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Good luck trying to divert attention away from the perpetual Trump three-ring circus. Anyway, my mom's fluent in Swedish so she was telling me yesterday that it's rather appalling -if unsurprising- how the media are narrating this. I mean, Sweden Democrats are actually left-wing when it comes to economics, favoring the current Swedish welfare state and all, it's just immigration and its ramifications they are raising a huge stink about. Rather than their rise, it's the Social Democrats huge fall that's remarkable. I can't read Swedish myself so of course I'm interested in your take.

Seems consistent with his attitude. Everything's fine so long as he gets paid. You can bet your bottom dollar there will be no statements from him either way, since he's still attached to the project. I lol'd at the author bringing up how much support this has over in RetardEra to show that it's only the usual manbabies from gamergate rejecting it, considering that the place is a cesspool notorious for banning anyone who falls out of lockstep. Just about everywhere else this has been received at best with raised eyebrows. I wonder if they have considered that making Ciri black means they must make elves black, because Ciri is a descendant of Lara Dorren's, or make Emhyr black, which will make the Black Ones literally black. Good times.

Jewish would also technically fit the bill. Doubt the showrunner will see it that way, though.

Perfect. He should really be able to nail the complete lack of emotion that Geralt puts off in the games. I think he's to young. Maybe they will make him older by CGI. Yep. Too young and too... hunky. Geralt isn't a huge buff dude, and he's just ugly, even without the million scars. I think it's an odd pick. And I actually liked Man of Steel. I still think Mads Mikkelsen would have been perfect, but he's probably just not high-profile enough.

Quotes are selective by definition, unless you want me to paste the whole article. Which not even you have done, and which also makes you guilty of "selective quoting". The difference is that I provide the links to whatever I'm quoting, and quote directly from the source as opposed to lazy mishmashes of selective quoting by someone else. That you assume bad faith when others do something you routinely engage in makes you a hypocrite. Nothing new here, at least. I don't need to prove that the Japanese were "serious" about peace previous to August 1945, because that was never the contention, only that 1) the nukes weren't necessary to force Japan into surrender, an opinion which is substantiated by several of the US most decorated war leaders, the USSBS, and Asada's analysis of the emperor's shifting views in the later stages of the war and 2) that the government faction pushing for peace wasn't "negligible" in 1945, which again Asada's quotes illustrate I don't necessarily disagree with his position that Japan needed external pressure to finally surrender, but I do reject your reading that he's saying that the pressure could only come from the atomic bombings. It is on the record that many members of the government (Konoye, Higashikumi, Suzuki, Nagano, etc.) believed that after Saipan, it was basically game over because the B-29s would bomb Japan back to the stone age, as LeMay later boasted, and there was nothing they could do about it. The complete collapse of their imperial ambitions in the mainland would have applied plenty of pressure as well. I'm not sure what you mean about being "serious" either (though I'm sure you'll shift the goalposts as needed later). Short of broadcasting capitulation over radio, it seems that the emperor was pretty serious when he demanded that measures be taken to end the war ASAP. And even then there's the whole MacArthur memo thing that at least according to him -and it was never officially denied- suggests the Japanese were offering surrender terms essentially identical to what the final thing ended up as, at least as early as January 1945. But we'll just assume MacArthur made the whole thing up in bad faith as well, right? because you dig HNN links so much

Whoop-de-do! It's not Maddox quoting Asada, it's Maddox including a whole Asada article into a compendium he's the editor of. But not a quote. I'm sure someone, somewhere understands that this is a crucial difference, that completely "demolishes" some position or other. For everyone else, it's just you splitting hairs and chuckling and snorting at nothing. Good job at ignoring everything else. That Togo went to see the emperor after the nukes were dropped does not in any way mean that the peace party was "negligible". The fact was that the Japanese government was not really unified in its will to continue fighting till the bitter end. Again, Asada: "What the deciphered Japanese dispatches reveal, however, were indecision and contradiction in Tokyo; the Japanese government could never agree on surrender terms. The cable messages went round and round: Togo, under pressure from the military, repeated that Japan could never accept an unconditional surrender, while the more realistic Sato entreated for "specific" mediation terms and "a concrete plan for terminating the war."" He goes on to say that the whole thing was ultimately a waste of time, but it does show that there was a faction in the government that were in fact open to ending the war as soon as possible, and that after Okinawa, the emperor himself shared that view. But to understand that, you'd have to read the whole thing and not just jump to the conclusions, in the hope that the author summarized the whole thing in two or three short sentences that you could paste. I didn't "leave anything out". I pasted the passages I thought were relevant, noted where I had omitted something, and left out the parts that didn't add much, as per above. For comparison, I went to the book and pasted a link. You? You googled a collection of selected quotations (yes, quotations, not entire articles), randomly pasted a few, and didn't even bother giving a source. Naughty? Get the **** outta here with that weak ****. So you are making a point about the whole article based on... the title? And you cry when I point out your low-effort posting? Yes, the section is aptly titled, because it narrates the emperor's behavior from as early as 1943. It's made clear that he resolved to end the war ASAP after Okinawa. So from that point on, he was no longer "vacillating" even if he had been for most of the war. He was so very much not vacillating after that, that he surrendered in spite of the opposition of the Army and Navy leaders. And you have the nerve of calling obfuscation? What I'm reading is that despite what you and Giangreco say, there is no evidence in the Japanese record that proves that Japan would not have surrendered without the nukes, therefore promoting Shockley's figures from prediction to certainty. What the ever loving **** are you reading from that? More low-effort Googling? This time not even from a book, but from a magazine article with no citations. Weren't you asking Zoraptor to provide sources? The only ones you've presented yourself so far are: a lazy compendium of selected quotes (which you didn't even refer) youtube videos opinion pieces from FP and some university magazine (the latter not even making any specific argument, just "demolishing" critics) much sources, so rigour, wow What are you even talking about? I didn't say massive casualties weren't acceptable to them. I said a battle plan that calls taking casualties amounting to 25% of your population and 100% of your forces a "victory" is insane, because even that would not have prevented a total military defeat and they knew it. Even then, the only way of reaching that point would have been, indeed, "no surrendering ever", which is unlikely considering that the government wasn't all for doing that and emperor did in fact impose a surrender way before it came to that. However, a bluff is the more reasonable assumption considering that Japanese war leaders were afraid of being tried for war crimes like their German counterparts first, and the risk of communist uprisings second. The former was an inevitability if they didn't kill themselves first (hence the condition that their eventual punishment be handled by the Japanese government), and the latter would only increase over time with the decrease in living conditions and the government's disregard for the death toll. The fear of a revolution of one kind or another was also one of the factors in the deadlock of the Japanese government at the time. From Fumimaro Konoye in February 1945: "The greatest obstacle to ending the war is the existence of the military group which has been "propelling" the country into the present state ever since the Manchurian Incident--the group which, having already lost all hope of successfully concluding the war, nevertheless insists on its continuation in order to save face. If we try to stop the war abruptly, these military extremists together with both the right and left wings, might attempt anything--even a bloody internal revolt, and thereby nullify our efforts. The prerequisite to the conclusion of the war, therefore, is to wipe out the influence of these dangerous people and reform the Army and Navy. I must urge Your Majesty to make a serious decision to that end." As I said, Giangreco stops short of saying that the proposed Japanese strategy of grinding down the invader in a long battle of attrition could result in the US being forced to negotiate, because he knows that won't fly. Painting the Japanese military leaders as complete psychotics though, even if indirectly, sure, why not. So yeah, whenever you speak of strawmanning, it is safe to assume that you are actually referring to your own tactics. Yes, because massive preparations have to be made for surrender, right? And the army specializes in surrender tactics and drills, which hold a place of honor in the curricula of all military colleges worth their salt. Surrender is a political decision, as opposed to a military one. Not to mention that it has already been established that the top Army leaders who were coincidentally in charge of said preparations, were very much not in favor of surrendering under the Potsdam terms. Nevertheless, they were overruled. So their extensive preparations did not, in any way shape or form, preclude surrender.

Some monsters are immune to +2 weapons and below, but they are few and far between. And I don't think you should be encountering any* of them before at least the second half of the game. I'm pretty sure some of them are also optional to fight (i.e. you'd have to go out of your way to do so). Don't worry though. You'll end up with more weapons and gold than you'll know what to do with unless you're rushing to complete the main quest. *the only exception is a certain type of encounter consisting of a certain construct inside a room with a door too small for it to chase you if you have to run because you can't hurt it. There's two of those in chapter 2 if memory serves. And you can defeat them using other tools anyway.

this is straw man. lord knows Gromnir didn't claim such. the argument were that the the japanese, particular the military, had no intention of surrendering as of early august 1945. sure, there were a japanese peace faction (as mentioned in agiel's video) which had a genuine desire to find a way to end the war w/o an invasion o' the japanese mainland, but they were a negligible faction. discussions with moscow to intercede on behalf o' japan were little more than an attempt to delay an american invasion as long as possible. were never fanaticism. were calculated. But that's the case you've been making, because you keep bringing up Giangreco. His position is that Japanese leaders simply redefined victory as inflicting maximum casualties on an invading enemy because Bushido or something. Just that a massive bloodbath on the Home Islands would somehow be turned into a victory for them—but he stops short of actually proposing that the invasion could have been defeated and the US forced into a negotiation from an unfavorable position. So, it follows that that was just posturing and most likely they hoped that a strong defensive posture and the experience in Okinawa would perhaps make the US more amenable to discussing surrender terms that included at least some of the Four Conditions, before attempting any landings. The alternative requires assuming that all of Japan's top brass were insane and completely disconnected from reality, which doesn't jibe with your "calculated" strategy either. Yeah, the peace party was negligible... except that the emperor himself was the foremost member and was pushing for peace as early as June. Reminder that the emperor imposed peace on the Supreme Council, even if they didn't want to believe the A-bomb was a real game changer. Negligible indeed. This is what Maddox wrote, quoting Asada: "The emperor, who had already concluded in June 1945 that the war must end soon, was from this time forward Japan's foremost peace advocate, increasingly articulate and urgent in expressing his wish for peace" and "It must be stressed again that the bomb did not “produce the decision” to end the war, nor did it set in motion the political process that led to Japan's surrender. Japan's informal, secret “peace maneuvers” had begun as early as March 1943 when Hirohito first intimated to Kido his wish for peace. [...] In mid-February 1945 he told Konoe that there was still a chance; he expected to negotiate peace terms after having given the enemy one final blow. By early May, he had reversed himself and almost embarassed Kido by urging a prompt peace: “The sooner the better” he said. Kido's diary entry of June 9, 1945, contains the first clear indication that Hirohito had decided to think seriously of peace. Distressed by the debacle of the battle of Okinawa, the emperor took an unprecedented step on June 22 when he told the Supreme War Council, “I desire that concrete plans to end the war; unhampered by existing policy, be speedily studied and that efforts be made to implement them”" and "We must then ask this question: Without the use of the atomic bomb, but with Soviet entry and with continued strategic bombing and naval blockade, would Japan have surrendered before November 1—the day scheduled for the U.S. invasion of Kyushu? Available Japanese data do not provide a conclusive answer" https://books.google.com/books?id=A2Zv3VD6ptQC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Looks to me like you haven't read the material you are referencing yourself. Keep digging up hour-long vids and pasting lazy quotes in hopes that I will get bored, though. I'm on vacation and have plenty of time.

"(as can be seen from our specific Shockley quote, he were basing numbers on predictable projected resistance rather than some kinda belief in particular intransigence o' the Japanese people. the high casualty totals were most direct attributed to US learning o' how extensive were Japanese preparations for a US invasion. regardless, is largely irrelevant as the question is what Truman believed would be casualty totals. after-the-fact debate as to what would be more accurate projections does not change information available to the ultimate decision makers. (a 1993 Smithsonian exhibit actual brief reinvigorated the revisionist debate, leading to revisionism's accepted demise by all save a few self-appointed pundits at the far corners o' the intra-web)" I read it. Four lines, quite literally. Are you browsing the forums in 320x240 or something? And yes, I pasted a sentence in a search engine and added the author's name. Never said it was hard to find the source, I simply called your post low effort, which it is. I'm not sure what's your fixation with "revisionists", but that's not what the post was about, but rather your defense of the old line that Japan would not have considered surrender, thus bringing about a realization of the casualties modeled by Shockley as a result of an inevitable US invasion. The main argument used to support that, the defensive deployments on Kyushu, isn't exactly compelling because what else would you expect them to do until actually directed to surrender? The whole "fanaticism won't let them surrender ever" thing kinda flies in the face of the fact that they, well, did surrender. Again, the nukes were not capable of a level of destruction orders of magnitude greater than what conventional bombing could, and had achieved. Did they give the emperor what he needed to impose a surrender on the hawks in the government? Possibly. Would they otherwise have kept on fighting indefinitely, thus making an invasion inevitable to end the war for good? Not likely.

If your post must be 95% copy paste, at least have the courtesy to provide a link to the work you're citing. Yes, yes, I'm paranoid as all hell but when only selected quotes of a selected quotes compilation are posted I immediately think cherry-picking and contextomy. Beyond that, this is a discussion thread. Providing references and linking expert opinion is cool, but I'd expect a bit more... discussion. Call me crazy. Regardless, from what I've read (all secondary [edit: and tertiary] sources), the issue is complex, and the evidence is far from incontrovertible. So using words like "demolish" and "in ruins" to characterize what is currently an open topic strikes me as somewhat presumptuous. I know those aren't your words, but you quoted them nevertheless. https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/j-samuel-walkers-interview

Yes, yes, throw about 'revisionist' to try and discredit people then accuse them of being dogmatic. Classic Gromnir. Literally four lines inserted in an obvious low-effort copy paste job. Classic indeed. Now, Robert P. Newman's referenced work sounds interesting. I'd have to look it up, but the claim that the USSBS assessment was an utter and complete fabrication with regards to how soon the Japanese would surrender and wrong about the effect of conventional transportation network disruption combined with a naval blockade on resource-starved Japan's ability to maintain a war footing is... odd. Especially considering that the author pins this squarely on a desire to mislead and minimize the effect of the A-bomb by Paul Nitze.

Those are casualty estimates taken from a mathematical model based on the premise that Japan wouldn't surrender no matter what. While the math is probably solid, the basic premise the model is based on needn't be. On the other hand, top military officers seemed to share the opinion that using the bomb to precipitate surrender was unneeded. Nimitz, Halsey, Eisenhower and MacArthur's views seem to be in agreement on this. Even Curtis LeMay declared that Japan would have collapsed "in two weeks" nukes or no (he also believed that the Soviet attack didn't change the situation either). Walter Brown wrote that Secretary Byrnes (to whom he was an assistant), Adm. Leahy and Truman all agreed that Japan was "looking for peace" as early as August 3. It is also useful to remember that, while the destruction caused by the A-bombs was considerable, it was not anything the Japanese hadn't suffered before. For reference, in the night of March 9-10, 97,000 people were killed as per the Tokyo Fire Department in a single, massive raid. And yeah, as Agiel noted, it wasn't Truman making that call, which is something else to consider. IIRC he was on a boat on his way back from Potsdam, where nukes weren't discussed, when he got word, and all he did was sign some previously drafted White House communique warning Japan that there was more where that came from if they kept it up. The narrative that the bombs actually saved millions of lives that would otherwise have been lost in a protracted Iwo Jima-style battle seems to have been crafted post-hoc and doesn't have much supporting evidence.

I don't think it is a huge leap to assume mental health was part of that, given his actions. I could always be wrong, maybe he was well adjusted. "Well-adjusted" kinda flies in the face of what he did, by definition. In any case, going ballistic after getting rekt at whatever isn't exactly a new phenomenon, and as always, Russians are just better at it: https://themoscowtimes.com/news/man-loses-game-of-cards-takes-out-his-axe-59441 AFAICT, this is the first mass shooting directly connected to gaming, right?

In one review I read the author described the same issue, and he said it (alongside clunky LoS mechanics) led to him losing interest in the game. Apparently on higher difficulties you cannot simply dispose of bodies and the strategy of dropping targets one by one like that doesn't work. Seemed to be the consensus in the comments section that anyone with experience in X-COM style games should be playing on hard. I've been keeping my eye on this for a while but I'm trying to wait at least 6 months to buy games. So please keep the comments and screenies coming...

Holy **** that is a good quote. Yeah, I'm not sure the meaning is what we may take it to be today. Let's not forget that the US nuclear arsenal grew from ~1,200 warheads when Ike took office to about 22,000 when his term was up in 1961. This was a guy whose main claim to fame was being Supreme Allied Commander Europe. If anyone should be war weary, it'd be him. No doubt Stalin & friends were a bunch of unredeemable scumbags, but it takes two to tango. So writing maudlin poems while gearing up for nuclear combat toe to toe with the russkies strikes me as a tad hypocritical (edit: from my post-modern urban sensibility and pov, I mean).

Have they managed to make it not run like **** yet? They'll get on it right after they fix the rampant cheating, I'm sure.

Hmm. It could be said that you are an extremist regarding not apologizing to extremists. Would not apologizing to you ever would in turn make me an extremist, and therefore make me not eligible for apologies myself, resulting in a runaway unrepentance effect? I shall ponder this question. Moving on. PUBG is ****ing finally getting a training mode. Who knows, I may even reinstall.

What would it take? A handful of dedicated developers. SCS does what the guy in the video showed, and then some (not knocking his work, just stating facts). The new scripts governing enemy behavior were expanded from several hundred lines each originally to several thousand. All it took was a physics professor writing an entirely new set of AI scripts in his spare time, based on a third-party piece of code developed by professional programmers as asked by one of the original designers of BG2 (detectable spells). The added complexity makes for a really enjoyable experience—if you have sufficient game knowledge to cope with it. Otherwise, it's a fairly miserable time. And so we come to one of the problems with good AI: most people won't spend enough time with a game to appreciate good AI, or derive enjoyment from constantly facing an AI opponent that is simply a better player. What fraction of fans view SCS as a must? How many even know about it? And this is BG2, one of the most popular and highly rated CRPGs of all time. TL;DR it's just not worth it for the most part

I actually meant that unironically! Guess I'm too much of a **** to fully throw off all the spooks, though.

But we do. Anyone running for office at even the local workers' council level is a statist at heart and not really interested in "changing the relationship between the government and the people" in a fundamental way. Anyone running for office while also censuring the state's monopoly on violence is just a statist who thinks his **** don't stink. Minarchism is your jam. Okay. Even the smallest state requires that people are deprived of the right (if not the ability) to exercise their discretion with regards to the use of force in general and especially against it because ultimately any law is useless if there is no way to physically ensure compliance. That and your other bane, the prerogative to raise taxes, are the indispensable foundations of any state—even those which aren't actual states on paper, such as territories ruled by warlords. Sorry my dude, it's either full-on egoist anarchism or statism.

"ELI5: the monopoly on violence" But really, someone saying that with even a hint of disapproval rather than as a purely factual exposition while simultaneously running for an office that necessitates the very thing he's decrying has to be either a total demagogue or plain old stupid. Take your pick.

Looks like a total nightmare to play with a controller, but to me so do "point & click" RPGs. Not to mention that the game still struggles in a decent rig when nearing the endgame. I can already see them capping max empires at 6 and galaxy size at 400 stars. Also, my naturally cynical self finds it exceedingly hard not to think that some of the more controversial changes (fleet changes to discourage doomstacking and FTL simplification) were pushed to make the game run _at all_ on consoles.

How utterly predictable. At least tell me you're an industry plant and not doing this on your own dime? There's no way for anyone to confirm that anything you buy on Amazon Marketplace is actually "new", genius. That's what the Marketplace guarantee is for. If they want their authorized distributors to be separate from Joe Nobody from Nebraska, they can give them a seal or certificate that they can display in their profile or whatever. They can use proprietary shrink wrap as WotC have been doing for decades now to prevent this kind of problem. The solutions are endless. This is plain dumb, and just the latest example of their overbearing and sue-happy attitude.

Just here with your daily reminder that Bethesda are scumbags: Bethesda threatens lawsuit over sale of secondhand game

Guess I missed that. I steered clear of the GG thread but I don't recall the politics thread ever being banned. Do you have specific examples? We can continue this over PM if you'd prefer.