I am quite fascinated by the TTRPG Eclipse Phase’s depiction of humans in an extremely high-tech future. Why physically travel between planets when you could just email over a copy of your mind, have it stuck in a rented body, and then download the copy’s memories once it has done whatever you needed done? There’s absolutely no requirement for your new body to be a human-shaped one either, provided you can maintain your composure while being in such a different physical form. Some people get really weird with it, others think that it’s abominable. There’s a mobster who puts her enemies’ minds into fish and keeps them in a tank.

I’m not so keen on everything about the setting, and I’ve never gotten a chance to play a game of it so I have no idea how the mechanics are, but there are cool ideas in there

I’ll say this bit in English first for the benefit of anyone else that’s reading: I absolutely do not intend to attempt to justify the suppression of those cultures with my comment. It’s fucked up and it lessens the richness of our culture, regardless of who did it. I’m more just wary of a certain current within Scotland of blaming the English for a lot of stuff that we very much did to ourselves, and I think it’s good for us to reckon with the fact that it was the same Scotland that we identify with that did (a lot of, not all of) it

Tha mi ag ionnsachadh Gàidhlig ri cùrsa eSgoil UHI (OGE sa Ghàidhlig? Chan eil fios agam). Tha deuchainn agam a-nochd, a-rèist is e seo stuidearachd! Feumaidh mi faclair cuideachd, ach feabhas mi slaodaiche. Bithidh mi toilichte barrachd a bhruidhinn, fiù is ged nì mi mearbhallan. Tha mi airson an cànan a chumail beò

To be fair, we had been trying to wipe out our different cultures and languages long before the union with England. Pictish didn’t make it, Cumbric didn’t make it, and Gaelic had been getting slowly pushed out of the centre of power since Malcolm Canmore’s time. Even the Statutes of Iona were James VI.

Rinn na Sasannaich e na bu mhiosa, 's cinnteach, ach chan robh sinn cho diofraichte

The nature of being a bunch of smaller countries is that you have to actually take the time to make sure you’re working together on something. There’s not a single government to direct it. There will be negotiations.

However in the meantime, support continues. France is supplying intel, and Mirage 2000 jets that France gave to Ukraine deployed in the last couple of days. The UK sent £750,000,000 on Friday. The EU approved about €200,000,000 in contracts for Czech companies to help rebuild damaged things in Ukraine.

Moby > Morby

With all due respect mate, I am British, I do understand the toll of the Blitz. I’m just conscious of the fact that Ukraine has basically been suffering the same conditions for far longer, as pointed out by the other reply. That isn’t an attempt to downplay what Britain suffered, but rather to properly recognise the severity of what Ukraine is suffering. I’m sure I don’t need to send photos of the damage done by Russia.

For what it’s worth, Britain probably didn’t suffer as much as Ukraine has. The actual island of Great Britain was more or less secured after the aerial battle of Britain was won, and that took less than a year. Military casualties would go on to be comparable to the war in Ukraine, of course, and there was the ongoing difficulty of feeding everyone, but Britain at least had the sea and a massive navy standing between it and the enemy and civilian casualties were “only” about 70,000

You could honestly just ask the ghost via the oiuja board and it would be roughly as meaningful as a polygraph

We actually should invite him. We need this to be better than the extortion attempt that America made. What we need to do is just include a genuine mutual defence clause for Ukraine in the deal.

Counterpoint: I saw a harrier give a bow at an airshow once and it was awesome

I don’t think this is being framed as inspirational in the article, it’s just a depiction of grim determination in the face of an awful situation. I do think that the Ukrainian instances are more “honourable”, for whatever is worth, because Ukraine didn’t start this and also doesn’t have the same option to just stop it that Russia does, but honour isn’t really the point

Regarding the guy in the first photo, Sgt Rubliuk: he’s in a training role now. He’s a officer, the photos are described as being in training situations, and in the second photo of him he seems to be correcting someone else’s posture with a gun. He probably does have quite a lot of experience that he can share with trainees, and he doesn’t need to be able to pull a trigger to do that

Rubliuk rejoined the special forces last spring as a senior sergeant in the Artan intelligence unit, training new soldiers and monitoring enemy drones

I have no idea where to look for information about Russian artillery shells, but wikipedia has info on a few American 105 mm and 155 mm ones. They all have about 15% of the weight accounted for by explosive. 15% of 160,000 is 24,000

I’m not German and don’t have any special insight into German politics, but until someone that knows better comes along I can at least offer that it’s Angela Merkel’s old party. Unless something has shifted drastically, it’s the Germany we’ve known for most of the past twenty years

We’re nowhere near net zero, though. We do need to get there first. Since carbon capture removes far less carbon per money spent on it than replacing fossil fuel power plants with clean options does, carbon capture doesn’t really make sense right now

The varieities that might work out are give some other benefit for now. Afforestation can help prevent desertification, for example

Stunned, shocked. It originates in cricket, in which hitting the ball beyond the boundaries of the field without it bouncing gets you six points

They’ll definitely be working with the rebels beyond the rescue! He’s getting busted out by a disillusioned veteran of the army that captured him, and that guy is already geared up with a battered and customised mech stolen from that army. The other player characters are going to drop down and fight to rendezvous with the rebel and their friend, at which point they can drop a third mech prepared in advance for that player to join the fight. The rebel leader will definitely stay relevant, he’ll just have fewer forces to back the players up than he otherwise would have

Lancer has a system called “reserves”, which are basically special bonuses you can acquire by either achieving extra objective in a fight or securing something in the downtime between fights. Stuff like being able to call in an artillery barrage from allied forces, or a flight system with fuel for one fight. These are usually things only for the players, but I’ll be treating the loss of rebel forces incurred in rescuing the player as a reserve for the enemy — the rebels aren’t able to garrison the town they captured and it’s not longer a safe spot to rest, or they can’t take out the artillery spotters before a fight, something like that depending on what’s relevant and how they decide to approach things.

Fortunately we are playing Lancer, so it’s entirely in keeping with the setting for the others to drop from orbit in big mechs to explode things until they get their friend back!

In the meantime there was going to be a thing about working with some rebels behind enemy lines anyway, so they’re going to break the hostage out of captivity at the cost of not having the resources to help in a later conflict

One of my players offered themself up as a hostage to get the others out of a losing fight alive, which was a great twist in the story but now I need to run two branches until the others can attempt a rescue

Frankly I don’t think he owes any tolerance to the guy who is already advocating for the invasion that has killed hundreds of thousands of his fellow Ukrainians. Strategically I don’t think it’s a bad move either; being nice to Carlson isn’t going to get him anywhere because Carlson is a repugnant man and Zelenskyy’s evaluation of him is spot on. He might as well show some backbone and humour by mocking him instead, it makes him more likeable to the people that aren’t the lost cause of Carlson fans

I’m not sure why you think he “can’t manage” it. Why shouldn’t he comment on someone that he is justifiably unhappy with? After all, he can have an opinion too.