Zoraptor

Lots of moves towards blocking vaccine exports. Apart from the US (already in place) and Europe's moves towards it India has also implemented a ban as of today. Which will, ironically, further cut the EU's supply since the EU had whined its way into getting supplies that were meant to be going to low income countries- and are again now they're staying in India. Attempts to increase production by waiving patents are also being blocked by the usual suspects- UK, Europe, US. Ironically- or not- the countries that have been accused of 'vaccine diplomacy' have supported patents being waived despite that effecting their vaccines as well*. Indeed, mRNA vaccines won't get manufactured by 3rd parties even without patent protection since they're too complicated and require specialised equipment, storage and supplies; it will be the 'vat grown' ones that will be. Ironically, the Oxford vaccine would have been open source if not for Bill Gates insisting that it not be.

I guess that means we'll get an admission that an Israeli F35 was hit in Syria in... 20 years time then.

It appears that as demanded by the British press- at least prior to everyone piling on their vaccine instead of the Russian one- Vladimir Putin has had his first Sputnik shot. Those two ought to do something at least. The big problem is that the only way to get the money to buy a house is to already own one- or have your parents own one- since you can borrow against both. A lot of property speculators in NZ chain purchases and have multi million dollar mortgages so are cash poor despite being asset rich and owning multiple million dollar properties. They absolutely rely on the tax breaks because they simply don't have the cash to pay tax, annual tax bills of 30k are going to be extremely hard to pay. Inevitably they will try to pass the cost on to their tenants, but they simply won't be able to make 200$ p/w increases to cover costs. Then, when they come to sell they'll have to pay ~200k as a lump sum. I'm not a massive fan of our government's previously feeble response, but these measures should have the intended effect. Won't send the investors to debtors prison, but applies a certain cost for their rampant speculation, over leveraging and consistent rent gouging. That piece is literally hours old, the announcement was less than a day ago.

My sister lives in Australia, she'd literally have to sell both her houses there to buy a smaller one here, and take a wage cut of 20% too. Realistically the only way- literally- to buy a house is if you already own one and can borrow against that or at very very least aren't paying rent, hence the biggest buyer sector at the moment is- literally- people who already own 6+ houses and can leverage those properties for borrowing. If you're trying to buy a house you're spending ~25k on rent if you're lucky, need to save ~20k to keep up with the deposit's appreciation alone, and that on a median wage of 70k, before tax. For the typical person that leaves 5k to spend on everything else. Then they wonder why the economy is tanking despite all the money printing and low interest rates. Actually, there was some progress today. If you were a property investor you could (lol) write off borrowing costs including interest against tax- which of course a normal mortgagee could not. That has been removed, but up until literally today if you were a property investor you typically paid, literally, no tax on either those 30% p/a capital gains nor on the rent you charged the serfs renting your land. Oh yeah, coincidentally, the average number of properties owned by the average New Zealand MP is 3+ even without counting those hidden away in trusts etc- and there is a grand total of one MP in parliament who doesn't own a house.

Mad Max released. (Not the linux version, as Feral hates DRM free)

Dunno, his foreign policy strikes me as pretty close to what you'd expect if there was another/ 3rd term Obama/ Biden/ Kerry administration, with a few exceptions. There's lots of virtue signalling to show how different he is from Trump, not much actual action and mostly a rhetorical return to status quo ante, and we got some pretty obvious stupidities like the- somewhat- ludicrous statement that MbS would not be sanctioned for Khashoggi because "the US does not sanction foreign leaders". Which is news to a lot of foreign leaders, and precisely the sort of thing that Obama got himself into trouble with (eg his 'red line' in Syria, which turned out to be a kind of hazy squiggle). Stopping support for genocide in Yemen isn't exactly the bravest move in the world, and is far more of a return to Obama's policy rather than a punishment. The big difference is probably Iran, where Biden has actually maintained Trump's policy over Obama's, while saying he isn't. Despite the US abrogating the treaty completely unilaterally and having admitted Iran was following it Biden wants Iran to return to full compliance before the US does, and renegotiate it too. That's absolutely 100% what Trump's policy was, to all practical purposes- Iran must continue to keep following the treaty we broke, while we ignore it and add multiple new conditions as and when we want. Pretty stupid approach if he actually wants the deal reinstated in any form, as Iran has elections in a few months that the reformists will lose spectacularly having had their cornerstone achievement crapped all over by the US like a coeliac eating a wheat vindaloo. Good luck getting anything at all out of a conservative government, but then that may well be the idea, so hands can be thrown up and claims can be made that Iran rejected the deal the US reneged on. Should also be said, for all the treaties Trump reneged on only a very few- one?- have been reinstated by Biden like Paris. JCPOA, INR, Open Skies etc have all gone bye bye permanently, by all indications.

Even if it were a serious request I wouldn't even consider it momentarily. Covid is one thing, but anyone wanting to avoid that is infinitely better going to, and may Allah smite me for saying the word, Australia. I couldn't in good conscience advise anyone to move to NZ until they fix the housing market appreciating at 30%+ p/a (who would a thunk no capital gains tax and zero interest rates would result in that? Only those with a functioning brain and IQ above ambient temperature, which apparently describes no one at Treasury or in Government here) and at 20x the average annual wage, before tax. Rents up 30%, wages up 1%, and 'experts' are baffled why the economy is in recession despite the housing bubble. Easy answer, 50% of the population has had their disposable income reduced by having to pay rent increases which are then used to repay the banks rather than being spent in actual businesses. So stimulus, much economic activity etc etc. Oh well, you know what they say; there is only one type of person who believes in infinite growth in a finite system: economists, politicians, and idiots and they'll ride the bubble all the way down to oblivion.

Yeah, the problem with many of the DC movies seems to be that they're conceived when the current zeitgeist is one thing, then finished when it's moved on to something else. Then it tests badly with audiences, and tinkering begins to hammer a square movie into round perceived audience appeal. So you end up with something like Suicide Squad, a disjointed non sensical mess that would almost certainly have been better either without or with much less tinkering. OTOH WW84 probably needed some more supervision to hammer out its issues, but didn't get it. You probably have to blame the executives for that, since they're ultimately the ones in charge but it certainly is a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't.

They say that because their options are (1) Russia did it! or (2) the pilot got pressured into landing by the President's staff, and against the advise of the Russian ATC, and flew far too low. One is Russia's fault, the other is due to their President's intransigence and pilot's mistakes. Easy choice to make, especially if you're twin brother to one of the dead. For anyone wondering: 2010 Smolensk air disaster. There's a pretty good episode of Mayday/ Air Crash Investigation on it too which I can recommend.

They don't have to agree on everything. Even when they were on good terms there were disagreements, they were just kept in house a lot more than under Trump. The US and EU have different interests, but that doesn't mean they have to be enemies. In the long term that there will be a permanent split, but that's just the inevitable nature of history. In the end the EU is deeply risk averse with a lot of decision making inertia, and in the short to medium term a split from the US is way too risky. As always it depends on the initiative- if the US was relying on say Britain or Poland to push their agenda, alone, then they were never in a great position anyway, when the EU relies on consensus for many decisions. You can still be friends- or at least friendly- with countries that you disagree with on some things and both blocs still have plenty of common interests and a lot invested in maintaining the general status quo of world affairs. End of the day the EU and US supported each other on the vast majority of things even under Trump, it was just that the differences started being made public.

So, the EU had been threatening to block vaccine exports to the UK, including making (false) allegations that the UK has an export ban- in actuality they just got a guaranteed delivery contract instead of the EU stupidly going for a 'best effort' one because they thought they'd have domestic offerings. The response from Pfizer has been to point out that they receive critical ingredients from the UK, and any reciprocation of ban would see the EU with way less vaccine rather than more. Pretty much sums up the overall competence of the EU's response- make an empty threat backed up with outright lies, when the vaccine you're relying on requires ingredients from the country you're threatening. And they seemingly didn't have a clue that that's the case despite vaccines being perhaps the single most important acute need strategic resource on the planet at the moment. The previous crop of EU appointees weren't exactly inspiring except the thoroughly competent Mogherini, but the current crop are making them look like Solon.

Yep. A permanent break could have happened if Trump had been reelected but still would have required something like NATO breaking up to add that permanence. As it is it's pretty easy for a Biden US and Europe to go back to status quo ante Trump even by something as simple as not actively sniping at each other and keeping disagreements in house more.

An online gaming tournament between various Presidents and Prime Ministers would certainly give new meaning to the term Leader Board. The thought of Jacinda Ardern gibbing noobs while spamming #BeKind and #Aroha in chat fills me with a certain amusement. Though if rumours are true Kim Jong Un would almost certainly win even without the Best Korea stereotype.

Funnily enough the reason for offering the debate is exactly the same as the reason for Biden calling Putin a 'killer', ie playing to the audience. Make yourself look strong, and your enemy look weak. Biden draws a line under perceived Trumpian weakness towards Russia, Putin knows that Biden won't debate him... back for round 2 in a couple of years/ months/ weeks. Any other interpretation of either man's position is fabulism. And no, no one underestimates a mark's ability to be duped, especially when they're hearing something they desperately want to be true. Hence people actually believing- well OK, to forestall argument, on this forum just posting articles and defending such articles literally for years, purely as an academic exercise that expressed no personal belief- that Russia would be bankrupt in 6 months back in 2014.

As speculated on in the previous thread Turkey is now moving to ban the Kurdish HDP party in the wake of their disastrously inept attempt to increase Erdogan's popularity and maybe as a secondary aim rescue some prisoners from the PKK. Strange, 'real' Kurds are happy in Turkey and don't support the terroristler PKK because they have Kurdish language TV, according to Erdogan, yet the parties they vote for should also be banned for... supporting the PKK. Hmm.

The trials for Sputnik are as good as any approved vaccine except, ironically, the AZ one and have been peer reviewed by western academics plus published in The Lancet. Ironically ironic, a lot of the criticism of AZ comes from them being far more detailed with their information than anyone else including Pfizer, Moderna and J&J; and people mining that data for criticisms (eg the whole "can't use on over 65s" is not because it didn't work, but because not enough in the control got covid for that demographic. Couldn't tell if that were the case with others though, as the stats aren't detailed enough). At this point criticism of Sputnik is 100% FUD, unless you're criticising the others for the same things, and it has the best balance of efficacy and cost of any of them- and loses out marginally only to the J&J one when it comes to practicality due to that one requiring a single dose.

The common factor with all the bad Gothics was JoWood's publishing. Neither G3 nor its add on was in close to a finished state but got pushed out the door anyway. Gothic 4 was a pretty abject attempt to hijack/ rebadge the IP to ArcaniA since they were going to lose it back to PB. Sure, but we're game players and not managerial MBA types. If you wrote a shorthand list of the attributes of the typical Gothic game and the typical TES game on a piece of paper they'd appear almost identical, to someone who hasn't actually played them. They're both open world single person non party RPGs, how dissimilar could they be...

I think they did that literally ten minutes after I posted, so it was probably my fault. Not likely to be a badly manufactured batch, the relevant European regulations are extremely strict. If it's a 'bad batch' improper post production storage, improper dosing/ training, or- at a pinch- deliberate tampering would be far more likely causes. They're all far less likely than other explanations though.

In theory Gothic has got all the attributes of a Bethesda game done far better, except for actually being a Bethesda game. As with most publishers, Nordic suits want the next Skyrim, and a Gothic remake is a cheap way to try for it. That's also why we won't get a faithful remake by a passionate developer; because a faithful remake would be niche and ignore all the 'advances' of the past 20 years.

I liked most of the NPCs overall, though there was one in particular that really dragged things down with his elitism, snarkiness, silly pointy ears, dumb class and [redacted] conduct in the final battle. Indeed, I think I've never had such a negative reaction to a collection of dialogue trees applied to a digital image. Yep, I don't like Sand.

Fair call, not all the national health agencies have followed the herd despite there being quite a lot of pressure to and those that haven't deserve credit too.

It's actually kind of worse than antivax, since these people are meant to be scientists capable of checking facts and with intrinsic credibility while the average antivaxxer is worried about falling off the side of the earth if they walk too far in a straight line. Example text for anyone running into the NYT paywall (w/ emphases mine) So the exact same symptoms/ effects come from both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines as well. Indeed: So it also occurs not just with other covid vaccines, but with vaccines in general including non covid ones. Ho hum, or it would be if it wasn't so utterly irresponsible and stupid. Any day now one of the antivaxxers blessed with the ability to read will draw exactly the same conclusion, and apply the 'danger' of the AZ vaccine to vaccines in general- and those idiot experts have provided perfect ammunition to argue that if AZ is suspended then all vaccines should be. Can't believe I'm going to say this but the only body coming out of this with a scintilla of credit in Europe is the EMA, the national ones are having a follow the moron stampede.

Ironically the figures from the UK suggest that Pfizer is more likely to cause blood clots than AZ, albeit marginally and within statistical margin of error. In reality neither does, statistically both show lower blood clot prevalence than expectation from general population. Therefore if we took the reasoning to its logical conclusion the vaccines actually lower clot risk slightly and you should take them regularly for that purpose... Not really of course, but you can do anything with statistics if you're motivated enough. The more detailed justification used for the AZ suspension is that the clots are of an unusual type and there's some interference with platelet function, eg the German justification: Couple of notes: normally lack of platelets would usually lead to blood not clotting, eg as in haemophilia. And yes, the big criticism is that death rate from the clots is way, way below the number of deaths from covid that would be prevented by not suspending the vaccine; and statistical prevalence of clots in general is still below expectation. One specific type has gone up while others have gone down leading again to the inescapable conclusion that vaccines lower the incidence of blood clots in general. The absolute worst thing is that in a months time the same people will be baffled about why people aren't getting vaccinated, and probably rail against anti vaxxers for their bad statistics and knee jerk reactions.

No idea on the quest needed. I agree it's misleading to say available now when it isn't technically, but at least it will only be misleading for about a day. I can understand not being bothered with that distinction. Dunno exactly what is happening now, steam users seem to be getting a 10GB general update instead of the 54GB on GOG, and whether or not they've bought the season pass. So that's either a patch, or everyone is getting the dlc installed but it only gets unlocked if you've bought it.

It'll be installed, you just won't be able to run it yet (ie it's preloading, will unlock on the 17th). The 54GB 'patch' is multiple GB larger than the download of the game and first dlc was, so there's definitely extra content there.