August 2024: Countries clash... in the Olympics!

We're more than half way through the games now but prior to the start Israeli athletes had been threatened a repeat of Munich. Israel's response was to take out some of the leaders of their known enemies and just get on with it. Meanwhile in the USA someone had tried to off Trump who is running for President again, but it was current President Biden who pulled out from running for his second term, finally understanding that he might be too old.

That shooter wasn't Olympics worthy unlike this pair (Kim Yeji and Yusuf Dikec).

Not all is well in the Olympics though with complaints ranging from uncomfortable beds to the Seine river (used for some swimming events) being so dirty its causing athletes to fall sick. Russian troops in Ukraine know all about bad water as they have a shortage of it, resorting to drinking whatever they can find. To be fair they might be dying too quickly to care about it anyway, but are still gaining ground regardless. On the water itself it's still humorous that the Russian navy is getting sunk by a country without one.

Some of this is made possible by drones. These things can do everything it seems, from spying on Olympic soccer training to killing helicopters. The UK has recognized the threat at has made an anti-drone laser system (which probably doesn't work well in fog, snow or rain but neither would flying drones). The crafty Ukranians solution is just to shotgun them from an old Yak-52. On a random tangent, I checked if someone made a laser to kill mosquitos and the answer is yes, but it currently isn't practical. Damn.

Meanwhile more bad news for Ukraine as Hungary is upset Ukraine is blocking their oil (despite them blocking aid to Ukraine for over two years) and NATO has also deemed Ukraine too corrupt to join them. Perhaps Russia's joint venture with China to establish a moon base, possibly in Mare Tranquillitatis Pit if they can claim it first, might take some heat off? With the ISS being retired in a few years that would be a pretty big achievement.

Not sure how China plans to bank roll this given their current financial troubles, but maybe it involves assimilating the Tibetans? They've still got around 10 years to work it out anyway. Not sure the way Thailand is handling their finance would be the answer. They're simply handing out digital money to citizens!

May 2024: War... War never changes.

It's day 827 of Russia's two day special operation to take Ukraine and while they are gaining ground slowly through sheer numbers, a few countries have finally given the green light for Ukraine to use their weapons into Russian territory. That's a strange handicap to have originally been placed on the clear under dog, but lets see if this shifts the momentum into Ukraine's favor.  

Meanwhile in the Middle East, Egypt had warned it might withdraw from its mediator position in the (so far failed) Gaza ceasefire negotiations because of recent doubts that "offend" them. These doubts are mainly center around getting caught red handed mediating in bad faith, secretly changing terms before handing them to Hamas after Israel had already agreed and signed to it. Not sure how the parties involved feel but I for one would say "good riddance" as it's clearly pointless to put your trust in these lying snakes in the first place.

Now Israel is taking out some serious revenge to the tune of around 35K dead Palestinians so far for the instigating October 7 Hamas raid which killed around 1.2K people (for comparisons sake 9/11 killed around 3K with a 3.6M retaliation). It's clear where the loyalties of some folks in Mexico are, burning down the Israeli embassy in Mexico City right as they are being hit by a water shortage.

Worth noting Hamas are now singing their old song (on replay apparently) of "we're willing to negotiate as long as Israel completely stops fighting". Israel would be stupid to accept that and let them regroup, given the Hamas charter  (#4) explicitly states:

“Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement…. There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad”

Next it's over to China where they've developed some pretty cool gun toting automatons, but somehow they're still not as scary as the drones that can simply drop grenades on you. Then we have North Korea, trying to stay relevant by sending in explosive balloons of literal shit to South Korea. Are they trying to say all their septic tanks are full and are in dire need of help? Or simply that they're just full of shit?

Eurovision 2024: The Code (of War)

It was an interesting Eurovision this year with Sweden acting as the host. Ukraine had a better song this time around and Germany set the stage on fire, or was it one of the more eye-candy type acts? There was also a twisted fairy tale, a demon summoning, and a guy with no pants which I classify under the same theme of "horror" (though purely based on some vocals/songs more entrants could fit into this category). There was also a disqualification, and it ultimately came down to Croatia's Baby Lasagna and Switzerland's Nemo. For a change I managed to pick the winner correctly from the semi-final stage! Congratulations Nemo, not only for winning but for one of the best performances in Eurovision ever. Highly recommended you watch it. :)

Here's Raiven, fully clothed.

Since this seems to be a post about nations competing against each other let's check in on Russia's special 2 day operation to take Ukraine which is now on day... 817? It's been a long time since I posted anything about this (ironically, it was my previous Eurovision post) and in that time Ukraine was actually losing ground due to dwindling reserves of people and supply (due to other countries *cough USA cough* delaying support) and Russia's seemingly endless supply of people to take hits and further tire and disarm their opponent.

That battle continues as does the one of Israel (who actually had a Eurovision contestant this year) vs Hamas, a militant and designated "terrorist" arm of Palestine supported by Iran, who recently lost their president in a helicopter crash. President Bill Clinton tried sorting that out in 2000 but unfortunately was unsuccessful.

Eurovision 2023 - The Winner Takes it All

I was late to watch this years Eurovision, hosted by runners up the UK for their awesome entry last year and because Ukraine, last year's actual winners, are still fighting against Russia. That recent almost revolt could have changed the battlefield but as usual, the easiest way to deal with mercs is with money so that's no longer happening which is an underwhelming result.

Underwhelming is also the word I'd use to describe this years Eurovision. There were the mandatory anti-war entries and sexy eye candy, a random pirate shanty, a flute dwarf, some German heavy metal, and a hard core cha cha song about getting drunk. My pick didn't even get close to beating the winner who intentionally made her song sound like one from Abba. Indeed the best performances were ones not even competing, my favorite being this one from the first semi final.

Unlike other years where there were songs DL or myself would actually be tempted to learn, this years batch has no such song.

Today I Smiled: Eurovision 2018

Another year means another Eurovision! As you all know I'm a bit of a fan of this event, and this year had a combination of nice eye candy,  a douchebag intruder for the UK's entry, a wiggly Australian, a pyromaniac piano vampire, some heavy metal screamers, an opera singer in a cool laser dress, and some peace loving vikings.

Sometimes I think there's a secret "who can burn the stage" contest too.

I quite liked those last two, as well as Greece's song and Albania's Rock entry. Even if you skip all the above, the next three you probably should watch: Moldova's superbly choreographed and humorous number, the actual winning entry from Israel which involves a bit of clucking and eye gymnastics, and my personal favourite this year: Germany's touching "You Let Me Walk Alone".

Last but not least, here's a clip of Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) questioning why Canada isn't a part of Eurovision. :)

Today I Smiled: Eurovision 2015!

Short post full of  music links in-bound!

One of my guilty pleasures is watching the song contest that is Eurovision, and for those of you who don't know what it is I think this image sums it up nicely. :P

Because fire solves everything!

Yes, that's a guy singing and performing on a flaming piano. As expected there were also hot ladies, angry ladies, a fat lady, and even a bearded lady assisting the hosting since she won lost year.

There was also all sorts of music: from Israeli Club Dance, to Russian messages of peace, to songs that sound similar to something else, and as usual a couple of WTF entries.

My personal favorites of the night were Voltaj from Romania and of course Guy Sebastian from AUSTRALIA (included for the first time ever)! For a country not even in Europe I'm amazed that he did so well. The ultimate winner was Sweden though, and I had no problems with that as I quite liked his song too. You should give it a listen! :)

NBI: Region-Locking Games

You might have heard than En Masse has blocked half the world from playing Tera. From this, Jeromai from Why I Game has setup a NBI writing prompt and I thought I'd participate - so you can totally blame him for this post! :P

My thoughts on Region-locking:

Speaking from a guild with members all across the globe, region locking sucks. It makes it so much harder to find MMOs that we can all play together on. While we play many games, we're still looking for that one that will cater to all of us as many free shards of Ultima Online did so many years ago.

Devil's Advocate section:

If a game is so poorly designed that it can't handle world wide participation then I suppose a Region Lock is necessary. Rubber banding and general lag is not a good feeling in any MMO, though my personal experience is that I more resistant / can put up with more of it than other players that like to vocalize on general chat.

I suppose in PvP games it would make things pretty frustrating too for the lagged out person, while those with good connections would just get bored from the easy kills / annoyed at you giving the enemy team free points.

Your in-game encounters with folks from different countries, good or bad (any cultural tendencies that you’ve noticed)?

What? Jeromai is asking me to be racist? Ok, if he insists! Haha just kidding, douche bags are spread among all types of folk across the world (especially in games that allow PvP). That said there are also really nice people that I've encountered over the years, some of whom joined my guild - the ones that share our view always trying to help people and abstaining from PvP.

We've had members from Australia, Canada, all over the USA, Thailand, Belgium, Holland, England, Ireland, Singapore, Finland, Brazil, Lithuania, Germany, Slovenia, Israel, Croatia, Portugal, Turkey, and Georgia (the country, not the state).

The most eye opening talk for me though was with our Israeli guild mate. We voiced our concern for one of our English guild members years back when there was a terrorist bomb attack near where he lived. While he was ok, the Israeli guy was just like, "It's like that everyday here."

We lost contact with him after he was conscripted into the army, which is obligatory when he turned a certain age, and have never heard from him since.

Other on-going NBI activities:

Contains Moderate Peril still looking for NBI guest posts!
Gaming Discussion
Talkback Topic #2: Early Access and Kickstarter
NBI 2015: Poetry Slam!
Murf's Screenshot Challenge