Clueless Northman

Wouldn't be a "robot comeback" since there never was a robot empire to begin with, just humans going full luddite and deciding to destroy machines for some religion's sake. IIRC indeed there were some variations of faceless dancers and other weird genetic furries coming from outer space, though it's never been made clear who they were - some offspring from mankind going to unknown space after Leto II's death, but other than that, nothing precise. You posti the Tleilaxu deep space empire due to the Matres' hatred of Tleilax and their bloody crusade wiping out all traces of Tleilax across the old "known universe"? I always assumed it was due to them being a mix of Bene Gesserit, remnants of Leto's female army, and surviving exiled female Tleilax - the latter having a huge reason to be pissed off. Whatever, I always find it interesting and weird, because Leto II's goal was to have made sure no unified power could ever control mankind, yet here we have a supposedly massive force that allegedly is ruling over most of the outer unknow space, and seems to come back to hit the (obviously way smaller) galactic core.

It should also be noted that there's also, among some of the Iranian population, resentment towards what they pretty much consider as upstart camel-herders from Arabian desert, who conquered their great and wealthy Persian empire and ruled over the whole Persian land for many centuries. Yet there's also the Shia/Sunni schism, which complicates matter because the divide isn't exactly an ethnic/linguistic one and the Shiite world overlaps a bit into the Arab peoples bordering Iran, and actually all along the Fertile Crescent. Ironically, this was a purely internal Arab affair at the beginning, but eventually Persians/Iranians chose the minority side in part to set them apart from the Arab world.

Very sad. Hopefully, Denmark will be spared the French nonsense of "should be rebuild the roof and spire in concrete and glass modernistic-brutalist fashion, or build it back like it was?". When you say "Arab countries", wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Arab governments", since the Arab street is notoriously not truly represented by their governments, and barely has been - at least since Nasser's demise - and said governments are nearly as afraid of their own peoples as they are of Iran. Of course, the people aren't big fans of Iran, but the Palestinian issue ranks way higher for them than for their corrupt leaders - on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if the issue of Palestine ranked a bit lower for the Iranian people than for the Iranian government.

Trump didn't retaliate when Iran bombed in retaliation a (warned, iirc) US base in Iraq after Suleimani was killed. So one now has to wonder if Netanyahu is more unhinged or is as "sane" and "sensible" as Trump - which is quite the low bar.

Heck, you can do this in Elder Scrolls as well, specially Oblivion and Skyrim in which scaling helps you, more than in Morrowind, and you can complete their main quests quite fast (20 hours maybe?), yet they're very long games (as in 200 hours) if you actually do all the content, all the quests, side-quests, factions.

You haven't played Disco Elysium? And there I thought I was a late-comer for playing it 6 months ago. I can't wait to read your reactions when you've played it (or probably when you've played it, then re-played it). Which also makes me ponder: would Divinity Original Sin be considered RPG (I suppose so), and where would either of them rank in the "best RPGs evah" field?

The genius spoke the truth Though I have to add BG2 comes close. Heck, I'd rank Morrowind quite high, though it has its flaws. And of course, that's because I'm always torn and reluctant to consider Deus Ex as a genuine RPG; well, let's say an action RPG, and then it'll be in the top 5. I'm also with Fez in that Disco Elysium has an amazing degree of roleplaying. It'll be hard to beat - specially since the studio seems to have been quite gutted :/

Curse, I thought I wasn't going to play since I rarely know the year of release of a game, so I just spent one full hour trying to make a list. So here's my list, with often honorable mentions. Like others, games were mostly played later than release year. It would be easier for me to make a top 10 favourite games, or a 10 most played games, or even a "best game I played this year". So here it is - as you'll see, not much recent games, though I have some and/or plan to play them, like AC Odyssey, Control, RDR2, Last of Us, Cyberpunk. A couple of times, I wasn't even sure if I had played any good game from that year. Another couple of times, it's so close it actually was a tie. And a few times, it was a really hard decision. Last but not least, some years, specially before the late 90s, it wasn't always an objectively great game (and honorable mentions were OK games who I liked nearly as well as the winner when I played them decades ago) 1979 - Space Invaders 1980 - Pacman 1981 - Popeye (Donkey Kong) 1982 - Zaxxon 1983 - Lode Runner (PitStop) 1984 - Strategic Conquest (Impossible Mission - Lazy Jones - Bruce Lee) 1985 - Tetris (Saboteur - Robin of the Wood) 1986 - Leader Board (Dark Castle) 1987 - Pirates! (Test Drive) 1988 - Grand Prix Circuit 1989 - Sim City 1990 - Angband (SimEarth) 1991 - Civilization 1992 - Wolfenstein 3D 1993 - Sim City 2000 (Syndicate) 1994 - Realmz 1995 - Exile 1996 - Exile 2 1997 - Blades of Exile (Age of Empires) 1998 - Starcraft (Baldur's Gate 1 - Age of Empires 2 - Colin McRae Rally) 1999 - Planescape Torment (Dungeon Keeper 2) 2000 - Deus Ex / Baldur's Gate 2 (Thief 2 - Shogun Total War - Diablo 2) 2001 - Europa Universalis 2 (Max Payne 1) 2002 - Morrowind (Warcraft 3) 2003 - Max Payne 2 (KOTOR) 2004 - WOW (Rome Total War) 2005 - Civ 4 2006 - Oblivion (Dwarf Fortress) 2007 - Europa Universalis 3 (Mass Effect 1 - Bioshock 1) 2009 - Asasssin's Creed 2 (Hearts of Iron 3) 2010 - Mass Effect 2 (Amnesia) 2011 - Skyrim (Witcher 2 - Minecraft - Deus Ex Human Revolution - Portal 2) 2012 - Crusader Kings 2 / Dishonored 2013 - Bioshock Infinite (Tomb Raider) 2014 - Banner Saga 2015 - Witcher 3 (Age of Decadence - Soma) 2016 - Stellaris (Tyranny) 2018 - Subnautica 2019 - Disco Elysium (Plague Tale Innocence)

During the few minutes of total eclipse, and if there are no clouds around, you can see the brightest ones - and the occasional planet. Though I'd say it's not as obvious as during a moonless night - and often the range is more limited around the Moon/Sun, the sky isn't completely dark all around, and it's more a sunset-like sky the farther you go from the eclipse proper. Though in Eastern US, the Sun will be quite low on the horizon, so a lot of the sky might be caught in the shadow cone.

Having watched a 6-min eclipse quite some time ago, I have to say: if you're quite close to the path of totality and if you're free to take a few hours to go and see the full eclipse, do it. Don't hesitate a minute. As others said, the difference between watching a partial eclipse (even when it's 70% covered) and a genuine full solar eclipse is beyond huge. It's comparing eating scraps of food you found in a public bin and eating in a 5-stars gourmet restaurant. To this date, it is the most impressive and amazing thing I've ever seen - and these include visiting great places like Acropolis, Teotihuacan, Ngorongoro, and flying around an erupting volcano. So, I wish you a great weather; having shitty clouds hiding the spectacle would be just awful.

So it's fine, because there's no way Villeneuve would consider this. Being a long-life fan, having read the book when he was a teen, back in the 1980s (and obviously he didn't stop at Dune but went on reading Messiah shortly afterwards, and possibly the other books), I'm fairly confident he shares the fans' doubts about Junior's claims about having genuine Frank Herbert's writings and the fans' criticism of Junior's fanfiction.

Exactly. Just like 9/11 and Bataclan were false flags. (I suppose the "sarcasm" tag isn't necessary - at this point, Putin doesn't need this, he could order full mobilization and a majority would most probably follow and agree with it...) To be brutally honest, he would've won all his elections, even if done legit with opponents allowed. He just wouldn't get 60+% of the votes at once, but I'm quite sure he'd get the plurality, though with a far smaller margin, and obviously he doesn't like that. I hope, and I hope Russian officials won't stupidly deny it if it actually happened. Though there's a long tradition of not paying attention to the other side's advice, like Russia (and others that would be less of an opponent) warning Bush administration in mid-2001.

Sounds like a criticism of French cinema (which Villeneuve would obviously have been quite exposed to) way more than of Hollywood

The ludicrous part being that European countries basically have given up all of these core powers (industrial output and military tech levels), but to the US. It's as if most nations or at least political leaders across the EU prefer to let the US have that kind of power over them, rather than fellow European nations. Europe is led by absolute morons, and has been for decades, or they're just too deep into wishful magical thinking. I came to that conclusion - that US is awfully unreliable - more than 20 years ago, and that's just by looking at current events. A long look at US historical record would've been enough. I mean, we go from Kennedy to Nixon, then from Carter to Reagn, than from Bush to Clinton to W. Bush, from W to Obama, and then from Obama to Trump. It's kind of obvious that every decade at least, possibly more often, you have US administrations or presidents basically looking to overturn key parts of previous policies, including foreing policies, and every time you think it' can't get worse, it actually can get worse. Any Euro leader worth a cent would know how it works and would plan accordingly - that is, seeking more autonomy if not independence from US alliance and help, in pretty much every field.

These are countries whose governments would believe anything Israel told them, or at least would pretend to believe anything, and act accordingly, the same way you'd expect North Korea, Iran or Syria to believe anything Putin says about Ukraine. Or, to be blunt, Western countries are basically doing a blatant act of political whataboutism.