Gorth

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)...

It's so silent outside... for the first time in 4 days and 4 nights, my roof isn't getting hammered by rain. It's been literally non-stop torrential rain since Wednesday https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-27/queensland-severe-weather-rain-flooding-bom-warnings/100864896 Brisbane river rising, Australian Defence Force evacuating areas, people dying... generally very wet at the moment https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-27/wivenhoe-dam-level-rising-staged-releases-more-rain-falling/100865762 Wivenhoe Dam capacity above 180pc and rising despite staged releases, more rain falling Looking at the bright side, the bush fire chances are very low at the moment

Ever heard of the Spanish Civil War? While the Axis forces supporting Franco's Fascist army were regular military, a large number of volunteers (including Russians) fought for the Republicans. Lots of them civilians having been shown how to remove the safety from a gun.

Those BUK air defence systems seems better at taking down civilian targets than military ones... (j/k) Way too much misinformation and propaganda on both sides to trust anything on the internet at the moment. After a few years of fact checking, some of the messages may stand the test of time.

Speaking of cats... Australian breakfast TV

Umbrella: Check Stockpile of bottled water: Check Crackers and canned food: Check Torches: Check Good thing I live on high ground (we've had nightly rainfalls of 100-400mm rain for a while now)

If Sweden or Germany had joined Russia, they probably would (be looking for a fight).

All the best for your family Shady Our own Ukrainian office has ceased operation and staff is being evacuated to Poland.

That sounds almost like the original Tomb Raider game (which was what made me love the game so much). Not sure how I feel about Dark Souls style combat though. Not that it's necessarily bad, just never played the game, so no idea if it's a good or a bad thing

Part looking for a new place to live (my friends live north of the river and I feel a bit stuck living south of the river) and crossing t's and dotting i's on my citizenship application. Only thing holding me back is, if I move it's a hassle to change address on an application being processed.

One problem with this last bit... those are NATO members. Nothing short of military engagement from NATO's side will save NATO as an organisation, if it comes to that. Edit: If NATO doesn't respond with full military confrontation to an invasion of the Baltic countries, Putin will have dismantled NATO even faster than Napoleon did the Holy Roman Empire.

Gary Brooker... no more whiter shade of pale for us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Brooker

A nice little video by ArenaNet as preparation for the launch of End of Dragons in less than week now (something I'm looking really forward to). For those who don't know the game, what impressed me with this video is not the technical quality of the gfx or the voice acting or anything like that, but that they somehow managed to cut and paste snippets from so many old cutscenes, that are completely unrelated to the story being told in the video, together and slapping a new narrative on top of the mish mash of videos, that the story and video clips actually seems like they were made for each other. ArenaNet did something slightly similar back in 2013 with their first anniversary trailer:

I suspect China's "game" in this, is to see how much force the west is willing to commit. I.e. boots on the ground and airplanes involved fighting over Ukraine. If none, they might conclude Taiwan is ripe for the taking now while everybody else is busy looking at Ukraine and the response wasn't scary (by Chinese standards)

Ironically, Kiev was the Russian capital from 996 to 1108. Moscow didn't exist before 11147

Split the thread in two for the time being... For Ukraine stuff For non-Ukraine stuff

Started this as a new thread to relieve pressure on ye olde general politics thread. Please stick all things Ukraine in here for the time being. Like the US election thread, a temporary measure until things gets less heated... Now watching this space for the news of the upcoming death of legendary Russian war hero Navalny who did a combat drop over the western Russian city of Kiev, unfortunate that his parachute came undone on the way down.

Starting a new thread for all things non Ukraine related. Please use other thread for that. Similar to the US election days, to give other subjects a chance without being drowned in the topic-du-jour... Old thread:

You didn't see his latest live performance on TV? Red faced and frothing at the mouth? It's a very, very angry man. Sort of knew something was about to happen after the live charade that was the Russian security council meeting transmitted live on TV. The poor spy chief got called back several times to the podium to rephrase his free and uninfluenced opinion to the viewers until Putin was happy with his message.