I don’t consider anything I watch a guilty pleasure, since I’m pretty open about watching B and bad movies.

I enjoy movies where a director has made a surprisingly successful cult movie and on the back of that got creative freedom and a big budget from a studio, which they then used to create something beautiful and terrifying. My exemplar movie for this is Southland Tales, which I absolutely love on all possible levels.

I really like movies that commit to a sharp genre turn. The Guest (2014) is a great example.

Lastly, spaghetti westerns. This seems like a maybe more mainstream choice, but had a conversation in real life not too long ago with somebody who had no interest in any kind of western and didn’t know about the distinction between classic and spaghetti. When I was articulating the difference I was able to boil it down to classic westerns being nostalgia and romanticization of the American west, while spaghetti westerns were made by people with no nostalgia for it. It creates a subgenre which is grittier and more morally grey than the John Wayne era movies. My favorite is Once Upon A Time In The West, though I’d recommend people work up to that by watching other genre movies first.

Can you dry fire it and rotate through every position? From what I’ve seen on revolvers sometimes a cylinder can be binding somewhere specific to the cylinder rotation.

You might also want to take every screw out of the frame to check and make sure none of them are broken which could be causing inconsistency.

I’d like a better breakdown on numbers to know if the Patriot’s inception missiles themselves are missing when they are fired, or if the problem is more on Russia firing many more missiles.

Other articles only address the total interception stats dropping rather than stats of the Patriot batteries themselves. I know the total interception rate has gone from mid 30% numbers to around 6%.

I think looking at a breakdown is an important nuance because it shows if the Patriot systems themselves need to be upgraded, or if there just need to be more of the existing systems deployed. I know the spokesperson said the modified Russian missiles are more difficult to intercept, but what does “more difficult” translate to in the percent of fired interception missiles that successfully connect? Is that a 5% drop or a 35% drop for the interception missiles actually fired?

Given that Ukraine is looking to the US for more Patriots, I suspect the systems themselves are acceptable but there just aren’t enough deployed to provide enough coverage.

This is all curiosity from a public sideline, as I’m sure that privately the ordnance experts have these numbers and details on interceptions to do better breakdowns.

The MCC Halo had a graphical remaster on the original engine, that’s why you could swap between original and remaster visuals on the fly. The upcoming project is a remake on a new engine with changes to gameplay and design.

Certainly. While I don’t think I ever saw the original movie all the way through, that mechanical owl is a core memory of mine.

I think every study like this should be looked at and considered as a work in progress and as information that doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Also, quotes like “This matches some anthropological estimates for early modern humans.” might be ones to consider, as other sources do agree that a lifespan in the 30s was at one point to be expected, but it began extending past that 30, 000 years ago. So when the original study talks about 30 as the upper end, is it looking at an age where an early hunter-gatherer type human would be unable to keep sustaining themselves with that lifestyle? Is it because they are no longer fit enough to keep hunting or is it because even if somebody else fed them that all the other circumstances would just pile on? Is the idea of DNA estimating lifespan also looking at the idea that once an organism ages to a certain point and slows down it statistically dies from predation as well? Since that is something humans as a whole have been able to get past with intelligence. I don’t know exactly how that all interacts, which is why looking at a lot of data is important before declaring something.

Which also brings up the idea of an average in relation to an expected lifespan. It is a commonly known tidbit that while the average lifespan in ancient and medieval times would usually be estimated somewhere in the 30s (depending on the exact era, location, and methodology), that’s an average dragged way down by infant mortality, and that people who made it out of childhood would have higher expected lifespans. I bring this up because looking at the OP linked study and then skimming a look at average lifespans might make the idea of DNA-destined-dead-by-30 a lock, when it really isn’t.

Obvious advancing medicine increases the population average lifespan. A human 30,000 years ago born with diabetes probably wouldn’t make it very long while one born these days with proper medication lives much longer. Does seeing the population average lifespan number go up have any relation to another individual, specific human who doesn’t have any sort of chronic illness? No, so again just looking at raw population averages as just one way of looking at expected lifespan is something to keep in mind.

The conclusion is that it’s an interesting study to keep as a link, and use as one piece of data if you’re really interested in gathering more information.

Yes, it was in the CE PC multiplayer. And, to refer back to the post:

It adds new weapons to the CE campaign

Food Network is in the bag for Kitchen Aid products.

The special provisions that exist or have been proposed are for first responders because they breathed in dust and were exposed to various health hazards during the response.

What above and beyond taking care of do people who weren’t exposed to any of that in the backend need?

In your own question you are identifying something that isn’t a first responder. First responders arrive on scene. By being on scene the first responders were exposed to health hazards. Those hazards are what existing or proposed programs deal with.

Repeat from the other thread:

I beat The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.

It was alright. A third person shooter where you are theoretically giving tactical orders to two NPC followers. In reality, good or interesting tactics go out the window in favor of just spamming special abilities as much as possible in a chaotic mess of fights. The story was decent and gets interesting near the end, although for my money after the big reveal it feels like it drags out a bit longer than it needs to. For $3 I got my value.

Something that is popular (or sells well) despite having no apparent appeal to anyone the commenter can think of.

I don’t enjoy Bloodborne. I think I can figure out why there is a lot of hype for it.

It seems like all of the answers are “I personally didn’t enjoy this game therefore I can not conceive of anyone else enjoying it.”

I find that interesting.

I’m not saying Clancy stuff is always completely grounded, especially the longer it goes on, but I’m trying to use the Clancy comparison to capture the essence of an idea. COD4 while fictional, and with moments that aren’t wholly realistic if you really hold them up to the most intense scrutiny has the overall texture of realism. MW2&3 and Black Ops games all exist as throwing bigger and more insane setpieces out with no regard to any realism.

It’s a the last COD with a real gutpunch moment that says anything about anything. The nuke going off it a moment of realizing you aren’t a special main character and you die like everyone else, and that maybe war isn’t just a big fun adventure. All the shock moments have been trying to top it are so dramatic that they don’t have the same effect that the nuke did.

While (classic, I’m not counting stuff ghostwritten under his brand) Clancy characters have hyper competence, it’s to be expected given that they are turbo ultra elite soldiers or spies. Their motivations and ability to act doesn’t reach the point of self parody.

For a COD4 example: Nikolai, the Russian that the player rescues early on in the game. He is a mole inside the Russian antagonist faction feeding information to the SAS. He got found out. He’s being kept at a house with a handful of regular soldiers watching him. When you rescue you him he is calm or at least puts up a calm front and thanks you. That’s a pretty believable guy who could have been a real person who is doing something realistic and dangerous.

In MW2 that character can materialize with apparently infinite types of military aviation hardware, and he is also a pilot able and willing to do insane maneuvers. And he is personal friends with Captain price rather than just being an SAS asset. And he is in touch with a friendly militia group in the middle of Europe.

There is a distinct jump from COD4 to MW2, where it goes from Tom Clancy to Michael Bay.

MW2 is still fun, but it exists in an entirely separate tonal reality than COD4.

I’m replaying COD4 and taking notes at the moment for a review I’ve wanted to do for years, coincidentally.

Looking at just COD4 without being influenced by knowledge of the sequels, it’s got a decent story and if you look at the edges you can find contemplations of cycles of violence, and while not to the point of being anti-war it does emphasize the waste of it.

The characters are Tom Clancy levels of larger than life, which is significantly more restrained than what came later. Individually the story beats and scenarios have at least a texture of realism, often loosely based in something real and then strung together in a story that isn’t convoluted.

I could see it being a good movie with the right handling. It probably wouldn’t be.

The first one has slightly different foreign languages dubbed. It is also listed as a Sony manufactured box set, I really don’t know the rights history there, but that’s what the product page says.

The second one is listed as a Disney made box. It contains one disc with everything on it.

The third product looks the same as the second but containing three discs instead of one.

The closest that ever happened to me was an interview that ended up turning into a two hour plus long tour of the facility with my interviewer pointing out a lot of little details in more of a first day orientation than interview kind of vibe.

The job seemed like a lock until I got a generic rejection email. I didn’t reach out, but the same day that I got the email I also got a text from my interviewer apologizing to me because he had recommended me for the job and thought I was a good fit, but management above him had an internal person that they’d already planned to give the job to.

Normally I’d be skeptical of a story like that, but given that he’d really gone above and beyond the scheduled amount of time for the interview and that he sent the text unprompted, I really do believe there were shenanigans afoot above him.

Questions like this are why I don’t like “drone” as a catchall description. Drones are everything from single use first person view suicide devices, to off the shelf quad copters for recon, to essentially unmanned aircraft, to essentially just more controllable long range missiles.

Ukraine has adopted Vykhors as the “standard” for their first person view suicide drones. These are often seen in footage with PG warheads attached and modified so the drone can fly straight at an armored target.

Ukraine has also been using Bayraktar TB2, which are essentially unmanned aircraft which fire air to ground munitions and then return to base.

The Russians use for example the Orlan-10 for recon. They are recovered after using a parachute to help land in one piece.

Russia purchased from Iran, and now makes its own version of the Shahed 136, a long range drone (about 1500 mile range) that is essentially just a highly controllable missile. The payload is built into the drone.

These are just a few examples and not an exhaustive list. The examples should illustrate the wide range of sizes, costs, and uses of drones though.

Do those detectors even work against LIDAR? A lot of police use that now anyway.