Zoraptor

About 90% sure that Bioware said they did body scans for both Strahovski and the reporter (Jessica Chabot?). Kind of funny how far they'd run from using that as a marketing point today. Pretty sure they'd have used 3D laser scanning (~LIDAR) for the body scans as they do for a lot of CGI work in films, while reference points are just for motion capture. Both have a bad case of bethesda face, but the bits that require less resolution are a lot better. Laser scans produce far more data than can practically be used, so they'd have had to reduce the resolution down and probably did it non selectively which would disproportionately effect areas that require high res like the face.

Bit closer to market price ended up as the same as Germany was paying which given the income disparity was decidedly pricey for Ukraine. Then again, they'd provably stolen something like 12 billion m^3 (!) of gas and it will have been multiple times that considering how short the period examined was, so hard to have too much sympathy. After that and the cut off there was a bit of a cycle of up/ down prices and up/down transit fees, some more significant problems in 2014 and not much else except for them suing each other. Theoretically Ukraine doesn't buy Russian gas any more, they buy it from their western neighbours instead (who, of course, are mostly supplied by Russia so Polish etc taxpayers end up subsidising Ukraine's gas prices...). The MSN article originally linked is pretty rubbish. They somehow- not sure how, since it's pretty obviously relevant- neglect to mention that Ukraine has guaranteed transit amounts for at least the next 3 years, and with an option to extend for another decade. Well OK, I am sure how, if you're writing outright propaganda that is exactly the sort of thing you have to leave out or avoid finding out, or you have to end up admitting that the point of the sanctions you're bemoaning not being enforced was really to try and get people to buy US gas rather than any concern for Ukraine.

The Nord Stream 2 sanction regime was always going to fail, because it wanted to impose costs on Germany especailly to further an exclusively US foreign policy goal (note, I don't count Baltics and Poland getting a chub at Russia being discomfited as an actual foreign policy goal). Merkel has never been supportive of Ukraine in the same way that the US has, and reiterated during Maidan and since that the politicians saying Ukraine would join the EU as a matter of course were lying. She's also a lot more realistic about exactly what Ukraine's behaviour entailed than the US- like Yulia Timoshenko going from owning a VHS rental store to multi billionaire in a few years when she got her hands on the gas concession. The blatant theft and graft of Ukrainian leaders wasn't just costing itself or Russia, it cost down stream partners as well who ultimately had to pay for the gas filched. Hilarious though thinking about the US reps who actually thought Europe would opt for massively overpriced imported US gas, despite there being no infrastructure at all for it and it being, well, ludicrously expensive. Biden is just accepting that the US played its cards and lost, world would be a lot better if countries behaved that way more often and didn't dig in just for the principal of it. Qatar got too big for its boots. Its citizen population is minute, but it's very rich. MbS was by most accounts planning on a literal invasion and annexation, not just sanctions and a blockade. Stopped by Turkey mostly, but also because the US would not approve it due to having an absolutely massive base there (which quite apart from the negative appearance of allowing an invasion would have to go as there was no US basing allowed in Saudi) Pretty much anything about MbS can be explained as him being the ultimate trust fund baby- never had any consequences for his mistakes previous, so had a massively inflated sense of his won competence and no idea of how others would react when they weren't directly beholden to him. See also: Yemen and the break up of the alliance with the UAE, and somehow managing to run Saudi Arabia's economy at a persistent deficit. Hamas is basically Ikhwan (Brotherhood), which is Sunni. Iran is Shia. The main Ikhwan backers are Turkey and Qatar, both of which were vehemently opposed to Assad. So Hamas betrayed Assad and Iran and sided with the Syrian rebels which had a sizeable Ikhwan component (indeed the last major uprising in Syria previous was Ikhwan), while other Palestinian groups didn't, indeed one of the more effective pro government groups was Liwa Al Quds, a palestinian formation. To this day Hamas has zero presence in Syria as a result. So far as I am aware the last time any comment was made about rapprochement it was dismissed extremely undiplomatically by the Syrians. Doesn't stop Iran selling weapons to Hamas though, and they maintain supplies to some of the smaller non Hamas groups too. They're Sunni Muslims who believe in Political Islam. By most measures they're more moderate than the typical salafi supported by Saudi or the west, not that that's saying much, but Political Islam is a threat to most of the monarchies and dictatorships of the region, so it's suppressed due to 'terrorism'. Their aim is the same as any other party really, to attain power. They're not particularly concerned about how to do it, but then in that region no one really is. Theoretically they kind of support democracy, but only the sort of democracy that could be relied upon to elect the 'right' person all the time.

Yes, the vast majority of Hamas rockets are 100% home grown and machined in Gaza, like the Qassam. That's why they're so inaccurate. That's also why there are so many of them and they cost a ludicrously small amount, by some estimates as little as $300, to make. One of the more amusing things about the whole situation is watching people who crap bricks about Iran's rockets simultaneously claim that 30% of rockets launch crash in Gaza (and get blamed for all the politically inexpedient casualties*) and are supplied by Iran. Pick one, either Iran is supplying the rockets, and their rocket program is therefore garbage, or they aren't. In reality Iran's rocket program is pretty good and a definite threat. They hit Al Asad airbase about as precisely as you can get with ballistic missiles, and temporarily crippled KSA's oil infrastructure while making it very obvious they could do it a lot more permanently if they wanted to. Hamas bottle rockets aren't in the same league precisely because they aren't Iranian. Iran is not much of an actual supporter of Hamas any more, they mostly sell them arms now paid for by Qatar (hence Israel's hard on for blowing up Al Jazeera offices). They fell out very badly, and in terms of being actual friends, pretty permanently, when Hamas decided to stab Assad in the back in Syria. Obviously it's a lot easier to blame Iran for everything rather than a US ally though, but it is also part of the Ikwhan (Muslim Brotherhood; Turkey and Qatar practically) v Saudi Arabia bloc conflict much like the coup against Morsi in Egypt was, and a way for them to contrast their support for Palestinians with Saudi and friends supine stance. *Interesting stats, as weapon precision has got better Israel has killed proportionally more civilians rather than less, and kills more civilians as a percentage than WW2 which had genocide, nukes, firebombing, Japan in China, Germany in USSR etc. They've also killed around twice as many civilians, proportionally, as the Syrian Civil War. Yes, really. Long term friends, nah, but MbS is desperately trying to extricate himself from troubles now and that requires detente with Iran which is the best that can be expected. He at least is pretty resigned to the JCPOA being reinstated prior to the Iranian elections. Hilarious watching early interviews where he and his foreign minister were saying that they didn't need to even talk to Iran because "they aren't even arab". Trust fund baby getting a dose of reality.

Claiming the building housing the AP for 15 years was also a Hamas HQ shows a certain amount of, uh, chutzpah. Even more amusing, I've seen Hasbara claiming the roof was being used to fire rockets, when it was mostly used for AP/ Al Jazeera live reporting and it would literally be impossible to have used it for such. Considering Israel also targeted the building housing AlJ in 2014 I suspect there's some 'suggesting' going on about the advisability of hosting Al Jazeera in your building if you want it to remain undamaged. Not like Israel needs to be worried about punishment for war crimes after all.

Well, if they thought coverage was biased before... Nice to know that Joe Biden has phoned Mahmoud Abbas about the violence. Might as well have phoned me for all the good that will do.

lol. British tabloid takes on international affairs are always hilarious in a hick racist uncle type way, and somehow their 'experts' always have the very hottest of hot takes. There's plenty to legitimately complain about in China's attitude to Taiwan, but this ain't it. Taiwan's ADIZ literally extends over mainland China, including a city of 8 million people (Fuzhou). ADIZ also have literally zero legal standing, are self proclaimed and are routinely ignored by everyone except the country proclaiming them. And Bhutan, and the Philippines, and Vietnam, and more but OK. lol, you named them, and they're all its neighbours. All to the east and south too, so it isn't even around the country, let alone the world. Uh yeah. In the situation that Australia has sent troops to fight the PLA it's not really a 'punishment' situation to hit targets in Australia, it's called being in a war with each other. No kidding they should have a plan to hit Australia in response, no doubt they have a plan already, for that. All I can really think of at to why this would be in the least bit surprising instead of blindingly obvious is because fights have typically been picked with those incapable of effectively fighting back instead of, well, China which most definitely can. There's one or two steps between canceling port management contracts and whacking massive tarriffs on barley and China lobbing Long March rockets at Ramsay St or whatever though, just one or two.

Yeah, while Netanyahu may be particularly blatant about it he's far from the first right wing Israeli politician to deliberately stir up ethno-religious troubles for political gain. Ariel Sharon- previously forced to resign as Defence Minister due to complicity in genocide against Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon- did the same thing in 2000*, to provoke a reaction that would favour him electorally. *plus ça change, plus ça même chose x2: Bibi was under investigation for corruption all the way back then too.

They've got a few guided ones now it seems, or they've been extremely lucky with a couple of hits. Vast majority are still unguided though.

Amazing how the latest round of Israel/ Palestine broke out so close to Lapid being offered a chance to form a government instead of Netanyahu. Barely 3 days after Bibi lost his mandate and the Israeli Police were storming the Temple Mount and injuring hundreds, so very coincidentally making it impossible for Lapid to get a majority via Arab parties. Man would do literally anything to avoid seeing the back of a prison cell, including provoking yet another pointless conflict to boost his popularity via Rally Round the Flag. This time the damage is likely to be even worse thanks to the significant inter communal violence in Israel proper. I strongly suspect he'll try pulling an Erdogan and get the Israeli Arab political parties banned again for 'disloyalty' before the next election.

Firstly, ANC actually received extensive training from Libya and the IRA. Being 'terrorists' doesn't stop you also being freedom fighters, you're just way more likely get labelled as terrorist if you're going against the interests of the group doing the labeling. In the ANC's case that was its association with the SACP, with western powers still tacitly supporting South Africa because it was a bulwark against communism. Secondly, Hamas didn't even exist in the 70s. It was established- with support by Israel- as a counter to the PLO, in the late 80s. They could theoretically have supported the ANC for... maybe a year. Thirdly, that's irrelevant to South Africa or the ANC. Israel and apartheid era RSA literally had military agreements and sanction busting military supply- including, allegedly, a nuke for uranium swap- so thinking that they'd just decide to swap sides to the one selling their oppressors the guns used to oppress them is laughable. Tough noogies for Israel, might have been different if they'd been on the right side of history instead of propping up white supremacists. Finally, it's still no surprise that the ANC hates all the apartheid like things Israel does, and there are a multitude of reasons for them supporting the Palestinians- and splitter groups like the EFF* are only more radical, not less. Any expectation that they'd support Israel against its version of the ANC is laughable. *not the US group supporting internet freedom

Yeah, the thought that a South African really cannot think of a single reason why the ANC etc supports the Palestinians is... incredible, in the old sense. If nothing else the ANC got plenty of training from the PLO etc. RSA also had the ethnic specific roads, bantustans etc which Israel has well within living memory. They're also not going to be particularly concerned with terrorist designations and the like when a certain prominent ANC leader was considered a terrorist until, er, 2008.

Ah yes, the days of the 'paired' disaster movies like Dante's Peak/ Volcano and Sudden Deep Impact/ Armageddon. Weird how despite theoretically being similar reactions differ so much. I liked Dante's Peak a fair bit as stupid schlock entertainment, can't remember a single thing about Volcano or Deep Impact but have definitely seen both, and the sort of out of scope negative reaction some have for Twister (or I guess, Ice Age) is exactly what I have for Armageddon. I know objectively it's just a big dumb disaster movie exactly like many others, but it manages to offend me in just about every way possible. Indeed, Armageddon would have been infinitely improved had it been paired with Sudden Impact instead. Kind of wish I could wangle Event Horizon/ Starship Troopers into the paired movie theme too, there's always one person determined to take both of them completely seriously despite the cast producing more ham than the Chinese pig industry.

I've never seen Twister personally, but especially outside the US a lot of people see it as being the ultimate generic/ formulaic US disaster movie. Based on what I've been told the main objection is... I'd kind of compare it to the hatred 'american cheese' (as in the 'dairy' slices typically used in burgers etc, not kitsch originating in the US) gets. Objectively it's inoffensive and bland, but for some that loops right around and becomes actively offensive. There are two types of people in this world, people who like AotC and people who are wrong.

Dunno, Russia and Putin seems to be living rent free in a fair few people's heads. But since you seem desperate for a counter view and I already had the figures needed at hand... Russia has pretty clearly been under reporting covid deaths significantly. Excess death stats are kind of silly and inaccurate- if we got by them covid brought people back to life in NZ instead of causing deaths, for example- but it's pretty clear that a six figure number should have been added to Russia's death toll, the only real disputation is how high that six figure number is. Fundamentally I'd be skeptical (heh) of suggesting any foul play at work when someone is suffering from covid, since a major potential symptom is Delirium. And that covers 2/3 of the cases in Raithe's article. The 3rd, yeah, just a tad suspicious, if the facts given are accurate. Dunno if they should be counted as suicide, or misadventure, or covid if caused by hyperactive covid delirium, but while Russia's suicide rate has declined around 70% since the 1990s it's still one of the highest in the world. Especially so for men where it was world #1 as recently as 2016; and that before the added stress of covid. You'd expect 2 Russian healthcare workers a day to kill themselves by simple statistics, and you'd have to assume that the rate would be higher for such a stressful occupation and time.

What will be interesting to see if all the people who were recently shocked and appalled at Chinese ethnic cleansing, settlement and oppression in Xinjiang will be similarly upset at Israeli ethnic cleansing, settlement and oppression in Palestine. Somehow, I suspect not.

Technically SWIFT is European. Based in Belgium, iirc. Thoroughly compromised by the NSA though, and frankly, if they were the only ones I'd be extraordinarily surprised. So it going would be great since it's pretty useless and hopelessly insecure, if it weren't for the fact that a replacement would also be specced by the sort of people who think building backdoors into everything is a great idea. Russia and China have supposedly had an alternative ready to go for years.

Myanmar and Burma are the same word more or less. Effectively it's like the Marathi Bombay -> Mumbai or Bengali Calcutta -> Kolkata crossed with Holland/ Netherlands. Please follow the rules of the internet and mention Foundations of Geopolitics and how it explains everything about Russia when mentioning that name.

Nope, the original criticism was: .."one of their rockets is going to crash. Quality control and safety are not words that can be attributed to Chinese industry".. and that's a direct quote with only the emphasis added. If it were quality control only I might- probably couldn't have been bothered- have pointed out that (allegedly at least) the Chinese rocket is actually Working As Designed; so it isn't a QC problem but is a safety one, to whit, what it's designed to do is dangerous. None of the situations I listed except the SpaceX one were QC issues- unless the Chinese rocket failed its reiginition in which case it would be directly equivalent to the SpaceX situation where the Falcon failed its reignition. But the allegation at least is that it simply isn't able to reignite. Sure, but not in the same no fault way that, say, a shuttle being hit by a meteorite or untracked space debris would be. (Both disasters were caused by known issues and could have been avoided, in the case of Challenger really should have been avoided too. Neither were really quality control issues though, the prior night's temperature was known to be out of spec for the O rings on Challenger and the launch should have been delayed as a result, but wasn't. Definitely fair to call it a safety issue though. With Columbia both the booster foam and insulation tiles were within specification, the specs were just insufficient and known to be insufficient too so again, a safety problem. The only bad design aspect of Skylab was not having a mechanism for controlled descent as, for example, Mir had, but since it lacked that it was also fundamentally unsafe same as a reignition less Chinese rocket would be, but yeah, neither are QC issues)

HD was, as always, trolling and it's absolutely obvious if you have any background in the subject; there was no bait to take because his 'pro China' stance is entirely predicated on getting knee jerk responses for his own amusement. The beauty about it is that he also manages to troll in such a way that anyone who is actually pro China gets riled too- and probably ends up admitting to all sorts of crappy stuff that actually did happen while trying to correct the inaccuracies. That too is obvious, if you have any background in the subject. Kills the 'beauty' of it a bit to explain, but... it wasn't a Xinjiang uprising, 20 million didn't die (that's the estimate for those displaced), 20 million couldn't have died in a Xinjiang uprising in the 19th century because it's very cold and very arid and the population was almost entirely nomadic herders; its current pop is only 25 million after massive settlement programs. It also wasn't instigated by the British, who at the time were busy propping up the Qing against the aforementioned Heavenly Kingdom. Apart from the last, pretty basic stuff really if most people's knowledge of Xinjiang wasn't #stopkony2012 tier slacktivism; and even the last might beg the question of how the Brits were instigating anything several thousand km away from their bases, up against the Russian border. But if you explain how it's wrong you end up explaining that China actually 'only' murdered around 4 million muslims and depopulated two states (neither Xinjiang, and both predominantly Han Chinese; the Xinjiang depopulation actually came a century earlier) prior to what is currently happening in Xinjiang now. So on one hand you potentially catch a bunch of knee jerking sinophobe gwailos taking everything at face value, on the other you potentially get wumao admitting to China slaughtering millions previously to correct the erroneous 20 million claim. Win win.

Sigh. I mean, we could go back to Skylab crashing over Australia- at the risk of it being labeled 40 year old whataboutism, I guess- or bits of the Space Shuttle distributing itself over NM, AZ and TX, but we really don't need to. The same thing happened literally a month a go (OK, not literally literally a month ago, in happened in... March) to SpaceX. The reality is that space is hard and doesn't pick sides based on geopolitical prejudices. Not bad, not bad at all. Triggers those who know nothing about the subject, also triggers those who do know something about it. (For anyone wondering: Dungan Revolt. Bonus contemporaneous war that killed more than WW1 but you've never heard of: Taiping (Heavenly Kingdom) Rebellion)

For anyone who doesn't think Bruce is spouting rubbish, (1) the US still has an export ban* (2) it has an export ban on vaccines it hasn't even approved, eg Astra Zeneca (3) it has enough vaccines to vaccinate everyone eligible, already- the stockpile has only increased since January so has outstripped demand for 4 months even when demand was peak *which at least they're waiving for expiring stocks of vaccine- and less credibly, to try and stop people using Russian or Chinese vaccines (ie the at cost Pfizer delivery to Brazil) Which is eminently sensible in general, but it's also part of the reason why the US can support suspending patents, now. In contrast, the EU's home grown vaccines aren't online yet (except German BioNTech production, and labeling J&J as Janssen) so having their patents suspended would mean that they actively lose money on research etc. For anyone terrified for the bottom lines of Pfizer et alia consider that the EU is looking to buy 1.9 billion doses from them. At the lowest charging rate that's ~20 billion in profit that Pfizer would not have had. At the rate they charged Israel it would be ~40 billion in profit. My heart bleeds for them at least as badly as it does for some anonymous indian peasant in Bihar hacking their lungs out.

The guy in charge of Stadia also left Google/ Alphabet this week, which is step 4 on google's 'product about to be cancelled' checklist.

Yep, similar to the situation with the AstraZeneca/ Oxford vaccine where it was designed at Oxford but licensed to AstraZeneca to make, except BioNTech does have some production capacity of its own in Germany and there's no requirement for the vaccine to be sold as not-for-profit with their partner, which the AZO agreement has. So while AstraZeneca makes no money from it Pfizer manufactures something like 95% in their partnership, and it's almost entirely on a for profit basis. At cost is ~11USD per dose judging by what they charged Brazil, so they're marking up by 90%- at least- to others.

Won't someone think of the poor pharmaceutical companies and their bottom lines? Poor old Pfizer, having had their research paid for by the German government, their vaccine indemnified against side effects and selling their vaccine at a bargain basement 50 75USD per person to most of the rich world when without the pandemic they'd have still been trying to rely on their triangular grow it big pill for sales. How will their CEO afford his 3rd private Caribbean Island of the year if Biden and the WHO get their way? (Wanting to waive patents is nice, but it's no loss for US companies. Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines are fundamentally too expensive and the control on them is being able to buy the lipids and nucleotide base ingredients; and Pfizer in particular already has deals with everyone they can reasonably expect to sell to given their high price and exotic storage requirements. The only US vaccine effected would be J&J- or Janssen, in Eurospeak)