Gorth

Got a similar anecdote to share... I doubt i would be able to get a mortgage in Australia, as I don't have any debt (to prove I can pay back debt) and not having had a credit card for 8 years, not making the banks any money. Doesn't matter I make a decent living, if they don't have it on print that you are a profitable customer for them.

Yes. Gary Oldman 👍

Probably some souvenir scam, taking a cheap western lighter and glue/solder two fake plaques on it and voila, genuine made in the CCCP! (at least according to some thrifty entrepreneur somewhere) Edit: Regardless of who made it, the guy restoring it did a good job of it

Maybe it's a lot harder when you have to make it look like someone specific compared to when you have "free hands" to sculpt a face?

Why do I always imagine Gromnir looking like Ricky Gervais?... 🤔

Still, how did Bioware end up with this (Miranda's voice actor and model for the looks) Looking like this

Come on, everyone loves beating up English people. Even the English do it 😛

Which is sort of the problem... the "major power" in the Middle East is an apartheid state and heavily supported by very influential lobby groups in the US, to the point where the rest of the world thinks of the US as Israel's bitch. Eventually, either the apartheid system has to go or a population group has to be genocided out of existence (a traditional European, including the UK, way of solving problems), but this is getting increasingly harder in a world where so many have access to current affairs and news. Which leaves the first option. Either turn it into an all inclusive, equal rights for all state or a two state, with two viable states mind you, solution. Co-existence would of course have been easier, but blame nationalism and religion on that. Edit to add: Part of what keeps the problem constantly current is 1.5 million displaced people that were kicked off their land live in refugee camps in neighboring countries with no future to look forward to. A good as any breeding ground for resentment and extremism. It's of course not the only problem in the Middle East, but it's hard to think up modern solutions to deep rooted, sometimes ancient problems. Just look at the Balkans how quickly populist politicans and nationalists can turn a civilized country into a smoking ruin. And even there, the problems are far from solved, they are just dormant at the moment, waiting for the right spark to flare up again. Same with Northern Ireland. If those two places are struggling, guess how hard it is to think up something useful for The Middle East. Old hatred and grudges just runs deep.

I remember when that was the news of the day, way back... eventually Russia got so fed up with the blatant theft of natural gas going through the Ukrainian pipeline, they simply turned off the valves. Much tears and gnashing of teeth followed as people were getting hypothermia in their homes (it was in the middle of the winter iirc.). I don't remember all the details of what was arranged but something about Ukraine stealing less and paying more was agreed, but Russia decided they needed a safer option for shipping it to other parts of Europe as Ukraine would forever being a weak link in the supply. Edit: At the time, Ukraine was already getting it at a hefty discount for good old times (Soviet times) sake. Iirc, as part of a compromise was made, an "adjustment" a bit closer to market price for the gas they actually paid for and not mysteriously disappeared from the pipeline into the local, national gas network... which Ukraine also promised to look into. I don't remember the follow up discussions (probably wasn't aired on Danish news) Edit2: @BruceVC regarding The Middle East, tl;dr; the place has been a mess since the Turks invaded Anatolia and the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. A collapse that was helped by the traitorous city of thieves (Venice).

A bit of (troubling) news about Witcher 4.... starts about 6:45 and 15:00 into the video

I wasn't playing the game at the time, but swtor oldtimers in my then guild told me that the game had no end game at launch. The first boss of what later became Eternity Vault was added and later the entire operation followed. At which time 4/5 of the players had left the game. According to the same people (i.e. entirely anecdotal because I haven't checked it), the game was planned to have nine chapters for each class story, but ended after 3 as players were chewing through class story a *lot* faster than Bioware expected.

First they come for Miranda's butt, next they come for EDI's camel toe... Edit: Not a youtube comment

Thanks. You just saves me from a potential headache Not going to wonder even just a little bit if I should consider this version 😖 Important parts of Yvonne Strahovski missing from the game 😥

Hamas has been stockpiling rockets for several years now. Actually, since the last major flare up. It seems to happen whenever Netanyahu faces jail time... this time he poked the bee hive by evicting people from their homes in the occupied parts of Jerusalem and and using a lot of force when people protested about their homes being literally stolen from them. Because the tensions weren't severe enough, he ordered the police to raid the Al Aqsa Mosque with guns and tear gas (an action that looks like it has had the surprising effect of making new best friends of Saudi Arabia and Iran). Netanyahu got what he wanted, a few hundred dead Palestinians, half which are women and children of all ages. He doesn't have to worry about jail as long as he can keep the military campaign in Gaza going. https://apnews.com/article/hamas-middle-east-israel-748a13f933111e2341fcf1d01f86bdb7 "Just over a week ago, the longtime Israeli leader’s political career seemed all but over. He had failed to form a coalition government following an indecisive parliamentary election, and his political rivals were on the cusp of pushing him out of office." At which point, many years of accumulated corruption charges seems to wait for him....

This thread needs more Rammstein... 🤘

What's wrong with 1111 1234 and P@$$w0rd! ???

I would love to try out various types of guns, small and large, on a firing range some day. I would probably hurt my shoulder and get bruises from it in the process, but I think it would be worth just for the heck of trying it once...

🐑🐑🐑🇳🇿💕 As for the India rules, it's not an easy question to answer and I might give you a different answer if asked twice about it. I can see the practicality of it, as most of the lockdowns happening after the initial lockdown last year was caused by people traveling from India. On the other hand, locking your own citizens out of your country is not illegal, but might be "questionable" ethically. Mind you, it's not like people in India can't travel to Australia, but they would have to be somewhere else in the two weeks before returning. I think the cricketers actually took a two stopover on the Maldives before returning from India to Australia. Effectively being quarantined somewhere else before returning. They have opened up a bit for travel from India now, but you have to produce a credible, fresh negative covid test before being allowed to board (and still have to be quarantined upon return) Edit: Australia technically has a constitution, but it has little to do with people and rights and is all about the power sharing between the federal government and state governments (responsibilities and limitations of each) Edit2: It has no bill of rights

I believe that depends entirely on the rest of the world and how it handles the pandemic. If anything, the tightening of the rules regarding India shows how far they are willing to go to keep the virus out of Australia. We can always kidnap some Kiwi's if we fear inbreeding... If the rest of the world doesn't get it's act together though, yeah, I think it will be a long time before international travelers become a thing.

Repeating myself from the last 15 years... I wish they could work out something with Games Workshop (and someone who wants to publish it) some day. The world needs more games featuring tentacle violence and ritual virgin sacrifice 😛

I've only really played 3 mmo's and tried out a few more (when they went free to play or had trial periods). WoW was definitely not my thing (never made it to level 10 on my one and only character). Black Desert Online... it came, I saw, it got uninstalled. Final Fantasy XIV... same. Tried it for 3 days. Bye bye. Not that it was bad, I just didn't "dig it". Warhammer Online was the first I ever tried and that only because I'm passionate about the lore of Warhammer/WH40k. It was a realm vs. realm mmo with a cardinal sin (the combat was probably the worst, clunkiest poo pile of any mmo). Which leaves me with swtor and GW2. I enjoyed the 6-7 years I played swtor, but as you guys mentioned, the lack of content slowly drained my interest. The uninteresting grind fest that was KotFE and worse, the droid planet (which I've repressed the name of) killed the game for good for me. Disclaimer, I did get a 2 month non recurring sub recently to play through the Onderon story line and level a toon up to 75 on imp side. Struggling to find the motivation to repeat the feat on pub side. GW2 on the other hand? Playing it daily for years now. Content (story content and open world events no less) coming out at a pace where I'm struggling to keep up...

I caved in and bought Nier Replicant ver. 1.22....etc. First I thought the game was broken, as my hero (ugh, does he really have to look like a kid???) constantly stuck in "parry/combat" mode. Then I realized my new controller was the problem. Unplug and replug controller and it all ran fine. Other than hating the whole concept of "save points" (there has to be a special hell for whoever came up with that idea long ago). Visuals are nice and the music is gorgeous. Story was a bit confusing, so I checked a few youtube videos covering the backstory, including Drakengard. Was a little less confusing afterwards, if not by much 😂 Still early days though and I was warned beforehand, that first half of the game is slow paced. Edit: Regarding graphics and animations, everything runs smoothly in 3840x2160 👍

Iirc, it was about crucial things like whether it made sense that Mandalorian assault craft were lobster shaped with a rider on the back (because that's how the Dark Horse comic had shown them) or assault craft shaped (small troop transport) when doing planetary drops 😝

I do 😎 Sadly I didn't contribute anything iirc... a bit self conscious at the time I guess. I was busy being a troll and picking ugly fights with a few die-hard Bioware fanboys at the time

An interesting interview by the BBC with the director of Russian intelligence. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-57144297 What i found interesting wasn't whether "they did it", but how politically savvy the guy is. You can always argue for or against whether they were and no doubt you would *not* get an honest answer in an interview. The fascinating part (for me) is how good he is, without a script, to respond without commitment to an actual answer. E.g. Q: Did you do it? A: The things we're publicly accused of, no! 😂 Also, when the talk is about MI6 estimating that they're only aware of 10% of all Russian intelligence operations in the UK, he doesn't answer yes or no (which sort of makes it impossible to pin him up on any outright lies). Like or dislike, got to admire skill in dealing with media when you see it.