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Actually, that's very apropos, because this past summer... I'm funny about musicals: either they're they're great and wonderful...or they're the worst thing I've ever seen in my whole life. I do like my musicals to be more on the diegetic side broadly speaking, and Cabaret is one of the very few 100% diegetic musical movies that I know of, which makes its musical numbers quite lovely (albeit completely insane) to me. Combine that with the lead being loosely based off of Louise Brooks and it's difficult not to automatically like it. It's unfortunate that I don't have any of the two or three quotes from her book as a signature that I had for years right now... I might have to bring them back for the occasion. I've seen Louise Brooks' "A Girl in Every Port", "Beggars of Life", "Diary of a Lost Girl", "God's Gift to Women", "It's the Old Army Game", "Miss Europe", "Now We're in the Air", "Pandora's Box", "The Canary Murder Case", "The Show Off", and "Windy Riley Goes Hollywood", and despite the fact that most of them are somewhere between bad and terrible (with the major exceptions of the German Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, and to a much lesser extent the American Beggars of Life and French Miss Europe which are alright and at least kind of interesting), they are not terrible because of Louise Brooks and I would love to uncover more of her lost, forgotten, and probably awful movies. I know there are more out there, but they can unfortunately be quite difficult to get a hold of by way of either legal or illegal means. It's always a toss-up whether I want to zoom out and get proper framing of the face with the drawback of being too small...or to just get memey with it. I chose memey this time, but I might change my mind later.

The circle cutoff takes the picture to another level.

the harder your cutting surface, the quicker your knives will become dull. am not aware o' a common cutting board material which will dull your blades faster than titanium. metal cutting boards o' any type are annoyingly loud and the surface also tends to be slick to the point o' being dangerous. regardless, the biggest drawback to titanium is the speed with which they will dull your knives. a thick ( at least 1.5 ") wood board (teak, maple and walnut are all excellent materials... am personal a fan o' teak,) is probable the best all round option, but if you do not like wood, that narrows the field considerable. composite and bamboo or other grass boards is not great in our opinion, but japanese rubber boards are an interesting alternative as they do not suffer from the microplastic issue and will not warp when exposed to the heat of a dishwasher the way some plastic boards do... not that am ever personal using the dishwasher to clean a cutting board. rubber boards is also thinner and lighter than wood boards, although they tend to be a smidge thicker than plastic boards as they are manufactured with a rigid wood or composite core. it is worth noting that japanese boards are better suited for japanese knives as 'posed to western a chef knife style which relies on rocking as much as slicing, but they are a nice compromise if you absolute refuse to go with a wood board. our recollection is that japanese rubber boards tend to be more expensive than wood boards o' the same size, but as an alternative to plastic, they are worth considering. @Bartimaeus louise brooks were a tragic enough figure that am thinking the tibetan death mask is less disconcerting by comparison. curious, whenever we think o' louise brooks, am first recollecting sally bowles from fosse's cabaret am knowing bartimaeus is not a fan o' musicals, but louise brooks were the inspiration for sally bowles. HA! Good Fun!

Its an interesting one, there is a view that arts and sports should be apolitical but people tend to be inconsistent around this type of activism For example in South Africa there is a famous musician called Black Coffee who had a concert in Israel a few years ago and he was heavily criticized by the anti-Israeli groups But those same activists will be fine if he plays in an African country that is a failed stated or autocracy where citizens are repressed I think its up to the artist or sports person and there own moral decision because you cant really separate the optics of politics from the arts and sports and you will get criticised whatever decision you make

I had no idea there was such a variety of pigeons.

good news: scary tibetan death mask bartimaeus is finally gone bad news: back on that louise brooks crap again tangent: i hate circle avatars, they're so much harder to get right compared to square avatars, LC's avatar accurately captures how I feel trying to make circle avatars

I'm make better my Cooling system and increase Power of PC in settings and now i don't have this problem (problem with like a => "fatal error..." and after frozen a Game)

Here's the pitch..... Eugenics.

One Battle After Another (2025). Suppose it's a metaphor for today's America, or at least what they wanted it to be. That being said, it's a great movie.

great honey scam continue wonder how little court would punish them after a decade long lawsuit

Trying Echo of Lilith in D4, yup, not happening, reflexes too slow for the one shot mechanics

"at the time I put it online, I probably mined about one bitcoin a day, something like that"

New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s chairman, said in a statement on Monday night that the artists canceling shows were “far-left political activists” and that they had been booked by previous leadership. “Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” he said. After Mr. Redd canceled the Christmas Eve concert, Mr. Grenell called it “classic intolerance” and threatened a $1 million lawsuit. HA! Good Fun!

It is said, that GOG in 2025 had a very positive year considering the revenue, although 2024 was pretty bad. That being said, going private might be a good step for them, as a lot of original older GOG customers, have heavily criticized some of the newer service changes based on the corporate decisions of their Mother company. Some of the even completely left the service (ergo the 2024 financial results of GOG).

There are three viable paladin builds for solo: paladin/troubadour, paladin/blood mage and paladin/forbidden fist (technically the priest works too, but any class works with the priest and the paladin isn't the optimal choice). There are no specific builds because they follow some simple principles - stack defenses, armor and healing. For the herald you can also see the solo videos on YT for items/stats/abilities/skills. The paladin comes with increased passive defenses (Faith and Conviction), armor and healing (Exalted Endurance, Stoic Steel), while the other class adds more healing and especially pets (which combined with Bardatto's Luxury ability will add basically another 2AR). Some key items are Magnera's Chain (which allows to achieve high resists against all damage types on top of for/will buffs), Lethandria's Devotion (main shield giving more healing and defenses), Wintertide Bulwark (backup shield used for the deflection buff which stays the entire fight even when you switch to another shield), Cadhu Scalth (backup shield used for increased deflection, damage reduction and modal). For weapons - Bardatto's Luxury, Modwyr and Animancer's Energy Blade. Another key element to these builds is stacking resting bonuses. For example, the herald can achieve over 170 in all defenses, 19+AR and heal 40+hp every 3s, which makes him virtually unkillable.

Yes. I assume it does some behind-scenes autosaving but you cannot manually save, outside of exiting/reloading. Flame altars are your base markers. They also function as FT waypoints, and when you exit game, it will load you into the last/closest flame altar you were at. Thus people make sure to always have one flame altar available they can still build, so they can temp-use for those purposes. You can't place them inside some dungeons or in "the shroud" (I think), but you can place them at/near POI's/mines etc you want to revisit. How many total flame altars you can place in the world depends on upgrading the altar - I'm up to 7, I think the max is 10. With general POI's, you can place altars so base area covers the POi and turn it into your base. Redesign a broken down castle or farmhouse, stuff like that. Or just anywhere you want. The base stops things from respawning within its area.

#####-Kennedy Center says it plans to sue jazz musician who canceled Christmas performance over ##### name change Yeah, because we all know how much a legal threat encourages the arts. Perhaps Mr. Redd could follow Marshawn Lynch's example, "I'm just here so I don't get fined."

Doing a melee stealth build and trying to ignore the utter silliness of stealth attacks with a sledgehammer. Was hoping to get online fully with a light melee weapon. So i took Vital Striker, which seems to be at least somewhat competitive. Then i found the 'menacing mask' item. I think "oh, cool. Another 10% of my sneak damage when i'm stuck out in the open." Nope. The way it seems to work is that if you equip menacing mask, you ONLY get that 10% sneak damage and the game completely ignores vital striker. Shouldn't this add on rather than replace? Though 10% is such a trivial amount of a boost it's not a huge deal to simply not use menacing mask. Sad that there's yet another worthless item in this game.

Just a tongue in cheek joke that the rebels didn't count.

Isn't Enshrouded one of those games where you cannot save the game anytime anywhere?

Playing BG3 in small spurts. Exploring the first map and getting ready to go to the goblin fort. The game hasn't grabbed me so far, but the combat is not tedious in TB.

7 Days to Die - well I like the re-added smell system, although it's overtuned so I had to alter it a bit. The rest is kinda - well, it's still what it is. I've heard they're considering a semi-return to LBD - not fully but a combo + books. I didn't like their LBD back when. Not sure if I like the sound of that. Oh well, I can just play 1.0-b333 forever if I want. Enshrouded - I did cure myself of that curse, and then promptly disabled Curses in the options. I noticed that option when I started the game, but I just thought it would dictate whether enemy casters would do normal debuff spells all the time or rarely. Turning it off after being cursed only half worked - the visuals of it and mana regen not working remained (could be a bug). Anyway -- some other comments: ----I've come to the conclusion this is the kind of game where you cannot unlock all crafting/building options etc until you've basically .... finished the game. The questing/biome discoveries aspect anyway. So if one is looking for sandboxy in that sense, you'll be playing for 60-80-100+ hours before that truly kicks in. Unless there's rush method guides, which I don't "do" on first-runs. ----quite often a quest marker (NPC wants something, to unlock something etc) had me going in circles for an hour or more around that marker, trying to find the "way in." Blocked my castles, blocked by cliffs/valleys, blocked by "deadly shroud" I'm not of a level to travel through yet. I'm sure there's some lone ez path in but I apparently could never find it. Frustrating. ----turned off weapon/mining gear durability because the decay rate is ridiculous - at least early-middle - re: mining or longer dungeons etc. even with repair stations scattered around. Apparently there are eventually repair kits, but guess what, I don't have that ability yet. Shocker. I did loot one in what seems to be a "plains/grass" biome. ----I hear they may plan for a Creative Mode for full release. Maybe I should wait until then. I'm an odd duck sometimes tho, where the more frustrated a game makes me, the more stubborn I become. I mean, there ARE things I like a lot about Enshrouded. I think. Heh.

Arcane Archer/Ascendant with Frostseeker/Essence Interrupter is very fun and versatile. Pale elf mystic of course with bear pet bodyguard... Once you can use scrolls of Avenging Storm and Imbue:Eora you will feel almost like cheating. If you equip a companion with items with "Reflect against Spells" (Mirrorback, Collar of Eothas' Light, Cabalist's Gambeson) you can also reflect Ancestor's Memory on yourself if you repeatedly cast it on him. For companions Eder, Aloth, Pallegina and Xoti are solid choices.