Gorth

Looks like the UK got fed up with keeping Iranian oil tankers hostage and let it depart Gibraltar. Mostly of interest because Trump has recently tried bullying the Australia government into joining the war against Iran that he (and the Saudis) wants so badly. I wonder if he wont try to mimic the Prussians who got fed up with the Austrians (not to be confused with Australians, thank you very much) as they kept outmaneuvering Prussia in the game of diplomacy and just went screw it, lets cut to the chase and declare war against Austria anyway, casus belli be damned.

The architecture of Orr. Not for the faint hearted (it's a long way down). Yes, I'm "cheating", using a flying mount to get up there. Surreal skies over the land of the undead.

Shamelessly copying the Bioware wikipedia page (middle paragraph bold faced by me): --- Their first game, Shattered Steel, began its life as a proof-of-concept demo, similar to the MechWarrior games. This demo was submitted to ten publishers, seven of whom returned to the company with an offer. A publishing deal for Shattered Steel was eventually signed with Interplay Entertainment. Brent Oster and Trent Oster left BioWare at that time to form Pyrotek Studios, which continued developing Shattered Steel but broke up a year later, with Trent returning to BioWare to finish the game.[5] BioWare's first game was released the following year. Shattered Steel's release was described by IGN as a "modest success" with "decent sales". Two noteworthy points were the deformable terrain (player weapon damage caused craters in the environment) and zone damage (well-placed gunfire could shoot mounted weapons off enemies). A sequel to Shattered Steel was planned for 1998 but never realized.[4] BioWare's founders and staff were keenly interested in both computerized and pen-and-paper variants of role-playing games. Their next development project, therefore, was determined to be a role-playing game. When Interplay financed "exploratory development", BioWare presented the publishers with a demo called Battleground: Infinity. Interplay suggested that the demonstrated gameplay engine would be well-suited to the Dungeons & Dragons licence which it had acquired from Strategic Simulations. Accordingly, Infinity was reworked in line with the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset.[4] This resulted in Baldur's Gate, which witnessed a development cycle of three years. During this time, the three doctors continued to practice medicine. However, in the final years of the project, the demands of development prompted Muzyka and Zeschuck to leave medicine and move into full-time development. Augustine Yip decided to continue with his medical practice. Baldur's Gate sold more than two million copies after its release, nearly matching the sales of Diablo. Following the success of Baldur's Gate, the Infinity Engine was used for the games Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series. The success of Baldur's Gate was followed by an expansion pack for the game: Tales of the Sword Coast.[6] Edit: tl;dr; what was pitched as a typical (for the time) rts game got reworked into Baldurs Gate instead. Based on memory, may be wrong, but the thinking behind it being that the rts market was already very competitive at the time.

Guild Wars 2... having an "alt account". I've since completed the quest for getting for Skyscalle mount for this account too. I thought it was a nice little touch, that the little critter grows when you feed it and gets happy when you play with it.

A friend and I went and saw Lion King (the new one). It's not that it is painfully bad or anything, it just doesn't hold a candle to the original, animated movie. The CGI offers the worst of both worlds. Not realistic enough to be convincing and not "cute" enough to compete with the old animations. Story was sort of Ok'ish, the songs.... not particularly memorable. The food at the restaurant outside the cinema was good though

Hey, we're talking about a guy with several high profile bankruptcies behind him. Not sure how anyone expected him to manage a national economy any better Anyone wanna bet it's why he's trying everything short of just ordering airstrikes on Tehran, casus belli be damned, to start the war he wants so badly. Hard to impeach a president in the middle of a war, so he need it badly. Maybe he's waiting for Boris Johnson to take over in London, because that guy has shown beyond any doubt that he has neither shame nor spine. He'll be busy wiggling his little bottom in the air, spreading his butt cheeks with his hands, trying to appear as appealing to Trump as possible. Once he's secure in the role as Ttrumps inflatable doll, the UK will jump and lead the charge wherever Trumps points them, because they (the UK) need whatever scraps of trade agreements they can get.

Oh, you mean all 3 countries have oil reserves, but not under control of western powers? 😛 EDIT: Disclaimer. I haven't watched the video

A brilliant take on Brexit. Personally, I liked the chapter on Bigfoot Erotica better than Theresa May's Chapter 12

A shame nobody had any feedback for you on Surviving Mars (not familiar with the game), but I recognize the use of Steam sales as a way to try out games I wouldn't normally buy

😇

Consider myself recommended and warned No idea where it came from, but Steam asked me if I wanted to apply a voucher at checkout, reducing the cost from $20 to $12 AUD. That's about $8.5 USD. That's what I spend on two Cappucino's across the street, so, not really any risk involved in that purchase. Bought the base game. I'll give it a try over the weekend

I haven't tried the Battletech game currently on a sale on Steam, but it's kind of sad that the best version of it that I've played so far is an old Amiga shareware game (Called 'Mechforce iirc', runs fine on WinUAE). Complete with clan mechs, drop pods, destructible terrain (set the forest on fire and watch the fire spread depending on wind direction, mechs that suffers reactor explosions creates depressions in the ground etc.) and a computer AI that plays a very competent game. Turn based goodness I would love to see in a post 1990 version 😢

Sorry @LittleArmadillo0 I removed the last post of yours. The profanity in the image featured a little too prominently to ignore

Reading that whole thread....

Oh, I'm such a bad subject of Her Majesty's 😝 I'm sure the outback is large enough to hide in. On a serious note, you know I couldn't care less about countries and nationalism. It's some perverted idea that was introduced in 1648 that you should die for a country. Ideas and values? Maybe. Nation states? Never.

Hehe... someone leaked memos from the UK Ambassador in Washington intended for London. He had some interesting things to say about Trump. No surprises though, more like stating the obvious: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48898231 "We don't really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction-riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept." He questioned whether this White House "will ever look competent". A bit rich from a government that haven't worked out how to exit the EU yet

I'm not a shrink, but I could easily imagine Trump on the podium at the Nuremberg Rally in 1933, enjoying the adulation of the masses, he would fit the profile like a hand in a glove. I dismissed his initial lies as the typical election lies that all politicians give the voters. Not sure anybody really believe election promises (although I'll make allowances for the Fox News audience, but I don't exactly hold them in high regard, unless you read/watch it for the giggles). What made me start thinking this guy has a serious problem with truth and the real world was the lies and exaggerations around his inauguration and the crowd sizes. Hence my comment above about his envy of totalitarian rulers, which can just order a sizeable crowd out on the streets. Edited for weird Friday afternoon spelling techniques applied

I always wondered if Trump suffers from some kind of small **** complex, envying people like Kim, Xi, Putin etc. for the power they wield over their subjects.

Hahaha, Ok. I just seemed to remember you had a fondness for Bourbon, not the specifics of the brands

My condolences @Guard Dog https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-48862621/jim-beam-warehouse-fire-destroys-45000-barrels-of-bourbon

I'm pretty sure too he can recommission some old Sherman M4's from somewhere. They can be sent to the Mexican border afterwards to help the locals against the invasion.

I remember years ago, going to Copenhagen and browse through the comics at Fantask was awesome. Wonder if it still exists...

Oh Ehh... Ooops? Apologies Hurlshot. Child abuse a subject I feel strongly about. Time to roll down the sleeves again

Even the old nethack didn't go that far... it deleted your save when you loaded it and created a new save when you exited the game. If you died while playing (and RNG could be brutal) it was back to rolling a new level 1 Edit: Spent the weekend with friends, enjoying food, drinks and live music. Locals in a small town, rural Victoria, but some of it was pretty good. All of them talented with good voices etc., just different levels of experience. Hard to not feel sorry for a duo that were obviously very shy and insecure, but the singer? She had a fantastic voice, just need to learn to let go of herself in front of an audience, even a small one

Ok, now I'm seriously curious. Exactly what am I manipulating here? As for scoring points, I know as well as the next even remotely sentient being, that there are no winners in internet debates, only losers. Some people just get a kick out of attention, I guess you call them "winners" if you pay them attention. But but yeah, to repeat the question, manipulating exactly what? On a tangent not related to the doings of the Cristian churches here, how would you, generic you, not Hurlshot you, measure most persecuted anyway? Number of individuals? Degree of persecution (i.e. being fed to lions or just not being allowed to stone women who get raped or by duration? In which case the Jews probably wins). Most persecution of Christians these days is done by other Christian denominations. Notable exceptions being places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Nigeria where the persecution is done by Muslims.