Agiel

To be honest, I'm more interested in the memo. I want to see if it's really that big of a deal or if people here are right about it being useless and irrelevant. It's irrelevant. Either everything in it is true. Or everything is a lie. Or it's somewhere in between. The people who swear it's true are all liars. The people who swear it isn't are all liars. The safe thing to do is just assume the worst is true. The FBI did abuse their power, the Democrats want to cover that up, and the Republicans are lying about how much they know about it. But here is the thing... no matter what that memo says, nothing will come of it. In a week it will be forgotten. I'm not so sanguine about the bolded part. From the White House's perspective in the absolute best case scenario it gives them cover to fire Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will more readily clip Mueller's wings, if not fire him altogether. But at the minimum it feeds into Trump's narrative that it's the "deep state" which is keeping his agenda largely grounded (and not his own perniciousness and incompetence). In that instance GOP congressmen will not feel compelled to act on increasingly dire signs of White House misconduct as long as a perceived stain on the FBI's reputation exists in the eyes of their voters.

Some modeling supplies I got from and online shop had an ad with a picture of a closet full of boxes that said "Closet full of unbuilt models? We'll buy them!" I think that store knows its customers a little too well. _Glances at shelf full of boxes of Warhammer minis that have yet to be painted and assembled_

Been sinking a lot of time into Afghanistan '11. It crashes like the dickens, it's hard as hell, yet extremely compelling. Like Dark Souls you have to take the hard knocks before you finally manage to work out winning strategies. Let's just say I had a few scenarios end with me feeling like the tank commander at the end of the Beast of War:

Afghanistan '11: It scratches a COIN itch for me, trying to balance keeping FOBs re-supplied, securing roads for IEDs, getting UN aide convoys to villages, and building and fixing waterworks to win hearts and minds. In my current scenario US forces withdraw towards the end and all the SEALs and Apaches board the C-5s home and you have to make due with indigenous forces, meaning you have to train up the ANA from the heroin-addled doofuses they start as into the Afghani equivalent to Iraq's Golden Division that eat shotgun shells and craps victory for when the inevitable Taliban onslaught comes.

I quite liked that game Cryostasis, which this game seems to have shades of (discovering the circumstances behind a disaster on a nuclear vessel) so I'll keep an eye on it.

One distinctly recalls Idle and Palin in this scene from the Meaning of Life when watching the White House and the GOP try to explain the President's positions:

They say the best abstracts are short and to the point:

Finished reading Svetlana Alexievich's <<Secondhand Time>> recently. I've occasionally opined how the alt-right grafted itself to Trump in spite of expounding the virtues of some of Marxist-Leninism's most unsustainable and economically backward policies (propping up failed industries with a side of xenophobic protectionism and allocation of work on the basis of ensuring loyalty) and kept loyal in the face of clear betrayals and barely concealed contempt towards them. It seems this attitude isn't all that different from the accounts of people in Alexievich's book who were imprisoned, and even broken, in the gulags but still described Stalin in glowing terms*, all in the name of "building socialism". *I've had some persona contact with someone similar: While in the 9th grade I was in a study group over Orwell's <<Animal Farm>> held at a Jewish friend's house that was also inhabited by his grandfather. He got into a tirade with all of us over how Stalin "was a great man" and verged into creepily conspiratorial territory when the debate shifted to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Idea for a Star Wars movie so Disney has their screwball comedy segment covered: A group of Rebel Scum misfits who crew a commandeered AT-ST learn of a cache of Kyber Crystals or some such worth hundreds of millions of credits in a bank miles behind Imperial lines and go AWOL to seize it. At the climax of the film they confront the crew of an AT-AT guarding the bank and convince them to blow open the vault in exchange for an equal share of the loot.

The first step down the road to disappointment? At least those Carrier plant workers who were nonetheless laid off have caught wise to Trump. And with the Kelly news of late their ranks will be joined by those hoping for a wall.

The gap between the releases of The Witcher 1 and the Witcher 2, as well as between 2 and 3 was about four years so mid to late 2019 release is in my mind feasible. Granted it's probably not the most precise methodology of determining release dates, but I would think a significant chunk of pre-production work was done around the time the Witcher 3 went gold.

Lest we forget: And...

Next historical Total War game is Three Kingdoms: Seems like something that was a long time coming.

Somehow I think those expecting him to shake things up at Davos will be gravely disappointed. Given my knowledge of his antics one would have to try pretty damn hard to convince me otherwise that ultimately Trump seeks the approval of Koch brothers-types, to say nothing of the mainstream media itself in spite of vociferous claims to the contrary.

Coincidentally I finally came around to binge-watching Ash vs Evil Dead. Now I can't believe I've put off watching it for so long; I loved the Evil Dead movies and even really liked My Name is Bruce.

Sad to hear that. He's been a fixture of your posts and I can imagine it's going to be rough to see him in pain when his time is coming, to say nothing of the great big hole in your life when he's gone. Still I'm sure in his own way he's grateful for having taken him when you did and cared for him all these years.

Man, all these people who are so triggered by TLJ having a black guy and an Asian girl as some of the leads seem like the type of folks who would have been annoyed seeing James Earl Jones in Dr. Strangelove or Yaphet Kotto in Alien in their days.

Mike Huckabee went on a tear recently drawing comparisons between Trump and Churchill, evidently after having watched Darkest Hour. I think the irony of Trump's rallying cry of "America First" last being used by the crowd that was very much in favour of throwing Churchill under the bus might be lost on Huckabee.