Gorth

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

What can I say? When it rains it pours? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56476998 About 18,000 Australians have been evacuated from flooding across New South Wales (NSW) as heavy rain continues to batter the east coast. Days of torrential downpours have caused rivers and dams to overflow around Sydney - the state capital - and in south-east Queensland. wait... south-east Queensland, that's me 😖

Eventually, a lack of skill will catch up with you no matter how good you are at marketing yourself. Anyone still brave enough to hire D&D? (Game of Throne "writers")

Sydney... the city that is never happy. First they whinge about bushfires devastating the suburbs and now that they get a fix for that, they whinge about the fix. Ungrateful louts, all of them 😁 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56473115 More Sydney areas ordered to evacuate over major flooding risk The authorities say anyone living in low-lying areas of the city must leave. On Saturday, Sydney's Warragamba dam started to overflow for the first time in years. Dozens of people have been rescued from floodwaters in New South Wales, with officials warning of "life threatening flash floods". Major roads remain shut in the area.

...as long as people don't lump me into the same group as Swedes and Norwegians (I'm so used to being asked if I'm German by now because of my accent I'm almost inclined to just say 'yes') 😝

Looking at the bright side, it's not going to interrupt international air traffic to the same degree that it did a decade ago 😇

Hillary Clinton

That's what you get for not boarding at a terminal with extendable gates. Damn low airfare travelers 😛

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/19/italian-army-accused-fowl-play-tank-accidentally-fires-rounds/ Edit: Without pay wall https://www.reuters.com/article/italy-chickens/chicken-farmer-cries-foul-as-italian-tank-blows-up-coop-idUSL8N2LG5VZ Edit2: I guess the Italian Army was bound to win a battle some day... 😇 https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/m80t0h/tank_kill_chickens_in_italy/

That's a very complicated way of putting it 😂 But in short yes. All I can do is take your word for it based on what I know of/about you at this point in time. Based on that, I actually will take your word for it, as I believe it's an issue that is important to you and you have given it a lot of thought, based on your past posting history.

Hard to say Bruce... the two articles linked to are SA specific. Not living there, not experiencing the SA society, all you get is second hand information. I think the only thing most of us can do is to compare with our own local experiences wherever we live at the moment. In Australia, racism is alive and well. Doesn't look like it's going anywhere soon. But that is irrelevant for racism in SA other than as giving the impression that it may be a larger than local problem and if it's a problem in enough parts of the world, it may also be a problem in SA. I know, still not really answering your question, but I think your question is difficult to add much to for outsiders (if you want to talk specifically about racism in SA).

A strange thing racism... I'm fully convinced it's an issue with and of society. When I was a kid and through most of my teenage years, I grew up in a place where i think you could say racism was effectively non-existing in daily life. Why? Because the population was 99.99% Danish. There was an Inuit from Greenland living in the neighborhood, but he was more an "object of curiosity" than an object of hostility or derision. I know things changed and they changed a lot, mostly for the negative since. Still, It's something you learn, racism isn't bred into your genes (not to be confused with fear of that which is different or not understood). Meh, still just trying to live life, judging other people and myself (yes, I'm sometimes quite judgemental, including where my own actions are subject of introspection, why did I do this, why didn't I do that? etc.) by actions and deeds rather than simple physical appearances. If someone wants to create increased awareness about racism (or most other kinds of discrimination), power to them. Edit: So much discrimination has somehow ended up becoming embedded in our language and our choice of words too. I know people resent political correctness and it gets out of hand sometimes. It can be part of what perpetuates a problem, although I think it's often more a symptom of underlying problems in society.

The Reddit "investors" (anyone remember GameStop?) are at it again... this time deciding to save the gorillas GameStop has now suddenly adopted a number of gorillas by supporting the Dian Fossey fund. Sort of a nice story for a change amidst all the misery. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56438230

Guitar version of the Game of Thrones theme (first two minutes are mostly warm up and tuning)

I know, US elections 2020 are over, but I thought this little tidbit was interesting. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56423536 Tl;dr; according to US intelligence services, Russia interfered to support Trump, Iran interfered to support Biden and China thought both candidates were hopeless and it wasn't worth interfering 😂

One of the longer running threads indeed (5 years now?) 😎