Zoraptor

Watched the trailer, was suitably impressed. Only thing I could really complain about is the 'narrator', so as long as she isn't the game's Bitchin' Betty it should be sweet.

Blackguards, probably. It's probably best for an rpg fan, and would give best value for an 80% off voucher. (Also the later Heretic Kingdom game has a part 2 'coming' (supposedly still), but be aware that its publisher has gone belly up which may complicate things if you're looking at it)

That's kind of the point though, as it runs both ways. A self identified Libertarian is usually almost indistinguishable from a self identified anarcho capitalist in actual policy. The libertarian is just avoiding using the 'negative' anarcho label. The same thing has happened to an extent on the left as well, 'Libertarian Socialists' and the like are practically the same as anarcho marxists/ syndicalists, they're just avoiding the anarcho label as well. Practically, they're much the same, though there are more significant divergences on the left side of the anarchist spectrum.

I think they're at- or near- the end of their initial deal with Disney which was for 20 odd games. They may well have to negotiate each release individually from now on. Was Afterlife the 1000th release on GOG or was it one of the others? I'd laugh if it was actually Twitcher3's season pass.

Baro' believes that anarchism is an inherently 'left' philosophy, that's all, instead of being inherently left/right agnostic. It isn't helped by most anarcho-capitalists relabelling themselves as 'Libertarians' and being decidedly non anarcho anything when it comes to protection and improvement of corporate, as opposed to governmental, privileges- but then again you do also get leftist anarchist groups that believe that various types of wrong think should be punishable by death or whatever. Neither is particularly true to the tenets of what I'd refer to as mothership anarchism because one results in everyone being slaves to the powerful, just powerful executives rather than powerful politicians (also being run by powerful executives, so plus ça change.., là), while the other doesn't really believe in the freedom to think, just the freedom to agree. A political philosophy with admirable philosophic goals, but crap practical implementation of those goals. Not exactly a surprise.

Yes. This thread has been uncommonly entertaining. I never would have thought I'd end up with an odd but rather compelling feeling that I should be apologising to oby for accusing him of being someone's alt, but... oby, I unreservedly apologise for impugning your honour. You're a scholar, a gentleman, perspicacious, honest, a font of wisdom and integrity, an asset to the forum and a valued contributor*, I unreservedly withdraw the accusation and disavow any further thoughts of it, you did not deserve that vilest of calumnies and unfairest of comparisons. Please forgive me.

I'd be extremely surprised if Rex was an actual neo nazi at any stage, as opposed to an attention seeker wanting attention on the 'codex. That would also explain his switch to SJW, that too is a good way of getting attention.

The really interesting documents from the french military who were in Rwanda got shredded by their military attaché prior to leaving, iirc, so it will be interesting to see if they have duplicates of those and whether they're released, or not. They have released documents before, but they just weren't the interesting documents. You picked the example, Bruceykins. Not my fault you picked one where the french were aiding a genocidal regime, since there are so many successful interventions to pick from (there are so many successful ones, aren't there?) you could always concede you stuffed up and pick another example. Just like Gromnir you should feel free to Post Proof of where I said that Or Retract. You even used quotes, so it should be easy to find where I said it, too. Or perhaps it's just another case of someone saying something you (and they, oh so very very desperately) want to be true and just repeating that, again and again: tilting at windmills made of strawmen.

As it is yours to be butthurt when reality doesn't conform to your particular view of the world, and accuse reality of 'anti west bias' or whatever the appropriate bail out to avoid admitting you were wrong is. Of course, you'll come back x months later with exactly the same 'arguments'... In any case, I would point out that the first person guilty of exploiting the Rwandan genocide was actually a certain BruceVC, who you may be passingly familiar with. I just pointed out that there already was western support in Rwanda, just that it was support for the side who ultimately perpetrated the genocide, not against them and that your point was therefore rubbish.

GOG doesn't usually release actual figures (exc Twitcher 2 and some companies have for specific titles, eg Legends of Grimrock), and since it's drm free with private profiles there is no way to get them via 3rd parties like steamspy- but they do order titles by historic sales rank, so you can tell how well they are doing relative to one another. At present PoE (Hero Ed) is just behind Div:OS and ahead of Wasteland 2 which suggest pretty good sales, at least relative to the other two high profile RPG kickstarters despite their head start in sales. All three are on page 2 of the list though, so well behind the Planescape Torments and the like.

Feeble, but true Wals? Then it isn't really feeble is it? More like it's inconvenient or unpleasant but true. Plus if I'm exploiting the Rwandan genocide to make a cheap point about the french I can equally argue you're exploiting the Rwandan genocide to try and shut down criticism of the french involvement in it. If we want to go down that route. If that's true, the individual behind the accounts is a very mentally disturbed person. Also likely a paid troll. The mods likely can confirm or deny with an IP comparison check. It's doubtful the individual is smart enough to use a proxy. Good website metrics software also could confirm/deny, though I wouldn't necessarily expect mods to have access to that info, if Obsidian is even keeping track. I'm certainly not entirely serious, there's a potential explanation for people disappearing over Easter (hmm, though oby is meant to be Russian! His Easter should be later! Whoaah.gif) that is wholly unsuspicious, though I am amused that they both returned so close to each other within hours of me writing the previous post. Besides, it's not really my business even if it were true, backseat moderators suck. (And even if it were true I can't say that I'd care either, I'd probably even be mildly impressed that s/he could carry it off for so long. In any case, there's no chance they're being paid, they'd be doing it for the lolz. Plus oby has already been busted once iirc, when he was claiming to be a 17yr old girl. But mainly the thought of them being the same person amuses me immensely since it means that whoever it is would have been antagonising much of the forum with one or the other alt for years, successfully and without detection. I rather like the idea of my and our collective noses being tweaked that way, it's an excellent ego reducer even if it isn't true)

New York Post? El Oh El. That paper is utter unmitigated Murdoch garbage- and Murdoch is as bad as any SJW just coming from the complete opposite direction and with a whole lot more immediate power. He's also himself the main evidence that any sort of "only the 'left' uses 'narrative' based arguments" implication is a load of old bollocks. His media outlets are the past master of narrative based fact light 'news'- just look at Fox News and The Scum as examples of his levels of 'journalistic integrity', and the NYPost is basically the US version of the non Murdoch newspaper that shall not be named (albeit both are slightly better than The Scum, which I wouldn't use to wipe my bum if caught short since it's supplied covered with asterisks already). If it really is about journalistic integrity/ ethics or anything at all to do with that citing near anything from a Murdoch source should be out, certainly from his tabloid arms. Even with the respectable outlets he's taken them into his loving embrace like the quality and objectivity sucking vampire he resembles so closely.

Guys, guys. Bruce = Oby, for sure. Search your heart: you know it's true! They even came back to the forums yesterday within an hour of each other! Non intervention would have been great, wouldn't it? Imagine if the dear old Hutus hadn't have had french help and aid in escaping post genocide.... ah yes, such a nice daydream, at least some of those million murdered people would likely still be alive if the french hadn't 'intervened'. Funny isn't it, how people forget about who was propping up, arming and supporting the government and its militias at the time- and established 'safe zones', post genocide, to allow those militia to escape when it became clear they'd lose- in their rush to use the 'never again' (unless it's inconvenient, they're our enemies, their friends are too powerful, we're bored, there's no advantage in it, there's no money in it, the french are helping the perpetrators, the US is helping the perpetrators, the brits are starving them and helping the perpetrators etc) justification for everything, ain't it. Praise god though, lessons were learned! the french intervened in the CAR! and... well, they 'solved' muslim militias killing christians by getting christian militia killing muslims instead. Y'know, I'm not sure they actually did learn, did they? Except maybe that most people will ignore their complicity if it's convenient, of course. ..and more generally NATO turned Libya into a asteriskhole, stuffed up Iraq, broke up a sovereign state arbitrarily (funny how when Russia does it it's terrible though) stabbing the idea of international law (stupid idea as it is, but anyway) straight through the eye socket while creating an organ stealing klepto/ narco/ criminocratic statelet wholly dependent on NATO etc etc.

Neither can I, I might have forgotten my password but you're supposed to use your GOG account now and I can remember its password. I was getting the Polish version of the website as well for some reason. Still, always fun to speculate how you pronounce words with no vowels and half a dozen different bits dangling off various letters.

Much as everyone uses 'troll armies' (or alternatively, motivated truth tellers countering the opposition's troll army's propaganda and lies with enlightenment and truthiness) everyone uses the external threat card, not just the west. That's why the whole thing is oddly amusing. West argues Russia is the external threat, Russia argues the west is the external threat, west argues they aren't a threat but are just prepared to counter any of Russia's aggression, Russia argues they aren't a threat and are just prepared to counter any of the west's aggression. West says anyone pro Russian is a paid shill but everyone anti Russian is just expressing their honest opinion and is definitely not paid; Russia, vice versa. Both sides are simultaneously right and wrong because they are both threats to and competitors with each other, both are trolling each other with paid commentators and it is completely insoluble because both are simultaneously right about the other but unable to admit that the other is right about them. Perfect, circular argumentativeness.

This isn't a situation where you can have experimental proof though*, it's not a Paradox game where you change some sliders and rerun the simulation a few times to see whether authoritarian China or democratic China performs better. You're limited to history, what has happened, and drawing conclusions from that. There's no intrinsic reason for China to perform better than India, they both started from more or less the same level at the 1950s, India had had the convulsions surrounding independence/ Pakistan; China was finishing a civil war and recuperating from WW2. You also have certain other support analogues like Singapore, (and after, Vietnam etc), far smaller scale than China but clearly what the theories behind their economic miracle was largely based on. I certainly don't have any philosophical desire for it to be true though, philosophically I'd very much like everyone to have 'freedom' and quality of life and economic development; and have a pretty strong and fundamental dislike of China's government system. But there's a difference between theory and practice, practically, one can neither spring all three simultaneously from the ether nor simply dismiss China's achievements because I don't like their leadership system- facts are facts, they're strongly authoritarian yet have presided over the biggest economic miracle the world has yet seen. Whether their system is sustainable long term, whether they could have achieved the same thing without the authoritarianism- they're moot questions, we can only go by what has happened and what has happened in similar situations as comparatives, plus speculate on the relative dis/advantages of the systems relative to each other. *and as numbersman says, that works both ways. If you can't prove that authoritarianism is 'better' that way you also cannot prove that 'democracy' is better either, as they both rely on the same single run of the data, ie reality.

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.