BruceVC

https://dotesports.com/baldurs-gate/news/baldurs-gate-3-sales-numbers-how-many-copies-has-bg3-sold#:~:text=How many copies of Baldur's,stats acquired by Steamdb.info. I just found this now so it may be old news, BG3 has sold over 22 million copies just on Steam !!! That far exceeds what I thought and its excellent news for Larian because now all their hard work was worth it and it justifies a BG4. As I always say the real factor in the success and sustainability of any game are the sales numbers And it also makes any negative sentiment that BG3 is **** and degenerate irrelevant and moot because most gamers clearly dont care. But total sales so far could be over 30 million

So I'm using 3 mods, Arx Libertatis and Arx Extended and Arx Neuralis and I have had no crashes or bugs so far Im really enjoying the CRPG design and mechanics. I just reached Arx City

Interesting, its a pity we dont have a similar confirmation and investigation on who destroyed the Nord pipe ?

I have decided to play Arx Fatalis next, I have never completed it and I configured some recommended mods like Arx-libertatis which is more a game overhaul https://arx-libertatis.org/ It should be fun and I remember it has a unique magic casting system where you use Runes and you have to follow a pattern with the mouse .Further updates to follow

SA beat NZ last night in the RWC final, 11-12. Another 1 point difference I thought the game was absolutely exciting and nail-biting and both teams demonstrated brilliance, both teams had opportunities to play the Rugby they love unlike the England vs SA game which was ugly I think overall SA played a better game but around kicking and tackling, we suffered in the lineouts and NZ dominated with the skill of there backline. The way they can pass the ball without " looking " always impresses me NZ was unlucky with the red card and but we got 2 yellow cards and dangerous tackles are dangerous tackles. I think the English referees overall did an excellent job at explaining things and most decisions considering the pressure of this final, no one is going to happy with every decision But NZ really lost because they missed a conversion and a penalty and we only scored points because of penalties so that tells me how effective the defense was for both teams. But end of the day amazing final and the game could have literally gone either way Players on the SA side who made the biggest difference for me were Pieter Steph du Toit with his incredible and important tackles and Pollard of course with his kicking France did an excellent job at hosting the RWC, it was very well organized and the stadiums were very well maintained. The firework display was beautiful at the end. Kudos to France for a well managed RWC I am hungover again this morning and if I knew I was going to be so thirsty this morning I would have drank more last night But end of the day it was a brilliant and exciting RWC and it exceeded my expectations with all the twists and turns on how the various countries advanced. Well done to SA for winning the final, they can be proud of their performance @Zoraptor whats the general NZ media consensus of the game, I thought NZ played a brilliant overall RWC and proved there critics wrong who had written them off in the beginning

Forget Netanyahu rhetoric but Hamas has a history of using hospitals and schools as operating bases because they less likely to get targeted Here is a link from 2014 and it discusses how the UN found military equipment being stored in schools https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/31/why-hamas-stores-its-weapons-inside-hospitals-mosques-and-schools/

There is definitely going to be a issue with the rebuild of Gaza and where are the Palestinians going to live. Who is going to manage and rebuild Gaza once Hamas is destroyed? I predict the UN will setup UN refugee camps like we see in Africa and ME conflicts like Syria, its not ideal but its sustainable and people are safe https://theconversation.com/most-east-african-refugees-are-hosted-close-to-borders-its-a-deliberate-war-strategy-200861#:~:text=Of the more than 300,Bidibidi in north-western Uganda

Thanks, good to know I thoroughly enjoyed my last Neocore experience

I love the satire from Juice Media, the girls are naughty but very cute And they often make good ponts, they obviously dont provide solutions but its parody and it's not supposed to

Thats a good read and its an example of the inherent risks and failures with how the CCP runs China, its a hybrid of Communism\state control and Capitalism The entire failed " Zero-Covid " Chinese policy would have exacerbated the property crisis and accelerated the problem But the article also explains how this happened or the contributing factors that created this crisis " Evergrande's rise was fuelled by heavy borrowing to build houses for middle-class Chinese looking to make money from property. But property developers borrowed too much money to build too many houses that not enough people want to buy" And then what made it worse "Things came to a head in 2020 when the government, fearing a bubble in the property market, introduced new financial regulatory guidelines, known as its "three red lines' They severely restricted developers' ability to borrow more money, eventually causing the crisis that has mired Evergrande and the rest of China's property sector. For China's leaders, the painful but necessary measure was the only way to rein in unsustainable debt. Except they didn't anticipate how much worse it would get, especially as China's economy took a hit from sweeping zero-Covid lockdowns'

Gorthfucious !!! You Nordic folk dont get a pass, remember the Vikings and terrible war crimes inflicted on my English ancestors. It still creates subconscious trauma, remember trauma is generational so 1200 years feels like yesterday

Thats okay then, I guess the Russian invasion and war crimes in Ukraine is different because its a conventional war. Good to know

Do you think Hamas cares about Palestinian lives? Why doesn't Hamas just release all the hostages, they could negotiate a deal through Qatar and Egypt where they publicly say something like " we will release all the hostages if there is a ceasefire "? Put pressure on Israel in the global arena?

I completed Dying Light 2 after about 110 hours and I made sure I completed most of the side quests and activities like freeing up water plants and climbing all windmills It was fun, I give it 62/100 on the globally respected "BruceVC game rating system ". That's not a terrible score , its effectively a C which is fine but end of the day its a Zombie killing game with the same repeated mechanics and quests that I found started getting tiresome I can't really explain exactly what made me get bored but I think its to do with the repetition of the quests and just how the resource mechanics work? I did appreciate the narrative choices like who do you support the PK or the Survivors Anyway its fine as a Zombie killing game but I did enjoy DY1 more and I preferred games like Days Gone and definitely the Dead Rising games

Bobby Flay is so brilliant and skilled, he was also one of the most successful Iron Chefs and won most of his competitions in the challenging Iron Chef arena The same as Michael Symon, he was practically unbeaten in Iron Chef You should watch these other shows of Bobby Flay if you like his cooking style. Great barbeque recipes in the second one https://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/bobby-and-giada-in-italy https://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/bobby-flays-barbecue-addiction/recipes

I didnt realize you grew in East Germany. Where did you live and how old were you when the Berlin Wall came down. What was life like, do you remember anything significant or worth sharing? Sorry for all the questions but I am always interested in lived experiences around things like the Cold War

Thats interesting, I thought most people knew that European anti-semitism goes back hundreds of years. The NAZI were just one example of it and they successfully implemented a program of genocide around it with the Final Solution Thats why most Jews are so sensitive to anti-semitism, its historic and generational and the response to the Hamas attack lets bigots rage about it again and of course the Israeli strategy doesn't help either And I posted this link earlier but you should read about the historical pogroms in Russia where Russian Jews get blamed for events and then killed and attacked , even if they weren't responsible https://www.britannica.com/topic/pogrom This is why Israel and its belief in the significance of a single Israeli Jewish life matters, thats why I will never believe they knew the Hamas attack was really going to happen. It would be the ultimate betrayal of what Israel stands for

SA won last night against England, 16-15 But we played really badly and we were very lucky to win. The English technical advisors clearly did there homework on us and they effectively prevented us from playing our normal game but we lacked inspiration and energy and made many mistakes SA was 6-15 until the last 15 minutes and I had accepted we were going to lose but then we scored the only try of the game and then within the last 3 minutes we scored a penalty We always take the win but we need to seriously reflect on our performance because NZ is looking very formidable. Also I didnt want SA to play NZ in the final, I would have preferred an Irish encounter because I do think Ireland is overall an easier team to beat than NZ

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/10/19/kill-the-difficult-ones-hamas-had-a-hostage-taking-manual-n586192?utm_source=ground.news&utm_medium=referral This article is mostly from Graeme Wood a journalist from The Atlantic, its behind a paywall so this is for easy access In summary its about how Hamas didnt expect to have the initial success from the attack and they werent intending to take hostages back to Gaza but rather use them as human shields as part of the immediate expected Israeli military response which didnt happen. Hamas even had a manual on how to torture and kill Israeli hostages within Israel

I dont understand your point? How would Russia ever look good because of the Israel vs Palestinian conflict Russia has committed dozens of war crimes in Ukraine and fights a war of brutality in Ukraine. Israel has done the same like Hamas But how does this make Russia look good for what they are doing in Ukraine, its 2 separate conflicts? Im clearly misunderstanding what point you trying to make so some clarification would be appreciated

I agree, the utter and consistent hypocrisy of Russia pretending to care about "civilians " goes to new levels of cringe

Under no ones authority, most the world wants a stable and prosperous ME. It doesn't really benefit anyone in the long-term the suggestion of any "endless war" in the ME Because if the entire ME erupts into civil war it will have a direct impact on the oil price which will negatively impact every single country in the world . You remember how the oil price got to $120 after Covid ended and how that impacted our economies So even if someone doesn't care about the humanitarian reasons of wars in the ME you should care about the stability of the ME because it directly can influence the global economy So to repeat my point, no it doesn't make sense that the US would want endless wars in the ME because at the very least its not in its own economic interests

Its exaggerated, misplaced and doesn't accurately represent the US interests in the ME or the reasons for its military interventions. If anything its to ensure stability for economic interests but no-one wants eternal war in the ME because how does it benefit anyone ? And the US has always supported Israel since its creation and I would argue the US has put more effort into trying to find a peaceful solution to the conflict than anyone else. But end of the day it cant force Israel or the Palestinians to agree to a 2 state solution. Only leadership from both sides can do that It reminds me of some of these Islamic extremists who in their manifesto claim the US are crusaders who want to destroy the Islamic world, why would the US want to destroy the Islamic world?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/17/greta-thunberg-arrested-at-london-oil-summit-protest Greta Thunberg has been arrested in London, I have been warning everyone about her years. Eco-terrorism is very serious and we should all be outraged by this @xzar_monty I wonder if she played a part in the attack on the Finnish pipe?

Its good Israel is getting openly behind Ukraine, Im not sure what difference it will really make considering the countries that currently support Ukraine?