BruceVC

S2 looks excellent, I cant wait

What do you mean NATO proxy? What is the difference between a NATO member like Sweden and a NATO proxy?

I agree but the nuke idea as a security guarantee is over If Ukraine hadn't abandoned its nukes you right, Russia would never had invaded But thats not realistic anymore. I dont support any new country getting nukes and that includes Iran or Ukraine

That is a problem, any suggestion to ban adult movies or adult content must be rejected at all costs I would even consider protesting if that happened in South Africa Im an adult, no one must dictate to me what I can or cant watch or what game I decide to play As long as its legal of course and not things like paedophile content

Yes and China passed the EU in 2022 and it was predicted to become the strongest economy in the world by 2030 if you read links like this https://trt.global/world/article/12768680 And that was influenced because the UK had left the EU and its GDP wasnt counted Now in 2025 the EU has passed China again, the point being economic predictions are often wrong But you right, this doesn't include US tariff impact and we will see that more accurately reflected at the end of the last quarter And this will apply to all countries that include China. But we need time to see the impact of US tariffs on countries that export to the US

https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/EU/CHN/USA The EU has passed China in nominal GDP, good economic news for our European members @Elerond It looks like the EU will economically survive the US tariffs. This should put you in a good mood

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/19/what-security-guarantees-might-ukraine-get-in-return-for-a-peace-deal The US doesnt need to deploy " boots on the ground " to support the EU in security guarantees for Ukraine End of the day this is a proposed US\Trump peace plan and we need to see how it unfolds and what is agreed on "Trump has promised to coordinate a Europe-led peacekeeping operation in Ukraine. “When it comes to security, there’s going to be a lot of help,” he said on Monday, sitting next to Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. The US president made clear European countries would be expected to carry most of the burden. “They are a first line of defence because they’re there. But we’ll help them out,” he said. Ukraine wants to buy $90bn worth of US weapons and says they could form part of the security guarantee. Overall, however, Trump has been vague about how much the US would contribute. He has ruled out Ukraine’s membership of Nato, which Kyiv believes would be the best deterrent against a future Russian onslaught. There seems no prospect the US would send its own troops to take part in a peace-keeping mission. One more realistic option would be for the Pentagon to provide logistical support to a proposed “sky shield”. The plan envisages an air protection zone in the west and the centre of Ukraine, including over the capital Kyiv, enforced by European fighter jets. "

Having a sense of humour is objectively not a bad thing even for world leaders When its obvious the person is joking

Why are you done with Dune, what dont you like about it?

I have often mentioned that Trump likes to joke and troll the media and yet many people dont seem to know when he is joking Yesterday he made me laugh when he realized how Ukraine cant have an election Constitutionally under martial law https://people.com/trump-jokes-no-more-elections-if-united-states-at-war-11792856 " During one part of their press conference, the U.S. president latched onto a statement by Zelenskyy about pausing elections during wartime, and spun it to hint at the possibility of him outlasting his two-term limit in 2028. "So you're saying during the war you can't have elections," he said, interrupting the Ukrainian president's remarks. "So, let me just say, three and a half years from now... if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections. Oh, that's good."

Why because they want an end to the war and they aware they need to engage with Trump in the normal obsequious way, all world leaders do that when they meet Trump if they want the meeting to be constructive. Its really easy to do once you understand Trump. But Trump was also very complimentary to the EU leaders End of day its clearly only the US who can get both Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table and achieve a significant and lasting peace And that means keeping Trump happy around how you engage with him Compare this meeting with Zelensky to the disastrous one in February, that wasn't funny

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/crlzey2j406o What a completely different and positive meeting with Trump compared to the disaster in February, the EU and Zelensky should be very happy with the outcome which was expected considering the number of prominent EU leaders who attended Zelensky had clearly been prepped around how to engage with Trump and this included he was smartly dressed and he received a compliment from a right-wing journalist he thanked Trump and the US on several occasions he presented a personal letter to Trumps wife who cares about the reality of the thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children. This went down very well with Trump, he likes this personal touch Zelensky avoided responding in too much detail around his expectations when asked certain questions Trump was also much more relaxed and complimentary to both Ukraine and the EU leaders who travelled to the US. He joked about several things But key takeaways which we have to wait and see how these things unfold the US would be involved in a peace keeping role in Ukraine in some form with the EU. This would be part of the peace negotiation agreements around security guarantees for Ukraine Trump wants to arrange a Putin and Zelensky direct meeting Trump believes Putin will make compromises The US is selling Ukraine an additional $90 billion in weapons I do think we are some distance off to this war ending but this was a very constructive engagement with both Russia and Ukraine and a good step in the right direction For me it highlights again the global influence and agency of the US, it really is the only country that can bring the likes of Russia and Ukraine with the EU to the negotiating table in a significant way

I am very impressed, I did my scrambled eggs this way and Im always going to do them like this now. It created the perfect texture and balance around moisture and solid egg Its funny, I have spent close to 30 years cooking scrambled eggs, I watch cooking shows all the time and I read cooking books and I cant recall a suggestion to do scrambled eggs like this . Granted I dont follow much egg cooking content but still And then I get a simple tip on a gaming forum and its significant, who says you dont learn new things on the Internet

I dont think a peace deal is that complicated and the general terms have been discussed many times The war ends on current gains, Russia gets to keep Donbas and Crimea and Ukraine keeps 80% of its country Ukraine wont join NATO but can join the EU and Ukraine gets security guarantees that Russia wont invade again Russia cant be trusted but if they agree to not invade after this agreement I cant imagine another invasion because Putin will have his geographical "win " in the Donbas region

That looks very simple, I will try that tomorrow

Thats interesting, I only ever whisk my scrambled eggs I can see how that other method would work but no one I know cooks eggs like that

I completed the entire install of Life in the Ruins (LITR) for Fallout 4 using Wabbajack and it all worked after some minor troubleshooting. Using Wabbajack is definitely the easiest way to install large Mod Collections, this one has over 400 mods A couple of issues I experienced and how I resolved them Make sure you spend time on the readme file because there are post config changes you have to make once its installed Some mods didnt download, I tried a few times and the same mods failed. But Wabbajack provides a link and then you can manually download them and copy them to the Wabbajack Download folder I had some incorrect virus alerts from my AV program so I just excluded the Wabbajack folder from AV and the Wabbajack install and unpack was able to progress I had an " access denied " during the unpack of all the mods. I just rebooted and it went away, I think this was related to my AV program I want to play around with adding some Adult mods so I have created a test profile in MO2 so I cant break my working vanilla install of LITR And I want to test and confirm how adding mods to a collection works or doesn't work because its not recommended But Im very impressed with Wabbajack

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-08-06-three-months-later-trumps-afrikaner-refugees-knuckle-down-to-hard-reality-in-us/?dm_source=dm_block_grid&dm_medium=card_link&dm_campaign=main&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=first_thing Interesting read about the life the initial white Afrikaners have faced in the USA since they arrived Its a mixed bag but they mostly working " much harder " but they feel much safer as the main positive around living in the US This made me chuckle " Kleinhaus said: “The biggest challenge is here you work, hey. There’s no kitchen lady you call to sweep the house, or clean the house, or stuff like that. You do the work yourself. He said that even farm owners worked from “morning till 11pm at night” with no farm labourers to call for help "

Here's a potentially positive story around US foreign geopolitical developments https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/2/drc-rwanda-agree-economic-framework-outline-as-part-of-peace-deal The US has brokered a peace deal between Rwanda and the DRC. Hopefully it maintains @Malcador we have chatted about this interminable conflict through the years. What is disappointing is it took the US to achieve this deal and the AU and SADC through the years failed to do the same thing despite numerous attempts But end of the day the most important thing is the war\conflict ending, for me it doesnt matter who is responsible for this

I watched that movie and I enjoyed it Its one of the few Apartheid movies that highlights the reality and nuance of Apartheid where not all white people agreed or believed in the system but you lived in a police state and there was a real fear of Communism which was used to label anti-Apartheid activists

The worst for me is when I hear South African accents , I dont think we have an accents but apparently we do ..and I mean English South Africans, not Afrikaans

I always get worried when you decide to play any game around Greek Mythology I dont want you to get angry if its not accurate .....please tell me you happy on the lore level

Oh yes, the Houthis There random bombing of cargo ships in the Red Sea has made a huge difference to Israel's imprudent military strategy since 7 October Maybe the Houthis should join BRICS, that will definitely be more significant

Once I have completed the King Arthur DLC I was left with an exciting choice, which game to play next and my 3 choices were BG3, Cyb2077 and Fallout 4 (replay ) I decided on Fallout 4. I played it first in 2018 but I never completed it after 280 hours because I was new to Mod Managers and I was using Vortex and I loaded certain mods midgame without following the recommended way you install mods and it broke the game And back then I didnt have any experience in mod manager troubleshooting so I just quit Now Im using MO2 and I want to use a Mod Collection from Wabbajack It will be the first time Im using Wabbajack as a mass mod deployment tool and I see there are about 5-6 recommended mod collections I am leaning towards this one and I used YT to get a good idea of what mod collections are popular Life in the Ruins https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/62971

I didnt even know about this DLC Thanks, I am going to play it