Gorth

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/chinese-troops-practice-midnight-launches-of-carrier-killer-missiles-2021-6?r=US&IR=T

Just another short fan movie...

Duh... yes, I got my decimal points all mixed up That should read 20 ton, not kiloton... what's a few zeros?

Let's see if this thing keeps floating... testing how a 20 kiloton explosion next to a carrier affects it (I guess they are worried about the Chinese "carrier buster" bombs/ballistic missiles) https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-57547885 Edit: Video on the BBC page of the test. Apparently the carrier was scheduled for being taken out of action for a while anyway for maintenance work and repairs. Edit2: I suck at numbers

My nemesis has a name at last! The deity behind The Amulet of Chaos, which has cursed my party, is none other than the God of Fail

For whats its worth, Nestle is a Swiss company, but the US branch is probably the only part of the giant multi-headed monster it is, they could at least try to drag to court (when in the US).

I did when I found out they were behind thousands of infant deaths, because they aggressively marketed a low quality powder milk substitute as better than breastfeeding your newborns in third world countries.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57522186 (never mind that I categorically already refuse to touch anything, chocolate or otherwise I suspect is made by Nestle or its subsidiaries for other reasons) "The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery on African farms from where they buy their cocoa. Six African men alleged that they were trafficked from Mali and forced to work on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast. The group say both companies perpetuated that slave trade to keep cocoa prices low. The court ruled 8-1 that the group had no standing because the abuse happened outside the US." An interesting situation. I suppose the ruling is technically correct (even if morally wrong). Sort of making you wonder if it was the right place the trial took place (or the wrong kind of trial)? Is child (slave) labor legal under US law as long as it doesn't happen on US soil? If so, would the laws need changing or are there other laws that apply, which the claimants should have pursued instead?

What's wrong with drinking mead from the skulls of your enemies???

I chose the exact opposite, following my native country's health advice (Denmark has completely banned AZ and J&J for human use). That from a country that currently has its own DNA based vaccine in trial testing, as an alternative to the mRNA vaccines). Bear in mind, BioNTech (the company that developed the vaccine commonly just called 'Pfizer') is not new to the technology, it wasn't something that sprung up overnight. The two brothers (Turkish immigrants who moved to Germany in some distant past) that runs the company has been doing a decades worth of research in mRNA technology searching for treatments of cancers. Somehow they just got the bright idea it might also work if put to triggering the immune system against Covid virus (not at least thanks to some hefty support by the German government). Pfizer was necessary, as a small company has nowhere near the manufacturing capacity nor the overseas distribution network that a giant like Pfizer has.

How did that old (pre-digital) saying go, a broken clock is right twice a day? I don't think Trump couldn't be right about anything, even if tried. Tl;dr; the article: "1) We still don't know anything 2) Who can be blamed for what and how can we exploit it politically"

Remember the old jokes about dropping off your baby in the forest and if it survives, it's strong enough? Not quite as drastic... Danish forest kindergardens, home of feral Danes

Sounds a bit like the protein folding project people used to run instead of screensavers

All I see is that China owns a substantial amount of the US Debt (1 trillion) and about 4 trillion USD as currency reserve. They pretty much have the fingers on the trigger of the US economy too. If push comes to shove, they can make it crash and burn, because they might have more influence on the currency exchange rates of the USD than the US has... (yes, I did see the historical reasons for it, keeping the currency they get paid in high and the currency they pay workers domestically in at a lower rate to keep it cheap). But, I was referring to China (unlike some oil states I could mention) has started a long and steady process of moving away from its over reliance on a one trick pony, in this case manufacturing export. It still pays well, but the last decade it has been gradually replaced by domestic consumerism instead of export. But maybe JP Morgan can explain that better than me https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/research/china-economy-2021-en JP Morgan predicts China will overtake USA as worlds larges economy around 2030, give or take a few years. Edit: First time I read about this change of Chinese economy was indeed in the aftermath of the GFC, don't remember which news channel it was, sorry. Was a long time ago. Edit2: Yes, my prediction of 10 years might have been a few years off JP Morgan, but I'm no economist. I leave stuff like the you and @Darkpriest

I wouldn't trust anything coming out of Russia Today any more than the official Chinese propaganda garbage coming out of the Global Times... Did they celebrate because they thought Trump would be anything other than a loose cannon, bringing down a long time rival? Putin putting Trump in the White House would be akin to the German strategy in 1917 when they put Lenin on a train and sent him to Russia. The destabilizing effect led to Germany winning the war on the Eastern Front and Russia imploding. Besides, unless a tectonic plate suddenly and unexpectedly submerges and takes China with it, it's going to be the worlds largest economy and then some in about a decade. The one other countries better ally with rather than the US if they know what is good for them. China's military may use shoddy 'made in China' materiel, but the Russian stuff is of a different caliber altogether. An alliance between a military savvy country and financially savvy country is not something to just dismiss out of hand.

Southern California shall rise again! (Or should I say Colorado?)

Ah yes, the Mandarin classes. I've been a bad student. Too old and too lazy to learn new languages these days. If anything, I would probably start practicing my neglected French skills. Reciting a French menu card just sounds sexier than reading out loud from a Mandarin menu card

Define "many"? The Bush clan and Trump were utter failures in my book. Last one from top of my head would've been Reagan for his contribution towards reducing tensions with the USSR in the 1980's.

This. I do not doubt for a moment, that there will be a lot of public posturing for the benefit of the press and going through the old cliches of human rights blah blah Navalny blah blah (an ultra nationalist, like Putin on steroids who thinks all Muslims should be summarily killed) blah blah Ukraine blah blah etc. Once the doors to the public are closed (notice how the US press is whining about how limited the access of the press is at this summit?) and roll up the sleeves and discuss realpolitik. Like what is going to be the "price" for leaving eastern Ukraine alone and not support China in the Pacific region... Edit: Belarus's obvious airline hi-jacking and violating any and all international rules about air space is probably too new to have been incorporated into the strategic planning before the summit, as that could probably have reduced the "cost" for Biden to get his agenda through.

NATO, suffering from a decades long existential crisis seems to have found a new enemy they can agree to disagree with… Nope, not Russia, but China https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57466210

Disclaimer: I only just started on the game, made it to level 3 (level cap is 10), so my impressions are what I got after a few days play. With the settings cranked up (3800x2100 or thereabouts and all effects, the game is visually pretty). Now art direction... yes, like humour, i suppose that is also a matter of taste. Not so much childrens cartoon style as old French and Belgian comic book style, which i grew up with (Danish translations) and loved very much and still do to this day. Very different from for example US comic art styles. Closest "style" I can think of would be Asterix.

A personal favourite of mine... the first Witcher game

And just fom the Bioware titles to the Black Isle titles...

I don't remember all the posts in a thread started 9 years ago, sorry if already posted... but the original Mass Effect had some pretty good music Shame on anyone who doesn't feel nostalgic when listening to any of these...

I'm not really much for giving games "ratings". My world view is a bit too binary sometimes. Either I like it or i don't (i.e. 100 or -5). I like this game. Very much so. East to learn mechanics, which can still involve some rather convoluted thinking and strategies for skill choices and party deployment. At a certain point, your party grows from 7 to 8 and you have to make a binding choice from 3 candidates, a bard, a paladin and a priest, which one you want to add permanently. I let my glorious party leader, the ranger, have the final word and went with the priestess. In his own words, she has some enormous attributes. An interesting mechanic is how party member can passively buff each other depending on who they stand next to. A simple example, if the magician is standing next to the wood elf (the party "dumb blonde"), she feels even smarter than she normally is by comparison and get a +5 to intelligence Similar with other stats and attributes. The skill system a mix of primary skills and derived secondary skills. It took me a bit to figure out how to get your party to scout for traps, but that turned out to be surprisingly simple. Just make your thief the party leader and the party sill move slowly, scanning for traps. Nice and easy like that in many ways. Your ogre is the party inventory, as his massive strength is what carries all the party's loot etc. (the in game explanation for how it works). While it is a 3D isometric system, the camera can be moved freely, rotating around the action, zooming in and out etc. But... no matter how nice and easy to learn the interface and game mechanics are, it doesn't matter if you don't dig the writing. I believe (without having investigated too much) it's based on a French comic. I found a single video on Youtube showing somebody's interpretation of the comic and I would recommend watching the 7 minutes or so video to judge if the visual style, voice acting (which sounds like the game voice actors) etc. is to your liking. Also the humour... always a hit or miss thing, I think the cartoon catches the style of the game. Edit: Someone else's 'lets play' video showing the introduction and the start of the game. Showing much more than I can tell in several long paragraphs