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You know what is even better way not to get dead nine year olds? Not to attack your neighbouring country.

Behold the James Webb Space Telescope's stunning 1st images | Space

Exactly and they are still there with bullets zipping pass them, getting ready to charge when the order comes in. I guess the only thing they picked up from the military, apart from the equipment, is shooting unarmed civilians. When the alternative is to just let the bodies hit the floor? I would say yes, they are supposed to charge in. They are trained and equipped to respond quickly and minimize casualties. But I guess they were too busy drawing straws on who was going to take point on "going through the door". I repeat, I never said all policeman are bad or that all fireman are good. But you would have to agree that there are plenty of video records that are not painting a good picture about policemen. I am not a police officer nor would I ever be one. Same as with any other profession that would put my life in danger. How I would react in a matter of life and death, I have no idea. I would like to imagine with bravery, but that is just that, imagination. Excuse you, but I already look like I have a bad ass. It's from all the sitting. Could be, it's just that after everything I have seen from the US police officers, it looks like all the bad things that we see from them are either triggered by fear or corruption.

Every police officer that runs around with the punisher logo in whatever kind of way should automatically get fired.

Which is a shame because the story is intriguing. Oh well, maybe I'll watch a YouTube compilation

Bayonetta 3 on Switch will include an optional “put on more clothes” mode | Ars Technica

Yeah I actually read German government report. Like in that politico article mentions EU has already imported more gas from Russia this year than they have budgeted for entire year. Norway has increased amount of gad they export. Meaning that Germany and Europe aren't running out of gas this year, but fear is how next year would look like. Even then it is gas price hike that they fear more than lack ofgas

OK guys, I am completely lost after yesterday, is here anyone with a military tactic education, who can give me some enlightenment on what is the endgoal of Russian military around Kherson, and why they have chosen the tactic they are using there? On Sunday, UA bombed and pretty much destroyed all buildings at Chornobaivka Airport, which also led to 5 high ranking officers being KIA. Not more than two day after, RU have put again new helicopters on the airfield, which of course prompted another (28th already) attack of UA against the airport, leading to another big explosion... Seriously, there must be some kind of master tactical plan behind this, but as much as I am trying to find any logical conclusion to this behaviour, I am unable to find one... No one on this earth can be that stupid... In other news, according to LNR militia chief, UA yesterday HIMARSed depot in Luhansk, and dealt a massive blow to the military air defense unit, which ensures the security of Luhansk. And during last 5 days, 33 high ranking officers of RU Army were officially confirmed by various Russian sources as KIA, 13 of them were Majors and higher ranks. UA longe range units step up their efficientcy a lot. No wonder, that RU was issuing nuclear threats again yesterday.

I overall lukewarm enjoy Ubisoft games. I haven't played a Far Cry game in quite a while. Since 5 is on Game Pass, I may give it a go at some point. AssCreed is decent enough, but I only really liked Black Flag and Rogue and that's mostly for the sailing, hence my interest in Skull & Bones, despite the trepidations I have (live service model & lack of solo campaign). AssCreed games always take a giant nosedive whenever they go outside the Animus and into present day IMHO. I haven't played one since the reboot on account of the reported added grind. I played Watch_Dogs briefly, but that game quickly lost me due to wonky driving physics and how much of a black hole of charisma Aidan was. Watch_Dogs 2, on the other hand, was a game I thoroughly enjoyed, largely due to how likable Marcus and the other DedSec hacker were. I legit wanted to do right by those wacky miscreants. It's amazing how far a likable protagonist(s) can take you.

Anyway, to reiterate this point that I hastily made on my phone, The Vision of Escaflowne contains these elements: Isekai, a shounen dolt male lead, the western equivalent of a shounen dolt as supporting character (i.e. a chivalrous knight) and a cat girl. The cat girl got a tail and real cat ears and all, not a girl in a cat costume. In spite of all that and some pacing and storytelling issues, I'd put it into my top 10 anime list, if I had one. Not that this wasn't clear from all the posts I made about it, but anyway. Just in case any one of you is looking for a new anime to watch. Coz, yeah. dunno, I got that impression for some reason.

Well number 1 is the endless stream of quests. They say "go here to do this main quest. And on the way there are 300 events. Save this person, clear this area ect. Feels like there is no real downtime. Example. Get the first mission. Walking down a path and there is someone held hostage in the bushes, but I don't see it, I just hear yelling, then firing. So I blindly fire into the bush. Save the person. I take 10 steps and the exact same thing happens again. Walk for 30 seconds after that, and then there is an outpost. Liberate that and I get a call that someone needs saving down by the dock. I can see why people like it, it's 'fun' just really not my style of game. Also I'm a little OCD when it comes to map markers. I feel the urge to tik them all off. And always end up getting fatigue and giving up...

I am unsure but I think I watched and absolutely loved an Isekai anime recently. What was it called? Hum. Right, The Vision of Escaflowne. Just saying. You know. Like, just… saying.

For me Ubi games lack “meat” - their games are extremely repetitive and core gameplay loop is just too shallow to make those enjoyable to me. They are pretty but the glamour disappears after a session or two. The closest I came to enjoying a modern Ubi game was FarCry3 - shooting was enjoyable enough and it wasn’t padded that badly - I still started to get bored with it halfway through. I didn’t bother trying AssCreed reboots as while they shake things up a little bit, they seemed to add stuff I tend to hate, like grindy power progression in an action game.

I'm roughly halfway through Yakuza Kiwami 2. It's standard Yakuza where the main story is a gripping serious drama with Kiryu being the most stoic man of all time and the side stories are a mix of heartwarming and completely ridiculous goofball comedy. There are the tried and true mini-games like karaoke and darts plus others, and a variety of gambling games; western ones like poker and blackjack, as well as a bunch of Asian gambling games that I have absolutely no idea how they work. I always tell myself that I'll learn at least one of them, but I never do. There are 2 reasons for this: First, there is so much other content that I not only fully understand but also enjoy that, why would I waste many hours learning a game that I may or may not wind up enjoying when I can instead do the gravure photo shoot mini-game? Second, I don't even understand what I'm looking at. I would first have to spend an undetermined amount of time learning what all the cards in a hanafuda deck mean before I can even attempt to decipher the rules. Since I have zero desire to 100% this game, or any other, for that matter, why waste my time on completely optional content I don't understand in the slightest? Anyway, besides the smaller mini-games, Yakuza always has 1 or 2 big... I hesitate to call them mini-games, given that they're so deep and meaty that they could easily be standalone games. ThIs time around it's Majima Construction Company and Club Management. Majima Construction is essentially a RTS while Club Management is, well, a management game. I am completely and utterly dog$#!+ at RTS, so I'm not going to bother with Majima Construction. Club Management, on the other hand, is super fun, so I plan to see that through to completion. I haven't looked up a guide or wiki, but I'm guessing that the rewards for completing these are Rush Style and Beast Style, given that I've only had access to Kiryu's basic Brawler Style. With any luck, completing Club Management grants Beast Style, it's always my favorite. I have no clue what would grant Dragon/Legend Style, but that usually isn't available until late game.

And talking of reinterpreting sanctions: EU backs-down over Kaliningrad

Still playing Elden Ring, after 200 hours I'm roughly half way through the game, enjoying most of it, though some bosses are becoming really annoying (tree spirits be damned!) the views, they are what keeps me going To keep myself from going insane I swap Elden Ring for Genshin Impact from time to time, and while the game is just a poorer Zelda clone, it can be cinematic and slight spoilers!

This is like water admitting it is wet, but still funny to just come out and say it. Edit: Looks like the Uvalde footage got leaked. https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2022/07/12/uvalde-school-shooting-video-of-robb-elementary-shows-police-response/65370384007/

Its interesting you have taken that stance, Hamas does that all the time in Gaza and the West Bank. Often when Palestinian civilian are killed its exactly because Hamas is launching rockets or has militants fighting from civilian houses and structures So its good to know you wont be outraged and you will blame Hamas for the Israelis killing civilians next time their is conflict in that region

Yeah, those are a couple of my favorite episodes. It does take a while, but I loved how that anime slowly built up their chrs and their relationship, the small humor moments then the dramatics....in that action-anime story telling way, ofc. It's also one of those where the Eng. dub is overall very good. I've watched both dubbed and subbed and I don't really have a big preference, except to my ears I might slightly prefer the Eng. VA's tonal/inflection, slightly more OTP interpretation of Mugen better.

Played an hour of far cry 5 on game pass. Remembered why I don't like ubisoft games. It's a shame too because the story is interesting albeit very unrealistic.

If Ukraine falls because of West stopping to care, and remove the sanctions, Russia will reinforce themselves and loads of current military officers will be shot for corruption and bad performance. They will learn from all their mistakes in UA, and from the gas and oil money, they will rebuild again. Next time, they will definitely not hesitate to attack eastern NATO members, maybe not directly, but through hybrid warfare. As an example, currently second most powerful political party in Slovakia is extremely Pro-Russian, and is sowing hatred against Ukrainian refugees. If they win the next election, Russia will have after Orban, one more white horse in NATO, and they will definitely use them during the recovery time to the maximum, to destabilize EU. And now imagine people like Salvini, Le Pen, Shroeder and Trump in the West as a leaders of their countries as well... There will not be many politicians in the West, who would be very eager to honor Article 5. Probably Poland and Nordic countries would be among the few, who would honor it in any case.

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

You've sent me down a black hole...

Thanks for this

What have I been pretending about? You have shown that you can attack my spelling and not the subject of conversation. Please don't make me go and find all the assumptions you have been making. Yes, I am assuming they are coward and yes, I could be wrong, but I think it's a fairly "educated" assumptions from all the failures I have seen previously. What you are just saying is that the failure is systematic, be it in training or hiring process and I agree. Not everyone should be allowed to be a police officer and training should be standardized. I have no idea what you think a policemans job is, but I know that it's to protect the public order, or at least that is what it should be. Either way I have no clue what you are defending here, or why you feel the need to, but to each their own. Preach!

Beats me, just disappointed not seeing more people using the Red Alert soundtracks. Kids these days..

Might as well prepare to take back Kosovo now that splitting bits off other countries by force is illegal again. Comparing Ukraine to Hamas, seems a little... counterproductive, Bruce.

Seriously, whats up with that?

I also enjoyed black flag. The furthest I've gotten in a ubisoft game was that one. For pretty much the same reason you stated. Have never played watchdogs. Not much interest in it really. Game Pass is great for games I have an itch to play, but know I will lose interest.

Serbia planning to attack while the EU's weapons are in Ukraine, I see.

I'm hoping they include more torture attacks than ever. Those were always a highlight for me.

@Gorth More eco woes after todays reports https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-policy-error-imminent-soaring-cpi-sparks-drastic-yield-curve-inversion More banks realligning to have H2 2022 with recession as a base case. I wonder how quickly before midterms Ukraine will vanish from the topic. Seems Sauds are also not willing to put US over Russia when it comes to energy markets.

Definitely will be tonnes of arms smuggling. I did laugh at someone on Telegram saying Ukrainians were trying to sell a HIMARS.

You make good points around your criticism....you made me laugh because its exactly what its like in FC games You can disable map markers as far as I remember but the mechanics that frustrate you wont change

Agreed about the grind and too much filler. In AC: Unity and Syndicate I played only the critical path and it was decent, but too similar to any other AC game. Probably, the same for Far Cry. I guess, I am not the target audience for triple-A, as I strongly detest grind, filler, "cinematic" cut-scenes, ridiculous file sizes and most of all GaaS, DRM and MTX. --- The Waylanders. Reached the second Act (again). The second to last difficulty does not seem different from Normal. I hope that the companion quests for the newly-recruited team member will work correctly this time.

It could be worse. I've watched many Isekais and some didn't go in a good direction. Skeleton Knight in Another World starts with some girls about to be raped. Not even Goblin Slayer went there that fast. Arifureta had an interesting story, with an entire classroom (including their teacher) taken to another world. But eventually it revealed itself as a harem ecchi and the first girl that appears is a "legal loli" as Haru would say. Maybe you will like So I'm a Spider, So What? It does get a little repetitive with the spider fighting against monsters every single episode, but the story seems to be pretty complex, which intrigued me. There is also Mushoku Tensei (Jobless Pervert Reincarnation), which is great in many ways, but the protagonist is a pervert reborn as a child and there are way too many scenes about that, like his maid and his teacher discovering he steals their panties. So watch at your own risk. Yes, their relationship is evolving and it is getting more interesting.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-senior-us-official-john-bolton-admits-planning-attempted-foreign-coups-2022-07-12/

Maybe that's why 95% of the worlds countries have designated Hamas a terrorist organisation?

Komi Can't Communicate episodes I don't know. So I forgot about this show and dived back in. So I've been avoiding this, but sometimes I catch @majestic's madness and need to finish something once I've started it even if it's trash. I fear this may be one of those cases. This show would be hugely improved if Najimi became a serial killer and wiped out at least half the supporting cast.

Very unlikely. Sanctions aren't going away anytime soon - I think the condition from the West is pre-2014 borders ? So that's out, Russia's ability to reinforce and conduct military operations is probably set back by a decade or so now after all of this. Trying hybrid warfare and getting friendly politicians in NATO might work, will be very unfertile soil for quite some time to come, at least in most of Europe. I doubt Russian tanks sweeping in through Vilnius or something is going to yield no response from NATO members, definitely can count on the US to go blow stuff up with a clear moral reason - and a practical one as what point is NATO other than to defend it's members. Then again, if suddenly you see this guy in the Kremlin, we must be afraid.

Germany's gas storages are in half capacity currently, so even if they lose all gas imports now they still have gas until November (when they start to need gas for heating). And during summer month they get more gas from Norway than they use (as they import from Norway 75 TWh worth of gas in month and use 45 TWh). EDIT: Germany's energy crisis is mainly caused by fact that Germany refuses to declare energy emergency that would allow energy companies to break their long time contracts, which currently forces them to sell gas in massive loss, which has caused that they try avoid selling gas as much as they can.

Here is the rumored power supply recommendation for the upcoming RTX4090:

Samurai Champloo 18 Mugen goes to school. Fuu and Jin help two brothers settle their differences. Samurai Champloo 19 Jin and Mugen crash a wedding and we finally get some concrete information about the Sunflower Samurai. Samurai Champloo 20-21 Travelling with a blind musician, Fuu is forced to consider the reality of her journey, while Mugen and Jin find a worthy opponent.

My recommendation would be: when getting to level 9, pick "The Dragon Thrashed" and only use that phrase. When it overlaps the damage from it will stack on enemies. If you already have enough tanks then give him a single handed melee weapon for one weapon set. This will give his offensive chants (so, The Dragon Thrashed in this case) +12 accuracy. This bonus only applies to attacks with the one-handed weapon and offensive chants. The talent (one-handed style) does not work for the chants so you don't need it. The second weapon slot is for a melee weapon (for example a hatchet) and a shield. Use Ilfan Byrngar's Solace first (you might already have it, it's a drop from that Drake in lvl 6 of the Endless Paths), then later use Little Savior (difficult, hoard of the Adra Dragon). Weapon and Shield Style is optional. Use the armor Blaidh Golan. This one is also an early armor to get (Brackenbury Sanatorium in a crate for free). Give him a Ring of Overseeing and later the Voice of the Mountaintop (Dyrford Village, the arms vendor there) - they both stack for chant AoE size. Alternative amulet: St. Borragia's Tears. Give him Veteran's Recovery and Ancient Memory+Beloved Spirits at some point. Use +MIG and +INT gear to raise the damage of Dragon Thrashed, the AoE size and the Linger time. Third weapon slot is a an arquebus or arbalest or so. Use a Belt of Bountiful Healing and Shod-in-Faith boots. Now stand to the side of eder like your MC does, but on the other side and work like an offtank, catching bypassers who want to reach Aloth/Durance/Hiravias etc. while chanting Dragon Thrashed with +12 ACC and healing your party passively with your Ancient Memory aura. Should you get into trouble switch to the shield setup. Should you not be able to do much because it's all so crowded and your accuracy with the chant is sufficient, switch to the ranged weapon. You will be pretty sturdy even with no shield because Veteran's Recovery and Ancient Memory stack - and should you receive a crit you will trigger Consecrated Ground, too. The long goal with the shield setup and the armor is to combine it with Grieving Mother's Defensive Mindweb and Durance's Withdraw (as a spell mastery): See, chants also work when Kana is withdrawn by Durance. You you can use Withdraw on Kana but his Dragon Thrashed will still work. This is the only way how a character can do anything when withdrawn: chant (and have auras like that from Ancient Memory and Little Savior). At the same time Withdraw counts as a stun effect. If you look at your shield and armor, they both have an effect that gives you +50 to all defenses when stunned. Since a shield is counted as a weapon and all weapon enchantments stack with everything, both effects stack to +100 to all defenses when stunned. Now - if Kana is withdrawn he gets +100 to all defenses. Wow - but that's not really useful because he's withdrawn anyway. Here Grieving Mother comes into play. Cast Defensive Mindweb on the party and everybody in the party will have Kana's absolutely stellar +100 defenses with no drawbacks. Kana will be out of the fight, but he can still contribute with a chant, dealing damage. When WIthdraw ends he will have cumulated enough phrases for a nice invocation of your liking. Dragon Thrashed will do tremendous damage in the meantime. Even before getting to that little Mindweb/Withdraw trick it will be very impactful, especially with the +12 accuracy from one-handed usage. Invocations can be used for further damage, summons or support while Ancient Memory + Beloved Spirits + the healing bonuses will work nicely for your party while you will be a versatile offtank, too. Later with Mindweb/Withdraw you will be the absolute superstar who grants unbelievable defenses and nice healing while still dealing great AoE damage. A variant can be to double down on the healing an use a combiation of short chants (e.g. the starting March of the Kamoa which does +10 Will, Fortitude and Reflex) with the Mercy and Kindness chant (increased healing done). This is also very useful for the party because the healing will be so strong all the time. You will do no chant damage then but do nice support and more healing. I have a build that uses this: