Zoraptor

"Twitcher sucks. Plain and simple." No. (They've also sold 7 million+ copies now)

You know where you don't see them? Mariupol and Odessa. You know where the massacres have taken place? Mariupol and Odessa. You know where the massacres haven't taken place- yet at least? Where there actually are effective, if still relatively lightly armed militia with AKs and balaklavas as in Slovyansk/ Donetsk/ Lugansk protecting people from crowd control via BMP. You have to congratulate the Ukrainians on telling the people that disagree with them that they're going to get shot up and burned alive unless they become a heavily armed mob with enough armament to deter incursions. That's sure to de-escalate things, as is the unconditional support for using BMPs as crowd control from the same westerners who threw a monumental wobbly- big enough for a Richter Moment Magnitude reading- when Yanukovich used asterisking water cannon and tear gas. The BBC- the BBC- had footage of a completely unarmed man getting gunned down by the Ukrainian military in the street, ITV had footage of another. Neither was balaklava wearing or armed. The Ukrainian narrative of the issue is utterly muddled, they still cannot decide what exactly they were doing at the police station, whether they were liberating it or defending it from being liberated. As they insist that they lost only one man and there were at least three dead police shown one can only assume that they were firing on the police themselves, and all the eye witnesses who said the police refused to fire on the crowd and were then shot up by the army for not doing have the correct interpretation. It really is rather depressing to see those cretins in Kiev doing every stupid thing I said they would. I would far rather be wrong about them than right. Again, there have been zero helicopters downed in Mariupol or Odessa. Not a one. And there's been a massacre in each. The only place they've been shot down is where there's an effective deterrence against aggression, ie not where the massacres are taking place. Plus, of course, the only independently verified helicopter shoot down was via small arms, despite the insistence of some that they had to be shot down with rockets. Indeed, the rump government has already changed their story on the first one to be 'shot down' (which was actually almost certainly a spontaneous fuel fire due to bad maintenance) from being hit by a rocket to being hit by a sniper's bullet. Now, we can wait to see what the junta will do to disrupt the referendum. Tanks? Artillery? Chopers? Bombers? Sky's the limit. Most effective tactic would probably be to just laugh at the sidelines, but that's far too smart for the clowns in Kiev.

Please everyone, stop deflecting from the important issue of Mr Ostrovsky being deprived of his iphone for three days. That's far more important than using tanks (OK, BMPs) on civilians- and apparently police who won't "do their duty" and shoot civilians- and triumphantly announcing you've killed twenty of them. Or herding people into buildings and setting them alight, for that matter. It's kind of hilarious though, the rump government can't even get it straight whether the police station was occupied by pro freedom activists or not, and when even the state media outlet of the 51st state is showing video of clearly unarmed people being shot dead in the street by the military you know there's some serious asterisks going down. I'm sure Bashar al-Banderayuk will still be welcomed with open arms though in all the capitals of Europe though. Crowd control by machine gun is only bad if you're an enemy of the west, not a friend. Oh, and Putin going to Crimea to celebrate liberation from German hegemony* is far worse than machine gunning or flambeeing your own population as well, since that gets condemnation from the west while the latter is a 'measured' and 'restrained' response. *and of course to celebrate beating the germans in 1945 as well :smug:

It isn't irrelevant, because citing such examples as Mr Vice is meant to establish moral clarity on the issue- look how these guys treat the free press with disdain! But if others, supposedly more free, are doing much the same then there is no moral clarity, and people should be as outraged or more so than if a bunch of random armed blokes detain someone for three days. You can make anything look bad (or good, for that matter) by tailoring the terms of reference to exclude stuff you don't like and which contradicts your views, indeed it is a particular favourite technique of politicians looking to get the result they want from 'independent' panels. Seeking to redefine everything to a particularly narrow interpretation where (in some cases) even things happening inside Ukraine within the past few months or years are labelled 'irrelevant' or 'deflection' is utterly feeble and no substitute for a proper response. To illustrate why this is utterly feeble argumentation I will declare that everything that is not about Right Sector burning 40 people alive in Odessa as 'deflection' from the True Issue. After all, 40 people dying is far more important than some poor baby being locked up without his iphone for a few days. Ah, I can feel the warm glow of victory on the internet washing over me...

It is most certainly interesting that the 'Codex, den of villainy and casual bigotry that it is has active women, gay and trans members.

I dunno, that's probably a fundamental problem with jedi as a concept- they aren't meant to show or have (most) emotions so are, fundamentally, pretty wooden and boring. And that really is George's problem as well, since he had so much control over the setting that things like saying casual sex was ok for jedi (so long as they didn't love the person, of course. Which is one weird Conservative stereotype of Lieberals that, apparently, exists for real) automatically became canon. He was far more of a broad concept guy and should have left the fine detail to others. I'd agree with whoever it was that said that Palpatine was best acted, but then he had the big advantage of being a pantomine villain ("Where's Sidious" "He's behind you!") and mugging/ winking at the camera in every scene, something none of the others could do.

One of the big problems is that anaesthetics are designed to be used on someone who is lying down, not sitting. When sitting people tend to slump forward, which compresses their lungs (easy to show, sit then lean forward and you'll be able to breathe nowhere near as deeply as if sitting up, standing or lying down) and that makes them far more prone to suffocation from overdoses or even adverse reactions to standard doses. So, you have to pump in the gas, make sure people are unconscious/ kill anyone in non effected areas, disarm external booby traps, make sure bombers won't wake up inconveniently then carry unresponsive people out- and that all takes a lot of time. The problem was not so much with the response, but, as with Beslan, with the chechens getting into the theatre in the first place. As soon as that happened people were inevitably going to die and there was nothing anyone could have done about it. Show me on the dolly where Putin touched you... 850 hostages taken, 133 died. Even the worst alternative is 'only' 200 deaths, and that is nowhere near 'all'.

This is games though, and so far as I am aware there is no Twilight video game. And if there is a Twilight game, please do not make me aware of it as I am more than happy to live in ignorance in this one case. We should make a list of games with romance in them for Bruce to sample. I'll start with FEAR2. (Or Fahrenheit, for cringe inducing QTE 'action')

That still isn't proof or even evidence really, since what he's actually quoting is a post election survey and not the election results. The figures don't even match the ones he used earlier. I'm holding out for a certain virile Russian politician. Surely with my posts on an obscure video games board it's only a matter of time until he notices me?

No PC version announced, therefore minimal PC coverage is probably why nobody has heard of it. Plus it's still a fair way off. I'm not actually sure now if that rumoured amount is more or less than some of the more outlandish claims about how much TOR or ESO cost.

There is no 'solution for dealing with Boko Haram'. Magic bullet solutions to complex problems are just that, magic. They don't exist. Sure, if I could wave my hands and remove Nigeria's corruption it would go some way to ameliorating things, if I could wave my hands and replace all their weapons with guava and mangoes that would help and if I could teleport any hostages home I would. But I can't do any of that, you can't either, and neither can the US/ France/ Britain or anyone else.

Shrug. I've got no particular fandom for Russian competence or incompetence, though I think Putin has played a weak hand well overall- but the west could only get their guys into power by 'cheating', and being antidemocratic, Putin's man was duly and fairly elected four years ago and pro Russians won the rada elections as well. Can't say the same of Turchenov and Yatsenyuk, who owe their positions entirely to, well, "uprising" and "revolution" per Tyanybok, rather than democratic process. You can't judge competence based on people breaking rules, else the most competent football team in the world would be the one that brought AKs to the game and shot the opposition team and referees during their 2134-0 victory and the most competent politician in the world is King Jong Un, with his 100% approval in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. But I'll concede the point, yes, the west is far more competent than Russia at getting their way undemocratically, and Putin/ Russia was naive thinking they'd honour results their own monitoring organ described as fair, rather than plot to overturn them. Their charming naivete and willingness to believe the best in the west despite the repeated betrayals is, most certainly, one of Russia's most endearing attributes.

I suspect Outcast will go back to kickstarter down the line, with a rather better pitch from the get go. There's a lot more they could or should have done- get an agreement with GOG to offer the original at a discount of free for a while, for example, and some of their stretch goals were a bit off from what most would expect from KS (eg fund our console version!) as they were more of direct benefit to them than to backers. (I don't actually have a problem with the console stretch goal personally since Outcast would be perfectly portable to a controller without losing PC functionality, but stretch goals should really be about encouraging backers to give more, not about doing things the dev wants to do. Plus, there was some ill feeling about the cancelled Outcast 2 being console only)

The guy is basically a blogger, much as Erik Kain is on the gaming side (though Kain is far, far better). He doesn't have any inherent authority gained from being associated with Forbes and it similar to citing Alex Jones or similar non ironically. His source is a garbled Ukrainian news report, which misrepresents a post poll survey as being the poll itself. Not exactly a new thing, there's a great sideline in the media about quoting opinion polls to show support for Ukrainian unity which all conveniently ignore that supporting separation is actually criminal. You have to be brave or stupid to tell some random voice over the phone- who knows your name, address and phone number- that you're committing thought crime. Which is why surveys on any illegal activity have to be done very carefully and not as a part of some random opinion poll. And in shocking news, Eurovision will count votes from Crimea as being from Ukraine. The irony? You can't vote for your own country, but Crimeans will be able to vote for Russia.

And in that case the Tigers lost largely because they weren't an insurgent force any more. When they were an insurgent army they were extremely successful, perhaps too successful since that success led to them formalising all their structures and basically setting up a mini Tamil statelet complete with all the trimmings and a regular army during the truce- an army which then got steamrollered when the conflict resumed because, as a regular army, it was no match for the Lankan one.

Ah, but your dialogue is also different, and that is where most of the hints and in jokes come in.

Meh, the problem with the balkans stuff is that it's never even handed in its coverage. Pretty much everyone there was highly unpleasant at various times and places and there were no good guys, that's always true in any civil war- "what's so civil about war anyway?" to quote the great philosopher Axl Rose. But media loves a nice, simple story with identifiable good guys and bad guys and will, as always, hammer the square situation into the round hole when establishing that narrative. The usual response to something like the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Krajina varies from "they voluntarily moved out" (!!!) to "well, they did it first" (which rather ignores the conduct of Croatia during WW2- which is actually quite a nice parallel to Ukraine, to bring things back somewhat to topic, since you have at least some in Croatia lionising the Ustasi much as you have some in Ukraine who think Bandera and the UPA were wonderful) to simply pretending it didn't happen, when the only proper response is to deplore such things whoever is the perpetrator and not let geopolitical stuff trump ethics. And that, ladies and gentlemen, puts me well over my RDI of naivity for the day, and it's still before lunchtime. Oh, and the chopper the Ukrainians lost in Slovyansk is confrimed to have been shot down by small arms fire- so much for them having to have sophisticated missiles supplied by Russia to shoot down helis as claimed last week. I'd be keeping count of how often the pro Kiev propaganda has been wrong, but I ran out of fingers and toes some time ago. Pretty sure. You don't see western politicians talking about revolution and uprising in that manner and he was stating quite plainly that it was planned, we have no reason to doubt him. Now, you can say that an interview with the third most important opposition leader doesn't constitute evidence and you need to hear the same from Yatsenyuk and Klitschko, or that he really meant have a bake sale and do some door knocking instead of "revolution" and "uprising", but I'd be far more confident that that interpretation is your bias than mine is mine, because instead of bake sales and door knocking we got, well, the uprising and revolution which my interpretation supports. Your interpretation has its flush busted by the 2 of reality, mine is the ace of trumps (suit, reality), since I'm into mixing metaphors. If we hadn't got revolution and uprising it'd be open to interpretation, certainly, but less than a year after that interview that is precisely what we did get. Planned for, played for, and got. Quod Erat decidedly non passively Demonstrandum.

Hey guys, I hear that the cab driver is proven undeniably to be Cain! (Don't play either Malkavian or Nosferatu on the first play through, unless you're sure you'll play once in which case Malkavian is OK. Apart from arguing with TV anchors and Stop signs the Malkav quite obviously knows what is going on, and is more entertaining if you know what is going on as well)

Those sheep need a good crutching, not something the average consumer would put up with. Unless rebranded as a ewe brazilian, perhaps. Plus one of the lambs looks like it has fly strike. Yes, I am awaiting Sheep Shearing Simulator 2014, now that you ask.

What I think is utterly irrelevant and completely meaningless (though I'll give it below since you seem so interested)- it's pretty obvious to anyone what Tyanybok meant and he's far more important than I am, because whatever I say will be speculation whereas what he says speaks directly as an actual leader. It's like disputing something about black holes, having an interview with Hawking given as a reply then insisting you want to know what I think about black holes, not Hawking, and it's only one interview so Hawking was misquoted or the interviewer had an agenda. You can insist that when Hawking says singularity he means something different and when Tyanybok says uprising or revolution he means something different- even despite actually getting an uprising and revolution- but in neither case does the evidence support you. Now since you're so interested I have basically no doubt that they decided they were going to try and flip Yanukovich if they got the opportunity, from the start, it's a tactic they've used previously and successfully and Tyanybok outright states that they've been looking for an issue to trigger something, and I have no doubt that they were actively encouraged to do so by the EU and US as that is a tactic they've used successfully in their various colour revolutions, hence the EU's intransigence about agreements when the Russians were willing to compromise. And power blocs are always looking for opportunities to flip countries, anyone who thinks theirs is lily white in that regard is deceiving themselves. But I doubt they expected or planned for what they've now got. They give the distinct impression of being a bunch of headless chickens stuck in the headlights to mix a metaphor- now- that they distinctly did not when the revolution was in progress. They, and the EU/US thought they saw a golden opportunity to permanently alter the facts on the ground in their favour, gift themselves the next set of elections by crippling the PoR and Communists, and get Ukraine's western track so far in advance that it wouldn't matter what the eastern parts wanted as by the time they had a say it'd be irreversible. They critically miscalculated just how much importance Russia puts on Ukraine, how reliable the eastern parts of the state apparatus would be having spent so much of their energy slagging them off and in some cases sacking them and, well, thought that their opponents would just suck it up and didn't really believe strongly enough to really react. Now, they don't have a clue what to do, they've broken their country, probably permanently.

Anti western? More like pro reality. You don't even actually dispute it, you just claim that the french and AU don't have enough troops as an excuse. Well, they had enough to change the facts on the ground by threatening Seleka and getting them to withdraw, just not, apparently enough to do the same when it's muslims getting killed instead of christians. If western involvement was a panacea for all Africa's ills colonialism would have been a wonderful era of enlightenment and prosperity, after all.

Right, so opposition goes on about revolution, about how some are being too "passive" and we then get a revolution- but he actually meant normal electoral stuff like making phone calls and putting up posters? Hmm. You even establish form in your interpretation, the Orange Revolution may have had some legitimacy in that the election was disputed, but the last one was not and the OSCE even went out of their way to say that rumours of it being fixed were wholly unsubstantiated. The only then current justification was sour grapes from losing in the first place- and that is not usually seen as a good justification. Who cares that the interview is with Tyanybok anyway? He's proud of himself, so he's honest about what he's doing because he thinks it's right and will appeal to people, much as some of the Right Sector people in Odessa were quite open about setting the Union building on fire because they thought it was fine to do so and despite Yatsenyuk trying to blame everyone except his supporters for it. He talks about fomenting a revolution and pre revolutionary atmosphere, about trying for an uprising, others being too "passive" and stuff like that and then non passive revolution is what happens. It's borne out by history that he was not talking revolution in some sort of abstract way. Or, it seems, it's "only one link", an interview with only the third most important leader. Apparently, only signed affadavits from Yatsenyuk and Klitschko (who I'd actually let off personally, since he's had the good sense to stay out of the clusterasterisk that is the Yatsenyuk/ Turchenov 'government' and was specifically called too passive, a veritable badge of honour considering the current circumstances) will do as evidence.

Neither Frank nor Francis is meant to be a sympathetic character, certainly. They have some amount of the anti hero about them when taking on those you suspect are equally immoral but they are pretty much outright villains by any objective measure. I find I can cope with that OK, so long as the villainy is done in an interesting manner and with style.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone describe prokul harem boko haram as anything other than a standardly unpleasant Al Qaida like. There are some fair reasons for muslims in Nigeria to feel discriminated against, and the violence has certainly not been one way as the western press tends to simplify it to- but then Nigeria is so corrupt as an entity that pretty much everyone is discriminated against in some way. Even so, boko haram don't have huge support even amongst the muslim population, they just have enough to be effective in a country that is still massively underdeveloped and has porous borders with equally underdeveloped countries. As for western interventions, well, CAR is a good example in all the wrong ways. Having got their favoured group (Christians, in this case) back into power the French are largely sitting on their hands while they settle scores with their muslim neighbours who were in power previously- french colonial and post colonial policy in a nutshell, get their favoured group into power and (try to) keep them there whatever they do, as was so shamefully on show in Rwanda twenty years ago. Yep, the practical effect of the Stingers was massively overstated, with the number supplied and the size of Afghanistan there was very little probability of running into one on any given sortie. The vast majority of Russian air losses were due to wholly conventional stuff like AAA and even small arms. But the presence of some stingers did change how the Russians behaved which made them a lot less effective.

Vampire Diaries is basically Beverly Hills 90210 with supernatural themes. Most of that network's output is Beverly Hills 90210 with [theme x] though. I've been watching the US version of House of Cards and to be honest I'm not all that impressed. I think it's due to two things, I just don't find Kevin Spacey particularly convincing when compared with Ian Richardson* and I did like the British version a lot. Overall the feeling is rather like the US version of Cracker, Fitz, where it was obviously based on the same source material but was just a bit worse in every meaningful respect. And it's just too long as well, another common complaint I have with US adaptations of brit shows- though at least it isn't 22ish episodes like a standard US season is. *the upper crust English accent delivering his disdainful soliloquy just works so much better, for me, than Frank's rather slight southern drawl. Plus, I don't like what they've done with his wife who in the english version is probably worse than Francis himself.