Zoraptor

The Trump 'ban' at least theoretically isn't an actual ban either though despite how it's being reported. It's a suspension until proper (extreme) vetting can be put in place. That could, of course, be a constructive ban and the temporary measure is meant to be permanent, but the legal basis for it is near identical to Obama's, and Obama rigorously defended his right to issue such edicts on the subject. Certainly there's more than a whiff of hypocrisy about criticism from Obama of such things, and a fair bit of selective reporting going on. (ftr measure is stupid populism. I have no objection in theory since the US is perfectly justified in wanting to control its borders but it also needs to be applied even handedly, and an even handed application means that KSA/ Egypt etc get banned as well since KSA especially is the prime jihadi exporter)

This is a ridiculous apples to oranges argument but ok, let's deal with it. In terms of science and technology Islam has contributed FAR more than you could possibly imagine. Algebra is Arabic in origin, YOU COUNT IN ARABIC NUMERALS! While Europe (and thus christianity) was going through a regressive dark ages, the Islamic states were flourishing beacons of culture and innovation. Byzantium became the Islamic Ottoman Empire which has been credited as one of the outstanding actors in politics of it's era. The only reason that Europe had a resurgence was because a whole bunch of people died, meaning that serfdom (which was reinforced by the church as the "Divine Right of Kings") was no longer a viable system of government. Even then the only reason they really got far ahead was because the European governments were funding (via governments) expeditions to the new world and to the Far East. If China had decided to keep it's naval program going, we'd all be following Confucian values rather than Abrahamic ones. They aren't even particularly comparable in age either. At the equivalent time point in Christianity's evolution we weren't even finished finding imaginative ways to kill Hussites, Lollards or Cathars, still thought the pope was literally god's voice on earth (well, if you knew what was good for you, see said Hussites, Lollards or Cathars) and were still nearly 3 centuries from 'eppo si muove' or the Peace of Westphalia. And 4 centuries off the formation of the US. 14th century Europe had practically no significant new inventions of any sort, just entertaining guff like trebuchets.

Last time you selected which site you wanted the key for from the backer portal (Obsidian's site dealing with getting people their rewards etc from the PoE1 kickstarter), got your code and stuck it into gog.com/redeem to get the game on GOG. There are three editions- hero, champion and royal(?)- on GOG, the version you got depended on tier chosen in the KS. Presumably the system will be similar this time, with some modifications such as GOG now offering an Early Access equivalent for betas. It was pretty simple and easy to do anyway, took about twenty seconds if that.

Changed email recently, or since you pledged last time? If so the address list may not have been updated to reflect that especially if they built it from addresses associated with KS accounts, or even backer portal if it allowed an email address different from the forum (can't remember if it did).

I'll back it, at roughly the level I did P(o)E. I found PoE to be just whelming- neither over nor under- but I'd hope for PoE2 to be the BG2 to the equally plain old whelming BG1. And since there isn't really anything much interesting in the tiers it will be standard GOG key plus minor assorted extras again. I'd hope most of the funding for Deadfire comes from profits of PoE anyway, with any crowdfunding being icing on top. Doubt they'll get anything approaching PoE numbers since it's Fig and the crowdfunding craze has largely subsided but I'd be happy to be wrong.

I don't think anyone would cite Saudi Arabia as a beacon of border security- their Great Wall is on paper, and if it's manned by Saudis won't be at all effective no matter its construction. Meanwhile, shoeless Houthis are still wandering around southern Saudi watching the Saudi border guards panic and run whenever shot at and blowing up a comical amount of advanced gear, including Abrams.

Carbon is a great soil improver- and oil is almost entirely carbon, with addition of some useful traces elements like sulphur, and hydrogen which can be used for clean car fuel! The people of Iowa will be able to grow even more corn now that there's more carbon available. Even better, burning oil releases more CO2 into the atmosphere which increases the rate of plant growth, so it's a double bonus for the good people of the Hawkeye State.

Only people I know from Leicester are Claudio Ranieri and Richard III. Very helpful I know.

Cool, can you do Bolivia now please. For some reason potted rants about the evils of socialism never address Bolivia and I'm wondering why. I wait, with 'bated breath. Has that been a trend? The only one I saw was the SNL writer who has suspended indefinitely for tweeting a negative comment about the son. I've seen plenty, though 'mocking' tends to be in the eye of the beholder. When he had the misfortune to be stuck in shot while Donald was giving his victory (?) address and he looked incredibly uncomfortable and bored throughout there was a lot of comment, mostly just saying that or stuff like how much he seemed to enjoy dad's speech. Some of it in a similar vein to suggestions he was a potential 'home school shooter' though, it just didn't come from a minor 'celebrity'. I just thought he was doing a Pepe impersonation to troll Hillary.

Details. And insignificant. And also not all accurate but I won't be nitpicky. I already said than nazi Socialists were a little different than soviet ones. So, working for personal profit for a private company vs working for the state is a detail and insignificant? That's only the fundamental difference between communism and capitalism, but hey, just a detail.

3rd one is Fake News. Only the politically appointed ambassadors were fired- which isn't unprecedented indeed it's usual to replace them- their temporary replacements are the career diplomat deputy ambassadors who do most of the actual work anyway. Where the ambassador was already a career diplomat they weren't fired, eg the Ambassador to Khazakstan is the US representative at the Syrian peace conference at Astana. In terms of actual diplomacy it's probably better to have the career diplomats rather than political appointees whose main asset and reason for their appointment tends to be being donors to the winner. And if there's one place you shouldn't get political news it's reddit's r/politics as it has been taken over by Correct The Record. I actually thought that was Ron Paul for a second.

Heh, the Nazis were famous for not forcing everyone to work or everyone to be employed who wanted to- in particular their philosophy stated that women should be breeding rather than working, in contrast to either the USSR or the UK. That's one of the reasons their industrial capacity was far lower than it should have been throughout WW2, and only peaked in 1944 when the war was lost. As for the rest, the big difference between the Nazi model and, say, Stalinism is that the typical German worked for their personal profit, for a private enterprise, while the typical soviet worked direct for the state. That's right wing/ capitalist, not left wing. They even went so far as giving said private enterprises access to slave labour. (Now I rather suspect that I'm going to be told that slave labour is somehow leftist as well, because ???, instead of being about as pure rightist as it's possible to get.)

Lol, it's a literal word for word rebuttal of what you said, except for the last part which is just the logical conclusion of your own opinions- that that conclusion is one you don't like is entirely your own fault for having illogical and mutually contradictory opinions. If you weren't making such illogical, assertional, doctrinaire and dogmatic claims you wouldn't have 'proven' that Trump's appeals to poor unemployed/ underemployed rust belters are left wing as well. What they do is important, and from what he did Hitler was right wing, and Trump will be right wing too, the supposed left wing trappings are populist appeal and nothing more- for both.

Seriously you want me to believe that a guy who opposed private property, was pro laborers, pro redistribution of wealth, pro government expropriation etc. was a crony capitalist? Sorry, I don't buy it. Well sure, apart from Hitler supporting private property- and having massive contracts with the big corporations like IGFarben, Krupp, Mercedes, Porsche etc which are anathema to the actual left wing- not being pro labourers or pro redistribution of wealth, and only being pro expropriation from 'state enemies' you're 100% correct, friend Oby_one. Which is to say you're not even slightly correct, just extraordinarily doctrinaire. Sheesh, even Auschwitz was run in part as a for profit enterprise for benefit of private corporations. Nazi party certainly had a socialist wing, it died on the Night of the Long Knives. If you're going to talk about things like rhetoric about full employment and taking back our jerbs as being Nazi/ left wing concepts then you've just 'proved' that Trump is a nazi- congrats.

1) Do we really need another Trump thread? Especially about protests which are, frankly, designed mostly to make the protesters feel good about themselves, #StopKony2012. 2) Do we really need another round of Genocide Olympics? FTR #1 place Mongol Horde at 100mill+, #2 Britain/ EIC at 50 million + all the Chinese who died from the opium the starving Indians were growing in lieu of food; neither of those were commie or even leftist and #4 Hitler was pure corporate crony capitalism and not even slightly socialist whatever was in the NSDAP name.

So you think the Canadian state is behind this? Real sharp. Behind what? The protests, obviously. The Russian interference was (allegedly) deliberate government sponsored interference directed from the top, this 'interference' is a bunch of beatnik hippies/ SJWs/ concerned citizens of the world who are not organised by the Kanadian state and are not directed at influencing the results of an election which has, after all, already been decided. The situations are not equivalent*. *With some caveats, hands off NGO sponsored protests and political interference via front or infiltrated organisations are a favourite approach of western intelligence agencies and are practically identical to Russians potentially using 'Fancy Bear' or 'Guccifer 2.0' or even Wikileaks as fronts, though those intelligence agencies will claim (of course) to not be interfering and that they're all genuine grass roots orgs. But you won't get such an approach vs the US as the stakes are far too high and there's far too much chance of discovery. Trudeau may have sympathy for the protesters, but he won't be supporting them perhaps beyond some carefully chosen words.

Latest entry on the official RPGCodex deviantart page.

That's a bit out of date now anyway, since Assange has said he may turn himself in (with caveats, of course) once Manning is actually released, ie May. Still won't be holding my breath- and as it stands he'd be sent to Sweden rather than the US as soon as he actually stepped outside anyway, so any agreement would likely have to be at least four way which complicates things more.

If I had to write positives on Obama I'd say that he came across as the most genuinely well intentioned President I've seen, and he didn't feel that he had to double down repeatedly on the mistakes he did make. Which sounds like faint praise but is actually one of the most important characteristics a leader can have; you cannot reasonably expect there to be no mistakes made but you can minimise the damage done by them and not make them worse trying to protect your pride. There's obviously a lot of negatives as well, but that's the nature of leading a powerful country- or being a powerful country for that matter.

I'm mostly interested in how does all of this apply to uses in real situations portrayed in fiction - so red crosses are on medical tents in Battlefield 1. That'd be an accurate historical portrayal, right? And how about ambulances in games, like Prison Architect? Does Red Cross belong on an ambulance? As others have said it's probably not enforceable in the sense that they'd have a slam dunk win in court, it justs costs money to defend against and would potentially be very bad PR ('violent game maker drags honourable humanitarians through court!!!') as well. On the two examples given I'd say they'd have no chance vs BF1 since it is an accurate historical depiction, but they might have a case against PA since the Red Cross is licensed for use on ambulances via countries' services, ie there's a US Red Cross organisation, a New Zealand Red Cross, an Egyptian Red Crescent etc so they could claim that licensing would be required for non historical usage. PA may also have some issues specifically because the RC tends to have problems with executions.

Oddly enough I don't particularly 'respect' Assange and never have at least in the 'being honourable' aspects of respect despite being a fairly strong defender of him. Respect/ honour is a fine concept but at those sort of consequence levels I'd expect anyone to do just about anything as avoidance, and Assange has already done some morally questionable stuff for such reasons- at very least he's stiffed the guarantors of his UK bail; albeit I'd be surprised if they didn't at minimum half expect him to do so and they were not short of cash. But as such I never expected him to uphold that or any other pledge relating to his continued freedom/ 'freedom' as I wouldn't expect anyone (nearly) to. OTOH I do respect Snowden as his conduct has been about as honourable as it's possible to get in the circumstances. If he pledged to do the same exchange I'd actually believe it- though I'd think he was very ill advised to carry it out without at minimum absolutely cast iron guarantees. I didn't say it, I just paraphrased what a pundit said. I understood from 'the rationale [you] heard' that you were paraphrasing what others had said, as such my comment was aimed at the rationale rather than you in a personal sense. Indeed, I'm pretty sure that was basically Obama's rationale (yep, Der Spiegel interview, Nov last year) for why he couldn't pardon Snowden- though there's plenty of precedent against that reasoning, most famously Ford pardoning Nixon.

The international treaty may be a Trademark treaty rather than the GC, since the ICRC is head quartered in Geneva they'd use international agreements of trademarks if TM protection was their aim outside Switzerland. The Geneva Convention provisions tend to have specific applications such as big P Perfidy, they're about as non trivial as it's possible to get and their infraction is a literal war crime. They won't be used to target videogames which are completely at the other end of the triviality scale. Targeting unauthorised use of trademarks or copyright material is very common though, similar to how you have 'Vintar' rather than Vintorez rifles in Stalker or Infernus rather than Diablo (double jeopardy there) cars in GTA because if you didn't you'd get a removal or licensing demand Solution is easy enough anyway, just use the Rod of Asclepius/ Caduceus instead.

Meh, he's better than the Swedish prosecution that leaked literally everything from interviews to victim statements to Assange's name in the first place- of course, no charges or sackings for those leaks. The US and Sweden have been so utterly dishonest he shouldn't hand himself over to either under any circumstances. He didn't flee to Russia, the US cancelled his passport while he was in the Russian transit lounge- en route to Bolivia, hence Evo Morales' plane being forced down for a Vienna Convention breaking search a little later. That's the same technically not quite slanderous tactic used against Assange to claim he fled Sweden when the prosecutor said he had no case to answer then another prosecutor just happened to reinstate charges after he'd left.

Meh, I hate those sort of articles, they're a once over lightly approach manifesting as actual analysis. The struggle between good occidentalism and recidivist barbaric oreintalism is as always primarily framing the author's western exceptionalism rather than saying much of anything about Russia itself. Some of it makes literally no sense at all, eg "The more Western leaders, and especially American presidents, talk about resetting relations with Moscow, the more the Dostoevskian president distrusts them"- like Trump, presumably? Nah, stupid quote rooted in the old canard of the Inscrutable Oriental which assumes bad faith from one party simply because he's the 'bad guy' and that's what he does (commensurately we are the good guys, so we do good, don't you feel warm and special? Nah, cheap positive feelz for, well, moronz). You can easily see the point at which Putin started actively distrusting Obama and that point was Libya- when the west blatantly lied about their intentions and functionally rewrote a passed UNSC resolution to mean regime change instead of civilian protection. As soon as that happened Russia and China have vetoed everything involving military adventurism with a UN stamp. That decision also informs Putin's decision to protect Assad more than anything else, as well as Ukraine. Most of Obama's FP wounds have not really been inflicted by Putin, they're self inflicted and Putin's just taken advantage of them. The ironic thing is that if the Russian goal was really to delegitimise the electoral process as a whole- ignoring that it's already fairly deligitimised by low turn out, gerrymandering, lack of term limits, corps as people and superPACs, other funding issues, voter suppression, crusty erratic voting machines etc- about the best way to deligitimise it is to have a weeks, months long campaign designed to say that Vladimir Putin got Donald Trump elected. For that it doesn't even matter whether he did it or not, if his goal is to reduce faith in the electoral process then he's won, automatically, with the enthusiastic help of his supposedly most strident opponents.

Had a barbeque at my sisters, didn't have to drive so I drank a fair bit (mostly homebrew, and haven't gone blind or had a hangover so bonus there) which I don't get much opportunity to do nowadays, and generally had a good night.