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Yes the Russians are so delusional they actually believe it will be some sort of huge "win" for them. What a bunch of idiots and losers. It won't even be a symbolic win for them. It will be the ultimate pyrrhic win and will go into military history as the classic example of such.

You all know nothing, guys. russia already defeated Ukraine, now its fighting dastardly NATO and other evil West. And it will win, of course.

I think this is extremely interesting, one of the most interesting pronouncements during the whole war. I am quite sure it was not Putin's intention to stress the fact, but clearly he is saying that Russia is weak, very weak indeed. After all, what kind of country can possibly have its existence threatened by a war it has itself started against a much smaller neighbour? https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-russia-is-fight-existence-state-2023-03-14/

My mom and stepdad are on a bush holiday in an ancient forest in SA, this is baobab tree that is anything from 2500-3000 years old!!! Imagine living that long and everything you would have seen

am not an expert on campaign finance law particularly ny law. that said, am maybe knee-jerking on this, but am reminded o' when republicans were trying to burn hillary clinton for her email stoopidity. is unreasonable to expect a prosecutor to push new legal frontiers when seeking indictments, particularly when accusations o' political bias is inevitable. you could make an argument for prosecuting hillary for her email negligence, but nobody had ever successful been prosecuted w/o actual intent to share secrets with foreign powers. nobody. evar. parse statutes as would a law school student is swell and all, but to explain how hillary were being treated different than defendants in every other previous case were gonna be an almost insurmountable hurdle, not to mention manifest unfair. hate to say it, and gives us no pleasure in doing so, but if trump haters is hoping for a felony indictment based on a novel application o' law, am predicting disappointment. a felony indictment is unlikely, and even if ny goes ahead with such an effort, am suggesting doing so would be unfair in same way were the calls to criminalize hillary. the mar-a-lago documents case as well as the georgia election interference investigations look much more likely to produce felony indictments, so don't feel as if trump is getting away with something. aside: misdemeanor v. felony is poor understood. historical speaking, a felony by definition were a crime punishable by death. misdemeanor, from a legal pov, is crimes less serious than a felony. will surprise few to hear that not all 2023 US felonies is punishable by death, yes? today the ordinary dividing line for a misdemeanor v. a felony in most states is incarcerations o' more than a year. 'course most o' us likely see a year in prison as other than a minor penalty, yes? am admitted not sure what is the penalty for the misdemeanor charges trump is likely to face in ny, but am suspecting is well short o' a year. even so, am knowing people is often surprised when they discover a misdemeanor charge may result in as much as one year o' prison. HA! Good Fun!

I can tell you one thing, if the whole Bakhmut Russian meatgrinder strategy is real it will be another absolutely brilliant example of Ukrainian subterfuge to manipulate the Russians into a certain approach. Remember when they fooled the Ruskies during the Kharkiv offensive?

The 'ratio' obsession at Bakhmut looks like a new 'body count' from Vietnam. You can arrive at any number you want to. One OSINT type, visiting the place with Kofman, calculated it at close to 1:1 for example.

I'm not normally a fan of PvP and generally avoid it in games... but I do have a blast playing the large scale "PvP" in Guild Wars 2. Just something fascinating by scores of people fighting, sometimes hundreds around a truly contested objective like "Stone Mist Castle" It's a game mode called WvW (World vs. World) and pits servers against each other on a set of maps where 3 teams fight it out in a all vs. all (i.e. team vs. team) kind of way. Featuring sieges with catapults, mortars, ballistae etc. trying to break down walls (or repair them), fighting over supply lines, outposts, castles and sometimes citadels. Much bloodshed and much violence. Unlike the PvP arena where you have a limited selection of gear and skills (to ensure fair fights on a small scale), on the large scale fights, anything goes for your build and your gear. Structured groups are well organized with the role assignment for buff, heals, area denials etc.

Not politics per se, yet... the results of the inflation fueled interest rate raises. An interesting take on why major banks have started failing (again) for lay people like me

Just for the sake, to have more info, what is going on around Bakhmut and Avdiivka, an oppinion of Russian terrorist Girkin.

our post 2008 solution to avoiding another banking crisis is we keep all our money with tony. downside is he is always asking us to do one more job, for old time's sake. HA! Good Fun!

My guess is the wing, else the debris would be sucked into the air intakes and FOD the engine. Interesting that dumping fuel on it didnt work.

Soca, Trinidad's cruelest invention

I've been around, honestly!! I'll look in but just haven't much to say I guess. Far cry from my big blabber mouth days of long long ago!!!

Not gonna go into the argument over numbers, which is everyones wild guess, but I have to correct you about the topography. Bakhmut in itself has around itself bigger elevation only toward NW, in between Khromove, and Yahidne. There is not much of elevation to the south (elevation between Ivanivske and Opytne is pretty much on par with the elevation of the city center west of Bakhmutivka river) nor east. Although, if Khromove will fall, then you will be pretty much correct, and I think that can be the final nail in the Bakhmut coffin. Edit: Oh and Vuhledar has been quiet up until yesterday, when Russia started another attack towards it, through eastern dachas, so far with the same effort as last time

The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure English translation released today. Now all the Trails games up through Trails of Cold Steel 4 are available in English. Azure is the second and final game in the Crossbell arc, and imo the second best Trails game up through CS4.

No, I suck at this stuff and lack the bigger picture. I just know about a few scenario cases that for sure will ruin your day. Here is the thing.. we fixed our situation with making banks pay out all money again. However, this caused huge inflation over a short time, and money pretty much became worthless again... which was the thing we wanted to get rid of in the first place. We pretty much just made everything worse.

You want berath's challenge on. I'm not sure why invisibility satisfies the flanking condition but it does. Maybe because the enemies can't see you they're considered "blind" to you and flanked is a subcondition of blind. If berath is off then i guess the battle eventually ends while you're invisible and you lose your buffs. The invisibility / Brilliant interaction is well known but kind of esoteric as to why it works. It should be noted Brilliant tactician won't be procced if enemies are attacking each other so you may have to skip a few rounds if you confused them with ABD Also you have to be solo. Theoretically it could work in a party if everyone were invisible. Watch the tactician/skaen during megaboss battles and you'll see him proc brilliant with shadowing beyond because that's the only way to get back resources. IMO the only reason to go pure blood mage on potd upscale solo is Major Grimoire Imprint which can be (ab)used to permanently steal spells. Though I've tried this and the game gets pretty dull when you have free casts of shadowing beyond, barring death's door, salvation of time etc. Also very tedious stealing spells because there are 7 spell tiers it affects and most enemy casters have 2 or 3 spells per level so it can take a LONG time to get a particular spell. Minor Grimoire Imprint can also steal spells in a much less game breaking way. And it works better since it only targets tiers 1 to 3 so odds of getting a spell you're seeking are over twice as high. Escape, Nature's Balm, The Moon's Light, druid chill fog are all nice spells to steal. But im getting off topic. So yes you get bonus PL with SC which could be worth if it if you're just nuking things...and since blood sacrifice is a free action you can restore unlimited spells per turn if you are protected by a potion of final stand at least. Without the potion your survivability will be pretty bad unless you abuse temporal cocoon. To do that you need highish resolve, cast temporal cocoon on yourself, then when the paralysis ends you extend the untargetable part with wall of draining which makes you basically invincible. In turn based I think melee attacks are even better since they're just standard actions, so you can do a mule kick with citzal's spirit Lance then switch grimoires if you need to throw up a wall of draining or use ABD next turn. It's annoying that "cast" length actions like most damage spells you have to end turn before they cast, which makes switching grimoires harder due to the cooldown. Of course with SC blood mage you could memorize most of what you want to cast and just not switch grimoires. You can definitely make either work. But... If it were me I'd go multiclass mostly because 7 levels of another class is worth more than level 8 and 9 spells. This is particularly true with wizards since you don't actually need to memorize anything. Only spell I'd be tempted to memorize is wall of draining and maybe pull of eora. Then carry llengrath, arkemyr (mostly these two), plus whatever damage grimoires you want. Ninagauth and Ironclasped are good choices and have just about everything you'd want (besides wall of draining and pull of eora). WOD is in jernaugh's careful calamities which is also a nice grimoire for jernaugh's equalizing burst. Can't overstate how good wall of draining is. How often you need to cast it depends on how many enemies you hit and how many buffs they have, you can track on your character sheet how many rounds you have left for given effects, you'll get a feel for how often to cast the wall to keep up the buffs. It extends weapon and item procs and potion effects as well as spell effects, so there's a ton you can do with it.

I hate to bring this to you... but there is a difference between nuclear powered submarines and nuclear armed submarines. Shivering at the thought of the next Scott Morrison having access to nuclear arms The only things special about nuclear powered submarines are their range and their price tag (about 0.1 of Australia's GDP the next 30 years)

How I imagine an Australian submarine fleet...

In my view, the most interesting thing about Bakhmut seems to be twofold: 1) the fact of how difficult it is to come to any definite conclusion about what is going on, and 2) the fact of how long it has been this way. It is also possible that I haven't seen the best available info, so "my view" may well be skewed.

aside, am recognizing is unfair and imprecise to say bank deregulation caused 2008. greater oversight and bank regulation woulda' lessened the impact o' 2008 and coulda even prevented it, but is inaccurate to say bank dereg caused the housing bubble burst. were a whole lotta causes and a mess o' willful stoopid necessary to make 2008 happen the way it did. what is mind blowing to us is the collective amnesia regarding 2008 mongst banks and legislators. maybe people at the top need to go to prison for them to stop playing lethal games with the economy? dunno, but greater regulation o' banks should prevent this kinda "thievery." edit: mark grace, a player for the chicago cubs baseball team, once said, "if you're not cheating, you're not trying. and it's only cheating if you get caught." is a funny bit o' pith when is 'bout baseball, but am thinking at some point it should be beyond question that a large enough percentage o' america's ceo types is disciples o' mark grace. metaphorical locks on footlockers won't prevent all thievery by your ordinary bank ceo, but business is an extreme competitive sport and the ceo will do whatever they can get away with to "win." many is gonna push limits o' legal... and then go a bit beyond. yeah, too much regulation strangles business, but how many catastrophes do you need suffer before you realize railroads, banks and oil companies is gonna be reckless with the health, safety and welfare o' employees and customers if doing so means a positive quarterly report? we need safeguards and punishments to deter. we don't have safeguards or punishments? gosh, what could possible go wrong? HA! Good Fun!

am gonna suggest people focus too much on the wrong content. flurry polearms for sohei is indeed nice, but it only happens at level eleven. the most difficult part o' the game is early, when you don't have many powers or abilities. so armed with metaknowledge, build experience, the right gear and an ideal supporting party, by the time you hit level twelveish, chances are you are no longer struggling. ... 'course even w/o flurry, sohei is gonna be the current win choice for monks. from start o' game, level one, sohei gets you get a horse, martial weapon proficiency and access to spirited charge. 'cause 'o changes regarding spears and charging, at level one you are gonna do 3x damage on a charge... if you choose spirited charge. you are gonna choose spirited charge level one. play as a human and you should have cleaving finish by level three. a sohei with spirited charge and armed with a longspear finnean is laughing at early game content. crpg axiom: most powerful ≠ most fun. rule o' kool should always win... unless you are playing unfair difficulty wotr. sohei might be most strongk but is it most fun? dunno. @ShadySands for the through the ashes content we had a half orc wildland shaman with a leopard. also had a sacred huntsmaster with a leopard. were two leopards and a horse in our party so we kept our naming convention straightforward: leopard 1; leopard 2; horse. not our most creative moment. leopard were our first animal companion with our angel sacred huntsmaster. gritty kitty. regardless, we wanna play a half orc wildland shaman as a main at some point in the future, 'cause is a stacked archetype. would likely choose a dog. maybe name God even if is a bit sacrilegious. wildland shaman is a serious stacked archetype. HA! Good Fun!

Just started a new game and my Half-Orc Oracle (Half-Orcacle) is still enjoying the festival with his wolf, Wolf.

I was obsessed with Midnight Suns over January and February. I remember the game took a bit of a kicking over it's writing when reviews first started coming out but once I got used to the tone that the game follows I think the writing was pretty good, if a bit cringey in places. The cast of characters really grew on me and there were some good one liners and a very wholesome dynamic between the cast, it really felt like a little family. Overall I'd rate Midnight Suns pretty highly, it's got a much shorter lifespan than something like XCOM by being so story-driven but it was a great experience while it lasted.

Night Sky This is a great show. Much more character relationships and development than sci-fi, but having two great actors as leads is enough to make it worth regardless of the amount of sci-fi. A pity it was cancelled, but at least they explained where each character was in the end.

It's not only in b&w and those are phenomenal scenes, but I'm thinking more of how the lack of color makes it feel like.... seeing shadows projected on a wall is the best I can describe it as. There's something eerie about the above that I don't find Apocalypse Now doing quite the same, partly because the faces in Citizen Kane aren't lit and partly because the different perspective. Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now evokes a more personal feeling from me because of the perspective makes you feel in the middle of his conversation with Martin Sheen. Comparatively I feel more removed from the reporters, more voyeuristic and outside of their world. It has been far too long since I've seen The Godfather. I think I watched the first season, maybe two? It's been a while and my memory is bad. The person I watched it with was a bigger fan than I was and enjoyed it. Recently I enjoyed Three Pines, which is a detective series, but the feel is much different than how I remember Luther.

All of the analyses I'm reading, from very reputable military/think-tank sources, continue to claim that Bakhmut is going very badly for the Russians and that in fact the offensive is effectively stalled, that casualties are still 7:1 in favor of Ukraine, that Russia's last remaining professional soldiers are who are dying there, and that even Russia's artillery, which was their one and only advantage, is now severely attrited. And as such, if the Russians enter house-to-house urban warfare with the Ukrainians inside the city, their forces will be completely attrited. And yes, this is deliberate Ukrainian strategy to destroy Russia's ability to carry out any offensive operations ahead of Ukraine's own offensive later this spring.

Blow dryer starts around 1:40

...problem is far too many don't think as individuals anymores...easier fer them ta wait ta be told what ta think by some f***tard Social Media "Influencer" or somesuch...yeah, that shyte's been goin' on e'er since Time Immemorial, but e'ery recent Generation seems ta be gettin' worse at it lately, imo...too many sheep...like a really bad version o' Genesis' Land of Confusion... ...or I's jus' a dinosaur waitin' fer that big rock ta take me out so things can start anew...who knows, maybe I's'll evolve inta a bird too... ...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!...

I canceled all my classes and ran all the way home to beat you!

You know, I gotta admit I'm also on the side of "the kids are all right." Not uni age, but I've been taking an ASL course through the local school board, and aside from me and one other older person, it's all teenagers/high schoolers. They're all really thoughtful and sweet. And make me remember how much I don't miss being that age-- being so self conscious and young, oof! There's probably a degree of self-selection because I don't think too many kids choose to take a 3 hour class on Saturday morning, but they do make me feel a little more optimistic about life.

Yeah I dont recall seeing GM since the last time this topic popped up.

Glad to hear you made it through relatively ok at least! Gina's not active on the boards, but if you PM her she should respond!

...nah, I's'd lose what's left o' me ever-luvin' mind if'n I had ta go back ta school these days; too many privileged unappreciative snowflakes in this Generation...I'd be in Cranky Ol' Cripples jail within' days... ...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!...

So looking forward to Starfield. And this teaser did have a HUGE reveal critically important to me: the game can be played in third-person! Pay attention, Obsidian devs!!!!

The next big DLC for Solasta has been announced, including level increase to 16: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2100431/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister__Palace_of_Ice/

Atelier Sophie 2 Afterparty Crusader's Kings 3 Friends and Foes Pathfinder Wrath: Commander Pack Dead Cells Queen and the Sea

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).

Final Fantasy 16 doesn't have any American voice acting because of angry Americans | GamesRadar+

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1326470/Sons_Of_The_Forest/ I have some exciting news, the Forest 2 has been released and its receiving some excellent feedback like the first one. Forest 1 was the best horror survival game I have ever played, so I will definitely be getting this one Here is a classic gameplay video and the type of thing I would accidently do

But for you to use the word "Pyrrhic", you must imply that Russia will, in some way, win. What do you think the Russian victory will consist of, then? Keeping Crimea, perhaps?

She has an illness now which has made her effectively mute. Cruel hand to be dealt.