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That Mencken was right when he said “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” Nailed it 80 years before it happened!

am more annoyed by the possibility it were less 'bout temper and more 'bout relative power. will smith, like so many actors, athletes and executives, has learned he is insulated from consequences. most people with power realize it is fundamental wrong to do violence to others unless one is protecting those who cannot defend themselves from violence. however, there is exceptions. will smith correct anticipated the consequences o' his actions. shame on the academy. shame on his defenders. shame on will smith. am understanding will smith were asked to leave following the incident. he refused to do so. can imagine if gorth or Gromnir smacked an employee at subway and then refused to leave? what woulda' been the consequences? for those who have not read, insights from kareem abdul-jabbar Will Smith Did a Bad, Bad Thing that said, the oscars slap is hardly the worst thing an actor, athlete or executive has gotten away with (this week?) sans any real consequences. doesn't make the slap less offensive, or at least it should not. as to aphasia... our symptoms is transient and nowadays we suffer such every six months or so. curious, but not uncommon for those suffering our flavour o' migraine, our frequency o' incidence is decreasing as we age. regardless, aphasia is why we always carry a laminated card with us we may offer to concerned onlookers explaining our inability to speak. once happened on a plane, leading to a bit o' panic. is a few explanations for relative brief symptoms o' aphasia which is less concerning than stroke. not many. doesn't sound like bruce willis' aphasia is transient and infrequent if it is forcing him to stop acting. am wishing best o' luck to bruce willis and his family.

The Russia-China meeting declaring a "new" world order is utterly hilarious. The two ministers with a straight face try to tell the world their new world order is about respecting the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states and "democratic relations" between states. Hahaha. What a joke. Apparently these principles only apply to states named Russia and China and *not* to states named Ukraine.

https://eternity.obsidian.net/game-data-formats/components#characterclasscomponent It seems that monk fists should be added if the character's class has ImprovedUnarmedAttack = true However looking at the source code, the function that utilizes that variable will only conditionally override the existing unarmed weapon. The scenarios that do override are sadly only player/party-related stuff, such as character creation, leveling up, respeccing, adding a companion to the party, the AddAbility/RemoveAbility scripts and a few more. So for all non-party characters they'll never get their base fists replaced even if they fulfilled the monk fist criteria.

@Darkpriest About the Gas and the Russia, today was very interesting program on our radio. There was an information that 70% of income for Russian gas is currently coming from EU, and that any Gas from West Siberia can be exported only to EU through Jamal/Yamal pipeline, because there was never build any pipelines from Siberia to anywhere in the World. So if I correctly understood it, if Russia will stop the Gas flow to EU, they will lose much more than EU. just because of infrastructure, which never existed. Also: Chinese rhethoric might say something different, but they are still quietly imposing some sanctions on Russia as well. https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/as-china-quietly-joins-sanctions-against-russia-xi-might-be-too-rational-to-risk-arming-putin-20220316-p5a54j.html @Zoraptor A little bit of what is happening to Tatars after Crimea annexation. If you are interested in that topic, feel free to run these links through Google Translate https://www.amnesty.sk/krym-od-anexie-uz-uplynul-rok-ti-co-ju-kritizovali-su-prenasledovani-umlciavani-a-celia-utokom/ https://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-3185910f-c682-4602-a991-3446c9469fac/c/PolRev2015-1pp31-63.pdf Both in Slovak Language Anyhow about the video, which is in breach of ToS, if you want to see an Ukrainian explanation as opposing view on Russian explanation, you can watch this video. Keep in mind, there might be a lot of Ukrainian propaganda involved as well, but I have not seen anyone to post any rebuttal of that video (excluding that anonymous tweet). Make your own conclusion. Video is under spoiler Tag: And the another addition to the "How incompetent Russian army commanders can be" is the news about Russians digging trenches in Red Forest and running around there completely unprotected (also keep in mind, this is news from UNIAN, but IIRC some IATA personnel has previously claimed same things.)

Weird West first impressions, so far so good. It's a mixture of Fallout 1 & 2, Divinity: Original Sin, and a twin stick shooter. The game is from a new studio with former Arkane devs, including Raphael Colantonio the founder of Arkane. It definitely has that Dishonored quality of letting you be creative in how to approach a situation. I'm playing the game as if it's Desperados. You give me the ability to stealth and I'm going to attempt a ghost run, that's just how I roll. It's a Raphael Colantonio game, a ghost run is likely possible. I did experiment with a decidedly not stealthy approach by sneaking an extinguished lantern to a strategic location, retreating to safe location, firing my revolver to get some outlaws attention and to break the lantern, creating an oil puddle, then hurling dynamite as they ran through the oil. It was super fun blowing a guy up and setting others on fire. Then I reloaded and stealthed the area. You can interact with most things, pick them up and throw them. I can confirm that you pet a horse. I have not found a living dog nor a cat so I cannot confirm whether you can pet them. You can take a $#!+ in an outhouse, though. Edit: Also if you dodge while aiming a gun you go into Max Payne bullet time while in midair, so you can play this game like a John Woo movie if that's your thing. Also, if you kill somebody a vulture will land on the corpse and start eating it. They get there quick too, those scavengers don't **** around.

Other cheap solution : give everyone's unarmed attack the same base stats as monk fists (or something closer, maybe fast weapon damages +1 min damages like monk's 10-13). So enemy monks won't suffer that much. Monk class / unarmed would be necessary to get the scaling. It even sort of makes sense balance wise since foes don't have easy access to unique weapons like you do, so fists are comparatively more interesting for them.

I wonder if it would be possible to give every class monk fists, then check whether they have Transcendent Suffering/Monastic Unarmed Training and take them away if they don't have it. i.e. You would have a reverse bug where all kith NPCs have monk fists, but since fighters/rogues/barbarians/etc. always come with weapons it would be irrelevant.

this meshes with an oddity i've noticed - if you pick Xoti as a monk or monk-type (forget which or if both), you have to actually equip/unequip a weapon or do something else before she gets her improved fists. kinda shows how good the monk class is - even with nerfed fists enemy monks are frequently very annoying. is there anyway that a script or mod could trigger an event that would get enemies to get improved monk fists?

I decided on a whim, what if I keep avoiding Furrante? It seems this wasn't expected behavior, and I can see why, considering how he homes in on you at first opportunity. Anyway... I killed Benweth without the quest, but the quest completed, and it said Furrante had given it to me, even though I'd never met him. Out on the world map, his ship is still stalking mine and if I let him catch me, he asks me to kill Ben. I reported to him in Dunnage just now, but his boat is still haunting mine. So anyway, grats Fireballs, you confused the game, woohoo. Yeah no, I didn't make this post only because of that. It's because Maia actually reacts to something Serafen says about Benweth in that first meeting with Furrante. And we all know we have to get to Neketaka to get Maia, so even though you're not supposed to be able to avoid that immediate post-Maje meeting with Furrante, there's at least one interaction that assumes you do so. I intend to let Furrante chase me across the Deadfire and eventually bring him to Ukaizo with me. Update: Furrante has now been hanged, but that's not stopping him. Maybe if I let him catch up, he'll ask me to reload and reconsider my decision? P.S. How I keep avoiding him:

At this point you can't believe anything that is being said by russia. Even the current peace talks are just a farce to win more time, so they can assemble yet another batch of expendable soldiers.

Russian are reportedly using Soviet era strategy against civilian women https://www.itv.com/news/2022-03-29/itv-news-hears-allegations-of-russian-troops-filming-rape-of-15-year-old-girl https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/27/russian-soldiers-raping-and-sexually-assaulting-women-says-ukraine-mp It is designed to carry nuclear weapons during war time https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.php?aircraft_id=194

Here's another example of just how vile Russia is: the airplanes that recently breached Swedish airspace were armed with nuclear weapons. Plenty of sources for this. Now, my knowledge of Sweden's recent policy is not particularly good, but surely nothing warrants this. This is sheer madness, absolutely. Russia obviously wants land from Sweden (Gotland especially), but still, still...

Enemy monks are using normal fists (i.e. 5-8 damage) and applying Transcendent Suffering bonuses to that instead of actual monk fists. Noticed this in both main game and Beast of Winter. Checked with all my mods on and off.

Yes many of them are or can be, its up the individuals who engage in debates to debate in good faith. For example Pidesco asked me a question about what point was learnt about Trumps victory. I gave him my opinion which I can support through numerous links. So I would assume if he disagreed with me he would explain his reasons for why Trump won the election or something similar I would then read his links or reasons and see if they make sense, thats what I mean by constructive But we often have frivolous and light hearted debates or we are just sharing our opinions. So I am not suggesting every debate should or would be constructive

Thinking about picking up Colantonio's Weird West, which was just released today. Due to it being heavy on choice and consequence, and different experience based on the (albeit predetermined) characters you get to play throughout, it's already been compared to classic Fallout, New Vegas and even Bloodlines by various outlets. One section of the game has you playing a character cursed with a pig head -- which means people react "accordingly" (memories of playing a Nosferatu in Bloodlines). That is, on top of Arkane Studio games, naturally, what with Colantonio being their founder. His last title there was Prey -- if you ask me, whilst never specifically marketed as such, that was more of an RPG than many selfproclaimed RPG in like the last 10, 15 years (in particular in the AAA space). And I'm still not even halfway finished with Wrath Of The Righteous. edit: Bought it. Couldn't resist. Also like to support that guy, he's got the right vision for games.

Yup. And in this case they even actually crossed into Swedish airspace for a couple of minutes before being intercepted the Gripens. Initially the Swedes were very emphatic that the aircraft had deliberately crossed into their airspace, but now the government is walking that back, saying it's possible they "strayed." Also, for several months now there have been rumors from the Elmendorf wing F-22 pilots, posting anonymously, that Tu-22M bombers they've been intercepting off of Alaska have been carrying live nuclear missiles. The Air Force has "no comment."

Agreed. However, I still think it's both madness and criminal on at least two levels. 1) A message like that is absolute overkill. The planes on their own were a clear enough message. 2) Sweden is a sovereign country. What it does is none of Russia's business. And here, of course, we come to the crux of the matter. I believe both of my points are perfectly valid and would be agreed with by a country that behaves with at least a modicum of common sense. Russia is not that kind of country. Russia used to be a kleptocracy, but it is quickly becoming something altogether more alarming. Just look at they way they are actively legislating for the reduction of intellectual and educational standards, and you're starting to see a new North Korea being born.

Clearly a message to Sweden about even flirting with the idea of joining NATO. They of course knew the Flygvapnet would intercept.

For all my fellow ABBA fans, here's their newly released "lyric video" of the hit song "Chiquitita." It's one of my favorites, and looks and sounds awesome. They're going to be doing this for several of their hits. Next up after this one is "Waterloo."

I agree it's possible. However, I'm not going to read much about this subject anymore, and I wonder whether the horrors of, say, the Chilean or Argentinian juntas can be topped. This is a particularly grisly topic, and while you can be correct, I'm prepared to hold on to the idea that the Soviet or the Russian army isn't that much worse than what other groups or armies have previously done in other locations. Some of this stuff is old, such as the "trentuno reale" of the Renaissance era, and some of this stuff is even older than that. Again, please don't think that I have any sympathy whatsoever for Russia.

What is little known about that is the US intel on the Iraqi WoMD in 2003 was uncertain and they rated themselves as such. What gets pushed is the political spin brought on by the Bush administration, including Rumsfeld and Cheney. They saw what they wanted to see, and sold the world on that viewpoint. Little evidence for Iraq WMDs ahead of 2003 war: U.S. declassified report Personally I never viewed the action as about WMDs; it was always about oil and terrorism.

Russian propaganda in action? Not sure what those crazy Ivans are doing...

At least Kh-15, Kh-55 and Kh-59 are lighter Soviet/Russian air to surface missiles that have tactical nuclear warhead version

Huh, I thought everyone could see edited posts, that way posters could see what was edited after the fact. For example, on my UI, just below Elerond's most recent post is: "Edited 31 minutes ago by Elerond (see edit history)". Tremble before my might!

We do not wield such powers.

I noticed his mentor thanking Hitomi for saving him without her having ever said anything to him, which would imply Van talked her up in private at least, . On a side-note, I'm refusing to consider this to be isekai until completely proven otherwise. Just because the Gaea is an inexplicably existing planet in the shadow of the moon or whatever (all of which is horribly out of scale in the same way it is in Outer Wilds) doesn't mean this is an isekai anime, okay? Yeah, animals learning weird behaviors from not having their parents around or other unfortunate circumstances can be an experience - having had two rescue dogs, a rescue cat, and finally a cat that was taken away from her mother within like the first few days of her life (this is the last one still around, and no, that was certainly not my decision!) has been proof enough of that.

See? You get it.

I get it, its much easier to be condescending in these types of debates than to be constructive

That takes time and effort, so I'm going to recuse myself. For my sanity and my job.

Maybe some Russian generals suddenly consider front line duty around Kiev a much safer prospect, than hanging around in Moscow... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60936117 Pentagon spokesman John Kirby called the assessments "discomforting" because an uninformed Putin could result in a "less than faithful" effort at ending the conflict through peace negotiations. "The other thing is, you don't know how a leader like that is going to react to getting bad news," he said. Putin didn't even know that Russia had sent conscripts to the front... the generals and advisors all being too scared to bring any bad news. According to US intelligence services, Putin is only now waking up to the reality of the situation by checking other news sources.

Its working, I had to delete the Oblivion.ini in the Mygames folder Now I can reload my mods and embark on my adventure ...yaaaaaaaay

Just when I think the Russian military strategy and approach cant get any lower I read these types of links and I realize...." it can get worse than I thought "

Or you could simply play Troubleshooter? A game that runs and needs no troubleshooting!

@melkathi and @Wormerine You guys have seriously jinxed my Oblivion gaming experience ...you wont believe what I have been going through After confirming all my mods are active I went to Steam and started Oblivion for the first time...and after the options screen when you click " play " the game screen goes black and shuts down immediately. No errors I wasn't worried initially because I am an accomplished gaming troubleshooter so after some high level troubleshooting I decided to play safe and just disable all the Mods but still it failed to load I then removed Oblivion and downloaded it again, twice and it still wont start So I now have a Steam version of Oblivion that wont load with NO mods and a clean install So please drop the voodoo, Jedi mind tricks and let the game work Today I am going to troubleshoot this egregious and frustrating problem extensively, I will keep you updated

Sometimes less is more. Now imagine if they are slapping DLC on Elden Ring ... then it gets even worse.

Thats gaming heresy, no active and committed gamer can ever complain about a game " being too big " ....its just not scientifically possible

No. If you look at the combat log the ability missed (there is no roll against any of my defenses) but as you can see my character is sent flying anyways.

Weird, if anyone has an idea about how this happens...

Well their is no honest debate about "if civilian structures have been targeted " they have, its irrefutable I can understand part of the point the article is making but its unlikely that hospitals and schools are being used in the Ukrainian defense Also this is exactly what Hamas does when they decide to launch futile rocket attacks on Israel, they use civilian buildings and then complain when the Israelis destroy the civilian buildings. But they do it exactly knowing their will be consequence because they can say " look, Israel is attacking civilian buildings " yet Israel wouldnt be targeting those buildings if rockets werent being launched from them But despite this the situations are different, Ukraine is a war and an unprovoked invasion. And the intentional or lack of concern with Russia's targets is both craven and contemptuous

very creative expression of anger relatable sentiment

So I thought I was pretty far in Elden Ring, now I found out there is a huge cavern system underneath the normal world ...... First it was just a big cave with stars on the ceiling, but then I came to another place and then another place and then another place... There's probably so many tiny rooms that I missed because you just can't check everything at once.

Mini-spoiler for episode 7 of The Vision of Escaflowne: Found out what was going on with the scenes that have no dub on Amazon - that's because the available version on Prime Video is from the German Director's Cut Blu Rays. Which also explains why they're not available for streaming in the US. So indeed, the scenes where the show just defaults to Japanese with apparently hardcoded subtitles were added after the initial dubbing and simply have no dub.

i think it could be an endgame thing after most bugs are fixed, and that depends on how good your console is.

Ha! It's open season on seizure of Russian assets. Game on.

I just found out that Weird West is a day 1 release on Game Pass, so I don't even have to pay anything (beyond the monthly subscription fee to Game Pass I'm already paying) to play it.

Hello, For those playing Deadfire in 2022 (hope you're many), I just released two mods: - Heal Injuries and Recover Per Rest resources on Ship: This mod makes party members heal all injuries and recover per rest resources while sailing (8h), no need to rest https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/582/ - Stealth Lights and Crafting: This mod changes the way that Stealth works, for example, who would sneak near an enemy with a torch in hand? Light sources like torchs and lanterns will alert enemies and give penalties to stealth. Also makes bombs require Explosives Skill to be used and crafting requires the relevant skill (ex: crafting potions requires Alchemy, (food, bombs, potions, poisons, scrolls, etc https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/581 Hope you enjoy.

Against crowds I like Amra + modal even more. You'll be frenzied + flanked and can even wear the Cap of the Laughingstock + Sandals of the Water Lilly which will drop your deflection by 40 points which makes cross against you very likely. Piling up damage reduction gear and armor is crucial though. Then you'll have Carnage + potential Riven Gore + Bleeding Cuts from a Retaliation and the +50% recovery time from Bleeding Cuts won't matter at all while Blood Thirst will work fine (doesn't for arquebus). So you can use that for some active 0-recovery-HoF or -Dazing Shouts or whatever after the shell breaks. Lord Darryn's Voulge: also really nice with this setup bc. of Static Thunder. Even a rod + modal works well. With something like Rod of the Deep Hunter + Sisyphos Stone you can slow down bunch of enemies' considerably while doing damage. Against singular (or not that many) tough foes the arquebus trick is pretty amazing though.

Yes, correct. And the Sporelings are very good summons considered the immediate access. That's why I wouldn't have recommended Furyshaper/Ancient (if I had read your plans before today ;)). I'd still say that Furyshaper is a great Single Class. The offensive beast and plant spells that are DoTs are very good (Insect Swarm, Plague of Insects, Venombloom) and adding Infestation of Maggots to the mix (although not a beast or plant spell itself). There's only two possible problems with them: first they all target fortitude which is often the highest defense - so you might need a reliable way (in the party) to debuff it. For example a SC or MC Chanter with The Long Night's Drink, your own Tanglefoot while Spirit Frenzy is active and so on. The better candidate for a Ancient Multiclass is the Helwalker imo. +10 INT are great to have for summons an DoT spells. And up to +15 MIG is great for DoTs, too (+10 from Helwalker passive, +5 from Thunderous Blows - although the +2 PEN is a little wasted if one mostly uses raw dmg DoTs - but for stuff like Wicked Briars it's great). What is also a nice candidate for an Ancient is the Psion. It needs no weapon damage to gain focus. You can stay behind and cast spells from cover. Psions have access to (mass-)charm and dominate which works really well in combination with summons such as Sporelings. It's very effective to be able to not only put summons on the field but at the same time also produce allies from enemies via mind control. Also the Psion has access to some accuracy buffing (Borrowed Instinct, Tactical Meld) which helps with landing spells. Alternating between druid spells and cipher spells and having one bottomless ressource pool is great imo. A Berserker/Fury has the advantage that he could stack +2 PEN from Frenzy with the +1 PEN of the Fury (when casting elemental spells) and then later even +1 PEN from some of the elemental talents such as Heart of the Storm and so on. +4 PEN on elemental druid spells is a big deal and helps a lot. Combining fast casting with spell spamming is nice as well. Also using Lord Darryn's Voulge is pretty cool as a Berserker/Fury. Once you get Blood Thirst this combo can be really fun when using stuff like Relentless Storm and Nature's Terror. Just make sure to get rid of confusion before casting Relentless Storm... The only thing that's not so great is that Furies don't have access to restoration spells - which means you cannot heal yourself from Berserker's self damage while frenzied (except with Savage Defiance and Second Wind and of course scrolls or potions). So a good healer in the party would be nice to have (for example using Tekehu with some Moonwell + the Moon's Night etc.).