Zoraptor

I don't know, what do we say about correlation and causation? It's not a 'lack of pirates causes global warming' type situation, having an authoritarian government with the ability to get reforms and the like done is a primary factor in the effectiveness of that government, and economy success is the pre-eminent indicator of quality of life. In neither case are they exclusively so, but there will never be any absolute correlation 1:1 causation because there can't be.

Even in that it's certainly not a slam dunk though. Autocratic China has lifted more people in absolute terms, and more people in relative terms, out of poverty in the past thirty years than anyone else has done in history, and certainly a lot more than its closest 'democratic' analogue India has done over the same period. While that is primarily an economic measure it is certainly the most important part of 'quality of life', you're unlikely to be immensely pleased about... your ability to post whatever you want on the internet or be mean to politicians or vote out the president without repercussions if you aren't first well fed and reasonably safe economically*. There are counter points of course, especially around environmental factors and the generally 'exploitative' nature of China at present- but then India really ain't better in those regards either, even if somewhere like the EU is. *Indeed, while it would be expected that poor people would vote more in democracies as a means to help themselves indirectly the reverse is true and they generally vote less than the average, often significantly so.

Ah, but have you worked out that Bruce and Oby are both the same person's alts yet? We're through the looking glass here, people! Or are we? Oby is far lower effort for more reward. LoF was higher effort and was largely ignored by the end. Alternatively, it was like seeing a Jehovah's Witness or 7th Day Adventist slowly get more and more depressed about all the unbelievers around him, until finally he stopped trying, gave up, and went mad. So we should all feel ashamed.

Seeing clerics with bows and a sword still makes me twitch slightly even after more than a decade.

Not disposable!? WTF is the point then? Just to gawk at it? Well yeah, pretty much. I mean, they generally aren't hard up and can usually afford to send the kids to an Eton equivalent plus replace the Range Rover every once in a while while having staff on retainer, but quite a few aristocrats do end up with big problems when their stately manor needs its lead replacing on the roof or whatever. Asset rich, cash poor basically, plus there is usually an estate tax on death plus often limitations on what can be done with your property due to cultural heritage etc which the merely rich don't have to deal with. They're generally the people who have been running the country for most previous centuries whereas the straight wealthy are those who run it now; as Meshugger says, they've got connections based on their bloodlines rather than just being wealthy. British Royal Family would be the best example, they're not particularly important inherently apart from breeding and are well off financially- but not as much so practically as other rich people nor as much as you'd expect if you simply ran through their list of property and the like with no context. The Queen may still be listed as one of the richest people in the world in some lists but she'd have trouble raising anywhere near as much money as even a fairly run of the mill multi millionaire, practically, because she can't actually sell Buckingham Palace/ Balmoral/ Windsor Castle or do much apart from charge 20 quid to visitors.

Class and wealth are separate concepts in some countries. While aristocrats/ higher class people tend to be wealthy their wealth is usually old money and often not disposable, merely being wealthy doesn't imply the Patrician 'worth' that being able to trace your heritage to Claude Coup-de-Pied, first duke of Chipping Norton b 1044 d 1099 with his own entry in wikipedia and a seat in the House of Lords implies. It's just an infographic, not a masters dissertation. They aren't really supposed to be nuanced, nor to be taken as purely accurate. Besides, privilege theory is turgid and wants me make to stick a fork through my head when I'm not Richard_Castle.gifing about the statistical analyses. That's a mortal insult to Polandball strips. Some of which actually are funny. (and any mention of political satire comics forces me to link to David Low semi compulsively)

It's not worrisome at all, or at least no more so than any nuclear weapon is worrisome. Tactical nukes are designed to negate/ promote tactical advantages. NATO has that tactical advantage as they have more troops and more equipment, and having flipped Ukraine they're now not far from most of the major Russian population centres. Tactical nukes make it clear that that is only a qualified advantage, as they'll be reduced to radioactive gunge if used. It's an intermediate deterrent, midway between 'my conventional army and airforce, missiles etc will asterisk you up!' and 'I will reduce your country to a plane of glass with my multi megaton multi warhead nukes!'. They're all deterrents, it's just the scale that changes. If that's particularly worrisome you'll have grey hair by thirty. As for delusional... well, Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, McCain etc. Not exactly rational clear thinking actors, lots of handwaving "we'll do this and that, bish bash bosh, awsumness results!" with less than awesome results. Asterisk Cheney wanted to bomb Russian troops when Georgia attacked them, and he was only the second most powerful man (yeah yeah) in the US. Bit more difficult to advocate that sort of interference and escalation when it's explicitly known that whichever base the aircraft launched from will be radioactive goo two hours later, so there is no escalation and no "we didn't think they'd really do it/ we didn't think it would get out of hand" moment later. And finally and to reiterate, it was NATO doctrine during the Cold War to use tactical nukes on WP concentrations if it became necessary, because at that time WP conventional forces outnumbered NATO ones. It's just that now the situation is reversed. Whichever side is conventionally weaker will use tactical nukes in a serious confrontation, it's inevitable and in the end it's what you have nukes for. A deterrent no one thinks you'll use is not a deterrent.

Thing is, it wouldn't make any practical difference if it were christians, hindu, buddhists, atheists- or other muslims, by far their largest target- being killed to those doing most of the killing and quite often to those writing the headlines. The fundamental problem is that a very large proportion of the Salafi/ Wahhabi sect, founder included, doesn't really believe that basically anyone else is legitimately muslim and that pretty much anyone who doesn't follow their branch is 'takfiri' (~apostate), and is thus a valid target for just about anything; as well as believing in an explicitly dark age interpretation of islam. Further, many believe that they can simply label anyone they want as takfiri, essentially divinely justified mass murder of anyone and everyone on the fly. In contrast, under most orthodox muslim teachings christians are actually protected as people of the book, and of course other muslims are as well. Ironically, many moderate muslims consider salafi themselves to not actually be muslims due to those differences, in much the same way that if Torquemada was still running around burning heretics there'd be a lot of christians quite genuinely disowning him as a non christian nutbar. Ultimately of course the problem is with Saudi sponsoring salafism and spreading it widely to bolster their influence. Alternatively it's all Iran's fault and if all shia just converted or committed suicide there wouldn't be any problem with salafi extremism; of course logically since everyone who doesn't believe strongly, rightly or at all is their target everyone else would have to commit suicide or convert for it to work; and the salafis would then inevitably start fighting among each other per Al Nusra and ISIS, but it is an alternative suggestion in some quarters that like to blame Iran for everything. On coverage though, when ISIS were murdering thousands of shia nine months ago in Iraq it made some minor headlines as a sidenote, but far far less so than when they murdered their very few western hostages (at least one of whom should have been protected by having converted) as well as that sunni muslim Jordanian pilot. That's just typical 'local man drowns in river' banner headline vs '250k die in Bangladesh hurricane' p24 quarter column bias towards local interest though, not any politically correct bias.

Yeah it seems a lot of them are being offended on Firedorn's behalf at the moment. I'd say that there is plenty of scope to be offended on his behalf though. Not because he changed the limerick, which is pretty minor so far as such things go even if he were pressured into it by Obsidian; but because a bunch of twitter activists labelled him as transphobic and... something genuinely weird and highly illogical about justifying trans panic murders, when it's the heterosexual guy who dies. The latter is simply bizarre but also very deeply unpleasant since it's such a huge non sequitor that it is indistinguishable from an outright lie, and the first is dependent on a very specific interpretation of the joke. Unlike some of those on KiA I'd certainly take that- having a bunch of twitter warriors basically slander him- as being the reason for the strongly negative reaction though, not any minor pressure he may have felt from Obsidian. Still, it actually could have been worse. Imagine if he'd used girl and boy instead of woman and man and the sorts of accusations that could then have been levelled by the offendatrons.

Most likely 'escaped vetting' or whatever just means that whoever read through it didn't see any negative interpretation. 'Escaped vetting' or similar is probably a bit of a disingenuous description in that case since it implies that the negative interpretation should have been caught when, really, you have to be looking to be offended by it to be offended. Still, it is certainly politic to say that since it implies it won't happen again, and I'd be certain they wish they had caught it earlier as this whole situation is lose/ lose for Obsidz whatever happens. I don't think it's as bad as it seems. That sort of thing is always self reinforcing, because those that don't care much about it may only post once or twice- they don't care much, after all- but those that are outraged will post more often and are also encouraged to post more often by seeing others who agree with them doing so, or to dispute with those that don't care much. While it's a bit subjective and based on what I've seen only (and I ain't systematically reading through 40 odd pages, for my sanity) most of those who are expressing outrage/ boycott/ money back demands here don't even have kickstarter or PoE badges. And at least the replacement poem has a decent amount of properly directed snark, too. And as for anyone expressing the desire to boycott Obsidian over it, well, you can always cheer up and have a look at the boycott CoD steam group jpgs to see how well the average gamer sticks to boycotts. (Hope c2b was just brofist harvesting on the 'codex, where else would I get my Obsidian news?)

Yeah but that's like going back through all Trevor Noah's back material looking for things to be offended ab... hmm no, not for Kuchera.

#StopKony2013! Ultimately the only answer to muslim extremism is to tackle Saudi Arabia, which is where the vast majority of extremism has its spiritual, educational and financial home. Won't happen of course, because drawing the link between wahhab/ salafi extremism and Saudi is politically inexpedient. And of course all the blunt instruments like bombing KSA will end in disaster as well, but it really is a choice between slowly unfolding disaster as Saudi funds more and more radical madrassahs and extremist 'resistance' groups, 'coincidentally' leading to more and more radical muslim terrorists and extremists while running around putting out dozens and increasing regional extremist brush fires; or tackling it head on at the source. A choice between two nice options, as always.

Found SoC and CoP and registered them in thirty seconds. I fear I may have ritually burned the box for Clear Sky, though they come close to giving that away every time it's on sale anyway.

"We have decided to replace 'experience points' with Sword Coast points that can be earned by performing tasks or may also be purchased directly by those with less time and who just want to experience our wonderful story and sensational character upgrade system. We feel that this fits well with D&D's philosophy and with best multiplayer practices"

From New Zealand, also British citizen- and I can/ do/ (have) write equally as baldly about the economic stupidity here; hooray for economic growth based on property speculation and overleveraged personal debt plus cow juice, What Can Possibly Go Wrong? Plus most of out supposed growth is based on rebuilding a city largely flattened by an earthquake, a rather unusual event not linked at all to the competency of those running our economy... but I doubt most people would find that interesting or relevant most of the time, despite it being most relevant for me. As I said though, everybody fudged them, not just Greece or Spain or whoever. France, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, everyone including the supposedly stronger and more responsible ones. Except Luxembourg, and fair due to them on that count but they aren't exactly the largest economy in Europe. Critically though, far from the Euro being dragged down by Greece or whoever being a disadvantage for Germany it has historically been an advantage, as it improves international competitiveness above what the old DMark would be at and Greeks etc didn't have German imports increasing in cost since they use the euro instead of a floating drachma; that is near pure advantage for Germany, at least up to the point where is becomes clear that the problems with the euro are fundamental ones and money lent is unlikely to be paid back. We're at that point now, and I don't see any way they'll genuinely recover without massive reforms which one way or the other will be unpopular and disruptive, because fundamentally, those weaker economies can never deal with their debt as the euro is structured. The idea of dealing with the crisis genuinely collectively is deeply unpopular in the stronger economies ('rewarding profligacy' etc) but the only real options are either that with proper enforceable fair rules for all to follow, or letting the weaker economies plain drop out. A barely tweaked status quo will not work. They're a special case, since they have the world's reserve currency. Anyone in their situation would leverage that advantage, and it's why they defend their status as such so vociferously.

It's a currency union without a fiscal union and the 'rules' for its entry and for entrants were and are routinely ignored by everyone (sole honourable exception to Luxembourg) and that has made it primarily responsible for the mess the PIIGSCetc have found themselves in. They no longer have the tools available to manage their debts because their currency is run out of Frankfurt so devaluation and the like were out (well, until it suited Germany) as options. And because their currency value was tethered to the far stronger German* economy it was overvalued relative to their own economy and their exports were artificially uncompetitive; in contrast Germany's economy was tethered to their weaker ones so the Euro was artificially lower and they were more competitive internationally. Net effect was weaker economies getting weaker as their competitiveness decreased (through no direct fault of their own) while Germany's got stronger, this further exaggerated the difference between the value of the Euro and where a 'real, sovereign currency's value would be both ways, further strengthening Germany and weakening the others. This was further exacerbated by Germany lending money to those weaker economies so they could continue to buy German products; and everyone ignoring the rules on fiscal responsibility. This meant that not only did weaker economies have overvalued currencies, they also had increasing debt burdens. Unsurprisingly, this was unsustainable and the house of cards fell down, and is still in the process of doing so as austerity ratchets up the economic disparity even further, all in the name of paying back the German banks that loaned irresponsibly and with no responsibility being taken by the technocrats who made 'rules' then never enforced them. The PIIGSCetc will never repay their debts, the best that can be done is a structured default without using the actual words, but it ain't going to stop them blaming the victim and exacting their pound of flesh prior to that inevitability. Fundamentally the eurozone is big B Broken. It's a mish mash compromise designed to appeal to politicians and Unionists, and offend as few people as possible; it is unbalanced, unfair and unworkable; a grotesque totem of pointless and ill thought out 'european integration' done solely for the sake/ appearance of said integration and either without any actual intention of being beneficial to all or being done with such horrendous incompetence that any good intentions were irrelevant. It's also close to completely unreformable. It has to be either a complete fiscal and economic union enforced with actual rules rather than follow them if you want, no worries if you don't- which won't happen; and even if it did would necessitate a sort of economic Marshall Plan that would be deeply unpopular in the wealthier states who completely lack the introspection to accept that they spent a decade sucking the lifeblood from the weaker economies with barely more morality than a crack dealer- or it has to go completely. There won't be a genuine recovery until either of those two things happen. *Not just Germany, effectively any stronger than average economy got the benefit)

How about an arranged marriage as an example... 16/18 daughter (over AoC, anyway, and not explicitly saying she's opposed to the marriage) brought in to cake shop by parents, going to be married to their 70 year old business partner. Traditional immigrant type dress, but no obvious religious affiliation implied. So there's no real legal impediment to the marriage, but a fairly huge potential moral objection, based on the vendor's morality and their perspective on the situation plus it has the potential for protest action whichever way the vendor goes.

Oby isn't delusional, he's just trollin'. But, the are actually pretty significant, mostly because the eurozone as it stands is fundamentally broken and there is no political will to fix it properly, only enough to paper over the cracks; and all the debt restructuring etc being done is just kicking the can further down the road.

Well, that's what the Romans said. It's basically propaganda, Rome pulled some extraordinarily shady stuff to justify its territorial acquisitiveness including things like claiming entire cities were not were they actually were and clients had a very... odd tendency to leave their kingdoms to Rome rather than their children. Most ancient historians are embarrassingly partisan*, much more so than even modern ones. Then again, oby's version doesn't really bear much resemblance either except perhaps as an off kilter reference to foederati. Most 'allied' Roman tribes/ kingdoms had ended up becoming genuine Roman land by C1 AD, and most of their neighbours didn't have recognised kings to depose or were too strong/ competent to do so (Parthians, Hermann/ Arminius) Or as someone else put it with deep sarcasm: Rome, the only city to end up with an empire by only ever fighting purely defensive wars against aggressors. Oh yeah, stratfor is pretty rubbish, but they certainly aren't in any sense 'the best western strategists', they're armchair generals with a reasonably prominent online following. *Which is why Thucydides is so good. About the only bias he displays is against Cleon, the guy who got him Ostracised. Yes, it's biannual Thucydides appreciation time.

That is why you have the distinction between 'tactical' nukes and 'strategic' nukes though. Tactical nukes are for tactical aims not strategic ones, same as there was a difference between tactical bombing in WW2 vs strategic bombing of cities and industry. Russia won't start a war with the intention of using nukes in it, they aren't going to attack NATO. But in a war with NATO in which they come under any genuine threat they will use tactical nukes to achieve tactical aims, because otherwise they'll lose. Does that make escalation likely? Yeah, but then so does the invasion, and you can rest assured (heh) that both sides have multiple redundant systems to deal with a strategic first strike by the other, the US won't hoodwink the Russians that way nor will the Russians v/v. Stating that nukes will be used explicitly has an explicit deterrent effect, otherwise, given NATO's history of aggression some McCainesque loon will decide that they won't really do it if we just bomb St Basil's or only assassinate Putin or something, everything will turn out fine; trust them, they know what they're doing. Nope, the result from that is exactly what trusting Sledge Hammer to know what he's doing would get you, a jolly red/ yellow mushroom cloud. Ultimately, if you only have nukes for deterrent value and state- or allow it to be accepted- that they won't really be used then they won't actually deter- because people think you won't use them. Tactical nukes are an escalation certainly and asking for more which is why you need to again have an explicit warning that they will be used, but they are less an escalation than turning the east/ west coasts of the US into glass instead, though that remains an option.

But the problem is, change the nouns around a bit and you have the exact same argument aGG uses against GG: Don't know about you, but I've seen that particular argument used literally (actually literally, not sjw literally) dozens if not hundreds of times to try and get proGG people to shut up because they're 'enabling harassment' or similar. Tempting as it is to use the same argument in reverse if you feel strongly about the subject- and while I am sure no malice is intended here and don't mean to imply any is- it is, at heart, the exact same type of argument as that. The problems with that sort of argument is the same whoever uses it; it doesn't really work to change minds, in fact it tends to make people hold their views more strongly/ think the person making that argument is being disingenuous/ strawmanning them and is just a cheap attempt to get them to shut up. By personal observation I'd put that sort of argument by aGG types against neutrals as probably the 3rd largest recruiter for GG, and probably largest for people who are mostly 'anti-antiGG'. Those sort of arguments certainly had a big influence on attitudes of high profile people like TB and Mark Kern, for example.

Seemed very much like that Alan did feel that way, which is why I wanted to quote his response. He probably won't have time to respond, but I think its a valid question regardless. Well, to me it seems like Alan is being an apologist for the bullies. Yeah, nah. That is pretty much identical to the argument aGG uses against GG in trying to get people to apologise for various anonymous twitter trolls and the like, as well as things like 'sea lioning'. It's not very fair there and it isn't really fair here either. You're only responsible for your own views, not for anyone else's nor for them taking their views to extremes, whether you're pro or anti GG. If you think Anita is a charlatan you aren't responsible if someone thinks that plus decides to threaten her. I don't agree with Allan overall and I don't think the limerick should be removed (though I agree that from Obsidz perspective not having it in in the first place would have avoided these problems) because it is a joke and an equal opportunity joke as well, but people can honestly hold the opposite view without automatically being tarred by association with the tactics of the rent-a-mob moral outrage brigade. Let's be honest here, there's very little chance of Allan trawling through the game looking for things to be offended by, and there's no reason to disbelieve that he is actually playing the game either- though it is likely that neither of those two things are true of some of the other very vocal complainants, especially anyone brought in by the 'retweet my outrage' requests. There is an entitlement to having a genuine opinion. Basically, don't be George Walker Bush- all a 'with us or with the terrorists' attitude does is create a whole lot of unnecessary terrorists.

That series has Cliff 'Uncle Bully' Curtis in it, so I have to support it. Funny really, he's done a huge amount of stuff both here and overseas including some reasonably big movies and TV series but here he's still most famous for being having the snot spectacularly beaten out of him by Jango Fett in Once Were Warriors and not having some eggs cooked for him. Pretty good TWD finale for a pretty good season overall, probably best since S1 at least.

It probably would have been sensible to exclude the PoE poem beforehand, this sort of controversy does not have a happy resolution for Obsidian since either the censorship or anti censorship will get upset whatever the response now. Still, the poem itself is pretty harmless overall. While I can see how it could be seen as transphobic arguably its inference that heterosexual men are so insecure in their sexuality that inadvertent exposure to dong would make them kill themselves is at least as potentially offensive, so it's balanced. (Good thing Croc Dundee came out decades ago, I can only imagine the reaction to its 'transphobia' now)

To most practical purposes the formal Yemeni government doesn't exist any more. But it is/was US/ Saudi friendly which allows them to call this an intervention at the request of the legitimate authorities. Much of the cabinet is captured in Sana'a, and the formal 'President' ('President' as he resigned but then unresigned later) Hadi ran off to Saudi Arabia, it's at his 'request' that the intervention has happened. Really though, the US has very little militarily to do with this. Most drones attacks were in the east of the country anyway which is away from the main military action.