Gorth

Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons.... Finished the main story last night. Haven't unlocked the Siege Turtle collection yet (something you need to do to acquire the turtle). The brilliant minds at ANet decided that it should not be easy to get, so they put it behind a map meta event. It takes two hours and on a *very* tight timer. I.e. if just a handful out of 50 people messes up, you've wasted 2 hours of your life. The unforgiving difficulties you normally associate with raids and organized raid groups, not 50 people random pug groups Apparently the failure rate is still over 80%, but getting ever slowly lower (from an initial 100%) as people keep banging their heads against the fight and learning the mechanics.... Edit: The recipe for success... just bring 60-120 people organized into 3 raid squads made up of experienced raiders

I definitively declined to extend the lease of the place I'm living in today. Nothing like a bit of pressure to motivate one self Still, I got 10-12 days to find a new place, arrange removal company for my furniture and cleaners for the old place. No hurry....

For those interested in history and background for the war... warning, long video, but very interesting. Bear in mind this is from 2015, covering post Soviet and Western relations after 1991, but could have been made yesterday. From the University of Chicago...

To the best of my knowledge, I never claimed Putin to be a champion of Democracy. What I have given him credit for, is providing stability after the implosion of the Soviet Union. The Russian "rump state", with the worlds largest (possibly second largest, as I don't know how many of the nukes Kazakhstan and Ukraine had respectively) and completely falling apart. I still remember watching on TV, how Soviet tanks rolled into Moscow as Red Army officers wanted to force a stop to the dissolution by any means necessary and Yeltsin taking power, literally on the barricades and then proceeded to governing the remnant of Russia while transitioning the country from communism to alcoholism. My horror vision back then was a Russian federation falling apart into 30+ warring areas, each with a warlord or oligarch with their private armies and all of them having hands on nuclear weapons, including world wide reaching ICBM's Putin put an end to that and made me sleep better at night in the late 90's. That I will give him credit for. Also for trying to approach the west and get Russia integrated with Western Europe, but constantly being rejected, rebuffed and mocked for his attempts at modernizing Russia together with the west, rather than despite the west doing much other than encouraging the Ukrainian invasion of Crimea (where were the cries of outrage and the threats of sanctions against Ukraine when they occupied Crimea? Oh right, the victims were Russians, therefore it was perfectly Ok and beneficial for the west), splitting off chunks of sovereign countries allied with Russia, ignoring sovereign borders, and acting with at times cringe worthy arrogance. All those events in the 90's contribute to me "feeling", that this is very much something the west brought upon itself, despite all the cries of outrage and disbelief. Yes, we can easily agree today, that isolation and ridicule may have done permanent damage to Russia and Putin's psyche, creating a completely irrational and ruthless decision maker. I still ask the question though, what could have been done differently at a much earlier point in time (like 1991-92) to avoid the present.

Deleted a few posts. Let’s *not* play the false quote game without making it painfully explicit it’s a sarcastic paraphrasing, never said in that form by the person being quoted. Or I’ll get grumpy. It’s fine to give an interpretation of what somebody else says (within reason) but don’t make it look like something actually said

Speaking of huge... playing Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons. Only 4 days in, so still a long way to go (skipping everything except the main story line at the moment)

Currently busy playing Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons... the Asian inspired expansion. Being no expert, I couldn't tell what culture it leans most heavily on. Could be Korean, could be Chinese, could be Khmer, could be a hybrid... Welcome to New Kaineng The game has it's own stylistic art direction. A bit like watercolours The city is "tall", with the nobility and who's who living in the upper layers and the rabble and gangs living on the ground levels Old Kaineng, which (like the city of Lions Arch) was destroyed in the tsunami created by Zhaitan when it raised the nation of Orr from the sea botton Welcome to the new player "home" while in Cantha, the ruins of Arborstone, being the new base of operations

I couldn't find any easily accessible list of demands of Ukraine other than honour the Minsk accord (which Zelenskiy effectively declared they were not going to implement after all) and don't join Nato. But The Guardians seems to have a decent list of demands made of Nato (including not accepting Ukraine as a member) and to pull Nato troops (I assume this refers to "foreign" troops in the countries in question, the countries would still remain Nato members) back. Lastly, that the US honours the INF treaty, which they unilaterally abandoned in 2018. Did I miss anything significant? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-list-demands-tensions-europe-ukraine-nato

Welcome to Queensland (The Sunshine State) and Brisbane, the (new) Venice of Australia Watch out when crossing the streets... not because of traffic, but bull sharks https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-23/how-shark-infested-is-brisbane-river/10731866 Edit: Oh look, the weather forecast

While the price is high, you could argue that such an outcome is giving Putin exactly what he wanted and then ask, why did that have to take a bloody war? As for reparations, I (jokingly) suggested before the war, as compensation Russia could provide Ukraine with all the LPG they need for the next 100 years or so (probably less as hopefully renewable energy sources will have replaced fossil fuel before the end of such a period). Mind you, that was just a pragmatic solution. Ukraine gets rid of a headache (all the Russians living on the wrong side of a "border" that should never have existed where those places to begin with, but the west being the west etc. perfectly happy to recognize the Ukrainian invasion of the independent Crimean S.S.R in 1991 and accept Ukraine imposing direct control of an occupied country, similar to China's invasion of Tibet in the 50's). Now there is the added cost in both human lives and material. Edit: That was a rhetorical question, as I do know the answer. Nationalist pride getting in the way of sensible solutions.

Let me guess, you don't want to criticize him for lying through his teeth about... well just about everything he says? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/14/deceit-boris-johnson-liar-prime-minister-joke-mendacity "he prime minister’s unhappy relationship with the truth is longstanding and embedded in his character. Veracity is trumped by ego. Most of his recent catalogue of woes – Brexit promises, dodgy peerages, sleazy colleagues, flat decorations, lockdown parties – could have been soothed had Johnson simply come clean early on, appeared frank and apologised. He seems psychologically unable to disentangle falsity from half-truth. A life spent in bland denials and upmarket jokes has lent him a high-risk belief in his invulnerability. From each laughable lie he could, in one bound, leap free." No, he's still not as bad as our own beloved, glorious and inspirational leader here down under, but he also had a professional career in playing loose and fast with the truth, before he turned politician. It's not for nothing he's known as "Scott from Marketing"

Speak for yourself Edit: I noticed some fancy new buzzword on the internet in recent months... sigma male (/facepalm)

It probably sounds better on domestic TV. No, the government from 2014 to 2019 wasn't "NAZI", just right wing and very nationalistic. Not the same. But NAZI Germany was the last existential threat to Russia (USSR), hence portraying the enemy as such. You have to go back a lot further to when French troops made it to Moscow, or even when Poland invaded Russia and burnt the city down, but those are most likely too distant events in peoples awareness.

Gen X says hello

Are you sure about that? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/world/europe/putin-sanctions-proofing.html "Crucially, the once-dominant dollar now accounts for only 16 percent of Russia’s currency reserves, which Moscow has replaced with euros, China’s renminbi, and gold." Edit: $631 billion is the nominal value of Russia's currency reserves, but an insignificant part of it is US dollars (according NY Times)

Meh, it's overrated. After too many years of 200% utilization, you feel "burnt out" in a real, bad way

I usually share their viewpoint. Proud Patreon supporter too

Moved a number of ageing posts from the Ukraine thread to here, as it was more about the age of political leaders in general...

Mostly of interest for Australians (federal election coming up this year). For non Aussies, Clive Parker and his UAP is to Australia what Donald Trump and the current Republican Party is to the US.

Nobody ever explicitly, verbally or in writing forbade it. It does make sense though, as cost of living in Fiji as also about 20% of Aussie prices at the time (may not be the same now, 15+ years later) Different roles in the company had a base salary plus a bonus arrangement. The formula behind the bonuses were not secret (tl;dr; the more overtime you did, the better you got paid) Edit: Our boss would present an Excel spreadsheet at the end of every month for the team, showing how much utilization each consultant had for that month, to encourage competitiveness in doing as much overtime as possible.

I think his marriage was "arranged" originally (a requirement for Soviet spies, to make them more resilient to honey traps iirc). He always went through a lot of trouble hiding his family from the public eye. Maybe he just need to get laid?

The first company I worked for in Australia (many years ago by now) opened up a Fiji office at some point. Charging customers Aussie prices for services provided by people who got paid 20% Australian salaries. Hard to compete with that for profitability. After rains and floods, the sun is shining again and temperatures back up close to 30C (around 85F for those who don't speak metric). Doesn't mean all the water is gone. Note to self: Buy more deodorant, as air humidity is close to 100%

The thing about nuclear war is, there wont be a "what's left". This isn't a Fallout game.

He may surprise you. He's very religious, married (has some pretty daughters) and hates vodka, to the point that Russian vodka makers might be the first on the barricades protesting against Putin. So much misinformation floating around (doctored images, wrongly attributed video clips, you name it) https://www.bbc.com/news/60554910 From 2018 gas explosions to Ukrainian Palestinian girl telling Russian Israeli soldiers to go back to their own country.... lots of examples in the BBC piece.

Not necessarily the "truth" (nobody has a patent on that I think), but an interesting take on what makes Putin tick (warning 30+ minutes long, but quite interesting)...