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I don't think most normal people care an iota what Pfizer says in of itself - Pfizer's a corporation looking out for its bottom line, just like 99.9% of all corporations. But if you distrust the corporation, and you distrust the CDC, and you are presumably not listening to any other country's disease-presiding institution or accepting studies done by any of them or anyone else on their behalf, where are you looking to for information that would impact your decision?

which is why so many people were concerned when the previous administration were trying to rush the approval process for the vaccines, 'stead of letting the scientists fully analyze the data. 'course after the fact is not as if big pharma is able to adjust the case, hospitalization and death rates; there has been considerable opportunity to check the actual performance o' vaccines... or is the theory that big pharma is also messing with those numbers as well, 'cause then you is getting into moon hoax level o' conspiracy, no? a conspiracy theory which involves the complicity o' a whole lotta folks in dozens o' countries makes it increasing less likely, or at least it should. we wouldn't doubt that the vaccine manufacturers did what they could with their internal testing results to make their vaccines appear as efficacious as possible, but am doubting what you are referencing is some kinda quibble over % points. instead you offer vague notions o' corporate greed, something nobody would deny is an issue, as an explanation for... what exactly? HA! Good Fun!

Technically they weren't Afghanistan's money but international aid to rebuild Afghanistan, which is why they were in US and why US was able to freeze them and take over them. They were mostly money paid by US tax payers. EDIT: They were Afghanistan's money in sense that they were promised to them and there was already budgeted targets for them, but all those projects were cancelled when Taliban took over, so technically Taliban should start again all those projects again in order to get access to that money.

Boba Fett was always a stupid idea for a Disney series. "No disintegrations"; from Darth Vader? You were never going to get the same character, so to many it would be automatic disappointment. It required far too much santisation and let's be frank, removes any mystique and mystery from the character while doing so, so it's a double whammy of bad. Thus you end up with the weird spectacle of a ruthless bounty hunter running a criminal syndicate that is... extraordinarily tame, and pretty frequently looking like a putz while doing it because you need some sort of tension. It's the sort of thing that looks great on paper but when you come to actually put it on screen you find that the reasons that Boba Fett was 'cool' are exactly the same reasons he can't work on screen as a Disney lead.

Other food with the same price only gave +0 morale and you have unlimited amounts at the shop, so it's just far more efficient than most crew provisions.

I really am having fun in NWN EE SoU I mentioned I love the D&D ruleset and the myriad of combat strategies in these games and here is one example to illustrate that point I encountered my first Shield Guardian and its immune to level 4 spells and below and my character is a wizard who didnt have access to level 5 spells. Plus my familiar cant harm it and my henchmen, who is Dorna, can only do minimal damage so I got slaughted the first 3 times I tried to defeat it And then I realized I luckily had some level 5 scrolls. So I used Bigbys Interposing hand to make the Guardians attacks more ineffective, used Chain Lighting and Cone of Cold and threw numerous Alchemist Fire at the foul creature. And with Dorna hacking away I was able to defeat it ...great battle

Yeah, you're right, I read to quickly. I will increase Boar regen to 2hp +0.5/5 levels per 3s.

I wanted to try a Bleak Walker/Stalker bc. of the awesome defense and also ACC stacking - but then remembered that Rangers (as Ciphers) don't get Spirit of Decay. Maybe I'll still do it even though I'll have one less PEN (but a metric ton of ACC)...

Yes, I meant stacking +1 PEN from Scion of Flame and +1 PEN from Spirit of Decay on Flames of Devotion attacks. The Bleak Walker's FoD is keyworded with fire AND corrode - and thus profits from both passives. And it works. I tried it once as a "Templar" concept (only that the Priest wouldn't be an actual Priest but a Druid - a Priest of Galawain if you will) but didn't really play it out. I can't think of any other ability at the moment that does one attack roll which is tagged with two keywords - but for all the abilites that have this the PEN would stack.

Thank you @Boeroerfor your replys and answering my questions ! I'm gonna play Berserker/Ancient like thought first.

the thing is, from day 1 we had the actual science folks explaining the relative benefits o' the vaccines. doesn't take much effort to go back and look at these boards to see people who were overconcerned with announced % efficacy while ignoring other factors. shameless self-promotion from big pharma is not shocking, but we knew the storage requirements and shelf lives for the vaccines from the beginning. as new data has become available regarding the drop off in efficacy over time and the need for boosters, we has had such information made available to us w/o the need for whistleblowers or deep cover investigations. am suspicious o' pharmaceutical companies trying to make a buck, which is why we don't pay much attention to the pharmaceutical company claims. wait for the necessary skepticism o' science to run its course. 'course Gromnir has made a habit o' warning people 'gainst making hasty judgements before data is available and am surprised by how much pushback we receive. is not as if the technologies and schemes for covid-19 were developed in 2020 as a response to covid-19. the actual science were already known and had been vetted, but as @ShadySands mentioned some time past, a polio vaccine ended up killing or paralyzing many kids. weren't the vaccine itself which failed, but were production failures which shoulda' been caught sooner if there had been proper oversight. were an example o' big pharma o' the day taking shortcuts which government didn't catch in time. is good to be skeptical and vigilant. heck, the cdc itself, early in the pandemic, sent out tests which didn't work. we expected problems with the vaccines and have actual been a bit surprised how few major blunders has occurred given the scale o' what has taken place and fact we are indeed doing different than in the past. there has been all too familiar mundane stoopid and mistake, not conspiracy. however, for perspective, before the covid-19 vaccines the mumps vaccine were the fastest developed. HA! Good Fun!

Common Over-the-Counter Medication May Provide Relief for People With Long COVID-19 Symptoms

No, I mean the Ranger's pet pig, not Druid's spiritshift.

I'd have far rather had a different vaccine than Pfizer for exactly those reasons. The funniest people* are those defending its cost- now the most expensive- as being due to all the research Pfizer had to do. The research was done by BionTech, and paid for by the fine volk of Deutschland. All Pfizer did was... license the design. I do rather like to pretend that all the people worshipping Pfizer are paid to do so, but facts have to faced: a lot are just stupid enough to fanboy an utterly morally bankrupt multi billion dollar company, for free. It's not even the best vaccine, half the reason boosters are needed is because its efficacy drops so steeply- considerably more so than Moderna's. Given it's Pfizer you might expect that being great short term and crap longer term is entirely by design, but as above they didn't actually design it so I guess that at least can't be blamed on wanting windfall profits. *OTOH the worst thing was slandering the cheaper alternatives, aided by useful idiots like von der Leyen desperate to throw poo at the UK for having the temerity to leave their club.

Ukraine has to allocate millions just to keep airlines flying. If this panic spreading is a cynical game by the US then they are handing Putin a serious win.

Yes, Berserker/Ancient Exactly what I did. I didn't do that because I used the Stag form and the Community Patch to get dual Carnage (33% raw dmg from Barb + 25% dmg from Stag). Both are nice, BUT: if you summon a Furyshaper's Ward you cannot summon Ancient's summons like Sporelings anymore. I mean you can, but they will replace the ward - which most lieky is not what you want. And the Sporelings are very good imo (especially in combination with Wild Growth). Yes On the Barb's side? Don't think so. Mageslayer makes no sense and Corpse Eater, while thematically a cool pick in combination with an Ancient, is implemented so awkwardly that it's mechanically inferior to vanilla Barb imo. On the Druid's side there's Fury (here I would suggest using Lord Darryn's Voulge), Lifegiver (good with Furyshaper, can't summon anyways) and there's always the Shifter.

The Afghans had ~7bn USD in gold and foreign currency (USD) reserves, held in the US (at the New York Federal Reserve); but starting at the latest in 2017, ie 5 years ago. So it's certainly not from recent donations. The ultimate source probably was aid though, as Afghanistan had few ways to accumulate cash otherwise, eg less than 1bn in exports. It was definitively Aghanistan's money legally though, you can't get more formal than held by its central bank. Main lesson: don't use the US to store your cash.

I've just finished second playthrough of Tales of Arise Demo on my PS4. I just needed some break in between of my simracing trainings, so I took something short and easy. This time, my character of choice was Kisara.

Suggestion: if possible, scale Ranger's boar healing like fighter's Constant Recovery.

@AmentepYou actually made it through the entire season? Hats off to you good sir or madam, you have a stronger stomach than I do.

I just find it hilarious how so many people are blindly taking the claims of Big Pharma, and Pfizer in particular, at face value and parroting, verbatim in some cases of the corporate press, everything they say. What a reputable company with a sterling reputation that Pfizer, they never steered us wrong before. Hey, remember the time they walked away from a deal to reduce to cost of AIDS medicine for poor countries? How about the time their hormone replacement drug was causing breast cancer? Or that time they ran trials of their drug during a meningitis epidemic in Nigeria and purposely gave the control group lower than normal amounts of antibiotics to make their own drug look better, leading to several deaths. I could go on, but that's all in the past, water under the bridge. I'm sure Pfizer is definitely completely on the up and up now. They would definitely not use this unique opportunity to make ludicrous amounts of money during a worldwide pandemic to squeeze out as much profit as possible. They definitely only have our best interests at heart and would never steer us wrong.

Haha. That was my first thought, too.

Potential Third Planet Discovered Orbiting Proxima Centauri Hopefully, the Webb ST will be able to give us a better picture of the system using its coronagraph.

Completed Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King. Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King is an action-adventure game with platforming and RPG elements. The story follows an amnesiac entity who tries to recover their memories. The protagonist canonically does not speak, but can nod or shake their head in some dialogues. The gameplay involves mostly hack&slash combat with stamina and few spells. I used a melee-focused build, thus the spells were used as utilities - to pull enemies from groups or sneak past them. There are 2D platforming sequences in early-/mid-game and 3D ones throughout the whole playthrough. Due to the level design, it is hard to determine if a path found is the main one or optional. While the spells vary from simple magic missiles to weapon buffs to invisibility (which for some reason messes up collision detection for elevators), weapons feel quite similar - all are swords with roughly the same movesets and slightly different stats and one different animation per weapon. Also there are the traditional for Souls-likes Estus flask (Catalyst) and Homeward Bone (infinite), as well as bonfires (Wells). Level design and items suit the sci-fi setting and the story well. The optional bosses are diverse and engaging, while most of the main bosses are very similar to regular enemies, all of which are humanoids with weapons, with one or two extra attacks. There are no penalties for death by environment and it is possible to recover all souls (essence) lost by killing the enemy who has defeated you. The saving system is typical for Souls-likes - auto-saving with checkpoints. The visual design is consistent, reasonably detailed and generally beautiful. 2D portraits look gorgeous and expressive. The soundtrack is beautiful and fitting. There is very little VA, only at the end. The controls are comfortable and responsive, 5-button mice are supported. There are numerous bugs, starting with the game freezing when I was trying to rebind the controls, to the MC clipping through walls. None of them were progress-breaking and the former was possible to overcome. The endings have quite specific conditions to achieve them and it is hard to make an informed decision in advance. I have used a guide for the last area after running in circles for an hour, because I have missed a passage that looked like a part of the wall. In terms of navigation, it was similar to the Cathedral of the Sacred Blood from Code Vein - a lot of indoor spaces with white walls. In general, I would recommend the game.

Oh. THAT episode is next. I remember that one. I might...um...skip rewatching it...

Just a bit more if the same (I was actually in the cbd that day, four and a half years ago). Who needs stadium flyovers and airshows when you can squeeze a few million people into one place and do low altitude flyovers

I really couldn't care less about what politicians wear, unless it's actively stupid. Unfortunately Truss's outfit was. I do very much enjoy the annual APEC silly shirt competition though. And very occasionally you get an outfit I'd 100% unironically wear.

I just posted that link because I wasn't sure if you guys were aware of it, it had nothing anymore to do with the meeting with Lavrov which is why I didnt mention it when I made this post

Generally speaking, anecdotal evidence is less than worthless. Definitely true in this case. It shouldn't be too surprising that you prefer it over the actual reliable evidence that is what studies generate, because that tends to be what humans prefer. See also: antivaxxers who aren't interested in hearing about the stats that overwhelmingly show that being vaccinated gives you on average a way better chance of surviving any given illness, but may be somewhat persuaded by a single person telling their own personal story of how not being vaccinated led to illness. In any case, the benefit of studies is, if they are actually using a decent sample size, they will include the 'lived experiences' of a large number of people, and will actually reliably measure these against each other free from the individual biases of those who experienced it. That's not to say that studies will be free from biases, but that's what peer reviews and having a large number of related studies will help. As Gromnir notes, while the specific study I found with a hasty internet search might have its issues, it does have the benefit of being backed up by the overwhelming bulk of studies on the subject. 'I turned out fine' or 'it was helpful for me' is relatively meaningless because most people consider themselves to have turned out fine, and don't really have anything to compare against. Also, that's one isolated occurrence, whereas studies with a larger sample size than one can find you overall positive and negative trends. Also, if someone's good behaviour is predicated on corporal punishment, does that mean we can expect the good behaviour to dry up if they no longer fear that corporal punishment? Let's say someone is 'kept in line' by corporal punishment until they become bigger than the person who was previously meting out said punishment. What then? The reason for their good behaviour is gone, except also you've taught them that they can get their way by dealing out 'corporal punishment' to those weaker than themselves. Also, I see someone suggest group punishments, i.e. punishing everyone but the perpetrator. Interesting to note that in armed conflicts, group punishment is specifically disallowed by the Geneva Convention. I assume that poster was merely joking, however, as they hinted at punishing everyone else and the situation would 'sort itself out', presumably implying that the rest of the students would in some way induce that one student to comply. I assume that poster didn't genuinely think that could possibly be a positive thing, having a whole group gang up on one student.

a scientist is gonna change advice when data changes. is zealots who is gonna keep repeating the same stoopid claims in spite of changing data is the problem. there has been good advice from the scientists which hasn't changed from day 1. mask advice, one o' the conspiracy theorist bugaboos, changed with the data and circumstances. there were almost no n95 masks available to americans 'cause we had sent what supply o' them we did have to china and 'cause the trump administration had ignored pleas from the lone US producer that a serious increase in supply was warranted. the trump administration also halted development on specialized rapid production prototypes back in 2018. US spent millions (cheap in retrospect) developing technologies to confront pandemics with increased n95 production as one means o' improving american safety, but w/o an immediate threat of a pandemic, the trump administration killed funding... which is the kinda myopia which plagued previous administrations as well. not the scientists who screwed the pooch, but politicians. and yeah, before asymptomatic spread was understood, and in the absence o' n95s which were needed for healthcare workers, scientists said there weren't much value in mask wearing back when the pandemic started. 'course once asymptomatic spread were understood, the scientists changed advice regarding even cloth masks. what is the other concerns? that new variants has resulted in new mitigation advice? such isn't 'cause scientists lied but rather 'cause most americans didn't understand realities. the neil de grasse tyson video we linked, the first one from october 2020, is particular useful in reviewing how some o' the current misconceptions 'bout scientist flip-flops is more a matter o' skeevy politicians exploiting the science ignorance o' the public as 'posed to actual changing advice from the science guys, who always qualified their advice and recognized that new variants would result in new challenges, which is why they keep telling us there is never gonna be natural herd immunity and why vaccines is so important. etc. *shrug* science don't change 'cause science is nothing but a method. scientific advice should change because if you change the data, real scientists, using the method, is gonna often end up with new advice. is the zealots of whom you need be watchful. HA! Good Fun!

I'm continuing to look for low sodium food products. One surprise is that organic canned food often has significantly less sodium than non-organic; like under a third as much. Perhaps the product doesn't need to be drowned in as much salt to give it flavoring? Anyway, the low sodium level makes it worth the cost, for me.

And now something little bit more positive. A one man made space strategy game very keen to realism - Falling Frontier. And it will be available on GOG as well... https://www.gog.com/en/game/falling_frontier

aside: is not an excuse, but am gonna once again observe how we rare had admirable clients. first amendment cases happen at the margins. people rare comment 'bout just how openminded and reasonable is religious zealots and even cultists. everybody knows white supremacists is models o' intelligence, justice and decency. we dealt with the most loathsome and obtuse: strip club owners, gang leaders, teacher's unions. kidding 'bout the last one... mostly. every day needing champion the first amendment rights o' those who, if roles were reversed, woulda' happily trampled on the speech religion, press and association rights o' others, were exhausting. get a chance to respond to the smallminded and willful ignorant w/o needing be nice is refreshing. moving on... https://gregolear.substack.com/p/shame-cometh-the-jared-kushner-story During the early days of the pandemic, he set up a shadow task force to devise an appropriate response. When that task force gave him its recommendations—masks, contact tracing, federal coordination of supplies, etc.—he ignored them. The virus, he saw, was hitting the Blue States the hardest. It would help his father-in-law politically, he came to believe, if the pandemic continued to rage in those states. This way, his father-in-law could blame the governors of those states, who were all Democrats, for the escalating public health crisis, avoiding responsibility. So he decided to scuttle the plans given him by his own task force, and let the virus run amok. At the time, the states hit the hardest by covid-19 were New York, New Jersey, and California. New York: where he lived for years, where most of his friends lived. New Jersey: where he grew up, where his parents lived. California: where his brother lived. He was willing to let the populations of those states—home to his family and friends—get sick and die to help his father-in-law’s re-election prospects. Again: He was willing to let the populations of those states get sick and die to help his father-in-law’s re-election prospects. As of this writing, 904,000 Americans have died of covid-19. The unofficial number is well over a million. Most of those deaths could have been prevented, had he and his father-in-law not sabotaged the pandemic response. The grandson of Holocaust survivors allowed that mass death to happen. ... if true... HA! Good Fun!

oh, we never had any notion o' changing the minds o' those obvious obtuse and intransigent. as @Gorth notes, the paragraphs is useful to speak to those who is less immovable but nevertheless possessing similar views. is impossible to use reason to change the mind o' somebody such as sharp_one who did not come to their conclusions through reason, but that don't mean there ain't others out there who nevertheless believe unreasonable and simple are unaware o' what is the actual law regarding 4th amendment issues or why increasing vaccination rates leads to a higher % of vaccinated people dying from covid-19. etc. also, and have mentioned this previous, we would block some o' the worst offenders o' obtuse, but the board software makes such impossible. in rl we had to always polite steer people to doing what was in their own best interest, even if they were self destructively ignorant; were kinda the worst part o' the job. those who abuse authority or those previous identified shmucks immune to reason who nevertheless feel the need to announce to the world how intransigent and ignorant they wish to be in spite o' any proffer o' facts is kinda representing an attractive nuisance to us. the whole Gromnir persona, +20 years past, were invented 'cause from our pov, too many o' the regulars on the bg2 boards were toolbags who seemed to find it amusing to mock "no00bs" and spout off 'bout things they clear weren't particular knowledgeable 'bout themselves. were cathartic for us to use the Gromnir bit to chastise folks we would need other wise placate in rl. like we said, if ignore were possible, we would use, 'cause as am getting older is less amusing to, "expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of (brutal) education," but am admitted quite happy to indulge when the worst offenders offer us the chance. "gonna make more use o' ignore 'cause chances are the next time we see somebody post something monumental asinine, am gonna comment. yeah, chances are we face some kinda sisyphean trial as we attempt to explain something which should be self evident, and no doubt we will need endure the comically retributive squeaks o' rage from those who feel wronged, but am petty enough to not be overconcerned, even if am agreeing with the general sentiment that is we should be more wary o' stoopid and angry. as such, where is possible, ignore is probable our best option." -- Gromnir, 28 dec 2021 am aware is petty, but we can live with such a burden. but again, trying to contribute at least something o' value... HA! Good Fun!

Sometimes a side effect of "paragraphs" can be beneficial for the bystanders, even if wasted on the original poster. So, even if not hitting where it's needed the most, can still be beneficial to others. Edit: Bystanders being a better word than onlookers.

Hi everyone ! BPM Version 2.0 is being uploaded. Deadfire Balance Polishing Mod at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) This new version is actually quite big (as usual, use the <Version 2.0> tag to check everything). That's why I call it 2.0. What I can say in a nutshell : 1) I've tried to be as paranoid as I could about scaling, so you guys don't have to worry about it. Trust me, now everything should scale pretty well, and no ability including from items should become obsolete because of poor scaling (but of course, some day some guy will point me exceptions...) 2) I've wondered a lot about the signature abilities of each class. This led to various changes. Spiritshift, Holy Radiance and Constant Recovery have all been made more central to the design of their respective class. I think Carnage has been restored as the backbone of Barbarian class, with a chance to interrupt with Crits that would remind people about good old Tall Grass builds from PoE1 (but still prevent degenerated combos with specific weapons or multiclasses). 3) I've evaluated the theoritical values of Monk wounds compared to other class ressources. This led to high level abilities costing more... and Shattered Pillars getting more. 4) Some subclasses tweak to make subclass more about doing their stuff. Better Imbued attacks vs worse Auto Attacks for Arcan Archer, more Corpse Eating for Corpse Eater. 5) BuGFixEs (including my own bugs)

for a little more precision in wall placement, sometimes half of a full vertical wall is needed

I saw the Outer Worlds 2 trailer today. THAT was funny! "Will this creature actually be in the game? No. Say goodbye to it forever" Self deprecating humor is hard to do right. They did it right.

I liked it. It wasn't Chrono Trigger level of good, but I enjoyed the game a lot. But it was more about the journey than the destination I guess. I'm really excited to play it again and to play the alternate reality Radical Dreamers text game that was never released officially outside of a small Japanese language platform. ****** The Search for the Developer of Aquaventure Apparently the new Atari is trying to find out who, at old Atari, created the game. **** Edit - also from the Nintendo Direct:

Just a preview of New Kaineng, the capital of Cantha in the upcoming Guild Wars 2 expansion (Cantha is an Asian inspired part of the GW2 world, which featured in the original GW) Looks like the Canthans are going to give the Asura a run for the money when it comes to who is the most technologically advanced. I want my own Jade Bot!

one o' our "moderators" has a very large cat to be making use o' an n95 that large. pet cougar perhaps? moving on... edit: the original gazpacho police. HA! Good Fun!

Also coming to PS, xbox, steam, supposedly https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/chrono-cross-the-radical-dreamers-edition-switch/