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I'm interested in why there is a lot of Ukraine dooming going on now. Their situation is dire, and by all rights they should lose this in the end, but that was even more true on day one of the full scale invasion in Feb '22. Russia is weaker now than at any time since the start of the war, while Ukr...

And I can absolutely picture Johnson contriving something like that scenario on purpose, reasoning that he can get all the political benefits of being seen to Take A Firm Line on Russia but never have to back it up with a commitment of UK forces if he can just stall until the occupation is a fait a...

I was looking at the Ukraine thread and realised I miss Sea Skimmer, his military/geopolitical analysis was always incredibly insightful.

According to Google, in 2001 the population of Afghanistan was 21.6 million, in 2019 it was 38 million and 2021 close to 40 million, nearly double its pre-invasion numbers. That is one of the crazy things about this situation: most people in Afghanistan are under 20 years old - 52.4% of the populat...

Broomstick wrote: ↑2021-05-13 04:33am What triggered this? I mean this current escalation, not the overall situation.

Probable the Netanyahu corruption trial that starts next week.

Now that we live in the future, this is much less miserable. You should be able to get VS to create you some cmake build stuff and use that on linux. This may be easier or harder depending on if you're using other libraries. This tutorial might have useful information, although I don't know if it ex...

I was a bit disappointed in the end of the show reveal. Really wanted Rex. Honestly, I'm not sure if it was Boba, Rex, or some other clone. I didn't see enough detail to be sure either way. Boba is just the one that seems most likely. Considering the McGuffin of the show was Boba's armor, it would ...

In positive news from the last few days: Modelling work predicts that masks could help prevent a second wave news and original article (open access) and published a day after that - Germany sees infection rates drop by 40% when facemasks made mandatory news and original article (open access) This gi...

I haven't done it myself, but yes it seems this is possible. Newer gimp instructions: https://www.deviantart.com/universal-tiger/art/GIMP-2-8-Pen-Pressure-Help-308775257 Older and some newer versions: https://askubuntu.com/questions/48771/how-to-set-pressure-sensitivity-in-gimp-to-control-line-thick...

Despite the name, https://www.gimp.org/ is a completely free and well featured alternative to photoshop.

Presumably the logic is along the lines of making a pardon "easier". Either he ends up pardoning someone with a very short sentence, or he is reversing the action of a rogue judge who gave a much longer sentence than that recommended by the DoJ.

I wouldn't read too much in to the graph of total reported cases. Even if you get past the detection and reporting issues, the overall epidemic is made up of a bunch of smaller localised outbreaks (individual outbreaks initially growing exponentially) that were all started at different times. The sh...

Assuming not: Are you saying that if the republicans agree internally that they will never vote to prosecute one of their own for crimes they have (verifiably) committed then the democrats must not prosecute them? Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the Democrats are the real Republicans? If so,...

It makes no sense! The vote is only on party lines because despite ample evidence that these crimes were committed, and no legal defence offered, the republicans refuse to vote to impeach (and some have even stated that they would not do so under any circumstances). Gabbard even states that she bel...

Man, thanks Timothy. That makes perfect sense in context. Senators definitely shouldn't vote for impeachment if they think that opinions on the subject correspond to party lines and that the people pushing it believe the president is a criminal and that leaving him in office is a threat to the coun...

I agree the Interdictor looks very cool. Are the bulges significantly bigger than other depictions? Something about the angle its at makes it seem to me that the forward port bulge is closer to the centreline than the starboard one. I think its something about the precise viewing angle that is makin...

is it easier to increase the fine then get a entire bill added? I mean, if they have made specific provisions in the bill that they deliberately won't fine multiple infractions more harshly than a single infraction, and the fine amount is absurdly low, that should tell you their appetite to increas...

The UK already has loads of private healthcare and private health insurance alongside the NHS. Private treatment has short/no wait times, comparable costs to other countries. I will note that the majority of private healthcare doctors have had their training entirely paid for by the NHS, greatly sub...

The shorter version was demonetised. The longer version, despite containing 100% of the content which was in the shorter version and 20 minutes more content besides, was not. While, of course, it is not quite this simple, you can make something objectionable by leaving things out. To reduce it to a...

I get that they, meaning Gates personally and the Foundation, are legitimately trying to give everything away. But the criticism of their strategy is valid because the Foundation isn’t giving money away fast enough to lose money over time and Gates himself isn’t giving his money to the foundation f...

If you promise to give away X dollars, then stop giving away money at X/2 dollars, because the multiplier effect of your donation is "only" ten or whatever, you're not actually committed to giving away X dollars. That in no way resembles what is happening. The foundation has not stopped g...

(Partially) Gates funded researcher here, so I have some familiarity with this topic. The foundation tries to fund things that will be transformational advances, rather than infrastructure. The thinking is that infrastructure and ongoing maintenence costs as well as dealing with known problems with ...

That didn't exist when I quoted :) I think in the Microsoft case, this assumption is reasonable. Microsoft has enough data centers that the majority of the target audience is close enough to a data center, probably a few hundred km radius. In that case, the majority of lag would come from sources o...

Gandalf wrote: ↑2019-02-15 09:07am This is way funnier than it should be.

Steel wrote: ↑2019-02-15 08:06am

My mother was just called a ‘w***e’ over the phone

I can't figure out what this is bleeping. Is it white?

I think "whore."

Ah, yes. Thank you.

My mother was just called a ‘w***e’ over the phone

I can't figure out what this is bleeping. Is it white?