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GUYS! GUYS! (and gal) IT WORKED!!! I saw and made a 47 second recording of a hummingbird eating from my feeder. Interestingly, even though the feeder has a ring around the bottom for the hummingbirds to land on while they eat, this particular one wouldnt land and instead hovered the entire time it was eating. In other news, I need to get out more.

Good luck...

I totally agree with this. From what I've seen, it looks like another D:OS iteration set in a different fantasy world. I can understand why this is so: D:OS2 was a resounding success, so it's reasonable to continue in that vein. But that also means it doesn't look like BG at all. It would be nice if I liked both BG and D:OS in the same way I like both BG and PoE, but that's just not so. D:OS is uninteresting to me. Shame, really.

I guess this is where different people (among those who did not like the D:OS games) have different reactions. For me, BG3 is not (yet) sufficiently differentiated from D:OS2 for me to like it. Still waaaaay too much D:OS2 in the game for my taste.

Yeah, don't gaze too long lest they get a couple of more seasons...

I really don't like the system with items in the inventory changing place when I use tools in the hot bar. It changes things around and it is really annoying. Maybe it would be better if you could pin items in the inventory like your tools you use all the time. (I mean in the inventory. Not hot bar)

If only. These Westlings cry out for purifying fire.

You are right, which makes me roll my eyes even harder. That person could have just not written that, but instead had to jeopardize their whole point with this.

A new update on Valheim:

Killer whale stranded on the rocks in Alaska saved by locals

"It's not real until it affects me." -Collective humanity 2021, seconds before Chicxulub-class asteroid ends humanity (P.S. Last I heard, the league was sitting at around 85% vaccination? Really not too terrible, and it's been going up...could be worse, and it of course could be even better.)

the human animal is not hardwired to take remote dangers serious, which is why long-term implications o' debt or climate change do not create the necessary fear to inspire changes in behaviour. am suspecting this ain't yet real for more than a few players. the first game which results in a forfeit and lost pay for both teams will likely result in a sudden uptick in vaccinations, but until then, this situation just ain't real enough. particular for football players, give in now and get vaccinated would be seen as capitulation and weakness, and no doubt these guys fear looking weak more than they fear covid-19. fools. HA! Good Fun!

No you did not just say that...

I dunno, some are at least a C cup.

Tax is theft! Employers ripping off employees is also theft. The difference is the former is legal and the latter isn’t. You can DO something about the latter. well, to tell you the gods honest truth you can do something about the former too. Don’t have an income, don’t own anything, don’t buy anything, and just live like a bum. No taxes! Another way to go is to not pay, enter skeevy business deals, get elected President and declare executive privilege for all dealings from the beginning of time to date. Of course the jury still out on how well that last one works LOL.

The cinema experience would involve getting overcharged for some water and listening to half an hour of commercials so not really. @Bartimaeus @majestic I'm on my phone right now and there's too much to quote without the forum software having a snack, so I'll try to be brief here. It's a personal thing and influenced by US education where everything lower than 70 is considered a failure, but it's just difficult for me to rate stuff numerically even to myself. Like I really enjoyed both Sailor Moon (except for Super S and the end episodes) and JoJo (note to majestic, it gets a whole lot crazier in Egypt. D'arby, not Barbie Mr. Jousturrr) but I can't quantify them numerically or anything. I can say I loved them and tell you why, as well as recommended then on those lines, but for the life of me I can't break out a calculator and explain why I rate JoJo 1999/2000 or Sailor Moon Pharoah 90/100. I just don't think of stuff like this in terms of numbers, and I don't think I'll ever really be able to. And I've never seen TAS, but it has a catgirl so if this thread would be the place to talk about it.

It is still a ****ty Baldur’s Gate sequel :-). But as long as Larian won’t miss the opportunity to create something of value, I can live with that.

Yeah, if it doesn't then fair enough. As I said, it's a matter of taste. Here's an analogy: there's a successful game called The Football Manager. Some years ago, they introduced a 3D engine to the game, in addition to its traditional 2D. So, previously, as a football (soccer) manager you'd been able to watch the actual matches only in 2D with your players represented by stylized circles, but now you were also able to watch them in 3D. And for me, and quite a few others, this was an awful change: the 3D engine is an attempt at a realistic portrayal of a match, but it's so unrealistic that it's actually a lot worse than the crude 2D view. The sprites look nothing like the real-world players they are meant to represent, their movement is clumsy, and so on. I get a similar feeling with these close-up scenes. The artificiality of the bodies and their movements is so obvious that it feels immersion-breaking for me.

Hahahaha, you just reminded me about Princess Mononoke and when it showed in cinemas over here... Parents were bringing children to watch it and right of the bat the protagonist was taking off limbs and heads with a bow and arrow, queue parents leaving the cinema... Pretty sure that is what killed anime in cinemas over here...

I think I talked about this before when ratings last came up in here, but I really think ratings only make sense when you have the context of a person's entire list of ratings to compare again. Me saying Cardcaptor Sakura is a 9.5/10 doesn't mean a danged thing unless you can look at my other ratings and see hey, he's only given literally one other thing out of literal hundreds of other things he's rated a 9.5 or greater before, so that must really mean something. Meanwhile, other people give out 10/10s constantly just because they thought something was good and they're used to giving perfect scores for literally anything that they think is just good. Not me - like I said, my average score is 61%, and out of the hundreds of movies I've watched, I've only given an 8/10 (what I consider to be "great") or higher a total of 26 times, so that rating really means something within my rating system. But you can't see all of my ratings since they're on a private site, hence why I was trying to give some quick context with the list I made, . As for what an 8/10 means...like I said, it means "great" - how it gets there is irrelevant. Some might just be consistently great but never go beyond that for whatever reason, others might be utterly perfect in some aspects (e.g. Steven Universe's main cast are my idea of "perfection") but fall short in other ways (e.g. average to poor filler episodes that feel kind of irrelevant and inexplicably drag down later seasons). Earlier, I said I rate stuff roughly 75% subjectively (how much everything appeals to me specifically in terms of characters, themes, plot, setting, world-building, style et al.) and 25% objectively (how well-constructed all the elements are, attention to detail, competent writing, acting, and so on). For movies, I don't usually give out anything more than a 7.5/10 if a work has what I would consider to be some kind of large bugbear or hangup that markedly took away from its enjoyment unless it really truly was consistently great except for that - I'm a little kinder towards longer TV shows like Sailor Moon purely because of their length and the quantity of good times given outside of that, so I don't usually penalize e.g. something like SuperS quite as much as if the equivalent were to happen in a movie. That's usually not an issue for me either, especially considering a lot of my favorite stuff (including anime) is often quite aged, so clearly I have some kind of appreciation and fascination for older stuff. It's just that...I'm a really tough person to appeal to, and I usually have excellent (but by no means perfect) intuition for what will appeal to me based on how a film/show is communicating to me right off the bat. How themes are being communicated, the types of characters used (and even the way characters just look, talk, or express themselves), art or filming style, setting - everything like that has a sort of unconscious language to it. My intuition for anime is still admittedly a work-in-progress, since it's not a medium I've had extensive experience with and so I'm still forming heuristics for it, but it feels like it's getting better, and when I take just even a super quick look at Akira, it seems like a very masculine (in the worst sense) main character that I'm probably going to hate, an edgy almost cyberpunk-ish setting that I'm probably not going to care for, looks way too action-oriented for my tastes... It just doesn't look like it's going to appeal to me. I'm very particular about what I like, and these are already setting off red flags for me - I'm still going to give it a chance eventually, but that's my perspective going into it. lmao - while I'm usually a bit of a proponent for darker stuff (up to a limit, of course, and given the right kind of kid who can handle it) being suitable for younger audiences because of how meaningful and formative such works can be at that age, I think that's a bit much...

This is, of course, a matter of opinion, but here's why I don't think it looks impressive at all: there are far too many close-up shots. I find them immersion-breaking, because you can see how unnatural everyone's expressions and face movements are. Also, they are not in sync with whatever they're saying. So, in wanting to make things look more immersive and/or "realistic", this approach actually breaks immersion for me. The old BG2 graphics are dated, of course, but there's nothing immersion-breaking in them -- they leave an awful lot for your imagination, which is precisely what the close-up scenes in BG3 don't do. (I'm also one of those people who are almost never interested in movies based on books, as books tend to be so much better, for somewhat similar reasons.) But, as I said, this is a matter of opinion. BG3 is going down a road that I find completely uninteresting, but even though that's a bit sad, it's also fine -- I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, the game being like that.

I have a hard times rating stuff on a numerical scale. Like, what does 8/10 actually mean when put on a subjective scale? That you loved 80% of it and hated 20%? I prefer to just say whether I like it or not and talk about why, because I figure that's more helpful for recommending something to others than tossing numbers at them to see if they'll get it. Admittedly I'm a weird guy and don't think of anything as favorite. Anyways, I've been watching TOS lately and haven't watched anime in a few days. I think I'll end up watching the Violet Evergarden special next but wait until the movie isn't the bootleg edition with soda slurping to see that.

Remember, "if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

Oh dear, I need a separate category for that, where it can rot together with American Pie and ever movie Adam Sandler ever "starred" in. -1/10? Funny, I had the feeling I was missing something from the "list", now I know what it was. I guess that's a genuine case of repressed ratings. That's not it. I didn't like Akira all too much when it was new and shiny either. That's why I said the rewatch did not improve my opinion. I stumbled upon it on Netflix, seems to have been added to our library recently. That also does not mean I can't regonize its importance.

A Waffle House waitress who worked a double shift while looking after her baby says she received a $1,000 tip from a country-music star who was impressed by her work ethic

Taiwan wins badminton gold medal for the first time over Mainland Taiwan in championship game, .

Everyone in one screenshot.

I'm playing "Kenshi". Sandbox where you do whatever (not my thing) with base building (I hate building bases), very grindy (grinding sucks), janky (that's actually a pro, I'm oddly fond of jank, Euro and otherwise), and yet I'm getting kind of addicted. I like the worldbuilding, but starting as a total nobody weakling I love even more. You raise your skills by doing stuff over and over, kind of like in real file, so my guys scattered around different save states are good at sneaking and breaking & entering, rubbish at fighting and exceptionally good at running away. Another good thing is that sentients in the game are content to beat you up and/or imprison/enslave so losing the fight is merely toughness training and not a game over. Anyway, 20 hrs in and it feels like I only scratched game's surface a little.

Yeah, that part was stupid and unnecessary.

We now have a dog, Meeko. His owner died of rattles so I brought him home. The girls are super happy. Vix the fox has so far ignored him

"White man's opinion" I stopped reading there.

Lieutenant Reginald Barclay is on my top shelf of reoccurring Star Trek characters, along with Chancellor Gowron, Ensign Ro Laren, and Q.

That one is easy, just use "disgusting people who go against the natural order of things as mandated by god!" or DPWGATNOOTAMBD! Much easier to remember, and more on point.

I agree in the sense whenever someone makes a point and says " white people\men" its normally a sweeping and inaccurate generalization that often demonstrates they are doing the same thing they claim to be opposed to ....like fighting " racism\colonialism\inequality ". Sometimes people dont realize they are unintentionally contradicting their own argument and sometimes they dont care ....so I never take that type of commentary in a serious or constructive way But in this case I can ignore that type of framing of the issue at Activision because this has nothing to do with white men but rather real and systemic sexism within the office environment. My annoyance at the generalization is not the same as my concern with the actual issue...which needs to be addressed properly by Activision management

More Miyu. Last episode opened with Miyu's best friend Chisato asking Miyu if she could stay over night at Miyu's place, and Miyu not being able to accept because she's homeless and usually waits out her nights under the moon at the top of an unspecified shrine. Cut to nighttime and her doing exactly that while discussing with her pet demon their choice of locale...cue some woman screaming far off into the distance, Miyu tensing up and trying to spot the cause...and then seeing some guy killing himself by jumping off from a balcony many floors up in an apartment complex. Miyu looks slightly disappointed, then smiles - all is right in the world, . That's the kind of show this is, . ...Also, probably my two favorite episodes so far were the last two - moving on up towards a 7.5 if it keeps it up, .

Trump Wanted His Justice Department to Stop ‘SNL’ From Teasing Him am no expert, and admitted using trump as a guide for constructing general rules for dealing with narcissists is likely flawed, but we work with what we got. trump were disproportionate concerned with his (self) image as being smarty, successful and strongk. threaten those fundamentals and the pig squealed, yes? is the extent o' our powers o' psychoanalysis. perhaps related... ‘Willing to Go to Jail': Rudy Giuliani Calls Ukraine Investigation ‘Lawless' were s'posed to be an interview 'bout upcoming 20th anniversary o' 9/11. unfortunate, these guys can't help themselves, yes? reports suggest rudy needs money and trump ain't gonna pay rudy's legal bills. is admitted a tough call for trump 'cause pay legal bills is tacit recognition rudy were acting on trump's behalf when he did outrageous and illegal. not pay and rudy motivation to protect trump decreases. what happens when you got multiple narcissists who can't shut up? is fine for the piggies when they need only explain selves to the base or to republicans in Congress. is tougher for the narcissists when prosecutors and/or a judge gets involved. HA! Good Fun!

It's repetitive, but engaging. And that's where it traps you. I could go back to Morrowind, but get annoyed by whiffing all the melee attacks at low levels. I could go back to Oblivion, but I don't hate myself enough. Skyrim is... easy to get into. And its flaws don't seem to really become striking until you've been playing too much and realized you saw everything worth seeing dozens of hours ago. Anyway, I'm playing Ace Attorney Chronicles. As something of an Ace Attorney fanboy, it's nice to be back at it and with something new. Only two cases in and I've had plenty of laugh out loud moments.

Gotcha. Yeah, when they redid the forums that time all kinds of small annoyances re auto-formatting since. Re: uncle: I vote for massive prank with the aunt. Sounds more fun.

I am still playing Skyrim. That is my dullest game I haven't quit. All because I adopted kids... It isn't just dull gameplay wise. It is dull visually, with all those gray mountains and snow.

Thanks, I started the Thundercat with a Nature Godlike, I am still struggling in the early levels, but is a good build.

Yes (also with Stone of Power) and yes. But if you only lack spell uses for one tier (e.g. PL4 spells) you'll get that one back. The dmg is random between three stages iirc.

this comment will come from someone who also likes to RP, and not min-max, and also fan of dwarves, so I would go with a multiclass that has lots of passives. I think the biggest problem of Ranger is that not many insane abilities are there to choose from, so its one of the easier picks to multiclass. as first char I would go with: 1) Scout (Ranger+Rogue, more passives from rogue side, and a few escape like spell), scout still fits the ranger RP theme, if you like to use stealth, then Assassin would be great for this. if not, then go no subclass rogue 2) Hunter (Ranger+fighter, also there are a few passives thats good, as a fighter you can wear heavier armor - RP wise I think dwarf ranger is not like an elf archer, you can be an archer in mail/chainmail/breastplate, and fighter passive helps in this case. subclass should be Devoted, but check the comments above if you want the Hunting Bow or one of the Crossbow weapons) maybe you can consider these 2 as well: 3) Wildrhymer (Ranger+Chanter, you can roleplay this like you are the bard of your dwarf clan, whose traveling with this animal companion to sing those stories he heard during travels in the mead halls. I would not recommend it for first as Chanter has TOO MANY good abilities, and at first it can be confusing) 4) Wanderer (Ranger+Monk, you are a travling ascetic type of ranger, monks also have great passives, and Helwalker is especially good with a ranger, as it increases your damage taken risk, but since you are far away from mobs, it shouldnt be a problem, but I still dont recommend this combination at first, it can feel like a glass cannon. maybe a Ghost Hearth+Helwalker could be a great RP choice, your animal died, so you've taken the road for a more spiritualistic lonely life) Edit: maybe just one additional thing, 2 handed guns are also insane in this game, and if you played dwarf hunter in Wow, guns also fits it. https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/The_Red_Hand this particular gun is basically a shotgun, lower dmg, but shoots 2 bullets at the same time ^^

If you like crossbows and Ranger I can really recommend Spearcaster. You can get it early, it has superhigh accuracy with enough Arcana and the additional enchantments are great, too. The best thing about arbalests is the modal imo. It causes a knockdown on hit but lets you shoot more slowly. No big deal if you have a lot of reloading/recovery bonuses though. My current Arcane Archer/Troubadour reloads quickly enough with the modal on that enemies I focus on canot get anything done, they are effectively prone-locked (the get back on their feet but cannot finish anything before they get send down again). Single Class Ranger can be fun for different reasons (mostly special item-ability synergies) - but with an arbalest I prefer multiclassing for more shorter reloading/recovery time and/or more accuracy. Good arbalest rangers multiclasses I played: Arcane Archer/Bleak Walker: very high accuracy, good damage, quite sturdy, also good party support via healing and aura etc. Arcane Archer/Troubadour: very short reloading time (Sure Handed Ila applies its effect twice to realoading weapons), good damage bc of the lash from Mith Fyr, very versatile due to invocations Arcane Archer/Helwalker: short reloading time, very high accuracy, good dmg. This one is also very good with AoE weapons like Frostseeker or Watershaper's Focus. Yeah, I like Arcane Archers. Another good combination (that I didn't play) would be Ghost Heart/Cipher. Anything but Soulblade and Psion would be good. Damage would be nice, accuracy would be great and lots of versatility bc of cipher spells. This combination is especially good with the War Bow "Frostseeker" because the accuracy can be so high that crits are very common. Of course Ranger/Rogue is always an option if you are looking for a lot of dmg per hit. Ranger/Devoted also works very well - although I find it a bit sad that the only figher attack ability that works with ranged (two handed) weapons is Penetrating Strike. One thing though: you need a good backup weapon for enemies who are resistant or even immune to pierce damage. Any bow would do for example.

tbf, compared to poe1, soulbound gear are not necessarily as such tent-pole items here. i remember going out of my way to get all soulbound gear in poe1, here i only bother if it's particularly necessary for a build. edit: it's been a while, but i don't remember many *interesting* unique items in poe1 (many of them were normal magic weapons with a fancy name). there are tons in poe2, which you can enchant with special enchantments. that fills in a lot of the gaps that soulbound items fulfilled in poe1.

An interesting note. On the Steam page for this game there are items already listed under additional content for this game. One is a season pass, and if you click on that it says season pass for the three upcoming DLCs for this game. So three DLCs confirmed.