Gorth

I was curious about Denmark, as they are mostly self sufficient with gas and oil (having a bit of both in the North Sea and relying more and more on renewable energy). Turns out they do (or did, old numbers) import some oil from Russia, but not crude oil. No idea what 'Oils Obtained from Bituminous Mineral' is edit: Sounds like something used for asphalt manufacturing...

Hey, what's the rush. Steam engines were old before someone made a working internal combustion engine

Cobra looks like it has a certain appeal... i really need to check it out some day As for Gleipnir, dang, they really left a lot out of the Anime, didn't they? From your post, about 3/4 of the story (and I still liked the anime a lot)

Same mate... same. Assumptions and generalizations are two of humanity's failures. Something about our brains wanting to reduce the workload and stop rethinking things over and over leading to shortcuts based on small sample sizes or some such (too many years since I read up on it). Still, it's such a limitation of the use of human intellect, it's criminal

As if the companies truly cares… the added cost of fines will be passed on to the consumers (or a few thousand employees let go, anything to avoid jeopardising they dividends)

Completely void of any logic (or truth), but funny indeed. He had me when he conflated Ukraine and LGBT rights Good satire of the way people think leftists think.

I do sometimes wonder if “The Great Sage” isn’t somewhat more than just a smug encyclopaedia

That time I got reincarnated as a slime episode 21... The slime overlord turned school teacher manages to earn the respect of the kids... backed in part by a giant intimidating and growling giant dire wolf (leaving no doubt that the kids are close to becoming dog food) and a "test", where the kids all get 10 minutes of one on one fighting and a chance to see if they can take him down. Of course it was never really a contest and he also observes that none of their excess magical energy got "burnt off" in the skirmishes. One kid, Chloe caught his attention for reasons he can't pinpoint. He shows them Shizu's mask (which they all recognize) and tell them she entrusted them to him and he will do anything he can to save them. The kids start acting just a little nicer.... Following up on his hunch, that Shizu survived until adulthood because of her merging with a superior spirit, he asks the Dryad for advice, where to find superior spirits. She points him towards something called The Dwelling of Spirits, ruled over by The Queen of Spirits. Yeah... getting all spiritual now (including a nightly conversation, well monologue, with Shizu's spirit where he repeats his commitment to save the kids) Unfortunately, the Queen of Spirits that the Dryad served, passed away a long time ago and she has no connection to the current ruler. Which means, she can't give him any directions towards an entrance to the place Rimuru spends the next month trying to figure out how to access the place. More teaching, class excursions, lessons and bonding exercises follow. A chance encounter with a human gives him a clue to the places whereabouts, as she claims it was close to the village where she grew up. Off Rimuru, Ranga and the class goes in search of superior spirits...

Way to go! Curiosity reflex triggered... whereabouts???

You should visit Scandinavia some day

That's a bit like saying all conservatives are religious nut cases and vice versa... too much generalization and mixing of ideologies. I was surprised the Mona Lisa thing didn't get attributed to BLM

I refuse to read any of Murdochs outlets, but from a more trust worthy site (Wales Online), it was an environmental activist that smeared the glass in front of the painting with cream... (didn't say if the cream was from free range cow milk) Sorry, your holy crusade against the radical left needs to be postponed a bit. Wouldn't want to waste all that zealotry....

Most famous drinking song ever to come out of London?

There are always exceptions. One of my all time favourite movies was Finding Nemo. Pixar managed to make a desk lamp more expressive than anything in all Lucas' post 1980 movies combined. But for every exception, there is a horde of generic, soulless CGI movies...

I don't know what it is about CGI, but it usually just feels very "lifeless". The kind of stuff you would use to prototype a live action movie sequence with, to show your actors how you imagine an action sequence should happen before doing it for real

Slime story continued, episode 20... For those who don't get the irony of Milim's 'Showing newfound restraint' comment in the last video clip, the last time she got really angry she completely wiped out a nation (Milim the Destroyer indeed)... It starts out in a hot spring (very Japanese I suppose), everybody relaxing after the latest scare and disaster averted. Milim brings up the subject of Rimuru becoming a demon lord again (she wouldn't object!). Rimuru is confused however, why would he want to be that and what's the merit in it? Milim being a bit baffled by the question, why did she become one? Milim is/was a dragonoid like Veldora, who currently resides in one of Rimuru's pocket dimensions inside him since episode 1 (where he agreed to take up residence for now, to escape the trap that had been laid for him). She can't remember why she did so, but poses it as a question... did something bad happen to me and I became one out of frustration? Leaving Rimuru confused, as to why she's asking him why she became one... But... she suddenly thought up one benefit. Thanks to being a demon lord, she gained herself a bestie! Anyway, she takes off because she has to "go back to work", which means hang out with other demon lords and do demon lord stuff. Which concludes the mini-arc that was Milim's introduction. Rimuru is now getting back to a promise he made to Shizu. Leaving people in charge of his city, he makes his way to the Kingdom of Ingrassia, together with Ranga (his dire wolf). Through contacts, he had already sent a letter of introduction to the founder of the school "The Freedom Academy", which was originally one of Shizu's students, 'Yuuki' and a Japanese family name (which I cant spell correctly from top of my head, too many syllables), which Rimuru takes as he's probably originally from Japan, just like Shizu was (full name Shizue Izawa). As for why these kids needs some attention... they are all summoned from other worlds and discarded as "failures", because their summoner didn't get what he wanted out of them. That leaves them with accumulating magical powers, which will soon kill the kids by spontaneous self combustion and/or explosion. Not a bright future ahead for these kids and they know they're not going to grow old. Shizu survived because her summoner forced her to merge with a superior fire spirit, which absorbed some of the magical energy until she got strong enough to control both the spirit and the magic. Rimuru make his way past the city guard and for the first time in a long time is in a city with the hustle and bustle of a human city (having previously been to the Dwarven capital and other cities with a lot of mixed species in the streets). He's convinced the city must be very wealthy as they have glass windows! Rimuru meets Yuuki and after a bit of misunderstandings (because he was using Shizu's mask to hide his magical aura at the city gates and Yuuki thinks he has killed Shizu to take her mask), he gets on Yuuki's good side by using his knowledge of manga's to instantly print a library of manga's that Yuuki hadn't read before he got summoned to this world He gets the job. Even a regular salary On their way to class, Yuuki drops the name 'Hinata', being one of Shizu's former students, but Rimuru knows very little about her other than Shizu mentioning she had a student by that name who left her. Well, the class is something out of a horror movie. A bunch of kids rampaging through the class room, not giving a damn about anything, because hey, we're going to die tomorrow anyway, right? More to follow later...

That’s because Denmark and naval based Harpoon missiles don’t go hand in hand… I remember when this was new news https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Harpoon_missile_misfire_incident

I don't care about their family lives... unless it's symptomatic of their personality. I.e. married/unmarried/same sex marriage... couldn't care less. It's completely irrelevant. I do expect my politicians to show traits I appreciate in a politician however. Honesty, dedication and hard work in all aspects of their lives. If they are not trustworthy outside a parliament, they are not trustworthy. End of story. But what I expect of a government is a bit different. I think the Swiss are on to something. Let people decide on issues, big and small between elections. Most governments (and oppositions) will run on single issues or close to it. But all the "other issues" that barely get addressed? They are decided by governments in ways that sometimes take the people who voted them in by surprise. To take an example from decades ago... people vote in a government in Copenhagen on some promise of blah blah. Without consulting anyone else in the matter they sign a treaty to sell the oil rights in the North Sea to a private company. Or sign a treaty to build a bridge between Denmark or Sweden. Or... you get the picture. People were never asked if they wanted any of those things, because it happened between elections. I know it's not viable in a lot of places in the world, but Denmark has the infrastructure to allow a lot of things to be done online, including elections. Might as well send out issues for referendums too. Even if Maastricht 1992 still scares the **** out of politicians (the politicians and the elite were like 95% in favour of Maastricht, problem was, the Danes themselves weren't). But we need a lot more direct democracy on a number of issues, without letting the politicians run roughshod over people, only asking if the "other party" is worse or less bad every 4 years or so.

@BruceVC I was being semi serious when I suggested Trump would’ve been more likely to support Russia over Ukraine…. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61614782

@BruceVC To continue the conversation about governments... what do you expect from a government? Are they hired to lead you or are they hired to do the administrative work of running a country on your behalf? Different cultures have different expectations. A government at odds with its people usually either doesn't last or resort to the use of force to get things the way it want it to. The Swiss put a lot of stuff up for referendums and let people decide, reducing the governments role in decision making. Scandinavian governments are there on their best behaviour, always under close scrutiny by the press and the people. Other countries have traditions of following leaders, some of them elected, some of them not.

Moved the last two posts by Bruce and me from the Ukraine thread, as it was more about general politics than the war in Ukraine

I mentioned it previously. It's too generic a question. I can mention many Americans I like and admire, many Americans I view in a very unfavourable way. Their governments (edit: the last 40 years) are somewhere between deadly disasters and entertaining circus shows. Rarely ever a "role model" for others to follow. Seriously think they would benefit from splitting up in smaller chunks. But that's just one outsiders opinion. Dips on those part with the Americans I like...

Trump would probably have sent Stingers and Javelins to Putin, to help him in his war against the "evil Ukrainians". After all, the Biden family are all in cahoots with the "regime" in Kiev, doing shady business deals.

My favourite slime... episode 16 to 19 (I think, may be 20, I'll need to double check, but it was a "mini arc", introducing Milim Nava and the world of Demons to Rimuru and his growing society (The Jura Tempest Federation or some such) Short version, Milim observed the events and the death of the Ord Lord Geld through a scrying ball, while at some demon lords place. What a great opportunity to relieve some of her perpetual boredom She ends up in the city of Tempest, looking for Rimuru and of course all his loyal subjects sense the threat she poses and attacks her. Not that the combined force of his most powerful subjects is anything Milim can't fix with a flick of a finger. Rimuru shows up and... plays dirty. He had correctly assessed her to be part immensely (and immeasurably) powerful, but also childish. Not only in looks, but in temper and disposition. Challenging her to a duel, he dares her to let him hit her first... which he does with a lump of bee honey which he shoves into her mouth. Suddenly she's willing to call it a draw in return for more of that sweet honey... (she didn't really come to fight anyway, she was bored out of her mind and this place and Rimuru looked like an interesting distraction) Milim decides to move in (Rimuru's slime form can show some nicely shockeded looking animations) and not only that, Rimuru is not only her friend, but her bestie! (I "cheated" a bit and checked out some of the background lore and character bios from the manga fandom wikis, especially checking what was cut in the anime adaptation, and Milim is probably the second most powerful demon in existence, rivaled only by another demon lord named 'Guy Crimson', one of three original demon lords, 'Ramiris' being the third, but she plays a significant role a bit later) A number of small side plots, like his followers refining the process of synthetically created healing potions (rather than relying on Rimuru to do the healing all the time) and the minion of another demon lord making the mistake of trying to move as the new "boss" on behalf of his master... until Milim sees it and decides nobody does that to her bestie and proceeds to smash him to a pulp, only stopping short of completely annihilating him because Rimuru interferes (was in one of the previous clips I posted). Rimuru interrogates the minion ('Phobio') a bit and gets information about his master, the demon lord 'Carrion'. But for now, the biggest threat comes from yet another Demon Lord, 'Clayman'. He has the allegiance (for reasons unknown) of 'The Moderate Harlequin Alliance', which he engages to gather information. A powerful being 'Charybdis' is re-awakening and he wants to know if it can be controlled. The two harlequins take it one step further and tricks Phobio into finding Charybdis under the pretext of it granting him power etc.... and gets literally consumed by it (Charybdis is a kind of spirit only creature, needing a physical body to take over and resculpt to its needs). A dryad shows up in Rimuru's city and warns Rimuru, that something big and nasty is coming their way and everybody is asked to help, except Milim (Rimuru is part scared of what would happen if Milim really lets loose and part worried about relying on someone a bit unreliable). She really wanted to impress her bestie... Long fight short, it ends in a complete disaster. Rimuru does find out that part of Charybdis' mind is filled with so much hatred of Milim it shines through. Rimuru asks Milim to help... and she's very enthusiastic Next up is episode 20 and onwards, but that is another little story arc. Rimuru promised Shizu on her death bed, he would look after the human children she had been teaching at a school for otherworld summons....

I would've guessed Finland based on the name, but Estonia is somewhat related to their northern neighbors (edit: iirc that is, help me out here you Finns and Estonians)