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You aren't wrong. But you can also paint the so-called free US in the worst possible light: an economic divide so insurmountable that makes it so class is more strongly inheritable than intelligence, the world's largest prison population both in relative and absolute terms, staggering (and possibly deadly) healthcare inequality, a structural obesity epidemic, long prison sentences for exposing the state's crimes, and the star of the show: unelected special interests which are slowly but surely turning the world into an uninhabitable trash dump, and which in effect exert more influence over the state than the people it's supposed to serve and represent because the only value is dollar value. I don't know man, sometimes I think you're so high on "freedom" as apparatchiks were on the workers' paradise utopia. I know you're going to retort that you went from nothing to a degree and a home thanks to your service, and then I will counter that some nobody kid from a poor peasant village in deep rural Russia went on to become Premier of the Soviet Union and bring it down from the inside thanks to its equal opportunity policies. So let's skip that part. in The fact remains that for a majority of the population, neither the US nor the Soviet Union are the hellholes one can make them out which explains why so many people still rate them highly over uncertain dreams of a better society.

She must have learnt from psychomantis that the gamer and his computer behind the 4th wall are more vulnerable than the armoured avatar.

Sure. Purges, labor camps, masse executions, secret police disappearing people in the middle of the night, waiting in line for just enough food to keep you from starving. Long prision sentences for expressing contrary political opinions, barbed wire fences, machine gun and dog patrols to keep you from travelling. I can certainly see the attraction. Come to that what the f--k do YOU find so attractive about all that? Like I said, I am trying to take you seriously but sometimes you make me wonder.

nanontale typing chronicles

Elanna: Party update Eder Aloth Elanna Grieving Mother

Elanna Part V; Having been foiled in their pursuit, next up for Elanna and her friends was a swathe of questing through Defiance Bay. The team completed A Call to Court, Supply and Demand, At All Costs, The Man Who Waits, His Old Self, Built to Last, A Return to Court; and began The Hermit of Hadret House; all with fairly little incident. The only point the team was given pause was against the thugs threatening the Salty Mast. Poor positioning on the engagement there resulted in two knockouts early on, but the two Eothosian devotees carried the team to victory. After this was done it was finally time to deal with Readric. With an extra level or two and a fairly standard choke-point there were no issues grinding the priest-killer into the dust. Osrya was also given a taste of justice for her part in harming innocents. Following this Elanna decided it was time to discover what was happening in Heritage Hill. Once again the area was cleared with no significant issues, even completing Missing Sentries. In this fight both the newly acquired Adra Beetle figurine and the Shades were put to good use buying time for the team. After discovering the mystery of the Engwithan machine Elanna decided to switch it off, hoping to preserve as much of the city as possible while preventing the interruption to the Wheel. With this done the party has garnered sufficient reputation to gain entry to the archives in order to help Eder find out the truth about what happened to his brother. Before leaving the city the party completed a few more tasks. Taking care of The Forgotten on behalf of the Vailian Embassy, investigating the Banshee at the Lighthouse, and clearing out Crucible Keep of its malfunctioning Animat soldiers. These battles took a heavier toll on Elanna and her team with Grieving Mother often bearing the brunt of the hurt. Finally, on their way to investigate Eder’s past and hopefully gain entry to the Engwithan ruins north of Dyrford village the Elanna and co successfully talked down a dangerous Ogre and convinced him to join them at Caed Nua.

Hey Serg, I really love the way you've formatted your team updates, both within your text and with the edited images. I'll certainly be trying to steal some of your ideas in the future! Good luck with the rest of the play-through! Cheers, CM

wtf did I just read. 😄

Hubby: "$2700? No no, it was $2300" Me: "Oh ok, I swear you said $2700, whatever." (couple hours later) Hubby: "I double checked, it was actually $2600, I have no idea what I said then." Me: "I still think you *said* 2700, but who knows." (we stare at each other a few beats) Me: "Happy Valentine's Day. We're truly getting old together." (another beat) *huge simultaneous guffaws*

OK seriously now. If you are using a person's politics to decide whether you like their books/songs/movies/etc. then you are waaaay too uptight about politics. That is like disliking someone because they cheer for a different sports team than you. Unless of course they are Yankees fans. Then hating them is perfectly acceptable.

THE YAKUZA REMASTERED COLLECTION

No one wants to remain in dire circumstances. There's always the social inheritance aspect. Someone born to poor, unintelligent or abusive parents will never have the same opportunity as others. Technically, maybe, but not in reality, knowing what we do about the human brain and how early experiences shape us. How society allows for poor (in any meaning of the word) people to break through the chain says a lot about that society. In the US you seem to want to keep the status quo, with expensive education and healthcare that definitely doesn't help poor people be "free". It's good that you see the benefit of donations and tax supported safety nets though.

Nope. That stretch goal was not reached during the crowdfunding campaign.

Hold up. In which capitalist dream land the law is an opt-in? All law is coercitive in nature, which means that there is a person with a gun who will happily kill you for non-compliance. Even if you could truly live off the grid, the only way to stop someone from exercising their free market "rights" over the land you inhabit and kick you out is to claim ownership of it yourself. Which means you are forced to participate in the capitalist system and abide by the laws that it's built on. You are free to *pretend* that you aren't participating, but that's about it. I've mentioned this in the past, but the only place where you could really be "free" is Antarctica, and guess what, it's illegal to settle there.

She WAS a mod!

Remember Dark Raven? She did that!

While I am quite certain I have spoken to the same person under multiple names I choose to treat every new name as though they were new. There have been folks who come here and make a genuine (if overly idealisitc) argument for the merits of communisim and it's ugly kid sister socialisim. And do it without invoking admiaration for for all the the curelty, repression, and scores of people who died because if it. But if you come here talking about how f-----g awesome the Soviet Union was your credibility meter is on 0. And another thing. Anyone who lauds the glory of the Nazi's and the BS Germany did in the 1930's and 40's is equally abusrd. Except no one here is really doing that. And facisim might never go away but to suggest it's taking over the US or anywhere else is also absurd. And even if there were politicians with facist sympathies (there are none right now I know of) the US is too decentralized for them to ever do much with it. Hey look, I'm all for staking out indefensale and even sometimes crazy positions to provoke good forum discussion. I've done that myself. But when you do it all the time people figure that is how you really think. And if you really think that way you are already too damaged to debate with. I'm not directing these comments at anyone in particular. Just sayin'

Michael Bloomberg says Hillary Clinton will be his running mate! Wow. That is a HUGE mistake. Especially if he wins. He will be the first President to commit suicide in office! Probably the day after inaguration! Hell she may not even wait THAT long!

Noppers. I'm working on a PotD solo. I did a couple unposted runs. My first attempt ended at the second Sun in Shadows drake encounter. The next one ended in Galwain's Maw. I have a character that I'm ready to post now. I'm not certain she'll make it all the way, but I'm confident she'll put in a respectable showing, at least, like her predecessors. Best, A. @Concrete Monster Excellent progress!

I would not buy US Bonds if they took dried dog poop for payment. One of two things will happen before those mature: The government will default The currency will be worthless Sorry Uncle Sam. You spending habits and money management has convinced me you are NOT a good credit risk. https://www.wsj.com/articles/treasury-to-sell-30-year-bonds-at-record-low-yield-11581614475

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/388 Just finished a mod with affliction keywords for everything but sickened and weakened. The big deal here is that it affects the status effect, where other mods affect the abilities. This overwrites all non-expansion afflictions listed, so it has to be used as a base. Other mods that change any afflictions won't have the keywords, so they'll neutralize this part of my mod. Any other keywords that would be cool?

That's a really good point. Although it is a minor thing, this is something that I also paid attention to while playing the game. Plenty of games have these tips displayed while loading, but Deadfire is by far and away the least impressive game I've ever seen in this regard. There really are only those four or five tips. I mean, come on!

this would be closed demo for Virgil the Longest Night.

I got high diplomacy 👍

Indeed, this ability is so bad on paper that no one even sees it was even worse in reality (due to applying pet Intellect) If only weak ennemy miss the pet, a simple solution would be to also apply it on Graze. A slide of 25 dice roll threshold would help. I thought about the Bond restoration too, but I saw a few (non blocking) issues : - Getting bond back when facing weak ennemy would also feel like an overkill. - Would make Rogue the only single class martial without ressource restoration. Either it would feel bad for Rogue, or I will have to add a Guile Restoration effect. In the later case, all martial single class would feel a bit too similar for my taste... - Bond Restoration is so precious that it would feel sort of mandatory. Given that you only get 3 Tier IX ability point and you probably want Prestige, it may reduce Single Class Ranger build diversity (that's why I'm also considering lowering Blood Surge to Tier VIII). Totally agree. For the moment, what I'm thinking about is a 8 raw damages stacking per 3 seconds (applied on next attack), for both pet and ranger, to mirror the healing effect. Using Takedown Combo on top of that would still be an option. Reducing defense based on Invibility time would work but it would be a debuff within a buff with multiple effects. A bit too complex to describe and use, sort of "abilityception". What I'm wondering is : - Should it cost 2 or 3 Bonds ? 3 Bonds would feel expensive if only used for repositionning, but 2 bonds would feel cheap if used for longer. Also 2 Bonds would make it almost strictly superior to Deadly Surprise. - Would it be OP for Solo (or full single class rangers party) ?

Yeah, you might be right 😄 When I'll find something more stylish for him, the Demon will go to the pantry. (and actually Aloth himself might not enjoying wear it, maybe it's just his 'other' instance poke out)

Excellent progress, Serg! (I don't know if I approve of letting Aloth wear Dunryd Demon with a robe, though it looks way too weird...) 🙃 Best, A. (And it case it wasn't clear, this was a joke: Aloth can wear whatever he likes)

The whole show is built upon a premise that is so ridiculous that you'll just have to go along with it. It's depressingly similar to the beginning of The Force Awakens in that skips some odd 15 to 25 years of galactic history and simply presents us with a future of a setting that makes no sense (some minor spoilers ahead, but all I'm talking about now was part of the trailers anyway). The, for me, strange and interesting thing about the last two episodes was that I didn't hate them like I did the second one. It's just that... very much like with Discovery, this is actually hurt by being set in the Star Trek universe. Any other setting a former Admiral setting out with an elven warrior raised by an order of elven assassin nuns on a quest to investigate Seb-Cheneb, the Destroyer, who for some reason is part of a prophecy of a galactic extinction level threat whom a former cybernetic drone "knows from tomorrow" might be interesting. Instead I facepalmed all the time. The worst part is that this episode had a seed of a much better way to get into a similar situation by having the Federation actually pull off the evactuation and then simply have the Romulan Nazi guys (what were they called, Romulan Rebirth movement?) take advantage of a possibly disillusioned Romulan people who could believably cope much worse with the relocation and Federation values than anticipated. This could, in turn, also lead to a believable feeling of resentment throughout the Federation. But nah, instead we have an attack on Mars and perhaps an android that might reawaken the beasts (that so TOTALLY doesn't mean the inactive Borg drones, right? RIGHT?) and bring destruction to everyone. In a post Voyager setting where Janeway brought perfectly working Anti-Borg tech from the future with her.

Just bought it.

None of those words mean anything, SonicMage.

FYI, I received this: Thank you for writing and I am sorry to hear you’ve experienced issues in Deadfire that have negatively impacted your gameplay experience. The Developer is hard at work on fixing the major common bugs that have been reported, however I must ask for your understanding as this is a very large game so these solutions will take time to research, implement, and test. I assure we are committed to bringing players the best game experience possible so we will continue to search for ways to improve the console port as we go. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you during your playthrough. Regards, Amanda Kirby Versus.Evil Community & Influencer Manager Discord: Maevri#0001 Twitter: @MaevriPlays

1:24:14

man onion really had some divination skills back than xD

Grim Face (Hearth Orlan, Priest of Eothas) & Co - Part 7 TOC: So we are back in the Keep to resolve a skeletons' attack ('A Call to Court' task also triggered just in time) and since party formation after scripted event is a base №1 (not custom which I normally use) Grim Face ended up in the frontline and was focused by both Skeleton Wizard and Rangers. He managed to cast Inspiring Radiance and was ready to follow with Interdiction but his endurance went down dangerously fast so he hid under Withdraw literally in the last moment (courtesy of his decent reflexes and fine robe he wears which does not constrain his movements too much) when Necrotic Lance was already midair. With him safe the rest of the Crew dealt with the undead without issues in short order. Pallegina hit level 6 (Lore>7, Vielo Vidorio) and we followed to the Duc's Palace to meet Chancellor Warrin and gain a main weapon for Grim Face for the rest of the game (Gyrd Haewanes Stenes Scepter). Defiance Bay: Day 2, Back Again. We started again in Copperlane to finish 'His Old Self' (somehow I lost the pics from that encounter but it wasn't something special - we focused Nyrid with all our firepower and he fell almost instantly even not able to finish a single spell. His bodyguards are also nothing to write home about) and then entered the Catacombs which were properly sanitized (since Grieving Mother took Greater Focus talent early on she could fire Mental Binding right off the bat and that greatly trivialize most encounters). We let Eorn go, talked with Helig of Thein to advance ' A Voice from the Past ' and finished ' Never Far from the Queen '. In order to progress Aloth's personal quest and talk to Moedred we headed to the Brackenbury Sanitarium where ' The Man Who Waits ' got some of our attention too (talked with animancers but not proceed to the North Ward yet). This also let Grim Face to wear Blaidh Golan instead of Fine Robe. Back in the Catacombs we recovered Soulward Amulet from Helig's now completely and irrevocably cold fingers and convinced Dalton to set free Rowyna's soul at long last. Ondra's Gift is next where Dodwyna and her misfits were challenged to recover Vianna's research (and Aru-Brekr for Eder), Waldr lost their last "Three Fingers", then sight, followed by limb sensitivity and shortly after a rowdy head itself, we found Brave Derrin's body and avenged his death and also collected three part of Engwithan Scepter to recover it for Grieving Mother (I'm amazed with her combat performance and skills so she well worth it). Next we sanitized the outskirts of Heritage Hill (except the large group near the tower) and saved Saeda making sure she'll reach the safety in the Cruicible Keep. This brought all except Pallegina to level 7 but since I usually level all party members at once we need a little bit more exp. Returning to the Caed Nua to start ' A Return to Court ' and WM1 content ('Durgan's Battery' quest) solved this small issue just fine. So Level 7: Grim Face (skills(none), level 4 spells), Eder (Lore>8, Armored Grace), Aloth (Survival>3, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Essential Phantom), Sagani (Athletics>4, Driving Flight), Grieving Mother (Athletics>5, Pain Block, Silent Scream), Pallegina (Lore>8, Aegis of Loyalty). Time to tie up some loose ends. Forest Lurkers in Woodend Plains and Black Meadow during 'The Parable of Wael' were dealt with via new approach: Eder open with Vigorous Defense>Disciplined Barrage>Knock Down, Grieving Mother cast Ectopsychic Echo on swift legged Itumaak and he delivers it past Lurker. Iben & Co were dealt with as usual by approaching from the West to utilize a choke point there, we buried the scroll as Wael asked and told Grimda it was their God's will. This granted us access to the Elder Archives so we could finish ' The Theorems of Pandgram ' side quest. ' A Return to Court ' quest was resolved peacefully and now we are back in Caed Nua after calming down our folks for +3 Prestige and talking with Marshal Forwyn to start ' The Battle of Yenwood Field ' quest. Since we are at home and already done with easy questing in Defiance Bay, I think, now we are going to explore the Caed Nua lower levels a little bit. Stay tuned! Current Crew state: to be continued...

Understood. Play at your pace, share at your pace. We're glad to have you here!

Oh great another money making scheme from con artists trying to cater to Gen-X nostalgics who can't seem to evolve from their shells. On a note from the same website https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/02/13/epic-games-ceo-says-devs-and-stores-should-be-apolitical-as-if-that-was-possible/ Right! Apolitical in times like these? It's like being apolitical in the 1930's and 40's, give me a break.

-Every Star Trek fan the last decade, . "Creator / executive producer Alex Kurtzman is in the firing line." I know he's an infamously terrible writer, but yikes, we're still doing the firing squads thing? Really? ...Well, maybe it's for the best after all - can't ruin anything else that way, .