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Well I am happy to say I am officially employed again. I will no longer be a parasite living off the body of the state by drawing unemployment. Not that I had any qualms about that! A friend and former business partner has started a new company designing and building private 5G networks. He just signed me to a one year contract as a RF Performance consultant. Plus I’m buying a 10% ownership stake in the business. Our first zoom meeting is today and I will get to meet the design team. There are three design engineers and one performance guy. One of the engineers on the design team I’ve known for years. The other two I’ve never met. I have been doing a lot of reading catching up on the intricacies of n260 mmWave 5G. When I last worked in cellular 4G LTE was just rolling out. It has come a very long way in a very short time since then. A lot of catching up to do.

what is wrong with you? that isn't the way it works for gawd's sake. we cannot disprove the conspiracy theory that aliens was behind the kennedy assassinations. there is no reasonable or scientific burden o' proving the negative, a fact which you should be aware. replacing any sorta causation argument with assumptions and correlation bs is exactly what the qanon folks do. burisma is no different than pizzagate or trump's election fraud nonsense. is believable to you because you already are convinced o' the conclusion and not because o' any actual evidence. the actual evidence supports a conclusion opposite o' your belief, but that don't matter, 'cause you believe all politicians is bad, and as such, a conspiracy which has biden engineering international malfeasance in broad daylight is similar believable. ... mr. spock read your post HA! Good Fun!

Musk promises to help if UN can prove it can solve hunger problems so my take away from this is if you have Tesla stock now would be a good time to sell

I hear Huawei has great 5g equipment.

Halloween Logic... Or wait.. is that... "BOO!-lean logic"?

Taken out the doorway of my cottage. Messed with the color and contrast a bit to make it more dynamic. I thought about moving the lawn chair or at least putting it upright but I actually like it there. Gives the place a lived in feeling.

Edit; Double post happens to the best of us... When she wants to be "Princess Vader"...

Looking over my old AI scripts, I finally figured out what the problem was. Apparently, you're allowed to use Whispers of the Wind on yourself for some reason, and if you set AI to use Whispers of the Wind it will default to "Self" as target. You need to change it yourself, but if you never notice it you'll always start WotW by punching yourself. Posting this in case someone else gets confused why their monks are self-harming.

If you haven't seen it, definitely.

Sounds like something I need to check out.

The Wind Rises. Well that was an unexpectedly sad story and seems like an intro for Grave of the Fireflies. Was really surprised Anno voiced the main character.

The whole thing's a joke. Humanity is utterly incapable of making the decisions necessary to fix such a problem, we're only capable of platitudes similar to the orchestra playing on the Titanic. Every politician in existence loves targets set 30 years in the future*, because they know that the abject failure to meet them won't be blamed on them. Pretty much any and all actual solutions require a lot less humans, yet every single country still wants to use an infinite expansion model because that's what the economic system requires. And as everyone knows there are only one types of people who believe in infinite expansion with finite resources- economists, politicians and idiots. OTOH pictures of Joe Biden having a random snooze in public always bring a smile to the face. *my favourite example of which was New Zealand becoming [introduced] predator free by 2050. With no extra money to actually be spent doing it, all the rats/ stoats/ hedgehogs/ cats etc would magically disappear due to the mere setting of the target.

Yeah, I ended up making a clean install and doing pretty much that. In principle I don't mind encounters getting level-appropriate abilities, but the way SCS goes about it sometimes is... tiresome. Like the spammable, no-save 5d12 Ballistic Attack that can one-shot even Clerics (because mind flayers normally come in packs), or making summoned elementals unaffected by Banishment, because that would be too easy. I played around with the menu a bit but eventually realized I'd save myself the aggravation and just go without "improved" anything. I'll admit it has been years since I last played with this mod but some of these "challenges" are exactly the kind of thing that drove me off Tactics and into SCS. I suppose it's inevitable that as people clock in hundreds to thousands of hours in a game they'll find more and more ways to trivialize content and mod makers may feel the need to "balance" and keep things interesting. Just not my cup of tea.

my personal playstyle - early on i just dump spells until i run out (except maybe keep a heal in reserve) and then just shift-melee the rest of the fight. potd fights early on are long enough that this works. not much action economy at this stage. not sure if it's optimal, but the times i've done shfiters like this they've been party damage kings. mid to end game where i have a lot more spells, it basically depends on how many enemies and how effective nature's terror would be. Nature's Terror makes getting up close and personal to enemies really worth it as a shifter, so i'll aggressively shift and leave other spell casting behind if I think I can get good mileage out of a couple casts of the spell. If there's not a lot of enemies and/or they're spread out, i'll still shift because my one-on-one with shifting would be extremely effective still (but maybe i won't bother with nature's terror). If there's a bunch of spread out enemies or it's too dangerous to leap into the middle of things, I stay back and become more of a spell caster until i run out of spells and shift anyway. my stalker/shifter was more aggressive about shapeshifting in all situtations because i could still do things in shifted form, my shifted form was better (e.g. marked prey and stalker's link and hunter's claw), and it was safer (+1 AR especially).

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/lidar-reveals-hundreds-of-long-lost-maya-and-olmec-ceremonial-centers/

Geralt/witchers have inherent powers that are magic-like powers. In the games you can have a certain number of them equipped and active at a time. One of those that pretty much everyone commonly uses is that shield ability. Others include one that knocks back enemies and one that briefly cancels magical defenses.

I'm so proud of muh Boys for pulling out that W last night. There were so many opportunities to fold and it would have been completely forgivable; we were on the road with an undrafted backup who had previously thrown a grand total of 3 regular season NFL passes and we could afford to take a L because our division is trash. Cooper Rush gets obliterated on a sack and fumbles because Tony Pollard missed his assignment (as good a rusher as Pollard is, Zeke is a much better blocker). Right there the Cowboys of the past 25 years fold and lose the game 9 out of 10 times. Not this year. The defense stepped up, forced a 3 and out, and got the offense back on the field. Micah Parsons is blossoming into one of the best linebackers in the league. It seems like he had a hundred tackles last night.

Is it still a conspiracy theory if it actually turns out to be true? Asking for a friend.

doesn't matter. they are all bad. today is billionaires but tomorrow is the guy making $50k a year. politicians suck, because they are politicians and they all lie and they all steal. tease gd with a conspiracy which suggests a politician is bad and he instant believes, 'cause it doesn't matter if the specific conspiracy is true or not when the conclusion is already a certainty-- they are all bad. heck, apparently every charitable organization with a goal o' combating world hunger is also part o' the problem. next time some kid with a little orange unicef box shows up and asks for a donation, be like gd and tell the kid to pike off. no way are you and gd gonna fall for such thin veiled villainy, yes? cartoon character predictable. HA! Good Fun!

Lost Boys Sax Player Talks All About the Vampire Film's Legacy (gizmodo.com)

Radio signal thought to originate from Proxima Centauri b Was actually from Australia good one Australia. You got us. Now we’re going to figure out a way to prank you.

Hmm, it looks like the US donates ~52B / year to domestic and international anti-hunger programs: Maybe that last 6B will eradicate world hunger.

Nokia , Fujitsu, and Samsung all have 5G base stations. Those are all pioneering ORAN solutions for hub to node connectivity. I think that is a great concept because you were not compelled to buy everything from a single vendor. You can actually use a Samsung spider cloud, Nokia base station, and Fujitsu radio. Ericsson however is still completely proprietary from hub to node. But because it is a hardcoded fiber-optic link it is completely secure. That is a requirement for the businesses target customer base.

IIRC (because I categorically refuse to play the EEs and will only play on the original engine), SCS hijacks the difficulty menu in the EE games and you can use a preset to get close to what you want out of the mod while using the fine-tuning thingy to correct whatever small points of interest you want. The actual Stratagems installer puts its components into a few different categories, and it sounds like you would be best off ignoring the "tactical challenges" category of components and only installing the "AI enhancement" components.

All about that perspective...

Bears are dead, Lions are beyond dead, Vikings are all but dead for winning the division - the only thing holding that back is the fact that they and the Packers haven't played each other yet. While I would expect the Packers to win both games at this point, I wouldn't guarantee it, not between those two teams (Zimmer's always been the best in the division at beating the Packers, and the LaFleur Packers are 13-1 in the division...with the only loss being @Packers to the Vikings last year - hard to lose the division when you never lose your divisional games!). As for the Cowboys...yeah, that division is super dead, and you've beat the Eagles and Giants already, and I don't see much reason to expect Washington to have a chance in either games. And so...all that matters is the #1 seed. The Cardinals were the greatest obstacle to the Packers in getting it and I had already thought it lost between the short week, our injuries, and playing @ there, but having beat them, I now believe the Packers can find a way beat anybody. Buccaneers just lost to the Saints somehow, but they legitimately only have one decent opponent left in the Bills for the rest of the season. Really, their schedule is a joke - them losing to the Saints was super important for anybody else to be able to claim the #1 seed, I think. Cardinals have a decent slate of opponents left, including the Rams, week 18 Seahawks (Wilson will probably be back), @49ers, and most pertinent to you, @Cowboys. Rams have @Packers, vs. Titans, @Cardinals, vs. Seahawks (week 15), @Ravens, 2x49ers, @Vikings. That is quite the remaining schedule - pretty much impossible for them to win all those. Cowboys have @Chiefs, vs. Raiders, vs. Cardinals for their remaining "difficult" games. Packers have @Chiefs, 2xVikings, vs. Rams, @Ravens for their remaining "difficult" games. Obviously, any team can drop any game any week - that's the nature of the NFL. But if I had to favor a team getting the #1 seed, I think I like the Buccaneers followed by the Cowboys best, especially because I think the Buccaneers are probably the most complete team (bizarrely bad defensive performance against the Saints notwithstanding), while I think the Cowboys are very likely to inexplicably drop one game to a bad team at some point in addition to likely losing at least a couple of their remaining "difficult" games...as well as having the losing head-to-head against the Buccaneers. After that, I'd probably tie Cardinals and Packers for next most likely, and then Rams the last - owing to their ridiculous remaining schedule.

To be fair this is reasonable concern but its not liberals who would make these arguments Because the reality of the dichotomy in the USA is its not either normal liberals or conservatives that are responsible because of course you can have different views on SJ topics or policies and still agree on things If I had to summarize what is the cause is the reality of some people who decided to make assumptions about what it means if you believe one side or another and then your opinion doesnt matter anymore because " the other side is automatically wrong " And the whole point of debate is not about making any assumptions of someone else's views. Because that is not a debate but rather what a monologue is

Yeah, they showed me around quite a bit. Not just in Estonia but also in Russia, though that was limited to the St Petersburg area. I had the best beef stroganoff of my entire life there.

So many memes! Lisa has some good ones too. The "pathetic" collection is increasing: Have you seen this one?

Because it can be quirky seeing these things:

What have I done this time?

Damn liberals ruining the interweb again...

The Evil Within 2 It's OK but honestly why do they keep making survival horror games more abstract and ethereal like Silent Hill these days? I mean sure, the premise is based off of science fiction but they seem to believe that science and the supernatural go hand in hand. There's only one game I played where that kind of formula works, and that's Parasite Eve. Why is Parasite Eve an exception to the norm? Because the factors of science and weapon customization are predominant in the game, along with good character arcs, whilst the supernatural ethereal Eve character is complimentary to that, and it's done quite well, sort of like the FPS game F.E.A.R., but with much more depth. I kinda digress though, despite that bad flaw TEW2 does narrative and character building quite well, the monsters are a bit repetitive but finding clever ammo saving new ways to bring them down is fun in its own right. The world, despite it's bad supernatural moments, does have a certain degree of openness to it, but jumps back to linearity soon after and vice versa, keeping it both open and claustrophobic at the same time. You really have to go out of your way to look for supplies or you risk running completely dry on ammo or health. Plot is almost a carbon copy of Silent Hill "man looking for his very young daughter" but its interlaced with psychological elements like psychopathy and sociopathy, which white collar law enforcement enthusiasts seem to love. "Let's understand the POS before we blow his brains out" seems in line with federal law enforcement types, and this certainly contains those kinds of elements. So far not bad, but I kinda miss survival horror of yore, where it was all about science fiction, weapons, and simple but colorful and memorable characters that keep it interesting and far less nuance.

@BruceVC Nordic food culture is bad, especially in my country where frozen pizzas are everyone's favorite meals. However, Nordic food can be insanely good when done by people in-the-know. Especially sea food. If I had the choice to go to a top 10 Scandinavian, or a top 10 German/Austrian restaurant I'd recommend the former any day of the week, because of the sea food. Edit: I'm saving up to go to Restaurant Under myself, in the south of the country. The ambience is pretty sick:

You definitely not alone it that view, I am just surprised that you thought your observation would be unique or somehow unreasonable ....is it because you have only been noticing how most liberals ostensibly have no issue with left wing propaganda and hyperbole on SM and we only seem to see the banning of what some people on the right say ? Just get my opinion in future, I will respond on actual overall usage outcomes and I dont consider myself left or right but more in the middle so you always trust me to be objective ....well thats how I see myself The moment FB accepted responsibility to somehow monitor and reduce " toxic usage " it created the impossible objective of being consistent with what anyone on the left or right says that others would consider inaccurate. And I have been very hurt and offended by what some people have said about " whiteness " and topics like critical race theory Because Kanie you know white people have feelings to and no ones wants revisionist history or selective outrage about a so called "fact " that the US is an example of systemic racism ....and I dont agree with that at all. For example I dont think I have ever met one active forum member who is a racist? We had a member called WOD who identified with white nationalists and not white supremacist ideology and he was the closest to a racist but I dont consider him a normal racist like a kkk member And its not because I am sensitive to these topics in a knee jerk reaction sense its because I will only accept statements like this if they are based on the actual data and reality. SA and the Apartheid system is a clear example of systemic racism but the US is an example of people being racist And you cannot address bigotry like this by suggesting that the problem is systemic....it doesnt make sense and just alienates people who feel alienated by this type of generalization

Time it does its thing...

Taking a bit of a break from SWTOR until the expansion drops in a few weeks, came back to BG2(EE). Apparently my favorite mod of all time, Stratagems, slowly went from being a pure AI upgrade to some -fairly untested from the looks of it- hArDcOrE challenge bundle aimed at making every trash pack a total chore to deal with. "Mildly upgrades physical damage of mind flayer abilities", says the readme -- applies a 500% increase. "Smarter" apparently now means that flayers can teleport at will and appear on top of party members on the other side of the map. And so on. Bleh. I'm almost spending more time manually excising nonsense components than playing the game. The fine-tuning menu is nifty, though. Never been easier to install a metric ton of mods, as well. Two independent tools to manage components, load orders, and even downloads. And once configured it's basically fire and forget. Amazing that the mod scene is still so active.

Watching monster trucks with my son and it's actually pretty awesome.

The vaccine is working.

This is why Eviee is such a godsend. The true emotional support pet in all its splendor. A typical go-to race is Wood Elf because on top of their racial bonus, they have nice stat allocations for common min-maxing templates. But DEX resistance is actually not as great as other resistances IMHO because DEX has 4 tiers of Afflictions, plus the first 2 tiers are actually not that hindering (depending on the build) and several classes can easily spam DEX Inspirations to clear them. However, a lot of things can Petrify (Tier4) which will get demoted to Paralyze (Tier3) with the resistance, in which case you're still screwed . So in many cases, DEX Affliction resistance is only a true lifesaver if you're hit with a Tier3 Paralyze (e.g. a Cipher's Mental Binding). Other Resistances can have a much broader spectrum of usefulness, but it also depends on the class, build, gear, consumables...

Race doesn't matter much. For Monks who will mainly use their fists Nature Godlike is a good pick (because the Fists scale with Power Level and a Nature Godlike will gain +1 PL from Swift Strikes - which should be active all the time anyways). Nature Godlike (as godlikes in general) are a matter of taste though. The loss of the helm slot is not that big of a deal. Besides that every race had its uses. I particularly like Humans and both Orlan subraces. Resistance vs. Resolve is good because terrify is such a strong affliction and there are not as many options to get a resistance as for other affliction types.