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phillip k. d!ck, in the intro to a collection o' his short stories, spoke o' heinlein: Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don't agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn't raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very impressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I'm a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love. am thinking heinlein is misunderstood by many as some kinda jingoist warhawk. maybe he was. *shrug* regardless o' phillip k's opinion o' heinlein's ideas, am personal a big fan o' the moon is a harsh mistress and we believe job: a comedy of justice, is criminal underappreciated. HA! Good Fun!

I always remember Heinlein on E.E. "Doc" Smith...

Well, mechanically it makes sense and it actually works out quite well (as long as you don't want to know what exactly is going on). The problems are that a) it's hard to explain, b) it's unusual, c) it's complicated and unintuitive, d) neither the game nor the devs ever even tried to explain what's going on but left players wondering how the tooltip calculations would make any sense mathematically and e) designers didn't seem to fully understand what the programmers concocted there either.

I know you were speaking to Bruce.... but here I go butting in! No, he wasn't. He was a man of the times he lived in. No better or worse than most. Does he warrant commemoration? Yes and no. Few commanders in history have done so much with so little. But at the same time he made two colossal blunders at Gettysburg and Petersburg. He is certainly worthy of study and understanding. But I don't know that he was ever deserving of the lionization his name has undergone 40 years after his death. Knowing what I do of him I think he'd be mortified. I think statues are appropriate where they are appropriate. The dedicated memorial, cemetery, battlefield sites, historically significant locations, or museums are certainly appropriate. But plunking a statue of Lee in the middle of downtown New Orleans made no sense because he had no connection at all to New Orleans. Other than to piss people off. Which actually was the point. If it were up to me I'd say no statues other than the places I mentioned. Besides, some of them are kind of creepy anyway. As an aside, you guys all know this "erasing history" nonsense, while it does have some points, will not stop right? They will be coming for the ones in dedicated memorial, cemetery, battlefield sites, historically significant locations, or museums later. Everything always goes too far.

Last one

Merry Bobby Bonilla Day! Blessed is the Batsman who receives his well-deserved full salary.

More importantly, why are there no orange people in this drawing?

Why there is no black people in this drawing?

thank you all

"I think BLM is well meaning" No, they aren't. They (and Antifa) are responsible for more murders, assaults, rapes, and robberies of black people than the police have been for a decade. While there are people who support BLM are good people and actually believe wholeheartedly the pretend claims of BLM, BLM itself is evil to the core. Only explaination for when we see videos of white BLMers shouting nasty things at black people, BLMers destroying black owned businesses, and murdering fellow BLM supporters after they start to leave a peaceful protest that's about to get violent. BLM is tainted to the core. EVIL. EVIL TO THE CORE.

@BruceVC I agree that the whole statue thing is indeed an odd thing, because any single person is likely to be many things to many people. One mans villain is another mans hero and vice versa. Which is also why old things sometimes gets torn down to make room for new things (that's my inner anarchist speaking). What does people remember Churchill for? As you sort of hinted at, it depends on who you are. Would a 50%+ approval rate among all people being exposed to the actions of some figure justify a statue? A threshold of 25% if they are all locals (i.e. live in the UK)? And so on. There is no easy answer. I'm sure the Romans tore down a number of statues too when previous historical leaders fell out of favour with the current rulers. Maybe the Brits see him representing something they like to remember. Living in Australia, i think I can say he is more than anything associated with failed WWI campaigns, Gallipoli and tens of thousands of dead Aussies and Kiwis. To the people in India, I'm sure he is perceived in a different way to both the UK and the people down here. Was General Lee (US civil war) a particular bad and evil person? No idea. Did his exploits on the battlefield warrant a statue? Probably. But... his side lost and the climate has changed. As said above, sometimes what was once considered great falls out of favour. As long as history books keeps the deeds of people for posterity, does the world really need statues anyway? Other than to make pigeons happy that is. Edit: Another way of looking at is, the values of society keeps changing. Some day, a the values people attribute to the positive and the negative parts of a historical person changes enough to change the net sum?

But Churchill was racist. Yes, he bolstered UK morale during WWII, but he wasn't necessarily a good person. Quoting CNN: "He said that he hated people with "slit eyes and pig tails." To him, people from India were "the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans." He admitted that he "did not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people." Not exactly a humanitarian role model

Of course they offer WIR free, it's a gateway drug for their fairly pricey War in the East. In terms of detail I don't think anything comes close to the old SPI Campaign for North Africa which tracked detail down to the water requirement for Italian units to boil their pasta rations in. And that was a late 70s boardgame...

I'm about 50 hours into Elex. Finally sided with a faction (berserkers). Siding with a faction wasn't the big boost in power that it was the first time I played Elex. I think that's because I was around level 35 by the time I did all the other content that I wanted to engage with before joining. A weird thing I noticed due to the way I'm played this time is that I found out the 'secret' location of an important NPC by moving the main plot too far forward and and forgetting to follow up on a few B plots. I, as a player, already knew were this guy was, but it was really fourth wall breaking that another quest giver was like, "we need a hero" and then I magically knew where this guy was. Also, the first time I played I found Nasty very amusing. This time, though, she's just annoying mostly 'cause . . . She. Won't. Stop. Complaining. The first go around she was novel in that her character was prickly. But her personality really wears on you a second time. Besides, I'm trying to romance Caja anyway. There are five other games I'm playing on and off. Chief among those are Bard's Tale 4 and Avernum: Escape From the Pit. Bard's Tale 4 is great once you get past the poor quality graphics and really dive into the game. It's part rpg and part puzzle game. Neither part is great but the sum of those parts is much better than it has any right to be. I had to, of course, play as a bard. My character is using the Brian Fargo portrait and uses the bemused voice. You don't have a whole lot of dialog trees and you can't really role play. Instead voices are determine what your character will say in ambient dialog--usually observational stuff. My character says some incredibly dumb things which fits as I get him hammered every fight. I suspect even if Ned the Dead survives Skara Brae, his liver won't. Snow in summer. Ice in my heart. Death's cold fingers. Tear us apart. P.S. It also has one of the best soundtracks in resent years.

The confusion would actually remove any INT inspiration completely (not downgrade it by one tier). Inspiration vs. Affliction always goes *pouf* - nothing left, no matter the tiers. So yes, your PL bonus would be cone, also +5 INT. You could simply cast Tactical Barrage again though (has no recovery and no casting time). The second time there wouldn't be a confusion to counter it and that would only cost one additional Discipline (which is easy enough to regain as a Tactician imo). But as I said: +17.5% crit conversion is also good. And Devil of Caroc has four good reasons to be worn besides the resistance to INT afflictions: a) it looks fantastic with the Helm of the Falcon and b) it gives +2 Discipline/+2 Rage and c) with a pet like Abraham and Armored Grace it's even faster than being naked iirc (or nearly as fast - don't remember the actual numbers) due to its own action speed bonus. and d) it can give +2 AR when bloodied - or healing on dealing crits which both is great for a Berserker. It's a tough decision...

It's inversions. Basically - virtually anything in the game with a negative symbol in front of it gets "inverted" and is much stronger than positive values. A full, ugly dissection is here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions For your case, a -35% modifier from dual-wielding is equivalent to a -53.8% additive penalty (1/(1-.35)). Combine that with the other positive additive modifiers, and do any appropriute re-inversions and you end up doing 13.11-ish damage (rounded to 13.1). Inversions are basically the worst part of deadfire's mechanics in terms of ease of use and intuitiveness. edit2: the math is ugly. at this point I've done it enough that a few negative modifers I know exactly how to invert them off the top of my head. But for an approximation, you can say that a single negative modifier is roughly equivalent to it being a single multiplicative penalty, if you want to be able to do calculations yourself. (there are no convenient rules of thumbs for multiple negative modifiers and/or when combined with lots of positive modifiers) edit: when I say "virtually anything" I really do mean anything. Healing modifiers, area of effect modifiers, beneficia/hostile effect durations, health penalties from low con, even paladin and priest disposition scaling. There are many places in the game where you can tell that the designers themselves didn't quite grasp their own inversion system and the balancing is a little screwy.

Beautiful games... The Disciples Series.

We can't not have Rammstein embedding correctly. edit: retroactive double post!

New videos of Empire of Sin. The second one dives a bit more into wars between gangs.

And dynamically exploit sustainable web-readiness.

Only if you maximize your synergistic diversity

rare one are more expensive corrosive mod for guns are rare and much more expensive than shock and plasma mod

A's, Rays, & White Sox are all a good buy. BTW nice to see you back around again @Leferd. You don't hang out this us as much as you used to.

I've been pondering doing that myself. I need to learn proper farming and survival skills over the next couple years. By then, hopefully, I've got a house in the mountains of North Carolina or Tennessee (same mountains, different sides) and I'll just cut the cord and disappear. Maybe not full on Jeremiah Johnson, but basically make 1 trip a month into town for supplies and straight up hermit style beyond that. Civilization can go ahead and destroy itself, **** em. I'll be off on my own plot of fairly secluded land, living as much as I can off my own crops, with a shotgun, a rifle, and a pistol.

1) abilities influencing dialogues. dumb characters need to be made fun of. 2) if your character behaves in a way that angers a party member, they should react and in some extreme cases even become hostile. this happen in poe 2 , but is too rare. maia does not even attack if you tell her you sacrificed kana. 3) combat misses needs to be a little more detailed., a miss is not to be restricted by a dodge, it should also be represented by a block animation (a character blocking an enemy weapon) , or a weapon hitting weakly and harmlessly a character (hitting armor, for example). 4)deities should react in dialogues if your character behaves in a way that displeases them. 5) keep factions, as they are always very important for the story.

What I would like to see in PoE 3: 1. Keep the voice acting to PoE 1's level, it's expensive and means less dialogue & stuff to read. 2. While the sidequests and factions in PoE 2 were good an' all I would like a stronger & longer main plot next time. 3. More books to read, like in PoE1. 4. While I hope they would keep refining the isometric RPG style, if this cannot be done, please make sure the alternative has tactical combat.

The game was fun overall, the new combat and leveling systems both feel like clear improvements over the first one, I liked enough of the companions that I had hard time deciding who to sit out - but yesterday I've made it to the end credits, and I came away from the game feeling quite underwhelmed. I've slept on it, and I can narrow down the reason to three things. Spoilers all over, obviously. 1. I've spend over 60 hours playing it, but nothing of consequence happened until the last two. Almost from the very start, I've been choosing to side with Huana whenever possible. I've lend a hand to Royal Deadfire Company otherwise (but not if the choice was between the two). I didn't bother with the Principi much, after getting rid of Benweth. I also picked up every single quest Valians gave me, then did the exact opposite of what they asked where possible. I destroyed the adra pillar on Poko Kohara and told their shaman that Vailians planned on sacrificing them. After they asked me to cut a deal with the slavers, I slaughtered every last one of them and happily reported back. I've sank a handful of Vailian ships for good measure. Until the Ukaizo revelation, no number of choices could lock me out from a faction. As soon as the endgame comes, a single choice locks me out of all factions but one. I've finished the game with Huana's help, and got to see their happy ending, where they diminish the trading companies and grow strong. Then I went back two hours, sided with RDC, and got to see their happy ending, where they steamroll over the archipelago and kick Vailians out. I go back again and pick Vailians' quests next. I didn't bother going through it, but I know it's available, and I imagine it gives them their happy ending. This doesn't feel at all organic. Why would Vailians trust me at all at this point? Why aren't the earlier quests gradually locking us out of the factions? 2. I just blew up a building full of innocents (or killed a queen) for a front row seat. Once Eothas' plan gets revealed, there's massive pressure to get through to Ukaizo and talk to him. Not massive enough to stop the squabbling and infighting, mind, but you get told the future of the world depends on you nonetheless. You commit to getting there by any means necessary - be it regicide or mass murder. You brave the Ondra's Mortar, fight the ancient guardian, murder one of the other factions some more, antagonize over what you will do and say over and over. Then you catch up with Eothas and get to point out just one single flaw in his plan, out of many (I chose "what about all the souls that will get stuck in In-Between?" on one go and "if you really do this to help kith, how about you actually give us some handicap?" on another). One of the options is literally telling him you just came to watch, thanks. Best I can tell, there isn't one to tell him his "kindness" is no different from Woedica's plotting; an uncaring god imposing his wisdom on the kith, consequences be damned. And then he goes ahead and does exactly what he set out to do. And that's fair enough, you can't always win. But as soon as he's done tearing the Wheel into pieces, the ending narrator kicks in and starts talking about "the enormity of what I accomplished" and plays it up as some massive success. But that rang ridiculously hollow. The only thing that I've accomplished was beating Hazanui Karu to this island by couple of hours (or some Vailian prince on the RDC path) and flipping a switch. I've stopped nothing. I just had another chat with Stay Puft, and he decided when to end that chat, just like with the other three chats we had. The only reason I was even there was thanks to someone else's watershapers or special ships. Me chasing all over the map after Ukaizo's location made no difference, either - it was revealed when it was time for the third act to start. 3. The most memorable part of the ending was my girlfriend exploding into bloody pieces Last but not least: Maia was fun character, so I always had her around in my party. At some point she started flirting, so I flirted back. Her bird was hungry, so I chased after shark meat to feed him. She appreciated it so much we went and snogged in the broom closet. Maia was also a loyal soldier, so she always followed her RDC orders. At some point she said we need to talk, and acted offended when I asked if this is the moment where she betrays me (even though it was where she betrayed me). She disappeared for a while, then told about the nasty things she did while she were away. She felt bad about it. Yet when it came to me choosing sides, and I didn't chose hers, she left there and then. She said I can't expect her to go against her country. I tried to plead with her, but she wasn't having any of it. She was gone. I met here again on Ukaizo, at Hazanui's side, with red circle under her feet. I used Serafen's mind control to take her out of the fight, hoping she'll calm down once her side is beaten. I took out everyone else, then waited for the mind control to run out. Nothing - not a word, not a single comment. Just back to shooting at me. I send my party to take her down, and Eder landed a crit. Just like that, she just exploded into hundred bloody bits. I'm not actually criticising this. I genuinely felt bad about how things turned out, but I could understand why she did what she did, why I ended up staring down the barrel of her gun in the end. When that overkill animation kicked in, I felt sick there and then. Thing is, that was the only part of the final act that actually made me feel anything. Everything else rang all the more hollow because of that one organic moment; the final narration was droning on about Eothas punching a tower over and over, and I just kept thinking "I can't believe Maia's gone. There isn't even enough left to bury". When I replayed last act for the RDC path, nothing remotely close this impactful happened. The ending felt all the weaker for it. I'm leaving this here because it felt like the right place to vent, but also because I'm hoping this doesn't come across as purely ranting, and is constructive enough to provide some feedback on what worked and what didn't. I honestly believe the game would be better if the different factions started giving up on me earlier: it would make it more replayable, it would add more impact to my actions in the earlier acts, and it would make the final act much less busy. I know there's a stigma about locking out large chunks of game out from the audience, but if there's any game that I'd expect to take the risk, it's the one that has been crowdfunded by a particular audience in the first place. I also hope that the inevitable PoE III gives a little more reason for our Watcher to follow the events. We had as little actual choice over the ending of the first game as we did on the second: Thaos always dies, Eothas always succeeds, and we just get decide what happens to the souls after. Difference is, Thaos falls by our hand. Us being there is required for the events to happen. Us being on Ukaizo is not.

Remember remember... the -25% of Blunted Criticals.

more water. less bourbon. HA! Good Fun!

400-mile-long lightning bolt over Brazil is biggest in recorded history.

Everyone in the company has to take Agile Development training. The cult hungers for members.

The Guardian - Ian Holm dies

lml