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Mattis was asked this very question yesterday. He robotically parroted a predictable non-answer about carefully selecting targets and doing their utmost to prevent civilian casualties. No worries son, we got it covered. Joe Taxpayer knows his dollar is well spent in defense of America, even as he struggles under the crushing weight of medical and/or student debt.

By intervening openly and forcefully.Obviously it would be a political suicide for some but it could have been done when the war was just beginning. Yeah, sort of like Libya. What a paradise that place became right after the moment . Remember: if brute force doesn't solve the problem, you aren't applying enough.

If legislation of this sort becomes more widespread, that could signal the death of social media. A guy can dream. As for the public watching the legislators... that's a good one.

Yeah. So either unenforceable on the part of social media operators, or completely ineffectual if they don't take a strong-arm approach. But sure, let the courts try to discern the "lawmakers' intent", and hand down some ridiculous rulings in the process. That'll at least make for some amusing posts here. Also, who watches the watchmen, etc.

So, who are these "fact checkers" going to be? It will be up to them whether or not a news story gets shared. If "they" say it isn't true then it isn't. Even if it is. Now, Obsidian is a California based company. Will this be the end of sharing news stories on WoT? Especially if the political powers that be decide they don't like what the news story says, um, I mean the news story isn't verified? Yeah, that's it. Verified? I keep coming back to a quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game "Beware he who would deny you access to information. For in his heart he dreams himself your master". That's hilarious. Let's assume I post a news story that machines are finally taking over and link to a rigorously researched CompSci paper as proof. Does Obsidz need to have a team of reviewers that can ascertain the veracity of the story... or be in violation of the statute? And what happens if the "fact-checkers" make a bona fide mistake? In short: LOL

Yeah, it's pretty stupid. Under our current "weapons ordinance", you could technically get in trouble for carrying a mother****ing screwdriver, let alone something intended as an actual "weapon" such as a pain compliance device. Firearms beyond hunting rifles/shotguns? Forget about it, you'd have to prove that terrorists or drug cartels are gunning for you, and even in that case, the license is handed discretionally... and can be revoked at any time, without explanation. Of course, potential criminals aren't fazed. I've long realized that it's better to risk getting caught with something and face the music than get caught with your pants down by someone that isn't worried about the much worse penalties for assaulting another person with a weapon.

Interesting theory, but evidence suggests you have it backwards. For instance, merchant-turned-missionary Bartolomé de las Casas' struggle to have Amerinds be granted rights and abolish the institutions that systematically enslaved them was based on the revolutionary idea—at the time—that "all peoples of the world are men", and therefore deserving of the King's protection as subjects. His reasoning eventually led to the abolition of (nominal) slavery in Spanish America. Was there an economic reason for slavery? Sure. Would the slave trade have existed without notions of racial superiority? Possibly. After all, Greeks would sometimes enslave other Greeks after defeating them in war. However, that doesn't mean that the racist component integral to the American black slave system did not exist, did not matter, or was merely a "projection". Read up on racists within the abolitionist movement; their very existence proves that the two issues are connected but ultimately distinct.

I'm pretty sure that prevalent thinking until about the early 20th century was that blacks were inferior as a race. Barely people, having more in common with apes than with the PC master race. Such luminaries as Voltaire even bought into this. They even invented whole new "sciences" to support it. And thus, we were given scientific racism, a thorny topic, to say the least. There might have been economic and logistical reasons for specifically targeting sub-Saharan blacks for the slave trade, but whatever they were, they fit snugly into pre-existing European—and classical, to be honest—views of racial superiority.

Eh, I don't know about that. Extrajudicial killings with total disregard for collateral damage are always a big hit. While most people probably have other things to worry about, just about anyone you ask is going to agree that publicly murdering your citizens—"traitorous" or not—via nerve agent is a big no-no.

Interestingly, I remember reading that there is evidence in the game files that Beth at some point intended to have the civil war subplot be much more involved and have it affect the world in noticeable and permanent ways. The final version of the quest in the game is basically a stump of what was designed originally. I agree with what you said, at any rate. Repetition in open world games is much harder to conceal than in more linear games. I generally can only put up with it if I'm playing with friends. I don't think I would have been able to finish Dying Light by myself despite the absolutely brilliant parkour mechanics and great atmosphere otherwise, and yet it's my most played game on Steam. Heh.

I'd say pull the trigger. It's not a MINDBLOWING, GROUNDBREAKING NARRATIVE EXPERIENCE, but it's well worth the price of admittance. Solid characters, interesting premise, and some decent C&C. It also has one of the best introductory acts I've seen in a CRPG. As others have said, it's short, so commitment wise it's nothing too serious. It's a bit heavy on the forced "replayability" and player ego stroking though, so you may find that grating—I know I did. Combat is bad, but it's Obsidian, so par for the course. I enjoyed it much better than Pillars, which bored me to tears and never got around to finishing. Also, don't bother with the DLC.

Physics is about observing a phenomenon, inventing a mathematical framework that adequately describes it, and drawing useful conclusions based on that. A mathematician's purpose is fundamentally the same but bleeding edge math and physics are hella esoteric after 300+ years of more or less steady progress and a few super geniuses. Was Von Neumann more a physicist or a mathematician? It's an arbitrary distinction, useful mostly for curricular organization. I'm thinking the "complexity" in the group mentioned refers to the study of complex systems, in which physicists (as well as many others) are heavily involved. Don't mean to sound patronizing or anything, but a physicist is exactly the kind of scientist I'd expect to be heading something like that.

"It has been a fantastic Presidency. Really, really great."

RTS is dead due to the MOBA, sadly. Would be nice to have a 40k version of Arma :D I haven't played DoW3 but I was under the impression that Relic tanked their own game by pushing a bit too hard with the esports-friendly, moba-like angle, thus alienating the actual RTS fans they still had. Wasn't DoW2 MP fairly popular a few years ago?

Hey man, they have to cover their bases. You can't very well price gouge unless your "competition" isn't in a position to compete, now can you?

I'm going through Dead Man Switch - Vox Populi: a port of the original SRR campaign to the SR:HK engine. It's not a 1:1 port—it has quite a bit of user-generated content, but so far it's decent. Surprisingly polished other than the fact that some conversations at the hub are mistimed, which occasionally produces rather nonsensical and confusing banter. My biggest gripe is that without a proper SDK, music cannot be ported, so I'm stuck with the HK themes. I don't think I'd be able to go through DMS again in the original engine after HK, so otherwise, it's great.

The upgrade is free for all owners of the base game (PC). It remains to be seen whether it'll be worth it, even so. Me, I'm desperate for some co-op pewpewpew (I even enjoyed Colonial Marines), so I'll at least give it a shot.

No idea. I bought it for peanuts for the coop campaign, found out they were revamping it with the EE which would be free for unEnhanced Edition owners, let it gather dust since then. General consensus seems to be it's mediocre at best in its current state. Bad AI, poor performance, the works. Supposedly all of that is getting some love as well, it's not just more content. edit: damn you, Malcador!

For the emprah!!

AFAIK, Getting most any Ubi game from Steam forces you to go through Uplay, anyway. Why would you want to throw yet another layer of DRM on top of Denuvo, VMP and Uplay?

Haha. The beeb is too scandalized to even refer to the "k word". It's just "the highly offensive word". This is Harry Potter-level puerile, here. Also: I'm pretty sure HoonDing is being ironic, as usual. The quote has been a longstanding reply—incorrectly—used by "leftists" and the BLM crowd.

Not anymore it doesn't. Thanks to financial markets, capital no longer needs to be invested and work to create tangible wealth to make investors a profit. Indeed, it's undeniably riskier and potentially less profitable to put down a few hundred millions to bankroll Ol' Musky's gigafactory than it is to speculate with some investment "vehicle" that hedges risk onto low-income homeowners or Joe taxpayer. Hell, even crypto investments are more profitable than investing in a business that produces something and employs people. Taxes shmaxes. It doesn't matter. Raise them? Capital flight and tax evasion. Cut them? "Healthy" upwards wealth redistribution, happy carefree financial shenanigans, and fiscal engineering will ensure that what isn't covered by the cuts will be ensconced safely away from the taxman anyway. It would take a coordinated global effort to put that genie back in the bottle, and it ain't happening unless **** gets ugly.

"We've also had renewed interest from some publishing partners, for whom the more complex and costly game was something of a challenge for them, that this is what they were hoping we would provide and renewed their interest." I vaguely recall someone calling it in the SS debacle thread a few weeks ago. So glad I could help finance your overly expensive and poorly managed AAA publisher pitch guys!

I think the concern is more about the state having a comprehensive record of every minor thing you may have ever done and enforcing penalties based on that, than about the idea of consequences for violations. On principle, I don't disagree, either. I live in a country where it's really easy for minor things like telling someone to take their hoof off a bus seat to escalate into a physical confrontation -- basic manners and consideration have largely gone the way of the dodo. I would, however, resist it in practice because if something has a potential to be abused you can bet your ass politicians will abuse the **** out of it. I mean, it's not like the CPC have a great track record of transparency and honesty. Social rules have always worked based on a soft "social credit" concept. The problem is the state taking charge of it now.

If only this extended to PUBG cheaters...