Gorth

You may or may not notice a pattern in my list, they're items that contribute to creating a society living in fear. You could ask yourself, who benefits from a society living in fear and why does it benefit them? Some obscure mastermind worthy of conspiracy theories, is it small groups or individuals (or even an individual) possessed by a hunger for power, encouraging collective fear? I'm sure it's not just Murdoch getting an erection out of stirring up violence and a crackdown on progress...

Yeah, like the January 6th insurrection... Otherwise I fail to see how your points would have helped prevent 14 kids and a teacher from being murdered in Texas

It might not be fixable on a Federal level, but maybe some day, some state or community might decide it needs fixing. No, guns are not the main problem (even if they exacerbate the problem significantly), society is the problem and needs changing. Edit: You know, like somebody starts making a checklist of things to fix... - Poverty/Wealth inequality -Racism/Unfairness -Hopelessness/Despair -Mental health issues being taboo/Macho culture/Socially dysfunctional environments -Lack of education (not talking about reading, writing, math etc., but life lessons and wisdom being passed on and disseminated) -... -... (add to list)

I wouldn't underestimate the Israeli intelligence services. There may be a few blemishes here and there, but they've "generally" assassinated a large number of people successfully in recent years. They don't seem to care much about the fallout or consequences either, as long as they get their target, whether they be politicians, military people or scientists/academics

Russian agents are just as bad as their army... most assassination attempts are high profile failures.

That time etc. etc. slime (too long title) After having more or less genocided the Ogres, the Orc horde enters the swamp lands of the Lizardmen. Fortunately, the one of them with a bit of brain is their king and he orders his son, Gabiru (who has no brain), to leave their village with a Lizardman army and recruit allies amongst the neighbouring people, mostly Goblins, to help with the fight against the Orc horde. He does that for a while, straining his intellect to the bursting point in doing so. His warriors are no less intellectually challenge and start goading him into seizing power, because... he's such a great warrior, a hero and a genius, much better at everything than his dad, the king. If anyone has see The Fifth Element, it was like a throwback to Ruby Rhod and the way his sycophants were fawning all over him. I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but he really is smarter, stronger and faster than his warriors, because he got a name bestowed upon him by Lord Gelmud (who we know nothing about at this point except he also has a master whose bidding he's doing). Some particularly hilarious scenes has Gabiru basking in sunlight beams, reflected off the shields of his warriors (who points the light towards their hero), looking like a movie star posing for the cameras... Eventually believing his own delusions, he deposes of his father the king and decides to round up Rimuru's village as "cannon fodder", in addition to the 7000 goblins he already conscripted for the glorious nation of the Lizardmen. Tl;dr; it didn't go to plan and his unconscious form gets carried off by his warriors. However, Rimuru has come to the conclusion (well, not really by himself, but a visit of a Dryad, the caretaker of the forest convinced him) that the Orc Lord and his horde (200000 strong) needs to be dealt with. Gathering his villages and the 6 Kijin (ex-Ogres), he and his army squares off against the Orc army. Rimuru doesn't even get to flex any of his magic muscles as between them, the 6 Kijin annihilates a quarter of the Orc army and forces a confrontation between the Orc Lord and Rimuru. To make a long and epic battle short, Rimuru is victorious and the Orc Lord is mortally wounded. From the dying Orc Lord, Rimuru learns a bit of exposition, who the Orc Lord was before he was given a name and why he was found dying in a wasteland by Lord Gelmud. A long and devastating famine had threatened to wipe out of the Orcs, dying a slow and painful death from starvation. Gelmud used this by bestowing a new ability on the Orc Lord, who could pass it on to his people. Similar to Rimuru, Orcs can (or could, the ability got consumed by Rimuru when defeating the Orc Lord) eat not only dead enemies, but their own dead and so sustain themselves, even growing stronger and absorbing the strength of the fallen they eat. Basically turning them into an almost mindless horde of ravenous, all consuming swarm of land sharks.... but, Rimuru offers the surviving Orcs, that they can join his village. They get food and shelter in return for providing muscle and labour to they growing community. Some time during the battle with the Ord Lord (named 'Geld'), Lord Gelmud had stressful experience where his head got separated permanently from his body.... Last thing to do, Rimuru frees the Lizardman king from captivity and they enter an alliance. At a gathering, they all declare Rimuru "Grand Chancellor of The Great Forest of Jura" (with the Dryad's blessing). A few hints and about what was going on before, including Lord Gelmud's master, but not much info yet. Gabiru gets sentence exile (much to his surprise, as he was convinced he was going to die) by his father, the king. Three of his closest syco... followers are overjoyed, knowing that he'll survive, and decides to follow him into exile.

Like the previous Rammstein video, questionable quality phone recordings It will have to do until some pro-shot quality/official videos get out...

Bitcoin and The Internet!!!

ABC news has predicted Greens to win Griffith (leading with 69%)

I suspect the design choice is very deliberate. It is made by humans after all

Isn't Florida full of sinkholes? I seem to remember reading something about it just being a big sponge with a bit of vegetation on top

To be honest, the opposition party is not my cup of tea either. It was either that or the lying, walking Chlamydia for too many years (as if it hadn't been too many years already). But the Labour Party also has a rather spotty reputation for doing away with peoples votes and doing leadership replacements and nocturnal backstabbing, meaning you tend to end up with another leader than the one that got the majority of peoples votes, some real bait and switch action... If I had been able to vote, I would probably have voted for either the green party or independents (unlike the US, independents in other countries can be very powerful and be the proverbial tip on the scale of hung parliaments)

Looking to pick up a new sport? The Beer Mile run may be your thing... https://www.beermile.com/

Oldies but goodies... the Rammstein members are somewhere between 55 and 60 by now, but still touring. Not bad for a bunch of "old men". You lucky bastards in the Czech Republic...

A fantastic movie (pun unintended). Together with Blade Runner probably my two favourite sound tracks from 80's movies... Arnold did a couple of movies in the 80's that I liked. Besides Conan, I would give honourable mentions to Twins (a shout out to Danny DeVito too) and Total Recall.

Right you are Even worse, I had the Conan soundtrack cd just in front of me

That "Cobra" stuff looks like something out of a 70's Belgian comic... I might have to check it out

His movie soundtracks (Conan the Barbarian and Chariots of Fire), his collaborations with Jon Anderson from Yes (I'll find my way home or The friends of Mr. Cairo), his own projects... he's a frigging genius!

Up to episode 13 in the story about my favourite slime... Rimuru practises his new human body. He has also picked up a "body double" skill, so due to a lack of mirrors in the world, he uses that to see what he actually looks like. Much to his horror, he realizes that his otherwise pretty young face is attached to an androgynous body with bits and pieces missing Wondering why he's looking like a kid (he was a 37 year old man in his previous life) and a bit uncannily, looking very similar to Shizu, he experiments with adult versions of a human body. Trying first a man, then a woman. The latter resulting in a lot of blushing and rejecting of the idea of adult, gender specific bodies. The young, androgynous human it is. He also repaired Shizu's mask and keeps it part as a keepsake to remember her by and part because it has magical (or rather anti magical) properties, masking the wearers aura and hiding his true power. Things are happening in the world outside the "goblin village" (because they are no longer normal goblins, nor is the village recognizable as a goblin village). Somebody as of yet unknown to the viewer other than the name, Lord Gelmud, finds a dying orc and tampers with it. Subsequently, the great forest of Jura (where Rimuru and his followers live) gets invaded by a massive orc army. The first people to get annihilated were the ogres. Rimuru runs into a small group of ogre survivors, who attacks him because of the mask he's wearing (Shizu's mask). The orcs that wiped them out was led by a "Majin" wearing a similar mask, so they assumed it was him. After beating some sense into them Rimuru decides to name them. As far as I understand the whole naming of monsters thing, it's not a trivial thing (which is why most monsters have no names). It requires a lot of magical energy to bestow a name on a monster and iirc, Rimuru went into several days of coma when he named all the goblin villages. On the other end, receiving a name makes a monster a lot stronger/smarter/etc. The 6 ogres becomes something else, becoming "Kijin" (just like the goblins became first hobgoblins, the dire wolves became something else and so on). They are now a force to be reckoned with, owing allegiance to Rimuru and moving in with his extended goblin and dwarf family in the village. The ogre leader Benimaru becoming a truly powerful fighter and magic user, Shion declaring herself Rimuru's "secretary", the scout (Soei) can suddenly create lots of body doubles to keep watch in many places at once (and teleport around). The old sword fighter, Hakuro, who in the first encounter managed to sneak past Rimuru's defenses and cut off his arm, turns into... something out of a martial arts movie. (I think a console game was made for the franchise too) Next to face the orcs are the Lizardmen, who lives in the marshlands around the central lake of the forest. Separate post coming up for that Edit: Shion's cooking really is bad...

V'ger had help...

The relationship between Denmark and Sweden explained... edit: Iirc, the solution being an artificial island, where the bridge and the tunnel connects

Back then, the training was because I worked in a role as (assistant) manager in one of the "Big Four". The amount of information we had on every man and his many layers of obfuscation of true ownership of money meant, razzias were a very real possibility at any moment, when investigators were digging into the assets of suspected white collar criminals. A bit irrelevant for us, who made software (and didn't offer audit, Tax advice or other financial advisory services) for the company's clients. It did make daily work a bit more interesting. More fun than the fortnightly fire drills (evacuating from the top of The Majestic Center in Wellington, 26th floor, using the stairs sucked) or the frequent earthquakes.

I remember when working in New Zealand… part of the training was how to deal with police raids

I did leave one thing out of my quote... each single item on the list had minimum one link to documentation. But I thought posting 1000+ links in a single post would kill the forum software or get rejected by the submit button. As for what the opposition is up against, in case you didn't watch the entirety of my previous honest government ads. It's an almost total media market domination (because it's owned by Murdoch Media). A situation similar to Italy under Berlusconi. No matter how rotten or incompetent, he has full media (well, over 80%, but that still gives a skewed political coverage in the public debate) backing for his shenanigans.

I really need to start a Deathguard squad or two in WH40k some day...