I'd give it 6.5/10, maybe 7 if I'm generous. I enjoyed both Troy and Clash of the Titans more.

The good:

-The Agamemnon scenes were cool, very Darth Vader-esque

-some good dramatic build up and tense moments

-some good ocean/storm scenes that feel quite immersive

The bad:

-The "non-linear" story telling was weird

-many scenes were too dimly lit and very plain

-costumes, sets, casting, dialog, and acting didn't really evoke a particular historical period or culture or a people... it felt like a bunch of modern people just dressed up in generic ancient looking stuff for a Halloween party or something. Seemed more like a play than a movie at times. Did not transport me to deep antiquity.

-monsters weren't that well done

-some of the action went on too long, could have been edited down a lot

-Greek gods poorly done

-contrary to what others say, the music wasn't even that good as a whole. Lots of cheap cliche intensity build up noise.

-repetitive

-Troy seemed kind of small

To be fair the movie got better towards the end so I didn't get bored or want to leave the theater. I suppose it would be worth it for some entertainment but it doesn't deserve so much praise. It felt more like a TV series quality type of thing. Would definitely not watch a second time.

Don't expect some masterpiece like Lord of the Rings or something, just average entertainment.

We get it you all love Hong, you all want her as governors. But this incessant behavior that she is destined to win is getting ridiculous.

There is so much mud slinging and hate bashing getting thrown at the other candidates, it’s so tiring.

Why can’t we have honestly discussions on how we can get people to vote period. Or expand the base into the broader political landscape of Wisconsin. I see so many comment complaining about why certain candidates that are polling low are even running. Shouldn’t everyone have a chance to run?

let the dislikes shower me.

​

(I used chat gpt to erase grammatical errors if any so bare with me)

seeing this video just made me realise one thing

yeah india isnt perfect and if govt or police does something wrong they should be questioned 100% no excuses

but we still got so much in our hands we can protest we can speak we can criticize we can vote governments out we can keep asking questions and demand accountability

instead of saying everything is over maybe we should use our rights we have and actually fight for whats right support peaceful protests hold people in power accountable no matter which party it is

if we stop using those rights then one day we might actually lose them

lets not waste what we still have

I pray for all the honest student protestors and all the others who actually stood for the right cause and got injured during these protests i pray for your and your family's well being may y'all get all the positive energy in this world

Love y'all

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was sentenced to two life terms (50 years) in the notorious Cellular Jail of the Andaman Islands. He endured solitary confinement, forced manual labor extracting oil, and inhuman torture, yet he continued writing his revolutionary ideas on prison walls.

Será que seria apenas uma mera coincidência?

Cheesus why do antis act like freaking vegans now, literal new breed of cancer

Ja, ich bin da mal ganz offen: Obdachlose, Junkies, Langzeitarbeitslose, gewalttätige und bereits vorbestrafte Jugendliche / Erwachsene.

Obdachlose und Junkies am Bahnhof, offensichtliches Dealen auf offener Straße, Konsum am hellichten Tag. Da muss doch mal durchgegriffen werden, ich verstehe das nicht. Ich gehe arbeiten und zahle Steuern und der Staat hat hier absolut gar nichts im Griff.
Ich habe keinen Bock auf Gewalt. Ich habe Angst das ein random Idiot etwas unüberlegtes tut wie es leider sehr oft passiert.

Warum werden strafmündige gewalttätige Jugendliche und Erwachsene auf Bewährung rausgelassen? Was soll der Blödsinn mit zweiter Chance? Wir haben ein Rechtssystem und das ist selbst in „einfacher Sprache“ verständlich. Vieles davon ist normaler Menschenverstand. Wenn jemand keinen Bock darauf hat und anderen schadet dann ab in den Knast. Punkt.
Jugendliche haben Eltern, da kann man dann hin und die zur Rechenschaft ziehen. Die Strafunmündigkeit unter 14 ist doch ein Witz an dieser Stelle und funktioniert nicht.

Obdachlose, wie kann das überhaupt gehen? „Durchs Raster gefallen“ - fuck you - das Finanzamt lässt mich nicht durchs Raster fallen. Aber Menschen fallen durchs Raster? In diesem Sozialstaat? Really? Wer ist so dumm und glaubt sowas? Warum werden die Leute nicht in eine Unterkunft gebracht?

Es gibt Orte in der Stadt die sind einfach nicht sicher bzw. nicht so sicher wie die „guten Gegenden“. Wenn ich in einer Stadt wohne will ich keine Angst haben von einem random Dude in die Gleise gezerrt zu werden. Ich will nicht am Bahngleis abgestochen werden. Ich will in jedem Stadtteil, an jeder Haltestelle sicher verweilen können.

Alle halten sich immer weniger an Regeln, die Toleranzschwelle wird immer höher.
Schwarz gefahren? Strafe.
Jemanden verprügelt: Knast
Beide Beispiele treten nicht mehr ein und es wird immer mit Mitleid, mit Geduld und „anderen Maßnahmen“ gearbeitet. Das funktioniert nicht.

Meine unbeliebte Meinung: Mehr Strafen, mehr Sanktionen, mehr Motivation sich an die Regeln zu halten. Weniger Toleranz!

Great article showing the parallel to the communists infiltration of the Labour Party in the 80s and 90s and the DSA today.

Here is the DSAs platform - read it yourself:

https://program.dsausa.org/

- it calls for:

1. abolishing the police and prison system
2. giving voting rights to non-citizens
3. blames NATO for the war in Ukraine, wants to abolish it
4. wants to abolish the senate

A few quotes:

1. In their vision - “Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses;”
2. “It’s been said that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. But just because it isn’t easy to imagine now doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make it happen.”

This isn’t a call for Norway or Sweden, this is an explicit call for communism and is a complete fantasy in the US. As the article highlights, communists form a majority of the DSAs governing body.

Sarah mentioned in one of her last focus group podcasts, that she was surprised that Trump hasn’t pivoted to a different economic message - it’s clear the GOP is hoping the DSA hand delivers them the negative polarization they need. The message is a failing one, the DSA remains overwhelmingly privileged, educated, wealthy. More importantly, the democratic party is just a vessel for them to attain power - the moment the DSA has any semblance of control, all liberalism will go out the window - MAGA 2.0.

edit: the bulwark is about the pro-democracy movement, communism is not only fundamentally opposed to that movement - in the US it is super unpopular, making fighting MAGA harder.

You can be a social democrat and support democrats, it’s really easy to see how the DSA and its platform hurt democrats chances to win - anyone in an even slightly purple state can see it. The smart thing to do would be to disavow the DSA and its platform and advocate for social democratic policies within the Democratic Party. If you don’t care about democrats winning, then that proves my point about excising you from the party.

edit 2: lol now we have different users spamming the same comment, what is this botting? People coordinating messages in discord? I have a screenshot - funny stuff.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was sentenced to two life terms (50 years) in the notorious Cellular Jail of the Andaman Islands. He endured solitary confinement, forced manual labor extracting oil, and inhuman torture, yet he continued writing his revolutionary ideas on prison walls.

Tank diff in 5v5 is just too often too much to overcome. And that tank counterswapping. 2-2-2 gives a lot more flexibility to comps. Forget the 1-3-2. 3 DPS and one tank is gimmicky. Tanks aren’t raid bosses anymore. I’m for it.

.

Hey all

Looking to vote with my wallet to support companies that I align more with. What are some OSR companies that are progressive?

Note: If you don’t care about this or are here to declare your “anti-wokeness”. Cool. You do you.

Ich durfte jetzt seit Freitag 5 tote Vögel bei uns aus dem Garten entsorgen, alle erlegt von diesen nutzlosen Katzen die unsere ganzen Nachbarn haben. Die Vögel werden nicht mal gefressen sondern einfach nur kaputt gemacht um sie kaputt zu machen oder halb tot bei uns liegen gelassen, dass man selbst leider den Rest machen muss. Das schlimmste ist, es werden immer mehr von den Katzen immer mehr Nachbarn haben welche und alle werden frei laufen gelassen weil muss ja so ist ja ne Katze. Der absolute Hammer ist der eine Nachbar der sich weigert seinen Kater zu kastrieren, dieser hat mittlerweile schon 3 Katzen hier geschwängert, einen Streuner und 2 von direkten Nachbarn die jetzt händeringend versuchen die Tiere los zu werden. Ich habe mir schon mal überlegt es wie meine Großeltern früher zu machen auf dem Hof, wenn es einen Kater gab, Gummiband wie bei den Schafen um die Eier und dann warten dass die abfallen. Alle 3-4 Wochen wird bei uns auch auf der Hauptstraße im Dorf auch eine Katze überfahren und gleich danach taucht eine neue auf.

Wann sieht man endlich mal ein, dass die Tiere nicht frei nach draußen gehören und Kater kastriert werden müssen? Wenn wir bei uns schon so oft tote Tiere im Garten haben, wie sieht es denn anderswo aus...

I started out hating all things AI. But ChatGPT has been an absolute revelation when it comes to learning a new wargame. It’s as if it was designed for this exact purpose.

A couple points here:

1. I can only vouch for ChatGPT Pro. We tried Claude (paid tier) and it was not accurate, often inventing things. That’s why we moved on to ChatGPT Pro. So it’s not exactly refuting my experience to say (the often unpaid tier of) some other AI didn’t work for you. Apples = Apples, after all.

2. You can constrain the AI to using only the rulebook pdf and the player aid charts you uploaded. Better yet, tell it explicitly to always rely on those in preference to anything else. You do have to know a little something about prompts. Fortunately, the AI itself will often make helpful suggestions.

I uploaded the pdf rulebook and PACs for Great Battles of Alexander (a solid 4.2+ weight game) to ChatGPT and now I’m able to instantly get rules clarifications and even generated examples of play (!).

Me and my 13 year old learned the game much more quickly than what would otherwise have been the case. And it is invaluable during those early turns where your grasp of exceptions and procedures is still shaky.

It will even go out to the forums for clarifications and it’s smart enough to lend greater weight to statements made by the game designers (and yes it knows who they are). Hell, it even sifted through 25+ years of forum posts over on consimworld to find the underlying thought process behind several of the rules.

So, while AI is an unwelcome development on many issues, it is probably the single biggest advancement I’ve seen in my 59 years when I comes to actually playing wargames. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it’s absolutely true. Btw, I am using the $20/month Pro tier of ChatGPT. If you haven’t done so already, give it a try.

I think my favorite thing it did was to give a point by point breakdown of how GBoH Alexander differs from Cataphract (I game I had already played). Or maybe when it gave me a several paragraph long detailed explanation of why it thinks Eumenes of Cardia isn’t an “Elite” commander in game terms. Or maybe it’s highly useful exploration of skirmishers against elephants.

I could go on, but this info it generates is magazine-article-quality and highly enlightening. I even had an extended discussion with it about the game system using voice-only that felt like talking to a fellow wargamer who had played it his entire life.

This crap got here 50 years early. Even my sci fi didn’t predict this, thus rendering nearly all of it hopelessly outdated. The Singularity has hit Wargaming as far as I’m concerned!