xzar_monty

Care to share any? The in-jokes, of course, may be difficult... I wonder if that guy Goncalo Ramos suddenly finds himself in high demand. It has been said that clubs have learned their lesson and that there will never be any more Salif Diaos and El-Hadji Dioufs in the transfer market (as far as prices go), but I don't believe that.

My less than charitable stance on Wikipedia is based upon quite a few years of experience with the world of fact-checking, the kind of work that publishers and better newspapers have to engage in for legal reasons, among others. The funny thing about Wikipedia as a source is that it can be anything from superb to awful, and therefore it isn't one to be taken seriously. Anyway, I've got no desire to take this any further (as far as discussions / arguments go). As for several other sources cited in these discussions, they sometimes fall into the category of "not even wrong" in the Wolfgang Pauli sense (in my view), so not much point in debunking them.

Ahem. My scepticism towards Wikipedia in no way implies any kind of faith in what Arestovych says. You sometimes have a mightily strange way of reading stuff. It's not as if it's a choice between those two as sources to be relied upon.

Morocco's supportes are very unsporting and thus really quite annoying, but it's not the players' fault. (Japan's supporters are still the model for everyone else.)

Given that today is Finland's Independence Day and another neighbour of Russia is in deep trouble, here's this. A Finnish choir went and sung this in front of the Russian embassy in Helsinki, with "Finland" in the lyrics exchanged for "Ukraine". This one here is an unbelievably spirited performance, I must say -- and the composition is indeed very moving. I wonder how long it took the choir to get their Finnish pronunciation up to this level (it's all right; they're in trouble with some diphthongs but that's all right, too).

Sounds a bit strange, but I recently bought Count, and I already have Musketeers, both in the original French, a language I've never read them in, and it was only the day before yesterday I thought about starting Count. Doesn't qualify as synchronicity, but FYI anyway... My sense is that as far as ripping yarns are concerned, Count is indeed very very good, but I wonder whether it has held up. Some books you can't go back to, some you definitely can, and perhaps even appreciate them a lot more.

As a side note, using Wikipedia as a source is one of those "don't know whether I should laugh or cry" situations. There is no doubt that it can be good, but it absolutely shouldn't be relied upon. In military matters, I wouldn't even dream of using it as a source.

Putin has Hungary in his pocket; this is another of those political situations it would be marvelous to get to the bottom of. We may have to wait decades for it...

As you only use the name Girkin, you must mean the rather well-known ultra-nationalist veteran, right? Where was this text?

Btw, not particularly pertinent to Ukraine per se, but further evidence of Putin's Russia's long-standing position as a country devoted to brutality: in my current work project related to sexual violence and its deliberate use in conflicts, I have now discovered that throughout the 2000s, Russia has been against everything that might help the problem and its recognition as a major scourge. Potential resolutions of the UN Security Council around this topic have been repeatedly nixed by Russia, most notably in 2006.

Croatia, Uruguay and Portugal tend to punch seriously above their weight. Uruguay of course made an exception this time. Also, Switzerland are surprisingly good in the "we're always there" category. In the five EC/WC competitions since 2014, only two countries have always advanced from their group, and they're France and Switzerland.

Precisely. Everyone of course knows this already, but "if not for nukes", Russia would have been obliterated as a military force in mid-March at the latest. (But then, "if not for nukes", it wouldn't have attacked, so...) Btw, I find the sheer amount of these photos quite strange. My military expertise is close to zero, but it feels odd that there are these clearly (right?) unexploded missiles all over the place. Why's that?

This looks interesting. Are Ukraine capable of more long-range hits now? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/05/explosions-russia-airbases-far-from-ukraine-frontline-bombers

Ok, I understand, thanks. It is true that save-scumming is impossible to avoid. I agree that some pretty bad choices were made in the spirit of balancing stuff. For example, one of the most serious consequences of this balancing ideology for me was that there was basically no loot in the whole game that made you happy. This is what you get when you balance stuff out: everything becomes the same. I understand the thinking behind it, and I agree that there are problems with some must-have items in various games, but Obsidian went too far in the other direction. And yes, there were no memorable encounters, either.

How is it impossible to avoid? I agree with plenty of what you write above, but in my view, this just makes no sense. To avoid metagaming, you just play the game and see how it turns out. You may miss some stuff, but that's fine. Where's the impossibility of avoiding metagaming? Do we perhaps have a different definition for the term?

My absolute favorite thing about raiders is the one everyone already knows: Indy doesn't affect the main story in any way. Without him, the Nazis would have found the Ark, opened it and died, too. I think it's delightful to have a story like this where the hero is meaningless.

This stuff can be funny, by the way, once you speak a fair number of languages. Ivan, for instance, wasn't "terrible" for me growing up, since I didn't grow up speaking English. It was only later that I learned that the epithet had been translated that way, too. There must be a pretty serious discrepancy between two different title or epithet translations somewhere, but I can't think of one just now.

Oh yes. And Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, according to Margaret Thatcher. And so on. And so on, for quite some time. I am not blind to, nor ignorant of, the naivety of famous historians, either. For example, Sir Antony Beevor, in his prologue to his book on the Spanish civil war, written in 2006, says this: "The passions and hatreds of such an era are a world away from the safe, civilian environment of health and safety, and citizens' rights in which we live today. That past is indeed 'another country'. [...] This, perhaps, is why it is unwise to try to judge the terrible conflict of 70 years ago with the liberal values and attitudes that we accept today as normal." We disagree quite a lot, but I have a suspicion we might agree that not many historians would write that in 2022.

It's not a question of understanding the opinion, but simply of knowing at least something of the context that gave rise to the opinion. As for them being opinions, of course they are, I don't think anyone was ever going to dispute that. Anyway, your elaboration of why you felt the way you felt was much more relatable, so thanks for that. I disagree almost completely, but I'm sure there's nothing wrong with that for either of us. I thought PoE started extremely well, in fact the beginning of the game was the most captivating one I've even experienced (with the exception of Ultima IV, but that was so long ago and I was so much younger when that game came out). I thought the biawac at the start was lovely, as was the "waking up" sequence of becoming a watcher, and then entering that dismal-looking village with corpses hanging from a tree. It was very dark and well-written. Now, it didn't hold up all that well, but the beginning surely was good. I played BG2 before I got into BG1, and I thought BG1 was rubbish almost all the way -- much too simplistic in terms of writing, but what tired me the most was walking around all those mostly empty outdoor maps. I suppose my experience might have been different if I had played the games in the right order, but really, BG1 was not that good after having already experienced its successor.

Ok. Then we are back at the usual: as anyone can have any opinion about anything, simply stating that opinion without explaining how they came to have it is just a waste of time.

Could you elaborate on this, even a little bit? I'm very curious. Also, what kind of writing do you enjoy -- in books, films, etc? Perhaps you could even give some specific examples. I thought PoE was mostly written very well.

I don't know whether the story is true or not, but I'm pretty sure you remember what Stalin was discovered lying in after his stroke, soon before he died. An eerie parallel of sorts, when it comes to some of the most awful Russian leaders. Speaking of Stalin and awful, I find it astonishing that the last time Russians were asked about this (in that one repeating poll), the "greatest ever human being" in their opinion was old Joseph Stalin. Hardly any foreigners got into that list, but one who did was Adolf Hitler. Twenty years earlier, Albert Einstein used to be on that list, but more recently Russians have been of the opinion that his contributions to mankind are nothing compared to Hitler's. So it's all fine and dandy in Russia.

I think the new Metallica song is pretty good, although it's obvious that Lars Ulrich can't actually play it like that; it's edited to a level of precision way ahead of his skills. But anyway, some guy on the internet though that Kirk Hammett's solo was a bit underwhelming (I agree) and felt he could do better. Here's the result, and I do think it really is better, a lot better in fact. (I think Hammett mostly relies on the pentatonic scale, whereas this guy at least starts with the Phrygian dominant scale.) The most interesting thing for me is this whole technological leap: we now live in a world where people can easily do stuff like this and put it out there. I think it's quite nice. It's also obvious that there are large numbers of musicians out there who are far more skilful than those in, say, Metallica. Whether they can write good songs is of course a completely different matter.

On two of my three starts, I've been able to bypass the fight altogether by being fast enough in the other errands. I wonder whether the bonus XP and loot you get for this is significant. I suppose not. Anyway, the tavern fight is bad. It's great to be able to skip it.

Do you have any idea of the numbers? Of course they're still growing, but still. There are titles that sell in the millions, some sell in the six figures, etc. Where would Pentiment be?