Derfel Cadarn

To be fair, that swim would probably be quite pleasant compared to what she endured crossing the Helcaraxe (27 years I think), what’s essentially a dark arctic wasteland

5 hours ago, mormont said:

Not if he's killed most of them in taking Ukraine.

He’ll draft any boy or man whoncan walk and have them charge guns/minefields en masse with what’s left of the Russian army waiting behind with guns ready to shoot anyone who doesnt advance

Russian convicts now signed up until end of the war, no longer just for 6 months

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68140873

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

I can't help but think that the city of Baldur's Gate in BG3 looks somewhat different from BG1, which, given the hundreds of hours I've put into BG1, is...jarring.

There’s over a century between BG1 and 3, lus numerous big events (Sundering etc) during thet time.

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think the issue isn't that Putin isn't completely ruthless who would see five million Russians dead to win in Ukraine, as he absolutely is, it's more that he doesn't seem to realise that he needs to preserve the lives of troops so they can fight again later on, especially if he is really considering an attack on the Baltic States in 3-7 years time. At the moment Russian casualties are such that they cannot be replaced easily, and given Russia's demographic trajectory, slaughtering tens of thousands of your fit young men and crippling tens of thousands more is not a good idea.

This isn't relying on Putin or Russia developing a sudden sense of compassion, but more a simple sense of practical expediency: grinding down Ukraine only works if Russia balances its loss ratio against Ukraine's in a way that make sense. They looked like they learned that lesson last summer and into the autumn, when the balance of Russian losses to Ukrainian losses fell well into the window that Russia can easily sustain indefinitely, having spent the eighteen months before than well outside (and catastrophically outside it at several points). Ukraine looked like it could get into real trouble at that point if Russia could sustain that for half a year or more. But in the last few months they've gone back to losses being well outside that window and that makes life a lot easier for Ukraine.

Putin's calculus has been to avoid a further mobilisation (due to the unknown political damage that would cause, after the problems last time), to avoid drawing more men out of industry where they are needed to keep the war machine working at the back end, and to maintain the pressure on Ukraine through sustainable military offensives until Ukraine falters somewhere and Russia can try to take the whole country, or until Ukraine is exhausted and forced to negotiate on Russia's terms. There's also the fact that Russia has exhausted certain resources and can't tap them again (Russia has probably got all the manpower it can out of the prison system).

All of these things should be conducive to Russia carrying out the war with a degree of strategic and tactical common sense to ensure the greater chances of victory. As it stands they are not doing that. In fact, there are some signs that they may have turned a probable victory into Avdiivka into a potential reversal, if the tendencies of the last few days keep up.

If Russia takes Ukraine, it may well be mobilised Ukrainians he sends into the baltic states

3 minutes ago, KingAerys_II said:

Instead of a fantasy world about Lotr, they created a woke American tale in Middle Earth, a very good job

What are these Americanisms you speak of?

Just now, KingAerys_II said:

It's evident when tv series is influenced by politics , the main problem of Asoiaf is the release of the next book, Asoiaf is totally fine.

However RoP as first approach to Tolkien works is very bad.

Lotr and The Silmarillion are part of English Literature, Lotr trilogy will be remembered as a masterpiece , the rest will be forgotten as mediocre product

You’ve still to elucidate exactly what these insidious ‘politics’ are.

Lotr is a single book released in three volumes, not a trilogy. 

1 hour ago, KingAerys_II said:

Read Lotr books and The Silmarillion, they are even better than Asoiaf.

The tv series has nothing to do with Tolkien

Does ASoI&F have too much ‘American politics’ for you?

I prefer ASoI&F by far. Imho Tolkein should have, post-Fellowship, spliced the Frodo chapters with the non-Frodo ones. 

2 hours ago, mormont said:

Well, see, the thing about this thread and indeed all other threads on this board is that they're not a news programme. They're not any sort of media, really. They're just a place where people chat. It's in the name: 'General Chatter'. There's no requirement for balance, no editorial priorities, no headlines, just whatever stuff people feel like saying. 

Sometimes stories can be important but people feel like they don't have much to say about them. That's fine. Sometimes stories are trivial but people like to discuss them. That's fine too. It's chatter. It's not the news. 

Fake chatter! 

2 minutes ago, Jace, Extat said:

Snap guess:

Zelensky wants another offensive. The General knows better.

Maybe otger way round?

The army wasnts 400k people called up, and zelenskyy has been hesitant 

6 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I have no idea what happened, but he was a student at the very upper crust school Harrow, when he was expelled a few weeks before taking his A-levels. He couldn’t get into any university due to a report about him from Harrow. There may be something out there on the internet explaining what he did, but I haven’t bothered looking. Presumably it was about cheating, but maybe it was something more, Sex, drugs and cheating?

I think he was expelled for bullying.

He apparently did gardening work for a while before getting into RADA, doibtless due to him being part of the Fox acting family.

According to him lrdviously, it was also largely due to an ‘indiscretion’ with a girl at a dance.

Had to lol at the Tolkien estate’s epic trolling:

As RoP season 1 comes out, probably watched mostly by those who’ve not read the books and almost certainly not The Silmarillion - and thus probaly know nothing about the history/lore - the estate releases a book called The Fall of Numenor. If the title was too subtle a spoiler, the cover shows the island being drowned by the sea…

Laurence Fox lost his libel trial - he was found guilty of libelling two people, calling them paedos.

His counter-suit, that they harmed his reputation by calling him a racist lost - thr judge referred to his twitter antics, blacking up and making the pride flag into a swastika

https://news.sky.com/story/laurence-fox-libelled-two-men-when-he-referred-to-them-as-paedophiles-high-court-judge-rules-13059482

I’m currently binging thr Slow Horses books (after binging thr TV series), and just starting Joe Country.

Also re-reading thr Dark Tower books, currton Drawing of Three at the moment.

in a few months I’ll start my re-read of Memory Thorn Sorrow, then read for the first time the sequel series, timed for the release of the last book.

After that, the Wherl of Time and maybe my Drizzt books

The post office scandal gets worse - BBC has documents/emails that prove the attempt to cover it up, and to sack those IT people who were finding thr software bugs

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68079300

2 hours ago, Madame deVenoge said:

I woke up this morning with an intense flash of pain across my jaw. Like a lightning bolt, on the right side, with one branch of the lightning cutting across my cheekbone and the other branching down the jawbone. It only lasted a second, but then it happened again. And again. I took a muscle relaxer and tried to get some sleep, which I did. Then, it happened again while I was on the phone.

I called my TMJ doctor. 

And of course, I checked with Dr Google, who was pretty clear that being a female of a certain age with the above symptoms might be representative trigeminal neuralgia. 
 

I shall keep y’all posted.

Jaw pain can also indicate a heart attack, so maybe bear that in mind. And also that heart attacks in women are more likely to be missed than those suffered by men

6 minutes ago, Denvek said:

Bound - the one with the Orion slave girls and their super-mind-control pheromones

Had forgotten that one!

There’s also a dodgy transporter episode from what i recall

11 hours ago, IlyaP said:

We don't talk about that one episode! Or Threshold!

Which episode was thay’t?

13 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Next on the agenda is either reservation dogs, the bear or somebody somewhere. Anyone got a recommendation? 

Slow Horses on Apple TV. I got a free 2-month trial, but even if you have to pay for a month and binge, worth it

7 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Pretty much. Finrod getting branded with Sauron's sigil a sketch of Mordor, that would guide Morgoth's servants to gather and rebuilt there, and his body being taken to Galadriel conflicts with the Silmarillion's version of events.

The show writers don’t have the rights to The Silmarillion, so unless Finrod’s death is described in thr LotR appendicss, the Tolkein estate would get sued for describing his death as it happened in Thr Silmarillion (unless they got permission from thr estate)

19 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

 

Angel wings guy or the one with two hands holding a crown?

UK cover with some warriors sitting around a campfire

Watching Enterprise season 3 ep 18 Azati Prime, and the ship is getting the shit kicked out of it. 
 

What sets it apart from earlier series (ie Voyager) is that the ship remains fucked up for the rest of the season. Archer’s razor was presumably a casualty because he starts growing stubble.

Seasons 1-2 were pretty bland, but this season ramps things up - Archer has numerous ethical dilemmas, not all neatly tied up. He condemns an innocent ship to three years of impulse travel.

4 hours ago, Spockydog said:

*Lazyscrog Update Klaxon*

Woooooooo! I am pleased to report that Lazyscrog Technologies has an official launch date.

I found out last week that we've made the shortlist for two of the three grants we applied for. As a result, I've turned down three different investors, all American, who wanted far too much equity for what they were offering in return.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed...

Except a Scottish Widows pension fund that my ex-wife forced me to take out shortly after we got engaged. I paid into this thing for about four years, starting in 2000. After we got divorced, I cancelled the payments and forgot I ever had it.

Anyway, a few months ago, I received a letter from Prudential, out of the blue, asking if I was Mister xxx who once lived at xxx from xxx to xxx. If so, please send proof.

So I did, and they wrote back and told me that the four years worth of contributions I had made were now worth upwards of £55,000.

This, and the positive news on the grant angle has allowed me to hit the button on a number of things that needed to get done, and being able to pay for it myself will allow me to retain 100% of my company. Though a rich friend who is CIO for a City brokerage might want to invest.

I have employed the services of an award winning, Soho-based, full-stack product development and marketing agency, to transform my prototype into a nice shiny consumer product and bring it to market, along with a range of specially modified grow tents.

We are basically going to use my completely out of the blue pension money to fund the product development and crowdfunding campaign. A whole bunch of agencies have told me they can achieve our goals in a whole bunch of interesting ways.

Our initial launch markets will be the UK, US, Canada, and selected EU nations.

In markets where weed cultivation is legal, we will lean hard into our success growing the Devil's Lettuce. We will be running a Lazyscrog Pilot Scheme in conjunction with Dutch Passion seeds, and ILGM. We expect significant 420 media coverage from this.

We are going to use the UK market as our proving ground for demonstrating the novel ways in which the Lazyscrog can grow a variety of food crops. 

As part of this, Lazyscrog Technologies will be an exhibitor and sponsor at the BBC Gardeners World Live Show at the NEC in Birmingham. We've bought a 3m x 3m marquee stand, and a small sponsorship package. Maggie, our brand ambassador, will be in attendance, and will be an absolute punter magnet. We have been guaranteed 'quality BBC coverage' of some form or another.

And so, on the 15th of June 2024, on the final night of the trade show, we will be hosting the Official Lazyscrog Launch Party event thingy. Gonna be in a lush venue in Birmingham city centre. Somewhere with a nice, upmarket vibe, exact location tbd. Open bar and tasty snacks, and some form of entertainment.

The details are yet to be decided, but I'm paying some fancy agency thousands to organize and promote it, in the hope of getting 30-50 top weed & horticultural journos, editors, and influencers to come along and press the flesh.

Of course, any and all Boarders are invited to come along and get pissed with me. @BigFatCoward, I'll reserve you a seat at the bar.

 

Congrats!

On 1/14/2024 at 3:39 PM, williamjm said:

It does sound like Feist might be disappointed with the sales for his new setting and is trying to link it to the more successful Riftwar books, but I think most Riftwar fans had grown tired of that series long before it came to its end.

*Feist* had grown tired of the Midkemia books long before it came to its end. He was phoning it in for fifteen years.

It was the cover of Ratmond E Feist’s Shards of a Broken Crown that drew me to fantasy in 1998.