Agiel

And it looks more ridiculous than, say, a giant hand summoned by a Wizard to crush his or her foes?

The real-life Xenia Onatopp:

It's getting to the point I wouldn't be enormously surprised if Maduro pulled a Galtieri and had his military invade the ABC Islands to rally public support.

Sadly no. The only interior stuff that is modeled is the Mk. 117 fire control display and the narrowband sonar display used for classifying contacts. That said you also have authentically modeled Soviet naval tactics and doctrine courtesy of Dr. Milan N. Vego.

December 28th, 1984, Norwegian Sea: "Conn, sonar, new contacts bearing 35. Designated Sierras One and Two." "Come left to course 300, make my depth 300 ft. Maneuvering, aye." Oscar-class cruise missile boat. Damn, what a whale, but its SS-N-19 Shipwrecks could wreak havoc on NATO supply convoys. I run a flanking course to the contacts to allow the more powerful TB-12 towed sonar array to track them and develop a firmer firing solution. After a few minutes gathering bearing and speed data, I manuever the boat into his baffles so they realise too late that they're under attack. "Sierra One, bearing 300, range ten thousand yards." "Fire point procedure, Sierra One, tubes one and three." "Ship ready." "Solution ready." "Weapon ready." "Match sonar bearing and shoot." "Conn, Sonar, units are running normally." The Mk. 48 torpedoes are wire guided, allowing mid-course updates from the launching boat against distant targets, and defeating countermeasures launched by the target. The Oscar only knows it's screwed once the fish go into acquisition mode. He deploys a noisemaker decoy, but the torpedoes simply drive around it to resume their track of the Oscar. The AN/WLR-9 active intercept sonar picks up the pings from the first torpedo, now emanating in a staccato-like fashion, indicating that it was close to its mark. "Conn, loud explosion on the bearing of Sierra One!" Sonar SUP shouts. The second torpedo follows close behind and detonates, finishing it off, eliciting silent cheers from the Dallas' crew. The Dallas slinks away, the sonar technicians electing to take off their headphones and watching the broadband waterfall displays to monitor for pop-up contacts instead. The sounds of the imploding hull of the Oscar is hard to listen to; a morbid reminder of the grisly death waiting for some in the silent service. The Dallas streams a floating wire antenna to transmit news of positive destruction of enemy cruise missile boats. The next day, COMSUBLANT cracks open his morning paper and chuckles softly to some good news.

I think we're rapidly approaching the point in which for security's sake all files on White House staff computers will have to be transcribed via 1950's typewriter for the following administration, then the computers summarily thrown into incinerators and the ash and cinders locked in a electro-magnetic-shielded sealed vault at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Who knows what kind of malware got onto those machines.

I'd say that it means they're all Jewish, an attitude couched in a phobia towards the "10 ft tall subterranean Jewish lizard bankers"; the far-Right in the US is quite happy to help all the Jews go the Holy Land... at which point they better learn to accept the Lord Jesus as their saviour if they know what's good for them since that was supposed to be what pre-saged the Rapture.

Just so you know, the person who created that .gif also posted this (name censored to keep language reasonably clean): It's looking more <<The Plot Against America>> by the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7p5kWPl7Xw

Iran targeted Star of David in ballistic missile test, Israel says Makes you wonder what those IAF pilots thought when they bombed those SA-2 sites in 1967, 1973, and 1982. Image was recon image over Cuba, but the arrangement of the "flying telephone poles" around the Fan Song fire control radar along with roads for launcher reloads is ubiquitous of the system.

Devs are indeed a bit of an unknown factor, which has deterred me from backing it, but if the reviews on release show it to be as much worth my time as PoE and D: OS then I'd be happy to pay the full MSRP for it. It has frequently been observed that the IWD games were great combat RPGs in search of a great story and something like PS: T was a great story in need of a great combat RPG. Hope that like the Icewind Dale games the PC soundsets are similarly awesome (as opposed to the mostly atrocious ones in NWN2 which I'm revisiting right now). Particularly fond of the female HOW_1 voiceset, which exudes the right mixture of confidence, competence, wit, bloodthirst, and feminine charm. Sadly I've been unable to discern who the voice actress is.

On the story in which Scarborough and Brzezinski were reportedly threatened with a damaging story printed in the National Enquirer, for the benefit of our non-North American readers, that is a publication found on the rack at the grocery store checkout line that has printed some variation of "Hillary: Six Months to Live" on the cover... for the past two decades. "Hillary" is also interchangeable with just about any celebrity that is probably chosen on the basis that the editor in chief just so happened to hit his or her name on a dartboard and "six months to live" can optionally be "in rehab".

Gotta say if you're aware of what getting maced is like getting headshotted by the Saint of Killers is almost a mercy after macing one's own junk... almost. And I know that since it's on basic cable it needs to tone down the sex stuff, but I'll be tremendously disappointed if Herr Starr doesn't get that scar carved on the top of his dome at some point in this series.

The first act can be a chore, while the Original Campaign stays relatively generic fantasy throughout (though I find the companions endearing nonetheless), the game comes into its own starting with the second act. It's also worth playing as a preface to the Mask of the Betrayer expansion campaign which is universally loved by cRPG fans.

Playing through the Neverwinter Nights 2 OC again. Almost forgot how many goddamn traps were in this game. This was what Neeshka managed to pick up from the Graveyard near Fort Locke alone:

I've found that some of Inglorious Basterds' most enthusiastic fans are Germans themselves.

Emphases mine

Ohhh... boy. When that truck said those tacos were spicy, they weren't kidding. 4AM tonight is going to be real eventful

My new boat. With the Hunt for Red October being one of my favourite movies my campaign just got off to an auspicious start: But how we got here... Uh-oh. And so we get underway from Holy Loch in dear old Scotland on December 25th, Ivan having ruined Christmas forever. To raise our spirits COMSUBLANT had plenty of Christmas ham brought aboard for us to dig in as we make for flank speed to our operating area. Our first assignment is to intercept Soviet cruise missile subs looking to run the GIUK gauntlet to break out into the open Atlantic to sink trans-Atlantic convoys. The situation as it stood when we set sail: So far the Soviets have limited their invasion to the Central Front, tanks and APCs rolling across the Inner-German Border, though that may swiftly change. NATO has SOSUS listening posts lording over the Andoya-Spitsbergen chokepoint which clues us into Soviet submarine movements as soon as they clear the tip of Finnmark. Speak of the devil one group is coming right now.

Former Giant Bomb duder Drew Scanlon tours a Ukrainian missile base museum as part of Cloth Map:

Been listening to Deathspell Omega's new EP, <<The Synarchy of Molten Bones>> and a portion of the lyrics of the title track struck me: Are they talking about a synarchy of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin? Though I suspect whatever Putin's net worth is it far exceeds that of Trump.