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Your troubles with pronouns is not left wing extremism.

There are a few questions here. 1) It is indeed true that it is not possible to talk constructively with some people, conspiracy theorists being an excellent example. Whatever you say to a paranoid person can and will be interpreted in such a way as to reinforce the paranoia. I don't know of any good solution to this. 2) From the fact that it's not possible to talk the other side, it does not follow that "into the sun they go". This kind of thinking is itself problematic and quite naive, too, in my opinion. Interestingly, this kind of either-or approach seems to be very common, but it's quite often just bad thinking. 3) When you think that you are perfectly in the right about a certain group of people, it is good to keep in mind that that group of people almost certainly thinks they are perfectly in the right about you or the world-view you represent. That's a bit of a problem, isn't it? Not much chance of things changing with that kind of thinking. 4) Martin Luther King's approach in the American South provides a good example of what can be done even in the direst of circumstances. And yes, I know how it ended with him. I am no orator nor much of a peace-maker, but there's an inspiring example of how to meet someone you regard as your enemy. Nelson Mandela might be another, simply in the sense that there have actually been people who have not resorted to vitriol and have consequently managed to accomplish some rather good things.

Screenshot Citizen One from the FPS event earlier this year (Siege of Orison) Pretty sunrises and sunsets Hoth Microtech looking pretty. The ship in the above screenshots (the "Constellation Andromeda") was supposed to be the largest player ownable ship at the time of the Kickstarter, things got a bit out of hand. For example, this is my character standing next to the front landing gear of an Origin 890 Jump space-yacht, which is classed as a capital-size ship... Below is the one other capital ship available in game right now, the Reclaimer. I do hope the buildings around it maybe give some perspective as to the size. This one I actually got to fly as on the PTU (test server) they tend to hand out ships to try new game loops, since salvaging is new, and this is a capital-size salvaging ship everyone got one to derp around with. I decided to just fly it to a planetary outpost and land it on the largest landing pad available (which only the landing gear fits on. Barely. It overhangs the pad by almost the size of the pad on both ends...). Then I found out there are actually only a few places in the system this thing can actually officially land and be stored/serviced. Welp. This ship looks small in space, and then you put it down like this. Star Citizen does manage to drive home that sense of scale. Talking about landing, perfect touchdown with the Connie. And dang, there's a queue to get in again... (this is actually a bug as these NPCs were body-blocking me from getting in)

As may have been clear from the screenshot thread. I've been poking at Star Citizen again after my rather, hmm, negative attempt late last year, and have been enjoying it this time around, mostly anyway. Just to get this out of the way: no the game is not anywhere near stable yet. If losing all your stuff because the server crashed, you fell through the floor, or a gurney murdered you, or...anyway, if any of that is a major problem then don't bother. Just to recap, a few years ago I bought the cheapest game package available (45EUR before taxes) because I found the game intriguing from a technological perspective as what they're trying to achieve is pretty impressive, scope-wise. Since then I've been checking in every now and again to see where things are at. This has generally been a yearly-ish thing but early this year there was a major FPS event going on so I figured that, despite my very negative experience a few months prior (when literally nothing worked for me), I'd give the gametech demo another go. It was a cluster****. But it was a very promising one. There actually is a game there now. There's not a whole lot of it, and much of it is broken (figuring out which mission types will actually work most of the time is part of the challenge...) but what is there is looking promising, and despite the issues (broken AI, server crashes, and griefers in what was supposed to be a PvE event) I mostly had a good time with the event. Additionally the next major patch (3.18, currently on Public Test Universe, supposed to go live "any time now") will finally introduce proper persistence support, meaning that if the game crashes you might not have lost everything as instead of getting dumped back to your respawn point, losing everything you had on you (or in your ship), you should be able to log back in where you left off with everything still there (assuming you are lucky and log back in to the server you just crashed out of, making sure that is the case is the next item on the todo, but hey, that seems pretty trivial compared to the persistence implementation) To me this is a major leap towards turning this tech demo into an actual game that maybe non-masochists could get some enjoyment out of, and I'm really curious to see whether the content development pace will pick up now that this core tech is implemented. Would I recommend the game to anyone? Ehhhh, probably not, at least not as a "game" as such. For anyone curious I'd probably recommend seeing how 3.18 shakes out once it goes live before deciding whether it's worth the price of entry. Or to try it at the "free fly event" in May ("Invictus Launch Week"), though my personal experience with events (based on last year...) is that is when the game is at its worst, but maybe this time will be different. Heh. I would recommend anyone masochistic enough to join to use a referral code though, the extra starting cash is kinda nice.

You should watch the Mentalist, as God intended, same time with the Psych.

Yeah, only Aeon and Azata can do it but I don't like how Azata does it. PS as long as you save before going Devil you can keep a chapter 5 Aeon playthrough as well.

I do not consider people openly advocating for Ukrainian genocide as people having different oppinion, nor do I consider people oplenly advocating for holocaust or calling all muslims ISIS, as people having different oppinion. They are the scum, and should be dealt with accordingly. And I can’t imagine any circumstances, under which I would ever be interested in any discussion with such people. Of course shooting them into the Sun is meant as a rhetoric hyperbole. Oh @Lexx, if you consider central EU countries as the West as well , some of us have problems with left-wing extreminsts, and it’s not “them pronouns folks”, they are people like Blaha, who preaches Marxism-Leninism everywhere he walks, while endorsing his fans ideas to gang rape our president and journalists

I Aeon - cosmic bureaucrat NO FUN ALLOWED! Azata - hippie commune and a cookie obsessed dragon Demon - RAGE! and maybe smash Nocticula Devil - Evil lawyer Gold Dragon - hippie without the commune Legend - super mortal who is probably stronger than all the mythics Lich - intern of undeath who is a bitch to bone daddy Swarm - nom nom nom Trickster - dril as a mythic

As I am back to Civ 4.

Wael/Stalker would be good I think, if not necessarily the most thematic combination. An armor bonus, buffs to keep yourself alive and in melee, and a pet to help your accuracy and boost your dps. General synergies I can think of for an Itinerant: - Barring Death's Door and Withdraw can keep your pet alive and prevent you from taking the pet death malus - Halt and Binding Roots can be used to CC many enemies on the battlefield - Takedown combo to boost the damage of your most powerful spells and melee attacks - Priest DOT spells to unlock Predator's Sense on your animal companion - BDD plus salvation of time on your pet and let it tank things - Champions Boon on the pet to boost engagement - Litany For the Body to boost the pets survivability

That's as good reason as any to fire the sunshine state into the sun. But if I'm being honest, England would be my first choice of a place to wipe off the map. Luckily they seem to be doing that to themselves. Not really. Media leaves much to be desired.

I personally don't think that paying 1 more Zeal for 10s Robust or 15s Courageous is that bad. I do actually think Lay on Hands itself is slightly weak, due to the recovery time. In easy fights you don't need to use it, in hard fights the enemy deals damage faster than you can heal it, so it is better to either use some other ability to kill or disable the enemy faster, or help the injured ally run away (with Swift inspiration, BDD, Withdraw, etc.) and regenerate with more cost-efficient AoE heals. Spending 5 seconds using Lay on Hands is just very poor action economy.

As you say, the average value seems balanced. As it is : "x% chances of getting 1 zeal where x is the percentage of health lost every 12s". For 3s ticks "x% divided by 4 chances of getting 1 zeal where x is the percentage of health lost every 3s". The second one simply seemed more confusing. Summon killing requires some ressource dedication. Optimally 1 Chanter summoning skellies while doing only that, and some character having a way to kill them without too much dedication. 1 zeal per downed summon does not seem too much for doing all that. Compare this with a Cipher spamming Brilliant on a Paladin. And the Zeal for low health requires a bit of management to give good result. I think the ability will be very strong (less so than vanilla), but would only give great results only if playing around the 2 sides. If you can manage the 2 sides, you deserve to be rewarded (once more, it would certainly be less than in vanilla). Making the 2 sides mutually exclusive would be an option, but it would overcomplexifies the ability IMHO. Somehow Paladin is the martial class "expected" to have the more ressources (+1 Zeal, Zeal on Kill mid game, Divine Retribution). Divine Retribution would be still a "must pick", but the summon strategy would be less necessary to get at least some decent results. If really needed, it is still possible to reduce the percentage chance of Zeal (including for downed summon).

Got a request to update my shipping address for the System Shock remake by Nightdive Studios, so I guess that'll be coming out soonish.

https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/zahranicni/valka-na-ukrajine-poprava-zajatce-tymofij-sadura-bachmut.A230307_131251_zahranicni_tbr

Most of them are ageing German tourists anyway, aren't they (minus the odd Florida Man)? A slow news day when the only occurrence of the word Ukraine on the BBC front page is in an article on rehabilitation of wounded soldiers and Al Jazeeras main story is the growing love affair between Russia and China.

It's not even about the generic people out on the street. Our dear leaders do not care what you think or say, they will do whatever makes the money in their pockets grow. This is the core issue here, imo. They are the ones who keep firing up those conflicts to keep on grifting. The way I see it, shoot them into the sun, and the issue should resolve itself over time. And if we can not shoot them into the sun, who else can we? Elon Musk?!

Same as me, very fond memories of Arx. I bought it a few years back on Steam and I will replay it. I see there is also 1-2 good mod overhauls that I will use https://arx-libertatis.org/ https://www.nexusmods.com/arxfatalis/mods/1

Hibiki. I've had this bottle for forever but I never enjoyed it until now.

The one I was thinking about (from around 1850)... The Tricolore dates back to 1794 or thereabouts. So yeah, I suspect someone got a bit too sensitive and started looking for patterns where none are (or none are put intentionally in place). Edit: Doesn't mean that there couldn't be more behind the story than just a French company using French colours. Sometimes there is more behind a story than obvious click bait. I just remembered the yellow Russian flags from history books featuring paintings of battles from the Napoleonic wars. Iirc it kept the yellow colours with various combinations of white and black added to it up until 1917 after which it was mostly red. Disclaimer: Sometimes battle standards are different from national flags (e.g. the Confederate States of America)

Ah yes. You can tell people who are deeply committed to western liberal values, democracy, freedom of speech etc and are implacably opposed to extremist ideologies like nazism immediately by... their desire to fire people they disagree with into the sun. Ho hum. Some videos coming out purportedly* showing the last road into Bakhmut now... and road is an extremely generous description. Knee deep mud and a lot of abandoned vehicles due to bogging and damage. And why not; time to check back on a popular theory ~a month ago- "Prigozhin and pals have been banned from mention in Russian media". Unsurprisingly, yeah, nah. *one at least has a geolocation, but I wouldn't count it as being overly reliable.

Georgina Beyer, the world's first openly transsexual MP. Prior to that was mayor of a pretty conservative rural town. Instrumental while in parliament to establishing civil unions and getting our prostitution laws out of the stone age- a law that was expected to fail by a decent margin. Gave a fantastic speech that changed a lot of people's minds and was good enough to get an abstention out of the only muslim MP (it passed by one vote, via that abstention).

Since the start of the war, Bulgaria has sold through 3rd countries to Ukraine weapons and ammunition worth a billion USD. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/03/6/7392185/

Another freebie on GOG. Figment.

Travis Kelce hosted SNL, and he is surprisingly good. His monologue is probably the best one outside of the stand comedians that host. I was pretty surprised that a football player was so good, but I guess I shouldn't, given the amount of players that became decent actors.

No I don't because nazis are not right wingers. Thats the issue. You are calling hot cold and cold hot. Nazis should be fired into the sun, free market people are innocent in this and you are grouping them with worst scum on earth. Thats why meaning of words is important. Unless you mean free market people should be fired into sun, in that case I don't know what to tell you as you are in same camp as Nazis and Communists. This is classic tactic of guilt by association.

Played a bit of Wo Long. Port must be the worst one I experienced in a long time. Nothing my 3070 couldn’t power through so far, but There are stutters and framerate isn’t smooth. I hear mouse and keyboard are atrocious but I play with controller, so can’t comment. I am lukewarm regarding the game so far. Didn’t play Niohs, so can’t compare. It feels sloppier and messier than FromSoftware games.

BPM did improve barbarians and they make fantastic fighters in multiclass builds, like brutes, ravagers, and savages are all really, really good, but this is mostly because of some low to mid level passives (one stands alone, blooded, bloody slaughter, interrupting blows, threatening presence, bloodlust) and just two active abilities (blood storm and stalwart defiance). These abilities allow you to do tons of damage, interrupt on crits, and with potions of enlightenment and high INT and perception / hit to crit you can keep up blood storm and stalwart defiance throughout even the longest fights. The rest of the active abilities, while some are fun (heart of fury, yay!), are pretty superfluous and don't really add anything to the class's utility (besides maybe leap if you can't get a movement power from another class). The tier 8 and tier 9s are especially "meh" and going single class doesn't really add anything to the awesome tier 1 to 7 abilities besides power level, which isn't as important for the barbarian as say a monk. And 33% resource regen on kill is not nearly enough reason to go SC, particularly when you can just take corpse eater and get +3 rage per corpse (though I generally prefer generic barbarian). ---- Got a bit of a rant here. Was playtesting a savage (generic barbarian / generic ranger). Overall it is a ridiculously good build, can stack accuracy + defenses with ranger's beast claw (plus marked prey etc.) and stack damage, action speed, plus good healing with barbarian. Plus 50% interrupts on crit. Build had no problem with any megabosses (minus Hauni O Whe). Doesn't even need armor. Dorudugan was second hardest, but he goes down eventually if you can damage him fast enough while healing yourself. Anyway, I go on to fight HOW, naked because armor breaks stupid fast in that fight. I have like a 60+ roll adjustment against HOW's deflection (accuracy stacks, flanked, cap of the laughingstock) plus power of money, pes, uncanny luck etc. so I am a crit machine, and with savage hunter talent (nice improvement btw) can do decent damage even without full pen. But the pet is actually kind of a problem here because it means more symbiote procs. Killed HOW form but a massive ooze formed from symbiotes in the meantime. I kill the massive ooze and about 50 smaller ones that keep popping up. Then the two gigantic oozes, as soon as one gets to bloodied it starts merging of course, and I can crit these guys like 80% but I only interrupt half the time, either I missed the interrupt on both or one was out of range of the carnage because the bloody things insantly merged back into HOW. Hadn't really lost any resources though, blood storm only has to be cast once in this fight, so could have kept going if I had to but I rage quit. Might try it again later with a ghost heart / barbarian, or just stick the boar in the corner until there's just smaller oozes left. 50% interrupt on crit may not be good enough, even with carnage and maxed INT, which is kind of sad (would be nice if you could see the carnage effect area like in POE1). Howlers sound good theoretically (energized + carnage) but can't reliably crit things. Maybe a wildrhymer could do it with the constant energized...but wildrhymer will have more trouble with Dorudugan. Well, maybe not, that fight might be possible with legendary war bow + overdraw + energized, think that puts you at 18 pen, then use summons to protect myself. The main question is whether that can damage him fast enough. Possibly, with Sure-handed Ila. Would be easy without abydon challenge, just use essence interrupter. Also, I recently discovered generic legendary weapons aren't subject to abydon challenge for some reason. Armor breaks down unique or not, but the generic weapons seem fine. Fists are still often the best choice but when you need ranged the generic legendary war bows are nice. This rant does have a bit of a point. First, really like the barbarian improvements in BPM, though it could probably use a bit more. Second, Blood Storm sometimes gives way too much time for crits. Normally it gives about 3 seconds on a crit but occasionally far more. I haven't found out exactly what triggers it but I had like 20,000 seconds of Blood Storm after about 45m and just the one cast. I saw it jump by over a thousand at certain points. I think it is an interaction between interrupting blows and blood storm. Not really a problem from my POV not to have to cast Blood Storm as much but thought I'd mention it.

I got the phoenix (there's only 1 in the game): I wasn't expecting a 4th vivarium, but I'll take it. Now I just need a unicorn and a graphorn to complete the collection.

OK, now I'm turning my attention on Minor Intervention and Light of Eoathas. I've always thought about these ones as situational but useful abilities. However, their unique trait, reducing Hostile effects duration, feels a bit weak. -5s for a Tier 6 and -10s for a Tier 9 feel too low for their levels. I'm thinking about doubling them to -10s for Minor Intervention (basically dispels nasty harcd Crowd Control) and -20s for Light of Eoathas (purge a bit everything including most of Disintigrate). This would feel right. I think the healing value can stay as instant heals are always good even if the value isn't that high. Other topic is Single Class Paladin. Previously, I heavily nerfed Divine Retribution (to +1 Zeal per downed ally instead of 2) because I felt that SC Paladin raw power relied too heavily on spamming summons to have them killed. I lowered a couple of Zeal costs (sacred immolation behind paid on health mostly), but now I feel that they lack a bit of Ooomph. I propose to add a second effect (also Zeal regen) to Divine Retribution so it helps a bit Pals when they are on their own. Currently thinking about a 12s tick that gives x% chance of +1 Zeal, where x is the % of health loss : - an almost dead Paladin would gain almost 1 Zeal every 12s - a 50% health Paladin would gain 1 Zeal every 24s on average. These values seem reasonable and emphasize SC Paladin playing with their own health (with all the self damages and self resurrecting stuff). I'm also thinking about Light of Pure Zeal. The ability feels balanced on its own, but I'm meditating on its role on SC Paladin builds. I think SC Paladins really lack ability to deal non fire damages. I think the ability could use a tweak to become Shock / Cold damages instead of Shock / Burn (it isn't even keyworded, and the damages type feel a bit "magical" at the moment). I'm also wondering about a Tier 9 ability (supposed to be the pinacle of a build) being focused on a couple of enemy types. So what about making the damages universal ? Maybe less damages vs non-spirit non vessel, with current damages vs them, or maybe just get rid of this part for the sake of simplification (also easier to balance if all targets take the same damages ; I feel it is borderline too powerful vs Vessels and Spirits at the moment, especially considering the instant cast and no friendly fire parts). Or there could be some out of the box idea such as LoPZ affecting also Sworn targets (but on a technical side, I think it would affect all Sworn targets, including Sworn by other paladin) in addition to Spirits and Vessels. I like LoPZ being so costly and devastating so I would like at least to keep this aspect.

Download is up on Nexus!

Oh. I thought Sharpened Blade just removed the Corroded Blade and gave the sword normal penetration. If it does give +1 pen compared to other swords (i.e. sharpened blade gives +2pen to how you find it) then I agree that's a pretty good weapon. Also I like Bronlar's Phalanx. I knew you'd know, should have tagged you lol Now I want to go back to my phantoms build. Very interesting to stack engagement items and proc disengagement attacks with terrify.

Arx Fatalis is a game I have very fond memories of. I'm afraid to try to play it again all these years later because I fear it may not hold up. I'd rather leave those rose tinted glasses on. Edit: I got the last broom upgrade in Hogwarts Legacy, I now have maximum broom. Honestly, it's a bit underwhelming. The first broom upgrade seemed to be the biggest, each one after that made barely any difference in max speed. I'll take it, though.

HBOMax has all the seasons of The Mentalist. I recall liking that show a fair bit when it was airing, altho like many series I probably only watched 1 or 2 seasons. It's your fairly typical "genius observer type with a past" helps a cop team solve crimes show, but the lead Simon Baker is just so great in it that it elevates it a bit. Rewatching it, it mostly holds up. Mostly it's fun seeing the early episodes again after all this time, maybe I'll try to finish thru season 5, when I think the main chr. arc ends (the show lasted a couple more years after that but probably went very downhill). Quite a few well known tv actors from the time period sprinkled throughout as well. I had forgotten how much I liked the deadpan demeanor of the supporting chr. played by Tim Kang, too. He had the perfect face/voice for such. I looked him up and I guess he has a recurring role in that Magnum PI reboot. Almost makes me want to check that out now, or at least an episode or two.

Star Trek Discovery is to end with season 5. I'm sure its fans will be devastated, both of them.

There's a bunch of other stuff too, like Riker trying the same thing twice to the same effect (keep going straight into that portal from the portal gun, stolen directly from Portal™), Picard dipping back into his flowery nonsense when talking to Riker, the ill-fated role reversal between him and Riker, and finally... I've pretty much given up on writing all the stupidity up. It's hard enough to watch this to be done with it, really.

I've started a new game of Kingdom Come. I played it when it came out originally and enjoyed it, but now I have the DLC. I just finished Theresa's story, and boy is she a more interesting character than Henry. It's actually a bit hard to go back to playing Henry the Dolt after Theresa and her very well done prologue. By the end of her short story, she was a master locksmith, she saved a bunch of people, she had first aid skills, and took down a bunch of Cumans with her sharpshooting skills. Oh and she had a wonderful dog. I mean, Henry is fine, but he doesn't really match up. edit: doh, meant to put this in a different thread. I have no screenshots for you people.

I may suddenly be at least a little re-interested. ...you can't actually have more than one. To get the first screenie I dismissed one, and ran alongside him while he was walking away to teleport. Using this mod alone, not all will cast spells. Sadly the headmaster was one of those, what a stuffy dunderhead. Prof. Sharp however, cast spells and cursed. That's the only two I've tried so far. They both said a few lines as we wandered, probably lines they'd say if you encountered them in Hogwart's, nothing special. I'd guess some would be total silence tho. ...do not have one out during their actual quests, dismiss them first. This mod doesn't duplicate the NPC's, it teleports them to you.

This is the best Merlin Trial I've done so far: The receptacle is at the top of that hill in the middle of the picture, the boulder in the ravine below, but that grade is way too steep to go up directly. So I took the long way around. Then it was a matter of finding the right spot to drop the boulder from. This trial would have been hell with Depulso because you have to go a looooong way around, so I used Wingardium Levioso.