Can anyone explain what Stroll was doing?

Hopefully they get to keep the Andretti name, but overall 11th team on the grid is definitely a win.

Ugh, you had to mention the fast timescale… Now I’m seeing it too and it’s so annoying.

I guess I’ve gotten lucky. I have stable FPS, performance doesn’t tank in the first village, no crashes and the only stuttering I had was when I was killing everyone at the military base and I had about 20 bodies at the building entrance because they just kept coming.

Looking at the reviews and what others are saying I think I’m very much the exception here. I can attest that if the game works it very much is the STALKER experience and if STALKER is your jam then the game is worth playing.

My only negatives so far are the key binds (I checked, I can’t set them how I want to because some actions can’t be changed from the settings menu), there’s no overview of your standing with a faction or who belongs to what faction (maybe it unlocks later as I’m still in the first area, but I do miss that feature) and some mutants seem too beefy (would’ve never imagined running away from a pack of flesh, but I do run away because they eat buckshot for breakfast).

My first hour of gameplay didn’t feel like as bad as the reviewers put it. I have a relatively beefy machine (5800x, 4070 and 32gb of ram), the game defaulted me to epic settings (with DLSS and frame gen) and I’m getting a pretty stable 50 FPS. The only bug I’ve encountered is the audio not playing, and I guess also the sun not reflecting correctly off of windows.

The first hour isn’t much but I was expecting a much worse initial experience. My biggest issue so far has been the default keybinds but I’m hoping to solve it when I have more time to tinker in the settings menus. I’ll update my experience when I’ve had more time to play. So far I’m happy.

If anyone is wondering it’s actually because of frame of reference. The first two images have speeds in relation to the rotation of earth, the last imagine uses a different frame of reference. If you put the last image in the same frame of reference as the first two images the number there would be 0km/h, because it would be moving in relation to itself.

I disagree. I stopped watching when Spike was scoped in on Vicious and didn’t kill him. Anime Spike would’ve never let Vicious go because this is how Spike reacted when someone mistook him for Vicious. You don’t get that pissed off unless you really hate someone with every fiber of your being. I had other issues with the live action as well but I’ve clearly wiped my memory of its existence. Only the Spike thing remains because it’s the reason I stopped watching.

I think getting lost is intentional. The Russian disinformation machine plays ring around the rosie with any topic until you get so confused about what you’re discussing that you just give up.

Assets get reused all the time. Elden Ring base game is reusing assets from Sekiro and Dark Souls 3. I haven’t played Rebirth but I’m pretty sure it’s also reusing assets from the previous Final Fantasy remake.

I have given you actual sources to my arguments or have based my arguments on information that is easy to verify, meanwhile the only sources you’ve given are vague “NATO think tanks” and an author to a study you wouldn’t even name. Great sources. Maybe I should also cite my argument with “Ukrainian think tank said so” and you can go scour the web for this nebulous source.

And nothing I’ve said about Finland is manifestly ignorant, the only one manifestly ignorant is you because what you said literally contradicts history. If you do confidently double down on Finland go ahead, show me proof how Finland alternated between pro-USSR and pro-NATO government during the cold war. I know for a fact there is no proof because it did not happen.

I think he’s alluding to the fact that Mojang is a Swedish studio. And of course Persson (Notch) is also Swedish.

He “worked” at one and saw they use gloves when handling fries.

This Wiki graph is a bit of an abomination. There is no point to jumping between different pollsters between months. But it’s also a very incomplete picture of A) Ukraine’s intentions B) the role that ethnic breakdown of these polling outcomes and C) whose views actually matter for security policy in Ukraine. And once again I return to the ethnic schism in Ukraine.

Not at all surprised to see you dismiss actual data with your own made up hypotheticals. That’s exactly why I didn’t bother to piece together data from the same pollster, I knew beforehand it wasn’t worth the effort.

You claimed that when it comes to NATO membership for Ukraine, it’s not about NATO’s wishes or Russia’s wishes, but Ukraine’s wishes. I am arguing that it’s not the case at all since both NATO and Russia had deep influence over Ukraine economically, politically and militarily.

Now I have no idea what you’re even arguing about. You’re literally telling me the basis of my original argument, that Ukraine was never neutral to begin with.

What point of mine are you responding to here? I never said anything to contradict that. I’m not making a moralistic argument, I’m making a causal one. Russian meddling was a huge part in depressing support for NATO membership in Ukraine, and Euromaidan was an enormous blow to Russian meddling. QED That’s why Russia switched from meddling to compellence.

You can ignore this part because I tried to make sense of your original nonsense. Not that your edit was any better considering you’re literally defending Russia attacking Ukraine with “Ukraine didn’t give Russia any guarantees”. That is such a horrible take I’m just going to straight up ignore what you said because that is something I’d expect to see in Lemmygrad.

Actually it is. Neutrality involves both pro-Russia and pro-West parties coexisting, alternating and sharing power. That’s almost always been the case with neutral/buffer states. Finland had a pro-USSR and pro-NATO leaders alternating for the entire Cold War almost.

What? I don’t know what kind of make-believe neutrality you’ve conjured up, but I’m going to call it bullshit on the account that I know your Finland statement is complete bullshit. For the entire duration of the cold war Finland had a total of 3 different presidents and all of them followed a foreign policy that has been coined as “Finlandization”. At no point during the cold war was there even a whiff of NATO in Finland because Finland didn’t want to give the Soviet Union any reasons to turn their military gaze at Finland.

That’s absolutely not true. Finland in particular came quite close to joining NATO several times and a long-term trend towards public and political support for joining NATO. In fact, if you read NATO think tank studies on the matter from 2000-2012, you’ll find that the matter went from uncertain to being treated as inevitable. The main issue was always concern over Russian economic ties. But that went out the window when Russia was subject to nuclear sanctions after invading Ukraine.

More bullshit. Joining NATO was a discussion point in politics around 2006-2007, but the general public has had very little desire to join NATO. I have no idea what NATO think tank studies you read, but that had to be NATO fanfic because it’s so far from reality it’s hilarious.

Sweden is actually a similar case. It has basically acted as an auxiliary partner in basically all of NATO’s major operations in the past. There is also a good study on how it used the threat of NATO-ization as part of its economic diplomacy with Russia (I think by Henrik Larsen). But it joining after the nuclear sanctions on Russia also makes sense. There have never been any downsides to the prospect of joining NATO except for 1. being dragged into others’ conflicts 2. damaging economic and political relations with Russia. Following nuclear sanctions, there really were no more incentives not to join. I think with Sweden it’s more complex as there are ideological factors which are more prominent than in Finland.

I’m not that familiar with the specifics of Sweden, but considering how wrong you’ve been about Finland and how closely Swedes cooperate with Finns I’m going to assume it’s also bullshit. But feel free to find some actual sources backing up your claims instead of hand-waving sources.

Exactly. Ukraine didn’t want to join NATO. If you make a claim this outrageous, you need to back it up

Polling data good enough?

Ukraine officially entered into negotiations to join NATO and entered a membership action program to do so.

So why didn’t Russia do anything about it back in 2010 when the plan of action was approved? Seems kinda odd to wait 4 years and then suddenly make an issue out of it.

It does in fact matter what the two forces with most impact on Ukraine’s economy, politics and security environment believe and aim for.

I don’t even know what you mean by this sentence.

Except Russia annexed Crimea before the election. If Russia was worried about a pro-NATO government why would they do something that guarantees a pro-NATO government? I already answered this. Euromaidan was a Ukrainian nationalist movement.

Euromaidan was a nationalist movement because the catalyst for the movement was, surprise surprise, Russian meddling. Or did you forget that Putin specifically made a deal with Yanukovych to throw the EU deal under the bus and choose closer ties with Russia. You can’t expect to have a non-nationalistic and not anti-russian protest when the reason for the protest is the desires of the population getting undermined by Russia wanting to maintain their sphere of influence.

What do you mean about the election lol? By March 1 no one on earth was waiting to see if Ukraine would vote in another pro-Russia candidate lol.

I thought it was about being neutral and not about being pro-russia? Pro-russia isn’t the same as being neutral. Ukraine could’ve gone down the path of not wanting to be a part of NATO but wanting to be a part of the EU. Those two things are not the same as evident from Finland and Sweden who for decades were members of the EU and had no desire to be a part of NATO (until Russia threatened them). But we never got to see a potentially neutral outcome because Russia made sure the newly elected government will be pro-NATO.

The EU-Ukraine agreement wasn’t the single issue in 2014, though it the catalyst. Economic integration with the EU was seen by both the West and Russia as a vital step in reforming Ukraine so that it could become part of the Western alliance - this was said explicitly over and over in Western capitals and NATO papers. Inside Ukraine it wasn’t seen that way, as most Ukrainians wanted to enjoy good relations with both sides but to elevate themselves to Western standards - until 2014.

Exactly. Ukraine didn’t want to join NATO. It doesn’t matter what NATO or westerns think or Russia thinks, it was up to Ukraine. They had no intentions of joining NATO, until Russia annexed Crimea.

For Russia however, it meant the end of economic influence which was its chief way of exerting political influence to keep Ukraine neutral or friendly, and for an important subset of Ukrainian security and political actors who would win out during 2014, it was in fact a path to NATO.

Except Russia annexed Crimea before the election. If Russia was worried about a pro-NATO government why would they do something that guarantees a pro-NATO government? I think it’s pretty obvious neutral Ukraine was not the goal for Russia.

To be honest, I also can’t fathom it being such a massive flop. On Steam it peaked at 700 players. Shadows of doubt release peaked at 2200. Something had to go seriously wrong when a niche indie title with no mainstream appeal has a better launch than a AAA game. I don’t think it should’ve been a success, but it definitely should’ve done better than that.

If the key question is security neutrality how exactly was the EU-Ukraine association agreement a security issue for Russia? Because Euromaidan wasn’t about joining NATO, it was about wanting the possibility of joining the EU.

I’m not going to entertain the thought of what “neutrality” would mean, because the entire “neutral buffer” argument is just Russian propaganda. Ukraine wasn’t neutral before 2014, it was squarely within the Russian sphere of influence since the collapse of the union. Let’s reverse the situation. Let’s say Russia wins, dismantles the current Ukrainian government and sets up the “legitimate” Ukrainian government, would Ukraine become a “neutral buffer”? No. It would become a vassal state of Russia because Russia can’t give Ukraine the autonomy to make their own decisions, otherwise they might decide to turn westward again.

Maybe that’s the hypocrisy the meme is pointing to, that the neutrality argument in its entirety is bullshit because Ukraine was never neutral to begin with.

I guess its worth mentioning that Ukraine was never “neutral” to begin with. Since the fall of the union Ukraine had been in the Russian sphere of influence and they were neutral only to the extent where it wouldn’t undermine Russian control over Ukraine. That’s why the EU accession agreement started this, because it undermined Russian power and Russia was not okay with losing that power. Russia never wanted neutral buffer states, Russia wanted countries that they could control.

Trump himself wasn’t funny, but he would come across as funny because he would say the stupidest things or act in an unprofessional way. For example when he said the experts should look into if showing light inside a human body would kill COVID or maybe injecting disinfectant might work, that was stupid funny. There were others like the “who knew healthcare is so complicated” statement