kanisatha

I'm sure this will be given as a rationale, but I sure don't buy it. Not for even a second. After all, it certainly doesn't then explain the president doing exactly this same song and dance with other systems time and again: "no we won't," "no we won't," "no we won't," "no we won't," "okay fine, we will."

Hey I completely agree that the Administration dropped the ball on the crisis in Hawaii ... and also disasters in Ohio and Florida. But I would disagree that it is an either/or thing.

But this is exactly why even though I've been happy that Biden has supported Ukraine I still criticize him. What's the point of having waited so long to do this if you were going to do it anyway? If Biden had done this months ago, even a year ago, it would have made a huge difference to Ukraine's war effort. And he kept doing this exact same thing with weapon system after system ... again and again. Why???!!! Just so maddening.

You are absolutely correct about this, and such people exist even here in the US. The US is indeed held to a very different standard (a double standard) than any other country in the world, and not just compared with countries like Russia and China but even other Western countries. But I will give some credit to those people who are at least honest about their double standard, even if the arguments they make to justify their double standard are complete B.S.

No, the reason people say things along these lines is so that it serves to justify their indifference toward the war and the plight of the Ukrainians. A lot of people in the world today, unfortunately, just don't want to be bothered by the plight of other people in the world. But they also want all those bad things happening out there to "go away" so that their indifference doesn't make them look bad.

Wow! I had the exact same experience during the ethnic violence of '83 in my old country when I was 16 years old. An armed mob showed up at our home looking for people of my ethnic group to kill. We barricaded the front door and I stood behind it (as a very scrawny 90lbs kid) holding one of those big ceremonial brass lamps from my religion, ready to bash at least one guy coming through the door before I was killed.

Right up until your computer bursts into flames.

I did read online essentially the same thing, that among all the current crop of ST shows this one's the best. But unfortunately, since my previous post, I've learned this was just a one-time airing of only the first two episodes, as a way to entice people to subscribe to their service as part of the newly-created "Star Trek Day" bash.

ST: Strange New Worlds is being aired on broadcast CBS. I've not paid much attention to you guys talking about the show up until now because it was a streamed show. So what are people's thoughts on this show? Is it worth my time? I've set the DVR to record it, but ....

Oh no! That's not good. I can't be all hot and bothered by Mom! Yikes!

Yes, the Minsk Agreement of 1991, which was signed by all five of the NPT nuclear states and also approved by a UNSC resolution.

Belarus and Kazakstan also inherited nukes from the USSR and gave them up. The only country to voluntarily give up nukes it had developed was South Africa.

Well, I want the game to be a realistic sim of what third-stage space exploration would actually be like, so I'm not only okay with this but am very happy they did it this way.

RIP Jimmy Buffett. A sad day for me and my fellow parrotheads.

My current PC also cannot run it, but I'm going to buy the game anyway as a show of support for what I consider (as a passionate fan of human space exploration) to be one of the best RPGs in recent years. I should be able to buy my new PC sometime next spring.

Well, I'd have to ask: what have these people (as individuals) done lately? Maybe they were just taking up space on developer teams. Maybe they did this even back in the day when Bioware was making BG2 or DA:O. It's a tough question to ask, but I'm never convinced that just because someone has held a job for a very long time, they were/are good at that job. What I see far too often is people somehow managing to hold on to jobs for years and years in which they haven't really done any meaningful work.

Yes this is one of my main issues, although I wouldn't use the word 'perfect' to describe my expectations for any game. But also, my past experiences with mods were less than satisfactory, where adding the mod to my game was extremely cumbersome and aggravating, and then keeping the mod (and mod manager) updated was additionally aggravating. But here, adding the Unity Mod Manager was quite easy and problem-free, as was adding the UB mod itself. So, fingers crossed.

Having finished my P:WotR run I went back to Solasta. And I finally, after all these years, broke down and registered for a Nexus Mods account so that I could apply the Community Unfinished Business mod to Solasta. I mainly activated three things in the mod, exactly the three biggest gripes I've had with the game: a party of six, multiclassing, and removing attunement. Then I started playing the official user module, Caer Falcarn, that comes with the modding tools DLC. Now Solasta is sooooooo incredibly awesome! I'm so loving the game, and looking forward to playing Palace of Ice and also some of the more popular user modules out there.

Yeah, same. I didn't read that Bioware statement as saying a lot of veterans were among those laid off. It's only around 50 people, all of whom have been offered jobs in others parts of EA. And furthermore, just because someone is a "veteran" doesn't automatically mean they're good at what they do. I remain confident in DA:D and continue to be very excited about this game.

The fact that the Russians have significantly increased shelling of the Kar'kiv area and other towns in the northeast says to me the Ukrainians are making good headway towards cutting off Russia's Crimea landbridge. Clearly the Russians are trying to ease the Ukrainian pressure in the south by trying to get the Ukrainians to divert some of their forces to the northeast by threatening re-invasion there.

According to many accounts on the Larian forum this is quite common throughout the game, where the game assumes you said/did things a certain way, and responds based on that assumption, regardless of what you *actually* said/did in the game.

Just a few days ago the Niger junta met with Wagner to coordinate military planning, and the coup leader openly stated he was counting on Wagner to safeguard the coup from any military threat. Now would be a good time for ECOWAS to act, if they were going to be doing something anyway.

Is anyone here surprised? My only surprise is that Prig was that naive and stupid as to fly in Russian airspace. According to US intel, the plane carried the entire upper leadership of Wagner. Yay for Africa!! Btw, I can even believe that Prig and his buddies were told by Putin this is how it's going to be, along the lines of how the generals who conspired against Hitler in that bomb plot were given the "option" of poison.

But is this true to the extent that you can also get *good* encounter/quest/story/companions outcomes?

Yes! ^This! And not just on this failing but on failing after failing. People go out of their way to give Larian a pass, which they absolutely would not do for, say, Bethesda or CDPR or even Obsidian. And this is true of even pro reviewers and gaming journalists who give up all objectivity when it comes to Larian.