ktchong

A good reminder about the differences between Sunni vs. Shia, and how the US government and media always conflate the two to create a misleading narrative:

Donald Trump will win the 2020 re-election. If you recall: back in 2016, all the election polls and pundits predicted that Hillary had “90-plus percentage” chance of defeating Trump in a landslide. All of them EXCEPT TWO: Professor Helmut Norpoth and Professor Alan Lichtman. Norpoth used his “Primary Model”. Lichtman used his 13-point predictive method. Here is the peculiarity shared by both Norpoth’s model and Lichtman’s 13 method: The main focus of the model and method was not even based on the candidates themselves. The models mostly looked at the performances of the SITTING PRESIDENT, who was Obama at the time. So, in essence, they looked at the 2016 election as a referendum on Obama’s second term. It was NOT Hillary who lost the 2016 election. It was OBAMA who lost the 2016 election — because outside the Black communities and the neoliberal circles, Obama’s policies had harmed and were disliked by the average Americans. The Primary Model even predicted that: even if Bernie had defeated Hillary in the 2016 primary, Bernie would have also lost to Trump — by an even bigger margin. Hillary or Bernie had very little to do with the outcome. The 2016 election outcome had already been pre-determined by the second-term performance of then-sitting president, Obama. Which brings us to the 2020 election. On December 5 in the New York Emma Clark Memorial Library, Norpoth offered his very first tentative forecast for the 2020 result based on his Primary Model. A month before that, Lichtman also went on the MSNBC to make an early 2020 prediction based on his 13-points. BOTH professors predicted Trump will win the 2020 election, regardless who will be the Democratic candidate. It is simply because Trump’s PERFORMANCES — outside his insensitive/offensive/sexist/racist comments and his un-presidential behaviors — especially his performances on economy, have actually been objectively good. AND, he has kept most of his campaign promises (even though I disagree with almost all of his policies/promises; I have to admit: he has kept most of his promises to his supporters.) Mind you: Lichtman is a Democrat who hated Trump, and Norpoth seems to be a progressive. But that was their early prediction for 2020. I encourage you to google those professors and their forecast methods/models. So, unless the economy crashes before the 2020 election, Trump will have his second term. So Happy New Year!

The first movie trailer of 2020:

Not sure if this is relevant to "politics", but a few days ago I read in Chinese social media that: in East Asia, (South Korea and Beijing in particular,) Asian male-white female interracial marriages outnumbered White male-Asian female ones, for the first time. Now that I've thought of it, I've been seeing a lot of Asian male-white female (AMWF) channels popped up on YouTube in the past year, (i.e., 2019.) One of the benefits when your countries/cultures/region have "risen", I suppose.

Whoa thanks. Anyway, I completed my Mass Effect trilogy DLC last week, but bought the Dragon Age 2 DLC just this week. Will ask for a refund quickly. Frankly, I've never been much of a fan of Dragon Age. I am more of a fan of the Mass Effect trilogy, and always thought the Dragon Age universe pale in comparison to many other sword-and-sorcery, elf-and-dragon fantasy competitions that have over-saturated the RPG market. Only got the first two Dragon Age to complete my "classic BioWare collections".

Whoa. Anyway, I am downloading Mass Effect 2 + DLC right now, just to test them to see if they work properly. Based on what I've been reading, you need to connect to the now-defunct "Cerberus Network" to use the DLC: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Mass-Effect-2/Can-t-connect-to-Cerberus-network-in-Mass-Effect-2/td-p/5893580

It was always curious to me as to why the universe does not have any other intelligent life. The odds are the universe should have other intelligence lives that are capable of spacefaring and contacting us. Now, it makes perfect sense. No other intelligence life was ever able to survive into the spacefaring age. They all went extinct for the same reason(s) we are going extinct. So, I already know how all this will end: I don't think we are gonna make it, because it is egoistical to think that we are any more special than all the other intelligent lives that had reached our stage of development (and the odds are plenty of other intelligent lives have reached our stage) and then gone extinct.

I have made the decision to pretty much stop buying anything from GOG, and I am in the process of migrating to Steam. For this Winter sales, I have spent close to $100 on Steam and from other venues that sell Steam keys. I spent about $30 on Origin -- but only to buy Mass Effect trilogy and Dragon Age II DLC packs, which are Origin exclusives that are not available on Steam or elsewhere. Those DLC were the last and only things I wanted from Origin, so most likely I will NEVER spend any money on Origin ever again after this Winter sales. I am looking to spend $5 to $10 on Epic because I want to use the $10 off $15 coupon. On GOG, however, I have spent only about $3 for this Winter Sales, and only very reluctantly because those games were not discounted (at 80-percent) elsewhere. This entire year (2019), I have spend less than $20 on GOG. I currently own over 400 games on GOG, and almost all of them were bought before 2018. I will still buy games from GOG if they are not available on Steam and made by CDProjektRed. Otherwise, I will continue to stay away from GOG. Frankly, if I can find a way to get rid of my GOG account and recoup most of the money, I will do it. I will write a long article as to why I have made that decision later. A lot of reasons that have contributed to my final decisions to distance myself from GOG. Honestly, other than the cult-like mentality to support "No DRM", (which is really just a gimmick that appealed to me in the past but not anymore,) I have found very few other reasons to buy from GOG.

Past its expiration date, but here it is again...

He got awesome when he dumped that toxic feminist-SJW Angelina Jolie that had sucked all the awesomeness out of him.

Finally saw Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It is bad movie, BUT it DID save Star Wars from the Last Jedi mess. Everyone could have known the movie after the Last Jedi would turn out to be a big mess after Rian Johnson f-cked over Star Wars. Johnson totally destroyed the internal and logical consistency of the Star Wars universe. There was really no easy way to continue the sage or fix the messes crapped out by Rian Johnson in the Last Jedi. HOWEVER, J.J. Abrams actually DID somehow fix the mess... but at the expense of a making a good, entertaining movie. Abram had to rushed through all the expositions to explain away all the messes created by Rian Johnson, without any time left for characters or story. The Rise of Skywalker gave us a good explanation as to why Leia could wield a high-level Force power in the Last Jedi, (i.e., Mary Poppins in space,) and why Mary Sue Rey was so powerful in the using the Force without any prior training, (which contradicted all the previous movies and TV series that had told us about how the Force was supposed the work; Rey's ridiculous mastery of the Force without any training also marginalized Anakin who was supposed to be the "Chosen One" and most powerful Force user in Star Wars history, Luke, Yoda, and millions of Jedi who had come before Rey, all of them had to trained hard for years and years before they could use telekinesis to move even a small object. Rian Johnson completely f--ked over all the other Jedi and the Force, and broke the internal consistency of the Star Wars universe.) The Rise of Skywalker has more or less fixed many of the f--k-ups created by Rian Johnson. The Rise of Skywalker was a bad movie on its own: it is too rushed, it is one exposition after another, it does not have any character moment or an interesting story. HOWEVER, this final movie actually DID fix and find ways to explain away (almost) all the BS Rian Johnson had put in the Last Jedi. For that , I give Abrams credits and respect. The Rise of Skywalker is a bad movie, but it savaged the Star Wars universe from Rian Johnson and the Last Jedi. (Not everything was corrected: for example, there was still no good explanation why the Resistance in the Last Jedi could use a starship to slice through a destroyer -- but the Rebel Alliance or anyone else had ever used it before if that tactic was so simple and effective. It retroactively opened up so many plot holes in all of the previous movies with spacer battles.)

Here is how an atheist like myself enjoy Christmas:

So I watched the first episode of Netflix's The Witcher last night. At the end of the first episode, Geralt (the Witcher) fought a "strong, independent" woman, (i.e., a dark, evil version of Snow White, somewhat of a Mary Sue in her own right.) Geralt easily massacred her seven companions, and he clearly outmatched her in their swordfight. During their fight, Geralt slapped her once. He also repeatedly spared her life to let her walk away. Every time he defeated her and could have killed her, he stopped to show her mercy. Yet she stubbornly refused to accept defeat and kept on fighting, kept trying to kill him. At the end of the swordfight, he disarmed her. Then he turned around to walk away, but she pulled out a dagger and dishonorably trying to kill him from the back. That was when he grabbed her dagger -- and slit her throat with her own dagger. That finally ended the fight and her life. I knew, at that moment, that all the critics and SJW's heads were gonna combust. They were not going to take that scene well: "OMG! A man defeated a strong, independent woman! That is blasphemy!" And I knew they would crucify the series and gave really bad reviews for that transgression.

Just found out Horizon: Zero Dawn is coming to Epic Games Store next year in February, and the PC version will be an Epic Games Store exclusive (like all Playstation titles that have been ported to the PC: Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human) as Epic and Sony has a PC exclusive agreement. Oh man, Steam is seriously losing grounds to Epic.

Cats -- a MOVIE -- is receiving "Day One" Patch after its disastrous release:

China returning to its rightful place in the world:

A HILARIOUS review:

In the UK, an ambulance callout costs you £0 in medical bills. The birth of your child costs you £0 in medical bills. In the USA, it's a different story. British react to the cost of healtcare in America.

A breakdown of the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” passed by the US Congress: Basically, it is a backdoor and pretense to extend US jurisdiction — the Patriot Act in particularly — into Hong Kong. For examples: Remember when Hong Kong refused to extradite Edward Snowden back to the US, and then allowed Snowden to escape to Russia? Under the US Congress bill on Hong Kong, Hong Kong would be required to extradite Edward Snowden to the US, even though neither China nor Hong Kong has an extradition agreement with the US. Also, the bill will require Hong Kong to follow US sanctions on companies and countries — including US sanctions on Chinese companies like Huawei, (which is ridiculous.) AND it will require Hong Kong to extradite Chinese citizens wanted by the US, even though Hong Kong is a Chinese territory. Again, neither China nor Hong Kong has — and will sign — any extradition agreement with the US.

The algorithm of YouTube would recommend videos to me based on my search records. I must have searched for "Bernie" hundreds of times, yet never ONCE has YouTube recommended a Bernie Sanders video to me. Hm.

Here is a very interesting video that shows how the so-called "Five Eyes" or "Anglo Sphere" (i.e., the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) blocks and censors videos on YouTube. Basically, if you live in any of those five countries that you would think are "free" and "democratic", some contents are blocked because their messages do not fit into the "approved" mainstream narrative. However, if you "change" your country to outside the Anglo Zone, then those "unapproved" contents become available. Seems like China and Russia are not the only nations that have a "firewall".