban while killing thousands and destroying the city. They did have support from NATO, just not boots on the ground support. There were still a lot of airstrikes etc. But yeah, the design of the ANA was fundamentally broken for its intended role in its intended country. The contrast would be that it was too 'western' (centralised, basically) while the Taliban was decentralised and far more flexible as well as better motivated in general. Trying to transplant western military methods into different cultures doesn't really work that well even for countries willing to chuck trillions at it like Saudi Arabia. It was centralised to try and cut down on corruption and stop warlords from having personal fiefdoms, but it all it really meant was that the local military commanders (and soldiers to an extent) had little affinity for the regions they were commander of and the soldiers' wages were stolen by someone in Kabul instead of someone local (and usually the local doesn't steal from his own soldiers, as he needs and wants their loyalty). If the US were staying for another 20 years it could have worked, but if that wasn't realistic then it was setting the ANA up to fail. Does need to be said, there were plenty of ANA soldiers willing to fight, and many who did. Not much point continuing when you're 'obviously' going to lose though, and when your commanders are defecting. There was plenty of outright treachery going on, I mentioned Ismail Khan before who was organising the resistance in Herat a week ago, it fell when... the regional governor handed Khan over to the Taliban in return for amnesty. The equipment though was definitely particularly stupid. Humvees aren't an asset for the ANA, they're an encumbrance; awful to maintain, not particularly safe, use a ludicrous amount of fuel and are too big. In 99.9% of real world situation in Afghanistan you'd either need something with 'proper' armour like an APC (or tank), or it could be handled by a far cheaper and infinitely easier to maintain Toyota Hilux or equivalent. No neighbour can readily furnish western spares and equipment full stop except Pakistan. At least Americans can console themselves that an awful lot of the 2 trillion spent went towards weapon purchases from US suppliers, though they'd have been far more sensible to have spent less and just kept the soviet stuff if the end goal was a functional army.

Bold of anyone to think that we won't need more footnotes than just * and † the way things are going.

About every six months some politician here talks about how very interested our government is in B&R, nothing ever seems to progress beyond that though. There has been some push back against Chinese 'investors' not living up to the claims they've made in their Overseas Investment Commission applications recently though, with some divestments ordered. Not that that says much, if they bought a property for a million dollars last year even if forced to sell they'd make 300k average profit (albeit, subject to tax).

Yeah, agreed. Can't really blame a fact checker who has probably checked wikipedia for something, especially when it's a subject of (semantic) debate even between experts. The strongest argument for the Sky News AUs stuff is that it can cause actual harm, under the assumption that people believe they're getting a treatment when they aren't, and that's a way stronger argument than one for any meme about events 200+ years ago.

The Washington one is interesting because of the argument of variolation vs vaccination. That is definitely not the sort of thing that SM should be worried about on principle though, it's far too granular and semantic. End of the day it doesn't really matter whether variolation <-> vaccination or not since they both achieve the same end. It's the scientific equivalent of policing grammar. Personally I always try to refer to variolation as inoculation instead, since it prompts less arguments for some reason.

There's certainly plenty to dislike about B&R. I'd cite the general insistence on using Chinese labour instead of training locals and the dubious necessity of some projects to a list too. But, there shouldn't be an expectation of altruism from them, and you do get the infrastructure built even if it is a white elephant highway like Montenegro, the other classic example often cited. I put it in the same category as someone using credit card debt, it's fine if it's really necessary, but there's a responsibility on both the lender and borrower to be responsible in how they do it. Too many countries buying the equivalent of a big screen TV on credit then being surprised when the interest free period runs out and they have to start paying for it.

SNA didn't get deplatformed, they got video upload restricted for a week, which was more of a warning shot than anything else. Yeah, it's dodgy when social media sets itself up as judge, jury and executioner for what counts as misinformation, but media really shouldn't be touting unproven cures such as HCQ or ivermectin, and Murdoch outlets regularly touted both. I guess at least they're unlikely to do anyone taking them extra damage beyond not being the miracle cure that they might expect.

Yeah, in a data set of successful US nation building efforts consisting of a grand total of two it could be mere coincidence that they were both advanced, while the failures were considerably less so. Could be, but it's way more likely that the two successes weren't randomly advanced while the failures were less advanced. It might be true too that debt trap infrastructure loans are a great idea instead of the aid and grants the two successes received, but again it's far more likely to be the reverse- and that the loans are suggested instead for ideological reasons that have nothing to do with successful nation building. All you can do is look at the data you have, and that says 100% of successful nation building exercises were with already advanced nations. (I do agree that the US government should have been honest about the required costs or just have explicitly not gone in for nation building but to keep the fight offshore- but that isn't what they did, they explicitly went the nation building route. However, frankly, you might as well hope for Dr Manhattan to turn up in Afghanistan as wish for a long term deployment of 600k US soldiers there. If you're going to wish for the impossible, at least wish for the cheap impossibility) There isn't much the US could do except keep troops deployed. The ANA falling apart isn't really surprising, it's just the speed that is. You can't magic in esprit de corps. Having said that, there are obvious elements that the US could have improved on. The Najibullah government lasted years after the soviet withdrawal without significant help, and the Northern Alliance at least held a significant chunk of the country for years; neither were exactly corruption free and neither received massive foreign support (post 1989 for Najibullah, obviously). If there's one thing that really suggests that the US stuffed up it's the diplomatic facet. They can't get the government meaningful support from any of its neighbours which is a death sentence for most practical purposes; and you have former enemies of the Taliban- Iran*, China, Russia- tacitly supporting them now. Any government is going to struggle when all its neighbours want it gone, let alone a weak one. *I actually asked elsewhere about the Iranian militias since there was a prominent Hazara militia in Syria, and it seems they're armed and ready but not fighting the Taliban, and the Taliban aren't fighting them either. There's also been the rather weird phenomenon of the Taliban saying nice things about shia recently.

Yeah, you need more troops for better security, sure. But was there ever a realistic chance of the US/ NATO sending... ~600k troops to Afghanistan or 470k to Iraq though, especially for the time required? No, not any realistic one. If there was no realistic prospect of it arguing as if it was realistic is simply pointless. 60k troops in the middle of Europe is, well, an order of magnitude easier in multiple respects. The point about an 'advanced' society is that it doesn't become a non advanced one by being bombed for a few years or whatever. The culture is maintained, the education is maintained, the knowledge base is maintained. It takes time to get there, but it also takes time to drop back from there. That provides a far higher platform for recovery than not having that base Gotta be honest, there an awful lot of classic thinktankism there- common sense stuff coupled to doctrinaire assertions made for philosophical reasons. For example, what do 'reintegrated' Afghan fighters actually do- or is it just a way to make it sound like there's an easy solution to a complex problem? Pay them to sit around? Don't pay them and leave them unemployed, per Bremmer in Iraq? Prayer beads or mat weaving? You need an alternative to fighting or opium, and that's far easier to do with advanced countries where you can rely on a set knowledge base, literacy, numeracy etc to provide jobs. I'm also highly amused by them touting infrastructure improvements via loans, not grants, and not just because the Marshall Plan was almost exclusively grants. Loans for infrastructure, that approach cries out for a catchy name to sell it. Belt & Road, perhaps?

I'd have to disagree about women's issues being mission creep, it (in the context of Taliban extremism) was one of the more fundamental reasons given for intervention, behind terrorism. Whether it was practically attainable... look for an easier question to answer, because that one's hard. But if you aren't going to at least try there's not even the pretense of actual nation building going on and the blame for any collapse on western withdrawal shifts more towards nation building having not even been tried instead of having failed. If you wanted to show progress to people to justify continuation one of those measures is women's rights; and it's at least in theory one of the easiest to show progress in too. Just show girls actually going to school: massive improvement. That's also of course one of the things that c/would, longer term, alter the culture to a more receptive one to other western values that would make any further interventions unnecessary, and it is of course a worthy goal in its own right- if your goal is nation building you want 50% of your population to not be uneducated chattel. But that's also a super long term project- as below way more than even 20 years- as you really need a generational shift to educated parents who want all their children to be too. Yes there is, unless we're going to go to extremes in terms of defining cost and what a 'fundamental' difference is. Just for one Germany and Japan already had the vast majority- practically all- of their population educated, with education being culturally valued. In contrast Afghanistan has the vast majority of its population uneducated, and a culture that (largely) does not value education (except, to an extent Koranic studies). That's a monumental difference, and one that can only be changed gradually, on a generational level. Give the Japanese and Germans time and they could have rebuilt their country to a modern level, themselves, with all the teachers, engineers, factories etc supplied domestically- that's what the Marshall Plan less Soviets did, after all. Way easier of course with more outside help, but it's not necessary. You can't throw money at Afghans and have them suddenly educated to German or Japanese (or Bosnian, or Soviet) level though. You need trained teachers who can speak the language(s). You need parents who care and want their children educated. You need a societal structure that values knowledge. You need religious types who don't think science is a tool of shaitan. Or you need a strong state that believes education strengthens their control. Educating their populations and industrialising took the soviets and chinese ~40 years, and that with totalitarianism and a lot of excess baggage. But if you want imposed nation building in Afghanistan that is the reference time frame required, not the ~10 years for Germany and Japan post WW2; and that 40 years is a, hmm, 'best case' scenario for the Afghans where there is a strong national government. Bosnia is also a poor example of nation building, since it's not really 'nation' building. It was already 'advanced' as part of Yugoslavia, certainly compared to Afghanistan. It still has two parallel governments, and ultimate power rests in an externally imposed Bremmer style Vizier who isn't even Bosnian- you'd think that an essential part of being a nation is control of your own country rather than ultimate authority being vested in an EU Gauleiter. Given a free choice the Serbs areas would still join Serbia and the Croats would still join Croatia. If there was a free choice. The 20k surge was also 20k for a single province and on top of those already there, ie ~160k troops in total. Fundamentally we're in agreement on that in any case, not enough initially, not enough in the surge, not enough long term. The fundamental problem with all of this is one of arguing practicalities vs theoretics. Theoretically, the US could have sent 500k troops to Iraq or Afghanistan. Theoretically they could send a million. Theoretically they could stay in Afghanistan for 40 years. But if practically they can't/ couldn't then the theoreticals of it are of merely academic interest.

The fundamental problem with an argument for NATO staying in Afghanistan is the lack of improvement or any prospect of it. This collapse would have happened 5 years ago, or ten years ago. To put it in perspective, the supposedly reviled pro Soviet regime of Najibullah lasted ~3 years after the Soviet withdrawal, the Ghani government may not even make it to the point of US withdrawal. If they stayed for another twenty years, would there have been any difference? Probably not, if the ANA simply doesn't want to fight/ the Taliban is so strong and that doesn't change. It isn't really a troop numbers or money thing, at least within the realms of realistic expectations. Technically of course the US could have sent a million troops and spent a trillion dollars a year and it may have made a difference, but that was also never going to happen in any realistic scenario. Sending lots of troops has been tried before too, and all it did was suppress things (eg Soviet intervention, and The Surge in Iraq. Indeed, The Surge could only be sold by explicitly making it a short sharp shock type deployment intended to be temporary). Some of the things you really need like education and cultural mores cannot be given/ changed simply by throwing money or force at them. 'Nation building' has only worked in countries which were already what might paternalistically be called 'advanced' such as Germany and Japan, and the term is a bit of a misnomer as they both had a very strong national identity to start with. The only realistic argument to stay is the geopolitical one- better to fight your enemies overseas than at home and you don't want to surrender the whole region to your geopolitical enemies (along with the prestige hit of seeing a client collapse spectacularly). But if there's no improvement those costs are going to be paid at some point anyway.

Looks like Kandahar is taken now too- still nothing official, but the number of pro gov people saying there has been a 'tactical retreat' of ANA forces in the last hour or so is... significant, and precisely what has been the immediate precursor to other losses being announced. So that would potentially be the 2nd and 3rd largest city falling within a few hours of each other.

It's a good game and certainly worth playing. It's got enough differentiation from a standard city builder to be interesting on its own, and some strong narrative aspects in its scenarios (which are also its biggest weakness, because it's scripted there's a lot of scope and a certain amount of requirement that you game the system knowing what is coming). I'm not as wholesale in my praise as the average games journo was but I'd still solidly recommend it.

At this rate a week before the US leaves might be being generous. Two more provincial capitals fall in Afghanistan, including its 3rd largest city Herat. The only real positives, such as they are, are that Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif are still holding out so far. The government is clearly trying to do what the Iraqi government did with the Hashd/ PMU vs ISIS when their western trained army disintegrated by trying to arm the general populace. But there's no Iran or Soleimani equivalents in Afghanistan- or at least none on the government side as the obvious comparison would be Pakistan, for the Taliban- very little willingness among the ethnics to fight, only a small shia minority (also the only ethnic group willing to fight, and notably the Taleban have made little progress in Hazara areas) and due to the conservative nature of rural areas and the Taliban such recruits as they'll get will mostly be inexperienced urban types. Hashd/ PMU, and for that matter the Syrian rebels, worked because they already tended to have training from previous conscription.

Koreans, Tibetans (and Vietnamese for that matter) sure, but the mongols and turkics gave at least as good as they got, historically. Three out of five of the last dynasties of the 'Chinese' Empire were turkic or mongol, and the mongol invasion killed more people than WW1 (maybe WW2 or the Taiping/ Heavenly Kingdom rebellion too) at a time when the world's population was much lower. Not going to get any argument from me over them trying their luck with their neighbours now though, only observation I'd make is how monumentally stupid and counterproductive antagonising all your neighbours simultaneously is and how antagonising India specifically lead to far more damage than the possible benefit gained. Same with the wolf warrior diplomacy, plays well at home and seems effective there where the rhetorical playing field is so very slanted as you can just throw anyone disagreeing in jail, and it makes you feel strong. But it makes everyone else think you're a bit of a knob, at best. I thought you weren't going to talk modern politics? (If it is then so is the WB/ IMF. At least the B&R stuff goes into actual concrete projects; for most of their existence the IMF/ WB gave money to despots that they 100% knew would be simply stolen, to create a debt trap and prop up western friendly regimes via arms purchases etc)

I liked the original a fair bit, and while I had some issues with its 'morality' system it was a step up over This War of Mine in that respect.

Erdogan definitely tries to play the US and Russia against each other. He's not going to do any of the stuff that would really cut Turkey loose like quit NATO though, and the US has no desire to try and force them out when all they really have to do is wait for Erdogan's mistakes to catch up with him (and at the moment there's only ~5% between Erdo's AKP and the CHP in opinion polls). Same with Poland, whatever the issues are they'd prefer to wait them out if at all possible, and the issues aren't that serious compared to even just the S-400/ F-35 issue.

Poland is nowhere near the level where the US would cut them loose. Far too useful as a proxy in Europe and as a stalwart attack dog v Russia. (Compare with Turkey/ Erdogan, the US isn't anywhere near cutting them loose despite their shenanigans being a lot worse, for much the same reasons. Different leadership in either and the whole situation changes)

Eh, Ethiopia has a very strong sense of national identity. One of the few African countries that does. It just doesn't stop the different ethnics from fighting each other. That's especially true when the rebels are getting a lot of help from outsiders hoping they'll blow up the Grand Renaissance Dam. China had the largest economy nearly continuously from the 15th to the late 19th century, that's a fact. Largest GDP/c... probably not, but it would have been up there, and for the time period it's a... limited way to measure things*. Many of the apparent challengers actually had ludicrously small Gross DOMESTIC Products because they were colonial powers whose money was made overseas, indeed the lack of Gross DOMESTIC Product was precisely what sent Spain bankrupt a dozen times despite having massive amounts of New World gold flowing into the country. *Consider the British Empire. Exploited its colonies, starved 100 million Indians, and- if you include all its colonials- its GDP/c was pretty low. Wouldn't call the BE poor by any measure except that though. Or the Roman Empire. The economic conditions of the vast majority there were pretty awful, and it ran on literal literal slave labour. It was also incredibly rich in absolute terms.

Governor Deathantis, surely. It's even a homophone. If you've got a lisp.

Pretty much nothing new there even if they have got a tablet. Not like anyone's mercenaries are renowned for their adherence to the rules of war, that and the deniability factor are precisely why they are used instead of regular forces. You can also tell a lot by what has been left out. ie, no mention of Pantsirs. Because they were absolutely 100% documented as having come from a UAE purchase and supplied to Haftar along with Wagner operators. Of course, the UAE is a strong British ally, so the fact that it was them rather than Russia supplying and paying for Wagner in Libya is just a bit too inconvenient to bother mentioning.