Gorth

Just a tip... for a short while, read the comments to Fox News articles. Sort of gives you an idea what you're up against. It's scary stuff. Those people are convinced it's their god given right to do as they please without thought for their neighbor. Lock downs impinge on *MY* freedom of movement, yell bloody murder and ignore anything remotely looking like social distancing. Masks? Hahaha... masks do *not* protect *me*, filthy liberals should all go to hell for suggesting we should wear masks... and so on. Almost (but not quite) quoted verbatim from the people who voted Trump. Oh, and also, Trump is to thank for the Pfizer vaccine, we should all bow and grovel in the dust before him. After all, he organized for Pfizer to pay all their research (for those who don't know, BioNTech did the research and Pfizer is going to mass produce it, Trump refused to fund the research, so the German government and the EU paid for it). Makes you roll you eyes in disbelief at the disinformation being spread wholesale on Murdoch media.

That we can probably agree on... at least up to the point where said institution fails to address the issue in an effective manner.

I know, and edited my post long before your reply It's a problem when it's a leadership problem and yes, I followed the development of the German problem over the years (it didn't just pop up from one day to another), which is why it was the first thing that sprang to mind. If officers and people in command are the problem, you only have so many options to change the culture of a unit. New recruits wont fix it. Need more examples, parts of the US police force? No doubt, there are many good cops putting their lives on the line daily for society, but if you have units that not giving a damn about what they were supposed to represent, you need to deal with it. if it's the senior staff that is the problem, no influx of new recruits are ever going to fix your problem. You need to get rid of the head of the snake and rebuild and then be more vigilant when it comes to putting people in power again. Especially those with the power over the life and death of other people.

And I'm suggesting that people murdering other people, in some cases, simply for fun and trophies, shouldn't go unpunished and those responsible should be held accountable, even if they belong to the so called "good guys". What made it even worse was that the government actively tried to cover it up and silence the press investigating the cases (and calling foul on the official version: nothing wrong, all good here) Edit: In Germany, they had a problem too with special forces, the KSK started to show a worrying trend as they began exhibiting some distinctly neo-nazi traits. They simply disbanded the unit. Sometimes a group can be too rotten to be salvaged. They didn't take to the streets and yell "defund the KSK", they simply disbanded it. End of story. That's one way of dealing with leadership problems in a force. https://www.dw.com/en/ksk-german-special-forces-company-dissolved-due-to-far-right-concerns/a-54386661

Australia generally has a problem with a toxic "macho" culture. Whether it being in the sports teams (bullying and sexual abuse are major issues), binge drinking among young males to a long list of war crimes committed recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mostly killing pow's or just gunning down civilians as a matter of convenience and in some cases to get new recruits "blooded". Yeah, no kidding. Something is definitely rotten down under. Btw, this is the story that the right wing government under Scott Morrison tried to stop from being known by raiding the independent news channels, detaining journalist and seizing their computers. Sounds familiar? Yeah, welcome to the old boys club. Just like the church covering their pedophile priests and making sure they don't get prosecuted. (as an aside, the Vatican paid millions of dollars to the Scott Morrison government to get their pedophile cardinal (George Pell) out of jail and put on a plane to the Vatican, covid and travel restrictions be damned). The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has released findings from a four-year inquiry into misconduct by its forces. It said 19 current or ex-special forces soldiers should be investigated by police over killings of "prisoners, farmers or civilians" in 2009-13. The ADF blamed crimes on an unchecked "warrior culture" among some soldiers. The inquiry - conducted by Maj Gen Justice Paul Brereton - conducted interviews with more than 400 witnesses. It also found evidence that: Junior soldiers were told to get their first kill by shooting prisoners, in a practice known as "blooding" Weapons and other items were planted near Afghan bodies to cover up crimes An additional two incidents could constitute a war crime of "cruel treatment" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54996581

Oops...

Your lawyers and my lawyers. The dark alley at 2am. Pistols only...

Just curiosity getting the better of me. One day I was logging in, checking posts from new accounts that needed approval (for those who don't know, a new account needs 5 approved posts to their post count to get out of moderated status, something that catches a shockingly large number of spam bots, which most people never get to see). Then I started reading a number of threads, trying to cover those where tempers sometimes flare up a bit or to add some oh so clever snarky remark. Not to boost my post counts, because posts in WoT doesn't count. Then I tried to remember, how did I even get here in the first place and what has kept me here for so many years. I don't even remember how many years it has been anymore I remember lurking on the Interplay forums, trying to gather enough courage to register and participate (edit: I was playing a lot of Fallout, PS:T and BG2 at the time), but then the proverbial **** hit the fan before I got my finger out of the warming embrace it was placed in. Lo and behold, the guys from Black Isle had started a new site and a new forum. Lurking for another 2 weeks, I finally bit the bullet and registered (and got a lot of funny remarks for my member number which the forum software showed next to your avatars at the time, 666). I remember getting into some at times vicious flame wars with Bioware fanboys at the time, who were mightily upset that Obsidian were doing Kotor2 and NWN2. Still surprised I didn't get banned then, I was not being gentle *cough* *cough* No sir (some of them got dragged away, frothing at the mouth while yelling obscenities at me). Watched people come and go. Mostly active in the gaming section and the game specific forums. I was way more a gamer then than I am today. Sort of sad when it feels like a novelty posting in the what are playing now thread I think what keeps me coming back is the sense of "community". Something reassuring about old, familiar faces. People whose quirks you know. So much stuff got rehashed and discussed to death that subjects like religion doesn't even happen anymore. Most people knows where other people stand on such subjects. Good thing we can get the little odd global crisis and end of the world scenario so there is something new to discuss (total nuclear war has been cancelled because of lack of participation). Anyway, just and old guy reminiscing. Hanging around because I like you guys and girls. Not because of any particular game, thread or subject (not anymore that is). So, why are *you* hanging around these forums?

My first terror mission in Xenonauts was a frontpage worthy fiasco. I eventually gave up and reloaded a previous save (capitulated). Blasted aliens were all hanging around on top of the roofs, sniping my squad to pieces. My one and only guy in buzzard armour (i.e. flight capable) died in the crossfire of 4 harridans on the roofs. No ladders leading up to them, meant, they could just move around unhindered and take potshots through windows and anywhere else I tried to take cover and work out a strategy. Short of offering them enough targets for them to run out of ammo?... nah, an example of futility. Reload, ignore this one terror mission and then craft more buzzard armour for the next one (and give it to more than just my sniper, I'll probably give it to a pair of assault guys too so they can go everywhere).

Lots of nations butt heads with illegal Chinese fishing in the southern oceans. That is some serious money at stake. Edit: And forcing their way into Antarctica, looking for stuff worth mining, violating other countries sovereignty. China *is* a problem and will need to be dealt with. It will come to armed clashes eventually. Might as well draw a line in the... water? The one thing I will give Trump a pat on the back for, not caving in to Chinese blustering. Edit2: Not the Kiwi navy, but the Argentinian opening fire on Chinese vessels in the arctic waters:

Bought Adeptus Mechanicus on GOG a moment ago (together with the Heretek expansion). Both of them between 50 and 65 percent off depending on edition (got the Omnissiah version). Let the galaxy feel the wrench of judgement!

Grrrr! I definitely made some bad choices when it comes to base placement in Xenonauts. Soviet Union, North America and Australia. Bad, bad bad... half the world is outside radar range. I made the mistake of looking at initial economic benefits of having bases in the Soviet Union and later North America. I can either build 3 more bases or just pretend half the world doesn't exist. South America, Africa and Indonesia are pissed off at me Lesson learnt for the next run through the game. Go for Europe, Central America and Indonesia instead if wanting to limit it to 3 bases.

China is in it for profit and neither presidential candidate suits their need, so they'll just use their G5 network to do what China does best, steal intellectual property and user data. Something I'm certain The US does too, which is why all company mails really should be encrypted. Russia on the other hand seems to prefer Trump as president (greetings and congratulations to Biden noticeably absent from The Kremlin). Presumably because they consider Trump a weakening of a rival (The US). A **** storm seems to be easy to stir up in the US and sway public opinion once the masses are enraged. That leaves Iran and they can't even defend themselves against Israeli cyber attacks, so I'll just write them off as a non-player in the US election when it comes to interference.

Of course, it isn't certain, but it wouldn't surprise me if he's going to spend the next decade fighting off lawsuits against him. Considering his financial situation, he might run out of money before the 2024 elections. Edit: I.e. the legal fights are going to make headlines for a long time to come.

Not quite true. I was around 35 when I was bored with life and left everything behind to start a new one on the other side of the world. With all my wordly possessions in 3 sports bags and less than $100 in my pocket (and no return ticket). Made a name for myself in my area of work and got more experiences and adventures than you can shake a stick at. Getting past 20 is no reason for not leaving your old comfort zone behind and just "go for it"

The other states used the police force to guard the "inmates" in the hotels (14 days of mandatory quarantine at the guests expense when traveling from either overseas or interstate). Australian citizen only from overseas at the time (Kiwis are welcome now, no quarantine required). Victoria just got this "brilliant" idea they could outsource the police work and it was a failure of epic proportions. As the cases exploded in Melbourne and later the various regions in Victoria (state borders were closed), all the strict measures, including curfews were put in place. All of which could have been avoided and people could have been a lot better off 5 months earlier. I live in Brisbane, Queensland (large chunk of land in the northeast of Australia, part tropical part sub-tropical). Queensland shut its borders to both NSW and VIC (and NT had already closed it's borders to all states and territories to protect its numerous indigenous communities). I lived in Victoria (Melbourne) for a while, but moved north in March, just 2 weeks before the borders closed

Actually, the sad thing is it was so unnecessary. Just look at the rest of Australia. The local government ****ed up and hired private companies for the hotel security job instead of using the police to enforce it. Those companies screwed up big time and should never have been used for something that should have been the police's job in first place. As for draconian... yeah, not used to seeing soldiers in the street enforcing curfews. Would've been better of those troops (and the police) had been doing the private contractors job in the first place?

I learnt two important lessons in Xenonauts yesterday, both related to trees. 1) Money doesn't grow on trees and 2) hand grenades are unsuited for forest warfare (after wiping out half my squad with hand grenades that hit trees and didn't go anywhere)

Trust (Turkish-)German scientists to not pick the easy options... Expensive treatments might still help reduce the spread while cheaper alternatives are developed for mass consumption. If people don't want the vaccine, add it to the tap water. Edit: It does look like it's effective for how short a development time it had. Still, trials are one thing, real world application another (as a developer, I can relate to that): ‘When you put [a vaccine] out in the real world, people may behave differently,’ said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/biontech-and-pfizers-covid-19-vaccine-is-surprisingly-effective-though-experts-question-what-effectiveness-will-look-like-in-the-real-world-2020-11-13

I'm sure you guys are completely ruining Putin's day with all these legal updates... what's a poor autocrat to do without his sock puppet running a rival country into the ground. Instead of being able to sic them on each other, he'll have to deal with both China and The US at the same time

Still practicing those old X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter skills. Looking through my game library, I decided to start from the opposite end. Good thing too. Having a blast playing Xenonauts. Finally getting to scratch that old X-Com itch (with game I actually seem to like as opposed to those horrible things from Firaxis Games)

The obnoxious kids you were not allowed to nuke so you could just get on with it. I think it was called Little Lamplight? At that point I stopped playing the game and uninstalled it. It has been sitting in my Steam account unused ever since. Point Lookout was quite nice though. If it wasn't for the mess with the Microsoft Live requirement, I would probably have reinstalled it just to play that part again.

I wonder if Putin plays chess? https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/11/12/is-the-nagorno-karabakh-war-really-over Uprisings in Armenia as people wants to overthrow the government (which had been trying to tie Armenia closer to the west), Azerbaijanis all happy with a Russian military presence (at least at the moment) and Turkeys role in the region reduced to irrelevancy (regardless of how much posturing Erdogan does). Not bad for six weeks.

A bit of news from my old country... for those who don't know, Mink (and fur production) is big business in Denmark. Turned out that Covid19 could infect mink and that created a new, mutated strain named Cluster 5, which is resistant to antibodies that works against Covid19. I.e. effectively a mutant strain that would ignore vaccines against Covid19. Looks like Danish scientists came up with a vaccine that is also effective against this new variant. "Early studies of the mutated virus strain, known as Cluster 5, showed the virus to have a reduced sensitivity towards antibodies, possibly compromising the efficacy of future vaccines, authorities said last week. But antibodies from rabbits treated with an early-stage vaccine candidate from Denmark’s State Serum Institute (SSI) successfully beat down the Cluster 5 variant, according to Anders Fomsgaard, a leading scientist at SSI, which deals with infectious diseases. “We couldn’t resist testing the rabbit antibodies we have against Cluster 5, and it works,” Fomsgaard told Danish broadcaster DR on Thursday." https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/11/12/vaccine-works-against-covid-mink-mutation-in-early-testing And in more local news (from my pov), The state of Victoria has now had 0 new cases the last 14 days. Looks like the draconian lock down measures did the job.

Since there is no such thing as lasting immunity against Covid19, any vaccine would only really be working for what? 3 weeks? Edit: The scientists behind the vaccine. I hope this thing works out, even if not the cheapest option. "The scientists who developed the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine are a Turkish-German power couple" https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/10/europe/biontech-pfizer-vaccine-team-couple-intl/index.html