Gorth

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210628-concrete-the-material-that-defines-our-age "There is so much concrete in the world that soon it will outweigh all living matter – including us. In the latest in our Anthropo-Scene series, we explore the material's global reach, occasional beauty, and unimaginable scale." The first half is of this is a love song to concrete (yes, Australian bands are a bit odd at times)...

As if things weren't bad enough in Australia, with the combined efforts of the Murdoch media and the Liberal Party government cracking down hard on the independent press, China wants to play "suppress the dissenting voices" too. One thing my old country definitely did do better, was standing up for the freedom of speech (to be exact, the Danish people did, twisting the arm of the government when the latter wanted to give in to pressure around the infamous cartoons) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57647418 "Chinese pro-democracy students in Australia experience harassment and fear punishment if they speak out on sensitive issues, a new report says. Human Rights Watch found such students feel surveilled in Australia, leading many to self-censor in classrooms. Academics teaching China courses in the country say they have also felt pressure to censor themselves. China's embassy in Canberra strongly rejected the report on Wednesday, calling it "biased"."

Big trouble in little China is just awesome entertainment 👍

I tend to look at the benefits... no office toilets (shared between multiple companies), nobody at the next table believing his ocd tapping with his pen against the table rivals Jon Bonham's drumming skills, no cacophony of sales guys constantly pacing around in circles behind your back yelling at their mobile phones, nobody next to you that is convinced his exotic seaweed food is better off eaten in front if his screen rather than the lunch room (never mind that the whole area stinks like stagnant ocean air for the rest of the the day)... can't say I miss it much. (If I ever get to sit next to an ocd "leg twitcher" in an office again, I might end up behind bars... after ripping if his legs)

The poor sport was feeling all abandoned and alone in the dark 😢

Was he part of the team that chose the engine for swtor during the early days of the project? If so, couldn't care less what he's doing these days.

@Gfted1 It's getting close! 😁 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-57660603 "A prototype flying car has completed a 35-minute flight between international airports in Nitra and Bratislava, Slovakia. The hybrid car-aircraft, AirCar, is equipped with a BMW engine and runs on regular petrol-pump fuel. Its creator, Prof Stefan Klein, said it could fly about 1,000km (600 miles), at a height of 8,200ft (2,500m), and had clocked up 40 hours in the air so far."

Oooh, a mild Australian summer day 😁 You better get that BBQ of yours started up if not already!

Bought Mass Effect: Andromeda - Deluxe Edition on Steam.... I may never get around to play it or it may suck badly or whatever. worst case scenario, it was less than 10 dollars, so a loss of about two cappuccinos. Best case scenario, I might actually play through it some day, unlike Dragon Age Inquisition, which is till gathering dust on my drive 😖

If I had the answer to that, i would run for the presidency.... (in some country somewhere, as I don't qualify for US president, not being born there). I can observe a problem, not necessarily come up with a viable solution. I just don't think an increase in police brutality to crush dissent and unrest is the way forward. It will only make society implode eventually. Like the housing bubbles you know? Each crash will become worse than the next until someone realizes this current economic model doesn't work in a sustainable way

Actually, it's really only a symptom. We can debate back and forth a bit around the symptoms and how best to apply band aid to a pulsating, arterial bleeding. The underlying cause is a "sick" society, where too many groups of people are left at the wayside. Too much inequality, too much poverty, too much focus on succeeding at all cost, including at the expense of your fellow man. It's a society where your birth dictates your fate almost as much as feudal Europe. Either born nobleman or serf. Outliers exists and people makes the jump once in a blue moon, but that just contributes to the fairy tale that those who are born into class nobility propagates as it makes the large masses with no prospects of a decent future docile, dreaming of a better future and getting frustrated (and violent) when realization sets in, "We're screwed any which way". Society is what needs fixing, but that's an even bigger task than fixing the police force(s) here and there.

Well, the police has sort of shown itself to be over paid and under educated for many of the tasks that it is being given. No good having your local alt rights, racists, failed militia men etc. to do the job of serve and protect if they have all the empathy of Hannibal Lecter and the gear of the Russian Ministry of Interior troops. Better equipped and trained for urban warfare than actual police work. Never mind serve and protect anyone other than their own post retirement pension. Many of those forces looks like they literally needs to be dissolved and rebuilt (and retrained) from scratch

I wonder if people are putting the effect before the cause? Do democrat controlled cities become "lawless" (see Groms post above) because the politicians are Democrats or are they destitute, "lawless" areas in the US that votes Democrat on the ballots in the hope of a better better/less bad future?

Oh, I see 😆

@Keyrock I sense of worrying lack of tentacles in that game? 🤔

I'm sure the Iranian Revolutionary Guard appreciates it 😛 "Both the missile and the aircraft were used by Iran and the United States Navy"

Not really sure if there is much to say about this?... more like just eye rolling 🙄 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57624942 "Classified Ministry of Defence documents containing details about HMS Defender and the British military have been found at a bus stop in Kent. One set of documents discusses the likely Russian reaction to the ship's passage through Ukrainian waters off the Crimea coast on Wednesday. Another details plans for a possible UK military presence in Afghanistan after the US-led Nato operation there ends. The government said an investigation had been launched."

Love those meme generators...

Lets end it on that note... if there are legal battles to be fought, let them be fought in court rooms, not on social media of former work places for the entertainment of the unwashed masses

I shall critical race theoreticate your butt 😝

I'm not Zor, but I do remember reading that the virus can survive up to 72 hours on hard surfaces. Which means, if an infected person touched e.g. a door handle, the virus can be transferred to the hand of the next person who touches it. Hence, wash hands and don't touch your face to help prevent it from getting entry into your body. Edit: Washing your hands only reduces the risk. To be sure, use hand sanitizer which kills the virus Edit2: Door handle is just an example, think stuff like shopping trolleys, faucets, water taps, railings etc.

My own two all time favourite games are available for free on GOG (they used to be available on the website of the guy who did the PC port/conversion)... Some may find them a bit dated by now, but for those of us with rose tinted nostalgia goggles, these are still the ultimate mix of rpg, strategy and grand strategy (and Mike Singleton is an unrecognized bloody genius) https://www.gog.com/game/the_lords_of_midnight https://www.gog.com/game/doomdarks_revenge

Got myself a combined tetanus, whooping cough and diphtheria shot today. Still alive. So far, so good 😂 The things you do when friends are expecting a newborn (their first) in a few weeks time (I couldn’t care less, but apparently whooping cough is a very real threat to newborns)

At an early point in the game, you have to make a binding choice, which of three candidates becomes your 8th party member. A paladin, a bard or a priestess. I went with the high and mighty upper class snob priestess... I still wish I could cart her over the edge to a long, slow, plummeting death. She really gets on my nerves 😂 At some point, you get a side mission to find her missing cousin Eugene. Turns out he has become a leader of the local cult of Slanoosh, god of perversion. Infiltrating the hidden abode, having made my way past the bouncers. The priestess (or wizardess, one of the two) did warn me, I better go into this with my eyes wide shut (obvious movie reference)

Say what you will about French cheese, but their missiles are quite good. I remember from the news back then, that there was a bit of bad blood between England and France because France had sold Exocet missiles to Argentina and was used to sink a British destroyer during the Falklands War. Most of the news back then were about said war. Edit: Before anybody wonders, if they had the missiles, why didn't Argentina just sink the Royal Navy ships? They only had a few missiles and used them sparingly. One was used to sink a destroyer, another used to damage another destroyer and one was intended for the aircraft carrier, but the plane doing the delivery was shot down. Edit2: I suspect modern anti missile defenses would make short work of them. The situation was a bit different back in the early 80's