Gorth

Something less virtual and closer to home... Australia at COP26 I know I've made the joke before, but Scott Morrison is literally fighting wind mills Don Quixote style, going to great length to sabotage any and all initiative that could lead Australians to turn to renewable energy, including wind, solar and similar energy sources. As for the why doing such a stupid thing, because the fossil fuel industry is one of the three main interest groups currently keeping the Liberal Party afloat (the other two being the mining industry and the church)

I'm perfectly happy here in Queensland. Sure it's halfway like living in the Outback, at the edge of civilization and the population has a disproportionate number of Bogans... but the weather? 10-20C in the winter and 20-30C (night and day) in the summer. I can relate to lizards and how wonderful it is to just bask in the sun on a rock.

The only "important" multiple choice tests I've ever done (4 of them) were Microsoft certifications. Usually of the get 80 out of 100 questions right within 2 hours to pass kind of tests. They were Ok I suppose. They did cover most of the areas you were tested in. Obvious pitfalls and trick questions included for good measure. Also some bugged questions that had no right answers, so that went into the feedback forms before logging off the PC at the test center. I remember it felt odd having this test center employee constantly hovering behind my back, staring at what I was doing, making sure I wasn't sneaking in any notes (for those tests, you were only allowed to use the information provided by the test software and what's inside your head)

I hear it was shot in Wisconsin...

That reminds me I have ME4 on my Origin platform. Never got around to try launching it The trilogy was a mixed bag. All IMHO, but first game had the most fun combat, second game had the most fun party members (and party, with the DLC) and third game had... no mini games! My biggest two beefs with ME3 was Kai Leng (which completely killed any enjoyment I might have felt playing the game up to that point) and the pointless ending that killed any enjoyment I might have felt playing the game up the that point... A bit of a weird thing about Bioware games when I look at it in retrospective. Dragon Age 1 and Mass Effect 1 both had some very promising and interesting game mechanics and combat systems. The sequels in both series tossed it all out and featured what I see as comparably dumb, mindless systems. Was it really too challenging? Dang it, I really loved discovering new, fun (and sometimes completely suicidal) outcomes when mixing various spell effects in the original Dragon Age

I bought Fallout 4 GOTY edition, if nothing else, just to satisfy my curiosity. Still have a very bad taste in my mouth after dropping Fallout 3 halfway through with no intention of going back to it. I made it to some camp with a bunch of kids that screamed 'kill me', but the game wouldn't let me kill them, uninstalled and never looked back. Oh yeah, the requirement for a non existing Microsoft Live service was another reason. It was $13, so I just think of that as the price of satisfying my curiosity and see what this game is about. I don't know what it is about Bethesda, but they sure as heck can't start stories in any way that I find motivating. In Fallout 3, they threw this old guy at me all the time, called him my 'Dad' and I was supposed to care somehow. Well, I couldn't care less I suppose. In Fallout 4, they have weighed me down with some brat, i suddenly have to find. Problem is just... I... don't... give... a... ****... about the baby. Hope the rad scorpions made a nice meal out of him. Double fail Bethesda, people don't care about characters because YOU TELL THEM TO, dammit. They just don't. Found my old home and Codsworth being way more interesting than my now dead partner and irrelevant spawn. Not sure if I'm actually going to progress from this point onward to be honest or just write off the $13 and cut my losses (time is a valuable commodity for me these days)

I guess that makes the Nordic people part of the 1%... our bronze age ancestors were cannibals and practiced ritual human sacrifice, our iron age ancestors (vikings) were raiders, pillagers and rapists. Our medieval ancestors were feudal lords, effectively slave holders and greedy as ****. Having turned to Christianity added an extra element of brutality and heartlessness that even our bronze and iron age ancestors didn't know. Our renaissance ancestors were imperialist, land grabbing scum. Just a few centuries ago, German was the de facto language of the nobility, because it was thought of as being sophisticated. Yet, the only thing they all remember these days is that the Swedish sucks... Edit: Granted, Denmark never had much in the way of prolonged civil wars, leadership disputes were usually settled quite quickly, first with regicides and later with economic blackmail.

You guys watch too much TV Thread continued here:

Some people are really struggling with video game addiction... so GDP could become a real issue. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58979895 Cam Adair finally realised that his addiction to video games was out of control when it made him consider ending his life. "I struggled with it for 10 years," he says. "I dropped out of high school, never went to college, and pretended to have jobs to deceive my family. "I eventually wrote a suicide note, and it was on that night that I realised I needed to get help. I'm now 3,860-day-free from my gaming addiction." ... "The pandemic led to me spending more time than usual watching Twitch [a live streaming service that focuses on people playing computer games], and YouTube," says Mr Adair. "Much of that [YouTube] content was game streamers and games too, both of which can be strong triggers to relapse and play. Thankfully I was able to stay away from a relapse, but I know many people in the Game Quitters community who did unfortunately relapse during Covid."

Following an old tradition, renewing threads.... Continued here (the last few hours of posts moved there) Thread close

Yeah, that's enough cute for one thread Copied GD's last post to start of new thread here....

Continuing where the old thread left off...

The blessing of Murdoch media... providing a shrine for human stupidity where they can congregate and sing hymns to their own ignorance. Blessed is the moron, for he shall not see it coming. I mentioned in a previous post, it's not a unique US trait. Murdoch media in Australia is the spitting image of Fox News (his Sky News network is same all over the world). People started looking for alternative news sources in Australia after NewsCorp got called out by police and fire departments for deliberately lying about the sources of the bushfires two years ago. It wasn't climate change, it was a combined army of thousands of arsonists roaming the country side, making it look like it was climate change that was to blame!!! I'm not even kidding, the truth is completely irrelevant to any Fox/Sky News reporting. And they both attract the same kind of people to the comments sections.

Moved a number of posts (that had little to do with gaming) to a new thread in WoT...

GD has a new girlfriend now... The universe no longer universally sucks

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59018391 Apparently Alec Baldwin was handed a loaded gun with a real bullet in it. The guy who was injured was standing behind the woman who got killed and was hit in the shoulder as it passed through her. Meanwhile, the BBC has obtained a document showing which crew members were listed as scheduled to be on set that day. It names a head armourer, the crew member responsible for checking firearms. Hannah Gutierrez Reed is in her twenties and, according to the LA Times, had recently worked in this role for the first time. Looks like the head armourer messed up on her first day on the job...

And something that somehow missed the 80's bus and ended up in the 90's... Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine

And a bit more... (sorry about the double post, I just have bad experiences putting too many videos in a single post)

Just feeling nostalgic... comes with age I suppose

Microsoft engineers are not without humour. An older version of their ERP software had something called Analysis Views. And a table to store the entries that made up the views. Of course they had to name that table AnalViewEntry… hard not to giggle immaturely when working with those objects (the provided functions being plays on AnalView)

They're fine. I can laugh at them I know this isn't the comics thread, but if you like this kind of humour, I wonder if you've ever read Vaughn Bodē? The Lizard of Oz, Lizard Zen or anything else lizard related. Slightly less explicit than the above and definitely more psychedelic (not sure how else to describe a colourful comic featuring nude women and lizards ending up in amusing situations)

But then, who gets to decide what is right and what is wrong? E.g. that (in)famous statue that got removed in a town in England. He was a prolific slave trader and the statue was there to commemorate how much his slave trade contributed to make the local community prosperous. Right or wrong to remove such a statue? Slavery has also existed in the western world since the Industrial Revolution. It took a century of hard (and sometimes bloody) fights by various socialist uprisings and trade unions to get out of something that in some parts of the world still is and in other parts was no different from the power landowners wielded over serfs in medieval times. Workers to be exploited (that's what I call 12-16 hour work shifts with symbolic pay, often not enough to feed or house anyone), killed (deliberately, shot by local militias/police forces if unruly or incidental by cost cutting measures), traded as part of the property they were contractually bound to work at when getting new owners etc. without anyone batting an eyelid. Yet, I'm sure you'll find the odd statue of those "great" industrialists in parts of the world. They aren't really any different from that slave traders statue that got removed in England. Why should they stay again?

Statues... what's the point. Build pyramids instead. If you want the world to wonder what the heck happened here...

In part what Amentep said, but mostly because I rarely enjoy "passive" entertainment. I like video games because I can participate actively in the entertainment and otherwise prefer watching cinema, concerts, theater, musicals etc. Sitting still and watching a screen for hours without interacting with it just doesn't sit well with me. For several years, I didn't have a TV either. If I *really* wanted to watch something, I would buy the DVD(s) and view it on my PC (that's how I binge watched all seasons of Game of Thrones, never saw an episode on TV). It's a bit about control maybe? I don't want to feel "compelled" to watch a channel because I'm paying a monthly subscription fee... Edit: I'll check out 'Sexy Losers'. I had a look at Crunchyroll, but the only show I could find of the ones I were looking for was Attack on Titan. I might still give that one a go.

Between fires, droughts and the San Andreas Fault, the east coast doesn't really look *that* bad