Werthead

These are not hits, this is the area where alert signals are going out, and Israel is not very conservative with those, so the entire area surrounding the estimated impact zone for each hit is saturated with warnings by internet and mobile phone. Still, several dozen impact areas appear to have been identified. So far, interestingly, no warnings yet for Tel Aviv and a lot of warnings in the southern region which is more desolate. Flares have been launched over Jerusalem. Red alert sirens going off in Jerusalem, which is unusual; attacks on central Jerusalem are usually avoided because of the mixed nature of the city, if you miss the Jewish parts of the city you can hit the Palestinian parts by accident. A reminder this is not a Palestinian attack or by local forces more aware of that sort of thing.

No, that's a reference to the fact that the absolute noise of bullshit on Twitter is insane. Some of the utter crap people are posting is far beyond ludicrous.

US aircraft and ground AA has shot down multiple Iranian drones and missiles over Iraq, the US government is now confirming. Israeli air warnings now sounding in the Golan Heights, as anticipated, as well as Nevatim and Dimona in the centre-south of the country and Eilat on the south coast. The Iranian mission to the UN has tweeted that Iran is carrying out a single attack on Israel in accordance with the UN charter allowing nations to engage in self defence. Iran has claimed the consulate in Damascus as its sovereign soil. It states the current action will not be repeated as long as Israel does not respond. There seems to be scepticism over this message, which has so far not been repeated by Iranian government channels. Emergency. Autocorrect (from another proper word!?) is annoying. OSINT is deleting and updating tweets. One of the reason I follow them is that they give fairly sober analyses and try not to repost sensationalism. It's clear this is a major attack but maybe not quite as insane as some are reporting. Covering other reports, it appears that Iran has fired ballistic missiles, railguns, asteroids and multiple kaiju at Israel.

Jordan has declared a state of emergency. Egypt has mobilised its own air defences, possibly to shoot down anything that overshoots Israel towards their territory. The Egyptian government has apparently contacted both the governments of Israel and Iran to urge restraint. It appears cruise missiles may now be in the air. Unconfirmed reports of ballistic. Now some reports by allied ships in the Red Sea that Houthi missiles and drones are in the air and Hezbollah fire on the border regions has stepped up.

Some reports that some drones may have entered Jordanian airspace. Lebanon and Israel have confirmed full closure of their airspaces. US estimates that the first drones could reach Israeli airspace in around 30-40 minutes from now.

Apparently Israeli aircraft have entered Syrian airspace on interception missions against the incoming drones, which are still in Iraqi airspace. Despite repeated reports on social media, no sign so far of a Yemeni component to the attack from US or allied forces in the Red Sea.

Türkiye is experiencing major turmoil in its airspace as flights headed to Iraq and Iran have diverted and requested landings at Turkish airports, which they were not expecting. Jordan's military has said it will engage any targets in its airspace without permission, with the suggestion it will engage either Iranian or Israeli weapons in its airspace. So far Iranian drones have only been directed over Iraqi territory. The first launches took place 1 hour and 10 minutes ago, still 40+ minutes from Israeli territory. Looks like they haven't reached Syrian airspace yet. Some claims of missile launches from Iran, but these appear to be stock footage. Also videos of Patriot and/or Iron Dome firing, but again stock footage.

Germany has sent an additional Patriot battery to Ukraine, apparently already on its way. One additional Patriot battery has been secured in principle and the details are now being worked out. Ukraine has apparently launched a series of attacks on Berdychi, driving back Russian forces holding several strongpoints. Not a major victory but a constant way of keeping Russian forces off-balance and not allow them to dig in. A Russian Storm Z unit has published an angry complaint that recent Russian personnel and equipment losses are unsustainable and poisonous to morale. However, Russia has had some localised successes based on meatgrinder attacks so these are being intensified. They have attributed these successes to Ukrainian firepower deficiencies, so when those new shells and weapons arrive, Russian losses could escalate horrendously. Recent casualties have been back in the 800-900 per day range even with Ukrainian weaknesses in weapons supply. A Chinese political analyst working at Beijing University has been allowed to post an article claiming that Russia will lose the war in a major way and that conflict has strained Russo-Sino relations. Interesting why that was permitted.

Shahed-136s are relatively easy to shoot down, especially with Patriot. Assuming only drones are used (and even lighter classes of cruise missiles), US and Israeli defences should not have a lot of trouble with them unless they are launched in a massive swarm of many hundreds or thousands, which does not seem to be the case. Iran has launched at least two staggered waves. One idea floating around has been that Iran might attack but in a way that can be shot down, and done in a way that gives maximum warning to Israel, again to limit the scope for a retaliatory strike. Ballistic missiles would cover the distance in a fraction of the time, give limited warning (minutes rather than hours) and could potentially carry chemical or biological attacks. Israel would have limited alternatives but a massive retaliatory strike. So far this seems to be measured, but the risk of miscalculation is massive. Iraq has closed its airspace, rather tardily compared to Jordan.

Hang on. Jordan has closed its airspace to all civilian air traffic. The United States has scrambled fighters over Iraq and Axios is reporting multiple drones launched from Iran crossing Iranian territory. The Israeli government's security aircraft, designed to provide continuity in the face of an attack on Israel's government headquarters, is reportedly in the air. So far only Iranian Shahed drones are reported overflying western and southern Iraq. But if Iran is planning ballistic missile strikes, they would not launch until the drones were close to their targets. Using drones alone might be a signal of both taking retaliatory action but not escalating insanely. Israel has now confirmed an attack is underway against its territory. It is deploying AA defences. US, Israeli and possibly UK aircraft may be deploying to intercept the drones, which have a 2-hour flight time from Iranian territory towards Israel. Some Iranian sources reporting cruise missile launches but no video confirmation. No ballistic missile strikes as yet.

One media outlet with links to the Iranian state has apparently signalled that Iran is considering a strike limited to military targets alone in the Golan Heights, on the ground this is territory recognised by numerous states (including Iran) as the sovereign territory of Syria. Thus, hitting occupying forces in the Golan Heights would be less incendiary than, say, hitting downtown Tel Aviv killing hundreds or thousands of civilians, which might trigger an Israeli-US retaliatory strike that could be existential (for the country or the regime). There's also messaging in Iran and amongst allies that the "panic" the United States has gone into, including "pleading" with countries like China and regional players to ask Iran not to strike back, has in itself been highly satisfactory to the Tehran regime, and has de facto recognised Iran has the regional power, which in itself is a major political victory. This may not be enough to appease hardliners in the military, who have been urging a major strike on Israeli territory involving 100 cruise missiles and drones. There is a perception - and this might be satisfying to some on the Israeli right - that Israel is considerably more likely to use nuclear weapons against Iran at the barest pretext than in just about any other circumstance on Earth, which modifies Iranian thinking until they have nuclear weapons of their own.

I think that's a nod to the game, where you can get flattened by a deathclaw in combat, quickly take a stimpak, and then be absolutely fine. I mean, you can get your leg blown clean off, hit the stimpak, and be magically fine immediately with no explanation of what the hell happened to your limb. Fallout has only passing familiarity with physical realism.

PF2 handles this excellently. The entire game is built around the three-action economy, so at Level 1 you can attack three times - if you don't want to move or do anything else - and at Level 20 it's the same. But that can be adjusted through the acquisition of feats, weapon styles (monks and flurry swordsmen can get extra attacks at the cost of attack bonus per attack) and the use of magic (haste, obviously). An interesting twist is that as you level up you're more likely to do things to increase AC or get reactions that don't use an action, so you can use your base actions more for attack (so at Level 1 you're more likely to use 1 action for attack, 1 to move and 1 to quaff a potion, whilst at Level 20 you're tough enough to not need potions as much and you can move through a reaction trigger, so you attack three times instead). That was incredibly controversial when PF2 launched, given PF1 and 3E before it had handled things by giving you an extra attack every few levels for the better part of twenty years, but most people don't even notice it now. Spells there's no helping. My firm belief is that spells that rewrite reality, allow you to time travel, etc are simply far too powerful and unbalancing to be in the game in the first place, but it's too ingrained now to remove. We can blame the total non-existence of 1970s playtesting for that.

Both Horizon games are solid from the POV of having very solid plots and pretty good characters and factions. What makes them outstanding are the robot animals/dinosaurs, working out how to bring each one down (although each type has one reliable trick to do it and it can get a bit easy to do that; Dark Souls, this is not) and the extremely interesting, well thought-out backstory/worldbuilding. As well as the great graphics. They are fairly linear though, and you're really just moving around the order of the quests you do. The advancement trees are okay, but not too special. There are some dialogue choices but I believe they have zero impact on anything that actually happens in the game. There is one possible romance choice that happens right at the very end of the expansion to the second game, about 120-ish hours into the franchise. The compression of the map is also very, very silly (walking around a Boston that's 1/8 the size of the real thing in Fallout 4 is fine because the illusion is easier to sell; the Mojave Desert being about 400 metres wide in Forbidden West, and being able to see El Capitan from the tallest tower in Vegas, not so much). They're are very much action games first and foremost and RPGs a very long, distant second. So they're more Far Cry (3-5) in that respect than, say, Cyberpunk 2077 (for all the moaning about it, it is an RPG, and actually far more of an RPG than The Witcher 3), let alone Baldur's Gate. I actually respected Far Cry 6 a lot for actually saying, "Fuck it, we're not an RPG, let's stop pretending to be an RPG and go back to just being an action game," and putting progression mechanics into being able to upgrade weapons a bit. The crafting system in Horizon is optional, pretty barebones and rather simple. It can be almost completely ignored. The game also drowns you in money, so you can just buy and restock everything from vendors and it's pretty easy just to pick up the consumables you need (the healing berries) as you walk around. Like way too many games, the crafting system in the Horizon series might as well not exist, and I wish there was some option to completely disable it. If the entire game is built around crafting as a mechanic and the game is excellent, like Subnautica and Grounded, that's fine. But for 99% of games it's, "well all modern unit-shifting AAA four-quadrant all-demographic appeal-blandathons need crafting, that's the rule now."

And in the games too.

No, it was delayed back to December 2025 a while back.

I don't think either of these two statements are accurate. Baldur's Gate III took me 102 hours to complete in my standard "fast-but-thorough" playthrough style, where the main quest and all side-quests, faction quests and companion quests are completed efficiently, but I did not laboriously check every single nook and cranny of every single location for lore, treasure, hidden information etc. People who did do that have reported putting 200+ hours into the game. It is not a short game, at all. You can complete it substantially faster than 100 hours, but only by ignoring a substantial chunk of the story/characters/events of the game and possibly gimping yourself for the endgame (you can also do this in The Witcher 3, BG1, all three Mass Effect games etc). Baldur's Gate III is also a significantly longer game than The Witcher III (which in a similar style took me 88 hours to complete, including Blood & Wine and Heart of Stone, but not all the optional treasure hunts or monster contracts). The Witcher III is also not massively globe-trotting: you spend ~80% of the game in a relatively small area around Novigrad and in the Velen swamps, and then small-ish chunks in isolated locations with some off-screen travel. This is similar to BG3 where you spend a large chunk of the game near the crash site, another large chunk in the city of Baldur's Gate and several adjoining towns, a small-ish chunk in the Underdark, and then a bunch of episodes in Avernus. Hell, BG3 is slightly longer than all three Mass Effect games combined, which chalk up at around 95 hours in the Legendary Edition including all DLC. BG3 has a fair few number of locations, far more than Mass Effect (especially if you're talking just ME1, and identical barren ice worlds do not count), but the maps are not absolutely massive. They are relatively cleverly designed, though, to fit as much in as possible without it getting silly.

To be clear on the extensive nature of rebuilding in the Fallout universe, there's a bloody Europa Universalis mod which has North America divided between the canonical Fallout factions, which would be completely impossible unless fairly extensive actions existed. The factions, and those factions being big and organised and sometimes capable of traversing the entire continent through vehicles, and projecting power across hundreds of miles, is a big thing in Fallout 3, 4 and 76 (the Bethesda games) as well as 1, 2, Tactics and New Vegas (the Black Isle/Obsidian games).

In Fallout VR you can watch Fallout inside Fallout, dawg.

It's very clear that they're not ignoring New Vegas. I think I've got a better handling on what happened now. It looks like the writing staff fucked up and assumed New Vegas happened in 2277, the same year as Fallout 3, rather than three years later. If you assume that it makes more sense:

As has been frequently said, if that was their position they should have kept the series relatively close to the apocalypse and not 220 years later. That was a call made by Avellone himself, alongside the rest of the Fallout 2 team (note: despite Avellone's PR machine, he was not the lead on Fallout 2), when they decided to set Fallout 2 in 2241, 80 years after Fallout 1 (set in 2161, less than 100 years after the bombs dropped). Bethesda did then exacerbate the problem by setting Fallout 3 in 2277, 200 years on the money since the bombs dropped and showing DC like it was bombed the week before. New Vegas did attempt to make this work by creating more of a realistic landscape of larger countries, armies and factions fighting over the Mojave (based on the original plan for Fallout 3 before Interplay collapsed). As has been said many times, the direction of travel from Fallout 2 through New Vegas was one of the series being "post-post apocalypse," with the immediate post-apocalyptic issues resolved and the world now recovering in some fashion. Fallout 4 leans into that by having a relatively well-developed Boston area with multiple, mature factions but also a good explanation for why the post-apocalyptic vibe has somewhat endured (constant political intrigue by the Institute to deliberately prevent any civilised nation-states from arising and also the destruction of the Minutemen). Bethesda also seemed to accept that the series remaining "post-apocalyptic" given the worldbuilding no longer made sense, so set Fallout 76 in 2102, just 25 years after the bombs fell. Yes, that's a reasonable point. There is also the very simple solution - already explored by Fallout 76 - of simply setting stories earlier in the timeline, closer to the war. It's worth noting Avellone's contribution to Fallout is limited: he did not create the franchise (that was Tim Cain), and he was a simple writer and designer on Fallout 2 and New Vegas, and was project lead on one New Vegas DLC and a strong creative force on another. It's also worth noting that the idea of civilisation rebuilding was present from Fallout 1, where you visit Shady Sands and it's already a considerable town some 84 years after the Great War, and is then a much larger city in Fallout 2. This isn't a late or recent retcon or reinvention, but something fundamental to the series. Wasteland as a franchise is much more immediately post-apocalyptic: the nuclear war happens in 1998, Wasteland 1 takes place in 2087 (+89 years), Wasteland 2 in 2102 (+104) and Wasteland 3 in 2107 (+109).

Alonso staying at Aston Martin cuts off Horner's preferred replacement for Perez. Alongside Perez's increased form, Perez might be doing what he needs to stay put at Red Bull. That does limit Sainz's room to manoeuvre. Toto seems to be getting more balshy about directly promoting Antonelli to Mercedes without an intermediary stop at Williams. Even if he was willing to put Antonelli into Williams, that's only a 1-2 year deal for Sainz. Sainz may figure two more seasons racing in a top four team, and importantly into the 2026 regulation change, makes it worthwhile as he could impress. He probably thinks he'll get the better of Russell in equal machinery, so potentially could stay at Mercedes alongside Antonelli whilst Russell might have to look for another drive. Bit of a gamble tough. It feels like the rumbling at Red Bull has decreased in the last week or so, but then again it could blow up at any time and Verstappen could walk, so Toto might be trying to keep his options open as long as possible.

Even the US has blamed Israel for doing something so stupid as to directly hit the Iranian consulate (effectively Iranian sovereign soil). Even if Iran doesn't want to escalate to a war - and it's clear it doesn't, given it could have started one over the attacks on Gaza and then Lebanon and in Syria - the government might feel it has no choice but to respond or look very weak, endangering its position.

Multiple countries are anticipating an Iranian response for the strike on the consulate in Damascus. Iran has interpreted this as a direct attack on their sovereign soil, and must be answered with a corresponding direct strike on Israeli soil. There seems to be a number of calibrations going on in Tehran on the response. A massive, full-scale assault on Israel could very well provoke an Israeli nuclear response or trigger a massive, wider conflict bringing in the United States, which Iran is not likely to win (and may not survive). However, the damage Iran could inflict in the process across the region would be extraordinarily significant. Amongst the bluster of flattening all of Israel there have also been comments about Israeli embassies or consulates, suggesting that Iran could instead strike Israeli diplomatic representation in a third country. The problem is that there limited targets for such a strike in the region: Jordan, Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Türkiye and Azerbaijan. Iran bombing any of these countries would be problematic. I've even seen suggestions that Iran could target the Israeli Embassy in Kyiv, as the closest approximation to Israel striking the consulate in Syria, although there's a nontrivial chance that such a strike would be intercepted by Ukrainian air defences. This would also give Ukraine casus belli to target Iran's drone production systems directly on Iranian soil. However, a limited strike on an Israeli target abroad, in clear and proportionate response to the Israeli targeting of the facility in Damascus, might discourage Israel from further retaliation, whilst a direct strike on the Israeli homeland would ramp up pressure for a retaliatory strike on Iran. Last week it was rumoured that Iran had communicated through back channels with the USA about a limited strike on Israeli targets that would not trigger a wider conflict, but the rhetoric from Tehran has apparently hardened considerably since then. There is also a growing feeling that a retaliation will be at the sharper end of possibilities, with Arab countries uneasily saying they will not permit their bases to be used for retaliatory strikes on Iran. China, which has been steering clear of the whole mess, has apparently dipped its toes into diplomacy in the region through communications with Iran, after an apparent US warning to Beijing of the situation escalating uncontrollably. There is some US speculation that Iran might be sabre-rattling to such a high degree that a limited strike will be seem as a comparative "getting off easily" scenario which Israel can be discouraged from retaliating against. However, that might be wishful thinking. If a strike does come, it could be in the next few days or even hours.

Britain is sending freaking laser weapons to Ukraine. Unclear if they are being sent alongside or separately to the sharks. (No, seriously, Britain is sending DragonFire laser-AA systems to Ukraine for field-testing) Russian police officers broken into the home of Manas Zholdoshbekov, an advisor to the Kyrgyz Embassy in Moscow, and beat his wife when he was unable to produce documents on his migration status, instead producing his diplomatic credentials which they seemed confused by. Kyrgyzstan has filed an official complaint with the Russian government. A former Ukrainian intelligence officer who defected to Russia has been assassinated in Moscow. Lukashenko has extended an offer to Ukraine to discuss peace terms. Ukraine has ignored him. One drone team operating near the front destroyed ten Russian tanks in one night using a number of low-cost munitions attached to cheap drones, halting a Russian offensive. This is probably one of the attacks previously reported. Russians in flooded areas have requested more money and infrastructure support. The Russian government agreed to provide a light aircraft so some priests could fly around the area and "prayer-bomb" it from up high. Subsequent flooding suggested this tactic has been ineffective. Officially the delivery will not be completed until June, but unofficially some have been sent and more will be sent over the coming weeks. They're obviously not putting 1 million shells in the same delivery and sending them along, the Amazon delivery guys got annoyed last time they tried that.