JadedWolf

I would say it's privilege blindness, though the western privilege is more subtle than male or white privilege. You take safety, political liberty, freedom of speech, and other rights for granted, to the point that they are not valued at all. I honestly think the best way to pay tribute to political liberty and freedom of speech is to remain critical of government, and to never blindly follow whatever the establishment says, but to demand answers when something doesn't seem right. In a world where there is free speech but no one dares to show dissent because it is "unpatriotic" democracy is dead. Of course, these are two extremes of the spectrum. There has to be a middle way where people can be critical of government without it crippling the health and safety of the state.

Amazingly people in Western countries are allowed to think differently than what their masters think, no ? I don't know why you can call one side narrative and the other is truth, given the penchant of both for lying through their teeth. But some of the comments are more than just disagreeing with there government, in fact we should raise reasonable and valid issues about our governments. What I see is that some think that there are governments just cannot be trusted to anything right and they never stand behind what there governments do, its always criticism and not enough support or recognition If your "government" is the E.U. though, you have every right to call it on its incompetence.

I fully admit being bitter and disillusioned toward the West. Or the East. Or humanity in general, if you prefer. I'm still on the fence about squirrels. Sometimes, when they look at you with their beady eyes... -Shudder- As for this topic... When you are painted as a stooge of the West for daring to say anything critical about Russia, what's the point of even trying to debate?

Seriously? Everyone agrees/knows what the NSA did what outside the law Really? Is that a professional goddamn opinion? Or are you retrospectively deciding that it ought to have been illegal? What Snowden did was violate the actual law in order to hand information directly to the Russian and Chinese security services, those paragon defenders of the little guy. Rather than do what he would have been told to do on day one: tell Congress. In the grown up world we don't just do whatever we happen to decide suits our personal need to feel awesome. We vote on laws then we obey the laws. Interesting take on things. I'm curious, how should he have gone about telling Congress, without being stopped and gagged in the name of national security in the process?

Oh great.

The writing in this show is just so bad. Case in point: Why am I even watching this trainwreck? Does it get better at any point?

I find the "we" bit here rather odd, because I don't think anyone here has any say in what the U.S. or E.U. does. You can live in a country (though the E.U. isn't even a country, and I really think some people here are really overestimating E.U. capabilities and foresight here - if anything, they've shown once again how incompetent they are at foreign policy) and still not actually be on board with or be responsible for what that country does. As for German trained snipers? ... I'm sorry, but can I have some of that stuff you've been smoking?

Saying that what Russia is doing is just the same as the U.S. and the E.U. were doing strikes me as rather simplistic. There's a difference in gradation. The latter did not march their armies to Ukraine's borders, did not invade parts of the Ukraine and did not send in their agents to incite unrest while disguising themselves as native Ukrainians.That's not to say I think that what the U.S. and the E.U. are doing is much better. Both sides are simply playing power politics, and in the end it is the people in the Ukraine that have to suffer for it. Yanukovich was a crook, but this new government doesn't seem much better. Not too bright, either. If they hadn't started off by curtaining the rights of the Russian speaking population it wouldn't have been so easy for Russia to feign being the champion of the poor oppressed Rus people.

The moves that you "learn" and the moves you actually have to perform in the game are actually different. In the game, all you need to do is face the object, hold the right stick down, then push the right stick up. You don't actually need to do anything with the left stick for the dragon shout.

Okay, not trying to be insensitive here, but that actually reminds me of a Law and Order episode. I believe the episode was called Gaijin. A Japanese couple goes on vacation to New York. The wife gets shot, and the husband is very vocally blaming New York for being an unsafe and violent city. In the end it turns out the husband himself paid for a hired killer to shoot her. And he specifically went to New York so he could make it believable that it was random violence. Which makes me wonder, did this guy see that episode? In any case, glad that he was found out and hope he spends the rest of his life behind bars. Sadly, that's probably not likely if sentences over there are anything like over here.

Also, it is quite obvious what the star of David with a lizard's eye in the middle of it represents. Anyone who thinks that Oby is showing off his Jewish pride raise your hand. Yeah, I didn't think so.

When you walked into the Off-Topic section, did you not notice how above the gate was carved: "Abandon all hope of moderation, ye who enter here"?

All that money spent, a whole 40 billion, and they couldn't even get the five rings right. But of course, if you're Russian, you would not have noticed, since you were actually watching footage of the rehearsal! http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/02/russian-tv-olympic-ring-cut-rehearsal/

I do not consider myself a mature, responsible adult by any stretch of the imagination, but I haven't even heard of most of those cartoons. I must be getting old, because whenever I see cartoons nowadays, I can't help but think cartoons used to be a lot better... -Shakes walking stick angrily- Duck Season! Elmer season!

I think you might be posting in the wrong thread...

I know, but that's really not my cup of tea. One of the reasons I never could get into the Icewind Dale series much. I suppose at least classes should be a lot more flexible in the new system, which hopefully means we won't have to take anyone along we don't like just because we really need their class skills. Still, three more companions would be worth it if you ask me. The more choice, the better.

I could see about putting more money into the cause, if it meant more companions were added, and if it didn't add months and months of delay to the release date. I like to play games like this through multiple times, and then having more companions to choose from is a big plus. Also, I always hate it when there's only that one priest to choose from, and her personality is totally opposed to that of my player character.

Steam kicked you out? What's the deal with that?

So I have mostly only had positive experiences with Kickstarter projects so far. Sure, a lot of them have to change their release date, for obvious reasons. And some are a bit short on content (I am looking at you, Shadowrun Returns). But all in all, Kickstarter has been a success for me. With one glaring exception. Godus. I can somewhat understand people who say it will improve with time, and that it's only a beta at the moment but still... I certainly am not enjoying it, and I can't see in what they delivered so far something which I thought I was backing. It seems to mostly involve keeping yourself busy by tediously clicking on things until you get RSI, with no other reward than to be the caretaker of a bunch of lazy ingrates who die off when you leave them alone for five minutes. But, that's completely besides the point. Because quite honestly, it can happen. A game can disappoint, and go in a completely different direction than you thought it would go. If that was all, I'd shrug and move on. But the whole thing has been so very dodgy. Alarm bells started to ring when Peter M. announced that the winner of the Curiosity clicking game was going to be the God of all players in the game that we as backers funded. Apart from raising concerns about whether our voice would be heard over that of this newfound deity, I couldn't help but think that they never had a clear idea of what the prize for curiosity would be until they had Godus kickstarted and only then decided to make this the prize. So like many were suspecting, Peter M.'s hyping up the value of the prize -a "life-changing" experience- only served to sell his clickity click game. Brilliant showmanship of course, but not what you want to learn about someone whose project you've backed in the good faith that he'll deliver what he promised. Then, as the beta launced, there were signs that 22cans was actually aiming for the mobile crowd. Anyone who has played the game in beta knows what I mean. It's not just that there's was at one point a store (which was removed after complaints from backers, though it is not sure if it may not return later), the whole interface and the gameplay just screams "mobile!". Indeed, they have already admitted that they plan to release it on mobile, and here's the kicker, for free. So, you back a project for PC, only to get a mobile game, and then you lean that the actual target audience will get it for free. Should I take solace from the fact that they will probably pay through their noses in microtransactions for the pleasure? Maybe. But it certainly leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Then, there was the Steam sale. I don't mind Steam early access, but who thought it was a good idea to sell this early access at a significant discount during a Steam sale? They must be really hurting for cash to slap the people who kickstarted their project in the face like that. The bottom line seems to be they stopped caring about their backers the moment they got their money. It's safe to say I won't be backing any of their Kickstart projects again. If there is going to be one, because I'd be surprised if Godus is going to be a success for them if things keep going like this. So... Yeah. Has anyone else had a disappointing experience with Kickstarter projects so far?

I am also missing the kickstarter badge.

Thanks for the update. It's refreshing to be able to actually see behind the curtain for a change.

Honestly guys, if I was a moderator I'd lock this thread. I am sympathetic to the fact that moderators here are very open minded, but this thread is a trainwreck.

I'll leave the question whether I believe in human driven climate change alone, considering I honestly don't know enough about it. But if it is true, to be honest, I think unless some brilliant inventors come up with something soon, we're doomed anyway - and turning off the light when we leave the room isn't going to change that. Humans are just not great long term thinkers, and they don't cooperate well - especially not when greed comes in. Good luck trying to tell countries like China that their people shouldn't drive cars. And the human population just keeps on growing, which causes enough problems on its own. But, one thing about this debate strikes me, and that is that it is said that it is said that there is money in "alarmism". Now, that might actually be true, but if I look at the other side of the coin, isn't there a lot more money to be made disproving human driven climate change? Wouldn't countries like China and India pay big bucks if there were scientists who could give the definite proof that humans did not affect climate change? If only so that Western countries would stop nagging to them? Or how about the energy companies, or the car companies? You don't think they'd be willing to shell out? Hell, if there was any scientific proof that could reach a majority consensus among the world's top scientists that humans do not play a role in global warming I'd be willing to pay, just so I would sleep better at night. A full 50 bucks, because, you know, I'm not that rich, man.

They've recently joined the Euro, so the obvious answer is bankrupt or part of Germany. Realistically though, in the absence of responses from actual Estonians you'll get limited usefulness from this thread if you're seriously considering moving there as everyone's experiences with it (including mine; backpacked through about a decade ago, nice country to visit but I cannot entirely disagree with oby's description either) are more tourist orientated. It'd be like getting views from tourists to New Zealand, they can only really say that the dollar is high and Queenstown is nice, they probably won't know important residential things like that housing is massively overpriced (cheers, overseas speculators/ supine government papering over cracks) and economically everything except things that go moo is a bit dodgy. You could also check expat forums, to see what experiences have been like for foreigners who have moved there. Something like http://www.expat-blog.com/forum/viewforum.php?id=280