Leaderboard

for national parks, we got those majestic redwood forests here in ca ... silly Gromnir, is another picture from our backyard. can see brick in bottom left corner which is our chimney. for walks we typical go to a nearby lake, but for the next month or so we gotta keep our dogs leashed at all times even if is no other people anywhere nearby. main reason for leashes is the abundance o' water fowl which is hatching and one o' our dogs will attack and swallow whole the fledglings if he gets the chance. is not a pretty sight when the dog gets ahold o' a bird. also, perhaps 'cause o' enduring drought conditions, rattlesnakes is extra prevalent this year, and our dogs is curious blind to snakes; will literal walk right over top o' 'em. doesn't make sense to us as the snakes (rattlesnakes, kingsnakes and others common in the area) is typical apparent to our non canine senses. even if the dogs can't see the snakes, you would assume they could smell 'em. have gotten lucky so far as has been a couple close calls. seeing as our dogs is preternatural snake dumb, am keeping 'em leashed. the dog who eats birds can seeming sense a silent and unmoving fledgling from fifty meters but will walk over a snake in his path seeming oblivious to the reptile. is weird. curious aside, rattlesnake hatchlings is as lethal as full grown snakes 'cause while they inject less venom than adult snakes, the dose is more concentrated. HA! Good Fun!

A while back a new neighbour moved in. Mostly she's the quiet and reserved type. Actually, most of the time you barely notice that someone new is around. Might also be because she apparently works night shifts and doesn't come out of her living place all day long. Just every now and then, at night, she leaves and you can catch a glimpse or two. I managed to snag two pictures, with relatively bad image quality because, uhm, well, it was night, my iPhone camera is pretty bad (I still got a first generation iPhone SE) and quite frankly, she gives me the creeps so I'm sure as hell not going any nearer than I was when taking the pictures. To say she's hideous would be an understatement, so really, if I hadn't walk by her door to get to mine I'd totally not even go anywhere near where she could show up. Hence, the images are in spoiler tags. Don't complain if you click on them and have a heart attack or scream like Prince John when he goes to visit Latrine in Mel Brook's Men in Tights. She also has the nasty habit of just throwing her leftovers out the door. Sheesh, who does that? Saw her today, not looking forward to the inevitable nightmares that will follow.

No change from what they engaged in in the early 18th century, then. Horrific indeed. One thing that has definitely changed outside Russia, perhaps irrevocably: nations outside Russia will recognize that all deals with Russia can be regarded as null and void, as Russia will not respect any of them.

You can't really argue with that logic...

I'm currently thinking about trying this silly Star Trek: Picard 'absolute candor' thing. I'd say by the end of the week I'd no longer have a job and my family would stop talking to me, but at least I'd be left in peace and all by myself. It is so incredibly tiresome to pretend to care about anyone else's ridiculous sensitivities. No, user, I don't want to spend an hour working on an issue that is only an issue because you can't stick to the defined process and that branches with a hundred times your workload have no issues with. No, user, if you print a picking list and change the storage location afterwards, it is not going to automatically update itself on the paper. No, this is not complicated. No, user, if you print a picking list after removing a package from storage it will not have a storage location printed on it. The package is no longer on hand. No, the system can't know you did not intend to remove it from storage unless you tell it so. No, this is not complicated. No, user, I don't want to listen to you griping about software not doing exactly what you want it to do when it was not developed specifically for your needs. Just deal with the fact that your use case is an edge case that barely fits into the entire concept in the first place. No, customer, I don't want to call you, you have an insignificant amount of shipments and make up less than 0.001% of all revenue, me talking to you about issues that are demonstrably on your or your IT service provider's end on the phone costs the company more than we make off of you in a month. No, dear colleague, I don't want to make time to go to a COVID-19 antigen test because you invited me to your marriage ceremony. I don't want to go in the first place and only agreed because you'd be a prissy bitch about it if I'd decline. No, dad, I already spend half of my time at work reading and writing emails, I don't want to be your secretary just because 'I type a lot faster' than you do. *sigh*

Well, there's a slight upside to taking extended walks when you're not that far away from a national park. When I was little it was possible to ice skate here in winter. Goes on for a bit beyond the bend. While they're not on the picture, there are several white lilac shrubs lining the way further into the park, the air is heavily fragrant with their scent. Not the worst way to spend some time walking.

^ I'm not an IT but I can say it was very freeing to tell my parents/family to essentially stuff it years ago. This is me, I do not need "fixing", accept it or fluff off. Humanity is just a bunch of ranting 3 year olds who want candy.

As much as this is horrifying, it is also fascinating, in a terrible sense, because it is so close to what the Russians did during the Great Northern War. Babies were tortured in front of their parents, and parents were tortured in front of their children (not babies, as that would not mean much). It is not enough simply to kill, or even to kill by torturing: it is important that the loved ones of the people killed by torturing witness the act. This was three hundred years ago, and it's still their modus operandi. One particularly distasteful aspect of war is that not only is it itself brutalizing, but once you have a situation where enemies (either soldiers of civilians) are completely under your control, this gives the perfect opportunity for every resentment and every pathology you may carry in yourself to come forth. Which is why we see these horrific things over and over again. With Russia, the situation is particualrly dire because essentially the whole citizenry has been institutionally brutalized for centuries, with no respite. An unrelated but somehow related bit of trivia: the game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? works differently in Russia. Contestants tend to avoid the "Ask the audience" option -- because the audience will not help the contestant. It wants the contestant to fail. It will try to give a wrong answer. That's the spirit in Russia.

Fassina is fine with whatever you put her. As a sorcerer she could carry your party with heals and buffs, and when her spells run out summon citzal's pike and wreck. This time I'm running her as loremaster and it's working out pretty well (infuse with vital essence helps her chants and invocations last even longer), so long as you're aware of the anti-synergy between summon familiar and chanter summons. (i deal with it by summoning a familiar and only using a chanter summon once i no longer really need the bonus PL for spellcasting). I know lots of people are sour on wizard subclasses, but I actually value conjurer subclass pretty decently (maybe just under evocation) since they get many of the spells I care about, and their familiar is guaranteed to give you a passive +1 PL bonus (on top of other stats) that gives you a slight casting edge even with your non-focus school, at the cost of a bit of action economy (having to summon a familiar and recovery penalty). Unfortunately conjurer tier 8/9 spells aren't as great as other subclasses that have access to evocation (meteor swarm and missile salvo are incredible and losing them isn't really made up for by getting some bonus PL on blackbow/enchanted armor that don't benefit much from PL ) hence why I tend to multiclass her. You definitely could do with an additional tank of some sort. Rekke is a real beefy boi as a brute or a brawler. I like him in particular b.c. he has higher dex and higher int compared to pretty much every other front-lining companion. He doesn't get as much DLC reactivity though. Failing that, Konstanten is more of a DLC sidekick, but I typically am underwhelmed by his stats (I don't value high con very much), though if you're patient he can make for a great SC barbarian. I mentioned in another thread that once I got to tier 8/9, my konstanten build skyrocketed as a major damage dealer thanks to heart of fury, the dazing shout upgrade, and the retribution-from-crits passive (equip a 2h axe and enable the bleeding modal). Because he takes a lot of damage in this setup, having a high con actually pays off a bit. If you want to be a tank, then I suggest instead filling up that fourth companion slot with Vatnir. I suspect he gets underplayed by the playerbase since he comes so late, but he's very good. It's funny - just by the nature of what bonus spells he gets from his priest subclass really changes how he plays compared to most other priests (even compared to Magran, who is also predisposed to being a nuker). If you don't want to make fassina a lroemaster, Vatnir makes a compelling celebrant, though honestly Vatnir's tier 8/9 spells are great (on top of how already great tier 8/9 spells are for priests).

And Star Citizen still hasn't come out.

Speaking of this question more generally, here is probably the cruelest of all historical ironies: Adolf Hitler's anti-semitism saved the world. Without it, and without the exile of several important Jewish scientists, the Nazis would've had the atomic bomb in 1942, 1943, something like that, and it would have been goodbye England, goodbye so many places. Albert Einstein pointed out in the late 1930s that Hitler's anti-semitism will prove very detrimental to his war effort. Einstein was right.

Incidentally, to anyone in general and @BruceVCin particular I recommend Masha Gessen's recent book The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Not a real historical study (like those done by, say, Orlando Figes and Ian Kershaw), but a thoroughly interesting document about the Soviet Union and Russia. Much of the stuff is rather harrowing, though, as the country has been and continues to be a very grim place to live in. The recent military failures can also be seen as a symptom of the overarching malaise. Why do generals make shockingly poor decisions, why do soldiers lack initiative and why do we see ridiculously stupid things done on a regular basis? Well, we are witnessing the operations of a culture where individual thinking is not only actively discouraged but has a history of being punished extremely severely. "Make good decisions!" is not an order that anyone can realistically be expected to carry out, if there is almost literally zero history of critical individual thinking being encouraged. Critical thinking has been dangerous: the system not only discourages it, but it actively punishes it. As a military strategist in my country pointed out, Russian low- to mid-level commanders have historically adopted a strategy of not making any choices so as to avoid making mistakes. But it doesn't work on the battlefield, as we have seen for two+ months.

Public Test Patch Notes for Update 0.13.0 Important Note: Your quest status will be reset with this patch. Our work on bringing you the story is going to cause some quest changes to have to happen in the background, so you will need to redo quests you have done previously. But everything you have built, crafted, and purchased in the backyard will all remain untouched! New Features Faction Reactivity Bugs will take the fight back to your base when they get tired of you intruding on their territory. The more you annoy a certain species, the more likely they are to say "knock knock!" at your door. Waft Emitter Want to anger the yard at will? Build the Waft Emitter! Concoct a pile of rotting bug parts that wafts throughout the yard, enraging whatever bugs whose parts you add to the pile. The more you add, the more enraged the bugs will be. Why you say? Well, why not??? Maybe you want to have bug delivered straight to you on demand! Note: Building art is temp for the start of the Public Test Build and will be updated. MIX.Rs Find MIX.R tanks across the yard mixing some good ol' Raw Science for Wendell's experiments. Overdrive the system by turning up the mix speed beyond suggested limits and trigger an explosive result to collect the massive amount of Raw Science inside. A word of caution though: MIX.R Overdrives are noisy and take time, and nearby bugs don't particularly appreciate that. Additional Defensive Resources Turrets Help defend your turf by building one of the two new turrets, hopping in, and gunning down some angry bugs. Pebblet Turret Shoots pebblets at high speeds to destroy your enemies. Pollen Turret Shoots pollen that stuns enemies. Effective at bringing down flying pests! Explosive Burr Trap Important conversation options with BURG.L now display a "!" icon next to them to show they are important for moving the conversation story forward. 1 New Mutation Creature Cards The teens can use their PEEP.R skills to better understand their bug neighbors and unlock creature cards that record important information on them. Creature Cards are obtained via the PEEP.R Successfully PEEPing a creature for the first time will unlock its Creature Card in the Data page Creature Cards contain valuable information regarding the creature Strengths Weaknesses Weakspot locations Health and Creature tier How many the player has killed Flavorful information or a fun fact Armor Upgrading and Adjustments Armor has been completely reworked Armor now applies flat Damage Threshold based on tier and % Damage Reduction based on weight class Flat Damage Threshold reduces damage by a flat number and is better against small hits 20 damage - 10 Damage Threshold = 10 damage 200 damage - 10 Damage Threshold = 190 damage % Damage Reduction reduces damage by a % and is better against big hits 20 damage - 20% Damage Reduction = 16 damage 200 damage - 20% Damage Reduction = 160 damage Armor Upgrades +1 - +5 Upgrades the Damage Threshold value and durability of armor by 5% per level up Requires Grub Leather Plates Bulky Path +6 - +7 Upgrades the Damage Threshold value and durability of armor by 10% Requires Berry Leather Plates +8 - +9 Upgrades the Damage Threshold value and durability of armors by 10% Requires Pupa Leather Plates Sleek Path +6 - +7 Upgrades the Damage Threshold value and durability of armor by 5% per level up Unlocks an innate status effect on the armor piece Requires Berry Leather Plates +8 - +9 Upgrades the Damage Threshold value and durability of armor by 5% per level up Requires Pupa Leather Plates Weight Classes Reworked Penalty for heavier armors is now stamina per weapon swing instead of stamina regen delay Light 10% Damage Reduction 5% More stamina to swing weapons Medium 20% Damage Reduction 15% More stamina to swing weapons Heavy 30% Damage Reduction 25% More stamina to swing weapons Weakpoints Creatures can now have weakpoints: locations on their bodies that can be attacked for additional damage. Enemies will take extra damage when struck in a weakpoint Certain weakpoints are only affected by specific damage/attack types Enemies that have weakpoints will have their weakpoint locations detailed on their creature card A special VFX sparkle will play when the player successfully hits a weakpoint Swap Difficulty Mid Game You can now change the difficulty of the game at any time on any game that is not in "Creative" mode. Change Custom Game Settings Mid Game You can now change many of the Custom Game options mid-game after having started a custom game. The following options can be changed at any time: Difficulty Bugs Ignore Players Building Integrity Player Damage Friendly Fire Pet Invincibility Hunger/Thirst Drain Stamina Drain Equipment Durability Food Spoiling Menu Pauses Game Base Defense Backpack Items on Death The following changes cannot be edited mid-game: All Recipes Unlocked and Free Bugs Spawn Quests ASL Terminals Field stations now feature state of the art "Advanced System Library" Terminals that connect directly to BURG.L's lab tech from anywhere in the yard. You can now access the Science Shop, BURG.L Quests, and the Milk Molar Infusion interfaces at any field station you find without having to visit BURG.L directly at the Oak Lab. Save Game Naming Full playthroughs and individual saves can both be renamed for better book keeping! Storage Naming Storage containers can now be renamed and the name will display above the interact text. The name will also show floating above the storage similar to the chosen icon. Additional Features "Take All" option on Sap Collectors The Read To Me feature can now use different voices installed on your system, including voices for languages other than English. Change the voice in the options menu. Various bugs can jump! New Crafting Content Charcoal Canteen Purify dirty water on the go. Charcoal Torch Light up a bigger radius, and repair your torch when it gets low instead of crafting a new one. Story / Quest Revisions Story and Quest progress will be reset. A lot of the early dialogue and quests have been undergone revisions and thus the story and quest flow are now different. Story and lab content will need to be traversed again to progress the new story flow. You will be placed back at the starting ravine. All inventory, player bases, unlocked recipes, milk molars, science purchases, and other unlocks will carry over. The dialogue revisions are still missing final recorded VO. Note: The first load of old saves may take longer than normal as the conversion process takes place. Changes / Tuning Systems Rest warning for waking up in the dark has been moved to 5am instead of 6am. The player will respawn at the nearest discovered Field Station if no respawn point is set. Billy Hogs and Apples now grant more items and are harvested in a slightly different way. After breaking the initial big food node it breaks in to several chunks. Each chunk can be hit to burst in to large quantities of loot. Billy Hogs now grant spoiled meat in addition to their other loot. Minor Stamina Rework: When stamina is fully depleted you'll now enter an "exhausted" state Exhausted state lasts for 3 seconds Cannot perform any actions that require stamina while exhausted After exhaustion ends, all stamina is fully recovered instantly Some systems such as Thirst have been changed to interact with exhaustion time instead of stamina recovery speed Stamina recovery speeds and delays work as normal in all other circumstances Stamina cost for swinging all weapons has been halved Controls When in PEEP.R mode, your rotation speed is scaled down for more precise control. Mutations Mithridatism is now a 3 stage mutation Stage 1 Obtained: Kill 1 Wolf Spider Effect: 25% Poison damage reduction Stage 2 Obtained: Kill 5 Wolf Spiders Effect: 50% Poison damage reduction Stage 3 Obtained: Kill 10 Wolf Spiders Effect: 75% Poison damage reduction Lil Fist has been reworked and is now a 3 stage mutation Stage 1 Obtained: Kill 40 creatures with fists Effect: 25% chance on-hit to gain a damage up buff for unarmed attacks, stacks an unlimited amount of times. Clears on combat end. Stage 2 Obtained: Kill 100 creatures with fists Effect: 50% chance on-hit to gain a damage up buff for unarmed attacks, stacks an unlimited amount of times. Clears on combat end. Stage 1 Obtained: Kill 200 creatures with fists Effect: 75% chance on-hit to gain a damage up buff for unarmed attacks, stacks an unlimited amount of times. Clears on combat end. Cardio Fan now also decreases exhaustion time on top of its previous effect of increasing stamina regen speed. Reliable Friend now decreases revival time by a much larger amount Stage 1 = 25% Stage 2 = 50% Stage 3 = 75% Daredevil now decreases fall damage by 50% and prevents dying from falling in almost all situations. Movement Zipline speed and acceleration increased. Tech Upgraded engine to Unreal 4.27. Audio One new combat music track. Accessibility Read To Me now works with non-Latin languages. Improved Read To Me functionality in Molar, Tech Store, and BURG.L Quest interfaces. Read To Me now pronounces science words such as BURG.L and TAZ.T correctly. Combat All creatures have had a damage pass to keep up with new armor system All creatures have had AI adjustments for combat Creatures will now strafe and move more frequently Creatures have had their attack frequency and cooldowns adjusted Stamina cost for swinging all weapons has halved. Daggers now deal Slashing damage instead of Chopping damage Daggers can no longer harvest plants requiring chopping damage while above water Underwater harvesting functionality remains unchanged. Creatures are better able to navigate between separate navigable regions. Pets Pet corpses will drop held items and memorials when they decay. Pets now take 3x as long to get unhappy. Additionally, Pets now lose happiness 50% slower when equipped with any sort of hat. Interface Subtitles have been improved to show character icons next to them. Subtitles display to other players when someone is talking to BURG.L so the rest of the party can follow along. Multiple HUD notifications that play at once will no longer overlap each other. Map location marker for current spawn point will show up no matter how far you are from it. Tech upgrades can be purchased by double-clicking on them. The Resource Surveyor interface now sorts the available resources. Added Deposit and Retrieve options to item context menus in container interfaces. Smoothie recipes are shown in the crafting interface (still requires Smoothie Station). "Take All" option on various buildings is disabled if there is nothing to take. A notification noting your equipment took durability damage on respawn now displays. A "Respawn at Kid Case" option has been added to the Death screen. A "Load Last Save" option has been added to the Death screen. Important conversation options with BURG.L now display a "!" icon next to them to show they are important for moving the conversation story forward. Building General Broodmother Trophy now supports Arachnophobia Safe Mode. The game now communicates more clearly when building is disabled because of combat. Zipline anchors can now be relocated if no lines are attached. Stuffed Weevil, Infected Weevil, Aphid, and Gnat can now drop ingredients when destroyed (except meat). Players may run while relocating buildings. Building Placement Triangular walls and floors can now be correctly placed against each other. Fixed several cases where snapped walls were incorrectly considered obstructed. Some grid buildings can no longer have other buildings placed overlapping them in specific cases. Buildings can no longer be placed inside characters in Creative mode. Small buildings can now be placed under stairs. Optimization Improved CPU Performance while playing the game. Steam versions of the game now use DX12 instead of DX11 World/Resources Dandelion Tufts world items will only stay active for 8 hours before being blown away. Pond Dome exterior lights will now turn off during the day. Removed the button puzzle and TAZ.T fight from the Oak lab. The landscape outside of the yard is no longer an empty void. Creatures Dust Mites are now significantly less tanky HP reduced by 20% Damage Threshold reduced by 12 Resistances reduced from 50% to 25% Items The same smoothie effect can no longer be stacked multiple times You can still stack as many different smoothies as you'd like Roasted meat now restores health when consumed in addition to its other effects. Bug Fixes Major Fixes Newly-connected clients can now see all resource survey regions instead of only ones near them. Dropped item locations will no longer desynchronize for clients. Fixed a client desynchronization issue related to relocated buildings. Fixed several other client desynchronization issues. Clients will no longer be missing ziplines when connecting to a multiplayer game. Collision added to the crumpled paper in the trash can so players can no longer get soft locked inside. Other Fixes The player can now take damage when impacting surfaces with sufficient velocity. Dropped weed burrs always collide with players. Controls tabs in the options screen will now scroll more nicely. HUD markers display in the correct locations during zipline connection. Previously-discovered Pagoda field station now automatically unlocks itself as a resource survey region. Clock times are now displayed correctly in Arabic. Reduced tendency of Wide Interaction to flicker between different interactables when many are close to each other. Wide Interaction can no longer be used to interact through walls. Displayed Milk Molar counts will be correctly updated when another player collects molars while the UI is open. Player nameplates and map markers will continue to display when the player is placing ziplines. Buildings can no longer be placed on Candy Corn. The client will no longer see inappropriately-disabled building construction interact options. The player will stop placing Pet Memorials after using the last one in their inventory. Hedge Berries will no longer disappear when cut using explosives. Frankenline drawing correctly saves and loads on Xbox and Windows Store / Game Pass versions. The full map art will now be correctly shown in the Resource Surveyor. Buildings can no longer be placed in prohibited locations by cycling the material. In German, some text labels that were supposed to be uppercase now are. Ziplines cannot be connected to anchors being placed by other users. The Broodmother BLT recipe no longer blends in to the table it's placed on. Collision around the underwater milk molar in the larva cave has been adjusted to make obtaining it easier. TAZ.Ts will no longer sometimes be larger in size. Bug Fixes - Steam Fixing issue where not logging in (OFFLINE_PLAYER) causes the wrong player save data to be loaded and potentially losing inventory / player progress.

It's probably pretty hilarious too with the voice actor gang consisting of DIO, Toya, Allen and Prince Dios. That seems like a dream combination for just that sort of nonsense. Also, yeah, okay, I wasn't sure with the tag. I can't even disagree in general. It's not just your brain*, there really is a whole lot of flat guitar playing in a lot of music, some even to the point of me not being actively able to make out the guitar track in the music, even though it's there - why else have a guitarist around. They surely don't pay a guitarist to pretend to play, I mean, that would be weird. I get paying people to sing lip sync like what was that, Milli Vanilli, but yeah, mockup guitarists would be weird. In this case though, well, dunno, it's probably too easy to win me over with good singing - or rather singing I would consider to be good, that's not really entirely objective. Well, there are objective ways to measure singing quality based on technique and breath support, but that's something else. As such I don't have any issues listening to Evanescence, even though the band is just, let's say terrible. I would not turn off Creed when it's on, but I would actively attempt to get rid of Metallica, and anyone noticing that would spell an instant loss of all metal credibility. *For me that's by far and large saxophones and (short form, by far and large) trumpets. The former makes me tune out, and the latter actually makes me irascible. I also really, really don't like it when music feels like it's everyone doing their own thing and there's a distinct lack of melody and harmony - or in other words, that's a whole lot of deliberate breaks where there should be none in terms of pattern prediction. It's doubly bad when this brain dissonance is caused by vocals. That pretty much kills all of jazz, with very, very few exceptions. That's not to say everything needs to be perfectly melodical or easy listening. Some groups I enjoy listening to employ quick timing switches from a base 6/8 time signature to an irregular 5/8 and 7/8 and it doesn't feel wrong. Hard to describe. A decent example is Frank Sinatra's Come Fly With Me. Ugh. Can't cope. Impossible.

Yeah, I took the presence of the tag to more mean "there are pretty boys in this show that are supposed to appeal to teenage girls". Combine it with the show putting the flower boys in DANGEROUS SITUATIONS where they have to RESCUE STRONG BUT VULNERABLE DAMSELS IN DISTRESS, and I do believe that is the idea, . Whereas in CCS, that's obviously not really the intent or situation...although it arguably kind of is to a degree in Escaflowne. I'll watch at least a couple more episodes to see if it continues to be inexplicably enjoyable to me. No, actually, it's just the style of music. I don't know how to explain it exactly because this is not really an area of forte for me since I've never liked it, but a whole lot of electric guitar-driven rock has a tendency to make my brain go numb - it sounds ear-thrashingly flat and dissonant to me. I weirdly don't have this particular instrumental issue with metal (although I don't like the vast majority of metal for other reasons), and I can jam out to Chuck Berry about as well as anybody, but more modern stuff just never really goes down well with me, I guess. We are all bioshounen on this blessed day.

All of the bases in DNA and RNA have now been found in meteorites Which pretty much suggests that life can form anywhere that the conditions are right. Now if we could just find some elsewhere...

I really like the idea of a pulley system.

Just in case: Bishounen is a tag for the aesthetics of the male characters, not necessarily the target demographic. It just means pretty boy (bishoujo meaning pretty girl). I mean, yeah, literally it means pretty youth because technically shounen means something like "few of years" or "little years", but it at some point came to refer to boys instead of being gender neutral. *shrug* Yue from CCS is the most bishounen character ever, probably. edit: Might as well post a picture for everyone who hasn't (and never will) watch the show. Blasphemy, how could you not like a song performed by not one but four really good vocal... eh, okay. That answers that. Okay, in all fairness, it's probably not the strongest of the Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles songs, but I really like the live performance. Definitely a case where seeing them on stage having fun enhances the experience a good deal. Unlike, uhm, that µ's thing that just gets worse when being subjected to the video instead of just the audio.

US uses often same approach towards international agreements as Russia, meaning that if they don't like one they don't follow it. Countries could complain to UN where US and Russia use their veto powers to kill such complaints. EDIT: There is no police which enforces international law, it gets enforced only when other countries decide to enforce it. Same goes to all international agreements. “Where is the security that the security council needs to guarantee? It’s not there, although there is a security council. So where is the peace? Where are those guarantees that the United Nations needs to guarantee? It is obvious that the key institution of the world which must ensure the coercion of any aggressor to peace simply cannot work effectively.” -Zelenskiy

Daily reminder that "US officials assert" =/= evidence. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-using-declassified-intel-fight-info-war-russia-even-intel-isnt-rock-rcna23014

US and EU acted according to Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances which Russia has also signed Russia broke their several of their international agreements and their own constitution If they have legal reason to impose sanctions then they don't break any contracts but otherwise they do. Acceptance of legal sanctions is stipulated by UN General Assembly or UN security council which both Russia is also member It is not in Russia (except cases where approved legislation is against Russian constitution and Duma didn't use constitutional change process), but it does not mean that it isn't against agreements signed by Russia,

Yes, so by that logic legislation approved by Duma in Russia is also not illegal, right?

At this point there's no longer any way for this to not end in nuclear armageddon.

Would be interesting to see what non-unilateral sanctions look like.

What do you mean by " Russia didnt attack any countries or seize the assets " ....they invaded Ukraine and decided to unilaterally recreate the borders of a sovereign country Thats why their are Western sanctions against them, what do you mean by "unilatteral decision to ban trading"

Yes I agree, Putins War has demonstrated the Ruskies cant be trusted with legal documents or rather to honor them. The latest example of this is cutting energy to Poland and Bulgaria because of demands they must pay in Rubles but the agreed on, Russian signed legal document, says only $ and Euros are accepted currency The West should seize and auction all Russian Oligarch assets they can and give the money to Ukraine to assist and ameliorate the terrible suffering of the Ukrainian people

Microsoft set a date for 2022’s Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase - June 12th. Surely, it is about time to give us an update on Avowed?

I have been following this on numerous international news channels, the killing of Ukrainian civilians and abuse of Ukrainian captured soldiers is much worse and widespread than I thought Some of the Russian military are acting in a more barbaric and inhumane way than I could have ever thought possible Their is definitely a case of War Crimes to be answered to on a myriad of different examples

Documentation of systematic warcrimes by Russia at the UN yesterday. The details are pretty horrific, and the evidence clearly shows these acts were not idiosyncratic but rather the result of Russian soldiers having been instructed to engage in them. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2022/04/28/Ukrainians-executed-Russian-war-crimes/7051651120048/ https://www.businessinsider.com/evidence-russia-executing-ukrainians-trying-to-surrender-us-official-2022-4

Uniper plans to pay with euros, but using scheme where Russian bank switches them to rubles. Ruble is not freely traded so it has currently value decided by Russian central bank as you can only buy rubles from them.

So US economy Contracted by 1.4% in terms of annualized GDP... With more inflation pain incoming, how sustainable it will be for US to keep pushing for geopolitical disorder in the midterms election year? @BruceVCseems I was right 'again' with economic fallout of the ****ty policies of the last couple of years. Can't wait for FED to pull the liquidity rug from under liquidity starved markets in the stagflatory / recession like conditions.

This show is really bad, but hilarious because of strange animation/writing/scene timing decisions. I should not be laughing at people being horrifically maimed or straight up killed, but I've done it two episodes in a row now (heck, I did it several times in this second episode alone!). A little blind girl named Miyu lost her parents in an accident, and all she has left is her older brother...only, he's mysteriously stopped coming to visit her at the hospital as of late, and it's been distressing/depressing her. Meanwhile, one of the flower boys is at the same hospital because his younger sister was just crippled in a hit and run, and he happens to run into little Miyu while she's wandering around the hospital with only the feeling of the walls to guide her.

Damn, some of them hit close to home, except I would be the one raising edge case issues. "So holding ctrl while clicking on that is not the use case? Too bad, have a bug." or "You don't think the user will type in δ⌐Ö♦•♀♣♣♀♪♫☼↕◄‼. Too bad have a bug."

didn't use parentheticals, so am wondering if the person responsible for the fox news chyrons were aware o' repeating greene's spelling error. either way, is kinda amusing. Christians Aid Migrants Because Church Is Run By Satan, Marjorie Taylor Greene Says "In a clip from the interview released by the group Right Wing Watch, Voris asked Greene about Catholic organizations in the U.S. that use federal funding to help resettle undocumented immigrants and refugees. "“I thought we had a separation of church and state,” Greene said in response. "“What it is, is Satan’s controlling the church,” she continued. “The church is not doing its job, and it’s not adhering to the teachings of Christ, and it’s not adhering to what the word of God says we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to live.” "She added that Christian groups that say you should take care of migrants are “destroying our laws” and taking advantage of Americans." ... the sad part is am betting a few boardies agree with greene. so it goes. HA! Good Fun!

I know you said you didn't need too much detail, but I've got the AEC website open on my other screen and I'm gonna break down my voting order for Senate and House of Reps. House of Reps: Green, Labor, Liberal, Liberal Democrats, One Nation, UAP (In House of Reps I guess I hate all the minor parties that aren't Green, hooray.) Senate: Independents David Po**** (lol I always forget about this site's dumb language filter) and Kim Rubenstein (still not sure on order), then (a lot of this is not yet settled, gonna delve through websites and see what I think) Australian Progressives, Greens, Animal Justice Party, Sustainable Australia (not sure tho) Legalise Cannabis Australia, (LOL. I'll check out their policies tho) Fuxin Li, Labor, (my votes will probs actually end here, but if I had to number them all....) Liberal, UAP, Informed Medical Options Party (Actual antivaxxers, screw these guys) If you see someone after the Liberal party in my rankings, I think they suck a lot.

I will be preferencing independents and parties with progressive policies, including the Greens party which is (kinda?) our third biggest party, then Labor. (Despite the fact that they embarrassingly spell their party the American way.) I'll have to read up a little on the latest changes to voting rules, but I believe these days I don't need to continue numbering past the first 6, in the senate at any rate, but if I did, I'd go Liberal after Labor, then the various conservative minor parties. (For some of these parties, read 'conservative' as 'racist and or/antivaxx') Specific policy leanings that I care about that will be contributing to Labor being at the bottom of that stack: I would prefer we treat refugees more humanely. Labor still seems to favour trying to discourage people from trying to seek refuge via boat, by making the experience less pleasant. I would prefer we listen to the scientific consensus that we're damaging our earth and should knock it off. Labor still seems to favour building new coal power plants. Those are the biggest things keeping Labor on the bottom of that stack. I think one of the reasons I like Independents and will probs preference them high in the senate is they're not beholden to a party; I get the impression there are probs people within the Labor party who would prefer not to be setting fire to our planet, but are required to toe the party line. Side note, both our two major political parties accept millions in donations from coal companies. So that's another thing I don't love. Other things are the usual 'not treating LGBT people like garbage under the guise of religious freedoms', 'making education free', 'supporting medicare', stuff like that.

Also we've got preferential voting, so even if (when) they 'both' suck you can vote for someone else and still contribute to keeping the less good candidate out of power.

Not sure about that. Maybe among the common Russians, but a few of Putins closest oligarch friends are Jews (and have Israeli dual citizenship), like Abrahamovic. I would suspect Islamophobia is a thing though, considering Navalny used to campaign on an ideology (besides some extreme nationalist views) of kill all Muslims on sight including life sized posters (and Youtube videos, which has since been taken down) with him in combat fatigues waving a pistol at a middle eastern looking character and slogans to the effect of kill them now. He did later change strategy in his bid for power, trying to appeal to the west, but still, if Islamophobia was a platform that brought him to prominence domestically, I assume it is a thing. The Chechen war probably did help fuel such sentiments too.

I think it's a sound theory at least. Mind you, not being a citizen (yet), it doesn't apply to me (yet). So easy to say yay or nay. One thing to say about i though, no matter how awful the cretin in Canberra is, you can only blame the stupidity of your fellow countrymen (unless you were stupid enough yourself to vote for him). Never mind that political campaigning down here is somewhat marred by the lopsided media coverage (courtesy of Murdoch media's not quite monopoly, but very significant market dominance). Only place in the world I remember that was worse off was Italy during the Berlusconi years. Better public debate and more variety in available media during elections is also required for the idea of mandatory voting to work, or you end up no better than China. I.e. a de facto single party state and the outcome of elections being more of an approval rating than a choice. Edit: Quite, not Quote

Weiss Kreuz, episode 1. This is probably the worst anime I've ever enjoyed watching the entire first episode of. Not in terms of art/animation, although the animation is quite poor on top of the DVD being a pretty bad scan as well...and it has one of the worst intro songs/videos I've heard. It starts off with some guys in a van being attacked intercut with our main character, one computer programmer Michiru, and her boyfriend having a short conversation... You know what, why don't I just post the clip? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/0nvsf4ugqivymf3/mpc-hc64_uxY2RkGOZe.mp4 Okay, the unintentional comedy of that aside, Michiru absentmindedly picks up a data disk from the scene of the accident, and since it's the only thing she has to go off of, decides she has to figure out what's on it. But first, she has to spend some time being depressed about the death of her boyfriend, and visits a flower shop with her friend that is also a girl. The flower shop is run by...a group of four hotshot boys that a ton of other teenage girls are fangirling about? Huh, what's going on here? This is really weird. Oh, oh no... Tags: adventure, drama, shoujo, bishounen It gets better...the premise: So, from what I gather, this show seems like it's going to introduce a new main character that happens to be a girl each episode, a girl that this silly group of flower "assassins" will just happen to meet or be around so that she can rescued by them from perilous circumstances! I feel embarrassed for watching this to begin with, but I feel even more embarrassed that I actually enjoyed the episode. @majestic You really should've reversed those videos. I didn't like the first song, but then I started watching the second and I thought "actually, the previous one was a masterpiece". Also, I'm never going to watch that show, .

As long as it's not the Techno-Necromancers from Alpha Centauri...

Yeah, BBG had some **** ups today apparently, as they've caused misinformation with the Austrian and Slovak part. Haven't seen Germans openly denounce that. BBG ****ed up also some data release on Meta, not that it helped FB ticker in any way today... Interestingly, while the USD is highest in value in 20 years, RUB is gaining value on it still. Not sure who is pumping the RUB because this is beyond actions of what Russia alone could have done with regulations.

This is just a Russian propaganda. Austrian chancellor has denied it, and the CEO of SPP (Slovak Gas Industry) has released today this statements: "This is a unilateral step by Russia, which is testing the European Union's united approach. For the time being, Slovakia does not expect a unilateral suspension of supplies, because it has fulfilled its contractual obligation in advance by making a payment by the end of May. I assume that Slovakia will follow the joint action of the EU countries. Slovakia has no reason to pay directly with rubles. The contract declares payment in euros or dollars."

Welcome back!

Not doing much. Mostly wage slaving, and playing computer/video games. My dentist told me that one of my wisdom teeth needs to be pulled out. I have a phobia for needles, and always hate my dentist visits. Edit: Damn, it was almost two years ago I revisited this place. Still haven't played The Outer Worlds, but I'll get the bundle thingamajing they have when it is heavily discounted.

I've been playing a bit of Elden Ring here and there. There are many fun parts, but I feel like the world is a bit too big for its own good. Dungeons are mostly fun, though.

After finally getting a new GPU I've finished Metro Exodus (minus the DLC, for now). Kinda ambivalent about it. The storyline is nice, they do a pretty good job of actually setting up an existing relationship for the player you can't help but care about, with character with their own hopes and dreams. Quite unlike that other company with the post apocalyptic games that tries to make you care about certain characters... (*cough* Bethesda *cough*). However gameplay-wise... I don't know. For me the best sections where those that played more like previous Metro games, the more linear, more purposefully built pieces rather than the open world stuff, like the start of the game, Yamantau, the Taiga, and the finale. Especially the respawning enemies kinda took me out of the immersion, certainly when it comes to what are supposed to be the more "scary" enemies (like Demons). In that it sort of reminds me of Dead Space 2, that game was "fine", but really didn't evoke the same claustrophobic fear of the original, until I set foot aboard the docked Ishimura and all that claustrophobic fear came rushing right back. The use of collectibles (diaries in this case, some of which are really easily missable) for environmental storytelling also isn't a trend I particularly enjoy, especially given how the save system works: there's only a few rolling saves that constantly get overwritten, with autosaves and quicksaves using the same slot, so if you purposefully save at a certain point the game will just overwrite that save in short order. This means that if you miss something in an area you cannot return to your only option is to replay the entire level. Still, I'd consider it a good game as I finished it in a few sittings, which is unusual for me nowadays. I'd probably give it a 7/10, maybe an 8, if I'm feeling generous.

It is enjoyable. I found it refreshing that all the followers are just people and don't try to become more Morte than Morte. But one playthrough is enough to see everything the game has to offer.

For the random amusement: Elden Ring's ‘Let Me Solo Her’ Becomes Total Internet Legend (kotaku.com)