Zoraptor

There's been plenty of evidence that the official whistleblower program was either a joke or worse, an attempt to snare discontents and suppress them: e.g. TLDW: former head of the whistleblower program at the DoD basically saying it was fatally compromised by criminal proceedings against said whistleblowers (specific case Thomas Drake) that probably used information supplied to his office and were blatant attempts to suppress whistleblowing via Chilling Effect. Also has to be said that Snowden (unlike Assange/ WL though even they didn't leak absolutely everything they got) didn't leak everything to the world, indeed he leaked a small amount and most of the really juicy stuff is escrowed against the CIA giving him a polonium sandwich. He leaked selected stuff to selected journalists and it was only stuff that (1) most rational people suspected already happened and (2) the foreign alphabet soup acronyms would already know about. The idea that China with one of the most controlled internet ecologies in the world wouldn't know that a PRISM/ xkeyscore program existed is laughable as they have the exact same thing in operation there. More broadly, Snowden is certainly qualified to comment as he'd have a good idea of what foreign countries can do from his time in the NSA('s contractor), but in this case it probably doesn't matter. Assuming the FBI information is correct her server had appallingly bad security that was vulnerable to a bog standard Romanian hacker and while that was probably 'just' gross stupidity she also appears to have tried to hide evidence via mass deletions (later recovered off a cloud back up). Whether she'll get in trouble for it or some underlings will take the fall- probably with a promise of a pardon later, per Susan McDougall- is an open question, though the obvious fall guy already has an immunity agreement. She certainly should be in trouble for it though as there's no need for her to have deliberately lost classified material, only negligently lost it. I can't see any way that having a badly configured private server against protocols and designed primarily to subvert Freedom of Information requests then using it for classified material doesn't pass the negligence threshold.

When I think 'black nerd' I think Steve Urkel. The only other one who springs to mind is Carlton from Fresh Prince. It's fair to say that I am sadly bereft of up to date ethnogeek stereotypes. Can't say that I would particularly like to play either in a game, though Urkel's catchphrase might be appropriate at certain points. Yeah, CJ from GTA: San Andreas is great. There the whole thing is caricature from top to bottom, of course, but it's very well done. I've not played watch_dogs nor followed much of the 'discussion' about the sequel's protagonist but I was under the impression a lot of the complaints were about changing the protagonist rather than just changing his ethnicity. Then again I tend to actively avoid dens of stupidity so no doubt there's a lot of trolling and/or actual racism involved too.

I'd have to disagree that Trump's pitch is in any sense practical, they are indeed gut issues though. He's almost devoid of practicality and almost entirely aspiration/ inspiration, and when questioned on it his stock response is almost always something like "how will it work? It'll work great, and make us all great, that's how it will work!" with optional "oh look at that guy's hat, isn't it great!" at the end. His program, such as it is, is about the most theoretical one I've ever seen in any race in any country that I've paid any attention to. Ron Paul consistently lost to establishment candidates. This time was different as Kasich and Cruz, the last options left, were at very best fall back choices for the establishment. End result may have been less Trump and more JEB or Marco rather than Ron Paul winning, but he'd certainly have had a better chance to get some of the dissatisfaction working in his favour. It all depends on how much Trump's support is about simply sticking it to the establishment/ being perceived as 'honest' (though that's more Bernie's thing) as opposed to how he was anti establishment; being mean to Mexicans and standing up to China or being anti trade deals plus taking on the establishment candidates with no mercy shown. If it's more the former then Paul would have done well with his cut Washington's power type stuff, if the latter then not so much. But in any case the anti establishment GOP candidate won and the anti establishment Democrat- who wasn't even a Democrat a relatively short time ago- got 45% of the elected delegates. Thinking that an alternative anti establishment candidate could do well is certainly reasonable.

Ironically, Rand Paul had a decent chance of doing well this cycle imo as the right's Bernie Sanders equivalent- though Sanders was helped by there being no other credible alternative to Clinton while there were too many alternatives to Trump. He chose a very bad nomination to try getting mainstream support since the nominee they got is considerably further from establishment than he was and there was a huge backlash against the establishment he moved towards; one of Sanders big pluses is his consistency and Rand Paul rather blotted his copy book there in a way his father seldom did* by making those concessions. Ron Paul instead of Rand Paul 2016 would have made things very interesting, I suspect. *that I am aware of, at least. I know there was some stuff in newsletters he edited or similar which people tried to get him on

Metagames, GOG? That really is pretty Valvetastic. He says, having not actually bought anything yet so not actually knowing what the asterisks they mean with their experience points and heroes talk. I'm always vaguely amused to read through the sales, find stuff that interests me then notice that I already own it but forgot. What a mindless slave to capitalism I have become, and as such I'm probably going to get Homeworld(s), Legends of Eisenwald and Age of Decadence.

You could safely reassure them that he won't ever write a woman character again. So no more tugged braids, smoothed dresses or sniffing noses, ever.

They have to have Manderly and his pies, it's exactly the sort of 'shock' that the TV writers love.

You're confusing realism with verisimilitude (or world consistency). If I make a world where there are dragons and monsters, it doesn't mean that I can also make people fly just because it's a fantasy. Sure you can. In a fantasy world you may be able to fly via a spell or by polymorphing into something that can fly. That doesn't break verisimilitude so long as they're the rules of that particular fantasy world just because we cannot polymorph or cast spells to fly here, commensurately, the lack of planes or helicopters in that world does not break verisimilitude because we have those options to fly here. All verisimilitude requires is a set of rules that are consistently applied/ remain consistent; there is no requirement to conform with reality unless you're doing proper Science Fiction instead of Fantasy. If those rules say that men and women have equal stats that doesn't break verisimilitude either just because men and women have different strengths here. Also, it's $current_year and the game is being published by Paradox which means that whatever else happens it will be a politically correct game about, er, exploitation, murder, betrayal, torture etc which is likely to be the real problem, verisimilitude wise.

I know that when I'm battling goblins and dragons with my fireball throwing staff in one hand and a double headed axe in the other, while covering my muscular body with only a chain mail posing pouch that I'm deeply concerned with it being as realistic and true to life as possible when it comes to sexual dimorphism.

Pretty sure numbersman specifically addressed the Gibraltar threats a few pages back- it's just posturing for domestic consumption since Spain lacks a government and there are elections expected soon and the PP unsurprisingly wants votes. Spain will get Gibraltar when Morocco gets Ceuta back from Spain, ie not in the forseeable future. 'Administrative barriers' at the borders already happen pretty frequently anyway.

In totally unrelated news refugees from Turkey have spiked again in the last week or so. Looks like time for Merkel's Case B: Stalingrad campaign blame Greece for everything.

Apart from being notHillary and notTrump, and every 3rd party candidate brings that. And most of those voting against a candidate will vote for the other mainstream one they hate less, as always, with a few voting for Johnson on the right and Stein on the left. If you want successful 3rd party candidates you need to have at least preferential voting rather than just 50odd fptp delegate races. All that can happen if a 3rd party candidate breaks through is that the Greens become the new Democrats or the Libertarians become the new GOP. Man, Daniel Bryan has really let himself go since retiring from wrestling. Still, he'd get a Yes! Yes! Yes! from me at the ballot box.

It's been quite interesting seeing who has doubled down on Clinton and who seems to be quietly dialling back support. What happens if Clinton gets indicted and how her more vocal supporters will deal (or not, more likely) with it will be decidedly interesting, let alone how they'd deal with her losing to Trump. Some seem to have enough difficulty as it is, and she only has a Sternly Worded Letter equivalent at the moment.

I don't think that restriction had a huge effect on Arrow. They chose to kill off Waller by the showrunner's own admission so it was basically no Deadshot*/ Boomerang/ Deathstroke and perhaps Cupid instead of Harley. They're all losses but shouldn't be that serious- after all, they got Ras al Ghul to use and then monumentally asterisked him up, and had Deathstroke for an ep and did a terrible job there too. It's also a historical policy; Smallville had, what, no flying and no suit restrictions? and that was supposed to be Superman rather than a relative B lister like (Green) Arrow. The current policy is a mess protecting a misfiring cinematic universe to the benefit of neither. Having said that, there have to be some restrictions- Gotham should get 1st dibs on Batman characters etc. *well, non Earth 2 version since Floyd was in Flash.

Can't be Sweden. The women aren't wearing Niqab.

Despite it having the marked benefit of making the Turkish government caterwaul they probably shouldn't wear the YPG badge, while it would not usually be applicable in those circumstances it does open up misidentification or even Perfidy possibilities. There are good reasons why you're expected to wear your own badges and the status/ legality of the YPG is questionable (and I say that as someone who by and large thinks they're the best of the Syrian groups) even if you aren't Erdogan.

It was always a lose-lose for Trump, unless Sanders hated Clinton enough to spike the debate which he clearly wouldn't do, as he still thinks he can win* and probably isn't that vindictive anyway. If Trump went hard at Bernie he'd lose the potential votes from the BernieBros who cannot or might not bring themselves to vote for Hillary but may vote for him- and those votes are effectively double value since they'd be natural democrat voters in theory at least- and if he went soft on Bernie it would not be reciprocated and he'd end up looking weak and give his Repub side denigraters more ammo. Bernie is also consistently the most liked candidate (OK, not much competition there) so Trump going hard at him runs the risk of making Trump even less likeable. In contrast, going hard at Clinton is easier as she's already heavily disliked. *and to be fair, he's got a better chance at the end of the week than at the beginning given the email scandal certainly appears to have real legs now.

Come now, let's not go crazy here. If nothing else there's a possibility that BvS was bad enough to get Snyder removed and improve any following movies- Arrow S5 on the other hand will start filming in a couple of months, with the same show runners. Arrow was also ~17hrs long, BvS was only an eighth of that. I'd bet if I forced you to watch one or the other you'd choose BvS for being shorter. Be thankful for small mercies.

Flash wears red, Arrow wears green. Flash goes fast, Arrow shoots arrows. One of the big complaints about Arrow is that he doesn't shoot arrows much any more. He's far more about getting into (badly choreographed) CQC with mooks which he then loses, requiring him to be rescued by Felicity. Or as in the finale, getting into a WWE/ Rocky V-esque let's just stand still and punch each other repeatedly fight. For that matter, while he is officially the 'Green' Arrow rather than just the Arrow now, despite them not changing the program name, he doesn't actually wear green. For some unknown reason he wears dark grey/ black. They then, inconsistently, add CGI green colour to it in post production! And that pretty much sums up how ill planned and badly implemented the entire season was.

^^^That's Arrow, not Flash. Flash has its problems but people are generally positive about it still, about the only people positive about Arrow are drama queens and shippers. It's crap, rubbish, a steaming gob of sputum on the footpath of fiction; a fitting companion to such recent and glorious televisual masterpieces as Dexter Season 8 or the later seasons of Sons of Anarchy; bereft of logic, sense, charm or purpose it merely exists to troll the people who liked the earlier seasons by gross parody of what it once was.

I thought it was OK. Flash always relies too much on deus ex speedforce resolutions and regularly doesn't make much sense so I expected both to be ratcheted up in the finale. At least the characters are well written, entertaining and consistently so even if the science and plotting is hand wavey and it's referential to the extent that it approaches being masturbatory. I'll certainly watch next year. OTOH, the Arrow finale may well be the last ep of that I ever watch.

It is based on 3 (?) well known comic story lines, so there's definite precedent from the source material- and if they used it to reset Arrow I'd be fine with it. Sadly, I suspect the other shows that could actually use it won't be effected nearly as much except for the big crossover event.

It won't be as clear cut as she makes it sound- after all, she has to make her case as strong as possible. But I do find the idea that transgender people complain essentially for the sake of it to be very hard to credit as they instantly set themselves up for abuse. Frankly, they probably do complain more but then there can hardly be any doubt that they also do genuinely face more discrimination than the average Joe or even Josephine. Dunno, sounds like at least some capital-ism is involved. Hmm, I thought that Valve had flat management, after all that's what that 'leaked' handbook said. So they shouldn't have managers to offer them money or be transphobic... Still, ex employees getting the same sort of non support 'support' emails as everyone else is vaguely amusing. (ceterum censeo Valve delendam esse etcetera etcetera)

The Night Manager is pretty good, so it's probably worth it having a second plug. Though I find Hugh Laurie a little disconcerting in drama as I'll always associate him with Prince/ Lt George, Bertie Wooster, Bit of Fry and Laurie etc.

I swear, some folks are just obsessed with everything being isometric. Most don't even know what isometric actually is, either, it's just associated with classic games like Fallout so gets bundled along as a buzz word. If you're making Bloodlines 2 then it should really be... well, Bloodlines 1 was a bit clunky with its mix of 3p and fp, but there may not be a more elegant solution and something 3p or fp would be expected. A tactical/ 'isometric' style game would be better as a (party based) spin off/ alternative because it implies a different gameplay experience.