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@GorthI feel you will be able to appreciate this one for sure

Nothing new there. As absurd as the urban legend that is 'trickle down economics'

It rained all morning and the skies have been overcast all day. The silver lining it that it has resulted in a surprisingly cool & comfortable July day here in Cackalacky. A cigar and some delicious beer on the balcony, what more can a man ask for?

Started the new job today. Would have been a lot easier if I hadn't spent saturday and sunday basically doing two 11 hour shifts walking and talking as a Handler for the Mando's at LFCC raising money for charity. Didn't get back from London till about 22:40. Then was up this morning at 0600 to get sorted and train into the new place. Still, the weekend was an interesting experience, and I did get to shake Simon Kassianides hand when they made him an honorary Merc.

Sorry, but works got me heavily tied up, so I'm not able to do a longer post. When I have free time, I haven't been up to screen shots and all that. Episode XXVII: "The Evil Overlord! Salamander" aka "Aku no Teiō! Saramandā" Episode XXVIII: "Cobra's Angry Revenge" aka "Kobura Ikari no Hōfuku e" Episode XXIX: "The Man From The Arctic And Their Fiery Blood" aka "Kyokuhoku no Otoko Atsuki Chi Yo" Other than the bit with Bud which was so predictable even HE should have seen it coming, a fun trio of episodes to set up the final showdown in the last two. Also got through BERSERK through the first story of The Golden Age (so the first 9 chapters, I think). It'll probably be a bit before I get to the next part.

Which he probably might not be able to do soon, as Russian Ministry of Defense after series of serious blunders since the famous crossing of Sievierskyi Donets river, are getting more and more pissed at the military bloggers, who are reporting about the war outside of official propaganda. They are now considering them as a "threat" to Russia Sorry but, that is the same, as saying that the coverage of 9/11 was lazy propaganda, due to the fact, that the US media has shown pictures of firefighters being rescued from under the rubble of twin towers Here you have another "lazy propaganda" including video by Reuters with "real civilians" affected at the place of the impact... https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-chasiv-yar-russia-attack-civilians-killed-invasion/31937053.html Anyway, as I've mentioned before, during the night from 9th to 10th UA army with long range artillery completely destroyed command center and warehouse at Chornobaivka, and also hit the barrack of Rosgvardia in Kherson Oblast, and another command post in Nova Kakhovka (town where is the dam, which supplies whole Crimea with water). As Rosgvardia is sometimes dubbed as Putin's private army, which is responsible for maintaining order against people who are daring to protest against the "tsar", this is pretty significant blow to the Russian plans to "convert" bad Ukrainians to "law abiding" Russians... This is what has been left from the airport after hit nr. 26 (12 senior RU officers turned to cargo 200): According to Adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Oleksiy Arestovych, only in Nova Kakhovka, the estimated number of RU soldiers destroyed with this attack is 100, with another 200 wounded, which might be little bit overestimated, nonetheless, these all attacks in Kherson Oblasts have significantly reduced the personnel and material supply of the RU army. All of these attacks against the warehouses and command posts deep in all of occupied territories was a prelude to big Ukrainian counteroffensive to liberate the South. This was yesterday, according to Minister of Defense Reznikov, announced by Volodymyr Zelenskyi. The UA citizens living in occupied territories were then urged to evacuate from the area by Vice PM Vereshuk. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ukraine-has-one-million-ready-for-fightback-to-recapture-south-3rhkrhstf https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-tells-residents-leave-occupied-south-due-counter-attack-plans-2022-07-10/ Unfortunately The Times article is behind a paywall, so if there is by a chance anyone on this board, who has subscription to The Times, who can give us some insight, of what is this article about, it would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Well, got the offer A bit perplexed as I really thought I bombed the interviews or at least didn't come across as all that competent. The 30% pay raise is very hard to turn down, even worrying about the job sucking in other ways.

Chuck Norris stands faster than you run. That took me a bit to get.

Hmmm... The CharacterStats object of Katrenn (BOUNTY_NPC_Katrenn) is using the Character Progression Table PT_NPC_Wizard_SpellswordMelee. This table doesn't contain Concelhaut's Crushing Doom, but it has three DefaultDecisionTrees IDs which seem to point to trees in this file: ...\exported\design\ai\aidecisiontrees\aidecisiontrees.aidecisiontreebundle One of the trees (a83e67f9-7536-43f5-8db1-88ba2b3ec165) contains a node with the ID for Concelhaut's Crushing Doom (01e682b1-dd28-4c84-a63b-27cbd950be49). This is a wild wild guess, but it may be that the AI can cast any ability from its decision tree regardless of whether it's actually available

Long list of snipets of news stories about and from Ukraine from the past three days. Some really interesting tidbits if you have the patience to read through: https://money.yahoo.com/ukraine-news-live-fifteen-killed-034643280.html

I watched it again, and I think I liked it even more. It's a really...cathartic movie, at least for me. Beneath the veil of silliness is a simple but powerful message that hurts so bad but also just fundamentally feels good, in a way that a lot of other movies try but almost universally utterly fail to achieve. Without the themes and characters shining so brightly for me, I probably wouldn't go for the silly action or mad-hat style of narrative, but since they do, it's okay.

Finished storyline of Hardspace, was fun enough, although a bit rushed the mission where you stiff the company by blowing stuff up was great fun. Reactor detonation did a lot less than I had hoped for. Fun game, needs more variety in the ships but even doing the same ship you've done over and over is enjoyable in a relaxing way as you go through the motions. Sort of amused people were grousing about the story or game being woke. I guess a lot of people see Communism when a union is mentioned

To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women. Metaphorically speaking.

Have you opened twitter lately? Because that isn't true in anyway. In case of Musk, it seem that he has multiple time breached his contract with twitter and according to Musk breaching contracts is one of the worst offence people can do. Although I think for him this and his political tweets lately have just been form of marketing as he is building his image as person who stands against leftist, so that people who have vowed that they will never buy electric car and see fossil fuels as way of future are now switching their cars to Tesla in order to own liberals. I mean conservatives are one of the biggest untapped market for electric cars in USA and Musk seems that found way to get millions of them buy Tesla as their next car.

Why would you get banned? Excessive positivity? I mean, I could totally understand that, but it doesn't normally happen.

Araki Hirohiko (creator of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) appeared in a video presentation at Anime Expo 2022 on July 3rd and showed a new Jolyne illustration.

I'm surprised pirate settings aren't more popular really. I was going to say "they should make a pirate CRPG" then I remembered deadfire Now I want to play deadfire

Vessels too including fampyrs, darguls and skeletons. I remember leaving the crypt in Sacred Stairs too late (I modded in upscaling up to ten levels) and the dargul barbarian in there wiped my party with Heart of Fury and Barbaric Retaliation. But it's mostly noticeable in shipboard battles that are by default of much lower level. I was shocked to see Dawnstar Incarnates while boarding the ship to save Bearn. Some other examples of nasty upscaling (even if you don't mod in larger upscaling limits) are the burning soldiers in The Bridge Ablaze. Specifically the archers have Vanishing Strikes which is very nasty.

It's interesting because it seems part of the reality of Obamacare is that the Democrats openly came to the table not just trying to "ram whatever they want through" and started with already offering concessions in hopes of getting bipartisan support because they wanted to make sure they were not just appealing to the people that directly voted for them (including using Romney's Massachusetts health care bill as a starting point). The hilarity of the second image is that, knowing what they know now, he feels they'd still reach out for bipartisan support (to me this is completely baffling thing to say, but here we are). So I feel there's a few things that could be learned... and it seems like there's a Democratic contingent that obstinately refuses to actually take one of the lessons (???). One of the most telling things for me is that the Democratic leadership still consistently talks about how a strong Republican Party is very important, yet I'm unaware of any such commentary that ever comes from the Republicans at least in the past couple decades.

Good. **** them.

RTX 4000 may be delayed to December due to mass excess of RTX 3000 gpus https://www.tomsguide.com/news/nvidia-rtx-4000-gpus-could-be-pushed-back-but-theres-good-news

Nah, if Obamacare taught us something, its that we can ram anything through the government, no matter the opposition, we just have to find the will. I for one wont stop until me and mine have free healthcare and a government direct deposit every month.

Upscaling literally changes enemy levels and they seem to auto-pick abilities just like newly added companions (or for casters, get most if not all of the spells at that tier). For example, if you turn upscaling high enough enemy monks in shipboard battles will use Whispers of the Wind and Inner Death against you (assuming they scale up to level 19). Inner Death is particularly scary as it kills most builds instantly on crit (I don't think the ability was balanced around the enemy having it). Barbarians with Barbaric Retaliation can also be scary if you're not expecting it.

Someone posted a bunch of cats on ships pictures earlier, and Drachinifel had a fun video about ship cats on his channel.

Was effectively a thing at my wife's hometown. Been going on as long as I've known her, when conservative groups were advocating that any and all books that had any LGBT content were inherently sexual in nature and needed to be removed from any public library. Was interesting as Taylor's uncle (a Vietnam war veteran that had health issues related to Agent Orange) went up with a few others to basically talk about how this is dumb and you shouldn't ban books.

We need to tax the fatcats into the ground and redistribute the booty in the form of UBI.

Played, and finished Necromunda: Hired Gun. Game is a mixed bag, objectively it ain't that good, but I had a lot of fun anyway. It's developed by the same people that also created Space Hulk: Deathwing and feels similar in many ways. Keeping in mind that this game is mobility focused I think you get a pretty good idea as to what to expect. Story doesn't really matter, and is basically wasted potential. The main character is a one-dimensional doofus that, despite being from the Underhive, doesn't seem to understand how things work around there (or "here", I guess). Game starts off being pretty hard (especially the side missions with their infinite spawns), but it is very easy to max out your bionics rather early on. Weapons and upgrades are a mixed bag, and balance is kind of all over the place. While I'm sure all weapons are "functional" there's also quite a few that just don't work too well, especially later in the game (shotguns, in general, but the two shots from the double barrel especially are problematic given the floods of enemies and its inability to deal effectively with shields) Gameplay wise offensive mobility is very much crucial, the game seems to push wallrunning but I barely used it (getting that achievement is going to be a chore) since it's kinda jank. The grappling hook, and just jumping all over, on the other hand... As for the "offensive" part, medkits are very limited and can only be stocked prior to the mission, you're supposed to heal using bionics, which only triggers after you have gotten hit yourself (yep, if you're on a sliver of health, out of medkits, have no more shields, and somehow are still alive you really are SOL). Story missions are quite a bit of fun (except the boss battles, most of those are, ehhhh, but I'm not a big fan of boss battles in general, so ymmv). I especially enjoyed the train mission. Side missions are a mixed bag, and risk/reward is way off for most of them. I'd imagine many players will quickly decide "Capture" (Domination, for all you UT99 players) missions, aren't worth the frustration, and in general just 'settle' on a set of favourite (or "to avoid") mission types and locations. On the note of locations, secondary missions are set on parts of the main mission maps where the same mission type will always use the same part of a given map. Similarly "secret" chests that contain upgrades are always in the same spots. The game also has its fair share of bugs, though most qualify as "annoying" rather than "breaking". The grappling hook is liable to get you stuck in terrain (that said, I've not gotten stuck anywhere in a way that forced a reload). Enemies can also get stuck in terrain, for side missions it doesn't generally matter as more will spawn, for main missions this can block progress (I've had to reload the last mission because of a stuck enemy that I couldn't get to in any way). When it comes to mission bugs there was only one that I found that is breaking, in the mission with the container puzzle, if you touch the controls "too soon", you break the whole thing and have to reload, that said once you know how it's triggered it is easy to avoid, but yeah, should've been fixed by the devs, really. "Finishers" don't seem to work reliably (often there's no prompt when there probably should be), maybe there's some hidden cool-down, but it's a good way to get killed for sure. Similarly it seems that the heal-on-damage mechanic doesn't always work reliably, or doesn't heal as much as it should (especially obvious when finishers heal tiny amounts) There were also some graphical issues, personally I had clipping issues with the armor of my character. Not exactly game breaking, since the game is first person so you only really see it in cutscenes, or loading screens, but when the devs are selling skins that is kinda...hmmmm... (that said, I did scroll through Steam screenshots and saw people using the same skin without issues, so maybe something with my system). There's also some very underdeveloped systems: side missions are given out by factions that you rank up with, but there doesn't seem to be any real incentive to do so (aside from "for fun", of course). Sure you get a one-time "bonus" reward for maxing out a faction, but that's about it. As a sidenote: you can also gain reputation with factions you're actively fighting, which, errr, doesn't make much sense. Another thing of note: for some reason it turned on FSR 1.0 by default for me, while my PC can handle the game just fine with everything cranked up without FSR. Took me a little bit before I figured out why things weren't quite as sharp as they probably should be... I'd probably give it a 6/10. I had a good time, but the game feels very undercooked. Just like Space Hulk: Deathwing, really, there was potential there, but they called it "good enough" way too soon. If you can get it on sale and enjoyed Deathwing and/or WH40k and/or janky shooters you could definitely do worse.

I like the idea of Pirate themed games, I havent played too many but Risen comes to mind and I enjoyed the concept of sailing around, trading and exploring islands This game has potential but it has limited SP so Im not sure how keen I am? https://www.theloadout.com/skull-and-bones/play-solo https://za.ign.com/skull-and-bones/166524/feature/skull-and-bones-7-things-you-need-to-know-about-ubisofts-pirate-game EDIT : But the MP component looks fun, you can SP but you cant avoid other players attacking you. It reminds me of RDR2 online which was fine, you sometimes get attacked but generally other players leave you alone unless you want to PVP

Gazumped by a mod, this is what tyranny feels like. I'll never get that two minutes back Anyway, bit of lazy propaganda from Ukraine today... Supplied image includes... https://twitter.com/Pavlo_Kyrylenko/status/1546003496687865856/photo/3 Which clearly shows a guy in military fatigues being rescued, from the civilian building...

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/fed-report-finds-75-800-billion-paycheck-protection-program-didnt-reach Who could have seen this coming?

Skeletons (like all summons, but especially because they are numerous and have engagement) - are very useful in the early game because they provide a strong crowd control effect without the need for accuracy and overcoming enemies' defenses. Hence calling them forth just always works and is never in vain like a CC spell might be if you miss the roll or the enemy is resistant or immune. There is no defense, resistance or immunty when it's about getting engaged by a summons or being boxed out/blocked by them. Drop some at the start of fight and most enemies will be under control - because first of all they tend to target the skeletons (because they have weak defenses and low HP) and as I said even enemies who wanted to ignore them and rush to your party will be stopped (if the skeletons are placed somewhat correctly and you actively attack enemies with them which will trigger the engagement which then stops movement). Note that you can individually control each skeleton directly (not the additional ones that come from Ancient Brittle Bones though), those are steered by game AI). A similarly useful lvl-1-summoning spell are the Sporelings of the Ancient Druid. Also very potent in the early game. The phantom isn't bad - but it takes noteably longer to cast (and so to appear), has no engagement and is alone. The individual creature is better than those of "If their bones still slept" though. The wurms (PL 2) are a good offensive tool for some time if you don't need skeletons for CC. They also scale poorly and will have to be replaced eventually (and an upgrade is not worth it, unlike with Ancient Brittle Bones) - but for some time they really help to overwhelm enemies pretty quickly, especially if you focus fire on a single enemy. If you reach a point where better summons become available (for example Ogres or Ancient Instruments of Death or whatever) you can simply retrain the character and skip the lower tier summons then.

Unless you plan to metagame I'd suggest you take neither. Low level summons on Chanter are really not very interesting compared to what you get at higher levels. My low tier invocation choice is usually The Shield Cracks as it's a spammable -AR debuff that also happens to target deflection. Most -AR debuffs aren't particularly spammable or target fortitude (which tends to be much harder to hit) so it's really nice to have.

My life is a bit simpler Submitted my tax return form (took five minutes) and should get $1500 (Aussie dollars) back within a fortnight. Not quite as good as the Danish tax system though, where besides always being spot on with the tax amount, you also don’t have to submit tax returns (unless you have complicated investments or bankruptcies to deal with)

Unfortunate order number XD

I want to do this/have a car set-up like this. Hubby can just sit in the back.

The missing roof piece (triangle to finish a peaked roof) really bugs me. It feels off to leave a hole there. Spend aged trying to fit everything possible in that hole. Agreed on vertical half walls. When building random shaped enclosures in the woods, especially near objects like juice boxes, it would be nice to be able to add an extra grass plank to patch a hole. Or allow the walls to overlap with objects would be fine too. Dyes and half stairs would be awesome too. I like to build 1.5 storey houses because one floor height makes rooms feel too claustrophobic and low. Seems like a waste of materials to make double storey rooms just to add room height, but it's impossible to make the stairs work with half storeys. Stretching the wall pieces to taller proportions would also work. I don't know code so no idea how hard that would be to make.

The ISS transiting in front of the Sun:

So ~$86k in todays Dollars. I wonder where the location was, I see palm trees and louver windows so probably FL.

https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage

sharing 'cause is that time of year... again. Table of State Laws that Protect Animals Left in Parked Vehicles 14 states have enacted laws that allow any person to rescue a distressed animal (AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, IN, KS, LA, MA, OH, OR, TN, VT, and WI). These laws functions to limit the civil or criminal liability of the person for damages resulting from the forcible entry of the vehicle. Indiana is the first and only state to require the person who forcibly enters a vehicle to rescue an animal to pay half the damages. West Virginia and New Jersey are the only states that criminalize the act of leaving a pet unattended under dangerous conditions without providing a rescue and immunity provision for anyone. check the link if you are curious, 'cause most states which provide protection from criminal and civil liability impose specific requirements for the prospective good samaritan. CA as an example: This person will not be criminally liable for actions taken reasonably and in good faith if the person does all of the following: -determines the vehicle is locked or there is otherwise no reasonable manner for the animal to be removed from the vehicle -has a good faith belief that forcible entry into the vehicle is necessary because the animal is in imminent danger of suffering harm -contacted a local law enforcement agency, the fire department, animal control, or 911 prior to forcible entry -remains with the animal in a safe location, but close by until emergency responders arrive -used no more force than necessary to enter the vehicle and remove the animal -immediately turns the animal over to a representative from law enforcement, animal control, or another emergency responder HA! Good Fun!

Love your ideas/points. Half stairs would be lovely as I like the 1.5 wall height best but that results in some interesting stair/ramp combinations. Of course that means we need half railings. We’d want half pillars as well. I’d also like the triangle piece to fit together. The beams adding structural support would be nice actually. I would love to be able to make dyes/paint. We have different colored flowers but they are all the same currently when picked up. If they were separate items we could have some dye materials. There are some existing items that would also work like charcoal, blue berries, etc. I rarely go I the pond or haze after I do those labs so maybe some new materials for those areas. Another poster mention adding slides to get down from tall bases quickly while still being able to move objects (gliding cancels object moves) and frankly I loved that idea.