IndiraLightfoot

We would all be speaking Danish (since the "Swedish" vikings were mostly about eastward trade), for starters! And my gut feeling tells me that what came to be the British Isles, Ireland, and Germany in the early 1800s would have been more or less Denmark. The same goes for the Netherlands and perhaps a substantial chunk of France as well. Imagine a commonwealth based on the Danish monarchy. Everybody would be dealing in their crowns currency, and they would surely have been very successful globally - given their fantastic seamanship. We'd be drooling over smørrebrød all day (those special sandwiches are delicious). Well, a very huge island still is Danish IIRC: Greenland.

I was nine at the time, but would probably have voted yes at the time if I could (not today though).. it's fairly recently that I've become more sceptic towards the EU - simply because they've proven themselves inefficient too many times. I do share the ideological goal they peddle though, I'm a big fan of a strong government working FOR the people against selfish monetary interests, but EU isn't that and won't be in it's current form. A Scandinavian union though - sign me right the **** up. I could even live with the political capital being in Sweden I still recall how the Danes have voted against various EU policies and the Euro, even against the ratification of the Maastricht treaty in 1992. I envy that Danish courage and cheekiness immensely. Any day that I feel a bit rebellous, I still hum the following tune to myself: Vi er røde, vi er hvide And Yes, I loved the chain-smoking soccer-player Preben Elkjær in the 80s (a hero in the Danish national team). I reckon, he's the coolest soccer player ever!

I'm old enough to have voted several times on various EU treaties and the euro, in more than one country, actually. I'm also old enough to fully grasp why the EU exists - it's an attempt to keep Europe together in the aftermath of two world wars. Sorta "never again. Let's create a pseudo-European community and a Kafka bureaucracy!" Nonetheless, I've always voted against it. I didn't want to join it, I didn't want to support that lobbyist black hole and all of its duties. Need I even mention the farming policies? I'd love to see great trade treaties, though - not just European, but global ones, for our region - and relatively easy border crossing between the countries, including work, education and all that.

Hmm, 2nd pic - spiral symbol on tents: Blizzard logo copyright infringement?

Horrifically, Jo Cox has been shot and stabbed by Brexit-fanatic outside a library in the Leeds area. All campaigning has ceased, both Leave and Stay.

A brief northern European impression of Obama: Since the 60s, as far as I can look back, he's the president who compares the best to what in countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, even Germany, would be, a liberal, but still right-wing politician. So, in many ways, plenty of peeps here understand him better than any other US president before him (one exception: Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal). Obama was also almost absurdly liked over here in the north. He got the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing, hehe. That's just one indication. He has nearly succeeded in doing something unique over here: Making an EU-US free trade agreement that holds water and lives up to its name. However, when that NSA global surveillance scandal blew up, the image of him changed, and he's now regarded as more of a weak, but benign president. Bernie Sanders would be even more familiar in this neck of the woods, with his social-democratic vision of government and policies. And then Trump: Trump, however, is often portrayed more or less like the leader of North Korea, like a nutcase, which doesn't bode well for any transatlantic bilateral relations or EU-relations, for that matter. The things he's saying are compared to demagogues or media mogul leaders, like Berlusconi. At best, he's compared to Putin. Finally, Hillary: She fares surprisingly well in the serious press in most of those countries I mentioned above. I'd say, lots of commentators expect her to be a stronger president than Obama, although slightly more to the right of him, in relative European terms.

Heh, sorry about that. This is but an English abstract of a much longer article in Swedish, plus the research papers and all the data, obviously.

Hi'all! Here's an interesting article, derived from a number of professors at Sweden's oldest university Uppsala: "Armed conflicts associated with militant Islamism, so-called jihadism, now account for over 50 percent of all people killed in battle. This is shown by new unique data from peace and conflict researchers at Sweden’s Uppsala University. Syria dominates the jihadist war category. This is because the researchers have divided the complex Syrian opposition into merely three parties, the Kurds, ISIS and ”insurgents”. The latter constellation contains several Islamist groupings. – We have made historic comparisons, always with the same definitions, and the change is striking, says Isak Svensson, professor at Uppsala University. One reason for the surge in the number of deaths in conflicts where jihadism is a component, as well as a surge in the number of conflicts overall, is that ISIS has opened ”franchises” in a swathe of countries. At the same time, some rebel groups have changed their rhetoric from nationalist or socialist to jihadist. As much a focal point of media reporting as it is, ISIS is not the uniquely efficient killer organisation it sometimes appears. – During their bloodiest year, 2015, they killed fewer people in 18 countries than the Bosnian Serbs did in Bosnia in 1995, says Erik Melander, head of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Surprisingly, South East Asia is almost void of jihadist insurgencies, despite large numbers of Muslims, including the most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia. One important factor behind this remarkable exception, according to the researchers, is that Islamist parties are allowed to work politically. Also, peace negotiations have partly been successful. East Asia is generally significantly more peaceful today than the region was three or four decades ago, as is Latin America, the scene of bloody guerilla wars during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Southern and Western Africa are also mainly at peace today, a stark contrast to the 1990’s. A look at the war map discloses that armed conflicts seem to be disappearing from the ”fringes” and increasingly concentrated to a belt across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan and Pakistan, through the Middle East and down to parts of Africa’s northern half. In the years since the Arab spring, there has been a trend towards ever bloodier wars. But this trend is now broken, the new data shows. The total number of battle fatalities in all types of armed conflict decreased by some ten percent from 2014 to 2015. The figure, 118.000 deaths, is still a lot higher than before 2011, but the long term trend points downwards. The worst years of the first four decades after World War II were several times more lethal than 2014. According to the researchers one chief explanation for the long term decline is that governments are less and less involved in armed conflicts against each other. A state’s capacity for unleashing violence is far greater than that of any separate grouping, no matter how bloodthirsty they may be. – Ten years from now we will most likely have experienced one or two, possibly three, new conflicts that have grown bigger than we had expected, just like Syria did, says Erik Melander. – But I believe the general trend towards a more peaceful world will continue. There will be new peaks, but every new peak will be lower than the preceding one. You quickly forget how things used to be." So, it's not only the news then. Various forms of jihadism are indeed the worst warmongers today. Still, the general global trend is less war-like violence, despite all the post-2000 weapon dealers and increased arms availability in certain parts of the world.

The law must apply the same for everybody - at least, that should be the ideal, no? In practice, I know, this isn't the case. For instance, the rich and the famous tend to get quite some slack. Moreover, everybody may be a victim regardless of sociocultural categorizations. In fact, I'd like to emphasize that we're all victims under those very classifications per se.

Arkane Studios have certainly mastered their crafts. This game looks enormously beautiful. *Glurrr!* (Me drowning in my own drool.) I mean the attention to detail is right up their alleys (literally) and mine.

I've never played Mass Effect, but I must say this game looks absolutely stunning. However, I fear this: Even if I did play for nearly 200 hours, lots of the content was just MMO repetition.

Good insights Indira But why do you think this attack is not ISIS related? It is ISIS related in the sense that becomes the tribute for the attack. Would he still have attacked the gay club if ISIS didn't exist? I doubt it as the reality of ISIS and its campaigns have definitely emboldened certain people to act in there name...so for example if this wasnt a real attack to support ISIS he wouldn't have announced it? The USA has had many attacks like this that weren't extremist related but I do consider this logically one ? That is a clever question! I must admit that Daesh propaganda on the world wide web certainly may act some kind of trigger for a loose cannon on the brink of exploding. In that sense, it may be considered as Daesh-realted. Still, even without anything like Daesh, he may have done the vile deed anyway. This question of yours also applies to the Breivik case at Utøya in Norway. If it wasn't for all those extreme right forums, would he have done it then, and even more interestingly, would he have done it on that scale and with those twisted political "stamps of approval"? EDIT: Speaking of triggers; As for the role of violent video games in this kind of crimes, I'd say it's pretty much no role whatsoever. (I do recall the absurd PnP RPG debate and devils and demons in the 1980s. *Shiver*) Still, as with any kind of story/media, scenarios and acts taking place in any kind of media may inspire culprits. But, so what? I mean, then those cave drawing way back in the Stone Age, where some elder probably told a violent story or two, pointing towards, say, an atlatl, are just violence-inducing and harmful as GTA. The linkage is quite bizarre. Our brains are hard-wired to copy others. We are copy cats, all of us. Every poet is a thief. You are a thief!

The Christian far right has most likely nothing to do with this hideous act of Omar's. Nor has any radical Islamism, for that matter. What we most likely have here, is a mentally unstable individual that saw an opportunity to associate his violent extrovert "acting-out" with Daesh. His father and ex-girlfriend, among others, seem to be insisting that this is the case. It has nothing to do with religion, and so much more to do with a loose cannon that have been in need for some serious help for years. As for the bigger picture; Yes. LGBTQ rights have been slowly increasing, and the overtness of LGBTQ in society and mass media has certainly change for the better over the last two decades. If we would compare the situation of today with that of the early 1960s, it's like night and day. In many European countries, though, some sort of right-wing renaissance has been going on for a few years now, and alongside that, a tendency of backlash. Various versions of Christian far right groups call for retractions of any laws protecting anything LGBTQ - this range from Russia and Poland to Greece. However, in France, National Front has amassed a substantial number of gay votes and party members. Still, if we were to add various Muslim groups which detest LGBTQ in Europe, the 2010s trend is a bit grim in that department. Another global pattern is this: Self-proclaimed free, enlightened and liberal countries seem to be pitted against equally self-proclaimed conservative, family-values-oriented countries, where the former supposedly unequivocally love LGBTQ, and the latter view LGBTQ as something inherently bad and unwanted and illegal.

May the weather be with you, Hurlshot; baby shower + windfall.

Hmm, Winston in Overwatch breaking bad?

This is precisely how I felt. I played FO4 for a few hours, and it didn't have that aimless adventuring/roaming qualities with a character you've rolled yourself. If you are to have a fixed protagonist, you really need to get it all right, like Arkane Studios did with Dishonored, for instance.

I'll certainly miss the memories of him as a kid, and those aren't from any television or anything. I traded hockey sticker cards with other kids at school (one of my few possessions in my rucksack I lugged around everywhere), and then I had this album full of NHL heroes. For some reason, I couldn't forget those four photos of him and the text describing him. Why? Well, he was the same age as my grand dad, if he had been alive, and Gordie was still going strong. Detroit Red Wings, IIRC.

Let's hope they muster those 15% for him then. It would be healthy for those debates.

Master of Magic, 1994.

Like I described above, I did: AMD Monitor plus one other software. I could follow everything, and I did follow it for like 2,5 h in total. Both the cores and the fans went ballistic quickly, and at any kind of activity - almost idle was enough - and then you saw a swift peak of the fan and the temp and then BLIP - black screen. The hours are ticking now, and I use my pc for pretty heavy lifting all day at work (and then for gaming). It's back in it's normal routine now, hopefully: silent and pretty cool.

I know, a bit of stretch there. However, here in Sweden, Snowden received a prestigious international award, the Right Livelihood award, not very long ago: “... for his courage and skill in revealing the unprecedented extent of state surveillance violating basic democratic processes and constitutional rights.”

About what Snowden and Clinton did: I view Snowden as civil disobedience/whistleblowing of global proportions and repercussions, and I view Clinton's mail server as severe recklessness with sensitive information.

Now, onto the obvious question: Does he stand a chance? Or is it rather a snowball's in hell? EDIT: There are obviously polls showing how disliked Trump and Clinton are (which isn't good if you have ambitions to lead by anything than dictatorship, and barely even then.)

I had never heard of him, and barely of the Libertarian party neither. But, if I would face the choice of either Trump or Clinton, I'd definitely pick this guy. He seems level-headed, smart and fit for all sorts of endeavours. He seems to have the capacity for a safe and sound presidency, and that's just my getting taken in by a first impression.