Gorth

I think it's sad I can't register the name of the most boring of the elements from the Periodic Table... Tedium. Nobody want's to deal with it

Rather predictably... the US is going to do their worst to ensure the ICC can't function as an independent court. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp66e6ppzd0o The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act would target ICC officials involved with the case by blocking their entry to the US, revoking any current US visas they hold, and prohibiting them from any property transactions within the country - unless the court ceases its cases against "protected persons of the United States and its allies". Tl;dr; the US will go after the individual members of the ICC and punish them for their "transgressions" against "special friends of the US"

My first finger pointing would have been Mossad, but Isreali resources are a bit tied up at the moment. Who knows, sometimes accidents do happen and helicopters crashing is not an unknown thing. Wasn't it Polands leader that ended up in a plane crash, where everybody were speculating about who could be behind it until it turned out that he was just impatient together with a pilot that didn't dare standing up to his "boss"?

I have it on my EA account (I bought a number of games when it was still "Origin"). But despite three attempts, I never made it out of what I think of as the introduction area, before losing interest

Fastest lap ever... jump to 4:40 or thereabouts for those insane speeds that pulls the average (average being 136 or so mph as it says in the title) up

It's actually more apt than I think a lot of people think... the second whistleblower died under mysterious circumstances too

I'm sure Xi would love to "bleed the west dry" of hardware, ordnance and ammunition to enable a grab for Taiwan unopposed by outside forces (I don't think Taiwan will just roll over on their back though). But I can see a strategic incentive in it for China to support the Russian "special military operation" *) efforts in the west. *) This is how it's being sold in Chinese state media too

One of those completely random encounters on YouTube... this Vietnamese woman and her German boyfriend (they're living in Germany) creates some sometimes hilarious video shorts on cultural differences

This is probably a topic for a different thread, but can the US really afford it? Not just aid to Ukraine, but the spending in general. That debt ceiling (holding up an asteroid sized debt) may turn all card house on the country. We would have to revise history and call the end of the cold war a delayed draw.

The Biden family is probably still miffed, that Russia ruined their lucrative extra income (the Biden family's 6.5 million dollars received from Ukrainian sources). You bet the Bidens will support Ukraine and by default Trump will support his own backer, Putin? Who needs Chinese meddling in the first place? Edit: Speaking of China and the Bidens... from house.gov oversight committee "The total amount from China, specifically with CEFC and their related entities, to the Biden family and their associates is over $8 million". No wonder he isn't interested in carrying on Trumps trade war with China edit2: link to above numbers https://oversight.house.gov/the-bidens-influence-peddling-timeline/

The lack of windows involved indicates it might not be a state sponsored sanction against the PM. More like replacing election with natural selection?

Congratulations... I suppose

I used to have more board games, but as mentioned before, moving often and long distances makes it hard to build up a circle of like minded friends. I used to do the old Play by Mail too with "War in Russia". We had a floppy with the game. We would take turns, save the game, mailing the floppy to the opponent once a week. Spent a lot of stamps and envelopes on that (a game turn in the game was one week, so we never finished it, stopping before 6 years had passed) We did take quite a few turns when we visited each other though, skipping the mailing part and just hot seating it... Gary Grigsby, Sid Meier, those were "the good old days"

Just to continued a conversation from a blog post... @kanisatha Thanks for the heads up. Sadly, I only have two of my old boxes of Avalon Hill games that survived more than two decades of constant relocation left, being "Flat Top" and "Wooden Ships & Iron Men". I always hoped those would some day get good computer game adaptations. The former being especially "taxing" by the sheer amount of literal paperwork involved. For some good free PC games designed by Gary Grigsby, the current IP owner (Matrix Games) have made "Pacific War" and "War in Russia" (WWII games) available for download for free. Even if designed in the Dos era of PC's, they ran on Windows 11 last time I played them. Took a moment to mentally separate SGS from an old favourite of mine, SSG (Strategic Studies Group), who made the first 4X game I played in the mid 80's, "Reach for The Stars". Sadly Microprose is no longer what it once was. They made some great strategy games besides flight sims, going back to the early Commodore 64 days and up to the PC era. Edit: Being part of my gaming experience on both C64, Amiga & PC Today I play a few older Paradox titles, like Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 3 and Hearts of Iron, as well as a few of Matrix Games titles, "Gary Grigsby's War in the East" and "Gary Grigsby's War in the West". I will check up on the SGS games though edit2: Something I didn't mention is, I still play a lot of the old C64 and Amiga games on emulators. Mostly a few SSI games on the C64 and an Amiga version of the Battlemech board game (yes, turn based on a hex pattern map, doesn't get better than that!)

Health advisory: Stay away from open windows?

Honestly? All I see is a political ad so typical it could almost be invisible because there is nothing distinguishing it from any other the last 50000 political ads. It's all about what they don't want, not a single word about what they can do, that would benefit the people of SA? I.e. the only change offered it's us instead of them? Disclaimer, I know nothing about the party, their ideology or otherwise, just going by the ad

I mentioned elsewhere, Grounded being Obsidians most successful game to date... Not sure why, but I seem to remember it started out as a "small thing" with a limited team and then sort of exploded in scope with growing popularity. If not already, I hope some day we get a post mortem on the game with its history These are Steam numbers only, not including GamePass/XBox https://vginsights.com/game/962130 4,381 active players (42 min ago) 7,841 active players (24h peak) 88.9% positive reviews $55.8m gross revenue 2.2m units sold 49 hours avg play time 22.5 hours median play time While they (Obsidian) usually know how to make crpgs, survival games and base building is not what they're known for. Edit: Scratch that part about XBox... no idea if Steam also sells XBox games Edit2: Adding GamePass players, it had 10 million players in 2022 https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/02/10/grounded-reaches-10-million-players/

Split off from previous thread...

Random interruption of gaming news... continued here

So... is your contribution on the way yet?

By uploading a virus to them?...

Dang, there went my cover. Now the whole world knows I'm Gorth!

Aww I’ve got a badge @Guard Dog yay, good to hear you’re Ok and enjoying life now

Continued from previous thread....

More war in the Middle East