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An oldie but goldie

Scotland the Brave!... And no, I'm not being sarcastic. Hands up anyone who feel like sniggering at the following article. If you do, you're not alone, just ignorant. It's a significant expense, that is no laughing matter, especially for struggling families. As mentioned in The Guardian article below, stigma around the subject is no small part of the problem. Scotland has become the first country in the world to make period products free for all. MSPs unanimously approved the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Bill on Tuesday. There is now a legal duty on local authorities to ensure that free items such as tampons and sanitary pads are available to "anyone who needs them". https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51629880 The issue isn't new (2017): https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/17/girls-from-poorer-families-in-england-struggle-to-afford-sanitary-protection Charities, campaigners and teachers report scale of the problem, saying more must be done to tackle stigma Girls from low-income families across England are struggling to afford sanitary protection, with many teachers buying tampons for their students or seeking help with supplies from charities and voluntary groups, the Guardian has been told. Charities, campaigners and teachers say that the problem is happening in cities and rural areas across the country, describing girls missing school, using donations, or wearing makeshift protection during their period. I know, why should I care, right? I'm a guy. I don't have a partner nor daughters, so I could just not care, right? Which is an attitude that leaves humanity stuck in the dark ages (IMHO). I'm not going to benefit directly from the Scottish parliaments decision, but... I do think access to basic necessities (and I do consider this a basic necessity) should be a not unreasonable expectation in a civilized society, just like healthcare and education.

YES! You were flying a pirate flag. It matters which flag you fly. That's why you can collect them. 😄

republican governor, tom ridge. HA! Good Fun! ps flynn is just the first. anybody who could be used as a witness against trump in future litigation will likely be pardoned so as to remove leverage options available to the justice department. is the fact this pardon doesn't surprise anybody which should be shocking to everybody.

There's a trial on free tampons/ pads in high schools here. It's got pretty broad support from everyone. The other option they were looking at was getting the government's medical bulk purchase agency to do the purchasing and then on sell at cost for older women.

This is on point, really. A perfect outline of a lot of the issues with DC and the superhero genre in general, as well as a lot of the hardcore fanbase.

I only got to use my new Sony X900H for a short bit. It was a happy coincidence that I got it at all. It just happened that I stopped for the night about 8 miles from where I live. No point in sleeping in the truck 8 miles from home. It also happened that early Black Friday sales were on already. Anyway, I got the TV home, set it up, then made sure everything worked alright. Then, just for ****s and giggles, I hooked my lappy to it via HDMI and fired up Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After changing in-game resolution to 4K the game looked spectacular. It ran like ass, mind you. The GTX 1080 mobile in the lappy is great at 1080p and can handle 1440p in well optimized games, but 4K is just too much. It's a testament to how well optimized Yakuza: Like a Dragon is that it ran anything approaching remotely playable at 4K. After that it was sleepy time then back on the road next morning.

I finished 1 twice... + expansion. God what did I do with my youth 😛

Ah, Drakensang, the game that makes Divinity's and Kingmaker's world building look fresh and iconoclastic and shames the peg-legged-zombie-amble party speed of said two games into Zootopia's sloth oblivion. 🥱 ...and yet I look at those char sheets and vaguely NWN2-y screenshots and feel tempted to buy it. Sigh.

You could get a bunch of those and sit in the middle! Put up an avi wallpaper of some beautiful environment and spin in your chair with arms flung wide like an actor in a movie. Like this, only with curved's. Of course, for me who loves huge screens - I need one of these!

Bloody freebooters, what happened to the time when women had to bring a sacrifice to the temple after being unclean for a week? Leviticus 15:29-30 🤣 Women here have campaigned to have sanitary products except from VAT, or at least reduced VAT (other items considerd basic necessities like food, water and energy have reduced VAT) to no avail for a while now - let alone them being freely available if you can't afford your own.

I'd imagine TP is readily available already, as I've found most public restrooms provide that and don't expect you to bring your own. Fun fact, my wife who teachers High School PE, has been buying feminine hygiene products and providing them for students for the last couple decades. She typically sells bottled water to cover the costs.

SpaceX's Starship SN8 prototype fires engines ahead of major test flight.

I’ve read that book. It could have been excellent but it definitely wasn’t. Dan and Grover were both interesting guys who had seen a lot of history. When the focus was on them it was a very interesting read. But Neurburn undermined everything he hoped to accomplish with his incessant whining and self loathing. He made injected himself into the story and he is NOT interesting

Yup. When I got the first Samsung, I decided to get a pneumatic-arm stand for it... and one of the twin-armed stands was on sale and cost about £5 more than the one-armed. So I thought, eh, juuuuust in case I decide to splurge on a second monitor at some point in the future....

I like having more frontliners than ranged characters. I'm going to suggest some kind of paladin multiclass, because I think they - are nice and easy to play (just use the full attacks and you're probably not going too far wrong in 80% of fights) - make the game more forgiving (lay on hands, armor and heal aura, reviving and liberating exhortation - all good for a first time player) - require very little micromanaging. (I don't know about your personal tolerance for micromanaging, but I have very little patience for it!) I think something like Kind Wayfarer / Rogue or Steel Garrotte / Rogue, dual wielding weapons should deal respectable damage while providing decent support. (Could even take Trickster subclass for more survivability buffs) I think rogue multiclasses make basically every non-spellcaster better in some way - sneak attack + deathblows in the endgame is just a truly silly amount of damage. So I wouldn't feel too bad about having three in one party.

I was feeling a touch blah, saw that Amazon had my monitor reduced by a third, and decided to pick it up... Now I have my matching pair of Samsung curved 27" side by side...

That bass sound! 👌

I know it's a sort of way out there as far as sources go, but Putin had some interesting insights into Trumps popularity with his base. From a Pre-G20 interview last year (after laughing off the idea that he arranged for Trump to get elected). Tl;dr; Trump saw how costly globalization had been for the middle class and seized on that. Edit: Crap, doesn't like embedding, need to click link to youtube to see. Fast forward to 4:52 for the part I wanted to share

I'm playing with the MM6-7-8 merge mod that puts the assets of all three games into an enhanced version of the MM8 engine. I'm sure enhancements can be acquired individually, but it comes baked in with the usual modern trimmings like high resolution widescreen, mouselook, slightly improved textures, user moddability, etc. All you need is the GOG copy of MM8 to run it, too. EDIT: Travel between the worlds of the three games is enabled once you're high enough level to learn Town Portal and can brave the required location without getting instantly killed.

I worked all day and came home to my roommate and fiance watching Dolomite is My Name.

You were meeting arms dealers in these clubs ? It is certainly not an easy language to learn, well or perhaps I don't have the knack for it. But there are a lot of resources out there.

The Troubadour/Psion is a non-melee character who will mostly cast. You can basically dump CON and RES. You want highest INT and combine that with Lingering Echoes. I mostly used Killers Froze Stiff, Soul Shock and Thrice Was She Wronged in the early game, later also Ben FIdel's Neck, Mental Binding... But you can basically take what fits your party best. With some power levels, high INT and Lingering Echoes the paralyze effect of Killers Froze Stiff last rel. long so that was def. my most used spell. For a good time I simply did a Killers->Soul Shock->Killers->Soul Shock routine. If enemies were resistant to DEX afflictions then Her Revenge->Soul Shock and so on. But I can also see that a summoning approach + charms or even CHanter Charm + Cipher Charm would be very effective. The beauty of a Troubadour: he can do everything well. My latest phrase was Many Lives Pass By - because that endless stream of Skeletons every 3 sec is just too good imo. But a Trobadour can be a real interrupt-machine with an offensive chant (e.g. THe Long Night's Drink) as well: as soon as you get the Champion invocation all his crits will interrupt, including crits from chants(!). You can substitute that with Borrowed Instincts for exampe. Lots of options. But for the beginning the most fun was just the alternating paralyze and then soul shock, then repeat. I used Sasha's Singing Scimitar as a pure stt stick for 1/empower per encouter and the Shocking Prelude which works with all your damaging spells. When going with a Priest as nuker and a Troubadour/Cipher I would most likely bring a Wizard who's able to cast Miasma of Dull-Mindedness and Dazzling Lights (besides all the otehr good stuff they can cast). That easy -50 Will debuff is very helpful for everthing that targets Will (several Chanter invocations, several Priest spells, several Cipher powers) and also a Wizard can profit from Cipher's Ancestor's Memory immensely. Also Wizards are very versatile. I like SC Wizards, but it doesn't have to be. Looking at a Cipher who can potentially mass-charm (and even better a Chanter/Cipher who can charm with both classes) a Debonaire/Wizard with Blightheart might be cool. They get 100% crit conversion when they cast friendly-fire spells onto charmed targets, the arquebus will give your splls a 10% corrosive lash and such a Debonaire/Wizard does quite good arquebus damage, too. Just an idea though. Arcane Knight is also always good. Another option would be a Druid. You are a bit low on healing. Ancient would be a good option, Lifegiver, too. Think about Great Maelstrom.

Oh Sunny is definitely coming with if I did that. of course in 2026 she would be 17 years old I think so hard to say if she would even still be with me. But if not her somebody will be. The way I figure it if I stay here in my home and continue to do what I’m doing, growing a large part of my own food and generating about half of the power I use I could probably live comfortably on about $20,000 a year. That would be enough to cover the cost of property taxes, miscellaneous groceries and other things, health insurance, veterinarinary costs, that kind of thing. One thing you have to love about Tennessee is that it’s a red state. Taxes are low in cost of living is pretty easy. So the idea is to generate an income that gets to close to that as possible then I can live without touching my savings which obviously is ideal. my home is paid off, and I have no debts to speak of. That’s a pretty good position to be in. now if I go for the gypsy retirement plan obviously $20,000 a year is not going to cut it. So I would have to sell all of the real estate that provides a revenue stream for me because I won’t be around to maintain it. If I sold everything it’s probably a pretty good chunk of money. But if it’s only earning average stock market interest I will likely run out before I croak.Living on the road like that, even modestly, isn’t cheap.

Vaporum https://www.gog.com/game/vaporum Vaporum: Lockdown (both steampunk) https://www.gog.com/game/vaporum_lockdown Grimrock 2 (dunno if you played this too or not) https://www.gog.com/game/legend_of_grimrock_2 Operencia: Stolen Sun (fantasy) https://www.gog.com/game/operencia_the_stolen_sun_explorers_edition StarCrawlers (scifi) https://www.gog.com/game/starcrawlers I played Vaporum and Starcrawlers, and enjoyed them both. Vaporum I enjoyed more, but I had a lot of fun with Starcrawlers too. I do not know of any more modern dungeoncrawlers, so if anyone konws some and they are available on GOG, feel free to recommend me something as well.

Edit: Hmm, I wonder if it was because I was flying Principi flag? I haven't had this occur since I took it off.

Okay, this amused me... A Cyberpunk 2077 character, wearing a tattoo of ... "Ghost in a Shell"

You're after a server. So that the game is hosted (run) on a seperate device to yours or your friends'. Dedicated servers are on the feature board but as a future consideration. https://grounded.obsidian.net/feature-board

What do you call a gathering of covidiots? A covfefe.

Agh! Got my modern day military thriller characters all mixed up. 🤣

Well..makes sense, it's a Jack Reacher story, no ? 😛

Men discover mysterious metal monolith in Utah wilderness, immediately touch it.

That TD by Lamb was incredible:

Also this is what that Rude Mage Gets! A Fine Light Crit Explosions!

Llama uses spit attack. It's super effective!

I loved the original Prey 2 premise so much.

Never be said I missed a chance to post this gem

I don't like any of the companions in Kingmaker. Most of them are very good / fun / interesting mechanically but NONE of their stories or personalities do anything for me, and it's a shame. I don't know how literally all of them managed to end up so boring -- the only thing I can think of is that Owlcat wrote them mostly around their Alignments and took the most boring / tropy interpretations of those alignments and gave them those characteristics... Or sth like that.

well, pretty dangerhair girl

Now, where's my favorite gif—

Was bit annoyed that the ship vendor would only give you limited info on the ships(and I haven't found any other info online). So I made this for ease. Boarding's still the way to go but I do like the naval battles. These are base statistics without any upgrades or crew. I assume Hit-Chance would mean how difficult a target you are towards enemies. Majority of the people are saying Hit-Chance would mean the chance that you'll hit the enemy though. *Navigator increases Travel Speed with 5 per level. *Fully assigned Deck increases Travel Speed with 16 if a Navigator is also present.