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Well, the thread topic is pretty apt this time 😛

Bad wordplay time...

Roaming around and seeing what I can find...

Looks like the glass hammer was finally recovered.

If anyone is interested these are two really excellent books on the Cuban missile crisis. The first will actually put you on the bridge of the four Soviet submarines and gives the account of their four commanders. As well as on the bridge of the US destroyers that were hunting them. It is a really cool perspective. The second one was written by Robert Kennedy who of course was on EXCOM And was present for absolutely every meeting.

I have read that origin for the use of cheesy quite a bit as well but imo it's a completely different meaning than using it for cheese in game. Maybe my english is just not good enough since I'm not a native speaker, but the 1896 usage of the word seems to be mostly used for something of lower quality than advertised. Most speedrun exploits require quite a bit of mechanical practice/skill but idk if I ever would call those cheese, I don't think any exploit has to be automatically cheese, but as we already saw in this discussion everyone seems to ahve their own personal usage of the word. Also I highly doubt many new players use exploits in Deadfire, it is mostly solo potd/TOI or even Ultimate players who look for those. There is no sane reason to use SoF with a party if I can set simple AI scripts that make my party more powerful than a solo char will ever be. 😛

For me there are three different things: cheese/cheap - easy way (unfair for the enemy), but perfectly legit exploits - using bugs, loopholes or unintended behaviors in the game to gain an unfair advantage cheating - using external means to alter the game and gain an unfair advantage Using 2 and 3 in MMOs is, of course, bannable. In the case of SoT/WoD, using them during the encounter in a normal way can be considered cheap, but it's of course perfectly legit. On the other hand, exploiting the AI and buffing before fights or even carrying those buffs from a fight to another is obviously an exploit (it gives clearly an unfair advantage never intended by the devs).

At the beginning of the game you are sitting at a dinner table with Pagan Min. He gets up, asks you to wait for him, then walks away. In a normal playthrough, this is your cue to escape, but what if instead you honor his request and wait?

The pilot on your water heater uses a push button igniter (do you hear a click when you push it), like a gas BBQ grill, right? So no electricity necessary.

It is a classic for a reason. @Bartimaeus

I finished Far Cry 4 last night and it was an entertaining experience, it gets a solid 65/100 on the highly respected global " BruceVC game score " system We all know about Ubisoft games and what they deliver on and FC4 is no different. I found myself compelled despite some " side quest fatigue " still doing numerous activities and killing random enemies right to the end. I like the way the economy of the game works, you utilize money quickly and the side quests provide ways to fund your ammunition purchases and healing syringes which are critical I found the game to be very elegant and functional , everything worked and I had no bugs or crashes that I can recall I particularly enjoyed hunting animals and clearing the main enemy fortresses. And the crafting element made sense and it was fun finding animals to kill for resources Good game and recommended for a break from fantasy RPG which is the undeniable leader of all gaming genres ....as we all know

Definitions of blurry made-up terms aside: I think most players who don't want to use some tactics that make the game too easy will say that it "feels cheesy" for them - even if it's intended behavior. Or they will say "it feels like cheating" even if they are not actually using cheats. Imo players can call it whatever they like - as long as they don't judge people for using it in their single player game.

Regarding the Soviet Union, I have several In-laws that miss a lot of things about the old the old days. If I had to describe the biggest difference I see between them and what I see with most Americans is that they don't think they're all millionaires in waiting and would rather trade a a higher ceiling for a higher floor, if that makes sense.

'Conservative' Texas senator John Cornyn criticizes President Joe Biden for being "unimaginably conventional". i'd like to exit the simulation now, please

Meh, left wing, right wing, who cares?

Tesla Owners, Say ‘Open Butthole’ and Get a Little Surprise.

K** L***, please, this is a family forum. While it certainly needs to die or at least be handled a lot better than it typically is beating the villain to lose by cutscene is more than just a jRPG trope (apart from ME3 off the very very top of my head Malak does it too in KOTOR, as does ol' meatwagon in TWitcher 2 and neither of those games are jRPGs).

That sounds like I really should finish watching NGE.

@Gromnir Bruce is asking about Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania not Russia.

fake news. western lies. only kinda kidding. russians know there is better than what they have, but particular the older generation o' russians remember just how bad things can be. for near a decade after 1991, russians were promised how much better things would be. just wait a little bit for free market magic to work. starve. freeze. putin made things better. is not complicated or deep or profound. HA! Good Fun!

That is technically true, but current communist party isn't united behind singular ideology, but they are more like left wing alliance and even then it has only ~13% support and Marxists are minority in the party. Left-wing nationalist (who don't really care about communism or socialism, in their world view social struggle is between nations) and reformers (who are critical towards communism and USSR and want socialism that is quite close to Nordic socialism). In my knowledge grannies and veterans aren't don't make any bigger sunk of members of communist party than they make of United Russia. I would not recommend to go shout Marxist slogans in Karelia for example, as there those grannies may beat you up.

looking at it the wrong way. the russian economy, by any western metric, is not good, but the situation from 1991 until near 2000ish were kinda nightmarish. germany and japan, after ww2, were rebuilt by the winners. the russians/ussr lose cold war and then the west stands by and watches as many freeze and starve. putin shows up and and gdp functional doubles in eight years, lowest wages is significant supplemented and pensions is restored. not a surprise people in russia love putin. today, no matter how bad things get and regardless o' how many is sent into poverty with each new self-inflicted financial crisis, putin has convinced russians it is the fault o' the west. putin's playbook is based on deflection and whataboutism and he uses with his own people as much as in foreign policy. but again, post 1991 were a terrible and frightening time for russians. can bring up statistics ' bout how terribad is the russian economy in 2008, 2014-2017, today, but none living in russia has ever known better. is not a hard sell for putin to convince russians they is doing good, 'cause compared to how bad things were, putin is not wrong. HA! Good Fun!

Nothing like a bit of DIY work 😇

That is very clever and humorous analogy about political rhetoric and sauce ...well played

I am... in my own way. Once you cover it in sauce, they both taste the same. Not that different from the political spectrum. Stray far enough away from the middle and it doesn't matter what their stated end goal is, the means of getting there are the same. Some flavour of authoritarianism and a single leader. If it all tastes the same to the common man, why try so hard to label things with meaningless labels? Now if those cult/political/religious whatever leaders offered us blue cheese sauce... it might be easier to swallow 😋

Gorthfuscious you not taking this subject very seriously and it is a very serious subject. For example its not so much the left or right wing but the type of sauce that matters. It must be a blue cheese sauce and preferably a Roquefort blue cheese sauce .....that is the ideal blue cheese sauce and should be mandatory with all wings 🍗

They don't pose nearly as well though. @Bartimaeus

On a scale from "extremely" to "unimaginably", just how much does this song rock? Dear god, how do they keep a straight face playing this?

Steven Universe, the musical movie.

Nah, I’m white. They just tell me to “slow it down sir. Have a good day” 😆 In all seriousness I’ve never been worried when interacting with cops. Funny story though. I used to own a business calibrating test equipment in Fort Lauderdale. I was renting an office space in an industrial park in Dania Beach. I had T-shirts made up with the business logo on it and the logo was on a sign on the door. It’s about 11 o’clock at night and I’m trying to get into my office when a Dania Beach police officer pulls up. Asked to see my ID and asked me what I’m doing here. I pointed out my T-shirt and at the logo on the door and I said “you’re quite the detective aren’t you?” The cop of course did not find that funny but the confrontation with no further than that. Anyway I told that story to a black friend of mine a few years later and he laughed and said if he had tried to do that same thing a beating would have followed. And he’s probably right.

To be honest, no. Not even in the German dub which, as I stated a couple of times now, makes Rei even meaner to Usagi. Not just mean, downright insulting at times. Incidentially, in the manga, it's Luna that questions Usagi's fitness as Guardian, she tells Minako and Artemis (through the arcade machine) that Usagi is essentially only half as good as the other three, and Rei more or less calls her stupid. I also know a couple of actual people who are constantly fighting like that but are otherwise inseperable, so it's not completely unrealistic, both in sibling relations as well as romantic ones (depends a bit on how you want to see their squabbling and love for each other) and even friendships. The Japanese version, provided the subs were halfway accurately translated, takes a lot out of the edge by the way Rei addresses Usagi. She does that without any honorific, and it's not done to insult Usagi. And that's just the talking, never mind the concern the two show for each other whenever something bad happens. There's a reason for Michiru's observation about the two, even though I kind of disagree with reading romantic subtext into it, but that's just me. I've said that before, with Rei's lonely upbringing and her general lot in life living alone with her grandfather in a Shinto shrine, being an outsider because her abilities scare people, it makes enough sense for her to latch onto Usagi as a sister that she never had, and it's perfectly normal to be both more forgiving and more critical of our loved ones than of other people, contradictory as that may seem at a first glance. Usagi and Rei may be the characters I can relate to the least, but they're great. It took me a long while to really appreciate Usagi and even though I felt really bad for her in R and wanted her to be happy, she was mostly annoying up until S, and never mind SuperS. The rest I chalk up to early installment weirdness. Like Rei being Minako at her school festival, or her pinching Ami to get her to back down. Or the transformation pen, or Ami slapping Usagi, and a couple of other things that happen here and here. It's par for the course for a show that was written by the seat of the writer's pants, trying to adapt rushed material and probably barely ever could get script reviews and revisions done. In a way it's a wonder it turned out to be as good as it did. I love it, warts and all, and I'll probably never get tired of talking about Sailor Moon. In some ways the manga is in the middle between the first anime and Crystal. Take Makoto's introduction, in both Crystal and the manga Makoto saves Usagi from being run over by car, in the anime she saves her from three almost JoJo-esque gym gods (hehehehe) trying to intimidate and shake her down. Anime and manga Makoto is friendly to Usagi after saving her, Crystal Makoto looks stern and tells her to pay more attention. In both the manga and Crystal a teacher is accosting Makoto for not wearing the proper uniform, Crystal Makoto angrily rebuffs that, while manga Makoto just tells the teacher that the school has no uniforms that fit her. Manga Makoto also needs to defend her hair color because the teacher thinks she dyed it. In all the versions Umino is spreading rumors of Makoto. In the manga, the reader can probably guess by now that they're not true, in the anime we already know they're false, because even though Makoto is super strong, she doesn't fight without reason, and in Crystal... in Crystal Umino seems to have a point, given her belligerent behaviour so far (even though she saved Usagi). Both Crystal and the manga have her throw back a baseball super hard that lands near her in a somewhat jerky-looking move o demonstrate her super-strength that naturally isn't in the anime because why bother, she's already beaten up two gym gods. So that long excourse is there to show that Crystal doesn't just look bad, but made weird adaptational choices where they would not have been necessary and left things unadapted that should have been (namely all the silly narrating of things that happen on the screen). The manga sure feels rushed, because it was. Hey look, it's almost another essay...

Indeed. And if you use monk abilities like Torments Reach while in bear form, for example, you get the neat animation of your panda doing a side kick. The animation for Skyward Kick is even more impressive, if I recall correctly.

I've been having a lot of fun with a barbarian/shifter on my current playthrough (on PotD). Sure, you can't cast while shifted, but there's nothing stopping you from opening the fight with some Heal- and Damage-over-time spells, then shifting and leaping into the fray, where the barbarian passives really help support both your offense and defense while in beast form. Then, with the multiple uses of shapeshift, it's not too much of a hit if you have to drop out prematurely in order to cast a spell or two (plus you get the heal). If you do, I'd definitely second the recommendation to get the Community Patch for the stag carnage buff. It really rounds out the flexibility of the shifter forms - cat for single target damage, stag for AoE, bear for toughness, boar for the healing and DoT and wolf for...something. Not really sure what it's good for (the knockdown is nice against casters but it's only one use)....

The Nevers Essentially X-women in late 1800 London.

Yep*, what the US is doing blocking AZ exports I have no idea. Either approve it and use it yourself or allow the exports, but instead there are literally millions of doses sitting around in storage. That's even worse since vaccines have a fairly short shelf life even when stored correctly. *EU has definitely put pressure on Pfizer/ Biontech not to export though, but short of blocking them.

Jordan Peterson's Connection to Red Skull In Ta-Nehisi Coates's Captain America Explained (esquire.com)

I'm playing on Xbox one. I was chopping grass when I was attacked by a larva from behind. It was a complete surprise because the combat music didn't play. After that I picked a few more fights with the same results. No music at all. I was even a little surprised at how dependant I became on the combat music. The game is a little more terrifying without it lol.