Zoraptor

Vladimir Vladimirovitch announces withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria! Well kind of, and with some pretty massive caveats. They're keeping their air base and naval base, planes, ships, AA etc there so what is going is unclear. It's certainly got some breathless responses from the usual suspects (is Putin dropping Assad?!?!?) but almost certainly means next to nothing practically, and is designed to short circuit some opposition objections at the peace talks and associated western narrative. They can literally fly equipment and planes in and out on at most a daily turnaround time (hours for fighters/ bombers) and those there have less to do at present.

Since there's already been a Knight Rider game it would have to be a remake or sequel. Like Knight Rider 2008, yes indeed. Or perhaps the latest Crusader Kings 2 dlc. Both are wrong anyway. Obviously the AP name is trademarked by Sega so that cannot be used but consider: a Knight is a decidedly Alpha individual, and a Rider can be a Protocol attached to a legal document.

Not worth it to me, but I guess it is to some.

VtMB was modern. For that matter the latter parts of VtMR were as well. I suspect most people wanting a WoD game are specifically thinking Bloodlines 2, so also a modern setting. They had fantastical elements but were still modern setting. To be honest, much as I love AP it was not realistic modern either, and I doubt there could be a proper RPG that was ever realistic modern. You had a power that literally made you invisible, for example.

I know it's tempting to troll WoD, but really... Whatever Trump says I doubt he really wants a protester seriously beaten up- quite the reverse- and that is what would have happened. Trump can deal with criticism, and deal with it pretty effectively too or he wouldn't be where he is, you can argue the method of how he deals with it but not the effectiveness. I get the impression that some people would actually like some serious violence so as to make a point, and that really is a moronic position to take. Yeah, Trump supporters tend towards the bonkers end of the disillusioned spectrum but it's hardly worth someone getting hurt to prove that as it's self evident. And as much as Trump is treating the campaign as an extended wrestling promo- which presumes that there's a certain amount of the carnival nudge nudge wink wink about what he says, and that everyone knows there is as well- instead of an orthodox political campaign spiking rallies in the hope there will be violence is not the way to go about countering him.

I don't like Trump but in that case he did the sensible thing. Both politically and in terms of safety. That crowd was both thoroughly infiltrated and getting decided grumpy, even if the police said they could maintain order I'd have doubted it.

I got psychotic. Just picked C every time, because why not? Write in vote for new game being Awesome Brotocols 2, as always.

Yeah. The new Sansa arc in the show is questionable at best, but mostly due to it making no sense rather than her being a woman. When it comes right down to it the same thing happened in the books, just to a different and 'less important' character, and the same thing has happened countless times to unnamed characters. That's a hazard of having a 'realistic' medieval setting along with all the other random brutality. Most of the really despicable people in the books and TV show are blokes, might as well say that Ramsay or Gregor Clegane or Craster are examples of misandry because they're all men. Worst thing a woman has done is... human sacrifice maybe, and even stiff upper lip honourable Stannis ended up doing that. I nominate Mr Martin. OMG GUYS I JUST HEARD GEORGE MARTIN DIED IT'S ALL OVER THE NEWS !!!!111! Nonek = Nostradamus.

The 'soviet retaliation' story is probably apocryphal. Its original sourcing is very suspect. Not all that difficult to sell, you just have to demonise the enemy enough, and most of your population simply will not believe it's happening because of cognitive dissonance. NATO was definitely having problems, their public casualty estimates for the Serbs were out by an order of magnitude and they kept on bombing dummy vehicles and the like, and their prestige required victory. As with Libya and as Syria would have been, they'd have simply upped the ante until they won in the knowledge that most people would regard them as the 'good guys' whatever they did. That was the war in which Wesley Clark, NATO commander, tried to start WW3 by ordering British tankers to attack Russian paratroops, an order that (oh so very sensibly) got ignored. The NATO leadership was- objectively- pretty bonkers, far more so then even than now. Certainly Clark not making the Presidency was a bullet dodged, even GWB's foreign policy was less stupid than that abject and utter cretin's would likely have been.

Long article on Obama's foreign doctrine and relations- not directly related to the election itself but there's a lot relevant there when it comes to the necessity of appearing 'strong' above all else plus some stuff on The Establishment, and Hillary. Pretty much reiterates my view that with the Syrian red line stuff the mistake was only in having the red line, not in stepping back from it. Plus France, Britain, KSA etc are all basically called chickenhawks, and it makes me laugh that someone political would actually say that.

..the lovechild of John de Lancie and Chris Avellone. The latter is particularly disturbing as having noticed it I just cannot unsee it.

In CoD you are playing a role of a soldier so by this definitio it would also be an RPG Pong is an RPG. I play the role of a paddle, and I can decide at any time to simply allow the 'ball' through; or to hit it back giving it player agency. Now, some would say that Pong lacks stats and thus cannot be an RPG, or lacks stats that effect the gameplay. Not so, the length of the paddle is a stat, as is the speed at which it moves and the ball moves. And if you really want, the weapons in CoD have stats, hence... The alternative is Need For Speed is an RPG, you can improve the stats of your vehicle etc.

I recall reading somewhere that Michigan law requires polling to be done over land line phones, not mobiles, which if true would certainly skew the numbers a bit as younger folks are less likely to have a land line. I read that as well but it doesn't seem to be true: There may be some wiggle room for it being true (maybe conducting the surveys interstate could avoid such rules, or similar) but that survey at least used cell phones as well as land lines. It was a bit more accurate than other polls from Michigan but was still out by a fair bit more than 10% from the real world result.

Clinton has won Mississippi by miles, unsurprisingly, Sanders ahead in Michigan. Stick a fork in Rubio, he's done. Last in both so far and not even a close last. Because, uh, National Socialism has some negative connotations? OK, so NationalSocialisichte Deutsche ArbeiterPartei weren't really socialists by any sensible definition and spent much of their first years killing off anyone was was an actual socialist, but the name has certainly poisoned the well. Realistically, socialism is inherently more 'progressive' than conservative and at least theoretically less inherently nationalist as well. It's not entirely contradictory to have conservative, nationalist, socialism but the two philosophies are far enough apart that most people won't share both to any great degree.

I'd say that the base system is fine- it's essentially still the system used in the IE games and while the combat in Icewind Dale or Baldur's Gate may not have been the best it was certainly good. That's unsurprising given that Aurora shared many of the backend bits of the original Infinity Engine and was used for NWN. If there was a problem with their approach it was too much obfuscation of it being simultaneous turn based so it didn't take any advantage of that system so as to appear more buzz word friendly real time rather than 'slow/ boring' turn based. Personally I'd say that the problem was that the combat was plain old boring though, used the wrong engine so didn't make much sense if given the slightest thought (supra modern guns that fire as often and as accurately and are used at as close a range as 17-18th century pistols? everyone running around with swords because blasters etc were so plink plink?), had basically no variety and no need for anything other than the most basic thought and tactics. It wasn't really bad in any singular sense, but the aggregate effect was that it was at very best mundane and rapidly became an actual chore you were forced oh so often to get through. Kotor2 had the same problems too, but at least there the ludicrous balancing meant that most fights lasted barely more than a round after a while. That's one example of a game that was massively improved by bad balancing.

USE is the endgame and it transparently has been for decades, really. It is primarily being pushed by the big players- France and especially Germany- rather than the little players, certainly, and they are the more developed members. Theoretically at least it should be good for weaker economies, if it were a level playing field but the deck is of course stacked towards benefiting the big players. Essentially it's like if the USA were separate states seeking to join together, California would have the biggest say in things, Texas, New York etc a decent amount but Rhode Island (too small) or Alabama/ Mississippi (too poor)... not so much. As it stands poorer US states get big benefits from being integrated into the US but if it were a current union negotiation instead they would not be in a favourable position. You don't get poorer places emptying of population because of numerous factors other than nationalism too, that's far too simplistic. I agree- but it doesn't have to be 'perfect' or unimpeded progress to be inevitable. It's the accumulation of the various impediments that stops it from being inevitable, a few bumps on the road can be avoided but if you get enough it stops being a road and you can't go further.

For most countries borders are a symptom more than anything. For some (Greece) it would approach an almost existential problem if the multi multi hundreds of thousands of refugees that have transited Greece stay there- they simply don't have the money and have problems with geography as the vast majority of refugees arrive on small islands with low populations and infrastructure which are also important for tourism. But for most it's a symptom of how the theoretically fair and equal EU with collective responsibility etc isn't, really. EU is supposed to be an inevitable, irreversible march to more integration; practically that has hit some snags and the inevitable and irreversible bits are looking more evitable and reversible. It may be true that nothing of substance has changed- personally I'd disagree since things clearly have changed since Merkel's "Wilkommen alles" last summer- but the intangibles of being big E European as opposed to or in addition to being German/ French/ British/ Hungarian etc should not be underestimated. The Euro crisis, UK referendum, existing opt outs for Denmark and the UK and the refugee crisis damage the prestige of the EU as an existing institution and do even more harm to the dream of a 'United States of Europe'. Essentially, the end game for the EU is for there to literally be no borders between the countries. Re-establishing them, even in a manner which still allows trade and free movement of citizens is a retrograde step.

Realistically it's pandering in general that has lead to Trump. No doubt there are people genuinely pissed off at inane SJW based social engineering attempts who want someone in power who will simply tell the SJWs to asterisk off who will vote for Trump because he will do that- and in this case they are probably right, sjws will never vote Trump so they're safe to reject either in power or on the campaign trail. But the Republican party in general and its cheerleaders like Fox News bear most responsibility. They've fostered an environment where there has been a self reinforcing cycle of obstructionism and absolutism where the greatest virtues have become a complete unwillingness to compromise and pie in the sky unrealistic pandering on issues; it's essentially a mob mentality that has been actively fostered. Trump is a showman, in that environment he has shone- but if it wasn't him it would be some other populist at some later stage. The issues that Trump is doing well at have all been set up by the Republican Party; even rather ironically the distrust of establishment narrative. That was of course meant to mean distrust of those other people and governmental beaurocracy, not the Republican Establishment itself.

This was always the end game (hoho) strategy. There are two things that MS has learnt from others- Android and iOS with their exclusive (well, 'exclusive') stores and curation and that PC people will happily buy expensive hardware to play games. One of the things not mentioned in the article is that this is also the death of xbox as a separate system from PC- it is the Universal Windows Platform, after all. That should significantly cut down on porting costs because there effectively won't be ports any more and potentially rids MS of the loss making xbox division while retaining its benefits and giving far more flexibility to them on the hardware front if they do want to keep subsidising boxes. They'll certainly have to improve their offerings to attract PC gamers though, their current windows store titles have some arbitrary restrictions that may be fine to xboxers but are not at all standard for PC gamers. The reduced porting costs of UWP would probably ensure a decent number of titles though. In any case, if Phil Spencer (who I always want to call Phil Spector, must subconsciously associate him with Warren for some reason) says it will be open I'd suspect it will be open in the same way that steam is open. You can buy keys from anywhere, no strings! Agreement with the Microsoft Subscriber Agreement, Windows Live! registration, acceptance of advertising, copy of windows 10 etc etc required.

Pretty easy to adapt the famous Goering quote to illustrate why that is seen as being 'popular'. Get the press to demonise an enemy, label anyone who doesn't agree as weak or a terrorist sympathiser, then celebrate getting a 'bad guy' when he dies; it's the same everywhere but just a bit more extreme in the US. She was pretty obviously trying for a soundbite/ quote of the "we got him" type, she just stuffed it up and got moderately psychotic instead- small punishment compared to how her (and, to be fair, Dave and Nick's) decision impacted the people of Libya. End of the day all the Mad Dog of Tripoli stuff was done precisely to set the scene for nobody crying when he (or his grandchildren) died by labelling him as a rabid animal that has to be put down for the greater good (the greater good). Essentially though, the biggest flaw most US politicians see in the current climate is that of appearing 'weak'; hence the popularity of the Tea Party a few years ago going after anyone on their own side who'd compromise with Obama, and to a large extent Trump's current popularity as well. That goes extra for Clinton, since she's female some people will assume she's 'weak'.

Dislike of Iran could be xenophobia/ jingoism or probably most accurately, bigotry, but Iranian is not a race or ethnicity so it can't be racist. Persian, Azeri, Arab, Kurd and Arab are the main ethnicities in Iran. Realistically though it just plays well with the electorate under the calculation that anyone who likes Obama's foreign policy simply will not vote for a Repub candidate and are likely to vote for her despite her record, even if holding their noses while doing so. I've indirectly addressed a lot of the other stuff below, too. You have seen the We came, we saw, he died clip? The problem with Hillary is basically that she's always been running for President since she got back into politics. That is one of the reasons why she is actively disliked by so many people, everything seems to be calculated and there's a feeling that she's just a walking aggregate focus group response form. In terms of her foreign policy specifically she knows perfectly well that she's going to be labelled as "weak on america's enemies!" or similar because she's female and a Democrat, so her history is strident arch hawk to counter that. Ironically, while an asset vs a Republican that was one of her weaknesses as a primary candidate vs Obama. But in any case that may or may not reflect her real views and what she would do if actually elected, but it certainly reflects a calculated long term strategy to counter an obvious weakness. Same with distancing herself from Obama's policies. Personally, I'd be amazed if she tore up the Iran agreement or significantly changed anything. Rhetoric and posturing as a candidate is risk free, putting that stuff into action isn't. As for Gaddafi, very few americans were going to mourn the passing of The Mad Dog of Tripoli, celebrating it with giggly, crappy classical allusions may seem decidedly sociopathic and the whole intervention was moronic; but that response will have been popular and makes her look strong, and that is what counts. I'd go a bit further than Malcador and say he probably is*. Most large organisations as a whole are sociopathic, and Putin in practically a large organisation by himself. *or whatever form of psychopathy sociopathy is formally defined as nowadays

Even I've heard of it, and I semi actively avoid esports. Though I guess given the subject it isn't that surprising. The big problem with that statement is that it is effectively accusing someone of being unprofessional while being unprofessional himself. The reason why you get either 'no comment' or inoffensive legalese type statements most of the time and the reason why they are more sensible is precisely because- most of the time- you actively want to avoid anything that will extend or aggravate the issue. Firings or even voluntary losses are very seldom good news and that statement while it does vaguely explain why/ what happened doesn't do so in a sensible manner but in an inflammatory way which suggests that there was personal animus involved plus infers there are differences in how people see things at Valve- both of which can only exacerbate the issue especially when Gabe seldom comments on stuff publicly because that by itself adds weight. Valve does know how to do this properly, they've had many quite prominent people leave and projects shut down with mostly no comment at all or measured 'wish them well in their future endeavours' type statements. Have to say though, I think the support issues are what is really killing Valve's PR. That's not a big, one time blow to reputation but a slow, creeping malaise that sees people praising their rivals and many (most?) discussions of anything Valve related garner a lot of support horror stories; and apart from the refund policy improvements (forced by the EU) the situation has been the same for years. At least this issue and the paid mods controversy are/ were acute rather than chronic problems.

Which is really ironic since the last two "one of us" candidates were the son of multimillionaire oil men (GWB) and the son of an already successful property multimillionaire (Trump) so are about as far from the Average Joe on Struggle Street as you can get. And GWB was a near unmitigated disaster, too. It's not just the US that has this phenomenon though, our Prime Minister is a multimillionaire banker (!) who is seen as just one of the guys because he admits peeing in the shower and likes to sexually harass people with pony tails seems like a nice guy to have a beer with. Though at least he is first gen wealthy and not from family wealth.

Whoah, someone's still butthurt. And as always it's the guy who insists he just didn't care... Some kids accidentally (?) crushed a dove's breastbone and it suffocated, making a peace ceremony have some macabre undertones when they tried to launch it into the air and instead of flying away it pancaked.

The distinction there is probably that they consider it freedom not to have to pay for others' health care as they would have to under a single payer system. I'm not aware of any single payer health care system where there isn't also a parallel private system which people can choose to use if they wish to so they can still choose to see the 'best' doctors under our system here or get elective surgery or whatever else; they can still get the special doctors and special treatment if they are willing to pay for it.