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This is not even the whole story. That is the carrot, the stick is that if we don't stop lobbing against Kosovo joining any international organization (we don't have to acknowledge them as a country but they can then be a UN member so it doesn't matter), they will pull any funding from the EU and reinstate visa requirements and as an aside they said that in that case Kosovo can still join EU security council and NATO (that is what would happen officially at least). Edit: Just to add, establishing "communities of Serb majority municipalities" in northern Kosovo, is something that what signed in the Brussels accords in which the EU was the guarantor. So they are offering us something they already screwed us on.

https://greekreporter.com/2023/01/23/16-meter-long-book-dead-ancient-papyrus-egypt-sarcophagus/

Navigating banner joy and revolt. Wear your swag! It'll make @The Guildmasterhappy

First attempt at Swedish meatballs, completely from scratch: So delicious! Eat your heart out, IKEA!

Outward has me hooked. Last night I managed to travel to a ley line and unlock my ability to do magic. I was ready for bed, so I took a boat back to a beach and looked for a place to camp. There was a fortress nearby, and the guards seemed friendly enough (they didn't try to kill me on site). I asked for shelter, but they knocked me out, took all my stuff, and threw me in a cell. So I guess I will be trying to escape the next time I play. At least I have a couple spells now, so I'm not defenseless. Not having a quicksave or reload option puts you in some strange spots.

Dragon Age 4 Production Director Leaves BioWare

Stove and fireplace, Ill never freeze to death with my bush-furnace. But yes, the actual furnace requires power.

My familys house is of "cultural significance" because it's old, so I'm not allowed to put up solar panels. Or triple glass windows. And they would really like us to dismount the heat pumps. And preferably also remove the stairway to the upper floor, because it wasn't there 120 years ago. One of the windows broke a few years ago, and we can't find any "wavy glass" that the municipality requires us to get, so we stapled some building plastic and then screwed a plywood piece ontop of it. Least drafty "window" in the house

We didn't go with all the bells and whistles with our solar even though I kinda really wanted battery storage but the salesperson actually talked me out of spending more. I'll probably look into later on if I still feel the need to have total grid independence but for now I'm working on getting everything in this house off gas and over to electric because our energy company keeps raising the price on NG.

I recently noticed seeing an add banner on the top of the page. It doesn't look very good and I thought I was somewhere else to be honest.

we were informed by an expert on such things that our swedish meatball recipe were actually norweigan meatballs. so we asked what is difference tween swedish and norweigan. answer: swedish meatballs is tending to be smaller and more spherical. we observed that our meatballs were smallish and spherical. the chef nodded in agreement. euros. ... *shrug* also makes us wonder at the european bafflement regarding american biscuits and gravy when swedish meatballs involves greasy meat slathered in a creamy gravy and served over a rib-sticking starch. ikea is kinda surprising as is no nutmeg in the ikea offering. we thought a signature flavour o' swedish meatballs were the nutmeg. Gromnir nordsweedballs in a brown gravy: preheat oven to 400F 2lb meat (usual 1/2 ground beef and 1/2 pork) 3/4C grated onion 1/4C half-n-half 2T cornstartch 1 egg 1t kosher salt 1/4t each fresh ground nutmeg, allspice, black pepper combine above ingredients being careful to not overmix. in the past we used panko breadcrumbs. meh. skip 'em. also, as am braising, we don't need vigorous mix and as a result our meat is more tender and less gummy than is most skillet durable meatballs. use a 2T cookie scoop to form into balls and place 'em on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. am knowing is raw meat, but taste and decide if your mix needs more salt. am always tending to start with less salt so am able to add more if needed. in batches, brown the balls in a skillet with 2T butter and 1T olive oil. remove browned balls to a dutch oven. drain off oil from the skillet and deglaze with 3 1/2C beef broth. combine whish to combine 1/2C room temp or cold beef broth, 3T flour and 1T better than bullion base. add your flour slurry to the skillet with the broth and cook over medium for ~ five minutes or until you got appropriate gravy consistency. skim off excess fat and foam and add salt and pepper as needed. aside: if your gravy is not a deep and rich brown, do not hesitate to add 1/2t or a smidge more o' kitchen bouquet. pour the gravy over the meatballs in your dutch oven and then place in a preheated oven for 35-40ish minutes. you wanna braise the meatballs. remove from oven and serve meatballs and gravy over noodles or mashed taters or whatever. the version we offer is admitted not the dairy gravy one most recognizes from ikea and other swedish meatball recipes, but it is our current go to recipe. HA! Good Fun!

Different look on the Leopards...

Metro Exodus SDK announced.

We're sending tanks now. /Edit: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/krieg-in-der-ukraine-deutschland-schickt-leopard-panzer-a-e2dde871-88d0-4cf5-8aae-482d58fd850f

Mimimi's project Süßkartoffel has been revealed. Looks very much like their previous titles, though according to earlier interviews and gameplay video it will be more open, than their previous titles:

yeah mostly the issue was that in The Ultimate Magran's challenge is turned on, which prevents you from pausing. So it doesn't become foolproof (and in The Ultimate you can't really afford a mistake). also, with Berath's challenge on, you can pause the game when you're close unenough, unstealth and then re-stealth while the game is still paused, then unpause, and that'll be enough to trigger combat while still in stealth. don't even have to bother with traps or anything. traps are useful if you need to split up enemies though.

I think Meryel is a priest of Berath. I'm pretty sure I stole Touch of Rot from her once.

Didn't know you could just sneak up to the fire. The wiki says doing that gives reputation loss. I managed to wipe out the Takano Estate at L10. Probably could have done it at 9 but was trying to steal spells from the druid and the wizard, which was a waste of time as none of them had anything good. Well, the druid did but his spells are easy to find. The wizard is called an "elementalist" so I thought he had the "elementalist grimoire" or possibly the "weathermage grimoire" but he has no grimoire at all, just a unique set of common and mostly meh spells: minoletta's minor missiles, jolting touch, curse of blackened sight, ray of fire, fireball, and crackling bolt. Was looking for combusting wounds, chill fog, and kalakoth's minor blights which are fairly hard to find. Interestingly even with Berath's Challenge you can apparently start combat by attacking and entering stealth, which queues up the battle music and prevents you from using offensive spells or leaving the area, but as long as you stay out of people's stealth detection you can send in summons and buff/heal them from off the screen. Phantom kept killing the druid though so I just took them on at once until druid and wizard remained, got the druid spells I wanted, killed the druid, then fought the mage for about an hour. Because of the changes to blood sacrifice it is very tedious stealing a specific spell (particularly if the mage doesn't have it lol), but basically I just repeat the cycle of eldritch aim => fetid caress (almost always hits this guy) => minor grimoire imprint x2 => blood sacrifice x 2 to 8 (or stop when near death) => fetid caress => restore x4. Need to find a way to script it so I can do it on fast mode but vela seems unscriptable for some reason so idk. Also you can't check wizard resources for some reason which would be needed to know when to blood sacrifice, though you can script around resources for a lot of other classes. If I knew how to mod I'd make a mod that gives vela the normal "ally" tags so those work on her in scripts and you can just auto-cast withdraw on ally if ally is not a summon, easy game. Anyway I wrecked my reputation with the Huana and was going to stop and do Archmage's Vault but found out just being nice to Netehe is enough to get you to -2, and the ship isn't there anymore. Your rep has to be -3 when you leave Neketaka. Luckily it doesn't have to *stay* at -3, the ship spawn appears persistent once it spawns, so I can board it later, but you do have to at least leave the city while your rep is -3. Oh I discovered another consequence of negative reputation. Didn't think there were any really, but if you go to the gullet with huana bad 2 or worse and talk to the overseer to go to the old city, he'll let you, but he leaves you there to die =/ Would be a nasty surprise in an iron run

You can just approach the pyre from behind from stealth and interact with the pyre without talking to the priest and you turn in the quest without any issue/rep loss. I usually sail around to discover all the map spots that give XP but that is not Magran Fires-friendly. Yes indeed

It needs to allow the creation of mods if they want this thing to survive. /Edit: Apparently it runs on Unity. So basically there will be a big hype on release and then it will slowly be forgotten and people keep playing JA2 1.13 instead.

Testing out AOE on unconscious gear on phantoms. This is at L20 with Mantle of the Seven Bolts Effort One Dozen Stood Least Unstable Coil Unfortunately Effort and Least Unstable Coil have 7 penetration regardless of level. Same with Cape of the Falling Star. Mantle of the Seven Bolts has 9 penetration which is still not great. One Dozen Stood has a decent 12 penetration. With Animancy Cat the exploding phantoms strat may be sort of usable. Shadowing Beyond => Pull of Eora => Essential Phantom. Stealing Champion's Boon would help the summons a lot. Even if the duration sucks because of negative power level you only really need the +2 pen when they explode. Pull of Eora doesn't pop you out of invisibility but Blood Sacrifice does, which is a bit strange since it isn't an attack. The phantom duration is a little over a minute. He is so tanky with One Dozen Stood that the Neketaka guards couldn't kill him though so I had to detonate him manually. But I'm sure actually tough enemies will detonate him. Potions of Enlightenment shouldn't break invisibilty so I think this will work, though the low penetration sucks. Least Unstable Coil does have a nice stun effect though. Could possibly even do this without stealing spells at all, using Arkemyr's Grimoire if it weren't for the ridiculous number of withdraw scrolls you'd need. Shadowing Beyond is better overall due to the lack of recovery, and stealing spells is fun. Blood Sacrifice breaking invisibility is also a problem, but length of Arkemyr's Wondrous Departure with decent INT is over 30 seconds so theoretically you could stay invisible without stealing spells or blood sacrifice BUT you also need to summon phantoms, and...can't regenerate resources fast enough for that without blood sacrifice or spell theft. How does potion of enlightenment work on multiclass characters? Do you get back 1 resource per class or is it random? Because with super high INT priest of skaen / wizard you could maybe do this with Spiritual Ally and Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure without stealing spells, if you got back 1 resource per class per 30 seconds from the potions. Or wizard / watershaper with watery double, except you can't be a watershaper sadly. You can steal the spell, though, but I'm not sure how bad it is with negative power level scaling. Or maybe a monk / wizard, not sure if the monk duplicate gets your gear though. Checked the description and it says "all class resources" so it SOUNDS like you'd get +1 per class per 30 seconds, so I think you could actually do all the magran's fires challenges in BPM without stealing spells, though withdraw duration was nerfed somewhat so I think you'd be just short of being able to stay invisible... Also makes these potions of enlightenment much better for multiclass, and they only cost 3000 gold or 1000 gold to craft

How do you get to L12 without raising your rep with the Huana? I'm avoiding certain quests for that reason, which puts me at 9. Maybe could do the encounter at 9, but it is dicey, so not ideal. I probably don't even need the shield but I've been wanting to try it because of the blood rage thing and huge deflection bonus for my 3 resolve char. Can also use The Wall with Escape (I think). Who needs to move when you can teleport? Guess I could do some of the Gullet quests, I think those just raise your rep with the Gullet and Dawnstars...except Trade Secrets. Can do Eulogy for the Dead. Archmage Vault and give it to RDC. Yeah could probably get to 12, though the pathing might be weird. Typically I go queen's berth => periki's overlook => serpent's crown => gullet (open undercroft shortcut) => queen's berth => gullet => serpent's crown => sacred stair => brass citdael => serpent's crown => periki => gullet => queen's berth => leave. I haven't found a faster way to do all the quests because you need Huana 2 to turn in Muhai without rep loss (though I guess who cares), and turning in Food For Thought is really circuitous with the best outcome, since you have to see Pitli then the Dawnstar Temple, then the Prince, then Enoi. Would be faster to get food from Mad Morena, but I don't do that because of the meaningless reputation gain in the gullet. Yeah I'm not doing that anymore. The only benefit to rep I've noticed is you can pass some checks that otherwise require diplomacy which I usually have anyway, and with Neketaka 2 you can get Emeini who is the best backup crew member IMO. And the cost of getting Dawnstar food is like half a day or more so not worth it. Ah crap, I already killed her. Oh well. I can steal it from Yseyr or Wheneena Eel's Kiss or probably a number of generic Huana ship priests...I think they're all Berath, was it Dgray who said that? Shows how hard it is to steal a specific spell though with bad luck. Even with minor grimoire imprint which only targets 3 levels vs major grimoire imprint's 7. I'm going to limit the number of major imprint thefts to things that I really need because it just takes ages to grind out a battle hoping for that 1/14 to 1/21 roll (assuming you always hit with the imprint, which you don't, so more like 1/20 to 1/30).

Awesome! I am 99% positive Meryel used Halt on me before.

I don't know if you can kite there, but it's true I wiped them out with a few levels under my belt already, lvl 12-ish I think.

Well the thing is it's incredibly hard or straightup impossible to tank your rep to -3 if you started raising your rep with a given faction. So I did it as early as possible, basically before doing anything that could positively influence the Huana. After, I got the shield, I did a couple quests for them and was back at +2/3 disposition with the Huana in no time. Yeah the ship to ship battle is on the harder side. I certainly wouldn't do it on an Iron run. I think I save-scummed until I got a number of "ship afflictions" on them, at which point they're just useless.

This is true for most damage spells but there are lots of good defensive and buff debuff spells, like Eldritch Aim remains great the whole game except for its relatively short duration, Chill Fog is usable as AOE blind debuff + proc for Combusting Wounds (also still good late), Infuse, Merciless Gaze, Mirrored Image, Arcane Veil, even Concelhaut's Parasitic Quarterstaff I use the whole game vs some enemies. Combusting Wounds + 3x Minoletta's Minor MIssiles shreds certain otherwise hard to hit enemies like The Messenger. Was how I killed him last time anyway. Concelhaut's Draining Missiles is one of the few offensive spells that remains good in general. Would be nice to see stronger PL scaling though. I often find it more effective to punch enemies to death even as a mage...

I like that one as well, although to this day I couldn't really say why. It was entertaining in some fashion I guess. The other not-In-Bruges roles I liked Colin in somewhat was Minority Report and The Way Back (2010), which I watched because of Ed Harris. In neither did I think Colin's acting was all that great, but I liked the characters for whatever reasons. Also, one of my favorite/most fun Gabriel's was Kevin Durand in that action-horror movie Legion (2010) - yes it was all action-ridiculous, what with the black armor and the slice and dice wings, but it made me giggle-cheer so I give it bonus points. Paul Bettany made a fun fallen Michael, too.

While it's true early game DoTs can do ridiculous amounts of damage, they have severe penetration problems. There's really no way to use a spell with ~10 penetration at level 20, unless you have an incredible amount of setup (food/Tenacious for +2 pen, and -AR debuffs on the enemy) because on PotD you are going to see lots of enemies with 15+ AR.

Evolution of the Russian Tactics. Most of the tweets are bout the Blitzkrieg, which was succesful in the south, but cost them a lot in the north.

Turns out, getting a franchise QB is really really hard. Y'all were lucky enough to have 2 in a row. Our best run of QBs was Staubach, definitely a franchise QB, then Danny White, not a franchise QB but pretty good, then Aikman, a franchise QB. Since then... Quincy Carter (yikes!), the rotting corpse of Drew Bledsoe, Tony Romo, and now Dak. The problem is we're always middle of the pack or do well in the regular season, so we never get to pick at the very top of the draft. Even then, there's no guarantee that a QB picked at the top of the draft will pan out. I mean, when's the last time we had a QB that was UNIVERSALLY considered a sure thing franchise QB in the draft and then he actually lived up to expectations? Andrew Luck, I guess. Kinda have to hope to hit the jackpot with a Mahomes type, but even he was picked #10, we almost never pick that high.

I think I'm getting several Obs shirts now. I like the traditional ones but the Obs pride one is cool to me too. BRB need to check shirt budget.

had a solar contractor come out and do estimate + a projection on our anticipated twenty-year savings. the honesty were refreshing and unexpected. if we go with every bell and whistle, in twenty-years we will recoup a bit less than 1/2 our costs. our savings ain't improving if we go with a less expensive install. explanation we got for lack o' returns is am already using considerable less power than whatever constitutes similar households and we do have our redwoods which cut down on a bit o' sunshine our roof might otherwise be receiving, but we nevertheless expected at least twenty year break-even. house faces south and is two stories with roof space upper, lower and garage. redwoods shade mostly back and east sides of house, so we get good exposure during afternoons. am moderate disappointed. we may nevertheless go with solar 'cause o' some small but real tree-hugger reflex. regardless, given our recent experience with contractors, we were surprised by the absence o' an effort to sell us more than we need. this year we also have plans to rip out our lawn and replace with a more water conscious alternative... maybe replace the three decades old insulation too. the thing is we were serious considering downsizing, so every dollar invested is representing a functional loss o' some % 'cause you don't recoup costs o' home improvement unless is relative cheap and having immediate aesthetic appeal; planting flowers or a fresh coat o' paint is a better investment than a kitchen remodel if you are selling. HA! Good Fun!

Tactical Barrage does synergize with Cipher pretty well imo - esp. since Ciphers have no own reliable way of getting an INT inspiration. Tactician/Beguiler makes for a nice synergistic combo bc. of Phantom Foes imo. Making it fairly easy to become Brilliant and refresh your Discipline. That can then used for Clear Out which is an awesome focus generator if applied to a bunch of crowed enemies (and higher INT = bigger AoE). Even if the Tactician gets confused (from getting flanked) you can use that to your advantage with the Cipher side - because it allows you to cast certain Cipher powers (see Amplified Thrust and -Wave or Ectopsychic Echo for example) on enemies instead of allies only. In case of Amplified Thrust the enemy target will get hit twice(!) by the thrust, which makes that spell a nice single target damamge tool and really worthwhile all of a sudden. Unfortunately the defense buffs of Borrowed Instincts and Refreshing Defense don't stack - but maybe one should just look at this and see it as two spared ability points (for not needing to take Vigorous + Refreshing Defense).

In a word... Yes. Knowing how to create concept work in a 3d package (even minimally) will allow you the benefits of the tools it offers, used both directly and indirectly in your designs. Just the simulated lighting alone is valuable. Blender's compositor is very powerful, and I use it quite often for rendering 2d composite images from 2d images on planes. Having the capability to work in 3D should speed up some designs, and make others simply—possible. _____________________ A software that any professional (and certainly a digital) artist should know about is Clip Studio Paint; they give a months long free trial. https://www.clipstudio.net/en/ Clip Studio has the ability to import (and actually use) 3D model data, and comes with 3D model maquettes for composing illustrations. I often import my work from Blender. From Blender into Clip Studio:

One thing I have noticed is that when a post is going to "break" before I post it, I cannot embed an image or video that should embed, nor react to other people's posts - both of which will work if I refresh the page and try again. I think Sarex previously mentioned something about experiencing a similar phenomenon with regards to at least reacting to other people's posts. Next time I contemplate writing up a longer post, I'll try to remember to keep my browser debugging open to see if there's anything useful.

Not sure what spells the xaurips have, but priests of eothas all have restore, and the dawnstar priests are mostly eothas (I think just xoti is gaun). Might be some other priest subclasses that have it too, I recall coming across it a lot but I grabbed it when I slaughtered the dawnstar temple. Which this time around may be a little difficult because Adaryc is a freaking beast, so...probably have to kill the sick one Pitli. I think the goldpact priests with Beina are also eothas and have withdraw + restore. Meryel and Yseyr are Berathian, there are some Woedica in oathbinder's sanctum, ran across quite a few Wael priests. Not sure about the Magran and Rymrgand but I don't think their spells are anything special. Yeah boarding a ship is suicide without withdraw, and I might die as well depending on the encounter...once you have enough spells it is no problem. I boarded tons of ships with the soul devourer. Granted she wasn't worrying about recovery time much and could zerg enemies with soul annihilation. Be a lot grindier this time. The druid spells the moon's light and nature's balm are also pretty handy. The moon's light has a pretty long duration of passive healing. Nature's balm not so much but not completely terrible. The naga shaman have exactly these two spells from levels 1 to 3 (and maybe blizzard?) so it is very easy to grab them on hasongo from that one shaman that is by himself. Eventually I can steal moonwell which is better than the moon's light but not until level 16+... if I can crit a decent amount might wield sanguine great sword and devil of caroc breastplate, they provide a lot of healing on crit. But probably will be invisible mostly summoning things later. Need to find someone with the phantom spells. Arkemyr has them and he isn't terribly hard but there's probably someone easier...Bekarna is easy but hard to get to. Do you know if Meryel (or anyone besides Yseyr) has Halt? I thought she'd have halt because they're both priests of Berath but I've been trying that encounter for about an hour and I am either really unlucky or she doesn't have it. She seems to have three level 1 spells, four level 2 spells, and two level 3 spells, which is a little strange. Touch of Rot, Interdiction, Barbs of Condemnation, Holy Meditation, Repulsing Seal, Spiritual Weapon, Pillar of Faith, Spreading Plague, and Divine Mark. Yseyr has most of these spells but not sure about Pillar of Faith, Divine Mark, and Interdiction. I guess different characters that have more than the standard 2 spells per level could have different spells. Halt isn't a must have or anything but it is pretty useful to get Vela to be stil. --------- Edit: Good call on the xaurips! The xaurip priests have both withdraw and restore and don't do much damage so they're ideal for stealing these spells. There's one with Purakau you can kite away from him, and I think there are some in Cavern of Xaur Tuk Tuk.

Films have gotten extraordinarily indulgent in editing and run time in recent times. I don't really know why. I mean, I kinda do...setting a tone, setting the mood, allowing everything to take its time and breathe instead of feeling so basic and rushed all the time like was often the case in past decades of film...but it does feel excessive at this point. Before watching Banshees, I actually got ten minutes into some other recent historical drama film called The Favourite, and...I saw the run-time was 2 hours and thought to myself, 2 hours is a long time for a movie I'm not really feeling at all sold on - if this were an hour and fifteen minutes or thereabouts, I could probably convince myself to keep watching it, but this is just too freaking long. Welp, let's try the next one...aaand Banshees is 2 hours long as well, great. Difference was, it caught my interest much faster - which was a little funny to me, because the main characters in The Favourite are women, while the main characters in Banshees are men, and that's obviously unusual for me as a total cinematic man-hater. It's not my my fault! Or at least it's not completely my fault: films/shows centered around men just tend to be written completely contrary to when they're centered around women. I'll let you watch the rest of it before any comments on anything you said about it. @Space KP, Baby

edit: I guess he was playing an Angel named Metatron, which I didn't remember at all.

Ok, well, it turns out my new hoodie was not in fact, magical.

Well, as you all probably know, I sometimes can't help myself and go against my own good judgement, especially when I already posted about not wanting to go against my own good judgement, and so, of course, I just watched the first thirty minutes of The Banshees of Inisherin. 31:29, according to the player, minus the length of the SEARCHLIGHT intro sequence. Okay, so why am I stopping and bloody postin' 'bout it? First, and on the very bright side, the film gave me a hearty laugh when Siobhan said to Colm that her brother's always been dull, and I like watching Alastor Moody, so there's at least that. Colin Farrell is another matter, but this role seems to be made for him, as he's really convincing in it. I suppose that is... not exactly an endorsement of his acting skills as much as an insult, although I did like Phone Booth, and thought critics were overly harsh on it. I also really enjoyed Martin McDonagh's 7 Psychopaths, but that too was a film where Colin Farrell just worked by being himself. It was also carried by everyone else and it's incredibly funny meta commentary aspect, also a film that had Crewman #6 in it, and the archangel Gabriel*, and when was he not great in a movie? So, that still doesn't explain why I am posting now instead of watching the rest of the film before doing that. I feel like I've seen the entire movie by now. There's still over an hour left. An hour and twenty minutes, give or take ten minutes of credits. Why? Why is this so long for what little content it has? Is the film trying to make me sympathize with Colm even more than I already am? Please stop with the feckin' repetitions already, or I'll start rowin'. Bloody hell. Jesus. I'm going to call it a day, as we're creeping up on it being 1:30 am. I'll finish watching tomorrow. Well, today, more like, so. *The Prophecy's Gabriel, not Constantine's Tilda Swinton.

And if you want to post in the politics thread, you have to pay double.