Zoraptor

XeSS? ... Guess everybody at Intel pronounces Xe as 'ex ee' and nobody pronounces it as 'zee'.

4 new Tomb Raider releases: Legend, Anniversary, Underworld; Game of the Year (Reboot). Can get the 7 games available for a smidge over $10 total.

High viral load not necessarily correlating with symptoms and being found even in asymptomatic cases seems to be a bit of a 'delta thing'. Delta has caused high viral loads (usually still a-/ low symptomatic) even in (some) vaccinated people. Trouble with proving transmission from those people is that trying to isolate high viral loads but a-/ low symptomatic people as vectors when you can practically guarantee anyone has also been exposed to some random hacking their lungs out, and the contact tracing is either non existent or swamped.

But how can you continually smooth those skirts? RIP in peace any thoughts of a faithful book adaptation. Guess at least we may still get some braid tugging.

Anyone overly worried about the vaccines' emergency approval should just pretend it's a response to an earthquake instead and ask if they'd be shocked and appalled at how normal bureaucratic procedure isn't followed after one of those. There's a massive amount of bureaucracy that gets sidestepped in any emergency response. After an earthquake you don't want people living in tents for years because you're holding planning meetings, receiving submissions, then counter submissions, then writing the costs of repairs to water and sewerage into next year's budget and gazetting that for comment as you'd normally do. You side step all of that due to it being an emergency and fix the infrastructure without it being budgeted; but keep the stuff that is really important ie repairs and rebuilds must still be done to safety standards so next time there's an earthquake the house doesn't kill anyone living there. There are of course reasons for the extended time frame and extra bureaucracy which occurs under 'normal' circumstances but those reasons are extra safeguards for when there's the luxury of little time pressure.

Children under 12 are specifically excused from wearing masks here since it can be impossible to get them to keep them on. We now have 7 cases here, fortunately all the exposure sites are very low risk like, uh, a pub and restaurant while watching the All Blacks, a school (teacher), hospital (vaccinated nurse) and a casino. Not their fault of course since they wouldn't have had a clue about being infected. Oh well, time to tackle my gaming backlog plus get the garden organised for spring, for the next 3+ weeks. May I also say a fulsome 'thank you' to Gladys Berejiklian (premier of New South Wales in Ockeronia). I know New Zealand was once part of her state and is listed as a State itself in the Ocker constitution, but I would have been perfectly happy if she hadn't included us in her plan to spread delta throughout the commonwealth. And she had the fricking index case there and did nothing for over a week.

She's not wrong. Niqab/ burka is cultural, not religious, and you're only 'meant' to cover the hair (indeed the specific Koranic guidance is that you're not allowed to cover the face during the Hajj, so niqab/ burka are banned there).

From the 'aged like milk files: Ashraf Ghani: fixing failed states Ashraf Ghani: Preparing for a Syrian Transition but unfortunately this masterpiece from all the way back on Feb 15 1989 doesn't seem to be available online...

You can make a vaccine that theoretically works in an afternoon- that's literally how long it took to do the theory on the Oxford vaccine, literally on a napkin. It's always the trials that take the time. Most big name viruses have a vaccine unless they're too mild or rare to care about, HIV would be the biggest one that doesn't, but that's also an unusual virus in that it specifically targets the immune system itself. The directed response to a novel pathogen (eg a new virus) takes time, that's why vaccines exist since they stimulate the immune system, and make it so the pathogen is recognised. It's also why vaccines don't work immediately. It would be incorrect to say that there's no immune response prior to that though, there's a swag load of responses you inherently get to anything new (including things like pus around wooden splinters), they're just not directed specifically at it and thus less efficient.

Previously I would have said that excluding the Afghan government from negotiations was moronic, but after their recent performance I'm way less sure about that. And yeah, if the US wanted support for the Afghan government from a neighbour it would have to be Pakistan. It would have to be a pretty big offer to get them on board though, and chances are that anything significant enough would alienate India (Modi) who Trump had been courting extensively. OTOH, too much pressure would drive them to make a deal with India's other regional enemy, China. So, not easy to balance at all.

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.