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I personally like Palputin.

Yeah, well I do try to regularly come up with creative names for that puffy decomposing bloatfish, but sometimes I just don't think that short rodent-faced melting waxdoll is worth the effort.

No, because we are in NATO. And exact reason why they can't even cross Dniepr CURRENTLY is NATO. If they mobilize its different story. Russian military is joke, it doesn't mean that 10 million 'russian' soldiers are not scary. I really don't see contradiction in it

How do you imagine keeping the status quo with the country like Russia today? Keep giving putler whatever he wants because "Well, he has to stop somewhere, right? Right?"

Well define 'European interest' because we in East REALLY don't trust frog eaters to help us against Russia as they demonstrated time and time again. Only one willing is US. Germans and French would sacrifice us in blink of eye until there is russian tank division 100km from France they will do nothing

Here's a good summary analysis on where things currently stand in the Donbas and overall for Russia's military efforts: https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-donbas-offensive-faltering-analysis/31832683.html

I am just waiting for Lavrov to call Chinese nazis, I am sure he REALLY want to xD

Ah yes, now I see - evil meanie Ukraine did not want to hand its territory with totally absolutely honest to god natural insurgencies that were totally absolutely honest to god not orchestrated by Russia up to sending their military officers to stir up **** there (also see: Girkin, Igor) over to Russia after it already occupied Ukrainian Crimea and therefore this war is entirely Ukraine's own fault, because how could the most peaceful and innocent goodest neighbour Russia not to interfere on behalf of those poor annexed oppressed regions, it being the shining beacon of selflessness and noble intentions, truly the caring oldest brother of us ungrateful faux-nations! See, I can do passive-aggressive comical exaggeration too! Lets not, because it'll require Russia attacking an EU member. Yes! It makes no sense, I agree! But he did it! Nice article. Too bad it did not age that well, because since then Bucha has been discovered among other things. Civilian executions, raping and looting doesn't quite fit the "we'll just denazify here a little and be out real quick" plan, don't you think?

Even if we ignore the fact russia shat on those agreements in the first place when it chose to attack, implementing them in full is giving demented dictator of a fascist country what he wants (and stupidly hoping he'll stop there). Also, Nothing is shifting here, because russian army is militarily semi-joke that not only America can face down, but only America and maybe Brits seem to be willing to face down. There is difference. Also2, Quite likely that it would not. Quite likely that it would be some deep concerns and perhaps even condemnation of actions, but those losers in their insignificant countries east of East Germany (that belong to russia's influence sphere anyway thus should know their place and accept it) cannot really matter more than precious status quo with aside of cheap gas, right? Also3, Just like this war that putler wages against Ukraine!

And Putinistan haven't done anything stupid yet, innit.

Unfortunately there's a big belief in some areas of the country that teaching sex ed (including condom distribution) is going to make kids have sex the first time or have more sex (as opposed to making the sex they're already having safer). We not only had to have our parents consent, it was actually done as a field trip (sex ed was explained at a local science center rather than in the class; I guess so no one who hadn't had a parent sign off could come and sneak a peak). Pardon me while I steal this response from KP...

Considering the torture stories I've read today, they sure as hell don't want to be taken as POWs.

Dunno about technological, but there are a bunch of sociological - if not solutions, ways to mitigate/lower the rates of abortion. Better sex ed so unwanted pregnancies are rarer. Better social safety nets so prospective parents don't feel like they're choosing between an abortion, or having both them and their child live in poverty and/or starving to death. It's late and I should go to bed so I'm not gonna look up the exact stats but I think those were two of the bigger predictors of abortion rates. Interestingly, nowhere on that list: the legality of abortions.

No direct proof, but here is a google translate of russian Konsomolskaya Pravda from March 1st, where they are talking how this might/will end up. Orban and the people around him were always very vocal about the cancellation of Treaty of Trianon, and from the experience, of how Hungary tried meddling into the affairs of they neighbours in recent past, including Slovakia (one of the most notable one is handing out Hungarian passports to people in neighbouring countries, very similar to what Russia is doing in Ukraine), I consider this information plausible, but it should still be taken with a pretty big grain of salt, because my subjective view on this matter might be a little bit skewed and not objective from personal experience of Slovak politics. https://www-kp-ru.translate.goog/daily/27371.3/4552402/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Absolutely, that's what it is. But should you ask Lavrov about it, for instance, there would surely be different justifications, possibly related to the nazis in Sweden or something (I suppose you've seen the campaign going on in Russia). That's what I was referring to (although, admittedly, possibly not clearly enough). What they're enganged in here is criminal, once again. Here, too. But they are likely going to try to justify it in a completely different way, and there will be some who accept that different way.

yeah, let's glorify, how Russia is stable under Putin, and completely forget how he is destabilizing whole Eastern Europe with his hybrid war since 2014, with half of the neonazi and nationalist parties in these countries being on his payroll... His goal being to completely undermine EU and slowly cause it to dissolve with the use of useful idiots like Orban, who was probably promised Zakarpathia Ukraine, to stay on Putin's leash... If he would not be such a moron and waited few more years, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia would make as much mess in the EU as UK did since start of Brexit rally... Before the War, Putin's approval here was over 60% (mostly due to well executed hybrid war)... nowadays, it is around 20%...

Who exactly are those "Russian apologists" you keep going on and on (and on and on and on...) about? If you want to insult somebody, call them by name.

Yes it would be a nice synergy. FYI the max I managed to reduce the Curse across different FF builds gave a duration of around 1.3s. FF typically has low to avg INT which isn't great for Bloodmage BUT you could take advantage of Beam spells since their duration is fixed!

Yes, but with Enlightened Agony you could maybe spare the cast of Infuse with Vital Essence (I guess you don't need the Fit inspiration due to Iron Wheel anyway) and at the same time get the reduced hostile effects duration. And should you get hit by stuff like Arcane Dampener you can recast it and shave off 5 secs immediately which often removes hostile effects on the spot. Too bad Iron Wheel's AR bonus doesn't stack with Spirit Shield and Llengrath's Safeguard etc.

Even with the lower starting Reflex, it is still my strongest defense by endgame, at 190+. Exactly. FF/Fighter/Nature Godlike can consistently get to PL10 without per rest items or consumables. Which is really nice for the FF attack which benefits from scaling left and right. It would be short but remember that because of inversions, adding multiple hostile effect reduction modifiers isn't going to do much past a certain point. If you have 35 RES, it gives -75% reduction, and everything is going to be pretty much marginal after that. Enlightened Agony will get you to -85% or Lone Wolf would get you to -82%, but the 2 together + Mohora Wrap + Strand of Favor + Cabalist Gambeson would maybe bring you to -88%... Basically combining just 35 RES + Enlightened Agony or Lone Wolf gives you best return on investment.

Oh my god, I just learned that Square Enix sold its studios to invest into crypto/NFT crap. What makes it even more stupid is that the NFT market is collapsing right now.

At 180+ Will and 80%+ negative effect % reduction, Arcane Dampener is never a problem anyway. They're very very close. FF/SG has a defensive edge, FF/Unbroken has an offensive edge. EDIT: FF/Unbroken has the perk of not having to roleplay an a**hole for full defensive bonus

Paladin get Hands of Light for 2 zeals and as solo character, Virtuous Triumph can help to regen the 8s base of courageous. * By memory, sometimes (didnt test deeply that phenomen) the courageous inspiration stay until combat end, so after the buff itself is over. That work with Effort, maybe also with other sources of courageous like Hands of Light.

I never had such a problem. You can't be interrupted if you don't get hit and a FF/steel garrote has one of the highest passive defenses in the game (behind a helwalker/paladin). Also there's no doubt in my mind that a votary is more durable because better armor, defense and passive healing (arguably the best) with no weakness against Arcane Dampener/Cleanse. The fighter has probably better dps due to the higher attack speed, but not by a large margin considering the dmg buff of the paladin.

The biggest obstacle to a Nordic or European defense alliance that has European interests and security in mind is... the US. Never going to happen so long as NATO exists. I suspect Putin has a tighter grip on the local media than Nicholas had Edit: The Romanovs were not exactly popular with the people in the first place. Iirc, he (the Czar) needed victories very badly after the disastrous Far East war with Japan as the peasants had started to get very restless already, 10 years before WWI. Yeah, but it's a really awesome parallel. Let's actually stop for a moment and consider what could happen if Putin is removed via internal coup or a civil war*. Last time that happend, by all accounts, you got people in power who were even bigger butchers than the incumbent by quite a bit. Do people really think that a Putin ouster is going to end with Mr. 4% support taking over so that we can all go sing kumbaya in the Red Square? Look at the political landscape in Russia and realize that Putin is actually the moderate guy there. Is the endgame a rehash of the Western 1918 expeditions into Russia (but guys I'm sure this time it'll pan out) to put cool guy Navalny in the Kremlin or what? How do people imagine this playing out in their heads? *civil war in a country with the largest nuclear stockpile is a truly terrifying prospect and I'd argue that anyone should consider the status quo better than that possibility, but here we are.

Paladins lack concentration unlike the fighter who has lots of it. They would likely get interrupted to death without any real chance to fight back especially with heavy armor. This is a problem I met often with my SC Devoted and a different SC Furyshaper playthrough. Even if you can single-handedly outfight the enemies with sheer damage, armor, health and regen, etc. you can often get interrupted to death.

I picked up Red Dead Redemption 2 in those easter sales and have been roaming around. I'm still trying to get my head around the whole "we had to flee this place and go up the mountains and brace snow over winter to travel east...." But then you've come down out of the mountains about 5 miles from the place you fled, set up shop and are then surprised they found you again...

Majestic's spider would not bother me at all, even in the house. The one Gorth posted would not bother me at all and I would find it quite interesting ... but from over there. If I saw one in the house it'd be broom swept into a giant glass jar and tossed outside with a stern warning to never come back inside. >.>

Some Unreal 5 action. Cool to finally be able to edit that PS5 Matrix demo on PC

I was excited to get stronger armor, but before you upgrade its practically worthless. The upgrades are heinously expensive and farming grubs (and secondary ingredients to a lesser extent) is slow, tedious, and unplentiful. Then, when you upgrade, it feels barely stronger than it was before .13 at the cost of many hours of effort. Additionally, the sleek upgrade for the broodmother helm poisons your teammates fighting with you, AS WELL AS YOURSELF. A waste of a lot of effort to upgrade it. And the druability (or repair cost) for the charcoal canteen makes it not worth keeping/using in for our party. I wanted to get beefier with armor upgrades, not feel like I worked my a** off for nothing of worth. Antlions, Black Ox Beatles, and other bugs still take huge chunks off health bars if you take a hit. I am disappointed.

Ha. I am just now working on something written by a major international star, and it's fascinating to note, once again, how even towards the very end, various names and unnice descriptions get removed from or modified in the manuscript. To avoid potential legal trouble, of course. Having done this for decades, some of it must have rubbed on me. Just in case you wonder why I avoid unpleasantries, you waffling twát.

Touché. (Except I wouldn't say putler.)

Not really alluding to anyone, except nebulous 'people' in general. And to be fair to people in general, rather a lot of them wouldn't even have been born in 1999. Thing is though, Putin's Russia has been so stable, relatively speaking, that people in general do forget how unstable it was under Yeltsin. Apart from the bankruptcy in 1998 he also had 5 Prime Ministers in 4 years from 1996-99, as opposed to 6 (including of course a certain VV Putin for 4 years) in the next 22 after he'd gone. He'd got rid of the VP, he was beholden to a load of oligarchs whose power makes the current crop look like children, he didn't have a succession plan, he didn't bother building a Party at all, and he really was a few vodka shots away from a drug/alcoholic coma for pretty much his entire time in office. We only knew who his successor was for sure on 1 Jan 2000, since after his resignation he literally couldn't fire Putin any more. Allegedly, the reason Putin was picked so far as Yeltsin was concerned was extremely simple; he promised not to go after him once he'd left office so his family could keep all the money he stole and he could die in peace. He'd never have got the same from Zyuganov or Zhirinovsky who outright hated him and may well have formally brought back the death penalty just for him. And his approval ratings and those of his political friends were subterranean- 2%- so there was no point any of them standing. If Putin dies Mishustin takes over temporarily, that is known. It's also very strongly suspected that he won't be the successor but just interim. There will be a successor who stands in the election after that, and one who has already been decided on. But there's literally no point in saying publicly that it's say, Medvedev, (who it likely isn't either) because all it does is 'reassure' westerners and make him a target immediately. Really though, most of the 'concern' from the diplomatic/ media side of the west is, basically, concern trolling. "Russia is so unstable, I wish we knew who Putin's successor is [and as above we actually do, at least in the interim] so maybe it wouldn't be quite as bad, but we don't, so you can see how unstable Russia is" sort of thing.

I found that high(ish) INT compared to low(ish) INT doesn't make a huge difference as soon as you have stacked enough hostile effect duration reduction. All you need is a short enough duration so that the curse wears off during your recovery imo. If in fat armor the wiggle room is rel. high. Not that I would go for 35 INT or so.

Keep in mind that the Unbroken gets +1 AR when wearing a shield. Paladin's Exalted Endurance (the AR part) doesn't stack with Iron Wheel's AR bonus. So in the end it's Stoic Steel + Inspired Defenses vs. Shield Mastery if I'm right. Inspired Defense is worth not much if you get attacked by different sources of dmg simultaneously (like in the Splintered Reef fight above). So in this case the AR advantage of a Paladin may not be as high as perceived initially, also because you can get Shield Mastery right from the start while Stoic Steel comes very late. But of course Stoic Steel can reach higher values if played correctly around it. Steel Garrote's life drain is pretty handy - but I suspect it doesn't work with Forbidden Fist ability in the vanilla game? I mean since it's not a weapon attack. Or does it still work because it's a melee "spell"? I'm using the Community Patch where it's tagged as melee weapon attack so I don't really remember if that worked in the vanilla game or not(?). I like Unbroken in general, but what I don't like too much about them in a solo game is the lower Reflex. Of course Tuotilo's Palm and Weapon & Shield style will balance that out - and I guess that makes it a non-issue in the end. But (only for for solo) I feel a bit bad about that. On the other hand I managed to play a solo SC Furyshaper with abysmal Will and have fun and success with it anyway, so maybe that's negligible, too (also because Reflex isn't as crucial as the other defenses in most cases it seems). It's a bit of a shame that the improved disengagement mechanics of the Unbroken/FF won't get used in a solo run (unless you use some terrify effect like from Endre's Flog of Obedience or so, but it's an inferior weapon, so that's not the best option for a solo run in the first place I guess). What the Paladin compared to the Fighter doesn't have is the build-in Power Level bonus that is Tactical Barrage. I guess that's a drawback when it comes to the scaling of Forbidden Fist/Transcendent Suffering in order to take it over a certain threshold? I wonder how a Bloodmage/FF would do when using Wall of Draining in combination with all self buffs including Enlightened Agony. The curse duration must be really short and the constant healing would benefit Blood Sacrifice a lot. But I guess somebody already did this an posted it and I simply forgot...

I wonder how the healing on the fighter side compares with a steel garrote paladin for a FF/SG votary build? Can it match the healing whenever you strike afflicted foes as well as the pretty awesome healing from exalted endurance? Paladin also has the innate bonus to all defenses that never goes down and requires no zeal, plus great armor boosts. I'm not saying that a votary would do better than a brawler. I was just interested in some comparison about their relative survivability playing solo on PotD upscaled. I haven't yet tried the brawler, but I know from experience that the votary is very durable.

At 3:06, a dead guy scratches his nose.

Re. a need for general mobilization in Russia, the consensus among Western military experts appears to be that a week into the Donbas offensive Russia is again performing poorly and way behind schedule, and is continuing to suffer a staggering number of casualties. Their battlefield gains are minimal and incremental, with the Ukrainians often taking back lost territory at a later point in time. The UK MoD even assesses that 25% of Russia's 93 tactical battle groups in the fight are 'combat ineffective' now. So taking and then holding these territories is going to require a lot of manpower, but even then will still only come at a very heavy price in losses. Can Putin's regime sustain those losses politically? I wonder.

I am being sick from playing the race card at every single opportunity... Yes in all of Europe there are lots of racist, but not everything is turning around them... Most of the time, the true reason, why is something happening is somewhere completely else... In case we would be speaking about Syria, there would be much more reason for the race card, because the Slovakia media completely failed about it, and the neonazis have stolen the narrative... And guess, who is paying Slovak neonazi parties? Russia... There are a lot of lawsuits now against them, because our secret service finally found some evidence about direct involvement of Russian embassy with neonazi disinformation in Slovakia... TLDR; behind every **** happening in Eastern Europe, you'll find a Russian ****...

I would disagree on you first paragraph. I REALLY don't think it was that at start. Now maybe. But No-one in the west wanted Russia to do this or play such games with them. No-one. Everyone knows costs of those power games and franky no-one really thought Russia is willing to sacrifice so much for basically nothing either. Even if Russia make their land grab now and it ends in peace. Who gained what? Russia reputation in west is ruined for another 20+ years and no-one is going to do business there for at least that time and they gained what? Broken and disfunctional land with high risk of internal conflict? I just don't see it

In Finland support from Nato changed from one party publicly supporting it and 21% of population supporting joining to all put all parties publicly supporting joining to Nato and 65% of population supporting joining. Change is mainly caused by fact that Russia is willing to sacrifice so much for little gain which caused people lose faith to foundation of Finland's defense which is to make attack cost so much that there is no benefit for doing so, but such defense doesn't work against enemy which is willing to sacrifice all for nothing. Finland is also putting Sweden in difficult situation as big sunk of Sweden defense currently relies on co-operation with Finland and it seems that Swedish politicians fear that they will lose that co-operation if Finland joins in Nato and Sweden does not.

It happened to the USA with Pearl Harbor; prior to that a significant number of Americans wanted no part in the conflict. Afterwards...

I think I've shared this one before but who cares, it's worth a repeat:

yeah, my Elden Ring screenies look nowhere near as good but I'll post them anyway!

Oh yes.