Zoraptor

I think there's a quote from Stephen Fry about people getting offended. Ah yes: May have taken a certain amount of liberty with the end of the quote though. Anyone convinced Oby is a troll should stick him on ignore but most of all stop following him around giving him attention. If he is a troll you are giving him exactly what he wants, ie suppurating haemorrhoid class butthurt. Besides, this is taking attention away from the foreign sponsored non popular terrorism taking place in Ukraine that is trying to set aside a democratically elected government and will hopefully be suppressed peacefully by the riot police as occupying buildings and being violent is evil and should be suppressed with the perpetrators being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Something something Russians are responsible for all that is evil in the universe but this isn't bigotry something something Euromaidan was completely different something something no I don't use my irony to put creaseys in my shirtys but maybe I should thanks for the suggestion.

It's certainly the game with most Appeal I ever played. For some reason Belgians seem to make very good games, must be the oppressive boredom. Funnily enough I knew the date of the kickstarter about a week ago but forgot about it. I'd prefer a sequel straight off the bat but I will be contributing towards the HD anyway since they've said it will be DRM free and Outcast is one of my favourite games, of all time!

Whatever Russia does is likely to be far better than what Ukraine did. It's telling that even after 20+ years there was still so much secessionist sympathy, and even anti Russian journos have said that the infrastructure in Crimea is, literally, crumbling. Russia certainly has all the motivation in the world to visibly improve things, if they really want to encourage more revanchist movements.

I guess that the US and NATO would say that they don't/ didn't try and influence the outcome while the Russian troops did, but I've still to see anyone seriously suggest that Crimea would not have voted as it did even without the Russian troops- even when it was outright criminal to advocate secession a significant plurality stated said support to pollsters. Practically the difference is that the west doesn't want at all to even consider the slightest thought of annexing Iraq or Afghanistan. The unflattering comparison would not be to the current/ recent elections in Afghanistan and Iraq but the earlier appointment of the immediate successor governments/ the occupying force administrations. In both cases it was people hand picked by the west that chose the new leaders, either in the form of the CPA (don't think it needs restating how appallingly bad and utterly undemocratic that administration was, it will forever serve as example of What Not To Do) and its successor interim government or the Loya Jirga in Afghanistan, and the immediate successors were, unsurprisingly, strongly pro west- at first, even Hamid Karzai was. And in both cases those client governments enacted agreements that were highly skewed and favourable towards the occupying forces, eg status of forces agreements that essentially granted Sovereign Immunity of the type usually granted to diplomats to military personnel and even private military contractors actually having checked the Iraqi one at least included all foreign contractors full stop as well as the military. It can be argued forever about which approach is worse, the Russians annexed Crimea, the west didn't do so for Iraq or Afghanistan so Russia gained directly while the west didn't. But Crimea is also now irrefutably Russia's responsibility, and was liberated with a minimum of bloodshed; they cannot hand wash Crimea in the same way the west hand washes Afghanistan and Iraq- declare victory, hand it over to the country's authorities no matter how broken and go home under a big 'mission accomplished' banner- whatever happens there is now Russia's responsibility. And there's a whole lot more that could be compared But, in any case it's clear that the precedent Russia was using was not the Iraq/ Afghan model, but Kosovo. Hence the declaration of independence from Crimea as a step to accession, while this was mainly mentioned as being due to Russian constitutional factors the main reason was because while international law has annexations as illegal the ICoJ- in a judgement that suddenly seems to have been forgotten in the west- found declarations of independence not to be illegal.

So long as you believe mutually exclusive things- like Ukrainian gas prices should not be subsidised, except by Russia of all people; there should be freedom of speech, but things some people may find offensive should be banned etc- you're always going to come across as a troll because anyone with a grasp of basic logic is going to wonder why you're so frequently, and stridently, inconsistent and come up with the answer that you're trolling. There's a reason people are convinced Oby is a troll, he posts vast amounts of pro Russian/ anti west stuff with very little in the way of consistency or logic about it, it isn't a consistent set of beliefs that an actual person would have but rather a bunch of stuff chosen to get a reaction and to fit Russia = good/ strong, west = bad/ weak. If you take the position that the IMF mandating an end to Ukrainian gas subsidies is good, but Russia ending them is bad you're doing exactly what Oby does. Your belief does not, in fact, have anything to do with the subsidies themselves. Your actual belief is that IMF = good, and Russia = bad so IMF ending subsidies must be good and Russia ending subsidies must be bad; and you contort the subsidy issue into a logic knot to try and fit that, basic, belief and narrative. Because it quite simply does not fit and you try to insist that it does it immediately make you look like a troll, because when viewed as being about subsidies alone you are taking a fundamentally inconsistent position- until you reduce it back to the actual equation.

Tagaziel would complain if Russia gave the gas away for free since it would- obviously- be an attempt to curry favour and then reestablish the old soviet empire! Ah, you must have been avoiding the SJW/ Romance threads then. Most sensible.

Heh, gotta have a giggle. Ukrainian company subsidises Ukrainian's gas == Crime Against Capitalism! that must stop. Russia subsidies Ukrainian gas == natural order of things, should continue, any change is a Despicable Russian Plot! How anyone could write that contortion of logic with a straight face is quite beyond my comprehension. You're reading too much into it. All it expresses is that Israel has unilaterally annexed land (without any of the excuses/ justifications that Russia had for Crimea) and does not want to go on record against that process as it would inevitably be used against them. I very much doubt that the US expected them to vote for the condemnation. Most of Israel's 'US has abandoned us' type comments are made for US consumption, as a stick for Fox et alia to bludgeon the "Israel hating" Obama regime with, they are not a genuine statement of intent- that would require some actual concrete movements by the US government to apply actual pressure with diplomatic or economic measures, as opposed to blowing the odd waft of rhetorical hot air at Bibi's well moussed coiffure. And that will not happen. Your analysis reads a lot better for Serbia than for Israel, as Serbia was very clearly stuck between Russia, their traditional ally and protector who still (iirc) provides them with subsidised gas, and their new pals in the EU; plus the Kosovo factor to complicate things.

I'd be pretty surprised if he didn't see it that way- he had a lot of people relying on him and most of them ended up dead- including his wife and so far as he knows his daughter. It was probably inevitable given the circumstances, but... I guess the real problem I have with the whole thing is due to it all feeling rather like a retread. Rick veers from being ruthless to being 'soft' roughly once a season, and has usually decided later on in that same season that it was a mistake and changed back. That may partly be due to all the changes in show runners they've had and the current trend towards moving closer to the comics, but it feels rather off. We've also been hit over the head somewhat with how the two extremes fail- utilitarians like Shane and Carol fail, idealists like Andrea and Herschel fail.

It's no longer April 1st here, but I expected some joke about PoE coming to tablets/ phones from ARMing the Masses. One of the founders is even an Urquhart.

For all we know at this point they do have back ups. And while there were some pretty stupid elements in how they went in it also has to be said that it was infinitely more sensible than the other group just wandering in the front door. And they cannot know that the others are already there before entering- that's knowledge only a viewer can have. Sending in one person to check it out would have been better than what they actually did, of course... I don't see what else the purpose could be. In most programmes when they are used they are meant to illustrate why a character is doing what they doing currently, by showing what has happened to them historically. That isn't really the case here since we've already seen how the prison set up worked and went wrong, and we know exactly why Rick does what he does post flashback. So in that sense the flashbacks are pointless and I'm left with is the thought that this is meant to illustrate the difference between the idealist Rick and the more pragmatist Rick, or 'Farmer Rick' and the 'Ricktator' if you prefer. It's about Carl as well but only so far as idealist Rick hopes Carl can return to be a 'normal' kid while pragmatist Rick knows he cannot. Indeed, the three 'normal' kids in the flashbacks end up dead from haemorrhagic fever, bundled into a random car boot trunk and (so far as Rick knows) zombie food, while Herschel himself ends up dead.

I was a bit disappointed by the finale- mainly by the flashback bits. I actually thought before the episode that they'd pretty much entirely avoided the (post Lost) cliche of having flashbacks as they seem to have in every second program on at the moment. I half expect them to have newsreader flashbacks on the nightly news nowadays, as it's all too often a cheap and easy way to pad out on episode. Don't think we needed to be told that Farmer Rick ended up failing whatever the intentions, we'd seen what happened half a dozen episodes ago. And the rabbit snare was a bit obvious as foreshadowing, as it had basically no purpose otherwise. But it certainly had atmosphere and a feeling of dread about it that no other program can match at the moment.

According to internal Ukrainian sources 80% of their service personnel have defected in Crimea. Not wanting to leave your family/ home holds some water, but not anywhere close to 80%- you'd expect considerably more than 20% to have no immediate family in the region at all, and the rump government in Kiev has tried repeatedly to say that they will help in relocation. Even half that- and almost certainly a quarter- would render their military effectively useless in a genuine conflict. I rather doubt that many Ukrainians worry much about whether Russia can't have good things- Russia has 4 times the GDP/c of Ukraine, one of the reasons even ethnic Ukrainians in the east and south prefer Russia is that narrow economic fact. And of course they also have to put up with the western parts expecting both economic subsidisation from the s/east and for the western parts to be able to set aside elected officials from the s/east when they don't like them and remove support for their language too. And an interesting article from Sergei Krushchev (yes, related) over at Al Jazeera. Despite the decision being his father's to attach Crimea to Ukraine and him being ethnic Ukrainian himself he is not supportive of their claim at all.

Some will fight, but going by Crimea a lot will simply defect or desert- that's the course 2/3 of the Ukrainian troops there took. The Russians would wipe the floor with whatever is left, I don't think anyone has any reservations on that count. Ukrainians already lost a heap of military hardware in Crimea as well, including something like a quarter of their combat aircraft.

Finished Fahrenheit. The control scheme and QTEs were an abomination (it is rather amusing that climbing a chain link fence is the most difficult part of the game...), and the plot drifted off on a massive tangent. Up until that point it rather reminded me of the Mac game Deja Vu I played and enjoyed as a little chap, and was far better as a police procedural adventure game than as an incoherent scifi/ fantasy/ matrix with literal wtf? moments. Still, liked it overall, it's the sort of game I don't play all that much and was good for a change.

And in other news, in a move that surprises no one Yulia Tymoshenko wants to stand for President again. Should be a good opportunity for her gas company to siphon off some of those IMF dollars given they're jacking up gas prices 50% and halving pensions. But how very fortunate that they've scheduled the election for late spring, rather than winter so the electors won't have to avoid all those frozen pensioners on their way to the ballot box. Well, Israel could hardly vote against annexations being legal. That'd be a bit too much on the nose even for politicians. But an abstention is definitively- ie by literal definition- not a yes vote. Adding in the undecideds or DNVs to the yes makes the whole idea of abstaining or not voting irrelevant. Hardly matters anyway, there's few entities as irrelevant and pointless as the UN General Assembly. It's meaningless when they condemn Russia, it's meaningless when they condemn Israel (several million times, it feels like), it's meaningless when they condemn talking in cinemas and onion flavoured ice cream.

It seems rather odd that whoever it is monkeying around with System Shock 2 and Thief on- presumably- an entirely amateur level has managed to put out something that is basically bug free (well, rocks didn't cast shadows or somesuch, for like two days) and Dark Engine is a renowned kludge while Overhaul has so many troubles with a professional team some of whom actually worked on the original titles. Modders also fixed most of the bugs left in the BGs with their extremely limited tools. As such, I don't have much sympathy for the code morass excuse. I'm sure a lot of it is undocumented and I'm sure that there are short cuts taken- but if you expect clean, well organised code all the time then you've probably just finished your comp sci degree.

That would be the same US intelligence that completely missed his plans for liberating Crimea, right? (Oh, I think it probably will happen, and soon. Can't take Crimea only, that just guarantees the western part of Ukraine shifts into ascendency permanently, the Rasputitsa are coming and while it isn't WW2 any more they're still a problem when moving an army, plus Transnistria needs a connection to Mother Russia. But I wouldn't trust US intelligence or CNN if they told me the sky was blue)

Well, there is the Eucharist. Really though, throughout Christianity's history you've had people who could morph 'turn the other cheek' into 'burn the the infidel/ heretic alive'. Converting a metaphorical consumption of Jesus into eating other people is not such a huge leap as that.

Wouldn't be surprised if Bruce likes the ending.

Yeah, not exactly a nice guy. Reckon the most significant thing in that article was confirmation that a significant majority of the Ukrainian troops in Crimea simply defected, first time I've seen that admitted anywhere even if it is buried on paragraph 4 of an article mainly about something else. From actually watching the news you got the impression that it was all heroic passive resistance against overwhelming odds- unless you actually looked at the people singing the Ukrainian national anthem and noticed only around a fifth of the people were actually singing.

I think they'll almost certainly be a very competent group who will be very good at surviving, what we've seen of them looks very efficient- but I wouldn't want them within a hundred miles of me. On the hitch hiker guy I don't have much doubt that Rick would have stopped to pick him up at the end of that episode, and they didn't actively kill him. That's one of those things the writers seem to like doing a lot, like contrasting Carol's ineffective ruthlessness with Andrea's equally ineffective lack of ruthlessness. I rather suspect that if circumstances were different Darryl and Merle would have ended up in such a group, so he has a certain base affinity for them. He could probably have escaped during that ep if he wanted to by going off hunting and dumping his stash. But it does seem very likely that there will be a choice between Rick and this new group soon, and in the end Darryl chose Rick over his own brother. Can't see that changing.

Meh, I'd put pretty much any amount of money that Darryl's new group are 'ruthless savages', for as much as that term has meaning in a post apoc setting. Having rules does not make anyone civilised or nice, they're the best candidates for killing that camp back in the Gov-centric eps and were distinctly and suspiciously interested in the 'clean women's shirt' back when they met Rick, let alone Bow Man's comments. I also thought it was pretty clear that Glenn was set up to as having- literal- tunnel vision and that it was a really stupid decision from a survivability stand point, and pretty much everyone including Glenn knew it from the outset. I do tend to agree on the other things though. CDC should ring alarms about claims of a cure, Woodbury should raise alarms about perfect communities. But I'm not hugely concerned by those sort of issues, as you can do similar to just about anything if you have the mind- the Wire is highly praised but the events at the end of S1 are utterly contrived*. OTOH, I do find it rather perplexing that Maggie seems to have basically forgotten she has a sister. *so the police have an obvious link to the Club they use for conducting business since the manager was a snitch who you'd just whacked for being a snitch. Bright idea to personally order your cousin to pick up a large shipment of drugs from said club, Avon. Not a mistake the real Avon would have made.

Nah, he's already down for voicing the protagonist.

Yep. Don't think I've seen anyone say that Russia is the victim, just that (1) they have reasons for doing what they have done and (2) pretty much everyone behaves the same way with the main difference being the way spin is applied depending on whether it's us or them doing it. To be scrupulously fair elements of (1) can sound like saying they are the victim if that is the message you want to hear instead of an explanation of why the Russians think the way they do.

Been playing Fahrenheit. While I'm enjoying it well enough overall it would be far better as a more or less straight adventure game without the interminable QTEs. And it feels ever so slightly creepy on occasion.