Monte Carlo

If anybody is particularly interested in this subject over the weekend, I've found the Daily Telegraph (15 free articles a month) live-blog on Greece pretty easy to understand for non economics geniuses. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11717907/greece-crisis-live-referendum-sunday-vote-austerity.html

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/03/estimated-6-million-readers-affected-as-reddit-moderators-revolt-against-corrupt-management/ I should point out the provenance - Breitbart, if you are unfamiliar with it, is unashamedly pro-libertarian / right wing / Tea Party-ish (I mainly read it for Milo, whose lulz-worthy troll / journalism gets snarkier, wilder and stronger all the time). However, partisanship aside, this is an ak-chew-al piece of journalism. It has sources and everything.

Ssssshhhh. Rumour has it if you say her name three times she appears in a cloud of brimstone-tinged smoke.

Hmmm. I can agree with this guy to a certain extent on this point at least. It will be seismic if Greece leaves the Euro, let alone the EU proper. This is because it's never happened before. There are also issues around systemic risk / collapse and contagion. The vulnerable states (Portugal, Spain and yes Italy) will watch closely. They might reject anti-austerity parties but OTOH they might become far more belligerent towards the Northern euroland countries (which is to say Germany). France, traditionally the bridge between Club Med and the North, is also nervous. This is a pretty critical moment for the EU. Don't underestimate the significance of the Greek saga. Will European leaders wake up and smell the coffee? Realise that tying southern economies to the Germans is folly, was always folly and is always going to be folly? No. Like First World War generals, they will march their economies into machine-gun fusillades of reality. Historians centuries hence will study it as a masterclass in wishful thinking and hubris.

Kingsman: The Secret Service. I loved it, but there's something about it nagging at the back of my head. The scene in the Westboro Baptist Church analogue disturbed me. A brilliant action sequence, but maybe too suggestive of a liberal wank-fantasy about what it would like to see happen to people it loathes. OTOH maybe I'm reading too much into it. And, of course, like almost everything British it's actually a film about class. Oh, and having an environmentalist global-warming worshipper as a totalitarian baddie was inspired, and clearly understands the fundamental truth about too many warmists.

^ Ha ha ha ha. I just spat out cornflakes laughing. So expecting governments to show fiscal responsibility is a sign of authoritarian neoliberalism? Seriously, Syriza is a joke. A sick joke, to be sure, but a joke nonetheless. There is hope for Greece. They need to GTFO of the Euro, man-up, print drachmas and start again. They also need a government that's interested in governing, not adolescent gesture politics.

In his mind he's fighting a war with the only weapons available. Yeah, trolling. Of course, if the West manned-up and brought back the death penalty for sociopathic murderers, this wouldn't be a problem.

^ Dude, the Greeks are losing access to bread, medicine and ATMs. I think access to online academia is the least of their worries right now.

Not really. It's simply a humongous waste of bandwidth, digital mediocrity of the most egregious sort.

Quite an interesting thread with lots of good points. My two centimes - 1. Britain was right in the early nineties to warn the Europeans that a non-tiered Club Med entry into the Euro would be a disaster. So it has proved. 2. Greece, an agreeable place with lovely people, was still culturally a post-Ottoman satrapcy, a nest of baked-in corruption and cronyism. Their entry into the original Eurozone was like giving a baby HIV. 3. Europe. Europe never changes (the polity, not the continent) 4. Did the founding fathers *really* imagine a day where small European nations would have to suffer German-installed technocratic governments, a la Italy? Edit : Obvs I use the term 'founding fathers' in a genuinely ironic context. They were statist morons. 5. The Left. The Left never changes (see 3, above). This is government by student union, not a mature democracy. Of course, voting for Syriza was a massive Greek lemming-joke, a frenzied death-phuck of epic proportions 6. Et tu, Podema? 7. Rock the Drachma (apologies to The Clash) I'd vote NO too, by the way. My heart, quite seriously, bleeds for the Greeks. A flawed, magnificent nation laid low by hubris.

OTOH, I think a murderous C3PO-femme robotic murderer is a pretty cool idea for an NPC. I'm with you on Forton, though.

Loads of tools for exif data out there, I had fun tracking someone I knew around China by exif-spying on the photos they put up on an image-sharing site. It totally freaked them out when I kept sending them northings and eastings for their current location(s). Unleash your inner NSA fantasies. Here's one I quickly googled. http://exifdata.com/

The problem with hate crimes is you create these issues with definition. Hate crimes are a recent phenomena in law. If person 'a' kills person 'b' that's pretty hateful in of itself. You also run the risk of alienating people - assaulting one person is more grave than assaulting another because of some protected characteristic? The Why of the act should be dealt with in court, not in the definition of the offence.

There is a history of 'lone-wolf' attacks by extreme right-wingers. We had one in the UK (Google 'David Copleland,' who tried to plead insanity but failed). It might be a lone actor, his mind poisoned by hate politics. Or what about Anders Breivik? Another lunatic lone actor. So it might be exactly that. America, a country at a lonely and troubled crossroads, is done fighting wars except for its own tiresome and relentless internal kulturkampf. Like any war, the first casualty will be the truth. Let investigators investigate, let justice take its course. Then electrocute the bastard.

I've just finished 'Wolfhound Century' by Peter Higgins. Link - http://www.wolfhoundcentury.com/ This, my friends, is worth a look in my humble. It's a fantasy that brings to mind the following - China Mieville, Mervin Peake, Michael Moorc0ck's early Steampunk stuff (before Steampunk was Steampunk) with a healthy dollop of Tom Rob Smith. The Vlast is an alternative-world Soviet Russia. Except it isn't. A provincial security policeman is sent to the capital to hunt a brutal terrorist threatening the regime. At this point I was going to let out a little sigh - the 'good cop stuck in a totalitarian state and uncovering a conspiracy' trope is one of my favourites but you can have too much of a good thing. Except... Wolfhound Century (even the name is intriguing and cool) has a militia equipped with golems made of angel-flesh, the streets are swept with sentient rain, strange forest spirits made of sticks and berries urge resistance and a bizarre thing that might or might not be the genesis-engine of cataclysmic change is kept hidden in secret police HQ. Meanwhile, a real-life angel lands in the primal forests of the west and infects the minds of madmen, determined to destroy the enigmatic genesis-engine (the 'Pollandore'). Oh, and the angel is in fact a two-hundred foot high statue, fused with the bedrock when it landed, herald of some bizarre interstellar race of maniacal aliens. Yes, very strange indeed. Yet much of it reminds me of Joseph Conrad but with added poetry (Higgins has a lovely turn of phrase, I suspect he's a poet too). Highly recommended. My only minor problem is the ending. Actually, it's not an ending, it's butchered like a very long novel chopped to bits for the next instalment. Never mind, I bought that immediately as I will admit to being smitten. I hope some of you pick it up, would love to discuss book-club style.

I'm open-minded about this legislation, and can see why people are sceptical. I'm sceptical. However, I think Assange is an asshat. And Snowden. Wow, I've got a multi-faceted view on something. Have to go and lie down.

be careful what you wish for. insist on completion has chrisA write that the novella protagonist gets drunk and wanders over a cliff ledge whilst looking for a place to relieve himself... and dies. the end. HA! Good Fun! Still better than Twilight.

Denial ain't a river in Egypt.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11656043/My-life-as-a-pro-Putin-propagandist-in-Russias-secret-troll-factory.html

We shouldn't question academics, ever. They are cleverer than us.

Done Mister Gandolfi.

I'm intrigued by the Kriss Vector on a number of levels, and would love to fire one. I've decided to put them in my new book, although being semi-futuristic they are re-engineered Chinese copies.

The only game I ever optimized using the Nvidia app thingie was Diablo 3 and it worked pretty well. But, yeah, I like tweaking in-game video options too. I'm running a GTX670 btw.

Miller had a torrid time re-shooting and editing the movie. I vicariously know someone working on the first unit for the shoot in Africa, and they were out there much longer than planned.

It's done. As Tigs feared, it is now about fighting in tunnels. The wastelanders have formed a LARPing group and are running around an old vault shouting 'lightning bolt!'