Leaderboard

I understand China’s rover landed on Mars today. Now they’re going to start stirring up trouble up there. I bet they’re going to send their rover to get to the best rocks ahead of all of ours!

So...your hubby is studying the blade, you say

Before you will start virtue signaling, stop outsourcing pollution intensive jobs and stop buying services/products and components from pollution creating countries like China and India. Shut down air traffic over Germany as well If you will do that, then I'll believe that you are taking care of green issues seriously, instead if virtue signaling for feel good points, while still contributing indirectly by increased consumption of high energy footprint products and services.

Hubby's still obsessed with learning how to become a master blade sharpener (video watching all week, practice, nicked fingers, trying to create/attach the perfect-est sharpening stone holder/clamp to his worktable...) ... that sharpening sound is kind of hypnotic, until its punctuated with a curse or two. Guess I'll make and test play some more 7 Days maps.

Nah, theyl shoot down NASA copters and claim It's aliens

Did I mention that I think the world would be better off without Facebook? apparently the European Supreme Court does too https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/5/14/facebook-faces-devastating-data-transfer-ban-after-irish-ruling Facebooks claim that privacy protection violates free speech because it makes targeted advertising harder or some such was dismissed by court and transmission of personal information of European users to the US had to end very soon (because nobody trusts the US to respect European data privacy laws)

How dare they steal my picture for their game. Also, Roger Maddox is clearly Lionel Richie.

Well, if they thought coverage was biased before... Nice to know that Joe Biden has phoned Mahmoud Abbas about the violence. Might as well have phoned me for all the good that will do.

I asked hubby to clarify a bit and my mistake ... he said he "probably" wouldn't use it to hold sharpening stones, he just wanted a permanent clamp. eg, he got long-term side-tracked and I misunderstood his verbal babblings. I guess it's one of those "wood working bench vises". Larger than the typical table-surface mounted clamps. Hence, undertable mount. I don't know why he's making 3000000 wood support pieces/making it seem so complicated but that's hubby. I learned not to ask for reasons on anything he does long ago. I figure it's safer. ... hubby likes the journey more than the destination. Thus he will spend weeks/months trying to be a master blade sharpener, get semi-decent at it, then will probably ... never sharpen a knife again. Like how he had a ball making those 3D printers (vs. buying one to just plug in), but doesn't care about actually printing, so now they're sitting on a shelf somewhere. He got into computers for the same reason. "How do PC's work? I must study electricity/physics/whatever and make my own! ... what? Actually using computers? Pfft, boring, I'll be in my secret lab."

@LadyCrimson You must trust Azdeus on these matters, Vikings know about sharp weapons !!!!

Or... wild idea: don't pick it. That's easy imo. The bad part is when you are a Barb, picked THreatening Presence and then meet an enemy Cipher...

My dream was more interesting, especially as I know how it came about. Dreamed I was in some version of some city in Serbia going to a grocery store. Except everyone was speaking Russian as the clerk was telling me something about store policy and my bags. It was the conflux of the clerk at the grocery earlier telling me I have to put all 14 bottles of water on the conveyor, doing my Russian lessons and finally falling asleep watching Death of Yugoslavia on my phone.

Just found four (!!!) feathers near the bird bath Some where hardly reachable up in the hedge or on branches. Haven't seen the Crow because I was hunting spiders in the hedge so i don't know if it just sit there and dropped some. Good luck!

As long as Germany (and Germans) do business with China, they are in no position whatsoever to lecture anyone else on the subjects of human rights and environment issues, being a knowing accomplice to the violation of both. Claiming otherwise is hypocrisy. At least I know the Australian federal government is a bunch of no good cretins owned mostly by the mineral and fossil fuel industry and they've made no secret of wanting to promote coal and it's like at the expense of renewable energy projects (and runs de facto concentration camps on remote islands to process "asylum seekers", although lets be honest the genuine asylum seekers are an almost non existing minority amongst the economic migrants) They don't pretend to care about the environment (and actively fight windmills in true Don Quixote style, to prevent renewable energy from getting a foothold in Australia) or human rights (it's not profitable for the Liberal Party)

Speaking of fashion and close siblings, I finished Castlevania. It clearly ran out of budget at points but you know what? **** it, this show is hilarious and amazing. It totally jumped the shark and it worked imo.

Peace in the middle east died in 1995 with the murder of Rabin by a right wing extremist and the (deliberate) efforts to sabotage the Oslo Accord in the years immediately after. Too much conservative resistance to the idea of peace and an independent Palestinian state in the late 90's. Edit: The conservatives were probably scared of what happened in the worlds only other apartheid state, South Africa, where it came to an end in 1991 and real, democratic elections happened in 1994. You can almost hear them thinking "Not on my watch!" in the Knesset and so the deal on offer got made continuously worse from 1995 to 2000 in true Darth Vader style (heavy breathing: Pray I don't change the deal anymore)

Rouwuerer

Too bad the Palestinians walked away from a peace deal in 2000. That would have solidified the borders and perhaps prevented situations like this. It only demonstrates that peace is not currently possible there and we're just wasting our time on such efforts.

Worth at least 100 rolls of TP.

Look on the bright side, that means there is a real woman that looks like that... or did 20+ years ago. @KatphoodLet's be real here, the real star of the show was Miranda's behind. The camera was practically glued to it.

THE THUNDERCAT 2.0 Class: Lifegiver / Blood Mage Concept: Fast, sturdy and fun Caster/Melee hybrid that relies upon strong synergies between classes to keep spiritshift, buffs and healing up forever, unleashing devastating combos of CC/Damage spells before optionally finishing up foes with claws. Optimized for a No-Rest run. Game Version: RTwP. Works with latest updates and DLCs as of v5.0.00040. I recommend the Full Community Patch and the No Forced Rests mod (otherwise just metagame around them, it’s fully viable but just a bit annoying). Upscaled PotD Solo Viable: Yes. Companion: Nope (meant to play solo by definition, no companion can use this template). As always, this is going to be a somewhat long post so please bear with me. I’ll explain briefly why I think this toon is interesting and illustrate how it comes together with a short video, then go over the key stats, equipment and abilities. -----INTRO------ The Thundercat is a beloved PoE1 Druid build by @L4wlight (I definitely won’t take credit for the original idea!). The idea: a very fast-paced and explosive Druid that loves lightning, using the Cat form for extra speed, being able to dish out lots of damage via spells and melee, inflict a lot of debuffs/CC and even healing and moderate buffing. My goal was to adapt the core idea to Deadfire minus the Britney vibe and to make it viable for Solo PotD. Multiclassing with a Blood Mage became quite obvious because of certain synergies: Lifegiver in Cat form has amazing action speed, stellar healing over time and some really cool offensive spells, but it can’t keep those up forever, its defenses aren’t great and it runs out of resources fast. Blood Mage uses healing as a resource to replenish spells at will, it can prolong beneficial effects forever with Wall of Draining (including Cat form, Flurry, Healing over Time…) and it has some of the strongest buffing, defensive and offensive spells in the game. Yay, the sweet smell of synergy! So far I totally realize that I’m not saying anything fundamentally new, so I’ll go in a bit more detail on each of the cornerstones of the build to explain why this toon has a special place in my little . Speed: This is a key enabler of this build’s playstyle. Action Speed has linear returns (thanks @thelee and others for the patient demonstrations) but with enough investment and the right build, I find that it can also somewhat alter your action economy and enable new combos, which is what Thundercat 2.0 is all about. It will all become clearer in a few paragraphs but at this point I’ll just mention that at the top of his game, this build reduces total action cycle time (Action + Recovery) by -55%. So a spell that would take 7.5s with a neutral-speed toon (4.5s + 3s) takes 3.4s (2s + 1.4s). Claws attacks have a total cycle time of 1.3s (0.2 + 1.1s)... How do we reach this speed? Cat Form has zero armor recovery, Cat Flurry is a huge speed buff, Captain Banquet stacks if you save/reload, we have lots of DEX, Fleet Feet, plus rapid casting and 2 weapons-style. Healing: Another key enabler for survivability and fuel for Blood Sacrifice. In Cat Form, we have lots of PL boost to Rejuvenation and we can stack outstanding HoT: Moonwell, Nature’s Balm, The Moon’s Light, the occasional Garden of Life… Not all of those HoTs get prolonged by Wall of Draining but Nature’s Balm and The Moon’s Light do (for Moonwell, only the +All Def bonus is prolonged). You also get some bonus from Dawnstar’s Blessing, Practiced Healer, Footprints of Ahu Taka, a bit of MIG). Net net, you can stack a consistent healing of ~60 health/3 sec, and easily spike over 100 health/3sec. Defense: The Thundercat 2.0 is no Arcane Knight, but he can still hold his ground. We stack bonuses with passives, accessories and buffs, in particular there is something nice with Captain Furrante’s breastplate “First to the Fight” effect not being removed by Spiritshift and extendable via WoD. (Doesn’t work with weapon effects like Sheltering Light and Drawing Parry). We can get REF and WIL over 200, FOR and DEF over 170 (non-veil piercing attacks). We have immunities or resistance to most problematic hard CC effects. Our AR is routinely at 17. We’re immune to Interrupt. Nothing stellar overall and we will get hit by high level foes, but we can take it, especially because we have other layers of active protection… Crowd Control/Debuff I think that the Thundercat 2.0 may be one of the best debuffers in the game. We can drastically reduce every single enemy offensive and defensive stat. Every stat. And easily inflict soft and hard CC. We have Afflictions across all stats, several Tier 3+ as well as Tier 1 & 2 with decent duration that are mostly attached to damaging spells in large pulsing AoE. And we can chain-cast those nasty effects very fast, potentially reducing literally everything on one sorry group of enemies. This enables to play very strategically on enemies weaknesses, or just to go bonkers throwing spells around that are randomly going to synergize with one another. Damage This is where I got really impressed. We have literally tons of casts of pulsing/ticking and DoT spells and we have 2 awesome force multipliers: Combusting Wounds and Infestation of Maggots. We also have a decent accuracy with most spells being around ~120 ACC and all those debuffs attached to help them land better. We also have a lot of INT so hazard areas and DoTs will last longer. If you combine all this with super-fast spell casting, you can very quickly get a snowballing, layering effect that overwhelms the enemy, creating an exponential stream of DMG that will leave all but the sturdiest of opponents standing. And when you’ve thinned the herd and supercharged your spiritshift duration, you can just go nuts in melee with one-second Greater Wildstrike Shock auto-attacks. Because you can’t swap grimoires when spiritshifted, unfortunately it is hard to use Zandethu’s Draconic Fury but hey, we can’t have everything all the time! Bringing everything together: Here is a small video that I recorded of the Sea-Lashed Crypt entrance fight where I am using all the mechanics described above. I know it is not a very hard fight by any means, the goal is just to show the different mechanics of the build easily, with a decent variety of enemies, some tanky enough to be able to show the snowballing damage effect. -----SPECS------ Race: Wood Elf (DEX Affliction resistance and +PER) Background: The White that Wends – Explorer FINAL STATS WITH ALL PERMABUFFS AND NO-REST BUFFS AS OF 5.0 (without combat buffs): MIG 13 (8 Base +2 Berath +1 Gift from Machine +2 Alchemic Brawn) CON 17 (8 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Brawn +2 Konstanten Boon +3 Girdle of Eoten CON) DEX 24 (15 Base +1 Elf +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Guile +2 Amira’s Blessing +2 Footprints Ahu Taka) PER 28 (18 Base +1 Elf +1 White that Wends +2 Berath +1 Konstanten Boon +1 Effigy: Sagani +2 Alchemic Guile +1 Savage Cunning +1 Cauldron Brew) INT 25 (18 Base +2 Berath +1 Konstanten Boon +2 Alchemic Wits +2 Charm of Bones) RES 18 (8 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Wits +2 Nature’s Resolve +2 Rikuhu’s Blessing +2 Eviee Pet) ADDITIONAL PERMABUFFS: Food: Captain’s Banquet Adratic Glow All Trainings Dawnstar Blessing Luminous Adra Potion Nature’s Resolve (Accuracy) Savage Cunning (Survival) Galawain’s Gift Magran’s Blessing Infamous Captain, Bonus Skills, Champion Stats, Port Maje vendor, Fully discovered Map, Bonus Money… invested all 105 Berath’s Blessing Points SKILLS: History at 20, Mechanics at 13, rest in Athletics and Survival. Diplomacy early on for quests. ----- ABILITIES ------ LIFEGIVER SPELLS Nature’s Vigor, Nature’s Mark, The Moon’s Light, Insect Swarm, Nature’s Balm, Infestation of Maggots, Moonwell, Wicked Briars, Cleansing Wind, Relentless Storm, Garden of Life, Venombloom, Nature’s Bounty. BLOOD MAGE SPELLS (optimized for Using Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardy) Learned: Chill Fog, Fleet Feet, Eldritch Aim, Combusting Wounds, Infuse With VE, Llengrath’s Safeguard, Freezing Pillar. From Grimoire: Thrust of Tattered Veils, Minor Missiles, Necrotic Lance, Binding Web, Expose Vulnerabilities, Fireball, Concussive Missiles, Confusion, Malignant Cloud, Call to Slumber, Gaze of the Adragan, Chain Lightning, Delayed Fireball, Wall of Draining. PASSIVE ABILITIES Wildstrike Shock, Greater Wildstrike Shock, Two Weapon Style, Bull’s Will, Bear Fortitude, Far Casting, Rapid Casting, Tough, Practiced Healer, Secrets of Rime, Heart of the Storm, Uncanny Luck, Improved Critical. -----GEAR------ Weapon Set: Duskfall (Drawing Parry), Lethandria’s Devotion (Sheltering Light). Doesn’t really matter, just in case you get targeted before Spiritshifting. Keep handy Lover's Embrace to cut some cheese. Grimoire: Of Vaporous Wizardy. Keep handy Illuminating Discoveries. Head: Rekvu’s Fractured Casque. (the Wrenched Knee injury is best here, you can get tons easily in the Poko Kohara dungeon if you don't disarm the traps). Neck: Charm of Bones. Chest: Captain Furrante’s Breastplate (First to the Fight, Vigorous Protector) . Cape: Giftbearer’s Cloth. Gloves: Bracers of Greater Deflection. Keep Burglar’s Gloves, Firethrower’s gloves and Woedica’s Grasp handy. Rings: 2 X Rings of Minor Protection. Boots: Footprints of Ahu Taka. Keep handy Boots of the Stone, Sandals of the Water Lily. Belt: Girdle of Eoten Constitution Pet: Eviee. -----THE END------ That’s it. It’s not a ground breaking build but it is quite powerful, versatile and very fun. Another strong Blood Mage + X to solo the game, and one of few Druid options that can solo as far as I know. Always happy to read your thoughts and potential for improvement or tweaking. I'm sure it can be steered in other directions, in particular for party play.

When I see British and diplomacy, I can't resist to reference to this. https://youtu.be/VOdnISwLkSs

Just watched the first episode of season 4. Looks like Trevor is bad influence on everyone he meets. What's the point of hiring Malcolm McDowell to voice a British vampire when he does his best to not sound like it at all? I mean, sure, we're talking 15th century London, but still, how about you go and fulfill the stereoypes I expect of you, hmm? Hmmm? Hmmmmmmm? I expected more of you, Admiral Tolwyn. Anyway, off to a good start here. Except:

I remember that assassination and how terrible it was and how unusual for Jews to kill other Jews. I also think that was the closest the Israelis and Palestinians came to peace through a two state solution which I still support In Israel they really do believe that even a single Jewish life matters normally. The Israelis released over 1000 Palestinian prisoners for 1 Israeli soldier in 2011. I would never have agreed to that if I was in a government because the potential future risk to my country with releasing over 1000 potential combatants is not worth a single life but I am not Israeli clearly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Shalit_prisoner_exchange

I'm fond of Amra but there are many great weapons in the game. As for shields, each has a unique modal that can be very useful if you build around it.

wasted opportunity. last time there were any genuine possibility for peace looked to be july 2000. HA! Good Fun!

Our dub used a female voice actor too. Seems like a common mistake* to make, good to know I'm not alone. Couldn't have told Zirconia from any old guy in the sub, but that's okay. I sometimes really suck at this. To be honest, that's one of the changes I can get behind. Fashion is so gaaaaaaaaay you guys is one of the stereotypes Sailor Moon could have done without. Still ridiculous because those brothers sure like each other a lot, but in general... Watched some more Cardcaptor Sakura. Sakura has a way out of this crush on Yukito in the form of Shaoran (who is also really crushing hard on Yukito and constantly fighting with Sakura over his attention whenever they're all on the screen), but I wonder what Tomoyo will do. That's not going to end well for her. *Leaning in favor of marking this one as a mistake. Our cousins were uncensored and nobody had an issue with the Sailor Starlights either.

Mammals Can Breathe Through Their Intestines, Unsettling Experiment Finds Who comes up with these things?

Re: hair - Still can't use a pair of scissors for more than a snip or two. Past few weeks I look in the mirror and have 70's flashbacks. Soon I'll be Cousin Itt from Adams Family, only greyer and a lot more scraggly.

Way back in the day I played a game called Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic. Here are some of the available portraits: They didn't even try to change Sigourney Weaver and Arnold Schwarzenegger. As an aside, this may be my finest thread derailing ever. I regret nothing!

White devil:

I agree with LadyBugWins, there are either too many hostile critters everywhere, or they respawn too quickly. The infected mites and weevils in the haze are the most annoying things in the world. Also in terms of bugs, I have noticed that the "enemy detected" notification when inventory is open does not go away. I think others have commented on this. In terms of balance, I like the concept of dehydration affecting stamina, however it is way too imbalanced currently. Hydration level needs to drop slower and have less overall effect on combat performance.

LOL! Its not like...huge changes...personally if I had the ability I'd want to volunteer to work just for this. I like the unique idea and everything XD But I also play mainly single player because multiplayer has so so many glitches with spawns TT u TT

I think adding a Black Widow would be epic as the ultimate baddie, but only in a super reclusive area like under the porch. I really think that they should implement the Subnautica game mechanic where your water and hunger levels don't drop while you are sitting on a piece of furniture (maybe they already did that? - I haven't built any furniture yet to test it).