Gorth

(After guessing every party's political affiliation wrong so far) Let me guess, your communists are not really communists? Oh, they are. Why are they in parliament, should they not be deployed executing land owners???

So, you better not insinuate the Earth might not be flat...

Finally got started on JoJo's Bizarre Adventures... truly bizarre indeed Not sure how to describe it really (only 5 episodes in btw, still 19 to go of this part of the story). Sometimes it really is an animated Manga (literally) and sometimes you get more exposition in the moment before a fist hits a face than a full novel Interesting enough so far to keep me going though. Need to find out more about that stone mask that turns people into vampires and Dio needs some kind of horrible, final death too...

My motorcycle had a 20L tank I think? A bit less than 4.5 gallon unless the internet is lying to me Fuel prices didn't really cause me much of a headache. Dangit, I really miss my bike now. Next on my to-do list

Maybe it's a pun on Evil Sardines?... Aka "surströmming" Edit: Nurgle cultists trying out "Evil Sardines"

Oh no, she isn't. It was just unusual for me to actually have any close friends at all (after not having had that for decades). Anyway, I'll let hear from me in a week or so when I've tried the Kimchi stew

Speaking of IKEA... best IKEA advertising ever! (and it's not even a commercial)

Similar in most European countries I think. Power split and re-split continuously, no party or bloc of parties staying in power indefinitely. The head of state being either a president or a monarch. The alternative would be either single party state (China) or two party state (USA) which I just can't imagine being on any Europeans wishlist.

I'm not sure what is so hard.... The (now ex) centre-right government lost the snap election which they called themselves and the socialist party won an outright majority in the election? A bit confused about what could be confusing Edit: Ah, I get it. The word "ruling" Edit2: What do you expect from a news organisation that puts this under art and entertainment Edit3: It means they went from being a minority government ruling with the help of other parties to have absolute majority. I get it now. Edit4: Not the worlds best written article, I would agree on that.

Bruce... put on your darn reading glasses Edit: To save you the reading, the former ruling party was called the Social Democratic Party (despite it's name, it is a centre-right party)

I honestly don't know much about Portuguese politics... maybe @Pidesco knows more about the background, but in a snap election, the ruling party managed to hand over a majority victory to the opposition. The socialist party now have a majority government and the far right party became the third largest party (the ex-ruling party being a center right party). Looks like they shot themselves in the foot with a sawed off shotgun??? https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60194375 (no, don't ask me why the heck the BBC stuck that under entertainment and arts)

That didn't stop Turkey from joining when it was convenient... I'm sure that Putin and Ukraine could've worked something out before western interference. Ukraine renounces their (illegal anyway) claims on Crimea and guarantees the civil rights (the removal of which was the trigger of the unrest) of the people of the Donbas region and Russia provides Ukraine with an agreed amount of LPG per year the next 100 years or so (or until Ukraine finds other alternative/eco friendlier energy sources)

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60185733 Boris Johnson desperately needs a war too to distract from trouble at home... "I have ordered our armed forces to prepare to deploy across Europe next week, ensuring we are able to support our Nato allies on land, at sea and in the air." On a more serious note, the BBC did some detective work and a bit of investigative journalism. Turns out Djokovic not only lied about his whereabouts, it also looks like his covid test results are forgeries, made by the Serbian state to enable him to play.... https://www.bbc.com/news/59999541 Mr Djokovic was tested in Serbia, and received his results from the Institute of Public Health of Serbia. All these test results have a unique confirmation code. We wanted to check whether these numbers are generated in strict chronological order in a single national database at the time of processing. If so, it would bring into question why the earlier test had a higher serial number. So we collected data from as many Serbian test certificates as we could to plot these confirmation codes on a timeline. For those who don't want to read all the graphs and texts, the conclusion by the researchers investigations was, Djokovic's positive result was from the time between 25th to 28th of December, not the claimed 16th of December (i.e. his positive test was after his negative test, which was supposed to prove he was no longer infected at least two weeks before traveling to Australia). All nicely forged by the Serbian Health Institute. Nothing new I guess, politics and sports do seem to have trouble staying away from each other.

It may be different now, but last time I was there, it was the English “packaged tour” tourists you had to kick your way through. Easily recognisable too. The day they arrive, they’ll be pasty white. The first night, they’ll drink themselves senseless and the second day they’ll sleep it off on the beach. Usually turning red and outright blackish purple in the sun because of their firm belief, that a sufficiently high alcohol content in their blood makes them immune to UV rays. At least they acted that way. You didn’t really see them again until they catch the bus back to the airport, then all wrapped up in alufoil like bandages and boxes of painkillers in their hands…

My, are we curious... I think I may have covered it in the what you did today thread, but short recap, she's an old friend that I got to know online originally, while playing Star Wars the Old Republic. It turned into a real life friendship. This time around, she came and stayed at my place for a full month. Working from home some of the time, which meant she would work from home at my place and I would work in the office here in Brisbane (we work for competing products). When not working, she would split her time with me and her family up here. Her brother, in-law and a little niece that was born while borders were closed and nobody could visit each other. When not with her family, she and I would go to the theater and watch stage productions, try out Halal Snack Packs (https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g255068-d12435083-i299586287-Eat_Fresh_Takeaway_House-Brisbane_Brisbane_Region_Queensland.html), cook our own stuff (hence my previous post, a lot of the new things we tried out, get drunk, fool around, go for long walks, whatever two people do living under the same roof for a while. And no, it's not a "romantic relationship". She's 27 years younger than me We are very close friends however.

Before I started on JoJo, I got sidetracked by one of those short (12 episodes) animes, which I just couldn’t put aside once started, so I guess by the end of today I’ll have finished Goblin Slayer. Like watching a live action D&D session with added blood, gore and brutality. Who cares, I was entertained, good enough for my low brow needs

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/28/ukraine-accuses-us-of-hurting-economy-by-stoking-panic-over-war Tl;dr; Ukraine blames the US for the current mess and it’s hurting Ukraines economy

Make sure you get football tickets!

My kitchen got subjected to a number of strange things over the Christmas and New Years period. Not at least because of that female friend I had staying at my place for a month. Rum Balls, Feta and Ham Filos, Pizzas (New York style), pan cakes. Egg Fried rice (with ham, green onions, carrots and some interesting sauces), various curried. Now in pondering if I should have a go at Kimchi Stew Got a lot of leftover Kimchi that needs to be used soon

Two years of lockdowns and restrictions. People are getting restless and need tangible enemies...

I'm sure those people in Ukrainian uniforms attacking the Russian radio station were just media critics, wanting to deprive the Russian people of their freedom of speech! (what I'm talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident)

I'm not so sure about that. The global chip shortage is *already* hurting the US economy and causing stocks to nose dive on Wall Street. Edit: This is with Taiwan producing at 100% capacity https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60135905 A survey of more than 150 firms found supplies had fallen from an average of 40 days' worth in 2019 to just five days in late 2021. Note, this is not to be confused with the other world wide chip shortage, lack of potatoes leading to a shortage in french fries and chips supplies https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/08/potato-shortage-french-fries-japan-kenya-south-africa-pandemic-supply-chains/ In Japan, McDonald’s locations stopped offering large and medium-size french fry orders late last month, after pandemic-related supply chain issues and floods in the Port of Vancouver delayed potato shipments. Days later, South Africa’s leading makers of potato chips warned that potatoes were in disturbingly short supply after a bad frost and excessive rains led to low local yields, on top of global sourcing shortages.

SSD's, when they work, are for me the preferred boot drive. However, I don't keep much important stuff on it. Every now and then, the documents and settings folder gets copied both to an external USB HDD as well as an FTP server (a habit of mine that predates stuff like OneDrive, I-Cloud and Google Drive by decades) as a precaution. I have a repair disk on a USB stick too, if I need to rebuild it on a new drive.

I don't have that much of a history... my first two movies were (IIRC) Akira and Ghost in the Shell and the first show was Macross. Not that I knew they were "Anime" mind you (it would be another 20 years before I heard that term, as well as "Manga"). The latter showed on TV back when European countries first started getting access to satellite TV (mid to late 80's I think) and for me it was just another cartoon, with space travel and giant robots involved. I think I'm going to check out JoJo's bizarre stuff next (no release dates for Mieruko-chan s2 nor Fire Force s3)....