I enjoy watching them from time to time. Dark Souls has always been a favorite of mine, but other games are enjoyable too.

>play very well 5 games in a row
>aight, I'm feeling this, time to use one of the better boosts
>gambit Victory
>searching for matches
>placed in the middle of an ongoing game, 2 players left on my team, 17 kills behind, enemy team already at 41 points.

Thanks 343.

"Some of the humour was corralled on social media using odd hashtags like #Dicksoutforharambe, a fake campaign which suggested men should wave their penises around to pay tribute to the silverback."

My favorite one is still the pic of a white gorilla with the caption along the lines of "would Harambe have been shot if she looked like this?"

That's stupid. I'm also not sure if she can actually do that.

i remember

I'm not even a native speaker but seeing that uncapitalized i coming from you still hurt me.

Quote from: Flee on July 29, 2016, 08:54:26 AM

Quote from: Tyger on July 28, 2016, 05:21:26 PM

Quote from: Flee on July 28, 2016, 01:06:23 PM

For those wondering, ree (pronounced ray) is Dutch for deer, hence the many deer pics.

nobody was wondering

don't tell the other but I was totally wondering

But can you explain the bear, cheeta, and groundhog?

The groundhog and cheetah both are from a Tripadvisor article on the Ree Park in Denmark, named after the man who bought it.
The fat dude is some guy named Adam Ree in a self-described "centerfold pose".
The redhead is a woman called Ree Drummond, a bestselling author, food writer and television personality.

For those wondering, of course.

Also, is Warzone Firefight pretty much impossible without using good Reqs? My team breezed through the first 2 rounds and were then faced with 6 of the bulky ghosts. By the time we killed two with the kinetic bolts, the round ended.

For those wondering, ree (pronounced ray) is Dutch for deer, hence the many deer pics.

Apparently my laptop can't run the game. Dammit.

I'll respond to your post in a bit, but there's a bit of good news coming in now too. The British GDP exceeded expectations (which were at 0.5%) and grew by 0.6% up until June, according to the ONS. This would be good, as it shows the economy in good shape before the referendum and would help deal with Brexit. Caution is advised though, as these numbers only include 1 week of post-Brexit data (which made up 8% of the period analysed). Pantheon Macroeconomics' chief UK economist Samuel Tombs mentioned that: "The second quarter’s GDP figure is not as robust as it seems at face value and it won’t hold back the MPC from cutting interest rates next week. The acceleration between Q1 and Q2 entirely reflected a pick up in quarter-on-quarter growth in industrial production to 2.1% in Q2 from -0.2% in Q1. Although manufacturing output rose by 1.8%, the strong growth in IP also reflected unsustainable support from a 4.7% surge in energy supply following an unusually mild winter. The rest of the economy slowed. Construction output fell by
0.4%, slightly worse than Q1’s 0.3% drop, and growth in services output slowed to 0.5% in Q2 from 0.6% in Q1."

Still, good news.

Quote from: Flee on July 26, 2016, 06:19:10 PM

There's more than one lawfag on here?

Um, Sir, I am a Sovereign Citizen™ and I know my rights.

Do you drive around with a travel-sized copy of the constitution in your chest pocket, screaming "the bill of rights is the only drivers / carry license I'll ever need" at cops?

This is kind of an overstatement. The only bank I know of which has explicitly said a recession is on the cards is Goldman Sachs--as well as NGOs like the IMF--but the worst they are predicted, which is in line with the most pessimistic, independent research before the referendum, is a mild recession.

From what I've read, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Barclays have all predicted a recession within these last 2 weeks as well. A mild one, sure, but they're all still expecting a recession. In addition, BlackRock (strictly speaking not a bank, but still the world's largest asset manager) also predicted a recession earlier this month. And as for the most recent (this only just happened today) and perhaps most influential prediction of all, Martin Weale (policymaker at the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee) told the Financial Times that in light of the most recent economic evidence, "expectations have worsened sharpedly" and "things are a lot worse than I thought", as he now backs a stimulus package and expects a recession if things don't change soon and says that even the Bank of England's policy changes won't be able to avert a recession if the economy doesn't pick up soon.

All of these actually seem like auxiliary concerns considering the unexpected big decision has already been made. I would be incredibly surprised if we were to see a second general election, the government has already made its position clear on the Norn Iron-Irish border, and the EU has also been pretty clear about its unwillingness to negotiate with an independent Scotland.

Oh yeah, they're definitely auxiliary concerns. My point was that while auxiliary, they're all capable of delaying the UK's withdrawal by many months. And that's something I'm torn over. I still haven't ruled out the possibility of Brexit just never actually happening and the longer it's put off, the more likely that scenario becomes, but on the other hand this uncertainty really isn't great for anyone.

Quote

the EU shaping up to be unforgiving in the negotiations...)

All the more reason to have left.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think we're shaping up for Project Pain. But the EU is going to be strong in the negotiations, as it should be. If the UK really wants out, it should be treated that way. As Verhofstadt said yesterday as leader of one of the largest factions in the European Parliament, there will be vetos to agreements which would give the UK a better deal. Does that mean that the EU should seek to punish the UK for leaving? No. But it does mean that it shouldn't give it any more benefits than what it already received in its rather privileged position within the EU. The one thing worse than temporarily hindering the Union's economy by strongarming the UK would be to show member states that leaving the EU will give them significantly better deals. And that is not something I think the EU will allow.

Promising noises (and even legislation) has come out of countries from India and Mexico to Canada and China on trade deals. And the UK government is working towards securing some kind of trade 'framework' with the EU prior to triggering Article 50.

Trade deals which won't even materialize for years to come. And talk is cheap. Of course there's going to be countries making new deals with the UK. It is still a large economy and global player. The question is just how long it'll take for these deals to actually come into fruition and whether or not they'll be better than what could've been achieved through the EU. For example, the US Trade Representative said yesterday that there won't be any informal talks until Brexit is fully over and done with. The UK was never going to be a global pariah and hated outcast without the EU. The concern is just that the new trade deals will take tremendous amounts of time, money and effort to be concluded, and that they might not be the vast improvement over what the EU can accomplish that Leave has painted them as.

The difference between us and the Remainers was magnitude, and so far the evidence is pointing to us being on the correct side of the argument. The doom-and-gloom stories spun by Remain are currently, for the most part, baseless.

I have to disagree on this. The vague and exaggerated claims made in speeches aside, I don't really know any Remain experts who said Brexit would be fatal and break the UK within months. The initial shock to the pound and stock market was a given and was guaranteed to rebound, but other than that? I don't think the main predictions were that far off. The PMI and CBI research published last week has been some of the best insight we've had so far, and I think it's clear that this is decidedly negative and in line with other predictions and analyses of the British economy (Deloitte's consumer tracker published today found that "consumers' response was strongly negative in all seven areas" and that consumer spending is expected to take a significant blow over the course of the next year). It's also not unimportant to note that the pre-Brexit predictions were all based on the assumption that a Leave vote would trigger article 50 immediately and start the withdrawal without delay. The fact that this didn't happen, that the government was reformed and that there's now months of informal talks and planning ahead before anyone would even dare go through with the actual withdrawal has probably done a lot to cushion the impact.

I hope you're right, but even though we're not seeing a critical failure of the UK's economy, I think it's safe to say that the actual evidence coming in now is primarily negative and paints a worrying picture for the British economy in the months and years to come.

Quote

and has been expected to rise by another 2% in the next 2 years

Do you have a source for this? The EIC has been predicting a peak of 6pc unemployment.

I was basing myself on the latest analysis I found, which was Credit Suisse's report released two weeks ago in which they adjusted their earlier predictions to account for new GDP data and are now assuming a 6.5% unemployment rate in 2017. That'd be a 1.6% increase over the current 4.9%, but that's not yet accounting for the latest PMI and CDI data. The 2% was a .4% exaggeration on my part, which I think is because I didn't look at the decimals when making this post last night and just saw it jump from 4 to 6%. >_>

Changes in monetary and fiscal policy can happen on a pretty short time-frame. The next budget statement is set to be delivered in March 2017, so any big reforms should be spelled out then.

Ah, good. That's later than I expected, but still not too far out.

You don't have to respond to all of the above, but I'm interested to hear what you think the best choice of action would be now. Not only are you British, but you're also the most economically savvy person on here and are more familiar with economic and fiscal policy than I am. Say you were given complete control over the UK's policy on matters of taxes / trade / foreign relations / investment and so forth. What do you think would be the best thing to do?

Quote from: Verbatim on July 26, 2016, 07:50:08 AM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on July 26, 2016, 03:15:48 AM

It's well established that third-parties tend to take votes away from the two main parties

Right, they take away from the other candidate. They don't give anyone anything.

It's just a bad use of language.

Not really.

If you take away one runner's shoe, you're contributing to the win of the other runner. Either way you're at somewhat responsible for the outcome of the race.

Gotta agree with Meta here. Two sides of the same coin. Taking away an advantage of one participant translates into contributing to his or her opponent. Sure, you can say that putting one at a disadvantage isn't the exact same thing as giving the other an advantage, but seeing how it's guaranteed to be either Trump or Hillary, any potential support for Hillary you now give to a third party does directly contribute to Trump's side. 

UK unemployment is 5.4pc. It was 8.4pc in mid-2011.

I'll respond to some other parts of your post later, but you appear to be right on this one. I wish I hadn't closed all of the tabs I had open when making this post, because I could've sworn there was an article of the IB Times which mentioned unemployment was now at a decade high. I'll see if I can find it again. But yeah, you're right. I stand corrected, unemployment definitely isn't as high as it was a few years ago.

And yeah, to answer your question: I had sources for all of it. I had a dozen tabs lined up with reports on the post-Brexit economy, but didn't bother hotlinking them all. I have some time later today, so I'll see if I can find it all again. Most were from the IB Times, I believe, so that should narrow it down a bit.