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Must have missed the part where she explicitly says she's willing to give anything up to the state. A circular economy is not necessarily a command economy. If you see any form of social participation as "the state", then the problem is with your definition, not her ideas. Also, in order to give up your freedom or individuality, you must have either. Do you?

Make Germany Great(er) Again.

Look at you, going all serious in a Lord of Flies Lords thread. Personally I'm much more interested in other sorts of useful transmutations, like fat to fit, water to wine, and of course, lead to gold. Unless you are solely interested in the science of it, in which case the 'why' is literally the only relevant thing. Apologies for the contextomy.

They asked him: "Did you do it?" and he said "No." So they let him go. I think you forgot to mention that the chief of police brought his sister in so the suspect could have his way with her in the interrogation room for his trouble.

Self-censorship is the worst kind of censorship. am pretty sure that inability to self-censor is symptomatic o' mental illness. just sayin'. HA! Good Fun! Yeah, well. No one is perfect.

Self-censorship is the worst kind of censorship.

Who knows. Apparently she's big on the whole circular economy thing. Regarding the loss of privacy that scandalises you so much, I hope you don't own a smartphone, don't buy anything on the internet, pay for everything using cash (which is itself on its way out), use a browser like Epic by default, etc. Because ironically enough, the "no privacy" thing is actually the most verisimilar thing in the entire piece. Some stuff is unavoidable, for instance, newer electricity meters log your power consumption habits. Post-scarcity future? I don't know about that. Post-privacy? You bet.

I just beat it. Have to agree. Mechanically, it's better than D&D/vancian, but every encounter in the game is literally the same. No, really. Even Archons. The only difference is how much bonus to hit/damage and health mobs have. Casters aren't really too dangerous. No healers. Tanks hit like a truck. Skirmishers/ranged you can pretty much ignore. The design-your-own-spell system is so underused it's almost a criminal offense. Why bother making the most of it toying around with spells when you can just spam stun/prone effects and add DoTs just for the hell of it? The lack of sufficiently different encounters to force you to adjust is the most glaring flaw here. Edict of Stone? **** it, I'll just swap my lightning bolts with rolling boulders. Whatever happened to vampire lairs, thieves' dens, <color> dragons etc? The setting is cool and all, but I don't understand what's the deal with iron. Cast iron is inferior to bronze wrt its properties. Economically, it's more advantageous to outfit your armies with iron gear than bronze, but that's it; otherwise bronze is superior (harder, bends rather than breaks). Why the iron fetish? Uneven pacing, with a strong start, gets weaker as the game nears the ending. Par for the course for Obs games. How much was left on the cutting room floor? The power/edict mechanic is... superfluous. Overall I rate it a perfect 5/7. Tyranny 2 when? edit: cast/wrought iron confusion. I cannot into metallurgy

I like good **** and I like good trees. Alpha Protocol was a commercial failure. That means more bells and whistles and less reactivity. Sorry! (I blame people)

Ah, there's a surprise. Which are you referring to, that he can't spell it or that he doesn't understand it?

Choices that matter. It seems pretty clear that BiowEA have chosen to maintain profitability by drastically cutting back development costs, instead of aiming for a net revenue increase. I feel this is a weak model and more vulnerable to changes in the environment than a supposed top-tier product should be, but I've been wrong before, and MMOs seem to be on their way out (or at least losing popularity to other genres). Maybe this is a good thing regarding future single player games. Then again, EA retains an exclusive license.

I admit that I'm not the most objective guy on the subject, but they hailed KotFE as "omg the most successful expansion evar", while the last 10-Q filing actually reported a 1% decrease in net subscription revenue. This is after they had announced KotET ("more of the same"), I think. Not likely to tank anytime soon, but not exactly in great shape either. Take that as you will.

Haha, not just the plot. The raid was bugged at release (no loot). As was the solo instance (unkillable Revan). So much fail... re: KotOR 3. Just give us a SW RPG about whatever. Or better yet, a new Jedi Knight game.

Nah, the analogy is perfect for what it is. But feel free to get your panties all in a bunch over some meaning you inferred from my post and then accuse me of not wanting a discussion in good faith after putting words in my mouth. I mean, being a passive-aggressive pantywaist really is all the rage around these parts, so why not?

I enjoy fast food. Therefore it's good. Because logic.

I doubt they were thinking about a trilogy when they made ME1. That's why they didn't know what to do for a story in ME2, they didn't know what to make of the Reapers (and therefore nobody can know, heh), they couldn't properly develop characters without substantially re-writing them between games, they couldn't find a common tone for the whole trilogy, etc. Throw in the gameplay changes between titles and the very mixed reception is no wonder. Bioware excel at convincing people that their RPGs are good, rather than at making good RPGs. Why ME3 wasn't taken more broadly as a lesson in the deceitful nature of marketing, I don't know. That being said, I have to admit I had great fun playing Captain Space A$$hole, journalist assaulter extraordinaire. And I also sank a bunch of hours into the ME3MP, but that was largely a fluke, judging by how bad the DAI MP thing failed.

Mmh. That's not really what she's doing, though. It's more the article being structured in a somewhat misleading way than Merkel denouncing oby's efforts to coup Germany. Her position seems to be a much more cautious "we cannot rule it out", with her main intelligence man outright accusing Russia of trolling and hacking... but carefully limiting his remarks to "potential" dangers during the upcoming election. The APT28 group he references has been around for a few years at least, so nothing really ground-breaking, and the escalation of operations began back in 2014 in the context of the whole Ukraine fiasco. Who woulda thunk it. This is also shortly after professional good-for-nothings at Brussels appeared increasingly concerned that Uncle Joe is winning the propaganda war some 25 years after the Berlin wall fell. Brace for upcoming "anti-disinformation" efforts. Bonus points to the author for describing the EU as a "crumbling bloc", btw. If only...

Hey guys I heard there's a new expansion? ...oh

Haha, okay mate. So we've gone from "Islam tanking half our governments" to "people are not only" concerned about the economy! Whoop-de-****ing-doo, but at least we're making progress. I never said that the economy was their only concern, I said you were cherrypicking and jumping to conclusions. Then the poll *you* cited said economic issues rate first among their concerns, if not exclusively. Maybe read your own links for a change: "All the same, most Germans still trust the CDU to come up with solid asylum and refugee policies. But 27 percent of Germans say they feel none of the country's political parties have convincing solutions to the problem - a rather high figure. Only 7 percent say they're confident that the AfD - which has yet to prove its authority as part of a government - has the right answers." So her popularity is falling... and yet she's still 10% ahead of her closest competitors, the socialists. Her lead over the AfD is almost 20 points. It's not that it's "practically impossible" to unseat Merkel. It's that Germans seemingly aren't keen on putting the far right in power again so soon. But there's more: http://ifop.fr/media/poll/3576-1-study_file.pdf http://www.bva.fr/data/sondage/sondage_fiche/1930/fichier_intentions_de_vote_-_vague_7_-_pop2017_-_7_decembre_2016cbc14.pdf Hmm... the two latest polls for the upcoming French presidential election show that the foremost concern for the French is, in fact, unemployment. Terrorism and security second in both, but on the one where a comparison to previous polls is made, it's clear that it's starting to take a back seat. Understandable considering that there haven't been any more attacks for a while now. Those two polls do predict a victory for the right, but neither gives Le Pen a shot. Yeah, yeah. The poor right gets discriminated against (what the hell does that even mean?) by the evil librul media. Your evidence? "that's frankly true" and "nobody with a straight face would claim otherwise". Yeah, you'll excuse me if I don't take your critical assessments as gospel. You don't exactly have a great track record interpreting data objectively. It's frankly sad how you keep twisting facts and misinterpreting figures to suit your Islamic bogeymen stories. Wake me up when you learn to properly cite stuff that actually supports what you are saying. edit: of course, it pays to remember how laughably off polls have been lately. Brexit, Trump, and it also happened here. Another thing to consider when making predictions and regarding matters as settled.

Is that a spanish proverb and is it true? Not a proverb, but yeah, it's true. In Spanish you'd say "se me ha caído" rather than "lo he dejado caer". Responsibility for falling is on the object in question, the damned thing, never on me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

So, we went from "half of the governments in Yurop have been tanked due to immigration (Islam)" to "Trump has won in the US, and maybe in the future the right is going to win elsewhere, and er, Brexit means the right won (despite the fact that the Tory PM resigned over it)". You done shifting from one foot to the other yet? Again, other than your own bias, what do you have to support that "immigration (Islam) was a significant part" of the results of Brexit and the Italian referendum? This is how it works: you look at evidence and then you make a hypothesis. What you've been doing is cherrypick facts and then magically draw conclusions that, oh surprise, fit your preconceptions. And please, understand that getting lambasted by the media is "fair" representation when you are in fact a self-serving, proven liar. If you are equating the one-sided treatment that Le Pen and Orban get in European media to what Trump received, well... I don't know what to say to you. Read more newspapers?

I'm sure James Monroe would agree. Teddy Roosevelt and others? Not so much. The US put out a system that slaveowners wouldn't have only after the country was torn apart in a civil war. And the reasons leading to the war were not only political and ethical, but economic as well. At the same time, you have to remember that Spain, unlike Great Britain, didn't have a long tradition of parliamentarianism. Spanish colonists, unlike their English counterparts didn't establish local assemblies and electoral processes. Socioeconomic arrangements were also different; while in the Thirteen Colonies there was no landed aristocracy to speak of, the Creoles and Peninsulars in Spanish colonies effectively became the landed aristocracy of Latin America thanks to the aforementioned caste system and forced labor schemes which, while formally retaining property of the land for the Crown, granted rights of exploitation of the natives to individuals (encomiendas and repartimientos). Why weren't there social liberal movements in Latin America? Flawed question. There were, but they failed to bring about real change for different reasons. US interference is one of them, but not the only one.

Not to be (more of) an insufferable ass, but I think you mean the Monroe Doctrine, which predates the explicitly anti-Soviet Truman Doctrine. The traditional ruling classes in South America can largely trace their origins to the upper castes of the old Spanish (and Portuguese? I don't know much about that) colonial system. Unlike in the US, you had a small minority of European colonists who ruled over a rigidly stratified society with which, for the most part, they did not intermingle. The independence movements in those countries had little to do with the dignity and rights of native Amerindians and everything to do with creole elites wanting more leeway to do as they pleased without Peninsular meddling and taxation. Left or right trappings were just superficial and cosmetic for these elites, ultimately what mattered was maintaining their privileged status. With a few exceptions, most rulers in South and Central America are of evident European descent, and it's not by coincidence. Reductionist explanation leaving out other factors of course, but as usual, if you want to understand something in history, all you have to do is keep going back...

First off, the economy is, and has been, a primary topic for both the left and the right. I don't know about the political discourse in Serbia particularly, but here, in Italy, France, and especially the UK and the US, the issue of immigration has been presented as subaltern to economy (H-2B issues in the US, strain on the NHS and public schooling in the UK) first, security concern as a distant second, and not at all as a matter of cultural emergency or ethnic survival. Yes, there are good reasons to think that the votes have had a strong protest component. Against both left and right. Against the "establishment" by disaffected types, who are both increasing in number and increasingly aware that they are getting the raw end of the deal in this "social contract" which professional politicians aren't about to change anytime soon. It's not surprising that when people think their future is threatened they first seek to secure their own and that of their offspring before anyone else's. That is human nature. And no, the right wasn't under MSM attack, except in the US -- only in the US it wasn't the right per se, it was Trump. It pays to remember that he guy had been disavowed by his own party. The same extreme, one-sided media polarization hasn't happened in Europe, so not only are you making an unfalsifiable (and therefore useless) claim, you are basing it on a false premise. Oh, and by the way. They just elected a pro-refugee leftard in Austria this sunday. But that doesn't count because... reasons? With that all said, let's go back to your original statement: I have to say that you have an interesting concept about what "half" means, and the rest is basically magical thinking along the lines of Lisa's tiger-warding rock, which the very poll you brought up disproves.

So you say, but I was listening to it while doing my squats, and around the 1:00 mark I felt like the mother****ing Archon of Iron...