xzar_monty

Oh I agree, I didn't think "more competition" was the issue. I just wanted to know what the competition was, and I don't think there was that much of it, having seen the answer.

Ok, thanks. I don't regard any of those as competitors to POE, as they're all remarkably different in terms of setting and/or gameplay, except for Pathfinder, which only came out after Deadfire. The Pathfinder games are excellent choices in theory, but the writing is so poor that there's no comparison in that regard to the POE games.

Really? If I remember correctly, the only competitor POE2 had was D:OS2, which had come out about 10 months earlier, so even that was more akin to old news. P:K was not out when POE2 was released. Please, if you have this "big list" you speak of, do give me at least five names from it, I'd like to check them out. I can't think of any, honestly.

I wonder if that 1420 person is heading for serious trouble, given the content of that channel. I've glimpsed at a couple of the videos, they're interesting.

A conversation between two Russians on a Russian street during this war: "What's your favorite brand of car?" "Lada." "Lada? You're crazy! Clearly you don't know cars." "I do know cars, but I don't know you." I found that funnier.

Sorry for not taking humour as humour, but it's neither artistic nor brilliant. You do recognize, of course, that the same dehumanizing rhetoric is used on the Russian side, too? So where's the difference, then? There isn't one. Another example of the same phenomenon would be an American Democrat dehumanizing an American Republican with the same vitriol that the Republican uses to dehumanize the Democrat. Once you sink to that level, it doesn't matter which side you're on, because the problem is in the fact that you sank to that level.

Have you read Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton? Hamilton can be poor, and his sex scenes are quite adolescent, but that one's a gem. There's such a delightful creature inhabiting that book. Highly recommended.

Btw, how massive was the massive? I understand it was pretty bad, but I haven't seen the numbers -- and I'm not sure if they're in the public domain.

@Gromnir: There's a hilarious video of Billy Joel losing his rag in Moscow. I wonder if you've seen it. Good songwriter, no question.

I never saw mention of his death in any credible media; not even his two heart attacks (which probably never happened) were mentioned in credible media, at least in the credible media that I read. So "when everyone said he was dead" is a bit hyperbolic. But yeah, talk of his death falls into the category of "there's rumours about everything" (see above). AND TWO HOURS LATER: apparently Ukraine has started its counteroffensive in the south. This may be big news.

According to British intelligence, Shoigu has been sidelined. That's an interesting development, if true. Not uncommonly for a current Russian leader, Shoigu has no real expertise in his field: he has mostly worked in construction and the Ministry of Emergency Situtations.

I suppose there's rumours about everything. I'm reminded of an exchange of words from the Sandman (comic). "Only a fool listens to rumours." "Only a fool ignores them." I'd have to concur with both. And in other news, this: https://euroweeklynews.com/2022/08/28/russian-war-correspondent-dmitry-litovkin-dies-suddenly/ There are plenty of other sources for this, too; please don't read this as an endorsement of this particular outlet. I don't know what to make of this news, but there sure are plenty of deaths like this these days.

It would be more accurate to say "the English-speaking media".

I agree, Sweden & Finland do fall within the realm of spin, especially if viewed as separate from everything else. I also agree that outright lies as such aren't that shocking, what is shocking is the nature of the lies. For example, in the case of Moskva, there really was no storm, so the outright lie is just stupid. (See, for example, this: https://web.archive.org/web/20220417090821/https://www.npr.org/2022/04/15/1093026912/russian-moskva-warship-sunk-ukraine) I can almost sort of appreciate a lie if it's intelligent and serves a strategically clever purpose, but we're not talking about that here. The stuff becomes startling -- for me anyway -- because of the sheer volume of it, espcecially when you consider the consistently aggressive tone (combined with the victim attitude assumed whenever possible). It's not a case of "clearly we're not sharing the same perspective" anymore, it's more like a case of "clearly we're not living in the same world", which startles me.

Fair enough. I just wasn't aware of that.

Something worth watching, this, seriously, if only for the joke at the end.

@LadyCrimson: ...and if you're young enough to be juvenile and the fight ended badly, here's some even more self-important self-righteousness for you. I remember when I heard these lyrics for the first time... I found myself thinking that anyone with that attitude is probably going to have a happy life with lots of love and close friends, and so on. Or not.

Probably not a helpful comment, but from a European perspective the whole issue is indicative of a system so effed up it's not even true. And certainly not funny. To think of the human resources wasted in a system like this is, shall we say, sobering. (The same goes for the lack of universal health care, but there the waste concerns both human resources and anything connected with health, of course.)

We're not talking about spin anymore, but of course you already knew this. The claim, for instance, that the Moskva had an accident and sank in a storm is not spin; spin would involve selective assembly / choice of facts and a particular perspective on them, not total disregard to what is true in terms of, for example, demonstratable weather conditions. And it's not even a degree of difference anymore, it's a completely different thing, but of course you already knew this, too.

I know. That doesn't make it any less startling. Here's another example: Shoigu being brutally honest and extremely trustworthy. Or perhaps not. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-defence-minister-shoigu-military-campaign-ukraine-deliberately-slowed-2022-08-24/ Yet another example would be almost anything Lavrov has said in the past six months. I understand the reasons, but it's still completely in the WTF territory, as far as comments on world events are concerned.

Yeah. The most blatant example of this that I have seen are the pronouncements made by Russian diplomats concerning the country's relationship with Sweden and Finland, now that Sweden and Finland are heading towards NATO. I mean, Russian diplomats are saying that these two northern countries have suddenly turned against Russia, become very unfriendly towards Russia and essentially ruined decades of good relationships, which is an enormous disappointment and insult to Russians. And in all this, the Russian diplomats make no mention whatsoever of the war in Ukraine. It's as if the Russian diplomats are extremely surprised by this sudden change in how Finland and Sweden view Russia. When dishonesty is taken to these extremes, it's really quite startling to see.

@Chilloutman: Do you understand that in the original? I don't speak Russian, you see, and what bothers me with both this and essentially all other Russian sources I've looked at (in translation) is the tone. They are both playing the victim game and being really quite aggressive, and the general tone is much more sensational and a lot more foolish / tasteless than many of the worst tabloids I've come across in the "west" (in languages that I can understand). Is my impression true, or is it at least partly the fault of google translate? (Google translate is a decent enough tool but I would never use it for anything I'd consider for publication.)

True, but not just any bodies. I suppose their bodies were deemed too much of a hassle, not worth bothering with. Lee descbrices himself and "a few other recent schoolboys" as "callow", which is an indication of their lack of usefulness, and says they were sent home after a fortnight. He also writes, "It was clear that the tiny Finnish army was doing rather well against the Russian colossus, without our help", which is more or less true, as Lee was back home by Christmas 1939 and all he saw was from before that time.

The incentives to make people have more babies apparently aren't working all that well, so Putin wants to increase Russia's population via more drastic measures. This is not a joke, by the way. And no, of course not, increasing the population is not the only reason for the war. But Russia as a major power requires a large population, and Putin is worried that it's turning towards dwindle. Btw, a military specialist in northern Europe pointed out that Russia is involved in twofold ethnic cleansing: 1) killing Ukrainians in Ukraine, with the intention of destroying Ukrainian culture, and 2) sending its own ethnic minorities to kill Ukrainians.

Not strange at all. An inexperienced person in a completely strange environment is not only a nuisance but can be a serious risk. "Environment" here means both war and wintry Finland as opposed to anything in England.