Agiel

Perhaps a better man would have rushed in to at least do something, even if it would come at the cost of his life as happened to Feis, but from the deputy's perspective he would have little idea as to whether he faced a lone gunmen or several (remember that the initial reports on the Newtown shooting claimed that were two active shooters) and listening to the gunfire one could easily conclude that in all likelihood he was vastly outmatched in firepower. And even at the moment of truth do not discount the possibility that even a trained person will blow it:

I guess you assume everyone is armed. convenience and accessibility is what makes handguns the real threat to people in this country, even if rifles get all the press. fear the government, then rifles make more sense. fear foreign invaders or indian massacres as were the fears o' founding fathers and rifles make more sense. want militia, then rifles make more sense. wanna reduce stoopid homicides and suicides (which actual vast outnumber murders,) then rifles makes more sense as the firearm deserving protections. a rifle is not so much an impulse weapon as is a handgun, and is gonna be making life less scary for cops to rid handguns and keep the rifles. I think the big gun control bugbear when I was growing up was less gang-bangers doing drive-bys, angry ex-husbands, or disgruntled workers shooting up the post office and more misfires and kids finding a loaded gun (or at least one that still had one round chambered) that wasn't stored properly and accidentally firing it.

Trump moves to ban 'bump stocks' 4 months after Las Vegas shooting If the most ardent defenders of the 2nd Amendment were expecting consistency or loyalty from Trump then they've missed three decades of signs to the contrary.

Trump: 'We want to get twice as many planes for half the price' Seems that he would find Soviet defence acquisition policies quite attractive. The above quote reminds me of a story in which a PVO Marshal boasted that his service was purchasing Su-27Ps for the same price as MiG-29As. Anyone with a passing knowledge of aviation would know that this is an absurd assertion, considering that the Su-27 is a larger and more sophisticated aircraft than the MiG-29, but given how the Soviet military mindset was of a weird parallel universe in which labour and materiel had no monetary value...

This is what you get when you buy stuff from fellow nerds overseas: If I'd known the guy I got this from would go all out with these stamps I would have asked him to use a Battle and Action stamps on this.

I believe it was really just a checkbox thing, though I myself never really gave it a fair shake. From what I remember when I was reading and re-reading articles on the first game during the long agonising wait I came upon a preview that focused on the multiplayer, which seemed to offer only somewhat more depth than Counter-Strike (something like teams that would hunt for Artifacts throughout the level to sell so they can buy better gear).

I rather liked the amount of reactivity Arcanum had, but I can't quite recall appearance having much of an impact in a whole lot of instances.

Or spend the ~$50 million a parade might cost on PTSD treatment and veteran care. If he wanted to see hardware on display he could just go on down to MCAS Miramar to see the air show or to San Francisco for Fleet Week. Something tells me he'd be at least a little disappointed if this thing does come to pass that the US doesn't employ TEL vehicles with phallic-looking missiles mounted on them like Russia does anymore: Hey, might explain that utterly inane Nuclear Posture Review they put out recently.

Some Enki Bilal artwork to commemorate the milestone:

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.