Werthead

The new regs are causing issues. By eliminating downforce (to reduce dirty air), the cars don't stick to the track as easily and without a huge power increase from the engine (which will stay the same as now, only generating more from the battery) that means the cars will either 1) go slower or 2) take off. I think the idea is that the cars will be at least somewhat lighter (due to more power coming from a battery rather than actual engine parts), which actually exacerbates the problem of the car being blasted into the air. I've seen some ideas about they maybe going in a different direction with aero and slimming the cars down to the 2010-2016 level (which look almost comically narrow by today's standards), which should reduce aero backwash from a smaller crossframe and also improve the racing at narrower circuits. Not sure how seriously that is being considered for 2026, because the design needs to lock imminently (also the dirty air problem was definitely still present before 2017, if not as bad). The active aero seems to be part of the solution, but it's also hideously complicated to get it working on both wings simultaneously, so there's some angsting about that. Sainz, meanwhile, seems to be down to deciding between Mercedes, Red Bull and Audi, with Mercedes seen more as a long shot. Audi have apparently made a money offer that Red Bull cannot match, but Red Bull's form is powerfully persuasive.

The books meander like hell through the last two (and arguably three) volumes, they can easily wrap it up in 16-18 episodes for the final two seasons without breaking a sweat. One season would have been tight, but doable. If the show ends like the books do, expecting some controversy.

The new Ukrainian bill includes provisions for more ATACMs. It doesn't require Biden to send them, but it clears the US to do so if deemed necessary. Interesting. Meanwhile, large chunks of Russian towns are going underwater. The flood has hit Kurgan, imperilling the machine building plant that constructs armoured vehicles. A weird incident in the sticks, the Chechnya Minister of Emergency Situations was stopped by police in Dagestan and pulled out of his car for unclear reasons. Whilst they were arguing, Chechen bodyguards from the Akhmat special units pulled up, pulled weapons on the Dagestani police and took the minister, apparently by force. Unclear why the Chechens and Dagestanis seemed to be at odds, and what the minister was doing. Fleeing from the Chechen bodyguards?

Cool stuff. I took my own stab at this as well.

The list of famous-to-semifamous actors in Fallout is already pretty big. Michael Dorn (twice!), Dave Foley, Ron Perlman (four times!), Rene Auberjonois, Matt Perry, Felicia Day, Liam fucking Neeson, Zachary Levi, Michael "Saul fracking Tigh" Hogan, Malcolm McDowell (as the President of the United States, kind of), Danny Trejo, Richard Dean Anderson, Tony Shalhoub, Jim Cummings, Kris Kristofferson, R. Lee Emery, Lynda Carter (I believe her nephew works for Bethesda so she has a voice role of some size or another in every Bethesda game from Morrowind onwards), William Mapother (from Lost, also Tom Cruise's cousin), The Actor Keith David, and more. Fuck, Rawls from The Wire is Caesar in New Vegas, I forgot that. Perfect casting.

The overwhelming complaint in UK public schools right now is a near-absence of discipline, kids can't be expelled even in cases of physical violence towards other students or teachers, and teachers who try to impose discipline on kids are sometimes threatened with violence from the children (and recall this can be up to 16-year-old, quite big kids) and/or their parents. Obviously caning and that level of corporal punishment - which went out the window fifty years ago - is a thing of the past and rightly so, but the pendulum has swing around to allowing anarchy free reign in some schools.

Wasteland does it a bit better with the bombs going off in 1998, although it's a bit vague if it's an alt history (well, it obviously is now, but not when the first game came out in 1988). The retrofuturistic thing is because of the legal need to make the Fallout series legally distinct from the Wasteland series (Fallout 1 was supposed to be Wasteland 2 but EA wouldn't sell Interplay the rights; the same team only finally got to make Wasteland 2 in 2014, amusingly marketing it as a spiritual successor to Fallout 1 and 2).

I think it's just UI, reactivity and graphics. It's slow and stodgy by modern turn-based standards. Even Wasteland 2, hardly the smoothest of experiences, puts Fallout to shame.

They're breaking out some casting firepower for the (very possibly final) season.

Alternatively. One of the reasons I think Fallout is really popular is that every piece of sci-fi pulp bullshit is in there somewhere.

Yes, that's one of the reasons Iran is regarded with suspicion in many Arab countries: it's not Arab but it's all up in Arab business in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. "Arab" can be a fairly broad term with very many numerous sub-groups but there is a strong distinction between Arab and Persian.

The Czech Republic has sourced 180,000 more shells and now says it believes it has created a "robust supply chain" for more artillery shells that could yield a continuous supply of not-insubstantial numbers. Which I think is code for "South Korean factories and a few others are going to start churning out supplies we can buy and send on to Ukraine." The CR was also pretty withering on other efforts to supply Ukraine which have failed, and particularly on attempts to keep production within Europe (a sideswipe at France). Good news for Ukraine, but better once the shells start arriving en masse.

There seems to be a current plan developing amongst Israeli leaders to get other western countries to impose sanctions, or reimpose sanctions in the case of those who dropped them in 2015 with the peace deal, on Iran, effectively killing the nuclear deal stone dead. If those countries do that, Israel would restrict its response to hitting Hezbollah targets in Lebanon rather than Iran directly. It sounds like that's very much an idea rather than the final plan, and Netanyahu may yet give in to the hardliners and order strikes on Iran's military infrastructure and the nuclear programme. A number of western countries have summoned their Iranian ambassadors but have so far held fire from fresh sanctions, apart from the United States which is promising a comprehensive sanctions package this week. Yes, the interaction between the Arab street and the Arab governments is always interesting, although also not as far apart as is always assumed. The average Iranian on the street, from what can be told, does not necessarily love Israel, but they're not as vehemently opposed to it as their government is, and they often take a similar view to Pakistan and Muslim countries further away from the conflict zone, they really hate the idea of fellow Muslims being killed, but they're not as invested in the situation as the people living right next door.

Huh, that should have no problem with CP77 in the slightest. Weird. Uninstall and reinstall, check all graphics drivers are up to date? Functionally unplayable today, I would say. They have not aged well, at all.

Yes, these are the same thing. Spoilers for the games, but at one point in Fallout 3 you hack a computer that was plugged into the US military command net when the war started and it gives a pretty terrifying blow-by-blow of what happened: Fallout 4 backs that timeline up partially:

Their current king was on Star Trek: The Next Generation!

I think it's much more about the very, very real fear, distrust and outright hatred of Iran amongst a lot of Arab countries (especially in the Sunni-majority ones, which is just about all of them, bar Iraq and Azerbaijan). That fear and distrust has, in some cases, matched or far exceeded that of their concerns over Israel. Saudi Arabia bailing on the Arab cold war towards Iran seemed to take the heat out of that for a bit, despite it being more of a truce of convenience than any actual growing warmth between the countries (once both Iran and Saudi realised they'd gone as far as they each could in Yemen without basically launching full-scale invasions, so it was in their mutual interest to back down; the government forces and the Houthis have been less keen on peace), but it's been coming back into vogue more recently. It's quite startling how much that enmity is in play right now, even with Israel bombing Gaza, which the Arab street particularly utterly loathes. But even in the best of times, the Arab countries and Iran have only a very tenuous "enemy of my enemy is my friend," thing going on, and in fact I've seen some commentary that there is concern about Iran winning a war against Israel and being so energised that its ambitions grow from there. With Israel and US influence gone from the region, Iran has a clear path of influence and power extending right across the northern flank of the Arab sphere of influence (effectively an Iranian empire comprising its already massive, well-populated territories plus Iraq, Syria and Lebanon), which is something they very much do not want to deal with (and Türkiye would obviously have big problems with that as well). The three-way balance of power in the region between the Arab countries, Israel and Iran and its proxies is a finely-balanced thing, and one of the reasons why it's even vaguely plausible Iran did have something to do with 10/7 is because how that balance was shifting dramatically towards an Arab-Israeli détente, recognition and possibly even alliance, which would be vehemently against Iran's interests.

If they intended multiple waves of attacks, they would have launched a second wave of drones 1-2 hours after the first, still an hour or two before the first group reached Israel. They'd have to do that because of the timing imbalance between drones and faster-moving cruise missiles and much-faster-moving ballistic missiles. They fact they never launched that second wave would suggest they never planned a longer attack. In fact, the Iranian Mission tweeted this was a single strike long before the first drones even reached Israel and before many of the missile components to the attack had launched. The missiles were overflying Jordanian territory after they warned Iran not to do that. Iran could have routed all of its missiles north over Iraq and Syria, but tried to take a shortcut over Jordan and Jordan responded by shooting them down. Jordan gets underestimated a lot as probably the least significant power in the region (bar Lebanon and arguably war-torn Syria; even the microstates are usually richer than Jordan with more oil reserves) but they are well-equipped by the USA and exert considerable influence, especially on the Arab street for the sheer volume of Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi refugees they've taken in.

Fallout 4 is the most recent single-player game, the best-looking and is due to get a major update on 25 April. It's also the most accessible, although it's also been criticised for being the most dumbed-down, which I'm not too sure about. It's a solid game, very fun, the DLCs are pretty good (even if one of them is primarily aimed at evil players and doesn't have much content for good players), and it has a fair amount of quest reactivity. Fallout: New Vegas is probably the best game in the series but it's also janky and has the worst opening hour or so in the series. It also tries to be an open-world game but the optimal enjoyment of the game is held by playing it linear and following instructions on where to go next, which gives it a bit of a schizophrenic feeling in the early going. Once you're ~Level 15 or so, that ceases being a problem and you can do what you want. The story is pretty good, the characters fairly memorable, the faction interactions mostly good (in FO4 there's too many factions and they trip over one another a lot more). Obviously graphically a bit dated but hardly hideous. Fallout 3 was designed to introduce the franchise to new players, so it's probably the most traditional of the three "recent" SP games and has the most traditional Fallout opening (you start and spend a fair bit of time in a vault). It's pretty solid, but it has the stupidest ending of any video game in human history prior to Mass Effect 3, so you need to have the DLC installed (which fixes it). It's the oldest of the three so is looking a bit long in the tooth, but again perfectly playable. As you go back in time the decreasing QOL improvements from the later games may get more irritating (New Vegas has iron sights, survival mode and better crafting; Fallout 4 allows you to loot without having to open a separate screen and has the settlement building mode, which is pretty good, although I strongly recommend having the Vault-Tec and Automatron DLC before tackling that). I would recommend playing 3 and New Vegas on PC if possible to install some basic QOL mods and the fan-made bug fix packs, and also remove the "piss filters" which can be vaguely irritating on both games.

I took that as a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, personally.

The suggestion this represented the full attack capability of Iran might be correct, but it feels optimistic. As a very simple demonstration, Hezbollah is known to be capable of launching masses of smaller munitions at Israel from Lebanon. They did not do so in concert with this attack. The Houthis may have also been able to fire more weapons, but apparently the US hit a number of launch sites in Yemen with missiles on platforms before they could launch. Also, contrary to Houthi claims, previous US and UK air strikes on Yemen had destroyed significant launch infrastructure as well as storage facilities, limiting their ability to join the attack. More exist and some replacements have come in from Iran, but it is more logistically challenging than it was. Iran also chose to lead the attack with very slow-moving drones. If they had not done so, they could have fired a larger number of ballistic missiles with far shorter flight-times from Iran and had a more significant chance of penetrating the air defence net. Israel's AA systems were also given a relatively lighter ride because the majority of the weapons were intercepted by Israeli, Jordanian, UK and US aircraft outside of Israel's borders, which had plenty to time to scramble and get into range to intercept (the UK and Israel even had time to launch tankers). Even if we accept that Iran did not have enough launchers to launch more drones and missiles at once (a highly optimistic statement), they could have reloaded and fired again and again, and kept up a sustained, pressurised attack on Israel unfolding over many more hours. In fact, Israel and the US both warned that was the most likely format for the attack and seemed bemused when it stopped relatively quickly. The one area where I think Iran did fail, and was taken by surprise, was the effectiveness of Israel's anti-ballistic weapons. Whilst I think the attacks over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights were not designed to cause real damage, Iran I think did really want to hit that airbase hard as that's where they focused their ballistic strikes. The missiles either veering off and hitting open desert or being intercepted (in at least one case, extra-atmospherically) before impact seems to have been unexpected. As it stands, the airbase took negligible damage. The US has said it also assesses that around 40% of Iran's ballistic missiles failed on takeoff or still inside Iranian or Iraqi airspace, which the Iranians will likely be furious about.

It's an alt history. The Fallout universe's history diverged from our own after World War II, as the transistor was never invented. Instead they kept using valve technology, giving everything this 1950s-ish vibe even up to 2077. The real reason is that Fallout 1 was supposed to be a sequel to an earlier game called Wasteland, published in 1988 by Electronic Arts. The same team founded a new company, Interplay, and nine years later started making a Wasteland sequel, but EA wouldn't sell them back the rights. So they had to make a "spiritual sequel." EA was apparently quite arsey about it and insisted they make sure their new game was legally distinct from the original. So they did that by making Fallout 1 with a single character (rather than Wasteland's party) and using the retrofuturistic thing to distinguish Fallout 1's setting from Wasteland. Ironically, Interplay collapsed in 2004 and sold the Fallout IP rights to Bethesda, who then made Fallout 3, 4 and 76. Some of the old Interplay team, now at Obsidian, made Fallout: New Vegas after Bethesda contracted them to make a new game, and the rest of the old Interplay team, now at inXile, finally succeeded in buying back the Wasteland IP from EA and made Wasteland 2 (2014) and Wasteland 3 (2020).

Serbia in general seems to be doing a thing of saying whatever Russia is doing is fine but then the government does things which seem to indicate they don't think what Russia is doing is fine, but they can't say so without pissing off too much street opinion. Bit weird, but I suppose better than the alternatives. Serbia has been doing this for a while, they were in talks with Russia about buying S300 and S400 AA systems, but eventually realised that they were a bit antiquated at this point and bought a bunch of Chinese AA systems instead.

Serbia has dropped all plans to buy Russian fighter jets, citing the sanctions regime making it impossible. They had been urged by Moscow to "wait out" the sanctions but the Serbian government has decided they can't afford to wait. Instead, they have ordered twelve Rafale fighters from France.