Lurker > WastelandCowboy

Honestly, just the 1950s. And I'm not American.

Sour people will point out that racism was more rampant in those days. While this is true, the US was still in a better position in terms of standard of living than literally every other country on Earth. Nowadays, other nation have moved past what the US both was and is. There are too many social issues in the US and too much division for it to be considered "great" like it used to be. Trump isn't helping.

If the US wants to be great again, they need to slash their military budget, stop acting like the world police, bring manufacturing back, stand tall among their neighbours and allies, fix their corrupt police agencies, vastly increase education funding, and promote themselves as the beacon of freedom and welcoming global melting pot of world cultures as was always imagined.

Seems legit.

Just one. I purchase just about everything with it - no problem. So no need for any more.

close this topic

TOKYO — Japanese Emperor Akihito's oldest grandchild, Princess Mako, says she is getting married to her university classmate who won her heart with bright smiles and sincerity.

Mako and her fiancé Kei Komuro told a joint news conference Sunday their relationship started when Mako sat behind him at a campus meeting five years ago at Tokyo's International Christian University, where they graduated from.

Palace officials say their wedding is expected next year.

Mako says she fell in love with his "smiles like the sun," sincerity and a big heart.

Mako's 83-year-old grandfather, Emperor Akihito, is expected to abdicate in late 2018. He'll be succeeded by his eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito.

Mako does not qualify as women aren't allowed to succeed the throne. She'll lose her royal status after marrying the commoner.

FourthDimension posted...

Joel from TLoU

This although he's voiced so many.

WastelandCowboy posted...

Nominate:

Patrick Stewart
Leonardo DiCaprio
Helen Mirren
Robert De Niro
Scarlett Johansson
Jennifer Lawrence
Jack Nicholson
Kevin Spacey
Sandra Bullock
Sean Penn
Brad Pitt
Uma Thurman
Morgan Freeman
Kate Winslet
Denzel Washington
Liam Neeson
Samuel L Jackson
Justin Timberlake
Jamie Lee Curtis
Johnny Depp
Julianne Moore
Ian McKellen
Christopher Walken
Anthony Hopkins
Robert Downey Jr.
John Malkovich
Cate Blanchett
Tommy Lee Jones
Joaquin Phoenix
Russell Crowe
Sigourney Weaver
Michael Caine
Charlize Theron
Jamie Foxx
Nicole Kidman
Christian Bale
Meryl Streep
Natlie Portman
Reese Witherspoon
Mark Wahlberg
Jessica Alba
Jessica Biel
Ewan McGregor
Zooey Deschanel
Kate Beckinsale
Gwyneth Paltrow
Anne Hathaway
Julie Walters
Julie Andrews
Julia Stiles
Edward Norton
Emilie De Ravin
Emilia Clarke
Halle Berry
Emma Watson
Daniel Radcliffe
Cara Delevingne
John Boyega
Dakota Fanning
Elle Fanning
Elizabeth Olsen
Daisy Ridley
Tom Holland
Chloe Grace Moretz
Channing Tatum
James Franco
Seth Rogen
Paul Waker
Vin Diesel
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Gosling
Jake Gyllenhaal
Chris Hemsworth
Orlando Bloom
Keira Knightley
Chris Evans
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Elijah Wood

Alright sweet! Although I really wanna do Robin Williams too at some point so I'm gonna chuck him in there somewhere. Also I will keep this whole list in a text document but it's not gonna appear in full in each topic... And I guess if someone nominates someone it'll move 'em up the list.

This is one of the creepiest things I've seen in a while.

(CNN)In rural areas across northern Bangladesh families are preparing to mark Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest dates on the Muslim calendar.

The holiday, which translates literally as the "sacrifice feast," is intended to be a time of great celebration. In small villages and towns, such as Beraberi some 134 kilometers northwest of Dhaka, residents spent much of the last year hand-rearing goats and cows in anticipation of the annual festivities.

Then the rains began to fall.

As the world's media trains its sights on the tragic events in Texas and Louisiana, another water-driven catastrophe is unfolding in villages like Beraberi throughout Bangladesh and parts of Nepal and India.

There, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) estimates that at least 1,200 have died and more than 41 million people have been affected by monsoon rains and severe flooding as of June this year. The rains are now moving northwest towards Pakistan, where more devastation is expected.

At its peak on August 11, the equivalent to almost a week's worth of average rainfall during the summer monsoon season was dumped across parts of Bangladesh in the space of a few hours, according to the country's Meteorological Department, forcing villagers in low-lying northern areas to grab what few possessions they could carry and flee their homes in search of higher ground.

And still the rains keep coming. In Bangladesh alone, floods have so far claimed the lives of 142 people, and impacted over 8.5 million.

In Beraberi, one of numerous island villages know as "chars" dotted along the Jamuna River, entire homes have been washed away, and crops and food supplies -- including livestock -- all but wiped out. When aid workers carrying relief parcels from the IFRC arrived by helicopter earlier this week, villagers described the rains as the "worst in living memory."

"People were fearful they would soon begin to starve," says Corinne Ambler, who was among the IFRC team who visited the village. "They are used to seasonal flooding but nothing to this degree, this is a different level -- for miles around all you can see is water, the flooding has transformed the countryside."

Mother of two, Adere Begum, 34, was at home in the village with her daughters when the flooding began. "The water was up to our knees inside. There were snakes in the water and my children were very scared," said Begum, who lost much of her livestock, including ducks, chickens and cows in the floods.

The IFRC has described the flooding in Bangladesh as the most serious in 40 years. The organization estimates that 700,000 homes have been partially or totally destroyed and up to a third of its terrain -- much of it farmland -- left submerged, raising fears of a coming food shortage, as the country grapples to deal with a shortfall in staple produce.

OS: Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8, or Windows 8.1
Processor: 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon 64 Dual-Core 4000+ or equivalent (For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.0 GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-62 or equivalent)
Memory: At least 2 GB RAM
Hard Drive: At least 9 GB of free space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content and saved games
DVD-ROM: DVD ROM drive required for installation only
Video Card: 128 MB of Video RAM and support for Pixel Shader 3.0. Supported Video Cards: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better, ATI Radeon X1300 or better, Intel GMA X4500 or better
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c compatible
Input: Keyboard and Mouse

Ethan Hunt? He's been in so many action movies that he's just Tom Cruise. So I just picked the Mission Impossible series.

The Ultimate Showdown

Who will win?

It looked like a bunch of teenage drama bullshit to me

Muffinz0rz posted...

lihlih posted...

Firewood18 posted...

KStateKing17 posted...

TheCyborgNinja posted...

FrozenBananas posted...

Jason Bourne

Three days after launching short-range missiles on Saturday, North Korea launched a new ballistic missile on the early morning of August 29, with the missile flying right over Japan’s northern island and landing in the Pacific Ocean.

As Japan and the United States reacted strongly toward North Korea’s provocation and vowed to increase pressure, China has refused to condemn North Korea publicly. Instead, China keeps calling on all parties to exercise restraint and remain cool-headed.

On August 29, questions about North Korea’s latest missile launch dominated the regular press conference of the Chinese foreign ministry. Yet the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying refused to put out any harsh word on North Korea.

When asked if North Korea deserves special condemnation for launching missile flew over populated areas of Japan, Hua said:

The Security Council resolutions have explicit stipulations concerning the DPRK’s launch activities using ballistic missile technology, and the Chinese side is opposed to the DPRK’s launching activities in violation of the resolutions.

Then, she used hundreds of words to explain why the Korean Peninsula nuclear crisis is a complicated issue and implied that sanctions toward North Korea are useless:

The Security Council has passed several resolutions, and sanctions never stop, but do they really have any actual effects? Everyone notices that sanctions and missile launches are happening side by side…The current development of the situation has just proved once again the fact that sanction and military pressure alone will never be the final way out.

Rather than criticizing North Korea, Hua suggested that other parties–the United States, South Korea and Japan–had prompted “the vicious cycle of endless nuclear tests, missile launches and military drills.” So, she demanded them to reflect their own responsibilities:

To those who simply cannot stop talking about sanctions, I would like to ask them whether they have been comprehensively and earnestly implementing the Security Council resolutions in a balanced way? Or rather did they put undue amount of emphasis on sanctions while making no efforts to create necessary conditions and environment for the resumption of the Six-Party Talks?

Once again, Hua put forward China’s “suspension-for-suspension” proposal and called on all parties to “exercise restraint and remain cool-headed about the current situation.”

“Suspension for suspension,” or “dual suspension” was a proposal made by Beijing in March where Pyongyang would declare a moratorium on both nuclear and missile tests in exchange for the United States and South Korea halting large-scale joint military exercises. The proposal is welcomed by North Korea, but has been unsurprisingly rejected by the United States and South Korea.

WastelandCowboy posted...

Dunno. I'm 27 and still legitimately enjoy playing with Lego and they're generally for kids 3-8.

I mean, it's one thing to build a lego set, it's another to play with it as a finished/built thing. I'm talking about the latter.

How would you describe the ideal leader of the country you live in? Would they be female, male, non-binary? Would they be negroid, caucasian, mongolian, or a mix of these three races? Would they be gay, lesbian, or straight? Would they have short, but curly red hair, long black hair, or hair of a neon or unnatural hair color like pink, green, or blue?

Absolutely none of these would be a factor

At least 1,200 people have been killed and millions have been left homeless following devastating floods that have hit India, Bangladesh and Nepal, in one of the worst flooding disasters to have affected the region in years.

International aid agencies said thousands of villages have been cut off by flooding with people being deprived of food and clean water for days.

South Asia suffers from frequent flooding during the monsoon season, which lasts from June to September, but authorities have said this year's floods have been much worse.

In the eastern Indian state of Bihar, the death toll has risen to more than 500, the Straits Times reported, quoting disaster management officials.

The paper said the ongoing floods had so far affected 17 mllion people in India, with thousands sheltered in relief camps.

Anirudh Kumar, a disaster management official in Patna, the capital of Bihar, a poor state known for its mass migration from rural areas to cities, said this year's farming had collapsed because of the floods, which will lead to a further rise in unemployment in the region.

In the northern state of Uttar Pradresh, reports said more than 100 people had died and 2.5 million have been affected.

In Mumbai, authorities struggled to evacuate people living in the financial capital's low-lying areas as transport links were paralysed and downpours led to water rising up to five feet in some parts of the city.

Weather officials are forecasting heavy rains to continue over the next 24 hours and have urged people to stay indoors.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, at least 134 have died in monsoon flooding which is believed to have submerged at least a third of the country.

More than 600,000 hectares of farmland have been partially damaged and in excess of 10,000 hectares have been completely washed away, according to the disaster minister.

Bangladesh's economy is dependent on farming and the country lost around a million tonnes of rice in flash floods in April.

"Farmers are left with nothing, not event with clean drinking water," said Matthew Marek, the head of disaster response in Bangladesh for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent.

In Nepal, 150 people have been killed and 90,000 homes have been destroyed in what the UN has called the worst flooding incident in the country in a decade.

According to the Red Cross, at least 7.1 million people have been affected in Bangladesh - more than the population of Scotland - and around 1.4 million people have been affected in Nepal.

The disaster comes as headlines have focused on the floods in Houston, Texas, which authorities have described as "unprecedented".

Officials in Texas have said the death toll now stands at 15 in the wake of Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey, with thousands forced to flee their homes.

The rise in extreme weather events such as hurricanes and floods have been identified by climate scientists as the hallmark of man-made climate change.

The US has seen two of its worst storms ever, Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Katrina, in just over a decade.

India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has said climate change and new weather patterns are having "a big negative impact".

darcandkharg31 posted...

No wifi easy, I mean, there's ethernet cables for the internet, no wifi doesn't mean no internet at all.

A tip from a member of the public has triggered the single largest drug seizure in the history of the Ontario Provincial Police.

The force netted 1,062 kg of 97 per cent pure cocaine which had a wholesale value of $60 million and an estimated street value of $250 million, OPP commissioner Vince Hawkes said Monday at a press conference at OPP headquarters in Orillia.

“This is a massive seizure – bigger than I’ve seen in my 33 years of policing,” Hawkes said.

Armed tactical officers stood guard at the press conference near the wall of multi-coloured cocaine bricks on display. There was a further armed guard at the entranceway to the OPP complex.

That cocaine will be destroyed at a secret location, Hawkes said.

“There’s a lot of drugs out there and drugs are killing people,” Hawkes said.

“It’s an amazing size seizure,” OPP deputy commissioner Rick Barnum said, adding the investigation is ongoing.

The OPP declined to elaborate on the tip that started the massive operation.

“Good information was received,” Barnum said.

The initial arrests were made after a traffic stop on Highway 410 in May.

The drug would have been cut down to between 30 and 40 per cent purity before it reached the streets, often with particularly deadly additives liken fentanyl, Barnum said.

“With the amount of pure cocaine seized during Project HOPE, we’ve stopped many criminals from causing more harm to our communities while removing a quarter of a billion dollars from the criminal’s economy,” Hawkes said.

Despite the massive amount of cocaine seized, there hasn’t been a noticeable change in the price of the drugs on the streets, Hawkes said.

Most of the stones containing bricks of cocaine had a kilogram hidden inside. The most found in a single stone was six kilograms, Barnum said.

Some of the stones were seized at a stone supply operation in Stoney Creek.

“Certainly the business was set up to be a front or a cover,” Barnum said, adding it wasn’t known where the cocaine was initially produced.

“There are definitely connections to Mexico and the Mexican cartels,” he said.

The Mexican cartels have members living in the GTA, he said.

The cocaine was smuggled in pallets of building stones.

“Our dogs – CBSA dogs – never detected the cocaine,” Barnum said.

He declined to say who would have distributed the drugs in Canada, except to say they are “extremely high-level organized crime groups.”

The haul was called Project Hope and was in partnership with the Canada Border Services Agency, Peel Regional Police, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

The cocaine was loaded onto ships in Argentina, destined for the Port of Montreal and then the GTA, Niagara Region and other parts of Canada, police said.

Luis Enrique Karim-Altamirano, 52, of Vaughan has a bail hearing on Aug. 30. He is charged with importation of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance for the purposes of trafficking and driving while disqualified.

Mauricio Antonio Medina-Gatica, 36, of Brampton, has been freed on bail after being charged May 1 with importation of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance for the purposes of trafficking.

Iban Orozco-Lomeli, 45, of Toronto was charged July 10 with importation of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance for the purposes of trafficking. He has also been released on bail.