Zoraptor

Obviously the next blockbuster epic fantasy has to be The Witcher. Given the huge amount of source material and enthusiastic fan base it would be a slam dunk in quality and success.

Cameron saying he'll resign makes me wonder if he's secretly for an exit. Especially since Osborne would have to go as well if that happened.

I presume he means that any indictment would be politically blocked. Get the federal prosecutor to decline to prosecute? Say that the emails are inadmissable since they were obtained illegally? Claim any incriminating emails were planted by hackers? I'm sure they could come up with something. You'd kind of hope that even a recommendation to indict would kill off a presidential candidates chances, so maybe something prior to recommending an indictment... There are certainly plenty of people who'd happily spike the investigation for political reasons. In any case, not like Wikileaks has actually released anything yet. Except chemtrails, I hear reliably they're up to their necks in that little attempt to mass medicate the world clandestinely. Why else would Assange spend all his time inside, hmm? Unless he was trying to avoid the chemtrails! Quod erat demonstrandum.

Overall I have to agree strongly with Guard Dog on the press coverage. I'm no Trump fan and no fan of the GOP but trying to blame them* is politically inspired contortion of the most extreme kind. When it was Dylan Roof shooting black people because he was a self confessed racist that was accepted as his reason without question- maybe not as the only reason since plenty of people are racist without murdering people and you'd suspect an underlying mental issue separate from __ in most mass shootings, but it was certainly the reason he chose the people he did and why Mateen chose the people he did. Yet when it comes to Mateen we're supposed to accept that he pledged to ISIS as an irrelevant delusion or something, if it's even mentioned at all. They seem almost paralysed by the possibility that using the words 'radical islam' will be used as an attack against non radical muslims or boost Trump. The closest direct parallel is probably the Australian Shia (!) Man Haron Monis who joined ISIS and took over a cafe in 2014. There were other underlying issues, but you cannot simply ignore their own stated reasons as if they don't exist. *exc gun control, perhaps

Somebody claiming to be a (non Russian) hacker of their server has stuck some files on wordpress. The pictured docs at least seem plausible so if faked it's a pretty decent effort, though there's nothing in the known universe that would get me to click unsolicited links to doc files from a self confessed hacker to check those. He says he's forwarded the haul to Wikileaks too.

I've said pretty much all of it for Sansa, and there it is mainly a matter of semantics as to whether she was foolish/ naive or stupid. I may sound stridently in the "she's dumb" camp but I happily accept she was also naive, or that it was her naivete that made her dumb. One thing I would say first for all of Jon, Dany and Cersei is that it would have worked better with the originally planned '5 year break'. We could assume that Jon/ Dany's/ Cersei's accumulated stupidity was meant to be spread over a far more believable 5 year stint rather than condensed into months. GRRM needed stuff to happen and for it to happen there had to be a lot of teh dumb occurring over a now condensed timeline and there could be commensurately fewer things that they did well. Cersei, hmm. She's probably the most interesting case actually. My presumption has always been that her POV chapters were meant to humanise her in the same way that Jaime's chapter's humanised him. You don't end up thinking that Jaime's a paragon of virtue but you understand where he is coming from, that he has a- to him- justifiable framework for his actions and that he is, in his own way at least, both honourable and misjudged. But Cersei doesn't really end up humanised because she comes across as vindictive, venal, quarrelsome, conceited and paranoid every bit as much as she did without the POV. The revelation that Aerys planned on blowing King's Landing up and barbecued Starks justifies Jaime's actions at least in that case, but the equivalent for Cersei is the revelation of The Prophecy and that just reinforces that her journey to stupidity and viciousness started early. If there's one thing that the show has done incontrovertibly better (imo, of course) than the book it's humanising Cersei. Book wise though she takes the Lannister's from pretty much uncontested to near war with former friends in a matter of months, and without any balancing successes. Possibly excluding Robert Strong but that seems... unlikely to end well, ultimately. For Dany and Jon it's a lot less clear that they're stupid because they're both in far more difficult situations than Cersei, so their mistakes are more easily justified and you'd expect them to have larger, less reversible consequences. For both though I would say that while they managed a decent balance between expediency and principle and were highly competent on their rise to power (Dany scammed the Unsullied off their masters as eg, Jon infiltrating the Wildings) their balance in power was off terribly and both were inconsistent in such a way as to maximise the dumbness, and ended up antagonising both their allies and their enemies unnecessarily. Jon in particular should have done better as he had plenty of direct leadership role models in Eddard, Mormont and even Mance he could have emulated.

She also lied about the incident on the way to King's Landing that ended up getting her direwolf and an innocent boy chopped as a result. She'd had a good look at the real Joffrey and Cersei rather than the surface appearance then, and ignored it. I'd certainly agree that she was naive/ sheltered, but imo that carries her over the line into wilfully or deliberately naive rather than just being an innocent, and that makes her stupid. GRRM has a tendency to overdo the stupidity on several characters to almost caricature level- Regent Cersei is at least as dumb as book 1 Sansa without any of her excuses and Sansa at least never thinks she's a genius while being a moron. Dany also suffers from it to a lesser extent when she's ruling, as does Jon as Lord 'forever alone' Commander.

Well yeah, book Sansa makes show Sansa look like an amalgam of all the best bits of The Prince, Littlefinger, Walsingham (historical, not forum) and Sun Tzu in comparison. She really is an utterly abject moron in the books, albeit mostly in the 1st book. Subsequent books she's just run of the mill dumb instead of elevating it to an art form. (To be fair, book wise I'm 99% sure it's Littlefinger who actually gets Ned the chop as (1) he's trying to get into Catelyn's pants (2) Ned knows LF betrayed him and (3) he's talking to Joffrey before he tells Payne to send yet another role to the great Sean Bean character farm in the sky)

Paying for influence. Is the US really carrying that many? As in the US military is there just for those nations not for any strategic interest of the US. NATO requires member nations to spend 2% of GDP on defense, only 5 meet that, the US, Greece, Estonia, Poland, and the UK. They don't need to spend as much to stay safe because the US provides so much. That's true, but also misleading. After all, if, say, Slovenia spends 2% of their GDP on the military they spend all of it in the NATO zone. If the US did the same they'd spend a significant proportion of it outside the North Atlantic zone, and everyone else at the 2% figure would be effectively subsidising the US within the NATO zone. That's the cost of having global power/ global pretentions- you have to project your force globally and that inherently costs money above and beyond local alliances and powers such as the aforementioned Slovenia.

Eh? The European refugee crisis has literally nothing to do with China, very little to do with Russia (Turkey has had their borders closed, so any extra refugees caused by Russian involvement are either internal or going to countries other than Turkey) and almost as little to do with ISIS since the population in their entire Syrian territory even with full pre war rather than 2014 populations barely passes a million. The only thing it has to do with Iran is that they support Assad; by that measure you can add Qatar, KSA, US etc as they support the rebels (and ISIS pre name change in some cases). It also ignores the biggest factor besides the existence of the civil war itself, Turkey, a nominal ally and friend of both Europe and the US, and the refugee crisis has had almost no effect on the US either. There's nothing US hard power could have done to alter things beyond the wanktastic daydreams of neocon fantasists. Now you're sounding like a Trump supporter. Not that it's a bad thing. That's a great post- and believe me, I know great posts having made so many myself. Posts like these will make the forums great again. You don't see posts like these from Crooked Bruce.

Arkane was doing a System Shock 3 (official) for EA prior to John Riccitiello becoming boss there. nuPrey is that game with the SS3 specific stuff excised in a similar way that Dishonoured = Thief - IP and Arx Fatalis = Ultima Underworld - IP. The EA SS3 eventually did see the light of day as Dead Space, which is why nuPrey looks and sounds a lot like Dead Space as well as System Shock. After the crap Bethesda pulled with Human Head I will never be enthusiastic about a Prey game while they're involved, even if it's theoretically right up my street. I'd far prefer Avellone to be working on the Otherside SS3 rather than a knock off.

Mexico is included, as is Canada. Canada is on the pictured chart 2nd from bottom, Mexico isn't as it had too few deaths (2). It's definitely not uniquely american anyway, but I'd safely say that it's disproportionately so when compared to the other OECD countries as a whole. What constitutes a rampage killing is the biggest question. Buggered if I know, despite everyone describing them as OECD Rampage Shooting Index data or similar there's no OECD page on it and the chart sourcing for the total deaths is to a now defunct page. Presumably it involves mass (well, it includes some single death incidents so go figure) gun violence which has no 'criminal' intention except for the act itself, ie cannot be because of drug cartels fighting over territory or similar but the sole criminal act has to be the commission of the mass shooting.

Except they're not. That's completely false. Mass shootings have happened and continue to happen all over the world. In fact, if you take a ratio of mass shooting deaths compared to population, the US doesn't even make the top 5 (admittedly this chart doesn't include 2014, 2015, or 2016): Yeah, nah. This is the classic statistical Outlier fudge. The issue with these sort of charts is perfectly illustrated by Norway being so high- have one incident in a small country and it will be at the top, because it's a small country not because of any intrinsic difference. At the time of the Port Arthur massacre Australia would be at the top, when Aramoana happened we'd be at the top, with Breivik Norway is at the top. That's the nature of small sample size statistics. After all, the largest incident number of any other country on the chart is 3 compared to the US's 38 and there's not a single other country there with a population larger than 82 million. Except there actually is since it's OECD members' data. To illustrate fully the complete list is here (archive link from the same source as the above chart, shows full chart minus the convenient crop) and contains all the countries including those with zero incidents. Do a full US vs non US analysis? Well, why not. 884 million people in the relevant non US OECD countries for 165 deaths. US: 227 deaths from 315 million. The comparative death ratio is 0.19 for non US to 0.72 for the US, so you're actually 3.5 times more likely to be killed in the US as elsewhere. Big 's' Significant? Asterisk that, unless you're paying me. But for sure it's a little s significant difference. (There's lies, damn lies, and statistics; to quote a phrase. And with the proviso that I'm mainly ragging on the original source, not Keyrock for posting it since his main point that mass shootings happen elsewhere is certainly true, but they are disproportionate to the US)

The saga overall certainly did, though for the sake of anyone not familiar with the it the specific thing that got him blanked from WWE was the release of the unredacted tape with his, uh, liberal use of n-bombs rather than the initial tape of him boffing his friend's wife. The unredacted tape release was never proven to be by Gawker- lucky for them, since it was under a non release order- though it seems extremely likely that it was them and was equally likely why they didn't take the initial video down, they expected him to fold under threat of the full tape's release. Hulk hasn't quite had the full Benoit treatment from WWE. Benoit will never be rehabilitated and has had pretty much the full Stalin unperson treatment, Hulk occasionally shows up in clip compilations or is mentioned in championship lists and the like and could yet return after sufficient time and a profuse apology. Jimmy Snuka is in much the same boat and even more recently than Hulk due to a historic suspicious death accusation resurfacing.

'Assault rifle' is an emotive term though, for a medium to high calibre weapon that has an automatic, military, equivalent. A semi auto 'assault rifle' is functionally identical to a semi auto hunting rifle in everything except look and (in the US at least, and iirc) magazine size. We have far stronger gun control laws here but I could, theoretically, walk into a gun store and buy an AR-15/ AK-74/ SKS/ FN FAL. I'd only do it if I needed to control pigs or deer as the idea of trying to shoot them with a .22 is both moronic and barbaric and I'd get a proper hunting rifle, but functionally that FN FAL 'assault rifle' would be exactly the same as a .308 'hunting rifle'.

Snowden may not be the best source but he's certainly qualified enough to comment as a technical specialist. He's certainly not a great source for the procedural aspects of the Hillary server saga, such as whether the server itself was legal or not or any data preservation law breaches, but he's equally certainly qualified to say whether it was secure and whether it could reasonably be expected that it would have been compromised. There is some question of his objectivity with respect to Hillary though, I'd definitely admit that.

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.