Played some more of Darksiders 3 and Xuan Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains. Not much to add here.

Started couple of other games. Started Tom Clancy's The Division with friends. I played a little bit of it a while ago, and while I liked the world building and the gameplay loop, but game started feeling repititive. Now playing with friends, so hopefully won't have that issue. Played a few missions and so far so good.

Also started Hard West on Switch 2. It's a turn based tactics game in wild west. It has couple of interesting mechanism, like luck. Each time someone shoots at you, your luck reduces (depending on distance, cover etc), and when your luck is down the shot hits you. You can also shoot people through cover. There is also an area map, where you can do a few things (depending on the campaign)

What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?

During the latest U.S.-mediated negotiations in Geneva on Feb. 17–18, Kyiv and Moscow discussed a joint Russian-Ukrainian civilian administration to run a demilitarized zone in the Donbas.

But Ukrainian officials say the proposal is unrealistic and unacceptable, and the recent round of talks again ended in a stalemate. The plan follows the failure of other stillborn ideas discussed during talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the U.S.

. . .

Ukraine maintains that freezing current front-line positions offers the most realistic basis for a ceasefire. Russia continues to demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the region as a precondition for any agreement — a demand that Kyiv has repeatedly rejected.

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President Donald Trump leaked disastrous economic data in a typo-filled social media post on Friday.

In a Truth Social tirade 40 minutes before his Commerce Department released the latest growth domestic product figures, Trump sought to deflect blame for the economy cooling.

The latest figures showed that U.S. economic growth slowed to an annual rate of 1.4 per cent - well below expectations and a significant drop from the previous quarter’s 4.4 per cent pace.

If Donald Trump’s administration really wants to find evidence of foreign interference in Georgia’s elections, then they need look no further than the president’s old friend Elon Musk and his shady super PAC.

Members of the Georgia State Elections Board voted Wednesday to issue a formal letter of reprimand to Musk’s America PAC over the billionaire technocrat’s illegal scheme to get Trump elected. Georgia, a key battleground state in 2024, was the target of aggressive campaigning by Trump’s team.

https://archive.ph/wKj0m

Some Amazon employees said they were still sceptical of AI tools’ utility for the bulk of their work given the risk of error. They added that the company had set a target for 80 per cent of developers to use AI for coding tasks at least once a week and was closely tracking adoption.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat running for Senate in Texas, wants people to know she isn’t taking corporate PAC money — in her Senate campaign.

“In this Senate race I have not taken any corporate PAC money,” Crockett told the Texas journalist Tashara Parker last month. “People don’t know that because my report hasn’t come out yet. But they will.”

But according to her most recent campaign filings, Crockett has a loophole that lets her use corporate PAC money to help fuel her Senate run — by transferring it from her House campaign.

Crockett’s latest filings with the Federal Election Commission show that she transferred at least $26,500 in donations from corporate PACs — including those representing CVS, Home Depot, AT&T, and Wells Fargo — from her House campaign to her Senate campaign on December 19.

“It relies on technicality that you can say ‘I’m not accepting contributions to my Senate campaign from corporate PACs,’” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at the government transparency group OpenSecrets. “But they can’t say that there’s no corporate money flowing through her Senate campaign, because it’s obviously not true.”

Therefore, the sustainability of the process largely depends on the deepening of the ongoing peace negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the establishment of solid stability on the ground. Should new tensions arise along the Baku-Yerevan axis, connectivity projects in the South Caucasus could quickly come under pressure from geopolitical competition.

Israeli settlers on Wednesday shot and killed 19-year-old Palestinian-American Nasrallah Abu Siyam as they attacked the Palestinian village of Mukhmas, east of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

He and other residents had intervened to defend a Palestinian farmer under attack by a group of settlers, a witness told the Associated Press.

The Israeli army showed up and dispersed tear gas, sound grenades and live ammunition, the witness, Mukhmas resident Raed Abu Ali, told the AP.

Video circulating on social media appears to show the moment Abu Siyam was shot and his body being dragged away.

Donald Trump on Friday railed against the supreme court justices who blocked his use of tariffs, calling the decision a “disgrace to the nation” and claiming he planned to impose even more tariffs under other statutory authorities.

“It’s my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think,” the president said during remarks from the White House. He cast that influence as social and cultural. “I’m ashamed of certain members of the court. Absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country.”

He praised the three justices who dissented in the opinion – Brett Kavanaugh who wrote the main dissent, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The others – including two of his appointees, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch – drew his derision.

The investigation reveals a systemic problem: even the constant tightening of EU sanctions has not been able to significantly limit Russia’s ability to produce strike drones using foreign components that enter the country through intermediary schemes.

https://www.occrp.org/en/investigation/made-in-the-eu-dropped-on-kyiv-how-european-parts-are-enabling-russias-winter-drone-war

The content and functionality of France and Russia’s foreign policy doctrines on Africa have determined the nature of their confrontation. At the same time, a radical revision of the French approach, although not a starting point, created favorable conditions for Russia’s transition from a latent, particularly informational, presence in the region to an open military-political repositioning.

The French vision of a new policy towards Africa was articulated by President Emmanuel Macron at the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 2017. In his speech, he stated that “there is no longer a French policy on Africa,” which was dubbed an “equal-to-equal partnership.” At that time, France’s military presence on the continent consisted of about 10,000 troops, stationed mainly in French-speaking West Africa and the Sahel. By 2026, most of the contingent had been withdrawn from their locations, often under pressure from large-scale protests, as was the case in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and a number of other countries.

...

Russia’s hybrid war in Africa shows signs of escalation, albeit with fixed changes in format. Despite the established frameworks of disinformation campaigns, stronger democratic institutions, and the adaptation of government policies and regulatory practices of media platforms determine the limited reproductive potential of Russia’s strategy outside the Sahel. At the same time, the Russian side is facing difficulties with recruitment, financing, and institutionalization of its security presence, which became evident during the replacement of the Wagner PMC with the Africa Corps, which raised questions among African leaders.

Gods of death love beanis?