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I'm married to the daughter of a catholic Croatian woman and an orthodox ethnic Serb from Bosnia, I'm way ahead of the curve here.

To make things even more funny, he was part of the Kosovo office.

While I have no thoughts or opinions to voice here on any of the topics mentioned on this page, I will say, I very much enjoy popping in here every few weeks to read the information and opinions posted in this thread. Thanks everyone

Serbia in to West? 😱 Uf, good luck with that. 😛

I'm merely quoting your post because it is a good way to start. Since bad faith reading of what I write has become normal recently (even at work, for whatever reason), I feel like I have to state this. O tempora, o mores. Anyway, to quote Captain Malfoy: To restate that again, I made a simple observation about Austrian voters of a party whose current party line is basically being anti-vax and Pro-Russian. It was generalized for sure, but it applies to no other group than the people I was talking about. Oh, and by the way, I think Czech consider themselves to be a part of Central Europe. Me, personally? Anything that was on the other side of the iron fence is Eastern Europe. A party directly financed by Russian money. They picked up some 15% voters with that program, which is most of our anti-vax population. The others still go to the dedicated anti-vax party or vote for the greens, because they're all organic vegan lifestyle weirdos whose little Elias, Noah and Leah aren't getting any bad chemicals injected. Funnily enough, the latter group is on average amongst the most educated people in the nation. These voters were also avid consumers of the German Russia Today branch, who flooded YouTube with videos about the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines. Their talking points were, by far and large, about how they are untested, could be DNA altering and ineffectual (which, curiously enough, have 'some' overlap with the sentiments stated here on the forum, and can all three be considered factually wrong). On a good day they had a veneer of scientific legitimacy by inviting immunologists like Sucharit Bhakdi - someone who should actually know better. Probably does. I'll be gracious and say that he's not just in it for the fame and money but because of his experiences with the dengue vaccinations, which really had adverse effects down the line wtih infections by strains being much worse for vaccinated people (one of his claims was that the COVID-19 vaccines could cause cytokine storms). The same TV station implored Russians to get vaccinated. By an untested, DNA altering and ineffectual (sorry, could not resist) vector vaccine. Indeed, we (Yuro-Peons) should be holding van der Leyen and the EU responsible for wasting enormous amounts of taxpayer money on the overpriced Pfizer vaccine, with equally good, if not better, alternatives being around for cheaper, or even at cost. But hey, Biontech is a German company, there was absoultely nothing untoward happening there. Nothing to see here, let's discuss some more about how the largest clinical vaccination trials in history lead to the distribution of 'untested' vaccines. As always, the real conspiracies are too mundane, and too out in the open. It's not fun when everyone knows about them. Can't be the special snowflake that has everything figured out then. Oh, and one last, final jab: I would never equate anti-vaxxers with Flat Urfers. Believing in a Flat Urf is hilarious, and I sometimes watch their videos to amuse myself (there is one of a guy doing 'high IQ research' on a train, stating directly that the Earth has to be stationary because no one can feel the speed at which it moves through space, and the water in this glas there is completely flat, it's just too funny). Sure, they could act as a potential gateway into other conspiracy theories, but they're mostly harmless - they might burn some books or annoy people with their preaching on the street, but that's about it. People who propagate medical quackery on the other hand are harmless at best ("if it doesn't help, at least it won't hurt to try", right?), and dangerous to deadly at worst. 👎 Oh, final question, if the Earth isn't flat and stationary, why does NASA use a flat and stationary Earth model in almost all of their calculations? Hmm? Can't answer that one, can you? /High IQ research.

There's a secondary mod that gives each form its own cooldown iirc. I do think a shared cooldown is good, otherwise Shifter pretty much has only upsides and no downsides. Shift into each form, use their active abilities, then immediately shift back and cast spells.

https://www.pcgamer.com/shadows-of-doubt-is-deus-ex-for-incorrigible-snoops-and-you-should-drop-what-youre-doing-and-play-the-demo-right-now/ Played the demo a bit, seems interesting if a bit janky

Yeah, right resolve is a very subjective feel, it depends on difficulty/party or solo mode of course but also a lot on play style. I prefer to have it less minimized also to help with afflictions duration, and maybe spare one ability slot to increase will to instead choose some other extra spell (e.g. Ectopsychic Echo is always good but often sacrificed for something else) [EDIT] oh one last not so well known psion trick: you can easily break engagement targeting one of your nearby skeletons with fast cast cheap telekinetic burst, that will hopefully push you away from danger with no disengagemnt attack and landing the spell on a cheap skeletons is much easier than targeting a tough enemy e.g. dorudugan

Started Gamedec (it's been on my wishlist for some time, but I've got it during EGS giveaway). It is an RPG, but dialogue-focused and without a combat system. The graphics are nice, and the fixed camera angle and position are welcome. There are several character customisation options (also several premade PCs, including the MC from another game), though allocating the stats before the Professions (i.e. the thing you need the stats for) are known seemed rather odd. The dialogues have some easily noticeable typos, and the general quality of writing, while adequate, is lower than in Disco Elysium. On the other hand, it does not have RNG skill checks - you either have the information/Profession/previous action or you don't, which is brilliant. The dialogue options provide some space for roleplay, but they also required to earn stats (the stat-giving options are marked only after they have been chosen) to unlock more dialogue options. I think, there is an overarching story, though I am in the middle of the second case, and it does not seem anyhow connected to the previous one. The journal and the Deduction (decisions?) pages could give more context, but decent otherwise. I probably will pause the playthrough for now. Started Blue Fire. It is a platformer, which I had thought to be a metroidvania. The controls are partially rebindable and comfortable. The graphical settings are lacking, but the game is heavily stylised (the MC looks like a balloon with a cape). The location design is fine for a platformer - does not quite make sense in terms of realism, with the Void (challenge rooms) having floating platforms with spikes.

Tell that to my Serbian friend in Melbourne at your own peril. I'm 100% she's waiting for Dan Andrews (the PM) to die, so she can dance on his grave and vandalize his tombstone (for ordering lock downs and social distancing, which made her feel like a caged animal). Mind you, she *is* perpetually angry unless you are in her friend circle (which i consider myself lucky enough to be, so I don't need to watch my back) 😁 Edit: I.e. uncompromising and unforgiving towards those who "wrong" her and undying loyalty and commitment to those she consider friends (which are people you can count on a single hand)

Could not care less. Though we have nothing against Russia. It would be the same thing for the West. We learned long ago that might makes right and that global politics are a hard bitch (Though we tend to remember). We do have a sore spot for the British, but that is more along the line of them acting like a bully but always hiding behind their much bigger friend and it's closer to waiting for someone to bloody their nose and put them in their place. This is all not counting our local friendly neighbors, that is another story entirely.

It's not entirely unrelated, in the sense that at least here in the north of Europe a curious overlap was noticed on the net at the start of the war in Ukraine: suspiciously many antivax posters suddenly turned pro-Putin. This was first noticed by some who followed the antivax rhetoric and then by the posters themselves, after which there was an effort to make it less obvious. This was a fairly clear indication that at least some antivax rhetoric was fuelled by Russia in the spirit of "Let's disturb 'the West' in any way we possibly can", as per its modus operandi.

I don't know about where you live, but here there were a ton of people making theories about vaccines and urging people to protest. As for the goverment forcing someone, I don't think that there was one country that actually forced its people to vaccinate. It did make life harder and more inconvenient for them, but the same could be applied to smokers, if your decision can affect someone negatively then it's you that needs make concessions.

Well, this is from our former foreign minister's wedding party. I am kind of uncertain how people are surprised by these 'revelations', but some parts of the Twatter thread are (not going to speculate about whether that is intentional or not) misleading. Christian Kern, for instance, resigned his position at the board of the Russian Railways when war broke out, and the reduction in intelligence sharing goes back to an earlier point in time and was related to a hostile takeover attempt where the Nazi Freedom Party (illegally) had the police raid the intelligence service headquarter over some North Korean passports in order to install a leadership more inclined to, say, look the other way when it comes to their connections with far right neo-nazi elements. The Schengen veto has absolutely nothing to do with any Russian agenda and everything with our ridiculous chancellor trying to score brownie points with the right-wing fringes before a couple of very important elections (one of which recently happened and saw his party lose a 50% +1 majority that they have held since the end of World War Two, just to drive home in what sort of dire straits the party really is). If tihs was at all related to any Russian agenda, then Orban's vote would have been different. The spying part is, to borrow from a local idiom, an old hat that is barely worth talking about. Everyone in Vienna is a spy, and has been for two centuries now, and as the thread said, it pretty much was codified post World War Two with certain changes to our laws. It's part of the reason how and why we managed to get the Russians off our territory, and it certainly wasn't and still isn't just for the benefit of Russia. It is also missing a few details, but what can one expect from Twatter. Our politicians were also constantly lobbying to soften or even remove the EU Post-Crimean annexation sanctions. Again, this does not come as much of a surprise, as RBI (Raiffeisen Bank International) is heavily invested in Russia, and it is also heavily invested in the ÖVP*, a party that has been a part of our governmen for 40 years now and is in really, really dire need of a timeout from power. Alas, for that to happen, the centrist and left-wing elements of our political landscape would have to work with the far-right fringes, and there's a better chance of hell freezing over. Anyway, it is hard to overstate the amount of power that the RBI wields. If one is proficient enough in German they could read the Raiffeisen Black Book for a glimpse. They have an enormous amount of money invested in Russia, and act accordingly. Fun fact, the Ukraine recently put RBI board members on the sanction list, with the exception of the one board member who is actually Ukrainian (Andrii Stepanenko). Because... yeah, never mind, I think that's obvious and rather revealing. In closing, because I have no idea what caused me to write this post now that I've reached a natural ending point, there's also the issue of the conspiracy theorists and Putin apologists. Those exist, in scary numbers, and there's a massive overlap with the anti-vaxxers. The FPÖ is openly garnering their votes, and they're rapidly approaching 25% or more according to polls. Politically, this is going to be fun going foward, because our current government it too busy with keeping itself from falling apart to actually address the issues the common people are facing. In the odd case they're actually realizing that there's an issue. To quote our president with his 300k yearly pay: Just grit your teeth. That's going to help for sure. *There's an old joke. To explain, first one needs to know that the BAWAG bank was initially created by prominent members of the Socialist Party as a way for workers to have access to banking services without having to go to the bourgeoise and capitalist other banks. It was held, until a financial scandal and dire straits, by the unions and the Austrian consumer's co-operative had shares too. It is fair to say that the Socialist Party (nowadays Social-Democratic Party) once indirectly 'owned' a bank. So, what is the difference between the SPÖ and the Raiffeisen bank? Well, one's a party with a bank, and the other's a bank with a party...

@Shai Hulud try long pain fists

Yeah I completely see your point and playing with Jayd’s mod I have to admit: it’s overpowered - at least in the short fights in the beginning .. but also a lot of fun 🤷‍♂️ I want to try shape shifting with your backstab and assassinate changes, maybe I’m able to chain an arquebus+shapeshift full-attack fast enough..

yeah, that battle without 0 recovery is really hard, I'm not sure it is feasible, no durable melee weapons apart monastic unarmed training (or use an axe with bleeding cuts until you break it, then keep punching). maybe something that could help a little is using Magran's belt, the blight(s) is not a real menace and it can contribute to reduce dorudugan mobility as it often attacks also doru, it is an excellent easy target for a first borrowed instinct, once you have borrowed instinct targeting Dourudugan should be more feasible. Maybe alternate punches with soul shock/ectopsychic echo, and chill fog from the grave calling sabre, hard to paralyze him but helps keeping him flanked

fyi, geosynchronous is a misunderstood term. geosynchronous involves an orbit period o' one day and is necessarily at 42 thousand kilometers from the earth center, or almost 35 thousand km above the earth. geosynchronous is not necessarily gonna remain at a fixed point above the earth unless the satellite is located above the equator which results in geostationary. example picture o' a geosynchronous orbit path. am suspecting the bigger hurdle for a geosynchronous spy satellite meant to provide useful image data is the +22 thousand miles distant from the surface o' the earth the satellite needs be. twenty-two thousand miles is a serious distance with all kinda atmospheric interference 'tween the satellite and the target. again, am talking w/o any real knowledge whatsoever 'bout spy satellites, but am understanding a bit o' the physics and thinking distances for geosynchronous is way beyond the range o' useful images which could be collected. hundreds o' miles? yeah, sure, but 22k miles? HA! Good Fun!

Yes, basically this. There might be other way to do but I'm probably not going to reopen the subject. You have to consider that I also worked a lot to make all shifts balanced which also increases the benefits of the subclass. Adding a cooldown on a modal would feel weird. But I fully get why one would prefer Jayd's version. No harm in modding a mod 😉

From what I'm reading, Hersh used to be a well-respected reporter, but years of Osama bin Laden, 9/11, and JFK-truthing have kinda done his reputation in, and the story seems to hinge on a single anonymous source. Not that I'm saying he's necessarily lying or wrong here (objectively speaking, it sure seems like the U.S. had the most to gain from doing it!), just that...you know, skepticism is pretty warranted.

He's been saying that for quite a while now...

feelz got no place in serious discussion *snort* *fart* All monarchs and nobility have it coming.......uhhhh metaphorically speaking.

Look on the bright side. We have an Austrian and a Serb in the same thread and no weapons drawn over whether Franz Ferdinand had it coming. Maybe there is hope for humanity yet (given enough time)? 😂

I can now log into the forums from my work computer without having to install a private email client to authenticate the browser on that laptop. Thank you 🥰

One potential difficulty is that those who are against Russia might not want to be so obvious or vocal about it, whereas with the West/US the question is much more neutral and safe. But it wouldn't be a good idea to speculate on this basis, other than saying that this phenomenon probably exists.

Funny thing is... she was a bit undecided on that one, because she hated Novaks guts (did I mention she's very angry?)

https://anchor.fm/worldofeora/episodes/EP--37-Orlans-e1mjnpd

as if modern game didn't burn hardware enough without drm

It reducing symptoms/ effects is why the infectivity period is shorter (essentially, less severe symptoms --> less time coughing etc and faster recovery). The vaccines don't have much effectiveness at stopping mild infections, but then mild infections are pretty much just the sniffles. They are very effective at stopping death and hospitalisation though which is important for a properly functioning health system and so you don't get the early pandemic scenes per Italy, New York or Britain of oldies being left to die at home because the system simply couldn't cope. That also saves a lot of money, a lot of money. There is plenty to dislike about the vaccines/ general response to covid, vaccine efficacy isn't one of them though.

am not knowing but am suspecting near all chinese satellites is known quantities and US and allies is aware to the second when they will be passing over ___________ or ___________. the chinese balloons obvious move slower, but is also gonna be more difficult to predict days, weeks and months ahead when and exact where such is gonna be in part 'cause weather baffles even the best soopercomputer models. in any event, am not a spy, and am talking out our kiester on this, but am thinking is unfortunate the balloons 'caused such a public stir 'cause if it were Gromnir in charge, we would much rather use the opportunity presented by balloons to transmit disinformation as is no doubt the case with satellites, electronic communications and human intelligence. find a mole in your organization and does the sooper spies immediate remove or do they consider ways to use the mole against whoever planted the mole? dunno. again, am not a spy, but knowing 'bout an intelligence gathering resource o' the bad guys seems like an opportunity. as long as the chinese thought they were getting one over on the US with balloons, the US could manipulate the intel the balloons were collecting, yes? HA! Good Fun!

Every iteration of this thread has been about putting people into boxes, the good box or the russia box. That it took an observation of who was organizing the pro-Russian thing in Austria to set you off on putting people in boxes is pretty damn funny.

While it will not stop the transmission it will reduce the time window in which it could be transmitted. Either way % there is a lesser probability to transmit if you are vaccinated for a certain time period. I will not go in to how effective the vaccines turned out to be or if any of the decisions made were good, but at the point of mass panic that was happening they needed to take some actions. For a moment I though you posted in the wrong thread and sub-forum.

Look, I know we've had some fun here but let's not go too far. Flat earth should be left in the dustbin of history. Scientific evidence has confirmed the giant ball of ice theory.

Well similarly to how obese people tend to eat more fast food than average, people who believe the vaxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx will give them tiger aids are more likely to be into other conspiracy theories and be Putin fanbois. Now just like you have fat folks who don't eat fast food and skinny folks who eat it every day, you have anti-vaxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxers who don't like Putin and Putin stans who get their microchip firmware updates. It's a correlation that seems to hold true in at least three different countries, no one is saying that not getting a vaccine means you personally cheer for every Ukrainian killed.

Hey yall! @BartimaeusI let the powers that be know of the scenario you posted about, so if it isn't already fixed since he was working on the issues, we'll get that fixed up soon @LadyCrimsonif you run into an issue with the request blocked message, can you message here as soon as it happens so we have a time stamp. We should be able to look into it and get that fixed. Unfortunately we had to update our firewall during the holidays due to outside sources and we are trying to white list a bunch of scenarios that we didn't think of that you guys are running into, so thanks for reporting all of these!

look, I didn't started mixing completely unrelated topics (vax, russia) togather. If you can't see that such statement is ment to invoke relation between these two I don't know what to tell you. Its like noting that 90 percent of bankers control most of the money and most ofthe bankers are jewis. Am I trying to imply something by it or not?

Buddy, noting an overlap isn't equating anything. If 75% of RPG players like vidya game romance, it doesn't mean that playing a RPG is the same thing as smashing some digital bootay after 3 conversations and you'd be dumb to think that. I don't know why you're this triggered and you should probably not get so worked up. They're also disproportionately Naruto fans, and watching Naruto is objectively the worst thing you can do.

Entirely anecdotal, but it sort of matches my observations of people around me in this side of the world too... 😖 You forgot QAnon believer btw

Should also note the ability order probably isn't ideal for what to pick AS you are leveling unless you avoid combat until at least L4 (very easy to do) or preferably higher, the build really comes into its own when you have stronger summons at L10 (ogres + pain block) and L13 is also significant for borrowed instinct which is an amazing buff/debuff, and the wisps are pretty decent with the upgrade which has a spammable dazzling lights (use shift+click several times if you want one to keep casting it). Then the build gets REALLY strong at L20 with the animated weapons and "many lives pass by". If you do want to be able to fight things immediately you'd want some L1 summons. The phantom (but reny daret..) is better in combat but the skeletons make better fodder especially if you get the upgrade. And the summon duration is pretty short even with high INT compared to summons you get later which typically have 25s default duration vs 12s, and you can about double that with maxed INT. Could also take cipher spell tactical merge if you have room but most of the time I think it is better to use your focus on pain block and echoing shield. Pain Link is mostly useful vs enemies with very high AR like Dorudugan, but the ability is kinda bugged and only procs correctly on direct single target attacks, so to get maximum damage out of pain link you'd cast it on summons and then engage/disengage them so they are auto attacked. Recall Agony can add a lot of damage to bosses but otherwise isn't used much. Borrowed Instinct you definitely want up any time you're directly attacking things or trying to land something like disintegrate vs a tough enemy since you get +20 accuracy and +20 all defenses, but you don't need it up if your summons are handling things adequately. Psychovampiric shield is great because it is cheap at 20 focus and you can cast it on your own summons if needed for steadfast which offsets the low resolve some. Also a good primer for making borrowed instinct hit or crit vs grazing since it debuffs will. You can take a more direct role and attack enemies with soul shock, soul ignition, mind blades, and disintegrate, or control spells like mental binding, puppet master etc, but most of the time it is better to spend focus on buffing summons, so I usually skip most of the cipher attack/control spells (have disintegrate here because it can kill hauni o whe and you don't have to fight his split forms). Also I forgot to mention starting chant, I'd go with come come soft winds of death since you can do some damage passively that way and heal a bit from it. And finally you should almost always use brisk recitation because accumulating phrases for invocations is generally more important than whatever the phrases do. This is just my take on the build. I don't have nearly as much experience with it as abot but it should be plenty good to get you through veteran and regular POTD (even solo). If you start doing something crazy like solo upscaled POTD with trials, this build can still handle it but some fights can get very grindy and optimizing tactics, knowing which summons to use for various situations etc becomes more significant. --- One final note, this build works very well with the Balance Polishing Mod if you use that (maybe better even), but is great in vanilla also. Lot of the good builds are much weaker in BPM but troubadour/psion is still very strong.

Steam's 2 hour refund window: A few times, I've used a pretty wacky trick where I renamed the directory and .exe of a game I was playing to that of another game I had installed, then used Steam to boot up the renamed-to game and it thought I was playing it, so no playtime accumulated on the real game. But...that's not necessarily always possible depending on the folder structure of the game you're playing, and maybe Steam has tightened the process up since I last did it a few years ago. I don't think I've ever actually refunded a game on Steam before, though there have been a few close calls (and there is one game that I really regret not doing so...Nioh, that awful garbage).

Means that people who spew acid are usually the same people who cry when acid gets spewed on to them.

Yeah, a lot of decent to good reviews of Hogwarts had me thinking I'd try to d/l and fire up the game for and hour, to at least see how it performs on my now "outdated" (haha) rig (in 4k I mean), as long as there wasn't a flood of PC-early-access reports of terrible performance issues etc. I was guessing/hoping with no RT/settings fiddling I'd still be in the realm of 50-60 fps most of the time. So I logged on a bit ago and apparently no one who bought the early-access pre-order can access. It won't unpack/start/play. Seems to be a general problem all over the world, not sure if it's 100% or 80% or whatever. Anyway ... it has nothing to do with gameplay itself but hahaha, that won't leave a good impression. Not sure what the problem/whose "fault" it is. Edit: looks like at least some people can access/play it fine. It could be mostly people who didn't buy directly from Steam, and/or something to do with preloading or not preloading.....hmm.. EditEdit: seems like unpacking is working for people now. I just started downloading because I was curious if it would start for me but I guess it will now. I'll test performance a bit on a few resolutions I guess, then wait for the Day1 patch.

https://the-secret-of-darkwoods.vercel.app/ Here is an upcoming CYOA game, it reminds me of the Fighting Fantasy PC games The developer is active on Codex and Im very interested in it

Given the overall availability of trained military manpower for Ukraine, losses of that extent would have collapsed their frontlines and have made it impossible for them to defend territory across such a large landmass with such a long border with the enemy.

'Dead Space' remake. I never played the original and that's a good thing, because I just had a great run through the 'Ishimura'. Whilst some of the gameplay elements feel dated (Buying and selling on a derelict ship overrun with monsters? come on now.), the atmosphere is quite good and spooky. Isaac Clarke is a great protagonist and shooting off limbs is a fun mechanic to master. Not quite as good as 'Prey' (2017) by any stretch but sometimes good mindless horror romps through broken spaceships is just what the doctor ordered. There's plenty of weird weapons in the game but honestly even on 'Hard' mode just focusing on dropping upgrade "nodes" into your suit and the starting weapon, the 'Plasma Cutter' is quite doable, and seems pointless to carry around 6 or 8 weapons of various ammo considering how limited ammo drops (ammo gets dropped based on the weapons you are carrying, so if you're carrying 5 weapons, you'll randomly get 5 different types of ammo) and upgrades "nodes" are in the game. I'm simply happy putting all my eggs in one basket in a setup like this. Simplistic mechanics sure, but hey, I had fun lurking in the dark corridors and fending off freaks that come at you from all sides.

If this were true Ukraine would've fallen by now.

I don't know if you've read much Robert Sapolsky, the well-known researcher on stress, but one of his more salient points is how economic inequality really is bad for everyone, in terms of quality of life as measured by stress levels and such. In the US, the struggle of the poor is obvious. But the rich almost have to isolate themselves from both the poor and the average person, which is very bad for both your stress levels and a general sense of trust in society, which affects everyone. The rich tend to live longer, though. As for money and quality of life, it goes something like this: starting from zero, the more money you get, the more your quality of life improves until you reach a point where you have a home with no debt and you can manage your ordinary bills and living expenses without any trouble (and pay for your children's education, if you live in a country where that is necessary). After that, extra money has almost no effect at all on your quality of life. (I think it was Sapolsky who also pointed out how average income is funny in countries like Mexico and Russia because although it obviously and mathematically exists and has to exist, no one actually earns that kind of money in these countries. Most people are much, much poorer, and a select few are ridiculously rich.)