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I went to a friends wedding last night and got to see a few new things! Hes an Italian guy who married a Native American (Ojibwe) woman and their ceremony was a blend of both cultures. The officiant was of the same tribe and he performed the ceremony in both languages, then they read their vows to each other while holding an eagle feather, then there was a blanket ceremony where they were draped in a blanket woven by her mother, then there was a tobacco ceremony where you could partake in "smudging" if you like (I did). Their language was hella complex and it seem like it took a lot of Ojibwe words to say just a few English words. It was honestly one of the best wedding Ive ever attended.

Not sure where to post this. The Funny thread? Politics? "This is what his vision of the future man looks like." Then you see 1:31. 🤣

Obi-Wan Kenobi - Whelp, that was a waste of time. Ewan McGregor is enjoyable, but he couldn't save this nothingburger. I don't know why I need to use spoilers, since nothing happened, but I will anyways. There was too much time spent on agonizingly slow emotional departures. There was some pilot that got killed on a suicidably dumb mission and everyone was all weepy. I had no idea who the guy was. There was no real buildup of his character, so why would I care? I was critical of the Book of Boba Fett because of the plot, but at least I understood that they were leaning on Western tropes, and it was fun to watch even if it wasn't very smart. Obi-Wan was boring and bad. I was really pushing to get through the finale. Anyways, I haven't decided when I'll give Andor a try. Hopefully it is better than this sad send off for Ewan McGregor.

Russians released the footage of how they blown up segments of Kakhovka Dam. Notice, that there is absolutely no visible damage to the road over the dam, despite months of HIMARS treatment of the near vicinity of the dam. Because contrary to Russian propaganda claims, all of the hits were performed to the bridges over water outlet on the left bank of Dnepr, which can be seen on the Maxar image, which I have linked few posts ago 🤷‍♂️

Hell being just an eternal traffic jam, sounds about right.

Alleged manual of Russian soldier for the “Great Patriotic War 2.0” in Ukraine. It is as ridiculous, as you would think. “We are fighting Russians brainwashed by Nazis supported by Israel” 🤣🤣🤣

You can tell what damage was done previously *sighs*… there are tons of videos and pictures of the dam… feel free to stay delusional further though 🤷‍♂️ and another delusion, is the two points at the end of your article… again I recommend you to check how it goes around Bakhmut, Pisky, Avdiivka, how Russian commanders are preserving their troops 🤷‍♂️ the simple reason, why Kherson defensive 8:1 number provided by UA MoD, might be little bit plausible, is that RU ended up in shambles and chaos after few months of daily care by Mr. HIMARS (20k+ soldiers under incompetent command is pretty target rich environment), which Russia was not able to counter at all, and they were still doing counterattacks around Snihurivka and Ternovy Pody all the time, until retreat… Also look at some numbers from the liberation of Balaklia, where due to chaos amongst the Russian soldiers and useless commanders, the presented numbers were 5:1 in favour for Ukraine as well. With much much much less HIMARS treatment… The numbers for the whole Kharkiv offensive were not released yet though (AFAIK). EDIT: just do the math. Someone made a statistics, how many HIMARS attacks have been done during that period… I do not remember exact number, but it was more than 300. Let’s split it evenly. 150 strikes against logistic infrastructure and 150 strikes against personnel HQs, with the reports from 20-300 killed personnel. But lets just use number 30, to be very conservative. That means minimum 4500 dead Russians by HIMARS alone, and 0 Ukrainian dead, due to lack of countermeasures, to destroy or even damage soldiers in use of this machinery… then look at artillery. Russia just shoots randomly and hope to hit something, there are videos on Telegram of Russian soldiers blaming their artillery support to shoot the projectiles up to few hundreds meters away from the targets, on the other hand, UA has Excaliburs, and they are using it with great success (again, you can see a lot of footage, with one hit kills of russian machinery), this speaks also in favour of better K:D ratio for Ukrainians. The only time, where the ratio is not in their favour, is their direct counter-offensive, which they dropped to absolute minimum in this region, in favour of the HIMARS pounding… all you need for this conclusion is some common sense, and some elementary school math 🤷‍♂️ and here you have some another backing of the common sense, for visually confirmed losses of machinery. During the counteroffensive, the ratio was 3.5:1 in favour for Ukraine *surprised pikachu face (or not)*. As you can see, the UA losses piled up a lot, just after the start of their counteroffensive in the middle of October, when they started to push more in Kherson Oblast, but they are still waaaay under the Russian losses… but yeah sure, do not let the numbers or common sense to disturb your ideology 🤷‍♂️

Dugin is putting the blame for losing Kherson directly on Putin. Hopefully, he does not enjoy drinking tea in the morning 🤷‍♂️

Here you have a Maxar picture of the dam from this morning, and you can easily compare the “damage” done by Ukrainians during last 6 months, and damage to it done by Russia in a single day 🤷‍♂️ *hint hint* RU damage to the right and UA damage to the left 🤷‍♂️ I have written about the ratio 8:1 as a ratio based on UA sources (mainly their MoD), not my numbers lol… aand You are considering 7 months of systematic destruction of Russian logistic and command centers, which lead to massive casualties amongst RU soldiers and destruction of RU machinery, while saving as much UA soldier lives, which in the end caused the retreat of 20k of Russian soldiers on the other bank in record time and liberation of more than 6000 sq kms, as head bumping against the wall… and you are still trying to accuse someone else of bad application of military theory 🤦‍♂️

I hate seagulls. I got mugged by them at Sea World when I was a kid and I've never moved on.

Let's just hope it's not Crystal either. The "Beautiful giraffes" are nightmares created by Abeloth to make people not watch the real show.

That was the general idea.

But make her watch Sailor Moon first. Except for Super S.

just retrain

サイバーパンク エッジランナーズ Okay, so where do I start with this one. First would be to internally debate how to properly measure the success of any given entertainment product. Is it the simple matter of saying how much I was entertained by it, or should we apply different metrics as well? In the former, then, well, I did neither like nor hate watching Edgerunners. If it is the latter, then I just finished watching a modern anime with a shōnen scumbag protagonist that did not make me want to kill myself, and that would be a job well done. Alas, when I look at what it tried to do, then I can just say it did not work for me. Visuals I guess by, this point, I don't need to repeat the same old part of this song like a broken record. There's a whole lot of nudity in this one, on the other hand, it barely ever bothered me. That is most likely because of the immense disconnect the art style causes. Awe-inspiring visual flair is not how I would describe the assault on my eyes that the color scheme and character art was. It looks like someone took 80ies martial art anime character design and mangled it through the eye popping color filter of Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop, except the filter setting was tuned for dystopian cyberpunk world, not feelgood slice of life romantic comedy. MD Geist fighting... no, wait. Toto, I have a feeling we're not in the 80ies any more. Anyone looking for their haiku dictionary? Guess that's enough. The animation quality is fine, actually, but I would not expect anything less from Studio Trigger. There are some scenes that look really uncanny, but such is part for the modern anime course. Scumbags I'm just copying quotes from wikipedia here, but Jonathon Wilson, whoever he is, certainly has not played Cyberpunk 2077 - or if he did, he did not finish the game. The basic plot elements are similar, except the game is much better in making one care for the characters involved than the show is, particularily with the mentor characters. Jackie is a much better character than Maine ever could be, and we see less of Jackie in the game than we do of Maine in the series. Maine is the guy in the image that looks like an illegal gene splicing experiment between Street Fighter's Guile and Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star. It's not all terrible. The second episode was mostly good, and some situations in between showed what this could have been. In some ways it was much less frustrating than Noir. Noir promised more than it could deliver, but Edgerunners mostly delivers what it promises, with a couple of moments that go beyond that. Having ten episodes while repeating plot points with this little screen time, without fleshing out themes or characters enough for them to matter in the long run, well, what was the point? Flashy entertainment and action was certainly more important than... well, anything else. Congratulations. One would think that people who worked on the original NGE know how to turn action into an addition that can underscore the exploration of existential dread that living in a dystopian cyberpunk world would provide the perfect basis for, but alas, this falls squarely into Rebuild territory. Just with being less obnoxious because it can't ruin anything that preceeded it.

I'm always open for contracts, and what girl doesn't want to become a magical girl.

I've heard good things about Andor, namely that if all the other Star Wars shows are adults playing with action figures, Andor feels more like a series with an idea behind it. I haven't seen it and could be wrong, so take that as hearsay.

Some Russians in charge of bigger Telegram channels are finally getting out of delusion, and are starting to ask the right questions 🤷‍♂️

I'm really curious about your reaction. Have your teenage daughter contact @Make a contract with KP, you might be able to change something about it. All for the price of a little... help.

am agreeing, but... is good to recall where clockwork orange falls in the kubrick catalog. is after spartacus and 2001 and orange were a warner brothers release. would we see a similar film from an established director nowadays? is possible, but major movie studios cannot afford to take risks the way they did in the 70s. is not the lack o' cojones 'cause o' dark and edgy content per se, but economics is different in 2022 and the current reality makes such releases extreme unlikely save as the kinda streaming fare you identify and possible indy stuff. am recalling we mentioned chariots of fire not too long past as the kinda movie is near impossible to make nowadays, and not 'cause it were edgy or dark neither. the industry is in a tough spot with their tried and true theatre release model becoming less viable every year. that said, am not a huge fan o' kubrick's orange. had the misfortune o' reading the book (including the oft omitted final chapter) before seeing the movie, so our pov were perhaps tainted the same way a person who saw movie first would read the novel different. curious, the movie is extreme faithful to the source material save for the manner in which kubrick used film techniques to subtle change his portrayal o' alex and the missing final chapter. kudos to kubrick insofar as his craftsmanship and skill, but am not able to embrace his vision. HA! Good Fun!

A few more island to go on treasure islands (unless it flips over again and presents me with a third map full of islands?)... making that today's goal for me. After that, there is only missions left, that takes place in Iz. So, off to Iz after that. I can almost hear the lead bard from some Abyssal Rock band belting out "Gorth save the Queen!" 🎶 😂

On one hand I can see it being overwhelming, on the other I usually hate when films inorganically explain stuff like what all the fictional stuff (slang, technology, etc.) is. In A Clockwork Orange I think the slang helps establish the world as a dystopian future or alternate reality. But I like it. Yes, though I suppose that depends exactly what you mean by a movie like A Clockwork Orange. There's more than a few folks making films that are dark, violent, sexual, and very weird. I assume some of them are less than faithful adaptations. The kicker is they're low(er) budget indie films and/or made outside the US with government funding. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn comes to mind as a satire that is shocking, dark, and cynical. The big problem is of course funding, the big studios are much more conservative and driven by algorithms, so good luck getting funding if your film isn't a proven money maker. I don't think any big established director who can get the big budgets would or could take the risk, Tarantino would rather play with action figures and do another western or period flick (or maybe sci-fi), Nolan would get high on his own farts again, Spielberg is in the boomer kitsch phase, Peele is too nice, and Scorsese or del Toro wouldn't get the budget. So I guess look to the indie films for something like A Clockwork Orange. That ought to be fun. Well if you ever decide to watch Eyes Wide Shut let me know and I will procure the rotisserie chicken. You naughty 🦑

A truly lovely story. Based on his body of work, I have a feeling that I wouldn't be nearly so keen on a Tarantino A Clockwork Orange, . I guess I cheated, since I did have subtitles enabled. I thought most of them were relatively clear thanks to the context of their usage, but...reading them so that you know that what you're hearing is correct certainly helps a lot. 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably next in line for Kubrick films I have to watch...

Love it, love it, love it.

Also from view from the cheap seats, a re-post of something from the other year:

am gonna guess trump is lying, 'cause if is true he sent doj resources to interfere with a state election, then he just admitted to crime. somehow having this go complete unnoticed in 2018 is unlikely, so am gonna suggest trump reflexive falsehood is what is happening with this admission, but it would be big news if true. HA! Good Fun!

And justifiably so. I love it when people (typically Westerners living peaceful lives within their own very secure borders) casually talk of other people giving up their land, something they themselves would NEVER ever under any circumstances say about their own land.

Student loan forgiveness: Federal court strikes down Biden's program | CNN Politics

While I'm not a big fan of CGI generally, I am a big fan of del Torro and the man knows his monsters. I think Kubrick is undoubtedly a master of his craft, but I do have to say I would not have guessed that you would like A Clockwork Orange. If you end up enjoying Eyes Wide Shut then I will eat a whole rotisserie chicken. He reduced Scatman Crothers to tears by making him do close to 150 takes in The Shining, so pain in the neck may be an understatement. Lmao, the first thing you hear is Alex saying the most British nonsense over synth music and it is hilarious.

Of course we know how to be very serious about absurd satire. How do you think we ended up with that Empire in the first place?

A Clockwork Orange (1971). Well, I put off watching it for a very long time, but I finally did. It is a marvellously constructed film, with the way all of it thematically loops back in on itself to tie everything together so perfectly. Thanks to that, it goes from being a film I probably should've rightfully hated (if it were handled by a lesser filmmaker) to a film that I did end up enjoying, which I did not expect.

If we talk about MC without party support then : paladin/troubadour paladin/bloodmage paladin/forbidden fist forbidden fist (using BT) priest/anything (using BDD & SoT) With passive help from the party there are of course more... Pallegina can also tank him with a little help but she won't be able to attack since without Rekvu's helm she will be interrupted most of the time.

Meanwhile, Inside the Box, Schrodinger’s Cat Plans Its Revenge…

LOFTID: NASA just tested an inflatable heatshield for planetary exploration in orbit (interestingengineering.com)

Hello, loving the game so far by the way! One design choice that has been bothering me is melee combat vs. flying enemies, more specifically perfect parrying them. When blocking a flying enemy, the enemy stays within range briefly, but you don't get that parry stun opening. However when parrying them, while the enemy does get briefly stunned, they are also pushed farther away from the player. The distance created from the parry does grant the player the opportunity to run away from the flying enemy, but it also removes the damage opportunity that parries grant, unintentionally punishing the melee player for parrying them. Solution: Parrying a flying enemy briefly lowers the enemies flying height while retaining the parry stun. While this slightly reduces that opportunity for running away, it doesn't remove it entirely given that the enemy is stunned. It does however give melee players an option to fight flying enemies and no longer punishes the player for parrying. I understand that range attacks like bows exist for the player, but I just wanted to offer 1 option for countering flying enemies with melee. This helps greatly as a solo player because you don't have to switch back and forth between weapons while worrying about blocking their attacks in time. Thanks for your time!

Fries... I've yet to meet a bird that could resist fries. Next time, do a stop at the cheapest junk food joint you can find and get some fries. The more fatty and salty, the better. It works on ducks, pigeons, pelicans, seagulls, crows, kookaburras, magpies, c0ckatiels, c0ckatoos, rosellas, galahs and lorikeets (the ones I remember from top of my head coming after me for my fries)

Okay I know this is late considering the age of the games, but I didn't really get to play when they came out, I ended up with Covid and was essentially bed bound so I fired up the Xbox and messed around with game pass and I stumbled onto these games and though "oh look , it's kinda like icewind dale I loved that game as a kid..." now I'm hooked I've been running around reading everything the lore and depth of world building are amazing. The story is a slow burn that many have criticized however it feels like it was designed from the perspective of a traditional TTRPG campaign there is so much to do. I can't speak higher of these games and I can't wait to replay them with new classes as my main so I can RP different choices more in line with that character. I am now working on finding the originals in physical format on Xbox ( I purchased them on steam but I also want a physical backup incase internet is for some reason i unavailable or if I no longer pay for game pass these have become my new go to game replacing dark souls