Zoraptor

I am awaiting the "For whom the Bell Tolls" of our generation, inspired by the events surrounding GG. Homage to Catalonia GamerGhazi, Eric Blair's memoirs of joining a movement for idealism and its slow decay as its eats itself. May or may not involve literally being shot in the neck by someone from KotakuInAction/ 8chan. Picasso's Guernica Brianna Wu commemorating a tragedy visited upon the innocent by mercenaries of the Breitbart Legion. Anthony Beevor's Gamergate, perfect fit to go with Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad, Spanish Civil War, Berlin '45 etc. (I'm actually rather amused by the flags, to be honest)

Do you really not see a difference between Not taking initiative to publicly mourn something, as long as no-one is asking you to.and Actively showing disrespect and spite for other people's mourning, like booing(!) a minute of silence.? Let's just disingenuously group both of those under "not caring enough" and equivocate away? If the situation was reversed, with the Turkish attack coming after the french one and there being no minute of silence for the dead french but a request for silence for the dead turks then yes, I'd expect some french to boo instead of honour it. Some would see Turkey as (not inaccurately, to be honest) enabling ISIS and there would definitively be a jingoistic 'asterisking muslims/ refugees/ refugee enablers' attitude from some, we can already see that; and it would seem that the turkish lives would be valued more than the french ones. It's not about saying that any lack of respect is OK, but there are reasons for it and they are reasons which would apply to every country/ nationality/ ethnicity/ religion under the right/ wrong circumstances. As for not caring enough, when it was 200+ Russians blown up the UK- formally, and as direct policy since it was their FM saying most of it- used their deaths to make cheap political points, smugly said it was a bomb publicly before telling either the country whose people had died or the country where the bombing occurred, and were as close to actively happy that those people had died as it is possible to be because it would be 'difficult' for Putin and his policy in Syria. That's not only not taking the time to honestly mourn but is most certainly showing disrespect by trivialising their deaths into a stick to hit an opponent with. And yet, nary a complaint about it; but we all know what would have happened if the situation had been reversed. It doesn't mean that I think the people disrespecting are nice or right, whether they be the Brit Foreign Secretary of Mehmet Blogsadoglu doing it. Get upset at people not showing enough or any respect though? Asterisk that, they don't have to care, real life ain't some web 2.0 emotional circlejerk. TLDR: there's no obligation to pay respects unless you're playing COD: Iteration, though you may be a bit of a dong if you actively disrespect.

It's very common for a cheerleader to make these type of "follow around" claims on Forums. It's cute, but it blatantly ignores the fact that the troll (in this case, Sensuki), is posting the same thing everywhere all the time. So unless someone leaves the forum, if they respond to the troll then one of the troll's cheerleaders will be like, "why you following us around, bro?" lol Since I've been dragged into this; I think Sensuki's custom title on the codex ("Cuck") was well earned and perfectly appropriate because he's acted pretty much exactly like a jilted lover, right down to professing to be absolutely unconcerned and over it all yet unable to actually let it go. I actually agree far more with Gromnir on PoE than with Sensuki. I just have zero interest in reading the two of them 'troll'* each other. *Not really trolling, Sensuki just hates PoE and Gromnir hates the codex. It happens, it's just boring to wade through.

Well yeah. (1) Football fans are unusually nationalistic- their entire reason for being is cheering their country, after all- and (2) there weren't much in the way of minutes silence for the dead Turks, dead Russians and dead Lebanese we've seen in similar circumstances in the last few weeks, indeed more than a few people thought it was more or less OK because they were Commie Turks/ Kurds, Hezbollah sympathisers or Russians. Philip Hammond, British Foreign Secretary even suggested (with slight paraphrasing) that at least the airline bombing imposed a price on Russia for intervening in Syria, god knows the reaction if Lavrov said the same about the Paris attacks and French intervention in Syria... Complaining about others not caring enough is always a problematic approach, as you can pretty much guarantee there's a bigger entry in the tragedy olympics out there that the complainer doesn't care enough about. Sadly, 129 people dying is pretty much Monday-Sunday in Syria, as a direct example.

I know, that's why I'm more of a bastard than Shady is. CK2 code is tentatively gone, unfortunately I can't offer the Lionheart/ King's Crusade codes either at this time since Gamersgate and Paradox seem to be having a dispute and I'm getting no serial available errors. If I do get codes I'll reinstate that offer. Riddick code is still there though. Additional: Mount and Blade Warband steam code free to good home, checked that the code is there too. [steam codes huh! what are they good for: absolutely nothing, say it again]

I'd be surprised if people didn't complain about DivOSEE and consoles/ consolisation, that's the PC Master Race for you. Couldn't care less personally though. People waiting for WMpt2 to be released before buying or a 'final' patch or whatever is just the nature of things as are complaints about dumbing down or making things too easy (or too hard, in some cases).

Erik Kain too would also qualify as a journalist so far as I am concerned, blogger and journo aren't mutually exclusive and there's a fair amount of overlap. I've pretty much exclusively read Young's personal blog/ website rather than his 'pro' pieces and regard the ../sites/.. section of Forbes as being blogs though, so I view both as being predominantly bloggers.

Single Purpose Account- long(er) standing account whose only contribution is game begging/ asking for gifts. Largely irrelevant here, but they are pretty common elsewhere.

Got an extra Riddick GOG key from the recent sale for anyone wanting one. Also steam keys for Crusader Kings II+ some dlc and Kings Crusade (Lionheart) + some dlc which Paradox trojaned steam into the drm free versions of so I won't use. PM for codes, one game+relevant dlc per person, first come first served. I'm more of a bastard than Shady is, so no new users/ SPAs sorry.

Sauce. Yes, it says 'nearly' but it is also from May. IIRC it was also Swen saying it was 1 million+ in August some time, but was in a form that was (unfortunately) not Google friendly. Press releases are inconsistent though. Most of the time we don't get any sales figures at all. And really, the reason we've got figures for PoE at 500 and 600k is PR/ hype for the expansions, if they weren't happening they'd almost certainly have given us nothing, much as they did for every prior 100k increment.

Erik Kain and Shamus Young at least are fine quality bloggers, even if Kain might resent the label. I don't always agree with them, but they're always worth reading. Much as with games journalists while most aren't great to say the least some certainly do their job well. Contribute to my patreon?

I'm not sure "rule of thumb I heard and read about" is the most convincing counter argument in the world. If DivOS sold 1 million plus and Steamspy had them at ~850k then either Steamspy is majorly inaccurate or there are ~150k extra copies sold somewhere. And for DivOS even Larian Vault copies were steam keys. There are 12 RPGs that are ranked above TWitcher3 on GOG, and most of those were pretty definitively PoE type games. Indeed, many were named directly as being its inspiration. Haven't seen anything showing GOG sales rankings to be inaccurate, personally, they're just useless in general because they're relative sales rather than absolute ones.

PoE has sold over 600,000 copies now, as of the latest press release. Steam Spy still has it at ~550k so it seems likely that at least some GOG/ Origin sales must be included in that figure.

Most likely Atenism/ Judaism/ Zoroastrianism shared a similar religious 'trope' as a base. I like the Atenism theory for the simple reason that it annoys religious extremists; they're all fundamentally unprovable theories anyway. As for Joseph building a pyramid, it is more plausible. Problem really is that the only credible historic candidate would be Imhotep, and that mostly because you can hand wave his name to I(m)otef, he doesn't really fit anything else about Joseph. That's clearly well into simple belief- and not mainstream belief given most seem to put Joseph well into the 2nd millennium BC rather than 3rd- territory though, it's not exactly got evidence backing it up beyond that. If anything it's more likely that stories of Joseph building pyramids are borrowed from Imhotep's legacy with there being no link except the naming similarity.

Presumably he rugby style tackled the guy. That makes a huge difference because a lot of the explosive force and shrapnel from his belt is then forced into the ground and the blast radius is thus heavily reduced. And of course the tackler ends up soaking up a lot of the remaining force too, sadly. If you're close enough to tackle him you're likely dead either way, so might as well give the terrorist the middle finger and save others. Strangely enough the first thing I thought about when reading about that guy (couple of days ago) was Frank Burns in MASH jumping on a deactivated grenade that someone dropped as a prank.

Yeah, SS3 is just an idea for some day and there's basically nothing known about the remake. At this point it's little better than a fan remake/ bare bones Kick (hoho) starter in terms of all the really important information. They've got the concept artist and some sort of 'would be nice' commitment from the Brosii (and Terri Brosius has done some extra voice overs for ND before), but nothing on the really important technical aspects that make these things actually work like engines or coders. They have just about literally no experience with coding and the like, their prior efforts have been almost exclusively lifted from fans/ mods- New Dark for SS2 and Malba Tahan integrating stuff for the SS1 re-release. They're a lot closer to 2015 Interplay than, say, Larian or InXile. The talk now is likely to drum up interest more than anything. Having said that, I personally wouldn't be surprised at all if they did a console remake of SS2 if they do do a PC&console remake of SS1. SS2 is a legit big seller (~1.5 million) at this point.

And sadly neither does Grommy. Still getting an E for reading comprehension I see. Though in this case it is probably deliberate malice rather than mere foolishness and your imagination writing cheques reality won't cash. As you can see, one main point (1) and three subsidiaries from that first point of which being embarrassed by Russia is one. If you don't think that's a factor then fair dos, but you're wrong. Now, since some may actually gain from the illustration... Even prior to the intervention the US had dialled back on the rhetoric and were saying that Assad could stay in a transitional role, they were already setting the scene for their policy change, the US trained rebels (Division 30) had already handed weapons over to Al Nusra and been disbanded, and the sole passably moderate major rebel group in the Southern Front had already failed in their big offensive. The US simply could not be peeved about losing their influence over Syria to Russia, the alternative thing they might be annoyed about, as they didn't have any influence to lose. From a geopolitical perspective all the intervention did was reinforce/ illustrate the already existing facts on the ground that the US had no meaningful influence and their policy had been a litany of half baked mutually contradictory failures such as kind of backing the Kurds in Syria, but not enough to offend Turkey- and with the big proviso that the Kurds are mainly interested in Kurdish areas, not marching on Raqqa or Damascus. Meanwhile, regional US allies were blithely supporting the big players in the rebels, Al Nusra/ Ahrar ash Sham/ Army of Islam etc much as they had blithely supported proto ISIS earlier, and none of those groups are even remotely pro US and cannot be spun as pro US, and the US knows that. Simply put, the US can only be genuinely annoyed at the embarrassment of Russian intervention because they had no influence remaining to lose.

Assad was always going to be included once Russia intervened, the recent significant victories on the ground and accelerated defections from the small remaining actual moderate opposition has just ensured that people are talking about it now, rather than next year. The US wasn't really annoyed about Russia intervening per se since their favoured proxies were almost exclusively outright embarrassments already- it's all about dialling back the expectations and making their policy not look like a hapless clusterasterisk at this point while trying to make sure Russia gets no credit. Russian intervention was the no-clothes-on-emperor moment for western Syrian policy and the US wanted time to at least get a posing pouch on before the illusion went. OTOH the Russian intervention sent the Gulf and Turkey into a splenetic rage since they've committed far more than the US both in rhetoric and in practicality. Realistically sanctions would last until the west needed Russia again, and that's that. Ukraine simply ain't important enough to anyone in Europe except Poland/ Balts and opportune jingoists like Cameron/ Hammond. They're important enough to get a response, but not important enough to maintain it. This kind of hyperbole will be paid for in blood, though probably no terrorist would bother with Slovakia. I'm guessing you've never lived under communism. He said he lived under communism. Not sure how you could have missed it. Really though, it's deeply ironic that someone who uses 'Obola' unironically wants Obola's NSA mates to have free reign to sniff his undies in order to protect him from terrorists. Pretty sure Jefferson had something relevant to say there. Hint: a Russian has quoted it to you...

Thinking pyramids were granaries is demonstrably wrong for two reasons- they indeed only have small empty spaces, and they can only have small empty places. As the 'bent' pyramid shows they didn't have much engineering wiggle room for the empty, massive chambers a granary would necessitate. The other bizarre assertion was that Joseph built them. I can only imagine how he'd respond if anyone suggested the (actually quite plausible) theory that Judaism and hence Christianity were descended from Egyptian Atenism, albeit around a thousand years after the pyramids were built. The odd bizarre belief doesn't really mean you wouldn't be a good president, though sticking with a bizarre belief in the light of proof to the contrary might. And at least it's a harmless belief.

It's actually ironic that for all the fear about Caliphates when they did exist the areas they ruled were ruled far more moderately than now, and for most of their time far more moderate than christians were at the same times. Historically, Caliphs of the 'Ibrahim'/ al-Baghdadi type have been a rare aberration. It's also rather ironic that while islam had both temporal and spiritual power, unlike christianity, the largest sect largely lacks any actual power structures similar to Patriarchies or Popes within itself. At least with shia islam you have somewhat more of a hierarchy, with sunni islam when lacking a Caliph it's pretty much open season on interpretation and seniority with a very few exceptions. So yeah, Islam could actually do with a Caliph or a 'Pope' so long as it were the right person, as it is it is far too easy for some nutbar to persuade others that their view is right, especially since so much of the Koran was written during what was a particularly vicious war and thus open to (il)liberal interpretation.

Woah, what? Did they really say that? To be fair, it's a lot better on page 2 which I didn't initially read because p1 is mostly Alec Meer (who hates Twitchers for some reason, b00bies in the prologue of TW2 maybe?) waxing lyrical about F4 and producing gems like: It would probably be more accurate to say that Meer made me lol rather than Adam Smith especially or even John Walker/ RPS in general in this particular case since Smith calls Meer on the above and Walker calls him on the dialogue/ story. I read RPS still mostly for Tim Stone, who is indisputably great.

I've noticed a trend towards at least mentioning the problems, they just dismiss them as not being important or not detracting from the experience- "everyone knows that Bethesda plots are a bit dumb, but you don't buy it for that, do you?" type statements. I had to lol (literally, for once) when RPS managed to make F4 sound like it had better graphics, worldbuilding and simulation than Twitcher3 because somehow F4 was 'convincing' or somesuch while TW3 somehow wasn't.

This will probably be a bit disorganised, but meh. When it comes to refugees there are two main facets- the refugees themselves, and the (European) response to them. The specific problem is not with the refugees themselves, unless you're as empathetic as a slab of concrete everyone can understand why a refugee would want to come to Europe and accept that the civil war in Syria is a legitimate reason to flee the country. The problem is the disorganisation of the response, leaving the problem with Syria's neighbours for so long, the sheer number of refugees and especially the number of non refugees tagging along. Most of that is on the truly horrible formal response and Germany's idiotic open invitation which encouraged people smugglers and generated potentially millions of fake Syrian IDs- money for which goes either to the people smugglers or those who have captured Syrian administrative equipment, like ISIS- while functionally penalising those who went through proper channels by staying in Jordan/ Lebanon/ Turkey. Ironically, Germany and Merkel have done more to damage the EU with their open invitation than anything else, even their vassalisation of Greece. She'll be largely free of the consequences because it is Germany, not Greece, but the seriousness of the problem is largely her fault, indisputably. Having said that, it's doubtful that ISIS would have to resort to refugee infiltration, they have plenty of foreign nationals who can just go home, and especially they have plenty of support from disaffected locals, the people who go off to fight in Syria in the first place. On blaming muslims, it is about as fair as blaming christianity for David Koresh or Jim Jones. There's some beliefs there in common, but it's at very best simplistic to blame the overall group. The big irony is that ISIS themselves wouldn't even regard most muslims as actually being muslim. Not just the shia/ alawi/ ibadi and such, but also those (theoretically) very close to them in the sunni branch, if they aren't radical enough and frankly nobody is radical enough except them and their salafi/ wahhabi ex-buddies in the Gulf (who'd still be supplying them on the quiet if 'Ibrahim' hadn't gone Caliph). That's why they bring in their ludicrous laws to enforce 'sharia', because even most muslims don't follow it to their liking. In any case, all blanket labelling of all muslims does is alienate moderates, which is largely the aim of such attacks. The ISIS narrative requires oppression to generate traction amongst those oppressed and to set the scene for radicalisation. If you're making idiotic 'kill/ deport all muslim' like statements then congrats, Jihadi John and al-Baghdadi would like to pat you on the back and thank you for giving the desired response, and to quote the great philosopher Mark Henry from his retirement speech "You're all a bunch of puppets". As for what can be done to fix the problems, well, it's hard given political realities. (1) Accept that your 'friends' in the Gulf are 'friends' rather than friends (2) accept that the brand of salafi/ wahhabi thought liberally exported by KSA is anathema to western values and utterly toxic (3) rationalise the refugee process (4) stop asterisking around with regime change, you haven't got an asterisking clue what you're doing; plus see pt 1 (5) just deal with it; stop wringing your hands and wailing when people get killed by terrorism, stop jerking your knee and learn to live with it; people die every day, and in the west far more die from practically anything else than terrorism- if that's the price for freedom then be willing to pay it. Practically (1&4) won't happen because there's too much money involved and politicians are morons with delusions of competency, and (5) won't because politicians are opportunists who want excuses to accumulate power and people get irrationally scared of boogeymen more than more realistic threats.

Yep. Though the catastrophic way in which they've been handled means that it would be very easy for extremists to infiltrate Europe I'd suspect that it will be primarily or solely 2nd gen French rather than refugees, much as it was last time. There's plenty of degrees of blame to be thrown around but nobody else caused this other than those who perpetrated it. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were actually more angry at Breivik for not being muslim than for killing dozens of people. This sort of event always sends some people sociopathic, at least if you take them at their word.

Bioware Austin -> TOR, not DAI. It also fits with Lucas (Film/ Arts; the rights holders) not liking teh gayz in Star Wars at all, say what you want about EA but they certainly can't be (sensibly natch) accused of homophobia and hence the rather hacky removal of the Juhani romance a decade+ ago from kotor as well. It is a pretty stupid attitude, though it's certainly LA/ Disney's right to stipulate what they want. Though of course Bioware has indeed had transgender characters, such as the memorable Edwina Odesseiron and of course %charname% even earlier with a certain girdle.