Zoraptor

What's going to happen to the old kit is a rather lol question for sure. There's a huge amount of surplus soviet stuff around the ex su, that is what happens to the old stuff. Or they can ship it off to Syria or Donbass. 2000 armatas is a bit ridiculous for a short term aim though. Technically doable to produce a tank a day, but practically no hope. Taking the bulk of their active T72s to b3+ status or similar seems a bit more practical. They are also likely to get a reasonable amount of extra funding off of France for cancelling the Mistrals, as they get costs plus penalties when France formally refuses delivery. Which is probably a blessing overall for Russia, the Mistrals always seemed like a pointless prestige buy to me.

If anyone thinks the situation is bad housing wise in the uk/aus consider that we have neither stamp duty nor capital gains tax. The government also refuses to count how many properties are bought from overseas, taking advise from an estate agent that it's only 5%. Which literally nobody believes. They also quite deliberately allow more immigrants in than we can build houses for. And all the houses being built are in the8+ times average wage bracket where you have 30%+ of wages going towards interest alone, even with a 200k deposit and the cheapest house bought. Can't really blame people for speculating when they cna get fifteen percent returns per annum with no tax, but it is and will totally asterisk the economy up for everyone when the bubble bursts.

You can do a google image search for some of the 'cartoons' done about her if you want to see. I'm no sensitive internet snowflake and I'd consider them pretty bad. Obvious warning for potential unpleasantness if anyone does so.

While Jade (surely, not Jane) Raymond may not have had any probllems with her employers and certainly seems to have been one of the better industry producers she has copped a lot of pretty unpleasant abuse from the more general online population. She's a good example of a successful woman in gaming but not a particularly good one in terms of having had no- genuinely- misogynist abuse, because she has.

The issue with fptp being that the Tories are, now, also not the party that most people voted for- most people voted for other parties and didn't want the tories. At least with the coalition most people did vote for the two parties combined, just. Even the big landslide victories of the bliars and maggies had well under the majority of the voters voting for them, they were at best in the low forties. MMP and fptp sux, STV 4 lyfe, no member lists and proportional results best of both worlds. In any case it doesn't really matter if the libdem dog wagged the tory tail, because coalition is always a poisoned chalice for the lesser partner. They get stuffed if the ruling party get stuffed but if the ruling party does well it's usually because it cannabalises the partner's vote. That has happened every single time here. Clegg was an idiot either way. And the overall result is exactly as happened here. Inaccurate polls, highly negative campaign by the ruling party, everything. Lord Ashcroft must have got some good mileage out of flying out here for advice, because Cameron's campaign was pure John Key.

There'd be a fair few Ron Paul supporters here as well, probably more than average. Maybe not so many Randies since he's more mainstream. The main candidates from either side certainly don't look too appealing though, and there will usually be more support for fringe candidates on the internet anyway.

The only ST game I played was the first (?) quasi roguelike one and Elite Force (which was rather good), neither of which are on GOG. The Iply Star Trek games do seem to be remembered pretty fondly though, as opposed to some of the later ones and the utterly terrible nuTrek movie cash in games.

I thought they were doing a Alpha Protocol(ish) sounding infiltration/ spy game due to E: C not selling that well. Still, EC was pretty good if perhaps a little understandably simplistic.

Theoretically at least the MP component on Galaxy will allow direct compatibility with steamworks multiplayer; but will also very likely require keys andor the client to be running. Which wouldn't be a change of policy from GOG per se since some of their titles already have keys associated with them and running the client would not be compulsory unless in supported MP modes, but it is a way to get much of the ease of use/ cost reduction (to publisher) stuff from steam hosting MP and the like plus also allow for a certain amount of drm on what publishers will see as the most important aspects of the game. It'll be a bit of a jolt to some but it's the best way available to soothe publishers while also being able to say that they're still drm free so far as SP goes. It's also primarily speculation, but I'd put money on it being pretty accurate speculation.

Is that actually 2008 Hillary data? It's got Lehman Bros on it and they're rather famous for being bankrupt as of 2008. (Unless Barclays are still using the Lehman name in the US, which seems... unlikely. It would be a glowing PR choice, but only because it had been nuked so comprehensively from orbit)

I believe that due to being Australian his choice vote wise is effectively between the Mad Monk and, uh, William Shorten (I think) in a non presidential race. Then again, I'd vote Sanders in ahead of either of those two options. Any time I feel depressed about kiwi politicos I can always look across the Tasman to be reminded that it could be worse. I was a bit surprised that Sanders was standing for the Democrats though, iirc he actually stands as an independent in congressional elections.

I suspect that Whedon may well just genuinely believe the stuff he says rather than is making excuses as such. He has said before that he doesn't like twitter and he is right that the old joke about 2 palestinians in a room resulting in three warring factions applies about equally to feminists and SJ types. Fix It Again Tony

Really, you won't find a more arbitrary committee than the boards that make up most companies' ultimate form of governance and which set wages for their CEOs and the like. Rich people, ex CEOs or aspiring CEOs themselves awarding each other 7-10 figure sums, bonuses and the like irrespective of whether they run their company- and the whole British economy- into the ground is pretty much the definition of arbitrary cronyism. We've got exactly the same problem here as in the UK and as was in Spain, our 'growth' is almost entirely based on a ludicrous housing bubble, encouraged by committees of rich people who stand to make profits from it. And what happens when the inevitable crash happens? Yep, privatise the profit, nationalise the losses, too big to fail etc etc. It's funny really, having a committee of left wingers deciding anything is terrible stuff, a fundamental evil that is to be abhorred; right wingers setting salaries for themselves == awesome, the natural order and other committees of right wingers deciding that their buddies have to be saved by taxpayers from their mistakes and that there is, oh so unfortunately, no recourse available to allow the people who generated those debts to be punished or not get their bonuses- but that the guy working in a chippie for 6.50 an hour is responsible for them instead- is also the natural order of things. And it has to be that way because otherwise where will poor Mr Abramovich live? Surely you don't want him to be forced out of Belgravia by a crowd of plebs? Driven off, depressed and downcast in his last and least gold plated Phantom as he runs for the those last liberal bastions of... the UAE/ Qatar/ Saudi/ Singapore/ Kazakhstan to spend his days in the horrors of mere unparalleled luxury rather than unlimited luxury? Have you no shame, commie?

He's not really pro consumer, unfortunately. He did write the gamer's bill of rights but he then proceeded to ignore most of the things he wrote himself. He's a raging right winger who will alienate a lot of people if asked the wrong/ right questions. Which is the problem, really, with electing 'representatives'. They'll end up saying stuff as the voice of [movement] that a lot of people will disagree with. Same thing happened with Occupy and it drove a lot of their support away.

To be fair, they'd probably cite Saul as well as Leviticus as justification for their stance which is a bit more difficult to challenge with a flow chart. It is all trumped by "Love thy neighbour" and "Judge not lest ye be judged" of course. It is always ironic how many people forget the Christ part of Christian and regard Jesus as some sort of hippy.

It's fair to say that the food safety explanation is... rather controversial. Trichinosis is only a problem if you don't cook the meat properly- and if you hadn't cooked meat properly you've potential for a whole lot of problems whatever it is and whether or not it's kosher or halal. Chicken would be a good counter example, it's kosher but almost all chicken- even modern chicken- has things like campylobacter in it (and salmonella, and listeria in eggs plus a couple of others I can't remember- chickens are basically little bacterial fermenters, tasty but care must be taken). Cook it and store it properly and you're fine much as with pork, don't cook it and store it properly and you have a fair chance of getting life threatening food poisoning.

If you got it a few days ago it was technically an invite for the 'alpha' rather than the beta as a big batch of unsolicited alpha keys went out then. I believe the beta uses the same system as is used for their game giveaways to stop the servers crashing ie you sign up and when it's not busy they send out a key/ register the title to you rather than doing them all at the same time. Also, Fantasy General and Pacific General have been released. Most significantly, they're published by GOG themselves rather than via a 3rd party as they have previously done.

I used bacon because both Jews and Muslims regard it as 'unclean', and because that aversion is exactly as arbitrary as whether or not you can draw Muhammed or write the non transliteration of Jehovah or not*. Generally speaking there's also a dichotomy between the two, where deliberately targeting Jewish religious practices is seen as bad while deliberately targeting Muslim ones is seen as 'free speech' and sticking it to the terrists, usually by the same people. Personally I think they're either both free speech or both hate speech. But I'm not going to waste my time worrying about which because either way the idea behind contravening them is just to be offensive and provocative, and is not to make an actual point- it's their right to be a git and they have to assert and protect the right to be a git against the dark night of encroaching lack of gitness, basically. Well yeah. Oddly enough, most people do absolutely fine without asserting their right to be a git and only attention courtesans, psychopaths and the chronically dumb actually revel and feel proud of being one. *I could of course write ____ instead but, meh, I can make the point that I personally think it's silly without rubbing any orthodox type Jews' faces in it for no actual benefit.

Simple answer is that they are both morons. If they disappeared from the face of the planet it would be a net benefit to mankind, though preferably have them disappear by dint of them changing from being morons to not being morons. "Except you did encourage it" No. Being apathetic towards something neither condones nor condemns by definition- FACT- because you don't have only binary condone/ condemn options- unless you're fundamentally a binary moran, oddly enough rather like the morans involved in both sides of this story. You aren't a binary moran, are you Volo? You're a fully functional nuanced human bean, yes? So, buy some cards and deal with it, build a bridge and get over it, whatever, you are WRONG and should apologise then quite the internet forever or something. Yours with appropriate L0L/ r00fles, Z

Please Volo, desist with the falsities and commence with the verities. Lying makes you a nazi ISIS communist vegan sjw sympathiser, you should stop and repent before it is too late. Ain't my solution- I just don't care if it happens. Choices and Consequences. I wouldn't splatter their noses nor would I encourage others to; I just won't be crying into my corn flakes over the injustice of it all when people who provoke manage to, well, provoke. Because it's what they're trying to do.

I do tend to wonder at which point free speech and hate speech intersect. I could easily see dumping bacon on the front step of a synagogue being regarded as 'hate speech' while doing the same at a mosque would be free speech, given the current climate. End of the day in both cases the person might have the right to do it, but I'm not going to spare a single tear if they get their nose splattered across their face as a consequence; it would be played for and got. Which really is the point of provocation or being provocative, of course, it is to provoke. Any significant point made with a Muhammed cartoon can be made as well without one, it's just poking a bear with a pencil to prove how aggressive it is- a self fulfilling prophecy and if the bear pulls your arm off then meh, guess you've 'proved' your point about the bear, good job but don't expect me to cry myself to sleep at night to a #IkbenWilders hashtag.

Monte, dear fellow, I think I'd take your prognostications a bit more seriously if you hadn't been going on about Cromwell being a man of parliament who fought for it and its existing powers for pages- when he actually left England as a hereditary dictatorship. He was also a mass murdering genocidal religious lunatic and a festering pustulent carbuncular boil on the flabby bottom of the human race but that's beside the point, ultimately he fought for and protected parliament about as much as Adolf Hitler fought for and protected the Reichstag, ie not really and certainly not in practice. And that's leaving out the taking the S & A in NSDAP seriously (really, why does no literalist ever expound the impeccable Democratic virtues of the DPRK or DDR?) when the first thing, near literally, that Hitler did in power was liquidate the socialist arm of his own party as well as any left leaning opposition. Cromwell apologists have a weird idea that he somehow 'accidentally' ended up as Fuhrer Generallissimo Il Duce 'Lord Protector' and that he was really just preserving existing power structures, much like he 'accidentally' killed a fair proportion of Ireland's population and 'accidentally' left his power to his son in his will. It's special pleading, and a particularly Special brand of it when coupled to the 'nothing really changed and it was not an actual revolution' spiel. It was and it did, it just didn't stick. Fortunately, because if there's one English leader who sits comfortably with the Stalins, Hitlers, Francos and Mussolinis of the world it's Oliver Cromwell. (And to be factual about things, Churchill the great hero impeccably capitalist right wing, was responsible for a Bengal famine that killed 3 times as many people as Stalin's Gulag. And, of course, the EIC killed more Indians than Stalin's total, including a time they killed more than Stalin's total over a shorter period, all while- impeccably capitalistically- peddling drugs to China, as their workforce starved. So, can't vote for those rightards drug dealers who'll starve you do death in an opium farm, can't vote for those leftards who'll collectivise your arse- omg it's the Lib Dems Russell Brand is right!)

Gamersgate is mostly about ethics in selling you steam keys- it's Gamergate, no s, that is mostly about saturated leg joints/ harassing honest hard working journalists and doing them out of their just rewards. (Seriously, Gamersgate have received threats and the like from people- well, sjws- who make that mistake)

Doesn't mean it cannot be a trope in any case. Perhaps the classic trope in fanfiction is the Mary Sue, an idealised female self insertion (ooh-er) into an established milieu by an author. Idealised self insertions are not always done by women of course, so you have the Gary Stu male countertrope. So what is really needed here is obviously a 'Bloke in [appliance/ enclosed space]' countertrope- so all you have to do is find a case study for it. My sister is part of a long term study group here with a big questionnaire/ interview every seven years and that study* found the rates to be almost identical; though one from a second city did find that women were considerably more likely to hit their partner or children than a man was. Having said that, the rates found were significantly different (70% for the first vs ~30% for women and just over 20% for men in the second one) so there's clearly a big variation in classification- one included verbal 'violence' and the other didn't, IIRC. *Pretty sure the relevant paper is this one though I'm not buying the article to confirm, it's certainly based on the right study group at least and is consistent with what I remember of it.

Bomb threat at the GG meet up apparently, with the po-pos in attendance. Which falls perfectly between lol and wtf. I'd say that it is a 'legitimate' trope, even if it is often misused as a term. There are plenty of things that don't fit the trope, but there sure are whole lot that do as well, at least so far as treating the woman as a disposable item whose purpose is solely to motivate someone else. When it comes right down to it a trope is just a classification system for the blocks out of which stories are built, whether you see it as just building a revenge motive or as a pseudo misogynist cliché depends entirely on perspective.