Gorth

A bit more from my favourite industrial band... made in Germany This is the case the song is based on: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case "The Fritzl case emerged in 2008, when a woman named Elisabeth Fritzl (born 6 April 1966) told police in the town of Amstetten, Austria, that she had been held captive for 24 years by her father, Josef Fritzl (born 9 April 1935). Fritzl had assaulted, sexually abused, and raped her numerous times during her imprisonment inside a concealed area in the basement of the family home.[1][2] The abuse by Elisabeth's father resulted in the birth of seven children:[3] three of them remained in captivity with their mother, one had died just days after birth at the hands of Josef Fritzl who disposed of his body in an incinerator,[4] and the other three were brought up by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, having been reported as foundlings. "

"I have dual citizenship... with the United States and Florida" "let's just proceed as if this is going really well"

Back in nostalgia land... memories of the time at university. We were always late, always pulling one all-nighter after the other when (software) projects were due to be handed in. Somewhere in our beer fogged brains (because we could get beer on credit, but not food and we didn't have any money), we also got bombarded by the horribly distorted sounds from a little "ghetto blaster" playing old tapes at volumes it wasn't designed for. Mostly The Cult, Led Zeppelin and The B-52's. It was just awesome music to survive so many 24 hour work days on... Edit: and a second song

If my experiences with running around wearing gas masks during civil defense exercises are any guideline, that guy will be screwed once the weather turns cold. He can either set the fan to max ventilation (and catch a cold) or not being able to look out through the transparent parts

I'll answer your questions with a new question instead, how will you change a system that is rigged to the point where a group of men can forcefully enter an apartment, murder one of the inhabitants and not even get charged with anything at all related to the murder? Once you know the answer to that, you have answered your own two questions, because the complete lack of faith in the police and the "judicial system" (which seems to about as effective as the Catholic church's internal dealings with pedophile priests) will start to diminish.

Nice read. To quote the linked text: "The hardest part about detecting collapse lies not with the data – that is clear as a bell ringing on a still morning – but with the emotional difficulty of accepting it (and then acting on it)." In the meantime, cities will burn, riots will increase scale and society tear itself apart more and more. We're already at the stage where populist politicians are winning elections despite any and all warning from history.

...and justice fails miserably again. A bank just give a fine, which will most likely be passed along to the customers as extra fees. They (the managers and the execs) won't change their tune until they start seeing the inside of prisons. Pathetic Australia... just pathetic. Australia's Westpac bank has negotiated to pay a record A$1.3bn (£0.7bn; $0.9bn) fine for the nation's biggest breach of money laundering laws. Last year, Australia's financial crime watchdog said the bank had failed to adequately report over 19 million international transactions. Some payments were potentially linked to child exploitation, officials said. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54275165

When Bandidos and Hells Angels had a falling out in Denmark and Sweden a few decades ago, missile launchers, heavy machine guns, hand grenades, car bombs, just about everything was put to use. Edit: Despite loosening up recruiting requirements considerably, the bikies eventually made peace when they started dying faster than they could recruit. Edit2: The army depots the article refers to were a left over from the cold war that was still only a few years in the past. National guard units had depots all over the country to make mobilization of reserves faster in case of DDR and Polish troops invading. Cut and paste from Wiki (Great Nordic Biker war) Weaponry Between 1994 and 1997, there were at least thirty-six break-ins at Swedish and Danish Army installations; at least sixteen Bofors anti-tank missiles, ten machine guns, around three-hundred handguns, sixty-seven fully automatic rifles, two-hundred-and-five rifles of various calibres, hundreds of hand grenades and land mines, and seventeen kilograms of explosives plus detonators were stolen. Police believe the Bandidos or their support clubs were responsible for the majority of the thefts. The Hells Angels obtained Russian- and Yugoslavian-made rocket launchers as well as surplus machine guns and rifles from East European countries.[6] The conflict saw the use of the Swedish AT4 eight times, and the Russian RPG-22 three times. Hand grenades were used four times and a booby trap once. Car bombs were utilized three times, while other types of explosives were also used on three occasions. The bombs used scaled in size between one and five kilograms.[6]

Wow... that was bad. Quake II looks like infinitely more fun to replay than a game of *this*

Hours... no idea. These games where there long before game launchers started tracking hours. Lets just say "lots" Still playing Master of Iron 2 (as late as this week), War in Russia (today) and the old Tomb Raider (the original, not the awful remake) a few weeks ago. Next up when done with War in Russia is probably X-Com3: Apocalypse. Only game that gives Jagged Alliance 2 a run for its money when it comes to tactical combat and destructible terrain. No, don't even get me started on how much I hate the "new" X-Com games Edit: I wasn't sure if this was a pc/console only thing, but if you count old 8 and 16 bit computers, add a few classics that I play regularly on emulators. Mechwarrior was my favourite Amiga game and Battlecruiser from SSI still get me playing the Battle of Jutland as both the German and British side in the various scenarios

Considering that Microsoft now owns both Obsidian and ID Software... Doom meets Outer Worlds sounds like a nice blend to me.

You could argue that the embargo and blockade by the US for 60 years now, has done more to cripple the economy and enforce hardship on the Cuban population as a whole than any domestic policy ever did. That's all speculation of course, because we'll never know the alternative if the embargo hadn't been placed there. Fairly sure they would have been screwed over even more if Batista had remained in power for decades. The same kind of government as the military junta that ruled Chile for decades. Edit: Venezuela is very different, the plaything of a meglomaniac who squandered oil money rather than invest in education and infrastructure (and now oil if just about worthless)

Still playing that old SSI game "War in Russia" (as the Soviet side). Almost at the end of 1941. Three consecutive weeks of blizzard has left The Wehrmacht in shambles. Even the various SS Panzer Corps shatters like brittle glass when one of my still befuddled commanders get the bright idea of sneezing in their direction. Now spending recklessly of my manpower to inflict maximum casualties while the the weather lasts (it's random from week to week). Using my meta game knowledge of being able to outproduce the enemy 5:1 in both manpower and tanks at the end of 1942, I'm attacking heavily fortified cities with just infantry and artillery, as each attack wears down a units "Readiness" factor and also starts lowering its entrenchment level. In short, send in the peasants! (anyone who ever played Bretonnia in Warhammer will know what I'm talking about) My biggest obstacle is going to be German air superiority which will still last a while unfortunately, even if I got lucky twice and managed to destroy HQ units (with all their air units). Planes are completely inefficient during blizzard, but once the weather turns to plain winter/snow, the Luftwaffe will have a field day level bombing my peasant on the open fields again. A situation I don't really expect to change significantly until the end of 1942 (because, meta gaming again, I know significant USAAF forces will start flying regular raids on German cities, drawing air units away from their eastern front). May the best comrade win!

Dear Microsoft, for Christmas, could I please have an Alpha Protocol 2? Who owns the AP IP at the moment??? That would have been my preferred MS acquisition

Digging through a lot of old stuff... and suffering several bad cases of nostalgia in the process. Dusting off my collection of old Joan Jett DVD's I put on my headset and just started blasting away at full volume. Found a youtube video of one of the tracks edit: that should have read CD's, not DVD's... oops. Music videos on DVD's weren't really commonplace 20-30 years ago.

Oh look, it's not only the Australian banks that are rotten to the core... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54225572 HSBC allowed fraudsters to transfer millions of dollars around the world even after it had learned of their scam, leaked secret files show. Britain's biggest bank moved the money through its US business to HSBC accounts in Hong Kong in 2013 and 2014. Its role in the $80m (£62m) fraud is detailed in a leak of documents - banks' "suspicious activity reports" - that have been called the FinCEN Files. HSBC says it has always met its legal duties on reporting such activity

In a few months time, Austria will be your favorite EU country then Just a tip, you'll need separate visas to go Austria and the UK when that time comes... don't get stuck at the border

Tulips actually tastes very much like green peas. A friend and I once got kicked out of a place for nibbling a bit on the table decoration

Not sure if related, but cut and pasting something from Forbes magazine: "The Cambridge Analytica scandal may have exposed the raw truth about data security and manipulation on social media, but the issue is rooted in the platforms—the potential for deriving intelligence from otherwise innocuous data. Many of the tools are new, leveraging AI and pattern analytics to map relationships between people “through link analysis,” to use natural language processing to “assign meaning or attitude to social media posts,” and to mine data for information about “past, present, or future locations.” And so are you really being watched? Probably." All governments have to do is flick the switch and get the end of the month summary report on the populations mood and tendencies.

2020 just never ends, does it? New thread here

Old thread Vote Gorth for dictator! No more more uncertainty, no more pointless political wrangling, no more endless debates! On a slightly more serious note, previous thread ended with whether or not there was a point in third party candidates. In the orange corner Guard Dog, in the purple corner a tag team of other forum members

Just a curiosity. One of those little forgotten pieces of military history from a different age (before ICBM's) A large military exercise... where results got classified for half a century because it didn't fit the official line.

The world lost another one of its interesting characters... Ruth Bader Ginsburg: US Supreme Court judge dies of cancer, aged 87 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54214729

He's spent too much time with Xi and Kim Edit: Check my signature for what I think of nationalism. "Patriotism" is just trying to make nationalism sound nicer.

If the spiders... and crocs, ants, sharks, snakes, cassowaries, platypuses etc. doesn't get you, the plants just might Toxins produced by Australia's stinging trees bear a strong resemblance to those of spiders and scorpions, scientists have found. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54199816