Lorindól

Hell, they would get unconditional surrender just by promising to send a few battallions of unarmed female troops over.

I’ve had the honor of competing with air rifles against one of Häyhä’s grandnieces. Häyhä never had any children of his own.

I can assure you that the talent was NOT genetic ;)

My understanding has always been that none of the Valar took part in the War of Wrath.

When the Valar challenged Melkor directly in the Battle of the Powers, Middle-earth suffered massive collateral damage. And at that time there was only a small population ol Elves at the remote Cuiviénen, guarded by detachment of Maiar.

During the War of Wrath most parts of Middle-earth were already populated by the Children of Ilúvatar, so the Valar had to limit their attack force to “just” Maiar and the Eldar of Aman.

Morgoth’s personal power had diminished when he slowly shared parts of his might with his “creations”, like the dragons. The Valar had to be aware of this; Thorondor was able to maim Morgoth’s face while retrieving Fingolfin’s body and would have relayed the news of this and the duel to Manwë.

So it’s pretty safe to say that the Valar considered their army to be more than adequate to overthrow Morgoth: Maiar to take on the Balrogs and other fallen Maiar, elite Elves for the orc hordes and other “normal level” enemies.

But I also think that an important component is also that the Children of Ilúvatar had to “save themselves” from evil, the Maiar were sent just to level the stakes and capture Morgoth at.the end. The Eldar of Aman needed to be a part of this effort, not just as elite reinforcements but to show unity with their Middle-earth brethren and other Children of Ilúvatar. They all had to renounce Morgoth’s evil and rally together to finally prevail after immeasurable suffering.

If the “gods” themselves had just showed up and taken care of the baddies, there would have been none of this hard earned absolution. Which also fits pretty nicely with Tolkien’s Catholic worldview.

As how Beleriand was destroyed and “fell beneath the wawes”, it could be argued that the Maiar were allowed to use their full power while facing the fallen Maiar, resulting in the utter ruin of the lands. And if the ruined Beleriand was considered to be tainted by Morgoth’s lingering evil, sinking the entire region to the sea would be a logical thing for the Valar to do.

Apparently the original team behind Star Control is making a direct sequel to II, since SC 3 was done by a different studio and did not follow the storyline that the creators had in mind.

And it’s supposed to be released this year. They are calling it “Free Stars: Children of Infinity”, since they don’t own the rights to the Star Control name. But they do own all the rights to the content in SC 1and SC 2, so this could be fun!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Stars:_Children_of_Infinity

I did like SC 3 as well, but it wasn’t nearly as great as SC 2. I can barely remember the main storyline.

deleted by creator

Star Control II, PC.

All hail the Gerbil King!

The intranet at my work is a near-useless dumpster fire. Everything is disorganized, all the important documents and instructions are hidden behind completely chaotic branches and layers of creatively named folders.

I have used the wretched thing only once. I instantly downloaded everything I thought I would ever need to an encrypted USB stick, so I would never have to use it again. This was 7-8 years ago. Everything important is always delivered by email and apparently stored to the intranet afterwards. The intranet has been hacked at least twice, but the real number is most likely much higher. For “reasons”, all the personnel info has also been kept stored on the intranet, despite the successful hacks.

I had the same exact approach back in the late 90’s. My friends had several band projects and when they were mixing their demos, I insisted that if the mixes sound good in a standard car stereo, they’ll sound good anywhere.

I was not referrring to the headline of the post; I am well aware of the size of the US. I was referring to the low-brow text on the post’s image.

Yes, I can nearly feel my European mind shambling.

I collect movies that I know to be good. I’ve been a true film freak for over 35 years and I’ve learned how to find “my thing” from the vast market with the help from my friends, reviews and forums. Or when I see a truly good one at a theatre, it goes to my buy list and it might take years for it to come my way.

I have never bought a movie just because of the covers, this has actually never even occurred to me. I did rent films this way back in the day, but I only buy stuff I know.

Nowadays I rarely find anything I haven’t already seen before, but just few weeks ago I came by a modern classic that I was unable to see in a proper theatre. I save these specialties to watch with a projector and a good sound system, hopefully in a few weeks I’ll find the time…

This. Just yesterday I bought a batch of films, DVD’s 1$ and Blu-Rays 1,5$ a piece. And they were mostly new films.

DVD’s are perfectly fine for TV and Blu-Rays for my projector.

I never jumped to the streaming bandwagon and my disc collection has grown exponentially in the last few years, since most people gave up on discs. Their loss.

Your description fits my brother perfectly.

He has very little curiosity, hasn’t read more than 3 books in his entire life, strongly dislikes all forms of art (except shitty movies and TV-shows), isn’t capable of analytical or critical thinking and hasn’t got a clue how the political system works.

He apes the attitudes of his spouse and friends, so much that I’m not sure he even has any opinions of his own.

Yet this doesn’t bother him at all. He’s very happy being oblivious and he makes more than twice as much money per month than I do with my master’s degree. He is very good at what he does and I’m happy for him.

It would still be nice to be able to have a real conversation with him, instead of just stating the factual matters or laughing at some dumb jokes. If we both didn’t share such a strong resemblance of our dad I’d assume that my mom had an affair, beyond our appearance we have almost nothing else in common.

Predators do what predators do.

I had two cats from the same litter. The female was superfocused on birds, rarely paid any attention to mice or voles which are pretty abundant here in the countryside. She very rarely managed to catch any birds in the wild, but if one made the mistake of flying into the house, it was game over in seconds. She could jump surprisingly high.

The male on the other hand was only interested in rodents. It was like to him birds didn’t exist. For yeard he kept our house totally free from mice, roaming the yard and doing his thing very effectively. I’d pay good money to have a cat like him again.

I wouldn’t let my cats out in the city, but out here I’ll let them live by their insticts. The nearby highway kills a lot more birds and mammals daily than they ever could.

I use mine almost on a daily basis, with my headphones and when I connect my phone to my stereo system.

I do have Chromecast Audio hooked up and I own good wireless Hi-Fi earbuds, but I prefer to use cables. They just work better, no interference or any other hassle.

One definitely should use solid structures, metal or wooden. The damned thing cost ~10$ and I didn’t have time to build a proper support structure at the moment. I meant to use it only as a temporary solution, which I forgot when everything was fine.

The design of the arch itself wasn’t the problem. The interconnecting pipes were only 1-2mm thick, so there was no way it could possibly support the weight of a flourishing grape vine.

It was marketed as a “rose arch”. I guess it could’ve handled this purpose without any problems.

Buy wrong stuff, suffer the consequences.

Mine lasted a year with grape vine before catastrophic structural collapse.

I’ve had general anesthesia, it was just like falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

If death is like that, then there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of.