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fantastic day in az for biden, although is curious so few ballots were counted. the largest batch o' votes came from pinal county, which is extreme red and had the most outstanding ballots uncounted in obvious red counties. ~13k o' the 20k votes counted today came from pinal. maricopa, by comparison, which had 24k votes ready for tabulation midday yesterday, only released 7k, and those broke 55/44 biden/trump. trump gained 1658 on biden's lead today, cutting the overall margin to 16952. were an overestimation on curable ballots. is closer to 6k instead o' 12k. coming into today, trump needed 56-57% kinda numbers to pull ahead. now trump needs 59-60%. again, that is a simplification 'cause is the spread which actual matters, but am offering just for those looking at announced ballot dumps and wondering what it means. regardless, if trend o' today continues, which is not a good assumption to make, then biden wins by better than 10k. oh, and btw, az only has recount if margin is .1 or less. however, situation looked much different last night. one day changed things a fair bit, and at this snail pace o' counting, we could be waiting for tuesday (not counting the curable ballots) before we get everything counted. heck, a few more hours this eve could change the situation. late monday might be when we genuine know 'bout az. isn't necessary, but am hopeful home states o' john mccain and john lewis flip. also, the (frivolous) lawsuits from the trump campaign becomes effective moot if is such overwhelming ec numbers with which to contend. oh, and hospitalizations and death count from covid is rising dramatic... story didn't end nov 3 as trump predicted. we saw tapper at cnn lament the crowds in nyc, dc, atlanta and elsewhere. were not media silence on the issue as many claim. however, am hopeful biden makes a forceful announcement in the next day regarding the continuing dangers o' covid-19 and the importance o' social distancing. https://www.hiawathaworldonline.com/news/national/biden-aide-responds-to-crowds-celebrating-despite-virus/video_c4391e1a-28d3-51d1-8b68-e4643edd2cad.html at least the campaign is saying the right things, but this message needs to be communicated w/o equivocation. sure, the celebrations is mostly over, but the messaging needs be consistent if people are gonna take serious. HA! Good Fun! ps in the last couple minutes, biden's lead in az increased to 16985. +33 for biden. unfortunate, am having no idea how many votes were involved. could be 33 or 33000. pps it turns out there is a more practical reason the President is fighting the election results 60% of all money donated is going first to the trump election campaign account for debt retirement. "Other Trump fundraising pitches in recent days ask for help to “protect the integrity of this election” but lead to a donation page for Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” committee. The fine print on those solicitations says 60% of a contribution helps the campaign retire debt and 40% goes to the Republican National Committee." yet another trump scam and his supporters is only too happy to enable the soon to be former President. HA! Good Fun!

Extremely clever of the Democrats to steal the election but let the Republicans keep a fairly high number of senate and house seats. Cunning.

Did you know you can upgrade Finality's Claim? I didn't. For the first time ever, I noticed a "combine shards" button at the bottom of the tooltip. It gathers void shards that you pick up in BoW (always wondered what those did). All three, and I got a Time Dilation III aura attached to the ring, which slows action speed of all nearby by -7%. Not great, but not bad for a surprise upgrade. Just leaving this note here in case you, like me, foolishly missed an obvious button. It's not documented by the wiki, so I figured it couldn't be that well known.

For the completion sake: and I suppose now Mimimi is off to whatever the next project will be. If their steam comments are t9 be trusted they are planning to stay within the genre. I just hope they will shake things up. I think Shadow Tactics and Desperados3 sucked the current design dry. Good stuff, but I will need something fresh to be on board for the third time.

Never be said I missed a chance to post this gem

I got some great news. It turns out the Tampa Bay rays really won the World Series after all. All I had to do is refuse to accept that the Dodgers actually won. Clearly there were some irregularities in game six. So anyway now the Rays are the champs. I can’t wait to order my T-shirt on Amazon. Any day now right?

Works well for status updates on my work.

The domino effect of Cyberpunk 2077 getting pushed back to avoid 2020 GotY Yakuza: Like a Dragon continues.

I always find this a classic...

For an opinion piece talking about some Trump legislation... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden-taxes.html

I have gone back to Shadowrun Hong Kong, and spent most that 4 hours on Racter's mission, because I've sucked and let my main character die, due to me being cheap to use a medikit... bleh... serve me right. At least the repeat of the second part of the mission was just 35 more minutes. Anyway before that from my DS 2 NG2+ I have still two more videos First one is Duke's Dear Freja. I was able to hit her few times during Birghstone Cove Tseldora Encounter, so she started with little bit lower HP pool. She still kicked my ass first time, because I completely stopped focusing when she had less than 10% HP left. Second attempt was successful though

Not really news maybe, but mod-interesting. I wish it was TR1 tho - but maybe that would likely be a lot harder to do re: texture replacing, not sure? tbh, I barely remember 3. 1 and 2 and 4 are the ones I remember most vividly.

Finished Subnautica. Great game, still buggy even after all this time. Really like this concept of games. Can't wait for Breathedge to be finised, as it's turning out to be a much tighter and less buggy of a game (I encountered zero bugs). I'm half way through Pathfinder Kingmaker (Playing a Paladin) and so far I agree with Zoraptor on most points. The biggest letdown in the game for me, compared to the Infinity Engine games, is the audio. Especially the background audio, which is really lacking. It would have done so much to make the world feel alive and it feels like they didn't even make an effort. The rest of the audio experience is not much better when comparing to IE games. I would have also liked to see the kingdom events being reflected in the world, but outside major quest, the environment is pretty static. Gameplay is pretty much on par with the IE games for better and worse. The worst bug I got so far is the game not saving, but I found a workaround for that. I think this is the best Baldur's Gate successor we got so far. edit: oh, yeah not being able to alt-tab the game in 2020, wtf.

Finished Pathfinder Kingmaker. Enjoyable and a good game overall, suspect it will be a better Baldur's Gate 3 than the Larian offering. Finished on whatever the 2nd to top difficulty was since I got most of the way through during lockdown back in April/ May then stalled out, and it was far easier 2nd time through. Monk protagonist, got most of the 'secret' content except Tenebrous Depths, because I zoomed through it so didn't get all the trigger pieces before killing the bosses. Think I mentioned it at the time but my major criticism is how random the combat is, tactics tend to be the same most of the time- buff and swarm plus some crowd control- and who wins is determined by saving throws and occasionally crits, most often against your main character since that can be an instant game ender. At least this time the enemy annoying ability spam was manageable. Plot and characters weren't really anything special or memorable, but equally weren't bad or a detriment. The kingdom mechanics were fine, again since it was a replay I knew some of the more annoying quirks like the Bald Mountain curses triggering earlier than the journal said they would so could work around the old staple of having the protag stuck upgrading someone's abilities while things turned to crap for a week or so. Only had one outright bug too, with one of the crafters never turning up, and a handful of crashes. OTOH, the save game size meant initial loads were pretty long even with a NVMe SSD. Definitely good enough and enough room for improvement that I'm looking forwards to the next game.

And nothing in the 200 years has shown much change to that...

video not available in this country. which speech? while am waiting, am gonna offer an alternative. is a speech from george w. bush delivered 'bout a week after 9/11. George W. Bush congratulates Joe Biden on winning White House, sending message to GOP about election’s outcome aside: @Hurlshot we watched snl last night for the first time in years, by accident. we were looking for a football game and happened to see the snl opening credits (missed the cold open.) we watched the dave chappelle monologue, and am glad we did. folks who stopped listening to your clip before they got to 14:31 did selves a genuine diservice. one more quick aside, am knowing we said young voters cannot be counted on for the next election. truth. however, am thinking with all the applause being showered on various groups for their effort to make the historic change in georgia and elsewhere possible, am seeing far less credit being given to young people. as much as Gromnir personal pokes fun at young people over a laundry list o' what we perceive as faults, regardless o' party affiliation, they came out and voted and as it turns out, their contribution to American democracy were pivotal. congratulations to young voters. you have our genuine and profound thanks.

AOC is a fraud and a phony, the end. Yeah I'm a bit tired Europeans obsessing over American politics, almost as much as I am Americans looking to Europe as some kind of model for the future. The same continent that produced Napoleon and Hitler shouldn't be an example.

prove it isn't impossible? ... you are not suggesting such is the credible basis for challenging an election, are you? it sure isn't the basis for lawsuits. @HoonDing most o' the 300 were eventually tracked, but ~150k were delivered late... "In several swing states, late ballots will still be counted as long as they were postmarked by Election Day and received by Friday. They include Nevada, where 4,518 ballots arrived on Wednesday and 635 arrived Thursday, as well as North Carolina (2,958 on Wednesday and 835 on Thursday) and Pennsylvania (3,439 Wednesday and 1,459 Thursday). But states such as Arizona (864 Wednesday and 559 Thursday) and Georgia (853 Wednesday and 610 Thursday) don’t accept any ballots after Election Day." pennsylvania ballots received late is actual current being sequestered and may eventual be counted. +5k votes. 'cause o' the Supreme Court decision, any ballot received after election day is sequestered. is unlikely to affect the Presidential race, but could be vital for down ballot stuff. HA! Good Fun!

Hey there friends, just dropping in to say that it's extremely good that Trump will no longer be president next year. Next step, vote out every single Republican, abolish parties entirely, stop using the electoral college, switch to preferential voting... EDIT: also AOC 2024 imo

Never seen the appeal of Jade Empire 2. JE1 was KOTOR reskinned with theme part China, I wouldn't expect anything else from Bioware for a sequel. Asian settings from a western studio will also be seen as, sigh, 'problematic' nowadays by the offendatrons on twitter, and Bioware listens to them. OTOH, I'd sell my left kidney for a 'Monkey RPG', especially if they used the wonderful TV series theme song that I've had semi permanently stuck in my head since the mid 80s. Fair warning, once that theme is heard it can never be unheard.

I agree. It looks far too good for the stage the game is supposed to be in. Why JE2 hasn’t been made with all the advancements in action-RPG genre is beyond me. Still, I wouldn’t want to see what modern Bioware/EA would do with it.

That makes sense. The priest extends Ascended with SoT, and the cipher returns the favor with Ancestral Memory, allowing the priest to recast it endlessly. Thanks!

So how many of you folks noticed Trumps campaign manager use this: Only for Biden's Digital Director to respond with:

I wonder how you feel about Mark Esper getting fired? Seems like he basically refused to use the military against civilians, so I'd think he'd be your type of guy.

never mind again - it DOES affect allies. i think i needed a save/load cycle for the game to properly initiate the aura in combat. edit: the description says the aura only activates when engaged, and my original test subject (bekarna) had no engagement, so it didn't trigger the aura. it's unfortunate it affects allies, but the aura range is so small (1.5m) in practice it's pretty easy to keep allies out and have it only affect engaging enemies.

never mind - it *DOES* affect enemies. it's just smart enough to remember that bekarna was not originally hostile to me, so it didn't affect her when i force-attacked her. sorry bekarna

Yesterdays game scared the hell out of me. Going into the 4th quarter with a 13 point lead and would have really screwed up the Cowboys draft potential if they would have won.

I think in Poe1 frenzy always concealed health, but in Deadfire it only applies to berserkers? You could always pick a "race" that has an ability that activates when bloodied, like humans or fire godlike and the barbarian class itself has the blooded ability that activates after getting well, bloodied and you can also spot it after the ability unflinching de-activates. Assuming one picks either one, naturally. In any case, if you go berserker get the ring Voidward (it reduces raw damage taken by -25%) asap; it's over at Radiant Court in Dunnage. Might not wanna go overboard with might in character creation either, cuz it increases the self-damage from frenzy. Also if you play in rtwp, one can always program the ai to use healing abilities when at say, bloodied or near death.

I'm never going to get a Jade Empire sequel.

Pfizer's New COVID-19 Vaccine Prevents 90% of Infections. HUZZAH! Lets try it out on our oldsters ASAP!

Keep in mind that Debonaire is a bit tricky in melee because of the missing engagement (so no Persistent Distraction) and his passive that makes the Debonaire weaker when no friends are around. I just tried this combo out for a bit to see if it works - I didn't do a playthrough with a whole char concept so I can't say how fun/unfun it is as a real build.

I'm waffling on upgrading since I have a 3900X and 5700XT I mean, I really want to, but since I'm still gaming at 1080p I don't see the point unless I also get some new monitors and that's even more money that I'm not sure I want to spend right now

By the way, Wildstrike seems to apply to every weapon attack while shifted, not only claws. Good for FF cause FF ability does not count as originating from wielded weapons.

Why would a herald be a better tank then BM/Tactician? It's immortal with wall of drain cheese and has better ways besides engagement to keep enemies of the party (for some reason I can't think of the name of the spell, but all I can think of is the word "succ")

It also triggers when you an enemy you engage is killed (whether by this char or another). So its actually much better then it sounds!

Hey guys. I just got my engineering skill up to level 60 and I’m loving it! No more do I have to purchase pristine items! I feel that pristine items are more worthwhile to modify with my precious few more potent modifications, and now all my items can be pristine if I repair them a few times so stoked! I really feel like getting your engineering to at least level 60 is a must. Not only can you easily enough make your essential gear better and more valuable, you can potentially double the value of items you sell if you want to throw a few item parts towards it. I’m pretty new to the game, but I think I’m going to work towards getting most of my skills to level 50 then work on science. I feel like tinkering is essential, and making it as cheap as possible would be ideal. I think if I can get science up to max, I could tinker all my unique items to max level eventually and have a ton of viable weapons at my disposal come endgame and dlcs. Anywhere else you guys think I should focus my points? Thanks and have a good day!