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Well yeah, everything is going swimmingly for Ukraine, according to Ukraine. Russia has definitely gone backwards in Kupiansk, but meh. I'm not a doom and gloomer claiming Ukraine is finished; they can generally hold areas they really want or need to, still. Just at the expense of other places- in this case Vovchansk, Siversk and Huliapole. And yes, Pokrovsk and Mirnograd. Really though, acritically repeating Ukraine's casualty claims is at this point extremely shonky reporting. At best. The latest body exchange via the red cross this week was 1003 Ukrainians to 26 Russians. Of course the actual ratio isn't 40:1 in Russia's favour but there really really isn't an explanation for that ratio- which has been pretty consistent for 18 months- which doesn't involve Ukraine either lying about retreating, or lying about the casualties it's inflicting/ receiving. Or both. The satellite imagery on the attack on the sub was also pretty conclusive that it was a clean miss. You can bet if it were a conclusive hit he'd have the satellite images in the article but it clearly hit the pier about 20m away from the sub. Still embarrassing, but if embarrassment was enough Ukraine would have won in 2022.

Talking about AI and fake news, I thought Pokrovsk had fallen to Russia weeks ago? Didnt Putin himself claim this and a Russian flag was hosted The one thing I have learnt about this war is not to believe any of the " updates " from either side until its confirmed and thats weeks later But I am still surprised by the Pokrovsk false narrative because even several Western media houses were repeating this https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/12/19/moscows-narrative-wobbles-as-ukraine-takes-back-kupiansk

Merry Christmas everyone and happy NY This is my best holiday of the year

german still didn't have much industrialized farming during ww2 if food production is important it would be more idiotic to protect small idealized family farm if farm landlord and farming megacorp are going to receive endless welfare might as well nationalize them

Bought myself the Moza Trucking Bundle and add-on stalks with the intention of playing the new Nordic Horizons expansion for Euro Truck Sim 2. Alas, stock for the stalks was delayed and I won't get it until next year. Using the wheel by itself has been a big change from the old Logitech G920 I was using, mostly due to the wheel being approximately double the size. However, I don't think I could recommend using it in this mode without the stalks because the missing inputs stick out like a sore thumb. There simply isn't a conveniently accessible button binding for gear shifts (no paddles on a truck wheel obviously) and indicators. My feedback as it stands, therefore, is to buy both the wheel and the stalks or to buy neither.

Their defence budget alone is meant to be ~60$bn, annually. Which sounds ridiculous and is, but may actually be an underestimate of the true cost. A 4 unit Patriot battery has around 400$mn (!) worth of pac-3s loaded (16 units/ launcher, 6mn per rocket. Not quite as bad as it sounds, it's 10 million for the old pac-2s, if you're Saudi Arabia). Firing them off once a week would be 20bn, alone; and Ukraine has more than one battery. Even if you go back to the cheapest pac-3 cost listed it's still ~13bn to fire one battery off weekly. That's partly why Europe has been so awful at ramping up actual production: it costs monumental amounts of money to make and run the fancy gear which everyone in the west has been conditioned to think is necessary. Then your 30mn euro shiny new Leo2 gets popped by a $300 drone using a $50 cold war era rpg warhead for everyone to see. The money overall pays everything from salaries for teachers- and soldiers- to generators to keep the lights running. The 'funny' thing is that 45bn p/a isn't even close to enough. It covers the theoretical budget deficit, but is only about 2/3 of the amount actually needed. And of course it's for two years. In two years time they'll need another 90bn.

Actually no, it makes a ton of sense for nations to protect their agricultural capabilities. You never know when a foreign embargo is going to lead to mass starvation. E.g. blockade of Germany during World War I.

Happy horror days?

With that amount of money they can get AI to fight the war now... I'm not sure what exactly that 90b is supposed to change. No one in Europe is willing to part with more of their arsenal without replacing it and money can't buy manpower. Realistically that money ensures that the Ukraine doesn't collapse due to lack of ammunition but even that is capped by production.

Made a Paladin in D4. Instead of levelling normally, I just farmed 15 or so Whispering Tree gifts on my main. It basically boosted the Paladin to almost max level and gave him enough ancestrals and aspects to come out ready for Torment IV farming (with some gambling for a unique ring). Basically the same gameplay. Charge into a group of enemies and watch them die. Just pressing evade instead of casting Ball Lightning.

I appreciate the thoughtful response. However, separating art from the artist works when the artist no longer benefits from the royalties*. Rowling still does and is actively using her fortune to cause harm, regardless of how popular the IP is. When it is 6 feet underground and the fund set up specifically to finance transphobic lawsuits is dismantled, then sure. *excluding the financial aspect/from the cultural point of view, I'd say if you can experience the work in isolation from the author's biography and understand it fully.

False. Gorby himself saying that it was not even discussed. Even if was discussed and promised. This don't give the right to Russia to invade a country, mainly a country which they promised to leave alone in 1991. And in 1994, when Ukraine was pressured to be denuclearized. And recognized Ukraine borders multiple times. Here is a video of Gorby himself about NATO : That said, thanks to Putin, Sweden and Finland are now on NATO. KGB Dwarf is the best NATO Salesman ever. _____________________________

Hello everyone. Since Grounded 2 was released, I've noticed that parrying seems slower than in the first game (I'm talking about the Xbox Series X version), where you only needed to lightly touch the trigger to immediately raise the shield and be able to make perfect parries. In Grounded 2, you can clearly see that the shield is slow to raise and lower, and it doesn't allow you to be precise when parrying (especially in Grounded 2, which also added effects for perfect and non-perfect parries). Many times I find myself parrying while the shield isn't even raised! The parry input is precise, but the shield animation doesn't seem to be. I hope you can fix this by speeding up the animation or synchronizing everything better.

Possibly. It's simply a question of the thing (humans) I am extremely disillusioned with versus another thing (future AI) that is still an unknown.

JK Rowling is a total troll, for sure. She isn't the first artist to try and ruin her art with dumb crusades, but she seems to be trying to be the best at it. That being said, I do believe in separating art from the artists, which I know sounds trite. But JK Rowling is an expert in children's fiction writing, and that's all she is an expert in. As an educator who began teaching around when the series debuted, I saw first-hand how the books got kids to read. We can criticize the literature all we want, but it was effective at captivating a generation of young readers, and that is not easy to do. With that said, her opinion on trans-rights shouldn't weigh more heavily than anyone else. The Harry Potter world has outgrown her. It isn't just a book series that she wrote. It has taken on a life of its own. Sure, she gets credit for creating it, but that doesn't mean she has control over it anymore. The movies were created by passionate creative teams that deserve credit. The theme parks were designed by artists. The Lego sets, merchandise, games, etc. are all much bigger than a single person. I get boycotting her. It's unfortunate that she gets to cash in on this world and then chooses to use that cash to be a bigot. But there is a point where a product becomes bigger than the creator. Volkswagen was created by the Nazi party. There are people that boycott their cars because of this, and that is justified, but it is also fair to say the company has moved past that complicated origin. So yeah, just my two cents as I watch the Harry Potter flicks this holiday season.

Hey, I recently purchased Stick of Truth on Steam and normally played it. I dont really know what happened because the game worked really well for the first 2 Sessions I've played. But the next day I wanted to continue playing, when I noticed that my game froze, whilst trying to auto-save. I figured out that I could move around while it auto-saves, but as soon as I open my Menu, open my Inventory, or just interact with something it freezes. I am confused asf and I've tried several things such as starting a new Playthrough, re-installing the game, running the game as administrator. If someone has any advice on what could cause this problem, please comment on this topic. Thx

The issue is on my end, something changed in my build that is not letting some apps write files even when ran as admin. That is why I said it's cursed. I have a portable ssd with windows 11 and that is what I use to play games. Waiting on my new m2 drive to arrive and then I'll reinstall windows.

Strange, It says it supports windows10. I was initially to suggest Linux, as BG3 has apparently a pretty great Linux support, but it seems GOG doesn't support Linux? Laaaame

Greg Biffle (NASCAR driver) and his whole family lost their lives in a plane crash. Only reason I know of him is through a youtuber Cleetus Mcfarland.

There's a question mark behind Arkane's future anyhow... at least for a long-term fan. Not quite sure what Blade is gonna be. As to increasing the system requirements, that's how it's always worked, naturally. The entire AAA industry is basically pushing the latest tech -- you may naturally ask at this point whether anybody would even buy Assassin's Creed like 15 for 80 bucks if not even the gfx would be improving anymore. However, upgrade cycles have gotten slower, as games are being developed with 5 years old tech (consoles) as the base. Gotta be honest, though: I'd rather buy 3-4 15-20 bucks indie games than a blockbuster one these days. Those also tend to be more focused, rather than trying to offer a little bit of everything for no one. Exceptions are projects I want to support or games that I REALLY consider premium. Thing is, outside of production values, the big boys aren't even the "premium" in this industry anymore. All they have is the cash to spend. However, as they are rarely allowed to invest it into anything interesting... I mean, it's worse than Hollywood. Hollywood still finds a slot for at least a del Toro, Burton, Nolan movie. In gaming, it's mostly an endless wave of remakes, remasters, sports games and recycled trends now. Lately even at industry award shows, it was studios that kept some independence / control over their projects that came out superior. Bit of rambling, sorry. But consider this: Even the last "fresh" Rockstar IP was tackled and shaped like two decades ago: L.A. Noire. Development started at Team Bondi in 2004/2005. That's just crazy. Speaking of which, these guys seemed to have one helluva time making their gaming dreams come true. It shows in the game for sure.

The People Make Games channel has published Why We're Boycotting Xbox (and Maybe You Should Too). MS does own several developers whose work I am fond of, such as Obsidian, inXile, and Arkane, and, fortunately, all of them have been increasing the system requirements of their recent releases ("more graphics"), making boycotting them much easier. Some of the Arkane Lyon employees spoke out in support of boycotting their games, which takes quite a lot of courage even in France.

OH MY GOD!

YouTube recently recommended me and apparently about a million other people this 18 year old Christmas x Lovecraft song. Okay. Nice. Yeah, it's a lot better than random AI slop, I guess. Merry Christmas, everyone!