Clueless Northman

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.

Sure, one can always argue that the inmate has control within his own prison cell.

This blows out right now, when the ICJ releases its first opinion and ruling - basically, Israel is under watch and is put on notice because all that's going on comes reasonably close to what S. Africa denouces. And instead of having Western countries telling Israeli government and IDF to act like civilized people and stop burning Gaza to the ground just like Genghis Khan troops would've done, they're bashing UNRWA. Yeah, that this accusation occurs right now is, of course, a pure coincidence, nothing to see here, move along. Israeli officials were definitely not keeping this claim under wrap to use at the most convenient time as a deflection from what really matters: the International Court of Justice finds that there's solid ground to suspect that the actions of the "only democracy in the Middle East" are dangerously close to genocide.

IDF has routinely been killing Palestinians this way across the West Bank for decades. It's not exactly a surprise the war in Gaza turns into such a blood bath for civilians - obviously, they weren't going to rely on stricter ROE.

One of the key takes of this decision hasn't yet been stated, so there it is: Even if there's no genocide and the ICC concludes there's no genocide going on, this decision shows they consider that what's been going on is bad enough to come close to a pre-genocide situation. Which means that, if things weren't as bad as genuine crimes against humanity, at the very least there are war crimes that have been committed and are still going on - and these will have to be prosecuted sooner or later, considering the international profile of the case. Besides, I would think that no sane government would supply Israel with weapons until the war is over, because this can become judicially very risky, depending on how things go on from here, and how the Court judges the case. Oh, it's partly the typical international situation in which the side with more and better English-speakers has the upper hand in English-speaking forums. You could see it fairly well when the Flemish far-right was agitating against Belgium central government: Walloons are a minority easily swamped by the more English-fluent Flemish posters; heck, I don't even want to think what it would look like in a debate about Quebec

Norway was one of the most critical voices of Israel in Europe, so I think Netanyahu would rule it out. Switzerland seems to (foolishly imho) try to corner the Ukraine negotiations angle and either doesn't try to deal with both crises or does it under the radar. Israel should ask Putin - after all, Bennett did mediate between Ukraine and Russia back in the first couple of months of the invasion of Ukraine. Sure, that's semi-tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely: Kremlin's criticism of Israeli actions has been very mild until now, even more if you consider it's supposed to be quite close to an ally of Iran.

You forgot: "topless Hebrew-speaking redhead people waving a white flag". Because, as is well-known, that's an apt desription of your average Hamas goon...

Just wondering: Weren't the US "freedom fighters", or "colonial rebels", depending on who you ask, actually embedded in the colonies' urban centers, the towns and the overall civilian population? As does, basically, every resistance movement, every guerrilla, including the numerous anti-Nazi resistances across Europe? Aren't right some Ukrainian troops more or less embedded across the major cities, be it Kiev or Mariupol during the siege? Isn't this quite a given, as long as armies don't go the old way and do typical field battles between standing armies, out in the open, far from urban centres? After all, the key reason why the Pentagon isn't immediately surrounded by DC suburbs is because it's actually surrounded by highway access roads and big bloody parking lots, not because it sits in the middle of the Mojave desert. That's something obvious since Algeria more than 60 years ago. But I suppose most people in US (and UK) think it was a bloody mess just because it involved the French, and everybody knows they're useless incompetent.

Nope, that actually came a bit later. The First Jewish Revolt failed and ended with a sizable part of the Jewish population dead, but the rest wasn't expelled. The massive expulsions came after the Second Revolt, which ended up with possibly just as many dead. There's a reason why most peoples only revolted once against Rome: the Empire was so ruthless and the devastation and deaths were so big that conquered peoples tended to stay put for a very long time. Judaea being one of the very fre exceptions. Heck, I was surprised to see that the National Museum in Jerusalem pretty much stated that, if the First Revolt was perfectly understandable and legitimate, the Bar Koshba Revolt was suicidal and a major mistake, and shouldn't have been attempted - the Jewish people should've known they would fail with disastrous consequences. It was also funny to see their take on the Maccabean Revolt, which they considered as pushed by extremist backwards ideologues against the more progressive and open-minded mainstream and majority hellenized Jews. Though of course that was what was written in the English notices; we weren't with our Israeli old friend, so I should ask him one day if the Hebrew notice say the same

I suppose they were sensible enough not to ask Uganda or Madagascar...

That's what I checked right before commenting, indeed, assuming this wouldn't be pro-Russian low-ball numbers. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if the final civilian death toll is above 30.000 in Ukraine. The key difference here, alas for Gazan people, is that Gaza Strip is basically one vast urban area and they have nowhere to go - many people managed to flee Mariupol before it was too late, if only because Ukraine is vast and they had other places to go. With Gaza, we're basically at siege level since the beginning of the Hamas war. To an extent, that should still be taken into account when planning military interventions, specially when the goal is, understandably and for good reason, to destroy Hamas' power: is it even possible without destroying most of the area, and if not, where to stop, at which point the civilian annihilation becomes too high to be justifiable, and at which point does it become genuinely counter-productive? This is such a fucked up situation for both peoples involved, both civilian populations, that I can't think for too long how they must feel and what future awaits them, if I don't want to be depressed.

Would you consider someone like Ben-Gvir an irrelevant nutjob whose opinion is of no importance? I mean, that would've been reasonably accurate description of the guy merely 3 years ago. Worth repeating that the military leadership (Gallant himself iirc) said right after the 7 Oct. attack that the rules wouldn't apply anymore in Gaza and that the soldiers wouldn't face prosecution, whatever they did there. That said, I hope the military hierarchy has put the soldiers involved in the hostage shooting on suicide watch. Well, since Ukraine has basically claimed at least 11.000 civilian deaths, then it basically means that IDF has killed just as many civilians in 2 months and a half as the Russian troops in 22 months. As for "anti-Israel bias", if Israel really wants to label Thailand, Guyan and Zambia as antisemite countries/governments - and any country who voted the last UN resolution -, they're free to do it. They just shouldn't hope to be taken seriously anymore except in a handful of Western countries. Any law scholar worth his salt knows that we've gone way beyond what is legal and that there are war crimes being committed, and investigations for crimes against humanity would be a given - investigations, not proof or trials, for now. Though it took them more than a year to go after Putin, so this can go quite slowly. The real issue is that, depending on how investigations turn out and the kind of international warrants are eventually delivered, this opens an insanely huge can of worms against some US and European officials, politicians, Congressmen, media people.