All Activity

Prepping to pack? I always assumed you were male.

That Jackson challenge was insane. I love VAR. Didn’t even look.

Well, that was great.

There is a difference between being valued highly and promoted to some level of significance and being a trusted friend/buddy. The first makes much more sense to me than the latter and I like how the show was more explicit in Toronagas motivations here. John was valuable and was given a position of trust but it didn’t break the lord/vassal relationship.

So Biden chose my campus to hold an event today, literally the building adjacent to where I work and teach. I don’t have much to share - my main take is it was a bitch and a half getting out of there to get home (thanks Biden!) - but a few observations: First, there was a decent-sized pro-Palestinian contingent, probably 45 to 50 people by my reckoning. These were non-students and true believers - Biden coming specifically here was not public knowledge, even to our students, until this morning. Their signage and chants were of course incendiary, but in about ten minutes observing them…and then another five when the fuckers held up traffic as I was trying to leave, I did not see nor hear anything antisemitic. There also was a number of students on the rope line with pro-Palestinian signage, but nothing I could see that was even offensive - particularly compared to the much more hateful right wing rabble. At one point a contingent of about a dozen RFK supporters walked by me. 10 out of 12 were at least seventy. When I went to the back lot to smoke as I do every day I shot the shit with a couple secret service agents cuz that’s where Biden was arriving. They were good guys.

Are you being disingenous on purpose? Read my post!! Second I am not talking about armour only!!!! I am talking about destroying drones before they can a) suicide onto you or drop a grenade b) call in an artillery or air strike and give away your exact location (no matter if you're on foot or in a vehicle)!!! Current anti air systems (patriot s 300 etc) are designed to shoot down high value (manned) targets that are large/fast/stealthy/etc. at a long range, so it makes no sense to shoot down cheap ass slow short range drones with them. What we will see is a combination of those systems (such as the Patriot) since they arre still good in their role and newer systems that are directed against drones and other slower, smaller and cheaper unmanned air vehicles: this includes things such as anti aircraft machine guns, anti aircraft machine cannons, unguided splintering rockets, Jammers, Lasers/DEWs, shotguns, radars and optical sensors made so that they can spot smaller air vehicles more easily. All of that will be mounted on a moving/armored vehicle (aka "tank"), to provide cover for your infantry and your other ground based vehicles such as artillery etc. I am talking about tech that is already under way, already in use in both military and civilian sectors and tech that is being developed and has almost or already reached industrial serial production (such as natrium or solid state batteries). Fuel cells are used in submarines and a number of civilian vehicles of various purposes and so are batteries and hybrid engines(remember the toyota prius?). I am not talking about jewish space lasers, light sabres and photon torpedoes! even though I agree with you that those would be real game changers! Seconf heat signatures are extremely important in modern warfare since they massively improve your night fight/low vision range capabilities and most of the short range/cheaper missiles such as Stinger or Javelin use heat to home in onto targets. No it wasn't! Again read my post! You said helicopters were not used because cheap infantry with manpads can shoot them down. What I said, which is how and why they are used/not used, is that they can not be shot down by manpads because they have higher range than manpads or anti air tanks such as the gepards, but they have no way of defending themselves against long range Air to air weaponry that ukraine lacks but Russia has (in form of fighter jets etc.) and secondly that helicoptes need terrain to have an advantage which again as i said doesnt really exist in Ukraine.

An interesting blast from the past, courtesy of Paul Moore’s Inverse interview with acclaimed screenwriter Brian Helgeland. Way back in 2017, HBO hired writers to develop successor shows to Game of Thrones, and Helgeland was among those named. Helgeland would go on to refer to the project in development the year after, but details remained thin as to what exactly he worked on. Well, they are thin no longer, as this quote from the interview shows: https://www.westeros.org/Graphics/Images/_medium/WoIaF_Nymeria_01.jpg read on >>> View the full article

Isn't Blackthorne based on William Adams who did achieve a position of high status in Tokuguawa Ieyasu's court? But indeed Tokugawa used Adams' skills for his benefit, much like Torunaga has done with Blackthorne.

Rockstar didn't make LA Noire, they just published it. I would think a major part of their resources over the last decade has been tied into ongoing maintenance and adding content for GTA Online, which is their primary moneymaker product. Also, a lot of super-extended game times are caused by failures of developer management to properly, well, manage and plan their projects, and also to properly coordinate huge resources and multi-continent development teams. Say what you want about Ubisoft, but they still manage to put out new Assassin's Creed games every 2-3 years, while simultaneously juggling multiple other AAA projects and series.

Weird that examples used to show Japanese barbarism in that article are literal Japanese versions of Macbeth and King Lear respectively. Did the authour not... know that somehow?

No Palmer? Fuck’s sake.

Jackson should've been sent off there imo. The ref should have at least gone to the monitor. Got away with a potential ankle breaker. eta. not even a yellow card? Shocking.

So...my point was correct? Cool to know. Abrams have been heavily modernized recently. It doesn't really matter; they're not dying because of drone strikes, they're dying because of mass fires and accurate fires. Top armor ain't gonna protect against that. Again, the problem is that there exists no amount of sufficient armor to deter the weapons that are currently in use. That includes drones, indirect fires, direct fires, man-portable fire, mines, and all sorts of craziness. Heck, it's not entirely clear how well that armor can sustain something like a Bushmaster's attack. It isn't just dealing with drones (though how a tank can deal with individual fleets of drones is I guess left as an exercise to the reader). You didn't write anything about solid-state batteries or natrium batteries, and neither of those techs currently exist in the way we'll need to use them in vehicles like this. In any case it hardly matters. The problem is not that tanks can explode or that they produce heat. Fixing imaging to spot tanks is not difficult and exists as retrofits for most of the US and Europe-supplied weaponry anyway. Heat signatures are not what are being used to spot things. If you want to talk about future tech that doesn't exist you might as well talk about active camo - that would be significantly more useful. I confess modern designs might defeat some of the more creative cheap drone attacks like dropping a grenade or a RPG that was held by a off the shelf drone with a 3d printed harness into the open turret of a tank, but that's really not the main way drones are being used right now.

They have asked Ukrainian Mil Mi 24 pilots multiple times if they think if Apaches can make a difference against russian armoured vehicles. You know what the answer was? Not really because those apaches will suffer the same fate as our Mil mi 24: they will be shot down by russian jet fighters using medium to long range air to air missiles. That's one of the reasons why they want fighter jets like the F-16 to a) cover for their own helicopters and b) because all the russian helicopters (mil mi 28 and Ka 52 have longer range air to ground missiles) than manpads such as stinger or starstreak or even anti air tanks such as gepard can fire. Russia basically "parks" them outisde of manpad/gepard range and fires from a distance onto ukrainian targets of value (such as armoured vehicles/tanks) this was one of the reasons why the ukrainian abandonded armoured assaults early on. (the others being artillery, drones, manpads and minefields/obstacles) The T 14 seems to be mostly a paper tiger and was designed prior to the russian invasion and thus the mass use of drones, while the Abrams is a design from the late 70's early 80s... I don't know which part of what features modern tanks will probably have you haven't read but afaik none of those two have them... Have you even read what I wrote???? Natrium batteries and solid state batteries don't get nearly as hot as current batteries let alone fossil fuel burning motors. And they do not explode! But yes please continue! And how do you protect these infantry men from all the threats such as drones, artillery etc? by placing them in a vehicle that is a) much faster than a human can be b) offers much more protection than body armor can provide (not that that those two are mutually exclusive you can wear body armour inside a vehicle), have greater range and endurance, can carry heavier and more diverse weaponry (machine guns, machine cannons, cannons, mortars, shotguns, DEW, missiles, rockets, Jammers, Lasers, Radars, optical sensors, grenades, smoke grenades, flares, chaffs) and most importantly can fire all those things while on the move (again moving faster than a human) and how do you call such a vehicle? A tank Let's say your an infantryman on foot in ukraine and your position is spotted by a drone which will have many options: drop a grenade or suicide onto you, call in an artillery or airstrike against none of these things you have chance. You have also little chance to kill the drone before it does any of that. in a vehicle you have at least a chance to run or shoot it down...

A L W A Y S funny [so was his anatomy]

Columbia Univ. Jewish students having their Passover in the protest encampment- Video enclosed "Inside the Seder dinner on Columbia's Gaza protest encampment" https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/us/video/seder-passover-columbia-university-protests-ny-digvid

Im positive me and a busload from Chi-town were out there on one of those weekends with you. Marching, rallying, protests and picketing are relished memories from the those long 8 years that the "Bush The Lesser" regime occupied the White House. Whether it was opposing the Iraq invasion or fighting for a fair labor contract I had a bullhorn or home made picket sign ready to go. People saying its pointless is funny, it filled my esteem with light during those long dark days when Cheney and Rumsfield were bombing the shit out of the cradle of civilization. My conscious was clear in opposition and that was priceless to me, far from pointless.

It's worth noting the protestors calling for divestment generally have been doing so for years with a clear understanding of the damage it would do to Israel.

Yes, it is good. This wasn't me accusing you of such. Just, a little concern 'til a got a little more info. All is well, relax.

Well good thing I didn't do that then, huh? You're the one that said "inevitable" scolding me for "the language of inevitability" and likening protests to a "natural disaster" (which I didn't do, by the way!) I guess I missed the part where I said "pick whatever you think is the worst, most toxic part about protesting, and let it be known to all the land, that's the part I fucking support!".

Late-breaking report that the Novofedorivka airfield in Crimea is burning, something really big hit it. Waiting to hear what that is. Helicopters are also best used in engagements where they can "pop up" behind scenery features to engage targets and then pop back down again to avoid retaliatory fire. In SE Ukraine, the terrain is not wholly suitable for that. It is worth noting that Ukraine has been experimenting with anti-helicopter drones. They haven't had a success yet, but they had a couple of near-misses in the attack on Robotyne, with drones flying past helicopters at close range and the Russian pilots and gunners clearly panicking and beating a retreat. That was using drones in a very improvised way though, and hitting a helicopter is tough.

Rockstar made Max Payne 3, Red Dead Redemption 1, GTA5 and LA Noire simultaneously. In fact, they spun up work on RDR2 immediately after RDR1 shipped, so were early in work on that alongside GTA5, LA Noire and Max Payne 3. Later on, the same number of people they used to make 3-5 games simultaneously (2,000) were needed to make just RDR2 and then GTA6. Video games have become exponentially more time, manpower and cash inefficient with each generation, which is clearly unsustainable, until we get to games that take twice the length of a console generation to come out.

Somebody start a new thread?