Rostere

Showering, you're doing it wrong

Impulse ordered an Erkin Koray T-shirt today. I'd been thinking of turning this design into a T-shirt for 6 years, so when someone else had already done it for me I figured it was time to buy one.

I guess I missed all the gameplay videos from the Torment, Wasteland, and Pillars KS. What has InXile done on Wasteland 2 or Torment so far to justify this conclusion and what would suffice to prove you wrong if that doesn't? Seems highly unfair to me. This far it's just showing off graphics, with seemingly a much looser connection to the original game. Torment, Wasteland 2 and PoE all had a very clear selling premise. This doesn't. Again, if this looks to be good I will be happy to pledge afterwards.

How much was the bet? If it is going to be Bush vs. Clinton, it is going to be a groan/cringefest. I am hoping for Rand vs. Warren. Warren has a better chance than Paul of getting nominated for candidate, that only hinges on Hillary ****ing up in some way. Paul has foreign policy views that is unacceptable to large parts of the Republican establishment. Santa Claus has a bigger chance of getting the Republican nomination.

I am sad to say this, but the game looks like **** this far. All we've been shown is a shiny in-engine video in UE, not featuring any gameplay. I'll pass on this until I've been proven wrong.

This illustrates the worst of cynicism. We should be morally obliged to be mad when people try to revise history to justify atrocitites, just as we should applaud and praise those who shine light on atrocities which have been forgotten or revised in the past. Russia had previously officially apologized for the brutal invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia. This catharsis was something which strengthened Russia in the global diplomatic scene and gave them increased credibility, especially in Eastern Europe. To backtrack on this is not only an indicator of the increasing disconnect with reality in the Russian internal political scene, but something which will greatly interfere with Russian relations with Eastern European countries, leaving them even more a diplomatic midget, sputtering jingoistic nonsense while country after country in their vicinity comes knocking at NATO's door. At this rate, Belarus will apply for NATO membership in 2017. Sadly, Russia believing that everything that goes against them in the geographical vicinity is a "Western conspiracy" turns out to be a very self-fulfilling prophecy. You could write a list about every atrocity that has ever occurred, and calculate their awfulness, and see which political entities have the most luggage, and the most undeclared luggage. My perspective is mostly observing that the current state of global affairs is stable, but as things change, this might not be so. So drastic changes are of interest, and keeping track of which way every country is heading is of importance. Most countries are on the path of inceasing awareness of historical atrocities, so it is interesting and noteworthy to see a country heading in the other direction. Challenge me, I have a frank and honest view of the history of my country, which is by and large shared by the general population, to the degree which they are familiar with history of course. Germany has handled Nazism's legacy in a way that almost borders on overcompensation (from personal experience - I have spent quite some time in Germany). It is true, but typically obvious to the point of being meaningless, to state that everyone is guilty of most crimes to a degree. But to frame it to sound like an equivalence is where cynicism turns to idiocy through oversimplification. BTW, you should change your avatar to this, it reflects your personality better:

Putin is not a communist in any sense of the word though. It is really Russian imperialism in the guise of Soviet imperialism he is trying to excuse.

Russia declares war on history.

Depressing at 3:00...

I played with 2 priests in a playthrough, 6 would not be a problem at all. In fact, there are lots of cheesy tactics that come to mind - although I guess things will be easier at higher levels. At lower levels you will not have the same durability (you run out of spells faster), and not the same versatility. Keep in mind that a lot of Priest spells can be useful to stack.

Or all of them?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11635895/Russia-questions-grammar-Nazi-for-fascist-links.html "First, they came for the Grammar Nazis..."

I so love to see corrupt people being publically hanged, drawn and quartered. Actually this is far better than the World Cup itself.

Oh, I'm not sure it's not simple intransigence. I think the matter is just that for whatever reason he has become convinced that FPTP is a "British" phenomenon... And if it is a British phenomenon, he wants to keep it that way to avoid being like his cherry-picked notion of "the rest of the world" (conveniently lumped together), or maybe just to feed some vain notion that being British is inherently different. To me this is just like being unwilling to go from typewriters to computers because the latter are insufficiently British, well, luckily that didn't happen. In the field of science and technology it is generally accepted that there is no such thing as alignment with a country and/or a culture. You use the optimal tool for what you're trying to achieve and it's simple as that. The situation is very complicated. If I was very cynical I could say that the only really important policy throughout the 1900s was staying out of the two World Wars. When two sides fight in such wars, the biggest winner (relatively speaking) is the part which stays neutral. See also Switzerland. If you read through Swedish newspapers you will find zero praise for any government, and nothing but scathing criticism. You would get the impression that this is the worst place on earth to live in, or at least the worst governed. There are a lot of problems here as well - there is a housing bubble of absurd proportions, in all European capitals there is only a similar situation in London. It is true that this is a very good place to live by different indices of development, but there are still strategical problems we are facing which could easily send our country plunging downwards.

So that is what it's all about then? You are not going to listen to people of a different nationality? I am incredibly grateful that's not how things work in the scientific world. There's nothing inherently "Scandinavian" about proportional representation. The two most popular systems of proportional representation were first formulated in Belgium and France (although France uses neither of them, obviously). Nevertheless, this has nothing to do with culture. Back in the days everybody used FPTP variants, because it's the simplest way to arrange elections. Then at some point it became feasible to use more advanced systems, which might require voting results to be summed up centrally before final results can be announced, and more complicated mathematical formulae. At that point a lot of people switched to proportional representation, becuase that is what most people want out of democracy - that the parliament reflects national voter sympathies. The old system of FPTP voting is instead an absurd game where the biggest party wins, which might not reflect popular opinion at all. If 20% vote right-wing and 80% vote left-wing, but spread their votes evenly across eight parties, the right-wing will win. If this is not a complete bankruptcy of a voting system, then I don't know what is. This is also illustrated in practice by the Green Party in the UK elections, which serves as a spoiler for the left-wing. But this has nothing at all to do with what we are discussing. Nothing. At. All. This is about proportional representation, in case you have missed it. Not what people vote for in certain countries. In any case, the last Swedish election resulting in a left-wing majority took place in 2002 - 13 years ago. There has not been a consistent left-wing majority in polls for some time. You heard it from me first - you might want to revise your picture of Sweden as a left-wing country. Just look at the UK - the results of proportional representation would disfavour the Tories most, and favour the UKIP instead. That's definitely a shift to the right. SNP would also be hit hard by proportional representation.

I'm sorry, I'm not a native English speaker, the word "ideology" might have different connotations for you. I use this definition. 2c: "the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program". The collected political goals of a party or an individual is what I am talking about. An ideology - in the sense I'm talking about it - is the sum of a set of political opinions. As you might have noticed, elected representatives in democracies organize into parties to push through commonly agreed-upon political agenda, which is defined according to the ideology of the party, which is the aggregate of the ideology of it's constituents. I think you have completely missed the point if you think this is relevant to our discussion. Our discussion is about voting for political goals and theories instead of NOT voting for these, but for "a person" (whatever that means). With regard to me personally, your quote above could not be a worse description. I make up my mind on every issue with meticulous care (this is more connected to me compulsively reading copious amounts of news articles and following politics than the fact that I'm going to use it to vote for someone, though), and then match them to candidates' stances with any of the online tools available for doing so. In practice, before elections news sites compete for traffic by building these tools. Candidates can declare their stance (positive or negative, from 1 to 5) regarding 30 or so political suggestions, and in text explain the reason for their doing so. I will do the same myself and match my scores against all candidates I can vote for in my district in question (approximately 477 different persons in my particular district if we only count the parties currently in the Riksdag) by the variant of the STV voting system we have. Then, I am going to vote for the person whose political goals, motivated with sound reasoning, align the closest with mine (and by the above definition, whose ideology closely matches mine). Supposing this person gets elected, I will keep track of his/her performance, which might differ from what I wanted, in case I would not vote for that person again. I don't identify with any party and always feel dirty after I have voted, but I have made my utmost to ensure that the person I voted for is as closely as possible my avatar in the Riksdag, by using a method of common ideology as I have detailed above. Now... You write that you "f***ing wouldn't" vote with ideology as a guide. You want to vote "for a person" (whatever that means). Now, let us repeat the definition of ideology from the British Merriam-Webster dictionary: An ideology is the sum of: Sociopolitical assertions (a candidate's analysis of the current sociopolitical situation) Sociopolitical theories (a candidate's theories about how the current situation was influenced by previous governments and how future governments might influence it) Sociopolitical aims (a candidate's values on more/less desirable sociopolitical situations) So you have said that you "f***ing wouldn't" vote for a candidate based on any of this - anything which makes up an ideology. You want to vote for "a person" (whatever that means). But what meaningful attributes define a politician that are not part of his/her ideology? Are you talking about religion? Sexual inclination? Hobbies? Ethnic background? Hair style? It's hard to dissect your statement into meaning anything else than you being a superficial moron who judges politicians like you would judge Big Brother contestants, or you really agreeing with me but trying to lash out at my opinions for some personal reason, or you not knowing what "ideology" means, or you intentionally trolling. There's nothing wrong with trolling but in that case you could at least be a bit more obvious. You also write that "ideologies are for people who struggle with complex problems". In this, you might ironically enough be correct. Ideologies are for people who struggle with complex problems, and moronic superficiality is for people who lack the capacity to start struggling with complex problems to begin with. You know, it's getting harder and harder to take you seriously by the minute. I've written stuff on this forum for 8 years, and if anything about my political opinions should be abundantly clear, it's that I am the opposite of a nationalist. I have never during those 8 years written anything which could possibly be interpreted as being "nationalist", because that type of thinking is the polar opposite to mine. It's a very, very odd derogatory term to choose and to be honest I think it's most likely that some type of Freudian projection is going on. By saying that the FPTP voting system is grossly outdated and insufficiently democratic, I have somehow insulted your nationalist sentiments. Because of some inexplicable reason you think that 19th-century voting systems are integral to your national identity and because you, somewhere deep inside, realize that it's silly to have nationalist feelings about an old voting system you accuse me of being a nationalist. But this is also one of the reasons it's so bad. Currently, you have six different parties representing various regional special interests in Parliament, holding 76 seats. That's an absurd amount. FPTP requires no party to have a national vision, but enables the rise of parties who pander to specific regional interests (SNP...). This is of course true not only of the nationalist parties, but of all candidates. The result is a navel-gazing parliament obsessed with regional problems and lacking national vision. I take it you're referring to Ed Balls. This is a bad example, since the reason he was ousted was that a candidate from another party took his place. For all we know, Ed Balls might have been the ideal candidate for the Labour voters in his district (and national Labour voters). It makes literally ZERO ****ING SENSE AT ALL that a person should be voted from parliament because the people of opposing opinion from his home town go out to vote. What would make sense however, is if Ed Balls was removed from parliament because no Labour voters wanted him there. Can you understand the difference? Which incidentally is exactly how things are organized in the typical proportional voting system. The parties have lists of candidates, from which you can vote for specific persons. Candidates then get switch places on the party lists depending on how many "personal votes" they get. So if very few Labour people want Ed Balls, then other people will take his place on the list, even if he is placed 2nd on it by the party. This happens all the time where I live. Several previous ministers lost their seat when the people voted for different people on the party lists. Wrong. In recent history, vote share has been roughly split between Lib Dems, Labour and the Tories, with the Lib Dems being the smallest party among the three. A system of proportional representation would leave them pandering to the centre, not the fringes. Which is also typically the case internationally. What the heck? This makes zero sense at all. LOL. This is blatant cherry-picking, and you know it. Absurd. Well, a lottery would also be brutal. The problem is not that UKIP lacks grassroots organization, that's not the problem at all. What they do lack is regional focus. They need to focus on the districts where they are (relatively) popular, pander to their specific wishes and blow all their campaign money there, and absolutely nothing at all on the rest of the country. That's how you win in a FPTP system. All other votes for UKIP in districts where they aren't currently among the likely winners is a complete waste. But it isn't. Only 50% or so voted for the SNP, and that's after they promised to respect the "no" vote very thouroughly. The election map gives a completely misleading impression, about 50% or so of Scots are not SNP voters, it's just that the SNP is the biggest party. They have 99% or so of the Scotish seats, but that's just because in the game of FPTP they were spread out as to be the single largest party in every single district.

I just wonder what the heck they are planning to do with these tanks. It's not like they are in any way a threat to NATO - in a conflict with NATO people will just nuke each other and after that any tank battles is just going to be pointless. Who are they considering when they buy these tanks? Ukraine? Belarus? Kazakstan? Georgia?

I read copiously as a kid. It is only in hindsight I've realized I read very few things from after The Lord of the Rings was published (that's how it turned out when my parents got to choose the books I read for me). My first books were "Kidnapped" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas", at age 5-6. We didn't have any fancy TV channels so I missed most animated TV series most kids watched during the nineties. I really wonder how many future children will have an upbringing like this.

The Mistrals are essentially ASW ships, as I understand things. Which makes sense when you look at the potential alternate buyers... EDIT: Clarification: Littoral ASW ships.

I think it can be said unequivocally that historical US meddling in the ME has created a worse security situation.

Disappointed. I thought this would be about something like "don't read to your children, let them read themselves instead". That would pretty much sum up my childhood.

So, about 3,8 million votes and only one seat.Huh. Yeah, it's completely ****ed up, I'm telling you.

I pity the people in Brussels who will have to put up with Farage. It appears he couldn't manage to get elected. 1 seat for UKIP it is then.

1 seat, if Farage doesn't win. That's 12% of popular support, and 0,0015% of the representation. That said, UKIP probably have a bit more support, people who aren't completely retarded and know how to game the FTFP system. A UKIP vote only makes sense either if you really don't care if Labour or the Tories win (since you're essentially throwing away your vote), or if you're in three or so districts where UKIP can realistically be the largest party.

Kursk.