majestic

So wanna talk about flat urf next?

Well, I thought it was relatively clear from the context, but apparently not: the current iteration of the Freedom Party has built itself around pandering to anti-vaxx and anti-sanction voters. The Pro-Russion demonstrations the Twatter thread talk about were organized by the same people who organized anti-vax rallies during the lockdowns and the brief time period we had a COVID-19 vaccination mandate (which was never enforced and later dropped), and it does stand to reason that if there would not be significant overlap between the two groups, such a pairing of ideologies would not lead to an increase in voters, let alone one in such numbers. So, yes, while there certainly are anti-vaxxers who are more vegan-lifestyle greens, they're not represented in Freedom Party voters. We could now continue to quibble about whether being against help for the Ukraine and against the sanctions automatically makes someone Pro-Russian, but that is a distinction that is morally hard to justify and callous at best when the party in question wants to immediately normalize relations with Russia and drop all aid to the Ukraine (and ideally send all the refugees back home). Casting your lot in with the Freedom Party means you at the very least accept their Pro-Russian/Pro-Putin stance, and their party leader's ivermectin ramblings, and his steadfast refusal to get vaccinated, and actively espouse it at worst*. Still, the distinction is relevant for people who can no longer make ends meet, and yet another failing of our politicians that these people feel that there is simply nowhere else to turn. Those also represent a part of the voters in those potential 25+% - but by far the biggest block (20%) of voters are those who simply believe both, that vaccinations were made for whatever nefarious reason (most benignly to make money) and that going back to the pre-war status quo would fix all of our woes. Also not sure since when calling a spade a spade has become an issue. Isn't that more for the 'radical left'? That all said, here's another fun label for you to tease that bee in your bonnet: (actual Nazi anti-vaxx propaganda) *Not that I believe for one second that this guy actually really believes the anti-vaxxer nonsense he is spewing, that's just something he tells the people because they want to hear it. Such a stand-up guy. Wonderful guy, that is. Everyone is against him. So sad.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Well, this is from our former foreign minister's wedding party. I am kind of uncertain how people are surprised by these 'revelations', but some parts of the Twatter thread are (not going to speculate about whether that is intentional or not) misleading. Christian Kern, for instance, resigned his position at the board of the Russian Railways when war broke out, and the reduction in intelligence sharing goes back to an earlier point in time and was related to a hostile takeover attempt where the Nazi Freedom Party (illegally) had the police raid the intelligence service headquarter over some North Korean passports in order to install a leadership more inclined to, say, look the other way when it comes to their connections with far right neo-nazi elements. The Schengen veto has absolutely nothing to do with any Russian agenda and everything with our ridiculous chancellor trying to score brownie points with the right-wing fringes before a couple of very important elections (one of which recently happened and saw his party lose a 50% +1 majority that they have held since the end of World War Two, just to drive home in what sort of dire straits the party really is). If tihs was at all related to any Russian agenda, then Orban's vote would have been different. The spying part is, to borrow from a local idiom, an old hat that is barely worth talking about. Everyone in Vienna is a spy, and has been for two centuries now, and as the thread said, it pretty much was codified post World War Two with certain changes to our laws. It's part of the reason how and why we managed to get the Russians off our territory, and it certainly wasn't and still isn't just for the benefit of Russia. It is also missing a few details, but what can one expect from Twatter. Our politicians were also constantly lobbying to soften or even remove the EU Post-Crimean annexation sanctions. Again, this does not come as much of a surprise, as RBI (Raiffeisen Bank International) is heavily invested in Russia, and it is also heavily invested in the ÖVP*, a party that has been a part of our governmen for 40 years now and is in really, really dire need of a timeout from power. Alas, for that to happen, the centrist and left-wing elements of our political landscape would have to work with the far-right fringes, and there's a better chance of hell freezing over. Anyway, it is hard to overstate the amount of power that the RBI wields. If one is proficient enough in German they could read the Raiffeisen Black Book for a glimpse. They have an enormous amount of money invested in Russia, and act accordingly. Fun fact, the Ukraine recently put RBI board members on the sanction list, with the exception of the one board member who is actually Ukrainian (Andrii Stepanenko). Because... yeah, never mind, I think that's obvious and rather revealing. In closing, because I have no idea what caused me to write this post now that I've reached a natural ending point, there's also the issue of the conspiracy theorists and Putin apologists. Those exist, in scary numbers, and there's a massive overlap with the anti-vaxxers. The FPÖ is openly garnering their votes, and they're rapidly approaching 25% or more according to polls. Politically, this is going to be fun going foward, because our current government it too busy with keeping itself from falling apart to actually address the issues the common people are facing. In the odd case they're actually realizing that there's an issue. To quote our president with his 300k yearly pay: Just grit your teeth. That's going to help for sure. *There's an old joke. To explain, first one needs to know that the BAWAG bank was initially created by prominent members of the Socialist Party as a way for workers to have access to banking services without having to go to the bourgeoise and capitalist other banks. It was held, until a financial scandal and dire straits, by the unions and the Austrian consumer's co-operative had shares too. It is fair to say that the Socialist Party (nowadays Social-Democratic Party) once indirectly 'owned' a bank. So, what is the difference between the SPÖ and the Raiffeisen bank? Well, one's a party with a bank, and the other's a bank with a party...

Well, if you have seen Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves then... you've seen Avatar, by far and large.

I recently threw out a bunch of books for various discontinued pices of software and operating systems from the early 2000s, and while I know they were practically useless, it still felt wrong to dump them. I kept my BeOS R4 book though. Not that BeOS is going to make a comeback, but it's a fun curiousity, at least. Unlike these:

Not having watched any of Spy x Family and not being familiar with anything but Anya's character design and apparently quirky Japanese (which is, giving this the benefit of the doubt, hopefully where those spelling mistakes come from), am I going to regret asking what Anya and the salmon have to do with a Kitsune-dance?

Now reload and try on Unfair.

I'm guessing this is one of those instances where the same word means different things in different places, because there's no such thing is pork kebab here. The Greeks here would probably flay you alive for orderding kebab at their places, you can have gyros or souvlaki, both usually made with pork. You see a place advertising kebab, it's most commonly beef or chicken, and sometimes lamb. In the worst case scenario it is made of old mutton.

But pork is haram. It's the haram food. It's so haram that almost nothing else is next to it... Anyway, kebab pizza is pretty good. It's been a staple of our (numerous) Turkish fast food places for so long that I never would have guessed it originated in Sweden.

Well, look at episode 20 of PGSM. Usagi figures out that Mamoru is engaged in the worst possible way. The writers are really milking that set up for as long as it lasts, and the foregone conclusion that is hovering over all of this makes it kind of feel superflous and wasted. There are some really significant deviations from the source material(s) in this series, but not enough to make anyone ever believe that the romantic core of this series could have any other outcome than the canonical one. This version of their relationship might be the best yet, though. Mamoru isn't a weird creep and Usagi is, while childish at times, a lot less immature and co-dependent than her anime counterpart. With this being a live action series involving actual minors, I also doubt we'll be treated to an implied sex scene where Mamoru has nothing better to do than jumping on Usagi after she calls him a pedophile. Yes, that's in Crystal, in case any of you forgot or, uhm, didn't read my posts. Motoki continues to be an idiot, but now that Makoto has actually talked to him and gave him a scarf for Valentine's day, things are progressing there, although they'll only conclude in a post-series special. I just hope Motoki isn't going to bring his turtle to the wedding. Ami is abudcted by Kunzite, finally starting her path down to DARK SAILOR MERCURY after being the Ensign Mayweather* of PGSM for the past couple episodes. Minako figures out that Mamoru is Tuxedo Mask, while psycho-killer Rei is trying to figure out what Minako's deal is. Mamoru and Usagi take the creepy kids out for what creepy girl calls a double date, only to have Usagi's hopes cruelly dashed by the creepy boy telling her that Mamoru and Hina are engaged. The series seems to have some pacing issues, after a while of not much happening too much happens all at once and way too quickly. *Character on Star Trek: Enterprise who, if he was lucky, got a single line to say per episode, because the writers had no idea what to do with his character.

Ineed, the overzealous backend protection issue is back, and it includes quoting certain characters too by the looks of it, like asterisks and ellispsis and quotation marks. Meh. Meaning that just because something can be posted doesn't mean it can be quoted in response.

Okay. This day is officially over. I am, for a lack of a better term, exhausted by the sheer amount of incompetence of what feels like everyone working in IT. I ask someone from which IP address(es) they are going to connect to our system for the data transfer as we need to white list on the firewall, and the answer is: 192.168.XXX.XXX.

Buy one and find out! Pretty sure that's just the regular keyboard though, the mechanical one is an upgrade option. The XMG NEO is also available with regular air cooling, but you can bet that both the CPU and the GPU will start throttling down the moment you turn it on. Complete waste of hardware and money. Arguably either way, but more so with air cooling.

Indeed, particularily for international communication, YYYY-MM-DD is the only format that is readily understood by everyone. It's a bit of a pickle now because we were told the deadline is in October, and now it is three weeks ago. In the days of yore unused HDDs would spin down to reduce wear, and when they spun up it could take a while for the system to react. Actually, HDDs still do that. My father has some 30 odd TB storage space that is largely unused in regular use, but when opening the explorer they start spinning up. Takes up to a minute until Windows reacts. So, yeah, things taking a while with hard disks, not necessarily a sign of problems.

Found out that we got some wrong information about a certain date from our reseller, because Muricans just can't write dates. 01/10/2023 is somehow not in October.

The ARC suffers from ludicrous price syndrome(tm) in Yurop. The A750 and A770 cost almost the same, which is right around the cost of a RTX 3060 12 GB, and yeah, that makes it a lot less appealing. Should still be good for 1080p gaming for a while though. Could certainly do worse, and an A750 anywhere near MSRP would be a really nice option for the price range.

Just for the fun of it, because they can be (pre)ordered now. Behold the XMG NEO 17: So, what sort of prices are we looking at? Uhm... with... Intel Core i9-13900HX nVidia RTX 4090 Laptop 16GB 64 GB SK Hynix 5600 DDR5 (comes with a buyback option for the upcoming 6400 MT DDR5 once they pass validation and QC checks) 17" IPS 99% sRGB WQXGA panel 4 TB M.2 Corsair MP600 PRO NH Mechanical Cherry MX keyboard XMG OASIS Rev. 3 portable AIO water cooling system 2 year warranty So, anyone here with some leftover money who wants to buy me a new laptop?

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat, AMD is as bad as Intel and nVidia when afforded the opportunity? You don't say. I thought Lisa Su is my lord and saviour?

Look at that, Xandria got yet another vocalist... I want to like them, really, but they keep pulling the rug from under me every time I get used to the new lead vocalist. I'm probably the odd one out who liked the first one best.

So, basically, when I think of someone who likes Crystal more than the original anime, I imagine a certain type of person, and I have to say this particular comment basically confirms my prejudices. Giant sentences, disjointed stream of consciousness, complete nonsense ahead: Small sample size, to be certain, but let it never be known that I am fair in my criticism of things I do not enjoy.

Are there anime stock character designs? I could swear I've seen that blonde haired guy in several other animes already. Edit: Kunzite just owns every scene he is in. edit 2: Artemis after Minako pranks him: Usagi's mother tells her to watch a frist grader, the daugther of a friend of hers. Usagi proceeds by offering her coffee. She looks like she escaped from some horror movie shoot. Talks like it too. And then Usagi just drops her off at a boy's house after creepy girl gives him chocolates for Valentine's Day. Uh, Usagi, are you sure about that?

PGSM continues to be a little weird because the characters are somewhere in between their manga and anime counterparts, and it sometimes just clashes. It's just too weird to see Minako dressing down psycho-killer Rei for not being serious enough, only to then throw a really childlish, competitive fit over taking care of a stray dog with her, as Rei brings some dog food with her and Minako just has to run off and buy four large boxes of high quality dog food to one-up Rei. Next scene, Makoto is telling Usagi to not give up because who knows if that girlfriend of Mamoru's is going to stick around (I suppose Makoto read the script). Makoto, of all people, should not try to get Usagi to mess up other people's relationships. Minako totally would. It makes sense in context of the series, I suppose. This is by the way the fifth set of voices for the characters I've heard (Crystal and original German and Japanese dub, now PGSM). It's starting to be really confusing.

It was great.