Werthead

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.

Also worth noting that New Vegas has several entries in the recent Fallout set for Magic: The Gathering, which Bethesda signed off on, and is also represented in the recent Fallout miniatures games (whereas Fallout 3 is not). Bethesda are happy to use New Vegas as a representative of the series, behind only Fallout 4 and usually ahead of their own Fallout 3. I think it's probably fairer to say that Todd Howard is not hugely vocally keen on the game, but other people at Bethesda seem happy to talk about it.

Baldur's Gate 3 won 5 BAFTAs tonight.

Something that might save Ukraine's arse whilst the US flails around is that Russia seems to be having real equipment shortages at key areas on the front. Apparently Russian forces have been ordered to retake Robotyne in armoured assaults despite their armour being obliterated in frontal attacks, so the last few waves of attacks have taken place in barely-armoured Ural-4320 transport truck charges across open ground, which have...not gone well (protip: if your upgunned T-72 can't achieve an objective, it's highly improbable a truck with some dudes on it will be able to achieve the same goal). In the last four days, OSINT sources seem to agree that Russia has lost 6 Russian SAM systems, 32 artillery systems, 40 tanks, 51 IFVs, 14 APCs, 52 trucks, 10 UTVs, 43 cars, 9 EW systems, 2 comms systems, 2 engineering vehicles and 1 boat. 262 vehicles in total destroyed. This might be a record for any four-day period of the war, but people are checking that. Russian officials are also apparently confused on their own mobilisation plans. The annual draft in May may be delayed until June or July, and the number of troops to be raised for combat operations is apparently being fiercely debated behind the scenes, due to growing disgruntlement about losses and casualties (it also sounds like the prisons have turned up the last recruits they're going to, so the next groups will need to be workers and students). The EU Council has apparently provisionally agreed to pay for the extra Patriot systems that Ukraine has asked for, although the details are still being ironed out. Czech diplomacy has apparently resulted in the acquisition of yet more artillery ammunition from Serbia, India and Pakistan, despite their relative friendliness to Russia. Perhaps factoring into that, the Indian government is apparently extremely unhappy with Russian "security companies" offering high pay for Indians to travel to Russia, where they are promptly pressganged and sent to the front line in Ukraine, with none of the expected money appearing. Several Indians have apparently fled the front and made their way to the Indian embassies in Minsk and Moscow where they were repatriated home. Estonia is apparently considering joining an informal coalition of countries who are prepared to send engineers, technical trainers and non-combat personnel directly to Ukraine. This coalition would likely consist of France, the Baltics, Poland, the Czech Republic and UK. Apparently this plan severely irritates Russia because it introduces a "grey zone" where the consequences of killing large numbers of NATO troops in a non-NATO country would be highly ambiguous, so Russia would probably avoid doing it. There seems to be growing agreement that the threatened offensive towards Kharkiv is a bluff: Russia does not have enough forces on the Kursk-Belgorod axis to defend against Russian partisan attacks, let alone cross the heavily-defended border and advance the considerable distance towards Kharkiv. Russia's most likely next move is a major offensive action to secure Donetsk Oblast's borders and resecure Luhansk (in the face of some Ukrainian attacks in that sector recently), but it looks like even this will stretch their manpower. It's also worth noting that the 2021 Bakhmut offensive was supposed to deliver them both oblasts and so far it's taken two years to scratch forwards to take Avdiivka. Future Russian success may depend on if they can continue to leverage glide bomb superiority; if Ukraine can deploy more Patriots and F-16s, that advantage may be eroded.

I think that gets overstated.

After three episodes I'd say it's been pretty strong so far. Not artistically amazing, but it does nail the black humour of the games, and there's tons of cool shout-outs to the game and some of the background material. All of the actors seem to have gotten the assignment as well. The mcguffin being is genuinely very funny. One thing has ruffled lore hounds' feathers though: Hoping that gets clarified, otherwise it just confirms that the TV show and the video games can't take place in the same continuity.

Baldur's Gate III is certainly in the conversation as Best RPG Evaaaah and I think "recency bias" is a silly reason to dismiss it. It is, very clearly to everyone familiar with the genre, an absolutely stellar achievement in terms of writing, characterisation and reactivity, if within a somewhat constricted envelope. It certainly isn't perfect though, and has various issues that do not make it a total slam-dunk for the position (if less than at launch). Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Cyberpunk 2077, Tyranny, Fallout: New Vegas, the Mass Effect trilogy and The Witcher III I think are all in contention, and that's games released since 2010. There's a plethora of other games that I haven't played yet but am willing to accept from overwhelming critical positivity that might be in there was well (Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, Disco Elysium, Pentiment, Wasteland 3, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader). Their genre is somewhat debatable, but the Banner Saga Trilogy is certainly up there. For older games, Fallout 1 and 2, Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate II, Anachronox, OG Deus Ex, Knights of the Old Republic I and II, Neverwinter Nights II: Mask of the Betrayer and Dragon Age: Origins I think have strong arguments in their favour, but decreasing accessibility is an issue.

Ukraine flexing with its new "Ukrolancet" munitions. It destroyed an electronic warfare station 22km behind the front, a significant increase on current on drone ranges. A Russian Mi-24 Hind was shot down over the Black Sea in a friendly fire incident. A Ka-27 was also destroyed in Crimea by long-range Ukrainian fire. The infrastructure failures in Orsk have led to talk of Orenburg Oblast possibly seceding from the Russian Federation (!), with citizens furious that Crimea gets more money than they do. Orenburg borders Kazakhstan, with Bashkortostan and Tatarstan (which both have historically greater secessionist tendencies) to the north. I would not expect this to happen anytime soon. A Russian drone construction and maintenance facility in occupied Kherson Oblast was blown up by a worker dropping a grenade he was trying to fit to an FPV drone. The initial explosion resulted in him losing his arm. The facility was evacuated as the rest caught fire and burned for two days. Ukraine has requested seven Patriot batteries, believing this would secure airspace around Ukraine for some considerable time. The US is apparently unable to provide them, so other countries possessing the system are discussing what they can do.

Ah, like the games!

The Avellone situation is interesting. It's clear that Avellone's stock in the industry had already dropped precipitously. He was not well-regarded at Obsidian in the several years leading up to these accusations, and several attempts for him to fully take charge of a new game consistently failed, with him being downgraded to a guest writer. He got a reputation as a "human Kickstarter goal," since many games had "Chris Avellone will write a quest!" as a goal during videogames' Kickstarter boom of about ten years ago. There were grumblings for some time before the accusations serviced of unprofessional behaviour, though more along the lines of partying at conventions and getting constantly interviewed and generally engaging in a lot of PR, sometimes out of keeping with the scope of his actual contributions to the project, and doing more PR than actual work. I think that led people to be very ready to believe any other stories of impropriety against him. Regardless of that, I do think it is very notable that every gaming site under the sun covered the initial accusations against Avellone and his blacklisting from the industry, but only Kotaku (IIRC) amongst mainstream sites covered his subsequent legal victory. Many of the other sites refused to cover that end of the story, and I know a couple refused to answer queries about why they joined in on the dogpile and not on the resolution (Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun refused to comment on it, which is odd given the enthusiasm with which they covered the start of the story). It is worth noting that on the same day as Avellone's story breaking, the stories about Cas Anvar broke and that story was much more serious and believable, given that over 20 women accused him of impropriety at events going back several years, and apparently spanned people he'd worked with in the industry, attendees of conventions, professional voice actors and possibly staffers on The Expanse, so in that case it was clear that he had committed wrongdoing. There was a BBC News radio report many years ago (I think close to ten years ago) and police and legal services seemed to pull a figure that they believed the number of false accusations in the case of rape, sexual assault and harassment was something like 1 in 16, or for every falsified case they had 15 genuine ones. I have zero idea on what they were basing that on (definitely not convictions!), but that still seems to fall on the "generally believe the victim until evidence proves otherwise" side of things.

Hmm. 1979: Asteroids 1980: Pac-Man 1981: Donkey Kong 1982: Zaxxon 1983: Star Wars 1984: Elite 1985 (the year I started playing video games, on the BBC Micro): Tetris 1986: Rampage 1987: Dungeon Master 1988: Carrier Command 1989 (the year I acquired a Commodore Amiga 500): Populous 1990: The Secret of Monkey Island 1991: Lemmings 1992: Flashback (after a furious charge by two great Dune games) 1993: Syndicate 1994: TIE Fighter 1995: Command & Conquer 1996: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall 1997: Final Fantasy VII 1998 (the year I got my first PC): Half-Life (by far the toughest year, with StarCraft and Baldur's Gate also seriously in the conversation) 1999: Homeworld 2000: Ground Control 2001: Anachronox (after a fierce bullet-time shoot-out with Max Payne and Hostile Waters) 2002 (the year of my second PC): Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 2003: Max Payne II: The Fall of Max Payne 2004: Rome: Total War (another very tough year, with Half-Life 2, Dawn of War and Far Cry in the conversation) 2005: FEAR 2006 (third PC): Company of Heroes 2007: Portal 2008: Fallout 3 2009: Batman: Arkham Asylum 2010: Mass Effect 2 2011 (fourth PC): Deus Ex: Human Revolution 2012: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (after a very harsh showdown with Dishonored) 2013: Metro: Last Light 2014: The Banner Saga 2015: The Witcher III: Wild Hunt 2016: Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun 2017 (fifth PC): Horizon Zero Dawn (Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock also having a word) 2018: BattleTech (a most worthy challenge from Subnautica) 2019: Death Stranding 2020: Cyberpunk 2077 2021: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2022: Grounded 2023 (sixth PC): Alan Wake II (after a furious headlock with Baldur's Gate III) By far the hardest years to pick were 1998, 2004 and 2023 for having too much stuff, and 2013 and 2021 for having too little stuff.

Star Wars: Outlaws launches on 30 August. Looks fun, though I worry about it being Ubisoft-style generic. Hopefully it's good, and the ground-space transitions are interesting.

Ukraine has confirmed one of its OWA-UAVs is officially called the "RAM X" but has been informally dubbed "Ukrolancet." They've gone on a spree with it in the last 48 hours or so, destroying 7 Russian SAM systems along the front. The United States has given Ukraine over 5,000 weapons (machine guns and rocket launchers) and half a million rounds of ammunition seized from Iranian smugglers in the Red Sea, bound for the Houthis in Yemen. Some suggestions that recent GUR attacks behind Russian lines were undertaken using US-donated Blackhawk helicopters, possibly modified by Ukraine to be much less visible to Russian radar. Impressive if true.

Something slightly similar to happened a work colleague of mine last week. She was driving and was brake-tested by the car in front. She had to swerve onto the pavement and stopped the car. The male driver - a total stranger - got out, ran up to her open car window and tried to punch her in the face (she thought he was going to talk to her so didn't do the window up), and got in a glancing blow. Fortunately a van pulled up and the driver got out and chased the guy off. Also, not being the brightest spark in the box, he did this with his number plates on full display, so the police were informed and arrested the guy. They're still trying to fathom a motive or it was just some harassing of a woman for having the temerity to drive a car down the road. Very weird and of course dangerous. My friend's a part-time bodybuilder in excellent shape, but she was shocked by the sheer randomness of the attack.

The Red Bull civil war has had some extra heat, with sources close to the suspended woman saying that sexual harassment by Horner was part of the case, which had not previously been confirmed. Some contacts of Horner's ex-wife also piling in by saying the situation is identical to when he bailed on her to hook up with Geri, but clearly that's starting to get a bit tabloid-y. Lots of rumour-mongering more related to the track going on. Apparently Horner is keen on signing Alonso on a two-year contract, which Alonso would definitely make his last in F1, but Marko has vehemently rejected the idea, believing it would cause civil war with Verstappen (some suggestions that Horner is cooling on Verstappen due to his alliance with Marko, his non-existent personal support and his lukewarm statements on continuing with Red Bull or even in F1 and is keen to line up a successor ASAP). Marko is apparently moderately keen on bringing back Albon, although Sainz is believed to be Horner's second choice. Amusingly, what might save Perez is him being a compromise choice between the two factions, as long as he keeps up this run of form (Perez has also indicated he does not believe he has a viable path to stay in F1 outside of Red Bull, and it's hard to see other teams picking him over other, more in-demand drivers or promising rookies, although you can't rule out maybe Haas or Williams taking him for the experience on a one-year). It does look like that Horner has accepted that Danny Ric is a spent force and he may even agree to a mid-season swap with Lawson if there is not a marked improvement. There is growing pressure and annoyance from the RB side that Tsunoda is not in the conversation, despite his outstanding (by RB standards) start to the season. Another rumour swirling is that Stroll may voluntarily retire from F1 to either look at restarting his tennis career or move into the management side of Aston Martin, with a possibility of still racing in their hypercar programme. Apparently there's been some tough talk behind the scenes that if they manage to get the car into a race-winning position and Alonso gets another WC, there's no way they'd get a Constructor's unless Stroll ups his game massively (implausible at this stage) or they get another driver in. With Stroll getting more points this year, they'd be ahead of Mercedes in the championship, instead of behind. Tsunoda is apparently Honda's choice to move to Aston Martin when they switch in as their engine supplier, and apparently that has been seriously discussed, with the likelihood that Alonso will be gone by that point. An interesting comment from Wolff suggests we may see some driver moves announced a lot sooner than the summer break, leading some to conclude he's already decided on Lewis' replacement. A few media outlets reporting on the somnambulant start to the season and the potential damage to the TV ratings after last year's significant drop.

In 1-2E you levelled up far more slowly and what you got for going up a level was pretty minimal unless you were a spell-caster, in which case your power level could increase dramatically. Apart from the Bloodstone Wars adventure arc, where they decided to reset the D&D level scale to 100 and allowed you to simply "level up" into being a demigod (literal ascendancy!) and then cap off the campaign by just murdering Orcus. I think everyone agreed afterwards that was going a bit silly though. 3E tried to get around that with feats and skills, so all classes got significantly better with each level, but the EXP levels were way too low (they revamped them for 3.5E and then again in PF1) so you'd level up once per session pretty reliably, whereas in 2E you might level up once every 10 sessions once you got to Level 10 or thereabouts. Also, they never really removed spell-caster supremacy, so everyone got a lot better between levels but spell-casters got a lot better. And the book-keeping for 3E was pretty extensive as a result. 5E I think has come up with some solid ways to limit spell-caster supremacy whilst giving non-magic-users some extra utility, but without simply making all classes reskins of one another (4E's key weakness). It's not perfect but they've definitely found some ways of improving it.

Current figures suggesting that over 2,000 Russians were killed, wounded or captured in the last three days. Just relentless, pointless assaults on strongpoints located too far forwards (so Russian artillery support and glide bombs are not yet making their presence fully felt). Possible Ukrainian counter-attack north of Avdiivka, looks like heavy engagements with Bradleys assaulting treelines and forcing Russian forces back before they could dig in. Interesting to see what's going on there. Shahed drone attack on Ukraine last night, 100% interception rate, reportedly. The IAE has criticised both sides for exchanging fire in the airspace over the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which has resulted in some damage to the outer shell of the reactors. Russia reportedly low on drones, missiles and shells, and has asked Iran and North Korea for more. No sign yet they have been been able to deliver. Some sources suggesting that the Iranian government warned Moscow of an ISIS attack on civilian targets in Russia over a week before the theatre attack last month. The Serpukhov, a Russian Project-21631 missile destroyer, is reportedly out of operation due to an internal fire whilst based at Kaliningrad port. Apparently a pure accident with no outside agency blamed. Huge protests in Orsk after flooding destroyed local homes. The governor was forced to meet with local representatives, but reportedly can do little as civil repair and maintenance funds have been diverted to other government projects (cough).

Ukraine's precision targeting is getting seriously impressive. They tracked a Russian armoured convoy and hit it in the middle of a town when it made a gas stop. The gas station was partially destroyed, the vehicles totally and everything around it seemed to be untouched. Multiple KamAZ transports destroyed and a Tigr IMV. Ukraine has deployed yet another new drone model, the OWA-UAV, which is an attack drone which is jet-powered. They used them to hit a series of targets in Belgorod Oblast. They travel far too low for S-300 or S-400 to be effective but far too fast to be easily shot down by Pantsir or standard anti-drone weapons. They're basically budget cruise missiles. Range is unknown at present.

20,000 I believe was the conclusion from the Drake Equation, which has to my knowledge never been updated with all of the issues we know now should be part of it.

Ukraine has captured a Russian "drone jammer," a T-72B3 equipped with multiple antennas designed to shut down drones operating in a wide area around the vehicle. Apparently the jammer appears to be 1) ineffective against modern drone frequencies and 2) so energy-intensive the battery attached to it can't keep it going for more than a couple of hours, if that. Meanwhile, the Azovproduct oil terminal in Azov was attacked in a Ukrainian special forces operation (which is raising some eyebrows) rather than a drone strike. The pipeline connecting the storage facility to the loading area was severed, apparently something difficult to repair easily. Ukrainian ground special forces strikes on Russian soil (as opposed to Crimea or behind lines in occupied Ukraine) have been rare in the conflict so far. The timeline for F-16s arriving in Ukraine appears to be narrowing to around July-August. It's unclear how the F-16s are getting to Ukraine given Russian bellicosity if they are flown straight in, but with NATO able to futz radar over the border area from Poland, it's unclear if Russia would even know. Also, Russia has bitched about attacks from NATO airfields on Russia, but if the F-16s are flown from NATO airspace to Ukraine, and then deployed exclusively from Ukrainian airfields, that's a different matter. It should be noted that Ukraine is now flying some aircraft from the western border airfields to other countries for cargo purposes on a semi-regular basis, so far without Russian interception. Another possibility is they are driven over the border on trucks, although how that would work is unclear; when F-16s are transported by road normally, they have to have the wings removed (obviously), and you can't just bolt them back on like an Ikea flatpack.

Yup. The conditions to bring about life in the Solar system were pretty insane to happen: Enough comets to bring water to the inner planets without annihilating them through too-frequent bombardments. The presence of two large gas giants of the right size to hold them in the outer Solar system: we know now that most systems have only one large gas giant, which will automatically migrate into the inner system, destroying or ejecting smaller planets closer to the star, so you need a second to hold the first in its outer orbit. So in our system we needed both Jupiter to act as a sweeper and Saturn to hold Jupiter in place. Without that Jupiter would have swept into the inner system and Earth would be in a different and likely uninhabitable orbit, if not destroyed or eject from the system altogether. Being slap bang right in the middle of the habitable zone. Having a working magnetosphere. Having a Moon of the right size to tidally stabilise the planet (and moons of the ratio of the size of Earth to ours seem to be incredibly rare). Having a sun that's going to last long enough to allow for life to develop. Not being too close to the galactic core and getting fried by radiation. Not being too close to a deadly supernova for possibly tens of millions of years in a row. The Fermi paradox has never been updated to account for some of these things, like the hot Jupiter problem, and if it was it would drop the number of civilisations you'd expect to develop in any average-sized galaxy to a tiny fraction of the current number (20,000 IIRC).

The early report from Morozovsk is that 14 aircraft were destroyed, although Ukraine is so far dividing them into 6 destroyed and 8 "severely damaged" and may not be able to fly again (the distinction is unclear, although perhaps the latter can be salvaged for parts). 14 Russian aircraft destroyed in one attack would I think be the Russian Air Force's worst defeat since early in World War II. And most of these seem to be Su-34s, one of the most advanced aircraft in Russia's inventory, and the main carrier for the glide bomb attacks.

One of the largest Ukrainian drone strikes of the war. 40 drones hit Morozovsk Airbase, destroying "several" aircraft. Morozvsk is a hub for Su-34s, which are the primary launch platform for glide bombs which have been hitting Ukraine hard in recent months. The attack was prolonged and concerted. 36 Su-34s were based at the airfield earlier this week. Some of the drones were apparently "jammed" and fell to the ground, but exploded upon recovery. I'm assuming this is bullshit, but different sources saying some of the drones had speakers and were playing German drinking songs as they approached the base, which is...okay?

I believe someone who celebrates Easter and Christmas as a cultural holiday without the religious connotations. I.e. giving presents on Christmas Day or eating Easter Eggs on Easter Sunday but not going to any church service celebrating them. Probably the majority, if not overwhelming majority, of people now (including people of other faiths).