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Once had a teacher who managed to find out that we got a hold of a copy of the upcoming exam and had a couple of days to prepare for it - she came in the with the graded exams, looked at the class and said in a somewhat disappointed tone: "I was told that you had the questions three days in advance and to be honest, I found the quality of your answers wanting even before I realized you had ample time to prepare. Tell me, please, how not a single one of you managed to get an A? Therefore, I have decided to accept what you turned in. Rest assured that I will take better care in the future, you will not be able to copy the questions prior to the exam a second time. Now, the grades are as follows..." Just need to do badly enough even with cheating, might amuse the teachers.

one o' our dogs will roll in p00p, dead snake or just 'bout anything nightmarish foul. if the dog is off its leash and it notices the source o' evil before Gromnir (a near guarantee as we do not have canine sense o' smell) the pooch will attempt to bathe in the feces, slurry, whatever. if we can't stop our dog from rolling in deer p00p, then what chance would we have o' reasoning with a teenage girl? deer poop is particularly vile in the late summer and early fall when the critters is clear eating considerable blackberries-- the resulting scat becomes a noisome jelly/jam which is curiously water replant. nevertheless am certain our dog issue is a laughable minor nothing compared to the difficulty o' raising a teenage girl. good luck. HA! Good Fun!

I don't see the need to invade Ukraine to get most of those fulfilled. Russian armies present in the breakaway republics would more than likely have been sufficient to prevent attacks, and to finally negotiate and end to the fighting. What's more, Russia could have done this years past. Russia didn't, because it needed to build antipathy against Ukraine in preparation for an invasion, and because the war was serving them so well in destabilizing Ukraine and slowing down membership of both NATO and the EU, neither of which would have allowed Ukraine to join while it was fighting a civil war. The West rather foolishly let Russia know by its actions that the opportunity to invade Ukraine was running out, and so Putin took our advice to do it while he could. It's pretty clear that Russia meant to overwhelm the whole of Ukraine, and claim the big prize, rather than the consolation prize of the Donbas, but couldn't do it because of the sad state of its armed forces.

I don't understand what the victory condition is for Russia, I mean they could take Kyev and remove the government. And then what ?. Another Ukrainian revolution in either months or years. Millions of willing resistance fighters. Millions of displaced refugees with nothing but hatred for Russia. The Ukrainians are simply done being told what to do. That's the main miscalculation. So far the Russian invasion has achieved nothing much that will be of value on the negotiation table. Best case scenario, Russia started this slaughter for the win of some small amount of territory and probably permanently terrible relations with Ukraine and the west. There is just no way it was worth it.

Went over it in my head before releasing it.

Wow, in my schools the teacher would give you an automatic 0 for cheating. Kids these days

To paraphrase Garak: "Are you sure that's the point, teacher?" Maybe she just needs to get better at cheating.

My daughter actually called me with an update shortly after I posted that. The teacher accepted her apology, but she ended up with 3/14 on the test. That was her score even with the cheating issue, so I assume she has learned that cheating is bad, and she's also not very good at it, so it isn't worth the risk. Ah well, the kid has an A+ in woodshop and is already a better craftsperson than her dad. I'm pretty sure the construction track is the right one for her. She doesn't roll in poop and has decent hygiene. My son, on the other hand...

Depends on whatever the Pentagon's idea of "full control" is, anyway.

Ive been busy this week with work issues so I havent finished with my Oblivion mods, Im about 80 % done so I will definitely start playing Oblivion this weekend

So I search the entire map in Control just to get to the research sector. In the end I can't find it so I check YouTube. Turns out you just have to turn around, walk down the hallway and take the elevator. The mini map in this game is awful. It payed off to wait and play it on the PS5 though. 60fps ftw!

You can wear items/consumables that raise MIG to at least 10 points and then some that give increased spell damage. For example Blightheart, Harley (pet - it works with spells, too), Griffin's Blade and so on. 6 is quite low. I wouldn't want to drive MIG to 20 as a Bloodmage, but in Deadfire a malus (-x%) is calculated multiplicatively in most cases (that's why grazes and underpenetration will hurt your dmg output so much) - therefore I wouldn't go beneath 10 MIG (or 8 if you use Breath Blessing points for raised attributes).

another thing is that the "downside" of losing linger when brisk recitation is on, is not always a downside. some examples: if you have a song that's just "thick grew their tongues" or whatever. the duration doesn't really matter, because as soon as the debuff is applied to enemies, they lose all their concentration. not many enemies generate new concentrate very frequently so the actual debuff doesn't matter. so if you just have a song with this one song on it, you double your chances of applying the debuff over the same time period. (also i think debuffs still have a duration, i forget) there's a chant that gives you a 10hp shield. it only gets refreshed when the song re-applies. so similar to the above, having a song with just this and brisk recitation on means you double your shield's effectiveness. (in fact, one of the early times I fought Huane O Whe, I just had this song on w/ brisk recitation, and it perfectly counteracted the Symbiote debuff that deals ~9.6 raw damage/tick) the song that summons a skeleton completely ignores linger mechanics. so you just double the amount of skeleton cannon fodder you have on the battlefield. all the resistance chants immediately downgrade all applicable afflictions when refreshed. so with brisk recitation on, you can rapidly clear away afflictions without much concern. for this reason, troubadour is an easy chanter to pick, whereas all the other ones require a bit more thought to use (and there's almost no reason to want to pick a vanilla chanter).

On the question of what comes next, most experts are predicting a long stalemate and war of attrition. And contrary to conventional wisdom it is the Ukrainians and not the Russians who would be able to better sustain this, at least militarily, so not including the horrendous costs to Ukrainian civilians. The Russians won't have their land bridge, and won't even have the two separatist provinces, because in those areas the Russian-speaking civilian population is not/no longer sympathetic to the Russians. Even those people that Putin believes are "his" people are now fighting against him. So Russian forces in these areas, along with their separatist militia allies, will be bled continuously by an active insurgency as well as hit-and-run tactics by regular Ukrainian military. And as those casualties mount, more and more Russian soldiers will surrender or defect, or simply stop fighting. Beyond the battlefield, though, the real action will be back in Moscow in the next few weeks. Yes, the Russian people have very little capacity for staging a revolution. But one never knows. As Putin more and more scapegoats the military and intelligence establishments for what are his personal failures, those establishments will look for ways to hit back, not because they care about democracy or decency in Ukraine but rather because they care about their own skins. After all, the last time revolution happened in Moscow, it was directly triggered by massive battlefield losses in a stupid war started by an ego-maniac leader who ignored his own advisors.

Yes, why would they? To do so would only come back to bite them on the ass and damage their future credibility. And besides, this is based on the intel community collecting raw data daily on Russian missile usage in the theater. So they actually have the data in their hands. It is not some sort of projection or estimate. And lastly, the US intel here tracks extremely well with the intel from other governments who also have good intel. We know for a fact, for example, that many Russian pieces of military hardware have fallen into Ukrainian hands, either because they broke down and were abandoned, or because Russian troops surrendered them to the Ukrainians in exchange for safety (that recent handover to US intel of Russia's super highly classified EW pod the Ukrainians got a hold of being the best example). https://interestingengineering.com/ukraine-captures-russian-ew-system https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44879/ukraine-just-captured-part-of-one-of-russias-most-capable-electronic-warfare-systems If there is anything we can truly say about this war, it is the extent to which the Ukrainians, and NATO, and also humanitarian NGOs have been able to collect on-site data about the war, documented with phones and video cameras and SM. I am very comfortable with that 40k figure recently released by NATO of total Russian service members lost (killed, wounded, missing, captured). That's 25% of their total force, which also means it's probably about 40% of their combat force. Those are catastrophic numbers for Russia. I can only imagine what the Chinese are thinking of all of this.

I spent last night dealing with my daughter's teenage angst. She has been pretty stressed about school. She missed a couple days a week ago and has been trying to make up a bunch of tests. My daughter has dyslexia and often has to put in twice the work and time to be successful in certain subjects. Apparently she got caught cheating on her Biology test. Now she actually has a special learning plan that allows her to use a notecard with vocabulary when taking tests. This is because of the dyslexia, but it doesn't give her the definitions. She was caught using some slides that has both. She doesn't deny it. She took a shortcut. I told her she needs to apologize and we went over how to approach that situation. She has some other issues with the teacher. Apparently she doesn't like the way he uses the word retard. I'm like, is it in a biological setting? I told her I'm not going to get into how this guy teaches, but she is in the wrong in this situation and needs to be humble and apologetic. We will see, she is stubborn. Parenting isn't always easy.

I like the stats that @Not So Clever Hound recommended for his Bleeding Arcanist build. It features high PER and INT, slightly high CON and DEX, and slightly low (but not dumped) STR and RES. It worked very well on my SC bloodmage game.

Search engines are your friend, living in bubbles where rich white people set the narrative is not your friend. Russian victory conditions: Ukraine never becomes part of Nato and remains a neutral buffer state Donbass region is fully recognized as an independent albeit most certainly pro-Russian gvts. (Donetsk and Luhansk consist of the Donbass region) Stop neo Nazi's and other anti-Russian groups from attacking Donbass region, which brings us to Completely deNazify all armed forces in Ukraine, especially the notorious Azov battalion (Ukrainian Nazi's think they are the true Slavs and Russian are inferior and Asiatic, Western liberals are actually doing a wonderful job perpetuating these early-to-mid 20th century stereotypes of Russians) ......... If all conditions are met, it's a Russian victory, if only some than it's a stalemate or a semi stalemate, if none than it's a Ukrainian victory, a neo Nazi victory, and a Western liberal victory.

Well, the latest estimates are 40k Russian soldiers either dead, injured, captured or deserted. I do not know how plausible it is (again IIRC info from UK and US intelligence), but even if it is half true, that is ****ing crazy number for 4 weeks of warfare...

More fun: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/belarusalert/belarusians-are-sabotaging-plans-to-join-vladimir-putins-ukraine-war/ https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1583572/Vladimir-Putin-Russia-Belarus-Ukraine-railway-sabotage-supply-lines-trains-latest-news-vn

Neighbour has gone turbo-Ukranian patriot, has flag on his house, slogan on his door. Hopefully he doesn't know about the Russian further down the street...

Guess they'll have to make a decision to withdraw soon.

Damn you all...DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!

Reading this official statement of Russian Ministry of Defense, it looks like, that inflating Ukrainian victories is underestimating the real status of the war. Allow me to translate it from Russian false speak to proper English. "We ****ed up so much in the north and north east Ukraine, that we decided to retreat to the Donbass region, hoping, we will mange at least one small victory, so we can run away from Ukraine as we did from Afghanistan, while declaring it as a decisive victory."

I think that it really is peak Trek. In many ways Wrath of Khan (the standard best Trek movie by most) works better as a sci-fi movie, but TMP feels more unique and more like Star Trek to me.

That "at least" is doing a lot of work here. Admittedly I'm nowhere near the armchair general some of the other posters are, but it feels like a lot of this stuff is giving false hope to Ukrainians in regards to resisting the invasion. I don't doubt that the invasion isn't going as smoothly as projected for Russia (by Russia), arguably very badly, but Ukrainians are still in a dire situation that could very well get much worse and I'm not sure if downplaying losses or inflating victories is helpful in regards to analyzing the situation that they're in.

The ring Voidward can be also useful for you, -25% raw damages taken concern Blood Sacrifice but not your spells

Latest report by US should be few days old, and yes, I know that they are not independent party, but compared to Ukrainian estimate of 15000, and Russian estimate of 498, their number seems to me the most plausible. Also the latest numbers from Ukraine are now out. And Their soldier casualties are probably underestimated as well, but we will probably never know by how much and comparison of Russian casualties by Ukraine sources. (which are as you say probably inflated by some %) Also in other news, looks like Russian army NW of Kyiv will have very hard time in the next days/week. Belarusian saboteurs did a tremendous job of cutting of their possibilities of resupplying the troops. (google translate of local news) https://tvnoviny-sk.translate.goog/zahranicne/clanok/152533-bieloruske-sabotaze?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Also: if you apply effects with durations on enemies like Many Nights or Soft Winds etc. - and only then switch to Brisk Recitation, the effect on the enemy gets refreshed to the original duration with every new hit (the game the doesn't remove the linger time when the effect is already applied) and thus won't run out. So it can be very benefical to first apply effects without Brisk Recitation and then switch it on as soon as enough enemies are affected. It's micro-intense so it's only really worth in long fights with durable enemies imo, but then it's pretty cool.

Finished Syberia 4, that was good. Didn't feel like forcing myself to finish it like 3, the story was much more interesting even if the premise is simple. No ill explained antagonist, other than Cantin that is an adventure game protagonist in his own right, heh. Hopefully they'll make another game even if Sokal died. Although, the pre homo sapiens lifeform learning English in 2 years is pretty funny. Not all that keen on them being a focus in a potential 5

I think season 2 is going to be on my to do list. Not stuff I can really binge watch, but it’s fun and relaxing watching just the odd episode every now and then Made it to episode 9 in Gleipnir. For some reason, it reminds me a bit of when I read Lord of Flies as a teenager. Creepy, exciting cringeworthy, sad, hopeful, all at the same time

So, a while back @KP wants Blue Velvet mentioned the "unaired" episode of the first season of Dropkick on my Devil, and I watched that to be done with it. Even amongst the otherwise weird episodes of this anime, this was... really, really weird. Also had a hearty laugh at Jashin's insane opening dropkick and how it ended. It was better than some of the regular episodes of season one, that had a bit of a stale spell in the middle. Relevant reference of the show award goes to:

Interesting thumbnail there.

I'm the last to complain when the rich get eaten. That being said, I wish we'd see a more frequent and uniform application of the law that allowed for that.

Lindsey Graham's tantrums are pretty funny.

This. was. EPIC!

From what I read Could be just another "hey remember this guy moment" and fans are reading too much into it but the posts made it sound there was slightly more to it.

Don't forget the Star Trek 4 dude who seems to have some recollection of his encounter with Spock. I didn't watch it but I saw people arguing about it on Reddit.

Plot twist, we're already there.

We've had CEOs and such in the past say that QA is an unnecessary expense as developers can test as well. Yup.

Ergo Proxy ep 1. I like it, it feels like someone watched Blade Runner on acid and then had a nightmare about it. I see I am once again a bad influence on you.