Leaderboard

His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused. well, that was unexpected. Gromnir has been giving evangelical christians a hard time 'bout their near universal support o' trump. have accused such folks o' undeniable hypocrisy and willful obtuseness. am knowing is only a single publication, but is a powerful reminder it is unfair to paint all trumpers with the same brush. change is possible, and for evidence o' such capacity to come as it does, unexpected and forceful from the religious right, is welcome and worthy o' an apology. am apologizing. we thought, save for a few individual outliers, the religious right were a lost cause for the foreseeable future. we were wrong. christian today has shown moral character and courage. they have put integrity ahead of politics. diogenes would weep with joy at finding an honest face in the crowd.

In our case it's endless hope and a desire to see what happens before hearing about it. Other than that I really do agree with much of what majestic said. A lot of my attachment to the series is gone so now I think I can just enjoy it as another dumb blockbuster that has little value to me beyond the spectacle.

It's cool to be anti-religion, but when you say "outlaw religion" you are handing over control to the government. So yeah, stop being a communist.

Thanks for making my point! Exactly how does that oppression work anyway?

Must be like public speaking, volunteer to go first just to get it over with

Thanks. Baby related observation: I seem to have Pavlov'd myself. Every time the baby cries I find myself singing Yellow Submarine, whether I'm holding him or not.

When you're in-game: "Ohhhh this night-time oceanside is so relaxing/beautiful!" When you're looking at the screenshot later: "...it's a tree and the sky is sorta blueish." Oh well.

Took the time to change the boost pressure on my car now that I've got the engine newly serviced, changed all the radial seals and gaskets, new belts and so on. I've gone from about 130hp to 190hp at the cost of 50$ and dirty hands. Original boost is 0.3 bar, and volvo's turbo+ package that is rated for 190hp has the boost at 0.7, I set my own to 0.8bar, and it feels great! It's a bit late, but, I raise my glass to you and your familys health and fortune Apologies for the glare and such, without the flash the whole screen was a blurry mess

You're nobody if you can't bitch about something in pop-culture on the internet first...

have not seen it, but am admitting we will likely be taking in a showing sooner rather than later in spite o' our relative lack o' enthusiasm. am knowing we will see eventual, regardless o' reviews and word of mouth, so is only a matter o' when and not if. unfortunate, as with past star wars films, is gonna become increasing difficult to avoid spoilers the longer we wait. if there is a surprise or gotcha moment, having been spoiled kinda ruins the intended experience and results in us not able to give the film a fair viewing or assessment. literal had force awakens spoilers revealed to us at an online cooking site. "______ dies and it was so sad." wtf. we were looking for alternatives to juniper berries for our cassoulet 'cause is not as if we keep a supply o juniper berries on hand. did not expect a thread on #$%@ing juniper berry alternatives would result in star wars spoilage. sure, we waited more than a month after release to finally see while we were on vacation at one o' the smallest theatres we had ever experienced... ever. waiting a month made spoilers almost a guarantee. however, to get spoiled by our juniper berry search online were kinda surreal. star wars, like it or not, is a cultural phenomenon. is near impossible to avoid being spoiled save by seeing immediate. am nevertheless gonna wait a bit, but am realizing every day we wait is increasing chance we accidental read or overhear star wars spoilers. onus is on Gromnir. HA! Good Fun!

Congrats to the TNs and their new Brendan TN.

https://images.app.goo.gl/WKp7NmGjyPDL6UM4A

I don't understand why so many of you are seeing Star Wars on day 1. You all kind of seem down on it. I mean, I know I will take my kids and have a good time watching lightsaber fights and space battles, but I still don't plan on seeing it until next week some time. What is with the rush towards disappointment?

If you have not read the Washington Post's work on the history and errors of the invasion of Afghanistan you really should. It is worth it to buy a 1 month subscription to get behind the pay wall IMO. Most of it is in the clear though. The Bush, Obama, and Trump admin's have been spectacularly incompetent. And all of it stems from an arrogant and obstinate refusal to try and understand the country they were trying to rebuild. Willful ignorance was the first failure point. There are definite lessons to be learned here but that sad part is they won't be. It doesn't have to be this way but it is. The Gulf War and incursions in Grenada and Panama demonstrated lessons learned in Vietnam. A limited and specific objective. More than ample force to achieve that objective. An exit map that is followed after the objective is achieved. Afghanistan & Iraq had none of those things. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/

Next books in the series are much stronger. I hope they stretch them out over two seasons. It's just a bit weak, and the episodes seemed a little short. They should probably have skipped the Ilus storyline or cut it down some.

Me: can i haz link You: gogle it Thank for the rest. Happy Holidays

You're welcome My mother sang to me when I was little, there is one that actually still works a bit, I get really sleepy when I hear it:

Watched Rise of Skywalker last night. It was ok, but nothing big. 40% of the movie is retconning the previous movie, 40% fanservice 5% meager attempts at humor which leaves 15% for the actual plot. So which such little time we have many things showed with broad strokes without details or explanation and with the exception of Rey and Kylo the rest of the cast are just inconsequential fluff characters.

Similar in that they have them, or...?

I loved the first game, never got around to playing the second game but I am keeping an eye on this one: Rock of Ages III

Surprised he's not trying to impeach Obama.

So what I'm hearing is... Even though I have zero expectations for TRoS... It will still be underwhelming... At the end of the day, I'm just happy people with **** tastes provide a livelihood for skilled laborers who essentially make non-essential luxury goods. Every kid needs to feel like they'll grow up to be the hero before the lose all hope when they grow up to realize they live under the Empire.

I recently set up a base in the jungle because I want a T4 purge Derketo priest. So far I haven't had a single lemurian purge come by my base. Just loads of snakes, gorillas and cultists. I'm thinking about setting up base in the north though, I've hit 60 waiting for the purge event that I want to come along, but since nothing is happening I might aswell move I think.

Color me orange and call me Sunkist... this week's The Mandalorian was actually decent. Who knew using a few semi-developed characters and having them interact would prove to be more interesting entertainment than a bunch of enemies of the week. It's a pity it took the show 7 episodes to get to this point. Still don't care for the implication that baby Yoda's species has some innate super control over their force prowess. It diminishes Luke's interactions with Yoda.

For any Epic users here, Into the Breach is free this week.

Probably means the lefty snowflakes will commit suicide or something, you should know how the dog operates by now, Hurl.

Hello! Thanks for your very kind words. We're looking into it now, stay tuned!

My sweet old girl Bela making the most of a cold and rainy afternoon.

This was unexpected.... https://www.gog.com/news/revisit_rainy_los_angeles_with_the_return_of_the_classic_blade_runner

couple disagreements from your criticisms: am less ambivalent 'bout the world map. didn't like deadfire 'cause it necessarily led to a multitude o' forgettable and brief encounters. am knowing obsidian worked kinda hard to make all those rando world map encounters unique. *shrug* the expansions were a saving grace for deadfire overall, as bow and fs provided a couple well developed areas which were allowing for more meaningful narrative and increasing complex gameplay options. the world map one-off encounters which boosted sense o' exploration, by comparison, were sad and anemic little wastes o' developer efforts even when done well. am also gonna disagree with #18 and the boss-battle impressions. yeah, we did get bogged down in sss, but that were a matter o' choice. sss were akin to making the basement o' the ice temple in iwd2 an entire expansion. nobody forces Gromnir to overcome every sss challenge, but... completionist is gonna complete, yes? that said, other than a couple quibbles, we saw deadfire boss battles, in general, as much superior to poe fare. have kinda spoken 'bout this previous, so won't dwell. am gonna particular observe our agreement with 14 and vo observations. am knowing the vo for deadfire were a big selling point and obsidian had to pay extra to do so. having full vo meant it were much more difficult for the developers to make changes to quests, but the tragic part is the vo quality didn't even enhance our gameplay experience much if at all. meh in fact, am thinking the expository narration were a bit more tedious because it were vo. if we would have quick read through the text as we did in other crpgs, is likely we wouldn't have noticed how much we disliked the heavy-handed deadfire exposition. 'cause it were vo narration, we actual bothered to listen to all such... at least we did so the first time we played deadfire. eventual had our clockwork orange moment enduring deadfire narration. no real standouts from the vo for companions, though we kinda liked serafen and am believing xoti's oklahoma bit were appropriate even if it were annoying. the sidekicks were a non-factor for us until the expansions and then only ydwin truly got on our nerves... 'cause nobody but leonard nimoy has ever genuine pulled off the vulan schtick. obsidian spent loads o' money on vo. developer needed embrace inherent design limits when utilizing full vo. for all such cost and effort... meh. what a waste. HA! Good Fun!

Hmm, let's see: Resident Evil 2 Remake - Mr X is a bit easy to game with how safe zones messed with his AI, without safe zones he would've been immensely frustrating I think, so he could've been implemented better. The police HQ is the highlight of the game and most of the areas afterwards are "just" good instead of great. These are my biggest complaints, otherwise Capcom did a great job and I'm leaning towards calling this one my personal GOTY. Also RE 3 hype and everything. Devil May Cry V - Switching between characters almost every mission and the simple one button change in the aerial combo throws off my muscle memory completely and I haven't finished it yet, but it was great fun as far as I got. Capcom's been real good this year, I hope they keep it up. Plague Tale: Innocence - It's pretty, it has varied gameplay (at least to my tastes), a mostly good story. Hugo's mental age jumping up and down like a rubber ball is a weak point but it didn't ruin the game, graphics are surprisingly pretty and it's a very atmospheric game. Good job Asobo. Guild Wars 2 - Been playing on and off since beta and while the content is arguable (and argued), it"s still fun to play when the game lets you, while the story is pretty consistently good, though like every open world game it suffers from a disjointed mood between story beats. Dying Light - Base game: amazing. I've had a lot of fun playing it, the story was unoriginal but well told. Then the DLC introduced a fun car you can ride in and a Mass Effect-grade dumpster fire ending that makes me somewhat fearful they'll pull the same crap in the sequel. Remnant: From the Ashes - Decent Dark Souls clone, fun to play but it's shorter than DS and feels emptier too. Warframe - First you enjoy the gameplay, then the grindplay kills any urge to touch it. Halo: Reach remaster - Decent game, but based on this installment I don't know how Halo ever got as popular as it is. Trying to work up the mood to play Life is Strange 2 but I just don't feel like it and the overt politicking/tribalism I've heard of/seen is cringeworthy. Witcher 1-3 - First one holds up surprisingly well despite it's age, second was pretty good too, if a bit too challenging at a few points *cough* Act 1 boss *cough*. I've put the third game on hold, I can see why this one is declared game of the decade by others but for me the open world is holding it back with either filler quests (treasure hunts), formulaic monster hunts and dull combat thanks to everything being below my level and still dying in 3 hits even when they're not. On a brighter note it's refreshing that CDPR actually, visibly had an overarching plot in mind for the three games and they mesh together in this sense really well, unlike other games and series that announce themselves as trilogies or several season long with no idea where they want to take the story. Usually I believe genres aren't better or worse when compared to one another but open world just feels like a design frame that does more harm than good. I already avoid everything roguelike because interesting concepts and fun execution don't mean jack when I can't finish or play the game thanks to difficulty spikes and randomized success. Same with open world, the disjointed narrative, boring gameplay loops and general timewasting just kill it for me.

Trees are a dangerous to your health. Don't approach one unless accompanied by a trained professional https://www.reifflawfirm.com/100-people-killed-trees-every-year-united-states/

It's that time of year again!

Ze Germans...

I read the interview, and by no (I mean really zilch) means one can deduct that Baldur's Gate 3 "is guaranteed to be TB [turn based]." So, making that "absolutely not RTwP/guaranteed TB" statement is only a shot in the dark. So, so dark... and the mist... oh, the mist. And the blindfold, too! However, one interesting thing in the interview is this: "'Systemic' is the in-house word. If it’s not systemic, it doesn’t go in." This is kind of the opposite of the Baldur's Gate mechanics. The older versions of D&D weren't very systemic. Actually they are quite terrible in that regard (if you want to read a very anti-systemic P&P ruleset you should buy the earlier version of the Dark Eye rulesets, ouf!). Still most people liked them (I guess). PoE was more systemic than the old IE games but less systemic than Deadfire - which made a huge step forward in that regard. Then D:OS I and II are more systemic than Deadfire. I personally am a big fan of a thorough systemic approach - no woder if one considers my professional background as a software engineer. But that's not all that matters in a game (else I would prefer D:OS over PoE which is not the case). I don't know how systemic D&D 5th edition is (never read it) but I wonder if a highly systemic approach might clash with the (formerly) bitty D&D ruleset(s) and the fond memories players might have. A complaint one can often read here in the forums (about PoEI and II) is the systemic attribute system. MIG does always raise dmg and healing no matter if it's spell or sword, INT does always enlarge your AoE no matter spell or Carnage and so on. Also the fact that spellcasting follows the same rules as attacking with weapons and so on and so forth. They wish for special rules so their XY character feels special. Some players think that channeling a spell through the same attack resolution as a attack from a sword is "unrealistic" (really) or it does break their immersion. They want special cases and solutions for everything. That might be understandable - but that is the opposite of a systemic approach. Because all those special cases and rules will make it impossible to add new stuff in a way that it all works neatly together. It's a software developer's nightmare. You may be able to create more "cool" or "realistic" effects, but at the same time you are making a big mess that's harder to maintain, to fix and to test while it also makes developing additions like DLCs a lot harder as well as introducing new developers to the team. Vincke also said that they"'ve taken a lot of creative risks, more than people will expect." I wonder if those creative risks and a very systemic BG3 will clash hard with D&D grognards' nostalgia. And if they do clash, if that will even have any noticable impact on the sales numbers - since D:OS I and II are very different from D&D but have way more players than there are nostalgia-clinging D&D grognards.