Agiel

no doubt one o' the reasons the trump campaign switched from ronald reagan to andrew jackson as the role model for trump is 'cause trump voters is suspicious o' russia. cold war soviet distrust is not forgotten particular 'mongst the alt-right crowd. possible first thing one thinks o' when invoking reagan is the cold war conflict. trump's russian entanglements is arguable where he is most vulnerable with his core voters. The thing to me was that Trump's economic plan while on the campaign trail seemed not too far removed from the Soviet-style command economy at its most corrosive and unsustainable: Rampant protectionism? Check. Make-work public works projects building bridges to nowhere (metaphorically and literally)? Check. Artificially propping up failed, inefficient, and obsolescent industries? Check, check, and check. As Richard Aboulafia noted: "Trump may be a Republican, but he may govern less like Ronald Reagan and more like Juan Perón."

You're missing the point of how things have been done in the UN. It is generally only in very extraordinary circumstances in which concrete action is effected through a resolution, but they are almost overwhelmingly more often than not vetoed by at least one member. If there was an intent to only bring forth resolutions member countries were sure to get through, then the entire world community would have given up on drawing up resolutions condemning Israel a long time ago. Point of them being that it builds an international consensus. That in mind China's abstention is a change from their previous policy of consistently vetoing measures taking a harder stance on Syria. Yes, they knew Russia would abstain, but China had an opportunity to look good for the international community. The abstain option provided the best compromise of getting diplomatic brownie points and not burning bridges with Russia. That the sole member that joined Russia in a hard veto is Bolivia, a country that is unlikely to have a particularly well-developed Middle-East or Europe-centric intelligence apparatus or much of any economic or strategic skin in the game and uses its vote solely for thumbing their noses at the "yanqui" should speak volumes of where the political winds are blowing.

Also of note that the China, who has until now consistently vetoed resolutions taking a harsher stance against the Assad regime (which is generally couched in a "all change is bad change" outlook), have pointedly decided to abstain from the vote condemning the Syrian government, which seems to suggest that either their own intelligence assessments based on verifiable data and/or the character of Assad's indiscriminate terror bombing campaigns seems to largely corroborate the consensus of the rest of the international community. Translation: "We accept the conclusions of the rest of the international community, but we do not want to jeopardise energy and technology transfer deals with Russia... yet." Point we've been trying to make is that even if one were to make the most militantly "Switzerland" approach to international affairs then it would probably be unwise to assume the most positive pro-Assad narrative as reflexively as the most anti-occidental one.

Picture was taken in the UK:

Michael Mann and Heat in retrospect.

David Frum remarked that in spite of his grave misgivings over the Trump administration he was leery of comparisons to Hitler since the American people have plenty of stops to get off on that train to outright totalitarian fascism. However a friend of mine opined: "The interesting thing will be seeing every poisonous ****wit in existence slinking towards the post if McMasters gets fired. I can't see a replacement fairing much better unless they're a total Goering."

Lest we forget:

It's being directed by Villeneuve, so a fresh take on it might just be what it needs to inspire audiences again. Also thus far people have responded fairly positively to Covenant, but then again the bar for tolerable for that franchise is somewhere above Alien^3, Ressurrection, Prometheus, and AvP2.

That's an interesting way to look at it. Is that like the idea that people without religion are immoral? no its like idea that people without religion push secular ideas. Don't understand where you get religion = morality It's a pretty popular idea, I am certainly not saying I agree with it. Of course the idea that you need to have children in order to respect the future also seems a bit off to me. Given that we live on the cusp of what may be the most dramatic technological disruption of the workforce (i.e. automation), perhaps that Voluntary Human Extinction Movement was onto something.

F-35s on the Mach Loop:

Looks to be a solid spiritual successor to SWAT 4:

11:49 reminded me of some words that went as such:

Had to buy a new laptop for use on my freelance projects. I hope dry dog food is tasty, my financial plans seems to be centered around cultivating a taste for the stuff given the big hole in my budget that purchase put in it.

I don't know. I could imagine that "Who do I have to **** ..." line being all Whedon, and remembering that is enough for something to rise in my esophagus, good direction and cinematography or no. In addition: I would have thought that Shaw would know better than to leave the robit unsupervised given the events of Prometheus, but someone pointed out to me that it wasn't as if good judgement was in abundance for the Prometheus crew.

Could have been interesting if it included some of the forgotten battles of the era between WWII and Vietnam: Pusan Perimeter, Inchon, Chosin Reservoir, MiG Alley, Dien Bien Phu, Algiers, and so forth. I suppose on the plus side for Activision looking at the likes bar this seems to be garnering a far warmer reception than Infinite Warfare.

I'm hoping with the precedent of a surprisingly good single-player campaign being attached to a great multiplayer FPS set by Titanfall 2 and Battlefield One means they do justice to the actually fairly exciting campaign premise of Battlefront 2. It seems that all the animation, environment art, scripting work, and returns-on-investment conspires to keep single-player campaigns of that order to around six hours or so, but I pine for the days prior to 2007 when 10-15 hours was the norm.

With 4/26 upon us and the release of Alien: Covenant to follow soon after, it's probably worth reminding ourselves in spite of the myriad of shortcomings of Prometheus, Scott's next effort couldn't possible be worse than Resurrection: Note that I checked the comments section and am astounded by the number of people who will passionately defend that film. I suppose that's the crowd that thought Salvation and Genysis was the right direction for the Terminator franchise.

I find it rather interesting, however I find the large amount of effects rather hard to keep track of the larger battles. I frankly don't get the MOBA comparisons since I find this little different from something like Warcraft 3 (then again, Warcraft 3 _did_ give us MOBAs). I just hope that the control point mode that was the fair of previous Relic RTSes does make it in however.

I also didn't find a sensible way of just matching myself against a friend - you can only form a party and go against other random people. Which is bizarre. You can create a private match on a 1v1 match with you buddy, which was how I dipped my toes into it when I first launched the game.

Trying out the Dawn of War 3 beta. Unfortunately Relic made the rather insane misstep of not including skirmish AI, so if you want to get a feel for the game I'd recommend getting like-minded friends into a private match to try stuff out. Ghostseer Taldeer is a tons (pun intended) of fun to use, and much like the Wraithknight in the tabletop, is truly a commanding presence on the battlefield. Think one of the greatest psykers the Eldar have to offer who is now a 50 ft tall robit with a big f***-off sword and you have an idea of the unit. Approaching your foe who is otherwise on roughly even footing in terms of combat power then having her literally leap into the fray from the fog of war and him quitting the game at that moment just puts an ear-to-ear grin on my face.

From the author of "The Better Angels of our Nature":

You sure about that? Note that an English reader can get by reasonably well with a machine translation of the Le Monde article, and that Al Jazeera seems to be treating Bellingcat's analysis as fairly credible.