Gorth

Like the Metric System J/K... just an opinion of mine, the US is what you get when you take individual freedom to extremes, leaving individuals to fend for themselves. Less social cohesiveness. Russia is what you get on the opposite end of the scale, complete lack of individual freedom and don't you dare do anything on your own initiative. Many countries fall in between the two extremes and a few gets close to aforementioned outliers (like China being similar to Russia in some ways etc.)

A Polish girl doing some very impressive (imnsho) "doll modifications". A bit of an understatement, as sometimes all that is left of the original is parts of the head. Dozens of videos of some very impressive conversions. I'm particularly impressed by the quality of her face painting (as a model painter, I always struggled with faces). I visited her website and sadly it states that she doesn't sell them and she doesn't do commissions (or I would have been tempted to splurge). For her own fun only apparently... https://www.youtube.com/@CatmeleonStudio Most her work shows too much skin to post examples here, even if it's all plastic and epoxy

It doesn't worry at all that Bezos is listening to everything happening in your bedroom?

Passed along the suggestion...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/06/09/download-free-space-marines-index-cards-and-defend-the-imperium-from-annihilation/ Space marines (non chapter specific rules) https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/06/08/download-free-tyranid-index-cards-and-devour-the-galaxy-whole/ Tyranids https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/06/12/free-space-marines-index-cards-dark-angels-blood-angels-space-wolves-black-templars-and-deathwatch/ Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Death Watch and Black Templars (free downloads) Edit: Games Workshop added various Chaos factions as free downloads... https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/06/13/free-chaos-index-cards-let-the-galaxy-burn-with-rules-for-six-factions/ Generic Chaos Marines, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, World Eaters, Chaos Demons & Chaos Knights Seems like Fulgrim's lot is conspicuously absent? Emperors Children turning out to be slackers

Will the world ever see such deep and profound dialogue again? On a serious note, it's like something created by ChatGTP years before that was invented...

Silvio Berlusconi... but I'm not sure how many people will lament his passing?

Fallout had no classes. It worked for me

Much better... My jab was at the justification, not the conduct. Counter argument to conduct of the war in Iraq would be the strategic objective... what did they do with the country after Saddam was toppled? Save the oil fields of course, but the thing about inherently unstable autocracies is, when you cut off the head of the snake, you have an incomprehensible mess on your hands. The world is still feeling the aftershock from the rise of various fundamentalist groups who rose to power during and after the war. No plans were in place how to deal with the country once defeated. Heck, they might even have done the world a favour if they had split it up there and then. At least the Kurds would've had a place to call home (and a new country for Turkey to invade).... Yes, I know, by comparison, the Russian objective (despite whatever Moscow claims) seems to be to just depopulate the area. Ship kids and women of child bearing age to Russia proper and kill the rest, it can be resettled in two or three generations (not unheard of during Soviet rule). No wonder Armenia and Azerbaijan are new best friends and Kazakhstan is rethinking its international relations in general.

The movie is great, but the sound track they mixed in is just jarring, making the whole thing feel incongruent

The food chain in Australia sometimes confuses foreigners... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-28/cow-eating-snake-photos-outback-australia/12822382

Moving on from old news in old thread...

New news in this new thread

It was just me poking a bit of fun at the original Baldurs Gate. Exploring peoples homes was not always straight forward (when the occupants caught you stealing and got all aggro on you). A novel experience for me at the time

Which of course was a blatant lie. It will take more than that to convince me that Bush Jr. didn't have his mind set in stone avenging Bush Sr.'s failed war adventures in the first gulf war. Payback time... or how would you else explain the lies and outright fabricated "evidence" used to justify the invasion? But that's a discussion for another thread

I wonder how people in the city react when they catch me inside their homes, going through their drawers and cupboards?

The Hobbit was a necessity I had bought this adventure game for my Commordore 64, The Hobbit from Melbourne House. In the box was the tape, the instruction pamphlet and... The Hobbit (in English). I ended up stuck int he goblin tunnels and kept getting killed in the dark. This was a decade before the internet, so the only goto aid was the paperback book. Eventually i figured out (by reading the book), that I had to trick the 3 trolls to stay out in the open when the sun rises and turns them to stone, then loot their camp. This little shortsword named "Sting" had a the ability of glowing in the dark when greenskins were near. Hence, i now had a lightsource in the goblin tunnels and could escape Nevermind that Gandalf and Elrond were both pricks, kept taking my map so I couldn't leave Rivendell. Every time I managed to get the map back, the other one would take it out of my inventory Don't get my started on Thorin, who would, while escaping from the goblin tunnels, plunk his lazy dwarf butt down on the ground and singing about gold, getting us all killed Anyway, school library... the only other series of books I remember from top of my head (mostly because it was a struggle of mental fortitude to get through) was a series of books by some guy named Donal Stephenson (iirc). About a guy called Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. the chose one and the wielder of White Gold (which made him special in some way, even though he was a leprosy patient and the white gold was his wedding ring). Maybe I should read it again and I might understand it better as an adult. There were many other books, but their names escape me today

I didn't get into Dragonlance until I was in my twenties (blame lack of Dragonlance book supply for that! ). What I did read at age ten to fifteen was what they had in the school library. Alistair Maclean in particular was a favourite. Fond memories of Guns of Navarone, Fear is the Key, Ice Station Zebra etc. suddenly resurfacing. Man... it's been many, many years since reading those. Edit: Books weren't really accessible to me unless there was a Danish translations. Didn't pick up reading English paperbacks until I got forced at gunpoint to read The Hobbit

Hey, lawyers have to live too! One way to keep up the employment figures

Simplest way? Only if they have nothing to hide. If they do have something to hide, it doesn’t matter that you know it, I know it and the rest of the world knows it. There’s always that little niggly bit of plausible deniability without hard proof edit: why take the blame today when you can make somebody else take the fall tomorrow?

I'm sure they're all volunteers doing this in their spare time out of the goodness of their hearts. Sorry, I no longer remember the usual Russian explanation for Russian service men helping the separatists, but it was something to that effect. No official participation for sure! Edit: thinking about separatists (and Russians) fighting against the Ukrainian army in the east for years, I wonder how much that may have convinced Putin, that Ukraine would be a pushover if using enough numbers? The insurrection showed if anything, that the Ukrainian army was as badly trained and equipped as the Russian army. Antiquated doctrines and equipment and corruption being rampant made it a very similar level to the Russian army in "efficiency". If two poorly performing armies fight, I can see how the idea may form, that it's just a numbers game. I'm fairly sure without some quick western support (those first shipments of NLAW and Javelin sure came in handy in the first month or two of the war), Ukraine would have, not necessarily lost but a lot more ground to recover. The upgrade of the Ukrainian available hardware and better training seems to be the key differentiator in making the numbers less important.

From my favourite Faeroese songbird... more from the Last Kingdom soundtrack. I *think* she sings in Old Norse

As a fan and player of Horus Heresy, you sometimes stumble over gaming groups that seems live in obscurity on the internet, despite making top notch work. Recently found a Malaysian group producing Youtube videos about different aspects of the hobby. Despite being around for some years and making quality videos, they still only have like 500+ subscribers. Makes you scratch your head But I found myself watching a number of their videos, including their backlog recently and really enjoying it (disclaimer: mostly for Horus Heresy enthusiasts I think) https://www.youtube.com/@fareastwargaming

I wonder what the judgement is on the French... one the most shocking experiences I had when working there, was the boiled steak. It was a perfectly good piece of meat and they boiled it (I returned to Berlin again after 3 weeks, at least I was familiar with Schnitzel)

It's his special power, that he got from The Emperor (all 21 primarchs supposedly got a special trait representing one aspect/ability of him)... to remain unnoticed