xzar_monty

An NZDF soldier killed in Ukraine sort of demonstrates that "people from all over the world" have rushed to aid Ukraine. Not in great numbers, of course, but they have. (And yes, I know, it happens in other conflicts, as well. The funniest instance I know is the young Dracula, I mean Christopher Lee, going to Finland to help in the Winter War. He was turned back quite quickly. He tells about this in his autobiography, Lord of Misrule.)

That's precisely what it looks like. There are some levels that have thought and planning in them, and taken together, some of them even present a narrative of sorts, but half of them could be cut and things would only improve. For me, the biggest disappointment was the blade I was able to forge after completing the dungeon. It took some time to assemble the pieces, only to find that I had no use for it.

Stands to reason. After all, the Moskva sank in a storm that must have been extraordinarily heavy but small, because no one else noticed it -- and there are plenty of satellites and such observing that sea.

@kanisatha: It just occurred to me that The Endless Caves of Od Nua are a structural equivalent to Avellone's tendency to "make it literary". I mean, the big dungeon is a nice idea. But it sucks: it's big simply for the sake of being big. That doesn't work. It should have proper content and planning, too. I'm fairly certain that a large proportion of PoE players agree that if Od Nua was cut by half, it would be twice as good.

It feels strange to respond to this. What I suggested was that FSB's investigation is probably fraudulent.

In Russia, the FSB security service found alleged assassins of Nazi propagandist Dugina in less than 2 days. Yet, the FSB are searching for killers of politician Nemtsov for 2 733, of civic activist Estemirova for 4 786, and of journalist Politkovskaya for 5 798 days. Of course this can happen even if everything is done as properly as possible: each murder is its own case, and some are more difficult than others. But still.

I agree that Avellone is fairly poor, as a writer, and for pretty much the reasons you describe. There's an aesthetic used by some bad writers: they want to "make it literary" by being long-winded and using vocabulary that is fancier than necessary. It really hurts when it goes wrong, and in my view it often does with Avellone. However, I also agree with Boeroer in that Durance is enjoyable. The Grieving Mother is overly complex, and doesn't reward the complexity. Boeroer's other point (about reviews) is also easy to agree with.

Fair enough, to each his own. I didn't regard it as either unnecessary or fluff, and I quite enjoyed it. As opinions, both are fine. As a reason for Deadfire's lack of success, I don't think this matters at all.

His novels tend to promise a lot, but they rarely deliver. I think the only unqualified success is Cryptonomicon, even if some of the observations he makes on languages he doesn't speak are nonsense. Seveneves, for instance, begins wonderfully -- the first sentence is a gem -- but it falls flat fairly quickly after that. I'm reading The Sleepwalkers -- How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark. Very interesting. Some of the little tidbits of information are really quite stunning; e.g. Serbia's low literacy in the beginning of the 20th century; the idiosyncracies of various British leaders; ditto German leaders; and so on.

One of the damned things about these is that confessions also mean nothing unless the confessor can provide sufficient evidence, too. For example, since the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was murdered in 1986, about 130 people have confessed to the killing. It's very unlikely they all did it.

I'm not saying what you describe is simple, but as far as "complex" assassinations are concerned, here's an exceptionally good example. This Dugin case falls some way short. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Mabhouh Footage (recommended for anyone interested in complex covert operations):

"With friends like these, who needs enemies" or whatever. But yes, it does appear that the situation is quite messy: the people who tried to kill Dugin, were they pro-Ukraine folks who wanted revenge for Dugin's policies / philosophies, or were they pro-Russia / pro-Putin folks who wanted to express dissatisfaction? No way to tell, I suppose, at least for now. And of course these two aren't the only possibilities. In the Sandman, Thessaly kills someone (can't remember who) and says "he needed to be taught a lesson". When someone else points out that "But you killed him!", Thessaly just says "Yes. That was the lesson." This Dugin event brought that to mind.

You do recognize, of course, that this kind of thing is precisely why other people enjoy the game? (How can quality writing be cringe? I'd like to know.) There's an awful lot of writing in P:K and P:WotR. In my view, it's essentially all rubbish, and it doesn't seem to have hurt the game, in terms of commercial success.

I'm quite sure there's an angle from which this(*) either did not happen, is not happening, is the fault of the collective west and/or is something that Russia clearly had no option to refrain from doing. Perhaps the angle will even be presented on this forum. (*) The "this", as far as I know so far, is only confirmed to the extent that Russia is not letting IAEA enter the nuclear plant. Your videos just might turn out to be false, but I'm not holding much hope for that. And other, less significant news today: Russia has once again blatantly breached Finnish airspace. Estonia, Sweden and Finland: three thoroughly evil western powers whose shameless provocations Russia clearly has no option but to respond to.

So how does one find this kind of stuff?

So, according to Ria Novosti, Russia will not let IAEA into the nuclear plant at Zap... And here's an apparent recruitment video showing how the Russian army gets its men. Harrowing, if true.

Interestingly, TASS reported this straight away. In its own way. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ammunition-depot-explodes-northern-crimea-tass-citing-local-authorities-2022-08-16/

Proper rye bread and salmiak licorice... Outside the Nordic countries you're often out of luck. Yeah, I didn't think the femur was an instrument in that band, my femur anecdote was just something I remembered, speaking of femurs in the context of music.

@kanisatha: Your twofold assessment may well be correct. Unfortunately it's one of those things that cannot be demonstrated either way until the true test arrives.

Oh, there's no question that the point is generally relevant. From which follows the question: don't you think it's equally relevant to China? I would argue that the point doesn't apply to countries like Israel, but then the point is sort of irrelevant anyway when it comes to Israel, because it has never had proper peacetime.

Not sure how trustworthy this is, and I'd argue that "elderly" doesn't describe all of these guys, but this does look mightily unimpressive.

So how's the smørrebrød in Australia? There was also a metal drummer who used to practice with human femurs; I read about this in Modern Drummer sometime in the 1990s. His rationale was that practicing with such heavy objects gave him good strength and consequently enabled him to play faster and louder on regular drum sticks. As a drummer myself, I can see that he has a point, but personally I'd just use heavier drum sticks (which I've done, on occasion). We're a strange lot, us humans.

I wonder about the authenticity of the mead you get in Australia, but heck, what do I know. Anyway, that was a nice song! I wonder what they're singing about.

Masha Gessen's recent book The Future is History contains a decent description how homophobia is one of the things that Russian media has been touting for about twenty years now. There was a case where a homosexual man had two beer bottles inserted into a sensitive spot -- after two, the third one didn't fit -- and the perpetrators didn't basically receive any penalty. Also, the public opinion, insofar as it was consulted, was in favor or the perpetrators. This is one snapshot of the current attitudes in Russia. The Russian media has also been very vocal about the attempts to turn people into homosexuals, which, as anyone should know, doesn't really happen even if there was someone out there making the attempt. And we're talking about state media here, which is the worrying thing. I just read an interesting article written by a Russian journalist. In it, he quoted a Russian historian who pointed out that the nation is still trying to come to terms with the events of 1917-1918. He stressed that during the revolution, a great number of the most intelligent, educated, liberal and productive people were either murdered or forced into exile. The Stalinist purges took this even further about twenty years later. The result was a nation of workers and peasants who are capable of doing things but who definitely need kind of a father figure, essentially a tsar, to tell them what to do. Note that these are not my words or thoughts; this was the Russian historian speaking. Interestingly, he added that if Putin for whatever reason changed his mind, it would take his PR machinery only a few weeks to have ordinary Russians waving Ukrainian flags and cheering for Zelenskyi. And as I'm sure we've all already read, there is, even now, a significant brain drain going on in Russia: the educated and liberal people want out. It's not going to improve things.

Also, an earlier piece on how the Bucha atrocities are viewed by people participating in Russian social media groups. In a nutshell: it's not pretty. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2022.2074020?src=recsys&fbclid=IwAR1bQJ_pW8EZ1Mvul_6C5EndLWUZAQaQ3IGs92KdjrBRgb_LtT6rx4WcEwc