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Also, gonna go get a hair shirt to wear as penance for doubting Cain, who called this shit like an hour before it happened.

It's what I (don't) get paid the big bucks for.

The missile failure rate is interesting.  Lots of people are (correctly) pointing out that this was a very Wag the Dog moment - US policy towards Syria is apparently unchanged, Russia was informed before the strike (and undoubtedly passed that info onto Syria) etc.  It's also unclear what intelligence led to this base itself being struck - the White House claims it is where the chemical attack originated, but what agency made that determination, how was it made and how credible is that assessment (just last week, Trump was asking for raw intel.  Did a White House off the books "intel team" pick the target, or was it a "legit" intel agency).

And on top of that, it's Syria, so everyone has every reason to lie.  Trump, the Russians, the Assad govt, the rebels...it's going to be a shitshow of claims and counterclaims and disinfo.

The articles I've been reading say the information was confirmed by the Syrian resistance. I'd assume that the smart move here would be to say "well they told us and they're /right there watching it/ so who are we to say they lied?"

2 mins of gameplay from the new Quake Champions. My body is so fucking ready for this. On the downside - there goes sculpting practice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLEUD0WnTzs

I'm personally unhyped. I miss Quake 1 way more than I miss Quake 3, and I have never, ever thought to myself that all Quake 3 needed was to be more like Overwatch. (I really just wish that Team Arena had been more popular -- the pickup-based class system was good and the game modes were well-made and in-line with the high speed destruction derby nature of the gameplay.)

Unfortunately, the Quake 1 community has somehow become riddled with Kekites and their slithery malformed ilk. I'm fortunate that the truly high quality people in the community are obviously opposed, so I can still enjoy the maps coming down the pipe without feeling filthy.

Nevertheless, I'll be right there with you -- I can't force myself to stay away from a Quake game.

No problem.

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/bgm-109.htm

In all, Tomahawks firing power shows a greater than 85% success rate

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/bgm-109-operation.htm

Same exact blocks of text. Probably from a book (Maybe one of the Jane's compendiums?) or a government report.

https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/tomahawk/

These missiles achieved an 85 percent success rate.

Citation from that site: "RGM/UGM-109 Tomahawk," in IHS Jane's Weapons: Strategic 2015-2016, ed. James C. O'Halloran (United Kingdom: IHS, 2015), 219-223. Seems like I was right. Jane's is a really, really good source for this sort of information.

Cruise missiles historically have an effectiveness rate that is just about consistent with their rate of use (e.g. they rarely fail because they don't get used often enough to be able to afford failure -- iirc it's something like an avg success rate of 87% or thereabouts). The US military is a bit behind the pack, the Tomahawks run an 85% success rate, but that's still way better than what we were shown here. These would need to be a completely bad lot or, as stated, ones earmarked for destruction or total refurbishment if there were THAT many duds.

85% success rate? That seems a little high. And if you're right, which you may very well be, raises further questions about how many misses and lack of serious damage there has been. I would assume missiles needing maintenance/refurb would not get used at all as they represent a pretty significant risk to those firing them in the first place. "US sinks own ship due to dodgy missile" is a headline the military can't stand.

So what are the other reasonable options? Someone pulled a Schindler and has been selling the US bombs without the ability to go bang? Not likely, but can't rule it totally out these days.

It's my understanding that "success rate" just means "explodes", so the misses aren't relevant to that number. Essentially, 85% of the time, a Tomahawk that is fired will blow up when it hits something. I could be wrong there, I haven't read up on them in quite some time, but I'm pretty sure the number is correct (a quick Google certainly says so).

It's also my understanding that "dodgy missiles" are safer for the one firing than it might seem. Something like, there must be a successful launch for the explosives to arm, and the explosives must arm to detonate. Those details are second hand, from military personnel I know, so I can't give you any sources on those, but it makes sense from a logistics perspective -- the launchers tend to hold multiple missiles, and a single failed missile would destroy them all, along with the launcher and anyone/anything near it. That's costs in personnel, labor, materiel and (usually) vehicles. You'd think that you'd just religiously keep the dodgy ones out of circulation, but they have (again, to my understanding) fairly short maintenance cycles and spend a lot of time attached to units that may not always be able to offload them for maintenance when needed, not to mention regular human failures (someone misses the date and signs off on it anyway, etc). Safer to make sure that they won't blow up the one firing them off.

There's also the alternative that someone put a clause in the mission plan that involved "casting a wide net" to catch "escaping targets" -- considering it /was/ internationally known it was going to happen before it actually did and all, that's a line that's plausible enough most people would buy it. It's also unrealistic because we're talking fucking cruise missiles, but I'm not sure reality entirely has a say in what happens around these parts anymore. This shit runs on soap opera drama rules.

Most airfields are surrounded by dickloads of nothing (for good reason). "Casting a wide net" will ensure the majority of them land ... nowhere and damage ... nothing and achieve ... fuck all. It'd be (arguably) a way to keep Assad and Putin happy while still appearing to do anything at all worth a damn.

The only other option I can think of is they explicitly toted out the ones so behind on maintenance that they were earmarked for return to the States and/or destroy in place, which requires the fucking operators to have been moles, which is unrealistic to the point of failing even soap opera drama rules. Cruise missiles historically have an effectiveness rate that is just about consistent with their rate of use (e.g. they rarely fail because they don't get used often enough to be able to afford failure -- iirc it's something like an avg success rate of 87% or thereabouts). The US military is a bit behind the pack, the Tomahawks run an 85% success rate, but that's still way better than what we were shown here. These would need to be a completely bad lot or, as stated, ones earmarked for destruction or total refurbishment if there were THAT many duds.

Being a military nerd has its moments at times like this.

I'm seeing runway damage that amounts to potholes and a /single/ heavily damaged (but probably still functional after you clean up the worst of the mess) hangar surrounded by unblemished ones, runway damage released by the Russian govt and hangar by a Russian news reporter.

No source I'm reading says all the missiles hit. There's talk about them being accurate but no one's asserting they didn't miss /anyway/. No one's denying the Russian count. That's a curious little tidbit, to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2017/apr/07/us-syria-response-donald-trump-assad-pentagon-live

Reading through now, those photos from the Russian govt -- if those were missiles, they were duds and have been carted away. The damage is absurdly minimal. I've seen malfunctioning fireworks do similar damage.

Russia says that the US strikes were basically supporting IS. There's also reports of civilian casualties despite the total lack of Russian casualties. Curious.

The Syrian rebels are confirming the US line /and/ target. The EU is supportive of the strike. The UK condemns it, apparently because the EU is supportive.

EDIT: Checking that Russian news guy's Instagram is a lot more informative. That looks like missile damage now.

Jesus fucking Christ I forgot how much of a pain in the arse modding Skyrim is.  Someone remind me in like, 2 weeks time, to make a backup of my Mod Organiser folder, so I never have to do this bullshit again.

On the plus side, this does mean I have successfully weeded out a bunch of legacy mods that were proving increasingly difficult to patch for.  But still...urgh.

Nigel, you should see if you can do a PhD on Zelda.  Then it's research.

And that is why I stopped playing Skyrim. I'll stop playing and then decide I should start play again but all the mods are broken for some reason and HOURS of work and fuck it I'll just go wander around in Dark Souls.

Last year it was discovered that a lot of "stable" mods...are not. ugridstoload, Duel....a shit ton of others I can't recall.  And then USLEEP was released and while most modders changed their dependencies to account for it, old mods like SkyRe have not been. 

I will say if you want a simple plug and play approach to mods, Enai Sinaon's stuff is great.  Ordinator (perks) plus Imperious (races) plus Apocalypse (spells) plus Thunderchild (shouts) plus Sacrosanct (vampires) plus Aurora (standing stones) open up so many different playstyles, are stable, have low script-load and requires virtually no patching.  Throw in USLEEP, Campfire/Frostfall, Immersive Weapons/Armours, Interesting NPCs/Inigo/Arissa and a combat mod of your choice and you're good to go.  Plus he deserves some respect, the amount of bullshit nonsense he has to put up with from people who took a perk and complain that the perk did exactly what it said it did is unbelievable.

I'm currently trying to work on the Requiem overhaul, which is a bit trickier because it requires patches for a lot of stuff.  Not everything, not as bad as it used to be, and lots of stuff is incompatible anyway.  But it requires a bit more attention to detail.

And yeah, sometimes I just say "fuck this shit" and boot up Inquisition.  Throw on Walk Softly and it might as well be a Souls game, "defeat the mage with infinite barrier who spams Fade Cloak to become invulnerable every 2 seconds...in your first fight outside of the opening sequence."

Enai actually stopped making quest mods after some massive drama. Dwemertech and the one about the Magna-Ge, they both got a ton of backlash because they locked people getting the cool spells and stuff behind /gameplay/, how /dare/ he. Also he used a trick, the same trick Skyrim teaches you to rely on when navigating dungeons -- of falling into water to mitigate fall damage. And put the player up high enough that they'd have plenty of time to steer toward such safe liquid. Unconscionable.

Last I heard he was also working on a combat mod that didn't rely on a million scripts that would end up orphaned and bloating saves to hell, since he helped uncover that all combat mods out currently rely on dangerous methods and sane people don't have many options now. He's a cool guy and definitely deserves the support.

There was a two year period of my life where I beat games in this order:
Dark souls 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, bloodborne, bloodborne, 1, 3, 3

GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH
-snip-
I'm looking for a good PS4 tower defense game. I've played Defense Grid 2, it was awesome. Any suggestions?

If you liked the Soulsborne franchise, try Nioh. It's very different and very similar at the same time. I've noted it comes a bit closer to Hotline Miami-style action within the same framework -- you die faster but you're stuck for a shorter period of time at the frustrating parts. Also: mission-based instead of open world, loot-based character progression instead of stat-based progression, and a slightly more "fighting-game-y" combat system. I've described it as "Onimusha 3 and Dark Souls make nasty love with bad ARPG loot system" when talking to the boyfriend about it.

I have a big ol' list of PS4 TD games here. Let's see which ones are good... (List is here.)

Unholy Heights is a good one. It's weird -- you're managing an apartment complex of monsters and you need to make sure they have appropriate furniture and neighbors, kind of distantly reminiscent of The Sims, or Animal Crossing a bit I guess. But you're also trying to strategically direct the monsters to move into certain parts of the complex, because every so often some humans come by and it turns into tower defense on a door-by-door basis -- the enemies stop at each door, beat up the monsters, and move onward, aiming to reach your office and kill the Prince of Darkness (Oh, right: you play as Satan).

I described it once as "Animal Crossing in Hell, except your hellneighbors defend your office from LARPers with their lives." Weirdly compelling.

I haven't played or highly dislike most of the others on this list. There's two Plants vs Zombies games on PS4, though, if you like that series.

On the other hand, if you like your tower defense games to be nails-hard, of variable pace, with decent visual quality but questionable design decisions, Deathtrap is apparently coming out on PS4 soon -- and that is a special game. Spin-off of the Van Helsing Diablo clone series, no mazing but /lots/ of available delaying tactics, and your character as a force multiplier when necessary.

And it's still tough as all hell. You have to not die (death takes gate points and it's impossible to get the full bonus on a three-star mission without doing a perfect map clear) but your defenses are very often not anywhere near enough damage being laid down, especially in the three-star missions, so you need to tank enemies at strategic locations to whittle their health down -- and they hit you like you're Richard Spencer, so that's easier said than done.

And you absolutely need to do the three-star missions, because vital unlocks (Trap Skill Points) are locked behind them -- you can't grind them up except by playing missions you haven't already beaten. EXP is limited too, everything's limited, it's /weird/ and feels oddly unnatural -- and yet I don't see how they could improve upon the end experience with what they brought to the table.

Underrated, viciously difficult in a way no other Tower Defense game I've ever played has been. Worth a shot when it comes out on PS4. (If you don't mind playing games on PC, it's already out on Steam. So is Unholy Heights.)

Statements of Absolutism are all stupid.

I know they're not really the same, but I like them both, and I immediately remembered the original.
"It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs."
I think that one applies here too.

I don't think the larva is capable of bipedal locomotion, personally.

What's the goal?

Good question.  Everyone Discordias differently.  My Discordia is different than Nigel's, which is different than Roger's, which is different than P3nt's, etc ad nauseum.

Your Discordia appears to be quite singular, and involves punching Nazis.  If that's your goal, then there's your answer.

My goal is of course superior.

Our collective Discordia is always to incidentally support the Rain God's personal Discordia.
There is no other True Path.

Some horror films:

"Commerce With Demons"- This is a story about a businessman who makes a deal with the devil to increase sales of his company's products. The busi essman doesn't have to pay anything to the devil himself, he just needs to allow his company's products to carry a terrible curse. Bizarre gory accidents start befalling the product;s users, but the product continues to increase in popularity. The film ends with the businessman and the devil looking down from a tall tower on the consumers dying in the streets and laughing maniacally

"Blood for Oil"- Similar-ish to the above. A politician makes a deal with the devil to literally trade blpod for oil

Part of a series of films whose third entry ("Devil Tank") was widely considered to be a shoddy attempt to cash in on anti-war sentiment during the Trump administration. The series doesn't die until finally "Commerce with Demons VII: You Get What You Pay For" is panned at the box office with its anti-homelessness and anti-poverty sentiments based on supernaturally-powered trickle-down economics in a world where buying cinema tickets is almost a full month's paycheck.

If you are interested in human error, I could compile a pretty good reading list that could help give you some insight into how and why we are so prone to self-delusion, error, and generally doing terrible things to each other while believing with all our hearts that they are right and good.

I really, really want this for myself, if Fernando happens to be uninterested.

No intention of threadjacking, just a bump and an expression of interest.

This is discordianism. We dont dabble in conspiracy theories about crazy people.

Though tbh. Think I'm in the wrong.  My bad, Nazis are a problem.  Though what people like ipunchnazis call a nazi isnt a Nazi. I'm defending the term because it gets thrown at fucking everything now and days.

I'm pretty sure that IPunchNazis guy is one of Them anyway, pretending to be one of Us People.

Fortunately, it's pretty easy to tell he's not Us People. He hasn't eaten enough of his own species to have gotten off his knuckles yet. The stench of scorched ass hair is lacking in his vicinity. The secret PD.com messenger gnome doesn't whisper his name in a hushed tone of reverence and fear. He doesn't have his own holiday. I bet he doesn't even know why Enrico Salazar died for his sins.

In short, you should treat him like you would treat Them and not like you would treat a potential future biped. He's meant to be an ideological trojan horse, except we tear apart our gifts so we can shit in the boxes and mail them to world leaders, so he was never going to succeed.