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True, if you disregard the fact that there's more than 100 different ethnic groups in Russia, and over 50 in China -- millions of people. India is literally, literally the most diverse country on earth, being home to thousands of ethnic groups and tribes with hundreds of languages. Compared to that, the US is a quaint little white ethnostate. Really, the convulsive decline of the West is just late-stage capitalism. No doubt we'll continue to see efforts to blame its failure on whatever, much like apparatchiks blamed the failure of communism on "saboteurs and anti-social elements". Doesn't change the facts none.

A little adult humour...

Roman Lives Matter.

I'll buy that.

For those who like their nostalgia.. WCNews - First Cut of Enhanced WC3 Clips released

For pistols, I can recommend both SC Ranger and SC Monk. I have also played MC Ranger/Monk, but pistols really want the PL 8 and 9 monk and ranger abilities. Between the three options, I find Monk to have the highest performance. Here are the abilities I think are important for a pistolero: SC Monk: Lightning Strikes upgrade to Swift Strikes: usually Swift Flurry is the pick, but it only works with melee weapons. A 15% lightning lash is very nice to have instead. Instant activation and no cooldown. Enduring Dance upgrade to Dance of Death: good pistols tend to have on-crit effects, so you want to build accuracy where you can. Instant activation and no cooldown. Stunning Surge upgrade to Stunning Blow: again, you want to be critting, so you might as well get your mortification back when you do. You will be doing a lot of stunning as a SC pistol monk, not just with this ability. Duality of Mortal Presence just because +10 Int is too good to pass up. PL8: Resonant Touch - not a great power until you get to PL9... PL9: Whispers of the Wind: this blows the doors off most of the Ranger kit, unfortunately, because getting 5 full attacks in the span of a couple of seconds is just too good. WotW is also cheeseable on its own, like by adding Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak for free stuns on every target. I typically open with Scordeo's Trophy equipped; if opening from stealth, using Stunning Surge. If the battle starts unstealthed, then you'll immediately buff and launch Whispers of the Wind, which will give you ~5 hits from Scordeo's Trophy, which gives you a nice -25% Recovery Time buff from the Opening Barrage enhancement. If you have 5 wounds when your first WotW is done (sometimes yes, sometimes no), then you switch to Thundercrack Pistol (if you want CC) or Eccea's Arcane Blaster (if you just want to do damage) for the next WotW. Thundercrack Paralyzes its target for 2s on a crit, so depending on your accuracy you may be locking down a lot of the fight right there. 2s doesn't sound like much, but it's quite effective in shifting the momemntum of a team fight. Eccea's does raw damage with a powerful "imbued ammunition" second hit, and a chance to fire multiple times with the Fractured Bullet enchantment, so it does a lot of damage and shines once Scordeo's Trophy has stacked its recovery time buff. While you wait for wounds to build between WotW activations, I usually toss Stunning Surge around with Eccea's, but it depends on the need of the fight. Edit: I forgot to mention Resonant Touch. WotW will spread resonant touches all around. When you feel that enemies have enough (they can each have more than 10 stacks, but 10 is the maximum that will take effect, so I tend to use it once I see 10 stacks), you can activate the power and dump a lot of raw damage all at once on every enemy with stacks. After a couple of WotW activations, it can be a great clean up power. SC Ranger: Standard Ranger accuracy-increasing powers like Marked Prey and such are great PL5: Driving Flight is a superstar. Getting a free second hit on another enemy who is within a ~150 degree arc (I think? Maybe 180, but sometimes I'm sure somebody will get hit and they don't, so... ) behind the first target is amazing value for a single power pick. Weapon abilities activate on the second hit, so everything your pistols can do to the primary target can be done to the secondary target. This also works for abilities like Hobbling Shot. I get Driving Flight as soon as it becomes available. Thorny Roots: fast-casting, foe-only AoE immobilize and pierce/slash damage. The only thing keeping this from being as good as many wizard spells is the small radius. But: foe-only. It's good. PL8: Twinned Shots. This is fantastic. For 2 bond you attack your target twice. Each attack is subject to driving flight. You can open a fight with Scordeo's Trophy and have four stacks of the buff before the enemies have acted. Or with Thundercrack Pistol you get two chances to paralyze two targets. Or with Eccea's two chances for split shots, which is very fun when it happens. PL8: Whirling Strikes. This is another very good power, but counterintuitive for a pistolero. It requires a melee weapon, but uses a full attack and will fully use an offhand ranged weapon. One great way to use this is to open from stealth with the Lover's Embrace dagger and Scordeo's Trophy: everybody in range of the power (which is considerably further than melee range, FYI) will be hit with the massive raw damage DoT from Whirling Strikes. Everybody within range of the power will also be hit with the never-ending raw damage DoT from Lover's Embrace. And everybody in pistol range (much further than the power's range) will be shot with Scordeo's Trophy. I really wish it could be paired with a rogue for backstab damage, but Mick Jagger tells me that I can't always get what I want. In practice I'm usually able to get five stacks or so from Scordeo's Trophy and destroy or nearly destroy three enemies who were in melee range - and they won't live long with those DoTs. I heavily invested in stealth on this character to be able to do this. PL9: Stunning Shots: this is amazing. Don't let "shots" mislead you: every weapon crit you do, melee or ranged, interrupts its target. This is enormous. With Driving Flight, you are typically interrupting two enemies on auto attacks. That is huge passive CC, and makes it easier to swap away from Thundercrack Pistol on difficult fights. I was not able to find much use for the other Ranger PL9 powers. Again, I open with Scordeo's Trophy to build stacks of the speed buff from the pistol - one or two Twinned Shots for -20% or -40% Recovery Time, then switch to Thundercrack to disrupt/paralyze casters and Eccea's to finish things off. Ranger/Monk: The abilities are mostly the same here. There is a pleasing economy of power picks because so many monk powers (and a few Ranger powers) are useless to a pistolero, but it really hurts to lose out at the top end of the power curve on both classes. If you have to go this way, I'd recommend modding to raise the level cap or give access to PL8 or PL8 and PL9 abilities to multiclass characters by level 20. The best part about a pistolero is that you get three unique pistols that each serves a different purpose, and switching between them is very useful. I take Arms Bearer for this reason. Scordeo's does damaging crits and buffs your recovery time, Thundercrack has a nice lightning lash and paralyzes on crits, and Eccea's does raw + corrode damage for those enemies that are immune to pierce. I recommend getting each of them as soon as possible. I think there are other classes and multiclasses that could work well, but these are the ones I have tried and can speak about with knowledge. The Ranger, Monk, and Ranger/Monk also do well with blunderbusses (SC monk especially - WotW with two blunderbusses and the aoe modal and bounces.... it's over the top), but if you just search for "boeroer blunderbuss" on this site you'll find much more information than I can provide on that subject

i would personally lean towards a smaller deflection reduction but paired with some across the board AR drops, or at least AR drops for all non-crush, non-shock damage.

Times 1.5 instead of 2, but still awesome. Uh... I played a FF for a 95% playthrough and I also never realized that. Awesome. How you just casually dropped that handgrenade of powergaming. I'm thinking about Sage again now...

More or less, so far. Right now it all still feels kooky from the IV mixers and then now being removed from said mixers (I had 6 constant IV drips at one point) but I certainly feel tons better than I did some days ago! I think I remember that time period and you talking about diets. They didn't remove it. After a lot of mucking about, since my test results always seem to confuse docs (I'm lucky that way, haha) they classified me as heavily Type2 diabetic. I was asked so many times if I had a drinking problem because of the pancreas aspect and apparently the first 24 hrs hubby had to keep explaining "she doesn't avoid drinking because she had a past problem, she just doesn't drink/never has." (well, outside of some times 30 years ago) So in the end they don't have a final chicken/egg answer. I'd guess Type2 for some years that had no dramatic symptoms (as mentioned I'm not a big "doctor checkup" person) then mild losing-function pancreas symptoms (fatigue, aches and pains "I'm just getting old") then finally several progressively worse acute attacks over the past year or so. So initially I'm on Type2 regimen - 2 insulin per day. Hoping can get it down to at least one instead. I have no specific diet restrictions outside of the very important portion size aspect and not overbalancing any food/sugar/carb groupings too much any one meal/day. So got lucky there I guess. EDIT: Because they don't allow vistor access at all at the moment, hubby said trying to get docs on the phone once a day to get information about even what they were doing to me was really difficult. He was pretty freaked out. EDITEDIT: Hubby even .... cleaned the house!!

I always thought Lil Nas seemed like a good dude. I was right!

I'm sure the ending of this game will surprise nobody, it's a by the numbers revenge story, but I'll spoiler tag this just in case.

Indiana Expansion. As in Project Indiana, the game's original codename.

If only he were raised by Splinter.

You are right, of course, and I agree. To be entirely honest with you, I have never really bought into lotteries myself. Not counting last week (that's when I bought two tickets; the third one was a joke), I think it happened once some twenty-odd years ago when I was still a kid and my grandpa got me a ticket as a surprise gift. As for the these past few days... call me silly, but I'm not entirely sure why I made the purchase. Given the overall mood, I guess it was something of a spontaneous "well, you never know" moment to indulge in a fantasy, but even so, I understood all too well that it was a stupid decision. Regardless, it's not happening again. EDIT: Hurlshot above put it into words perfectly before I even got to finish my post. Give it a year or two.

A lottery ticket is a pretty inexpensive way to fantasize about striking it rich.

If you had been with me on Saturday night I think you would have gone out and gotten very drunk somewhere. These were not dumb men. They were not confederate flag waving Sean Hannity fans. Every last one of them has served in wartime and saw action in countries with real tyranny. Yet are somehow blind to it happening here in the land they thought they were protecting. This is purely my own opinion here. People fail to understand how terrible a terrible thing is if they like the outcome. They don't like Antifa and BLM, and protests. So sending in federal officers to shut them down is a positive outcome in their opinion. They refuse to see that even if the outcome is desirable the way it came about was terrible. To make matters worse one of the members of our post actually drove to Bunkerville in 2014 to join the protest in the Cliven Bundy mess. This is what boggles the mind the most. HE correctly calls the actions of the BLM as heavy handed big government tyranny all while arguing the abuse of the monuments EO in Oregon is justified. The only difference is who is ordering the abuse. IMO they came from the same government. Governments enable terrible people to do terrible things. Everyone is arguing about who gets to hold the rabid dog's leash. Maybe it's time we got rid of the rabid dog.

Probably better Fx with USD than CAD.

slight change to our response: am understanding how stressful is career planning, but purchase o' lottery tickets may not be a practical solution. when we first came out to CA for school, the lottery were relative new in the state. just so happened CA had built up a jackpot which dwarfed any previous US state jackpot; had many folks who were otherwise dismissive o' lotteries buying tickets. Gromnir tended to hang out with the ol guys and we were all at a pizza place when conversation turned to, what would you do if you won the lottery? *sigh* by the end o' the eve, we had all purchased at least a single ticket. we lost. never again purchased a lottery ticket. +30 years and counting. HA! Good Fun!

Yes? No? I'm not sure. I've played a lot of ESO, and I do like that my one character can experience pretty much everything. But I do feel it lacks the build up and anticipation of some other games. Honestly I have the same issue with Skyrim. I get really into one storyline, but once I finish it, I have trouble starting a new one from scratch. It's just a different feel.

I still have one, and I like it. I did notice a little bit of quality increase, i.e. better separation of sound, and the software is better than it is for the onboard.

All world bosses and some dungeons are meant to be done in a group. It doesn't matter what your level is because there is level scaling, but you do usually need at least two other players to help. The only part that is (was? I'm not sure but it was when I first started playing) is Cyrodill because it's a PvP zone you needed to be level 10 to access it. Not all of Tamriel is in ESO yet because those will either be sold as dlc or 'chapters' (read: expansions) or the servers might get shutdown first. Long story short, when you make a new character the game will drop you into whatever expansion beginning you have and from there you can just run off in a direction--that's part of the reason why I have so many hours in one character and I'm not even done with one faction quest line, because when I get bored with a zone I'll leave and go do guild quests or just go to a new zone for a change of scenery.

People nowadays either use a dac or an amplifier if they want some high end speakers.

Sorry! I just checked it again (misread the tooltip the last time): Crits increase the DoT duration (as expected) and critting has no effect on the damage per tick. I guess this is the way it's supposed to be, so everything works fine and I can stay with my build thanks again!

Unfortunately this is a bug. If an enemy is immune to pierce damage the game will not further determine if the second dmg type (in this case shock) would be better but just dismisses the attack as "eh, piece dmg doesn't work". It's different if the enemy just has very high pierce AR (then it all works correctly). But the game logic that determines "preferable damage type" screws up once immunities are involved. You need to equip a weapon that does not do piece dmg at all (at least as first dmg type listed). For example Lord Darryn's Voulge. There's a mod that fixes this, but it wouldn't be accessible for you on a PS4 I'm afraid.

With Hand Mortar+Fire in the Hole I would pick Streetfighter/Arcane Archer. Fire in the Hole has a built-in jump (if properly enchanted with Chain Shot) and Driving Flight adds another one. If you put Fire in the Hole in the main hand and shoot an Imbue:Web or Imbue:Pull of Eora (even better if both) you create 3 instances of web/pull with one shot with immense ACC which will stop all non-resistant/immune enemies and pull them together so tight that your mortar explosions will hit them all while they are hard-CC'd for quite a long time. Streetfighter is just the optimal pick with everything Blunderbuss/Mortar related. Deathblows do immediately get unlocked by Blinding Smoke (Hand Mortar's enchantment). Mortars not only do AoE damage and target Reflex instead of Deflection for it, but also have dual damage. Against single targets switch to Kitchen Stove + some other Blunderbuss. A SC Streetfighter or Assassin can get to Gambit + Vanishing Strikes and cause massive mayhem with mortars while invisible. You need max INT and all the duration buffs you can get - like the Ooblit pet and special food and items - to extend the unbreakable invisibility of Vanishing Strikes. Also Backstab. Then just walk into a group and use Vanishing Strikes, then deal AoE Backstabs with Gambit. But before that it's obviously just an ordinary SC gun Rogue. With pistols it's best to go single handed (if you don't want to use a ton of Full Attacks all the time) and use the modal. The increase in reload speed is immense (faster than dual wielding) and you only lose 3 ACC (while gaining 15% crit conversion). Against pierce immune foes you can switch to Eccea's Arcane Blaster. Rogue/Ranger is also a good pick here but maybe neither Streetfighter nor Arcane Archer. Also Ciphers are good with this because they have no own full attacks anyway. Barbarians aren't too good with guns unless you pick a SC Barb and wait for Heart of Fury (which works with guns - especially well with mortars). Biggest reason is because Blood Thirst doesn't remove reload, only recovery (Heart of Fury does not trigger reload even if you use it with guns but only recovery). Guns also work with Barbaric Retaliation. Once you reach PL 8 a ranged Barb becomes fun and with PL 9 a ranged Barb becomes quite awesome due to Driving Roar (which is one of the most powerful dmg/CC combo abilities out there because at PL 9 it already has 8 power levels of scaling under its belt). With an Arquebus you can build decent Assassins. E.g with Bleak Walker/Assassin. Use the arquebus modal with Ring of Focused Flames and Flames of Devotion from stealth/invisibility and you'll have almost a guaranteed crit (+65 ACC). Dragon's Dowry is the best arquebus for assassinations. Funnily enough a Berserker/Assassin, while frail, works surprisingly well with Barbaric Smash+Assassinate as well. With the Red Hand you can once again use a Ranger/Rogue but also Cipher/Rogue is good. Cipher/Debonaire is one of my favorites because you can always charm an enemy and then shoot them for a nearly guaranteed crit. Even better: once you can cast Disintegrate you can charm, then land a crit with Disintegrate - and the enemy won't even flip back! The fast pistol shots make sure you get enough focus. Fighters aren't particularly good with guns unless you wait for Clear Out and put a gun in your main hand and a melee weapon or bashing shield in the offhand. This will unlock the option to execute Clear Out with a gun (pistol or blunderbuss). Especially devastating with mortars since it's AoE of Clear Out * AoE(s) of mortars. Also SC Fighter with Clean Sweep or Clear the Path (my favorite) is very impressive. My pick would be SC Devoted for Clear the Path or Devoted/Sharpshooter for max PEN and additional jumps with Driving Flight or Devoted/Streetfighter for high Sneak Attack and reload speed.

Since you say it's a fact: which of the subclasses are underwhelming and form a set the size of which could be described as "so many"? I don't think there's too much power creep. There are also some nerfs, especially when it comes to stuff that otherwise is extremely powerful. Of course: if you focus on the buffed stuff and circumvent the nerfs anyways then it will be easier. But in general I think it will not be. Elric even is considering tuning down the Megabosses because they are a lot harder to beat with his mod.

C'mon dude, 2hour playlist? Be a little more focused

I saw a trailer for a war movie and thought it looked very different from the usual Hollywood style drivel that glorifies war. Made in the Soviet Union in 1985 with a cast and crew completely unknown in my part(s) of the world I think. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/ Ordered the movie on DVD from Amazon. Will share what I think once I've watched it in its entirety.

HA! Only if you have three names. Two names or fewer and your life didn't mean a damn thing!

I really don't know about this one. I can only speak for my own experience in the branch I was in. But I never saw, nor heard of ANYTHING like that. Shady was a dark green Marine. His experience may have been very different from mine. But from what I saw; it would not be correct to call the Marine Corps a true meritocracy, but it was pretty close. Promotions were blind up to Sergeant. You made the cutting score or you didn't. Your MOS proficiency, conduct, rifle marksmanship, and physical fitness were the only things anyone gave a damn about. Take care of those four things and everything else took care of itself. No one cared if you were light green, medium green, or dark green. Run fast, shoot straight, do your job well. You will go far.

Was a good interview with Wallace - https://www.foxnews.com/politics/transcript-fox-news-sunday-interview-with-president-trump As always reading Trump is more painful than hearing him

Special instruction was a mischaracterization on my part. It was a memo from the DHS to law enforcement agencies IIRC. I'm writing on an internet forum here. This isn't a EMES ( a type of document I frequently write at work) where I'm agonizing over every word choice. If the goal is to "help" vets with PTSD law enforcement is NOT the agency to reach out to. That would be the VA which is a complete and utter s--t show and always has been for as long as I've known about it. Not holding my breath because the US government is incapable of doing anything without totally f-----g it up. I once had a copy of that memo and it was moderately insulting. It wasn't so much WHAT was said as how but it's been a hell of a long time. Really the only thing I remember is that it happened and it was literally the first thing the DHS under Obama did. Not a good first step at all.

Rogue/Ranger I guess. For blunderbusses particularly Streetfighter/Sharpshooter I guess. Get dual aoe mortar blunderbusses from Serafen (he starts with one, finishing his easy personal quest yields you another). Get bouncing upgrade on the 2nd and I guess the Blinding Smoke on 1st. Get the extra bounce ability from ranger. Get damaging/debuffing/DOT abilities from Rogue. Most should work in aoe, but avoid the Strike/Pierce the Bell line.

Thank you for the build, Frykas. I'm playing a variant of it also. As I hate consumables, I went with Forbidden Fist. Also maxed Res - both to mitigate the FF curse and was hoping to get lots of Riposte procs. Well, I didn't get as many as I hoped, so I stopped using Tuotilo's, as it was hurting my damage output too much. Still, Forbidden Fist is pretty awesome. It's special ability is quite strong and having enemies with double debuff and DOT durations and negated healing all the time quite rocks. Particularly vs durable enemies: now even Unbending doesn't help. Wound generations is a bit slower - then again I don't rely on many Wound abilities - apart from Thunderous Blows and Duality, so no real problem. Actually Hylea's Talons and FF alone provide a decent stream - and they supercharge the Crucible of Suffering too. I've never realised before it stacks with itself - quite crazy really! For sure am using Scordeo's Edge, as that's simply uber. But as for its pairing, I'm still deciding. Sure, Rannig's Wrath is nice for lots of crits, but the damage is a bit low. Tarn's Respite would also be nice for bosses, as it can debuff them further. Magran's Favor simply deals a lot of damage - even moreso with the modal. Grave Calling certainly rocks vs Vessels. Will try to get Seeker's Fang rapier next - its certainly much nicer on ciphers, but the added light DOT, combined with high rapier accuracy might still make it competitive.

Sleepy ferret is sleepy.

Food for at least 7 days!

Oooo, this is a good, good catch. I'm immediately taken straight to Game of Thrones where Cersei gets in league with the Sparrows and it does not turn out particularly well for her. Although I imagine that the relationship between OSI and the (other) corporations is more stable and collaborative. I think that Spacer’s Choice would like to think that OSI is its loyal (and domesticated) defender, and I’m sure OSI likes that Spacer’s Choice (and the other corporations) would think that, but I’m absolutely sure that OSI has its own agenda, too. In my own headcannon thinking, OSI has a sizable intelligence arm that it occasionally brings to bear to the benefit of individual corporations (or of HHC as a whole), but I think it absolutely has its own agenda as well. (Back to Game of Thrones: vibes of Varys.) Thank you for pointing this out!