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They did And EU didn't make it us or them. You can check it yourself https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25162563 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-trade-idUSKCN0HI1T820140923 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/22/ukraine-european-union-trade-russia https://www.brookings.edu/on-the-record/why-did-ukraines-yanukovych-give-in-to-russian-pressure-on-eu-deal/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/21/ukraine-suspends-preparations-eu-trade-pact https://www.dw.com/en/harsh-words-with-russia-over-ukraine/a-17301176 https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/ukraine-stuns-eu-by-putting-association-deal-on-ice/ https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2013-11-27/ukraine-withdraws-signing-association-agreement-vilnius-motives-and

I've been faffing about trying to get a grip of where game balance was now that everything's out (I only finished up to Core + BoW on vet upscaled at the time) and it seemed to me that Tactical Meld didn't get mentioned a lot, to the point that it feels slept on. I figured it might make for a nice Psyblade build's centerpiece spell when paired with a rogue on the first run where I figured out how Aloth's romance starts, hence the name. Race - to taste, but I prefer snow elves (I could make up some nonsense about loving the elemental DR it brings but really it's just elves) Stats - I start with Dex 15, Per 17, Int 12, Res 14. While these are the RP stats I had in 1, I do feel like Per is worth going heavy because it's harder in 2 to find permanent bonuses to it compared to 1, while Might just doesn't feel worthwhile when the basic psychic lash already gives 20% additive damage baseline. If I use a backstory where I made a sacrifice chances are it's Durance (with Int bumped to 13, Con down to 9 on the understanding that I'll get Durance's Resentment back after Hasongo). The cauldron upgrade 100% goes to Perception even if the potion for it requires Adra Ban. Class - as the title says, Soulblade Cipher/Tactician Fighter Skills - I ran this character as the group's primary lockpicker so I didn't have a lot of spare points to do much more than mechanics and athletics, although I think a few points into explosives might have been a nice idea. I also split between Insight and Streetwise more or less evenly for passives. Preferred gear - Weapons: Rapier or Club are imo kinda essential for a melee tactician (Gipon is a pain to farm for and also requires much lower rep with the principi than I'll ever have). Squid's Grasp has my preference since it's easy to beeline with the 50k pires blessing, has immunity to flanking right out of the gate, the mats to lift the curse are trivial to find, it's one of the two-ish items in this game with Second Chance enchants, and it doesn't require sinking a galleon with a crack crew. The ideal offhands for this setup are the bashing bucklers, hatchets, or daggers, although the two unique stilettos have good enchantments that are worth consideration, although in this case a source of non-piercing damage is especially essential. Grave Calling deserves a honorable mention as a plan B backup weapon because every pierce-immune is a vessel, but this is, on the whole, incredibly niche for niche situations - although on the plus side, it's incredibly easy to rob the Crookspur general store. Opening up with a pistol or blunderbuss before going to melee helps with the very focus-hungry initial setup, especially with things like the special attack on Kitchen Stove or Thundercrack, and all the uniques for both weapons (except Scordeo's Trophy) have a way to get around piercing immunity (it's still a mystery to me why it even exists and why it's specifically applied to things that shoot .60+ balls of lead but whatever). - Armor: Miscreant's Leathers, imo, is the best option, with Contender's Armor, DoC breastplate and Reckless Brigandine distant seconds (for a variety of reasons like respectively not being available until act 4, requiring specific history choices, and being rather ugly) - Accessories: My personal preference for hats is Fair Favor but Blackblade's Hood for the +1 Perception is nice and both essentially buff weapons that are good for this setup. Gwyn's Garter Belt or Cipher's Shackle is nice for the Dex resistance. I tend to use Harmony (paired with, say, Aloth or really anyone I expect will be in melee) and either Kuaru's Prize or Entonia for rings, with the Burglar's Gloves from the tailor in Periki for hands. Charm of Bones or Upright Captain's Belt are nice options to fill up the remaining slot. - Pets: I like using the cosmic bird but really any +Per pet will broadly do - Consumables: Unless I have a surfeit of ingredients for captain's banquet, I feel like a svef habit is a relatively good way to mitigate mental afflictions in general. Potions of Merciless Gaze and Deftness are also nice if I can't use one of the drugs with equivalent effects (due to being on svef, for example) My preferred leveling scheme is basically 1 - Eyestrike & Knockdown 2 - Mind Wave (or debatably Tenuous Grasp) 3 - Fast Runner (debatably Monastic Unarmed Training) 4 - Phantom Foes & Fighter Stances 5 - Draining Whip 6 - Psycho Shield (as was pointed out, if I'm going to use Foes on the build, better off asap, especially considering the lull in combat encounters that usually happens after finishing Maje Island) 7 - Secret Horrors & Penetrating Strike 8 - Hammering Thoughts 9 - Puppet Master 10 - Silent Scream & Charge 11 - Mule Kick 12 - Body Attunement 13 - Tactical Meld & Mob Stance 14 - Two Weapon Style (edit: In retrospect I think Greater Focus would be better off around here) 15 - Borrowed Instinct 16 - Disintegrate & Unbending 17 - Mind Plague 18 - Keen Mind 19 - Echoing Horror & Unbending Shield 20 - maybe the Complete Self? Alternately maybe Ancestor's Honor or Stasis Shell Fighter feels like a dip, all told, with only 2-3 picks from its tree outside of tier level ups. Mule Kick is nice to make sure whoever got missed by phantoms, eyestrike or a friendly rogue's distraction is still going to be flanked in the end. Also while Phantom is nice and all, my true setup to keep Brilliant flowing from level 13 on is to make sure that I have a friendly rogue in melee who can keep as many enemies locked down as possible with Tactical Meld. And for that, my preference is Aloth as a Spellblade, because getting Eder to 6 engagement slots is extremely easy and it's kind of hard to get him more surrounded than that. I just give Aloth Griffin's Blade, one of the leftover bucklers (usually Shimmerscale or the Outworn Buckler) and Llengrath's Martial Masteries and have him jump in the fray. Ydwin also works okay for the purpose of a melee rogue (but in very big fights might be better off paired with someone else for maximum engagement slots), but sadly Mirke's streetfighter subclass has anti-synergy with Tactician and just about anything that pumps her engagement slots (and the other rogue options are better off staying out of melee). I tend to use soul annihilation in that setup more to soften or when there's nothing better to do with the focus, since it tends to play poorly with mob stance (I think it only triggers cleaving if it registers the death as being due to the attack and not the spell, which is ugh), so soul blade is in this build more for the ease of getting concentration and as a safety blanket than for the spammable melee shred. I don't overly mind ascendant as an alternative but the concentration thing gets on my nerves in melee (the alternative belt does help to some extent I guess, as would picking Disciplined Strikes in the early levels). There's times when I'm a bit dubious about Brilliant Tactician's value, but admittedly I wouldn't build a dual wielding fighter with pen strike as an active were it not for it, I think. Mule Kicking Concelhaut to death while doing Bekarna's Folly at-level was the highlight of my first attempted run and it would probably not be possible without Brilliant. EDIT that's not just going over a few details where I blanked: I can sort of see why Psyblade doesn't exactly have a ton of building, it's a really straightforward thing and kinda hard to make a seriously heinously bad one, short of doing things like trying to stack buffs that don't (Borrowed Instinct overwriting every defense and accuracy modal was something I didn't expect on my first run, that's a lesson since learned).

Whatever happens tomorrow likely won't change anything. However, would be funny if their doomsday plane accidentally drops its payload on the parade.

From full quote you see that Barroso didn't put it as them or us , or demanded that Ukraine can't be in trade union with Russia, but the agreement between Ukraine and EU needs to take account that free trade deal would be only between Ukraine and EU not with any trade partner of Ukraine "Agreements on the establishment of a deep and comprehensive free trade area between the EU and Ukraine contain obligations that need to be fulfilled. We discussed this issue with President [Viktor] Yanukovych today. Our positions were clearly defined... One country cannot at the same time be a member of a customs union and be in a deep common free-trade area with the European Union. This is not possible," Barroso said. However, he noted that there are "some pragmatic ways to address this issue." "And we have to respect the position of Ukraine," Barroso said, adding that Kyiv and Brussels have a common goal of political association and economic integration. EDIT: Also Association Agreement that was blocked was not the mentioned "deep common free-trade area" but agreement to increase co-operation between EU and Ukraine and within 10 years form agreement about free(r) trade area between EU and Ukraine. So Ukraine could have signed it and be member of customs union with Russia.

Made my wife a version of eggs Benedict. Poached eggs took longer than I expected to get perfect since I haven't done them in a while but hollandaise sauce was excellent and I actually made in the blender this time around. For the meat I've been using chopped Serrano ham since I had it that way in Costa Rica once and fell in love with it.

I hardly recognise Witchers as RPGs, but W3 is definitely one of the better open-world "action adventures" I played. It's been a long time. I remember Heart of Stone having some difficulty spikes but can't remember much about BoW gameplaywise.

I mean, everyone at the time always talked about reactivity. And for what it's worth, Witcher 2 delivered hard. I'm not aware of other games right now which drastically change so much based on player choices.. mid-game. The whole 3rd act (town?) is basically a different game.

Battle for Kharkiv seems to be over: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/05/putins-problem-russia-is-blowing-up-bridges-to-stop-ukraines-counterattack/ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/07/world/europe/russia-ukraine-kharkiv-victory-day.html

My education in warfare politics is as good as monty's but I allow my guess to be written here, so you can then point and laugh at me how wrong I was So I think on may 9th, Putin's Victory condition would be Annexation of Kherson Oblast, and probably Donbas as well, and as soon as these areas will be the Russian land now, he will be scarmongering even more with their nuclear doctrine, trying to bully countries into stopping the military help to Ukraine. And grand mobilization might be the part of this strategy as well. The biggest strategic mistake of Ukraine, was not having any military presence at the "border" with Crimea, which is natural bottleneck. Few missiles and artillery shells that way would probably save a lot of southern Ukraine from occupation

Mostly vessels, but there are also other enemy types that are immune to pierce damage - for example some spirits (see Flame Blights). Borrowed Insticts usually stacks with all single-defense buffs (Arcane Veil, Escape, Shields ftFf, Mirrored Images and so on) - but unfortunately not with Vigorous/Refreshing Defense which is also a buff to all defenses (like Borrowed Instincts). It's still a mystery to me why buff from modals are considered active buffs (and thus won't stack with other active abilities that buff the same stat), given that modals always have pros & cons which makes them balanced all by themselves.

I listened to a lecture by a former intelligence officer on where Russia and Ukraine have succeeded and failed so far. While the failures of Russia are fairly evident ("nearly everything"), this officer pointed out an interesting Ukrainian failure. Zelenskyi & co failed to strengthen their military positions and prepare adequately before the war started, because they wanted to avoid provoking Russians. But as the officer pointed out, "not provoking Russians is impossible, so this was a big failure from Ukraine. If all else fails, Russia will simply fabricate a cause for war." As people interested in military history will remember, the Winter War did indeed start from a Russian fabrication, an event called the Shelling of Mainila. So I would agree that Ukraine was naive in this regard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelling_of_Mainila Also, on a different topic, it was interesting to read on how various countries have come to Ukraine's aid. Inside the EU, it was particularly interesting to see some numbers concerning countries furthest away from the war. For example, Portugal has assisted Ukraine ten times more (per capita) than Spain has. I have no idea as to why this may be, but the difference is interesting. Both of them have given less than peanuts per capita compared to countries like Estonia, and while this difference is easy to explain, the difference between Portugal and Spain is not, especially if you know as little about those countries' internal politics as I do. (From among the countries mentioned in the list I saw, Spain was one of the worst helpers.)

I really had to force myself through Witcher 3. Can't really remember the details, but there was a couple months break inbetween as well and then I just rushed the main quest when I came back. The first dlc was really nice, though. Liked it a lot more than the main game. The second dlc.. truth told, I probably only played 30 minutes of it and I haven't touched it since. Oh right, I just remembered 2 main issues I have with Witcher 3: 1. The minimap design is terrible. I don't remember anything of the landscape, because my eyes were glued to following the dots on the minimap. I was unable to force myself to not look at the minimap all the time. And without minimap I never knew where I was or where I was supposed to go. 2. The visuals are too noisy. There is too much happening on the screen at all times, which for some reason made me unable to focus and actually "see" anything. This is really hard to describe for me, because I never had this experience before in a game. It's like... you see a lot, but at the same time see nothing at all. Really weird. This plays also into 1, where I kept looking at the minimap, because it was simply easier for my eyes.

Heh. And that's considering that I'm playing with a mod that basically does away with item leveling. A gun is a gun is a gun, and that snazzy tank top doesn't provide any armor. So I have zero incentive to go fishing for loot. Can't help it though. Some of the side content is pretty good too. It's a 'problem' with the fundamental design of a story-driven open-world RPG. There's an obvious disconnect if you let the player roam freely on a massive open world and have the urgency of the main plot be conveyed only narratively. There have to be gameplay mechanics to enforce it, but I don't think I've seen many people praise the 150-day countdown until water runs out as genius design.

Went fishing with one of my buddies. A couple strong bites and had one hooked for a few exciting seconds before it spit the hook. It was good to get back at it again after a 2 year hiatus.

Space... the final frontier. To boldly go where no criminal has gone before! (cue 60's TV music) https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/05/05/outlaws-in-orbit-canada-to-introduce-a-new-law-to-punish-astronauts-committing-crime-in-sp Nowhere is safe from the Canadian Mounties anymore Canadian astronauts who commit crimes on the Moon could face punishment under a new law that extends the country's criminal jurisdiction into outer space. The "Civil Lunar Gateway Agreement Implementation Act" is a piece of legislation added on to the country's 2022 federal budget, which passed its first reading in Canada's House of Commons - the lower house of parliament - at the end of April.

Me watching the NFT market collapse:

Finally!

we poach eggs frequent in part thanks to the bag hack. makes easier particular if am doing many at one time. for large numbers, we use different colored twist ties on the bags so we know the order in which our eggs went in the pot. we should learn a blender approach for hollandaise, but the reason we don't learn is literal 'cause we enjoy hollandaise too much. we got a glass bowl which works ideal as a jerry-rigged double boiler over one o' our sauce pans and we has become quite adept at hollandaise, but is nevertheless a bit more time consuming and finicky than the fool-proof blender methods we has seen recommended. problem is we would likely have hollandaise on something at least once a week if were ez to make in our blender. am recollecting shady is not a personal fan o' eggs, so is nice you did the eggs benedict for the missus. HA! Good Fun!

If you are going to focus on rapiers and arquebuses, you can always use the Red Hand with the double tap upgrade, which will destroy vessels that are lower level, even pierce immune ones. But you might also want to spend a skill point on the extra skill slot, and keep weapons there like Grave Calling, Keeper of the Flame, Magran's Favor, Sungrazer, etc. Weapons like these, that have an AOE effect on hit, crit or kill, are great for ciphers since you'll also get focus from them when they proc. You might also want to get the Seeker's Fang eventually. It's one of the best weapons for melee ciphers, since it inflicts a raw damage DoT effect, like a mini disintegration, when you crit, and you'll crit a lot as a psyblade wielding this. Also, I'd recommend that you get Phantom Foes at lvl 4 rather than 6. You'll want this right away for a tactician psyblade. You might also consider getting antipathetic field instead of mind wave. It's fast cast and is a situationally very useful spell that can do great damage if you set it up properly. I use it throughout the game. Mind Wave, in the other hand, I tend not to use much after the lower levels, largely because it is a slow cast spell that doesn't do much damage.

The problem there is the Russian naval presence, which could allow them to land anywhere along the coast and bypass the bottleneck. Against a blitz-style attack, a defense in depth is more appropriate. The Ukrainians couldn't guard every inch of their border, so they needed to prioritize. Clearly, defending Kyiv was critical at the start of the conflict, whereas they could afford to give up ground in the southeast.

Yes mobilization takes months, but nothing will prevent Putin to announce it, as a part of the "glorious fight against the nazis in Europe". It would be probably just for propaganda reasons. Especially if it is true, that during the last week of April, Ukraine destroyed 50% of Russian military vehicles theoretically needed to render Russian invasion incapable of further attacks. That is a statement of one of our security experts, not mine. But unfortunately, I am not able to find the link to the article atm.

That was a ballsy move on CDPR's side. It takes a ton of work to design and program all these areas and quests. Naturally, developers want you to see all their hard work, developing content that many gamers will never see has got to sting a bit. I mean, it's one thing when it's an Easter egg or two or some copy/paste collectibles, and another thing when it's an entire act of a game. I played through Witcher 2 four (maybe five, it's been a while) times, so I saw everything, but most people are probably not doing a second playthrough.

Regarding the "mysterious fires" around Russia: it would be great to get some statistics on the amount of fires in Russia in, say, the past ten years. It's a huge country, so there are bound to be plenty even at the best of times. We are now living in times where probably most of these fires get reported internationally, but as long as they are a) not in military or other strategically important locations and b) not particularly close to Ukraine, I'm inclined to think it's business as usual -- unless statistics show that the number of fires has gone drastically up. I am reminded of the tragedy of the married woman who genuinely slipped and hit her head on the cupboard, getting a black eye in the process. I mean, nobody believed her.

Wow, what a good read that 1945 link Particularly interesting what it means for the Ruskies military campaign and the blowing up of bridges and also the high numbers of casualties amongst their special forces I wonder how this happened? Was it due to hand to hand fighting with Ukrainian soldiers or artillery or something else ?

From what I have heard/read from some security experts here, denying it to the latest time possible was their tactics, and they were slowly preparing for the attack around Kyiv and Donbas. But as I said above, they underestimated the possibility of the invasion through Crimea.

I would be surprised if he goes ahead with two of the most widely talked-about predictions: officially declaring war on Ukraine, and ordering a general mobilization involving drafting all military-age males. These actions would make it very hard for him to continue to deny that he started this unprovoked war and that the war is not going well for Russia. My expectations are that Putin will call for a societal mobilization ... for Russia's civilian society to rise up in support of the country, which is to say him and his regime, in the face of those horrible and evil nazi states in the West, led by the imperialist Americans, trying to destroy Russia. And then he may also declare the annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk, and then claim that Russia is merely fighting to eject Ukrainian nazis from Russian soil.

Heavy relience on GPS is an unfortunate design yes. I think we bumped heads regarding Witcher2 aka. ambitious reactivity done badly, so I won't repeat myself. That said all three Witcher games are so closely together in my personal rating that I don't feel too strongly about the order, though I did enjoy Witcher2 the least. I did adore Witcher3, but I wonder how much I will like it on 2nd playthrough (which is coming once Next Gen update drops). I wonder if filler content will annoy me more.

I agree. But in my view, that's not a discussion worth considering or essentially even talking about (and again, I'm contradicting myself by saying this). Discussion at that level has always existed, but social media has brought it to the fore and in a "printed" format, whereas it used to be just babble in pubs and locker rooms and whatnot. The fact that it's out there and sort of "written down" tends to give it a veneer of, I don't know, something worth attending to, but clearly almost none of it is worth anything. It's quite a shame that respectable media and all that babble exists sort of side by side on the internet, which can also render them an illusion of equal weight, or something, which of course is not true. (And I'm not saying that all the "respecatble media" coverage is good -- of course it's not, and it never has been.) Yeah, you knew all this already, so apologies for stating the obvious.

Hopefully he finds some way to troll the Western expectations.

Witcher 3 also suffers from content overload. The sheer amount of side content is downright overwhelming and ruins the pacing of the main story. The side content is dressed up really well, so it's not a chore like in a lot of open world games (*cough* Ubisoft *cough*) but it nevertheless ruins the story progression when you spend a couple of in-game weeks galavanting around the countryside, meanwhile EXTRADIMENSIONAL SPECTRAL ELVES are threatening to conquer the world. If you have the willpower to tunnel vision on the main quest then the narrative pacing works, the problem is that the game is designed in such a way as to not just encourage, but also almost require you to do a bunch of side content.

How is it a hot take when it's true. Witcher 2 sure has its problems, like the mediocre combat system, but everything else in the game is pretty much peak-witcher. In Witcher 3, the huge, empty, open world gets in the way all the time.

Elden Ring with VR mod

After the leaked Roe opinion, Justice Thomas says the Supreme Court can't be bullied "We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don't like," Thomas said. ... Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful Meadows said he was to receive her advice. Among Thomas’s stated goals in the messages was for lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted incendiary and unsupported claims about the election, to be “the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team. Legal Scholars Are Shocked By Ginni Thomas’s “Stop the Steal” Texts Richard Hasen, an expert in election law who teaches at the University of California, Irvine, also believes that Justice Thomas should never have participated in the case weighing whether Congress had the right to review Trump’s papers. Hasen told me, “Given Ginni Thomas’s deep involvement in trying to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election based upon outlandish claims of voter fraud, and her work on this with not only activists but the former President’s chief of staff, Justice Thomas should not have heard any cases” involving disputes over the 2020 election or Congress’s investigation of the January 6th riots. It has now become clear, Hasen said, that “his spouse’s reputation, and even potential liability, is at stake.” is it possible justice thomas don't realize his comments would at best ring hollow given his wife's involvement in the Stop The Steal movement? regardless, the bullying thomas believes is current directed at The Court in the wake o' alito's leaked opinion is precise the kinda political free speech even his narrow reading o' the First Amendment is designed to protect. but perhaps we missed the hundreds and thousands o' roe supporters who stormed the United States Supreme Court building in a bid to prevent the draft opinion from becoming a final ruling? our opinion o' justice thomas has been complete altered these last couple o' years. pre 2016-17 thomas had earned our grudging respect for his role as a consistent and principled judge if not his skill as a justice o' The Court. 2022 thomas leaves us with feelings o' mild disgust given his new role as a partisan creature who obvious has no sense o' self awareness. HA! Good Fun!

Oh man, I really like that site and browse it often. Well that sucks.

Yikes... that sounds like a template CV

I just had the worst stout ever. Great Divide Yeti Imperial Stout. Terrible, horrible, awful. I guess if you love IPAs and are trying to branch out into stouts then maybe this'll be your speed but if this is your speed we can never drink together.

When people in the FF XIV community wax poetic about how awesome Square is I like to remind them that FF XIV is good despite Square Enix, not because of it... If they couldn't manage to make enough money off of Tomb Raider... I mean, I really don't think anything needs to be added to that.

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.

I was playing it a lot. But i didn't really get anywhere because i was testing out all the early early game things. I beat Radahn and after that i got back into Destiny 2 again to get my max pinacle level. And now i'm trying to get back to Elden Ring but i also have to get back into Monster Hunter Rise before expansion arrives at the end of June. So lots of playing to do, so little time because of work.

https://embracer.com/release/embracer-group-enters-into-an-agreement-to-acquire-eidos-crystal-dynamics-and-square-enix-montreal-amongst-other-assets/