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The point is that Europe doesn't need to choose between being America's bitch and crumbling under the onslaught of Russian tank regiments, and hasn't had to since at least 1991. And yet... here we are. Yes, no one wants to go to Russia. What I'm saying is that the binary choice you are presenting between one master or another is false.

Yep. Exactly like Latvia. Only Latvia's border with Russia is only 200 km long and it'd be a logistical nightmare to use Latvia as springboard in an attack on Russia. Ukraine on the other hand has been used historically exactly as that, repeatedly. I figure some people do learn from history, after all.

Sure, let's kowtow to this foreign power in hopes that they will protect us from the attack that advancing their interests around these parts is sure to provoke. I'm really sorry that Ukraine has been thrown to the wolves by the West, but there is no way NATO was going to risk potential nuclear escalation over a non-member, and there is no way Russia was going to allow NATO to set up shop on their doorstep.

Seriously. What are you going on about? Why would someone migrate from South America to Russia when, given the ability to cross an ocean, they can stop at Southern Europe where they are more likely to get a citizenship, can understand the language, and the economic possibilities are a bit better. Not to mention... it's substantially closer geographically. Your argument right now is that no one wants to emigrate to Russia, therefore America(n imperialism) is great. You are Charlie Kirk and I claim my £5.

I'm sorry, what's the argument you are making again? Obviously a Central American migrant from, say, El Salvador, is going to assume that their lives can't be worse in the US. What alternative do they have, though? ****ing Antarctica? Oh, wait, no. Those who can make it, actually come to Southern Europe, mostly. Of course people in former Soviet Eastern Bloc countries are going to migrate westward. The post-Soviet economic outlook isn't exactly great and neither Russia nor the EU have done much to improve matters. The fact remains that you are still presenting a false dichotomy: either Western Europe with the EU, or no Western Europe at all. Either American influence in Central and South America or... jump in the Pacific, I guess? Yeah, nah.

Mhm. How's that working out south of the Texas border? I'm sorry man, I get it. There's some really bad blood between East Europe peoples and Russia. Ain't gonna sell me on the idea that bending over for chicken**** bureaucrats in Brussels -and the special interests that control them- is a desirable choice, though. I find it really funny that you guys can defend Ukraine's right to break free from Russian influence, while advancing the idea that Europe must bow to American imperialism, all in the same breath. Holy doublethink, Batman!

"Us people in the US"? My guy, I'm Spanish. My country has been a net receiver of EU funds since forever, and we still came off worse. And no, post-Soviet Russia showed very little interest in taking territories unlike the Russian empire of yore, until that stupid mother****er Clinton decided it would be a great idea to expand NATO eastward. Would Eastern Europe be a Russian sphere of influence? No doubt about it. Being a German-American sphere of influence isn't much better -- you not only are a serf, there's also a whiff of self-righteousness about the whole thing.

How in the ever-loving **** do people still believe that not being a part of the EU is somehow bad?! https://www.cep.eu/Studien/20_Jahre_Euro_-_Gewinner_und_Verlierer/cepStudy_20_years_Euro_-_Winners_and_Losers.pdf The EU is great for the German (banks). That's it. For everyone else involved it's both a net bad deal and a loss of sovereignty. Further, why would Ukraine want to become part of the same self-aggrandizing club of spineless losers that left them hung out to dry?

Not used anymore, eh? Fix Our Computers Not saying the post is legit -- it is a RIA Novosti post, after all. But the fact that the computer is old is no evidence to the contrary...

Yeah, I ended up making a clean install and doing pretty much that. In principle I don't mind encounters getting level-appropriate abilities, but the way SCS goes about it sometimes is... tiresome. Like the spammable, no-save 5d12 Ballistic Attack that can one-shot even Clerics (because mind flayers normally come in packs), or making summoned elementals unaffected by Banishment, because that would be too easy. I played around with the menu a bit but eventually realized I'd save myself the aggravation and just go without "improved" anything. I'll admit it has been years since I last played with this mod but some of these "challenges" are exactly the kind of thing that drove me off Tactics and into SCS. I suppose it's inevitable that as people clock in hundreds to thousands of hours in a game they'll find more and more ways to trivialize content and mod makers may feel the need to "balance" and keep things interesting. Just not my cup of tea.

Taking a bit of a break from SWTOR until the expansion drops in a few weeks, came back to BG2(EE). Apparently my favorite mod of all time, Stratagems, slowly went from being a pure AI upgrade to some -fairly untested from the looks of it- hArDcOrE challenge bundle aimed at making every trash pack a total chore to deal with. "Mildly upgrades physical damage of mind flayer abilities", says the readme -- applies a 500% increase. "Smarter" apparently now means that flayers can teleport at will and appear on top of party members on the other side of the map. And so on. Bleh. I'm almost spending more time manually excising nonsense components than playing the game. The fine-tuning menu is nifty, though. Never been easier to install a metric ton of mods, as well. Two independent tools to manage components, load orders, and even downloads. And once configured it's basically fire and forget. Amazing that the mod scene is still so active.

Have you tried Twisted Insurrection?

Sir, you are wrong -- this is the internet we are talking about. You are losing money, the way I see it. And once again, I'm "that guy". I often have these streams running in the background while I go about completely mind-numbing tasks like leveling a character or answering work emails. Beats listening to the whine of my case fan and it's not as distracting as music or as rage-inducing as news radio. BTW, I remember reading that one of those streamers actually got banned for the mic licking routine because Twitch figured it was too sexually suggestive or something. They unbanned her later because reasons and now it's a thing in there. They keep pushing the envelope all the time because people really like T&A, I guess.

eh, n/m

The Spanish media landscape is... depressing, to put it mildly. Comparatively very little attention is given to international matters and there's a hyperfocus on the domestic crises of the day, on which they will keep on reporting, even if there have been no substantial developments. It's a bit of a feedback loop -- readers generally aren't very interested in learning much about foreign affairs, so not much effort is put into making in-depth and well researched reports. Which in turn fails to spark much interest in international stuff. It's easy to check too, the foreign affairs news pieces may have a few dozen comments if that, while the president trading barbs with the opposition in parliament will have hundreds. So to answer your question, yeah. Probably only political elites (and defense industry bigwigs) really care, and personally I would have paid good money to see Macron's face when he found out. I have no idea what the average Frenchman's thoughts are on the matter, but I imagine they have bigger things to worry about.

^ That video is apparently private and not loading for me.

Sadly, it's a problem that is neither exclusive to Britain nor a consequence of Brexit -- though obviously HM's Government's lack of foresight and utter lack of interest in managing Brexit has only made it worse. The best example of this incompetence is the 5k visas they are offering where it's estimated that they need 100k drivers. Money's not terrible either -- ~£30k on average from what I read, for a job with a fairly low entry barrier. Conditions are grueling of course, and there's the risk of the whole thing being automated in the future, rendering drivers obsolete overnight... before 2030. https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-looming-truck-driver-shortage-trucker-haulier-brexit-hgv/

Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks

Yeah, Heroes apparently fixes some of the biggest problems with the game at launch so consensus among players seems to be that it's pretty much essential now, but I don't know about this one. For me the biggest deal breaker is that every update breaks mods. Otherwise I would probably have it already -- coop seems fun enough.

I didn't even know they were releasing another DLC so soon -- first one dropped just before summer. And apparently they added infantry through an official mod (because apparently devs do that now), but it's not very good currently.

Slow news day eh? Here, have some communism: Activision Blizzard lawsuit has video game workers using union tactics — but not unionizing I liked the bit about some union's biggest accomplishment being preventing a bunch of layoffs... only to have Blizz close the entire studio down instead. Weird flex but ok.

I think the idea was that MCA disliked the Force rather than Star Wars in general, and in particular the seemingly inescapable destiny-shaping aspects of it. Kreia is his mouthpiece in that regard. I can't remember exactly where that idea came from, though -- an interview he did, or maybe a forum post here. I think MCA will like any setting that allows him to write walls of text into it.

I don't think this is an EA project. Sony Interactive and Lucasfilm Games, rather. Though if you don't want to give Disney money, that works too.

Yeah, that's a common occurrence in RPGs in general, and Bioware games in particular. I guess making compelling and credible evil options is difficult, because it boils down to either egoism (i.e. walk away and get no XP or loot) or zealotry which is often a poor fit for player characters. Games tend to go for the thug playstyle instead, and that's just boring. Tyranny I think managed to present consistently interesting "evil" options that made sense for the player, but I can't remember many other games that did. Tyranny is also a special case in the sense that the story sets the player up as an official and enforcer of an all-powerful tyrant.

While it's debatable whether Jedi are remotely saintly, that's a failing of the setting, if at all. In a war context, Jedi rack up impressive body counts in other media as well. A true pacifist playthrough being a possibility in the remake would be a huge selling point for me, personally. I doubt that's in the cards, though.