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So... $47 instead $2? /shrug

That's what you get for looking at the funny thread

It would make sense. Not only because of our divided attention but because of what Chillout mentioned, as countries turn away from Russia, China is there. And Russia is becoming more dependent on them as well. I know my favorite new tease of my Russian in-laws is to call them Western China or China's newest province. Who would have guessed that people with dreams of an empire hate the idea of being someone else's subjects?

Counterintuitively my most useful pistolero was a single class Kind Wayfarer. The main reason is that you can achieve inexhaustible Zeal which you can spend at very high speeds for damage and party support and healing. In detail: Reasons: If it's not the main character it requires almost no micromanagement and can function vey well with simple AI settings. As main char you can use nice decision making to pick certain enemies apart and which party member to support mist effectively. With pistols you can stay near the rest of the party all times to make the best use of White Flames (AoE healing) and Shared Flames (AoE burning lash buff). With Ring of Focused Flame you will have +20 ACC for your FoD pistol shots which outbalances rushed reload (pistol modal) should you want to use it. In combination with Scordeo's Trophy (its stacking recovery bonus) and two weapon style+dual wielding you will be reloading incredibly fast - while your accuracy is still okay. Against tough enemies you can turn off the modal to hit more reliably. In a second weapon slot you can carry a single pistol for even more accuracy against really tough nuts. Add Acina's Tricorn for even shorter reloading time and more accuracy. Also add the Ring of the Marksman for even more ACC (and +1 PEN which is useless for Eccea's main attack but nice for the elemental additions and of course for Scordeo's Trophy). Staying in the back line makes most of the self-defensive passives of the Paladin class rather pointless - so you can skip those which frees up a lot of points for the support- and offensive abilities. Even without most of the defensive passives a Paladin is still most likely not the weakest link in the backline, so you don't have to worry too much about getting targeted by shock troops/skirmishers and that sort of ranged- or high mobility enemies that try to disrupt your backline. It is possible to take almost all exhortations (they have instant casting time und no recovery) to cover tier-2 inspirations for all attributes. Normally spreading your actiuve abilites like that would also spread your Zeal thin and I wouldn't recommend it - but your high level goal is to get infinite Zeal. So it's useful to have a big portfolio of active abilites in order to be very versatile. The trick to gain unlimited Zeal is to have a Chanter buddy in the party and to take "Devine Retribution" at PL9. Devine Retribution gives you 2 Zeal once an ally goes down. This includes party summons(!). Which means that when the party chanter sings "Many Lives Pass By" and also summons "Ancient Brittle Bones" there will be a ton of potential Zeal on the field - especially because all of those summons, while being great bait and distraction, die pretty fast if enemies even look at them sharply. Before that you can gain a bi Zeal back if you constantly snipe enemies near death and trigger Virtuous Triumph. Doing that also triggers Inspiring Triumph for your party members so it's a nice strategy anyway. Having so much (endless) Zeal lets you shoot FoD with While Flame and Shared Flames (or Eternal Devotion if you prefer the damage for yourself) at all times at very high speed and good ACC. This means good dps - and more importantly constant AoE healing for your party. It's pretty difficult to go down if your Pal is shooting healing into the air every few secs. Once you get to the "unlimited Zeal" part you can cast exhortations on all party members in no time (remember: instant casts, no recovery) and become a super-supporter. You an also put Brand Enemy on every enemy in no time. "Burn in hell y'all!" If you have a Ranger in the party you will be his best friend - because you can revive his pet instantly and without limits. You can also use a different sublcass of course. Bleak Walker would be more about damage, Steel Garrote can paralyze lots of foes with the Garrote ability, Shieldbearer can use Lay on Hands to barr Death's Door all the time and so on... I found Kind Wayfarer to make the most use of this pistol/FoD combo. I played this as an hired adventurer from start to finish. Originally only hired that guy in Port Maje just to test out the concept, but it went so well I stuck to it until the credits rolled.

I don't care about Steam for anything but being a messenger at this point anyways. Don't much play video games anymore in the first place, but when I do, it's usually retro or weird indie stuff, which is typically on GOG instead. Occasionally, I come across something that's only on Steam, but $5-20 a year for a few things on Steam a year really isn't that bad.

Most interesting part is China getting hold on the Central Asia countries where Russia is now loosing its grasp. I feel like all those 'friends' Putin believe in are slowly turning away and China is his last life line and he know it and Xi know it. And Xi is using it very well, once Russia usefulness fades away they will drop them like a hot mess they are

I read several articles on Russia's brain-drain earlier in the war, but I don't see those stories anymore. But the emigration data do suggest the most well-educated young people are the ones who've fled the country. As for Russia's academic community, they did raise their voices against the war early on but then several of them were made examples of by Putin and that silenced them. Don't know about other Western countries, but academic/scientific cooperation between Russia and the US is practically zero right now. But this is mainly due to voluntary shunning of the Russian side by US academia which is overwhelmingly supportive of Ukraine. There is no organized attempt to shun Russians, and certainly the US govt has not enacted any such measures. Russian students in US universities were very commonplace when I was in engineering grad school, but they're not at all prevalent in arts/humanities/social sciences fields where I am now. So I can't tell if there's been a dropoff, though I would wager they don't get to come here now, at least through official channels.

For some reason that edit hit me right in the funny bone and immediately reminded me of this scene:

Yeah, my feelings about Midsommar are, hmm. Some sort of combination of its plot feeling soulless and paint by numbers while being very obviously aimed at being quasi arthouse. Kind of like going to an expensive fusion restaurant and being served an expensive and obviously well crafted dish with a lot of thought put into it that doesn't really work as, well, actual food- you've had an experience, a lot of obvious effort has been put in and it isn't bad per se, but it didn't fulfill its actual intended function. I could certainly see how anyone wanting said metaphorical food would find very little to remember about it.

Mostly enjoyed is high praise from you.

Even ignoring the principal of it...if you live in a big city that where you have a lot of internet and server infrastructure pretty central to you, you might not be particularly bothered by the performance of always-online stuff. For those of us who live a bit farther out, and that's tens of millions of Americans at least and never mind the rest of the world, it can be a little bit of a different story. It's especially infuriating when it's completely unneeded from the perspective of just trying to play the game - it's one thing if it's an MMO and that's just a necessary part of the package, it's another if I'm trying to play a game that is a totally or predominantly singleplayer experience and it's being an unnecessary hassle. If my experience is improved by pirating instead of purchasing the game, you the developer/publisher have made what I would call a very grave error.

I clearly need to improve how I play a Witch build. This is a phenomenal approach.

Said minister of course got fired immediately, can't have anyone bringing to your attention that the soldiers on the ground is getting very wary of the government and the unhappiness is spreading in the IDF... But it's not just the IDF that is a source of concern at the moment https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65097625 "Now with a nation in crisis, all sides watched for the prime minister to act. When he finally appeared on national TV - maximising the impact with a live address at the top of the 20:00 nightly news shows - he began by likening his position to a story about King Solomon. Just as the biblical monarch had to judge which of two competing women was the real loving mother of a baby, he had made his own decision when it came to the two sides contesting his reforms. He announced he was pausing the judicial changes until the next session of parliament, and would "extend my hand" in "compromise" and "dialogue" with parliamentary opponents." Translating from BS to English: "lets save it for a few months and hope the **** storm blows over enough to give myself legal immunity against the corruption charges."

My guess is as reliable as yours. Although even if by some miracle US gets to busy with UA/Russia mettle, there is still Japan, S. Korea and Australia to hold them in check. For China, this war has been most interesting at the start, just to observe the western reaction how they handle it. Now, I think even Xi knows, that if he would want some new lands, he should go rather for the historical Manchuria than for the Taiwan. He would probably get it without a fight, if he would decide to march in there tonight, as most of the Russian army is around Ukraine

That's Macedon and Sparta. Story didn't end particularly well for Sparta either, though that bit tends to get left out (-->--> yet another alliance with Greece's perpetual enemy Persia, this time against the Macedon of Alexander the Great though...) Hawk is old, but pretty reliable. Its problem would be slightly different; that it's demonstrably worse than the old soviet systems Ukraine already has at pretty much anything and everything so doesn't have much of a use case until their old systems are depleted- which I guess could be labelled as a reliability issue, but is really a utility issue. If he isn't gilding the lily for leverage I'd suspect he's referring to a newer system that never got tested properly before seeing action. No speculate on which though.

See! California is right! We all need UBI (I can settle for less than $5M) and UFH ($1 houses). Im particularly interested to see what happens in the housing option. All the homes are already owned by fatcats, so unless more land rises from the Pacific ocean or San Francisco Bay, then they are going to have to seize the properties of the existing owners to redistribute them to the needy. Probably have to go full on eminent domain on their asses and give them pennies on the dollar of its worth. Hahahahaha, suck it, fatcats.

I wonder if this is true, @Gfted1 you sneaky Americans and your pesky microchips in vaccines

I heard an interesting opinion that prolonging the war in Ukraine is in the interests of China because then the West wont be focused on Chinas global aspirations like Taiwan and the South China Sea Im not sure if it true but its interesting?

Also it is said, that Putin pissed off Xi with the announcement of supplying of nuclear arsenal to Belarus, as they both signed a document about nuclear “restraint/deescalation” during his visit. Xi learned what Putin’s word means first hand https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-27/putin-s-belarus-nuclear-move-puts-him-at-odds-with-china-pledge#xj4y7vzkg https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-humiliated-china-xi-jingping-nuclear-announcement-snub-belarus-russia-2023-3?op=1

Is this left-wing radicalism part of the " CRT curriculum " ? Why teach children about that when surly their no more racism now ? We talking " historical realities " here ? Surly you agree @Pidesco, how about @Gorth we talked about that in Ukraine thread. We over that already why bother @PK htiw klaw eriF what about Texas who would it be received their if Disney pushed woke agenda telling poor white kids they all racist their ? @Lexx another conundrum for Germany what if a back girl called Hitler moved to Germany ? Would " racist " German politics force her to change her name ? Would the left-wing radicals in your governemnt object ? /snort You know, like I posted about before, back when Iron Sky came out, the film was - anecdotally, perhaps, based on IMBD votes - not very well received in the US. Republicans did not like being made fun of, particularily with the Sarah Palin stand-in as president in the film, while Democrats thought it was ridiculous and that Sarah Palin would never become president (well, she did not, so that part came true), and both sides agreed that American politics would never degenerate to the level shown in the film. When I watched it at the theater, I laughed really hard. I recently rewatched it, it really stopped being funny in 2016, for some strange reason. Can't quite put my orange on it why. Ah, well, what a tangerine I went on here.

A bit of airplane nostalgia... no, not the Concorde, but the probably way less known F-111. Famous and infamous in Australia. Acquisition was a mess, but it ended up with a very long time in service. Got retired in 2010...

I did Sayuka often enough before going to Poko Kohara and as fas as I remember it all worked normally with Overgrowth etc.

Hello everyone! I'm aware that the forum isn't visited anymore, but I still wanted to share with you a humorous yet incredibly frustating occurence that happened to me. I have a total of 675.5 hours in Pillars of Eternity and I've only seen Azzuro twice. During my first playthrough, with 190 hours, he never showed up.

Not too sure Japan, Australia and ROK will be enough to hold back China. But not as if the US is really tied down right now. Yet another data point of ammo expenditures being a problem when you're not fighting insurgents (although I guess sometimes even then - Israel had issues in 2006, if I recall)

Speaking of Jordan Peele movies I watched Get Out recently during a binge of horror films on Netflix and enjoyed it a fair bit; certainly one of the better 'with social commentary' type horror movies I've seen. Not as good as its reputation maybe, but not far off at all. I also appreciated that it didn't treat you like you were stupid and pretty much told you the set up from the start, if you paid attention. cf Midsommar, which is otherwise fine and really rather nicely shot, acted etc, but where it's blindingly obvious where it's going but you aren't 'supposed' to know it for nearly 90 minutes of film. Binge included The Mist, where I still hate the ending but like everything else apart from the forced stupidity of the pharmacy raid, and the two Quiet Place movies where I should have hated the gimmick but in the end it just worked in practice. I may have to trade in my curmudgeon card as I even liked the Netflix movie whose name escapes me- hmm, Malevolent per my viewed list, guess I like Florence Pugh in horror movies or something; and where even the name suggested mediocrity and forgetableness- and I watched specifically on the basis that it would be an awful but potentially fun train wreck.

...lol...dunna e'en have the customs site anymores...the ol' Coconut Clan be long rotted away, amigo...more's the pity... ...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!...

Speaking of gaming on Windows 7, Valve recently announced that Steam will no longer run on Windows 7 (and 8, but not a single person on the whole wide Earth cares about that) on January 1st of next year.

Resident Evil 4's Marketing is on point: