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No, leftist

@ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP The thing I was immediately struck by with the first few episodes of Sailor Stars is that the tone feels wildly different to me - in a good way. It's both...more lighthearted as well as appropriately serious when it needs to be (also the serious parts haven't just been characters awkwardly standing around while threatening and screaming at each other like all of the end of SuperS was), and I didn't feel this dreadful disconnect like I did with SuperS where the content is actually kind of horrifying and yet the show is playing pretty much everything for laughs like we're back in season 1 where all the villainous plots were silly schemes to steal people's energy. If they wanted to have that tone again, you could...but the content needed to be, well, not what it was, and it needed to not come at the sacrificing of character development already made in previous seasons. It also helps that a few of our main characters haven't been constantly insulting and yelling and screaming at each other...and the Albino Rhino seems to be ever so mercifully gone. In just the three episodes I watched, Usagi seems like a completely different and much more likable, intelligent, and reasonable person - much more like what I remember from my increasingly faint memories of S. Gosh, thinking about it, I really legitimately feel like I was kind of abused physically and mentally by SuperS - and that was with loads of skipping. You said Chibi-Usa saying "Twinkle Yell" every episode made you want to kill yourself? I only heard her say it literally like 2-3 times the entire season because I skipped so much...you poor bastard.

Episode 1 of Sailor Stars Season 2 was pretty good, but Oh yeah, and since you're playing Record of Lodos War, have you seen an anime of it from the 90s? I'm pretty sure I watched it as a kid.

China will never be humiliated again

https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronavirus-cases-map/ Vaccine doses reported INCREASED An average of 250,448 vaccine doses were reported each day in the last week. As of March 31, 14.3% of Texans have been fully vaccinated. Average new cases INCREASED by 166 cases compared with the seven-day average a week ago. On April 1, 2,409 new confirmed cases and 797 new probable cases were reported. Hospitalizations DECREASED by 456 patients compared with a week ago. As of April 1, 2,954 Texans are hospitalized for the coronavirus. Average new deaths DECREASED by 20 deaths compared with the seven-day average a week ago. On April 1, 118 new deaths were reported. I am not sure if those statistics with that vaccination rate give any case for celebration. Especially if average new cases continue to rise there is high probability that hospitalizations and deaths will follow

Depends on how things develop on the home front in China. It could be next year, it could be in five years. Depends on how fast Xi needs an external "threat". If none presents itself, he can always assimilate Taiwan (forcefully). Trump set an unfortunate precedent, being willing to sacrifice allies without batting an eyelid. Xi may be expecting more of the same in the White House. In the meantime, China is busy building up its power base and infrastructure for power projection in the Pacific, all the way down to Antarctica. and down through Africa. @BruceVCyou better brush up on your Mandarin too, as Chinese interests are spreading throughout that continent too... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3086968/china-finds-manufacturing-opportunities-low-wage-africa And leaving environmental disasters in their wake, like a passing army ant swarm https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210323-the-factories-turning-west-africas-fish-into-powder

On a game related tangent... BBC - Loot boxes linked to problem gambling

Usagi just might be at her strongest in Sailor Stars. She's still funny and occassionally immature, but never really annoying (well maybe once or twice, heh) like she was in SuperS. Spoilers, but an example: Best not to think of SuperS.

@majestic

Yes, I watched that one a long time ago. Don't remember much about it, except that I like it. This was another funny episode. I remember

I sniff my cats all the time. They smell kinda like hay.

https://www.universal-sci.com/article/discovered-bacteria-strains-aid-martian-crop-growth

This has happened twice a year since 2014. Every time it's evidence of an imminent Russian invasion/ Ukraine taking back Donbass, and every time it's been the equivalent of Putin resigning in January 2021 because he has Parkinson's. ie a rumour that makes the rounds of the press, but when it expires it does so with no press mention. Usually the Russians do some war games where they've always done them, go home in 6 weeks, then come back 6 months later. (There used to be yearly articles about the Russians building up their military and recruiting 100ks of new troops ...which was the yearly conscription intake, and it never got mentioned when the annual intake got discharged and the size of the army dropped. Haven't seen one of those in a while though)

The United States Marine Corps is about to reinvent itself

Another giveaway on GOG. Steel Rats

Doing on-line food shop. When I type Magnum I get offered ice cream or 1.5L of Verve Clicquot. This has radically complicated my dessert choice.

Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. This game is very easy, but I'm enjoying some boss battles. Some of the bosses (the big ones):

Thanks for the clarification, Boeroer.

Only for the bash afaik, not for the counterattack. Besides the PEN the damage itself also isn't very high iirc. But I didn't even know it's good for focus generation so maybe I slept on this.

Cop resigns after video shows him slamming his K-9 into a patrol car, NC police say ‘It was crying.’ Officer seen punching K-9 in face under investigation, CA cops say First off.... the only good reason to strike a dog is if you are being attacked. Or someone/thing else is. Never, EVER strike a dog as some kind of discipline. First off it's ineffective and counter productive. They will shut down on you and whatever point you were trying to make will not be received. Second of all is destroys the trust you've built up. It damages your relationship with the dog. Third, it is just cruel. A dog that loves a person will lie there and be beaten to death before raising even a tooth to defend itself. It takes an utter monster to beat a dog like that. It's no different from beating a helpless child. These two cops are the exact kind that give the profession a bad name. These are the kinds that would beat a suspect to death, shoot a man in the back and be genuinely surprised anyone took issue with it. Far too many cops are incapable of empathy. If you cannot muster up any for your canine partner you certainly won't have any for the public.

I feel you. Especially in that game where part of the fun is failing. My brain can't handle all that failure. If I wanted to fail I'd just live my real life.

One of the best weapons for a soul blade is Sun and Moon. With it you can spam Soul Annihilation without interruption (the second hit of the flail will recharge your focus lost) which will increase your dps greatly since the PL bonus will be applied to all your hits. If you add Tuotilo's Palm you can have the dps of a dual wielder and the defense of a shield user at the same time. On top you also get double healing from White Flames and free ripostes for more focus.

XCOM 2 is super cheap, am tempted.

It's been Volo all along

That one, he didn't make up. They are generally credited with reviving the genre of CRPG's at a time where it was more dead than a Norwegian Blue. Every 2 out of 3 games released were some kind of RTS spin off of Blizzards Dune 2 and Warcraft III (the two games that made Blizzard what they are today I think). Long gone was the glory of CRPG's and the memories of SSI's Gold Box Games (Champions of Krynn, Curse of The Azure Bonds etc.), Origins Ultima IV and V etc. Then suddenly out of the blue came this company that was started by two doctors to make medical applications and proposed yet another RTS "Infinity Wars" (to compete with the 2567 or so other RTS games in circulation at the time) to Interplay. Some clever guy (they had those at Interplay at the time) told the doctors that the RTS market was a few parsecs beyond the point of saturation, but hey, tweak your RTS a bit, add some D&D rule sets, add the option to simulate turn based combat in we can talk. BG and BG2 ended up selling millions of copies and suddenly CRPG's were hot. Interplay also launched Fallout in the same era, as well as Icewind Dale. But tl;dr; the CRPG market was stone dead at the time and everybody talked about it as something that would never come back.

Ion Fury expansion coming this summer.