Gorth

Strange, why do they suddenly want to turn the Marines into a naval based, amphibious branch The article brings its own conclusion on the why though, to take on Chinese bases in the South China Sea

(warning, video in article shows violent octopus) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56612257 Australia: Geologist beaten up by 'angriest octopus' on beach In a video that has gone viral, the octopus can be seen in shallow waters lashing out at geologist Lance Karlson. The creature came after him again later and struck him on the arm, before whipping his neck and upper back.

Maybe it's a geo location check? Works fine in Australia. Would you have access to vpn or proxy servers?

Depends on how things develop on the home front in China. It could be next year, it could be in five years. Depends on how fast Xi needs an external "threat". If none presents itself, he can always assimilate Taiwan (forcefully). Trump set an unfortunate precedent, being willing to sacrifice allies without batting an eyelid. Xi may be expecting more of the same in the White House. In the meantime, China is busy building up its power base and infrastructure for power projection in the Pacific, all the way down to Antarctica. and down through Africa. @BruceVCyou better brush up on your Mandarin too, as Chinese interests are spreading throughout that continent too... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3086968/china-finds-manufacturing-opportunities-low-wage-africa And leaving environmental disasters in their wake, like a passing army ant swarm https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210323-the-factories-turning-west-africas-fish-into-powder

Just some old stuff I happened to listen to quite a bit when it was new.

(sorry)

The rest of us will enjoy some chocolate eggs The latest outbreak in Queensland threw a spanner in the works for my travel planes. Had booked flight tickets, hotel and a night of standup/political satire show and comedy (and dinner) in Melbourne. Less than a week before, something escapes quarantine and the area is now in total lockdown until the next review (but too late for me to change plans, so... everything cancelled).

That's why I always thought @Guard Dog was a leprechaun

Thanks Bruce. We might disagree on the finer details (and I'll still stand by my claim that Ukraine botched the legitimacy of their claims by sending in tens of thousands of troops, annexing it in the first place). But I hope we can agree upon the choice should have been made by the people of Crimea, neither Kiev nor Moscow.

I never got around to read the Danish version. Bear in mind, I would have been around 14 at the time and preferred comics over novels *cough*. We had Danish translations of most of the Belgian/French comics at the time. My love for Tolkien came way later when I got an adventure game "The Hobbit" for the Commodore 64. I was stuck getting killed in the dark in the goblin caves (where you're supposed to find the ring) and the only clue was to read book. The game came with an English version of The Hobbit and I ended up reading it (and found my clues! I had to find and turn 3 trolls into stone, so I could get the sword "Sting", which glows in the dark when orcs/goblins are near, so it could light my way through the caves). I was several years older at the time, around 17-18 or so, and suddenly found the story interesting. Went out and found both Lord of the Rings and Simarillion in English and loved them. Especially Silmarillion is something I read over and over, even to this day. I probably just assumed a while ago your name would be something like Bruce Van (Der) C...something Given the Dutch/Africaans influence on the language

I've been using Gorth first as a board game character since 1978, CRPG character since 1983 and online since 1991. Sort of feeling a bit attached to it Strangely enough, in online games and MMO's I'm known by a different name for the last 10 years. Sort of my secret identity No, not really. Just strange how names sometimes seems to "stick" to you and can be hard to get rid of again. Edit: as for the etymology, I had attempted to read the Danish version of Lord of Rings (courtesy of the public libraries), but it was just way too boring and too long. I did take a glance at an appendix page with a list of names and figured, oh, Gorthaur, cool name, I'm so gonna steal that. Right up until the first wargame on a tabletop and my opponent asked me to pronounce my generals name Nothing that couldn't be fixed by chopping off a few syllables until I could pronounce it. Sort of. Heck, one syllable left, how hard could it be???

Cognac excluded!

Tried my hand at green curry chicken. I should probably get myself small kitchen scale for weighing stuff. The eggplant didn't feel very heavy in my hand, but it sure was a lot of eggplant once I was done slicing it into little cubes It did taste great though. Like the Massaman, I cheated and bought a paste with the spice mix already prepared. It may not be bacon, but curry and coconut milk on the stove isn't bad either when it comes to fragrances

Despite the amusement, actually not a bad cover

She was definitely the "most enjoyable" part of the first Suicide Squad movie. I liked the first movie, but then I didn't really expect haute couture when watching it (and I bought the dvd dirt cheap). Unlike some other movies, I felt entertained afterwards, not like I had just wasted an hour or two of my life or was suddenly missing several brain cells

Duh, I did. I stand corrected

That one, he didn't make up. They are generally credited with reviving the genre of CRPG's at a time where it was more dead than a Norwegian Blue. Every 2 out of 3 games released were some kind of RTS spin off of Blizzards Dune 2 and Warcraft III (the two games that made Blizzard what they are today I think). Long gone was the glory of CRPG's and the memories of SSI's Gold Box Games (Champions of Krynn, Curse of The Azure Bonds etc.), Origins Ultima IV and V etc. Then suddenly out of the blue came this company that was started by two doctors to make medical applications and proposed yet another RTS "Infinity Wars" (to compete with the 2567 or so other RTS games in circulation at the time) to Interplay. Some clever guy (they had those at Interplay at the time) told the doctors that the RTS market was a few parsecs beyond the point of saturation, but hey, tweak your RTS a bit, add some D&D rule sets, add the option to simulate turn based combat in we can talk. BG and BG2 ended up selling millions of copies and suddenly CRPG's were hot. Interplay also launched Fallout in the same era, as well as Icewind Dale. But tl;dr; the CRPG market was stone dead at the time and everybody talked about it as something that would never come back.

Not really news per se, just an interesting video about Bioware and its current situation (and what companies most of the ex-Bioware employees now work for, including a rumoued Kotor remake)

I think the people at CERN are all convinced the Standard Model is not the answer to the universe, but it will have to be a stop-gap measure until they work out how the universe works in more detail... or blow up Earth in the process

Thanks. Yeah, looks like the terrain is going to be a bit soggy for a few days still.... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56485246 "Warragamba Dam discharged 500 gigalitres on Sydney - equivalent to the volume of Sydney Harbour." (this is to prevent the dam from collapsing completely, a predictable flood, where you can warn people being preferable to it simply bursting) "No deaths had been reported but thousands of people have been evacuated and troops deployed after days of torrential downpours across the country." (good statistic so far, as most deaths in such situations are Darwin Award nominees) "Honey, you forgot to mow the lawn again!" (no, not actually a quote from the article, the picture is though)

Wet, wetter, wettest! NSW (New South Wales) take the prize. Not sure if visible from non Aussie geolocations

More stuff here...

Continued from old thread

Does 4 six-packs of toilet paper count?

Thanks mate. I'm not living in low lying areas, so not really at risk. if the hill I live on floods, we have a different kind of (global) problem