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Oh they absolutely would. And then get all butthurt if Ukrainians for some mysterious reason would not reciprocate their love and friendship and blame it on Ukrainians being petty and unreasonable. Prigozhin, by the way, is very candid about russia's goals, none of that denazify crap for gullible idiots. Like, quoting, "We minced the huge amount of Ukrainian armed forces and can tell ourselves the goal of special operation was achieved. Theoretically, russia got its fat loot by obliterating a large part of active Ukrainian males and terrorizing another large part of population into fleeing from Ukraine. russia cut for itself Azov sea and large chunk of Black sea and created a land corridor to Crimea. Now there is only one thing to do: to take root, claw in those territories we already have." So yeah nah, I'm not wringing my hands about how those greedy 'murican corporations get even fatter on weapon supplies as long as these people are at the very least pushed back into their borders.

Also, some of the more famous (and most loudest) republicans are paid by Moscow, so it's in their interest to support a winning russia.

Mein Kampf should never have been banned. If everyone had access to that book, there'd be far fewer (extreme) right-wingers. It's so well written it makes R.A. Salvatore look like Goethe.

I finally grew enough hair on my ass to take the plunge and open up my laptop to install another 8GB RAM more. I was nervous about the creaking noises that I heard while watching the how to video so I bought myself an iFixit "prying and opening tool assortment" kit and it went super easy! Huzzah!

Hey now. Don't slag on Scorsese. That's a step too far.

I'm pretty sure I've played that guy

Sure. All those thousands of Ukrainians are dying just to help out our defense industries. They don't really care about someone invading and occupying their home, and are fighting the invaders only because we made them do it. If you're one of those leftists who hate our military and our defense industries, at least just come out and say so. I for one, as an American, am so very happy that we have such awesome companies as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman who are helping to keep me safe.

BVC, if Ive learned anything here, its that nazis are everywhere. If theres two people standing naked in a completely empty room, you can bet your bippy that all three are nazis.

I didn't hear about Angelou's books being burned. But I will point out if they bought the books they burned her estate still got the royalty. I think the author of the Harry Potter books went through that a while back and responded to a book burning with a quip along the lines of "thanks for your money". As for the morality of it, that is in the eye of the beholder. I draw the line at harming people/animals. Vicks dogs may have been no more than property according to the law but that same law protects them from cruel and abusive treatments. It is immoral to do harm. Usually illegal too. It is immoral to take someone else's property for the purposes of protest/destruction/malice/gain etc. Usually illegal too. Unless a government entity is doing it. As for the rest, flame on. Burning poetry books, or bibles, or Quarans just to piss people off makes you a jerk. It's not illegal to be a jerk. Nor should it be. If those were YOUR books whatever they were and you want to burn them and post it online go ahead. Jerk. If you want to by a couple of cases of Bud Light and shoot them with an automatic rifle on tick tok, go right ahead. It was YOUR beer. If everyone stopped getting into a twist every time someone does this it will stop. They are TRYING to piss people off. Just ignore it and don't get pissed. Laugh at it instead like the harry potter lady. I probably would have acquitted Roark as well. BTW, if you want to get a good laugh at stupidity this Bud Light thing is the gift that keeps on giving. Also kudos to Dylan Mulvaney. Never heard of her before this. Most folks probably hadn't. There is no famous like controversy famous. Budweiser's new pro-America ad sets social media ablaze: Can't put the 'genie back in the bottle, guys'

I really enjoyed Solasta. It would have been nice if they had the resources to add more game or have a better RNG. But it was one of the most fun DnD experiences I had in a long time.

Not PC, NSFW, 100% accurate

Haha I agree, the weapon is fine as is even if description is off. It is extremely good in some cases but not broken or anything This makes perfect sense, what I was counting before was actually the SUM of double strikes, triple strikes, quadruple strikes, etc. Can see below that if a double strike happens with probability .33, a triple is .109, a quadruple is .0359, etc., and I've never seen more than 8 hits in a row so I did a sum from 1 to 8 to get .492 So effectively the probability of getting *at least* a double strike is roughly 50%, which lines up close enough with my testing.

A slightly older Rammstein piece. As usual, the band never gives any "official" interpretation of their songs, but there seems to be a fan consensus, that it's about the building of the Berlin wall (Rammstein are from the former DDR). It has English subtitles if clicking the subtitle button

deserves a second post, 'cause have mentioned previous how you misread ray bradbury's fahrenheit 451. repeat for emphasis: It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals. the wrong identified by bradbury were what led to books becoming illegal in his dystopian near future. book bans and burnings happened 'cause too many embraced wrong. happened 'cause just as many ignored or laughed off a wrong. they are all bad and is all propaganda anyways so it don't make a difference, right? obviously the solution is more guns, yes? is a tragedy so few read fahrenheit 451 nowadays. is no less terrible when people read bradbury and then fail to learn. HA! Good Fun! ps in gd's defense, am gonna admit F 451 is one o' the most misrepresented and poor taught books o' the 20th century. is ez to embrace a message that book burning is bad and censorship is wrong. to delve further rare happens with 451. as a nuanced critique o' populism, mass media and the costs o' trying to make people safe, 451 has too frequent failed to resonate even amongst those who have read the work.

I recommend using the standard array or point buy, if you want a reasonable challenge. If you just set the stats at what you want it gets pretty easy.

One Slovak journalist have published this today (Google Translated).

Extreme left want to seize the means of production. Extreme right want to eradicate all people they dislike. I can't imagine which is worse.

Used to be that the extreme left were organised clandestine groups who advocated for violent insurgence, with assassinations and bombings. These days the extreme left appears to be people who describe as fascists groups who used to be neo nazis but discovered the suit and tie and haircuts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Wolf spiders bite afflict poison. Wasp stings afflict venom. The wasp boss has some attacks that afflict poison (lobbed clouds), and others venom (sting). The black widow afflicts both poison and venom at the same time. Waspidote only removes the poison debuff. So, it doesn't work against... wasps? The current setup is confusing. Possible solutions: 1) Waspidote should just clear both poison and venom (it's a late game item and costs a lot of resources, anyways). 2) Wasps could afflict poison instead of venom, and then waspidote would only not effect the black widow's venom, and the wasp boss' venomous sting. That would probably still lead to a lot of player confusion (especially during the wasp boss), as there isn't really time to check and see "oh, I've been venom'd not poisoned, of course!". See option 1.

Those iFixit toolkits are actually pretty handy, even the most basic one that they sell. Laptops are kind of random as to how difficult they will be to open up and replace a part - some of them it's literally just a matter of opening the outside back of the chassis and it being a dead simple operation, some of them you instead need to open up the middle/inside of the chassis and they drape these incredibly stupid connectors that are tiny and fragile exactly over where you need to get access to that will break with but the most gentle of tugs.

You misunderstand. I'm not saying the Ukrainians don't care about their land, I'm saying we don't care about the Ukrainians. And by "we" I mean the current administration, not ordinary Muricans, us regular folks don't really have much of a say in this. As far as whether I'm "one of those leftists", I'm actually a libertarian. Make of that what you will.

OK there is a big distinction between book burning and book banning UNLESS both happen to be a state sponsored activity. If the government has you goose stepping around piles of burning books (something Florida is coming perilously close to) and has made it a crime to read them then it past time to start a revolution. Remember who Guy Montag worked for after all. If redneck Pastor Joe from Micanopy Florida wants to burn Heather Has Two Mommies because Satan wrote it that is a different story. It makes him a jerk but not a criminal in any stretch of imagination. Nor should it. As long as he came by those books honestly. Redneck Pastor Joe is not keeping someone from reading that book just because he burned a few copies. What he's doing is neither immoral nor illegal. Just stupid. When the state says "Thou shalt not have this book in thy library" they ARE trying to restrict people (kids mostly) from reading it. That is immoral hands down. Not illegal. But definitely immoral. IMO at least. The irony is most of the books folks want banned would seldom get a look. Remember back in the 80's the movie The Last Temptation of Christ? It was an abysmally bad movie that probably would have flopped had folks not gotten into a twist about it. So many people were out there protesting because it painted Jesus as insane IIRC (been a while since I've seen it) that movie goers who would have otherwise passed went to see it. Sometimes the best thing to do about the stuff that pisses you off is to just ignore it. Try to make it go away and it has the opposite effect. The pet discussion goes down a whole other rabbit hole. If shelters were a bit more circumspect about who they adopted to that would not happen as often. Plus people are teaching their children that pets are disposable commodities when they do that and they will teach their children that and on it goes. People suck. Most of them. Well, more like about half of them .

Somehow I'm not sure Kevin O'Leary is an authority on this.

I doubt it, ideological statements are not the same as data and economic realities https://dailyhodl.com/2023/04/16/us-dollar-death-shark-tanks-kevin-oleary-says-people-should-get-over-de-dollarization-fears-heres-why/

Does games of Horus Heresy and Kill team count? I know, it's more tabletop wargaming than roleplaying, but if you play story based missions and narrative campaigns, the differences are easy to overlook...

Moved to the correct forum

Surprisingly his latest sober standup is pretty good.

Well, no, unless you only consider winning and losing in economic terms, which I find it hard to fathom you'd do. Russia, for instance, can very clearly win, and win big, by managing to break down Ukraine, and that would be much more meaningful than whatever the military companies are winning in monetary terms. I am strongly inclined to agree with Timothy Snyder (link above) that in a hundred years' time, the meaningful historical question will be that of whether Russia managed to bring Ukraine down or not -- American companies making money will be almost irrelevant in comparison. [I am reminded of the late David Foster Wallace pointing out that the average American person has, by the time he has reached the age of 20, been exposed to such an overabundance of commercial messages that it will take him enormous effort to recognize that considerations other than economic even exist; and many will indeed fail to do so.]

Quite a few of the political analysts I've read have also pointed out that anything that Russia could look upon as victory (or even anything other than a defeat) would both justify its original decision to attack and look like a devastating / humiliating loss for the entirety of "the West", whichever way you want to define it. The US, of course, has already demonstrated remarkable weakness in Syria by first defining a red line and then doing absolutely nothing when it was crossed, but a victory for Russia wouldn't only humiliate the US, it would humiliate the whole world-view of "the West". What the long-term consequences of that would be, no one can say, but they certainly wouldn't be very good.

I dont know why the US would be interested in wrapping it up? Were not losing anything in it. Warfare is business, and business is booming (excuse the pun). Every single weapon we give them needs to be replaced in our inventory, and now some European countries are buying our equipment like theyre planning to storm Russia themselves (Poland in particular). In a bit of black humor, this is a proxy war for the US which completely exposed Russia as a legitimate conventional threat. We can fight to the last Ukrainian.

Just throwing this out there. Buying a product to only destroy it afterwards is no different than buying it and drinking it. You still BOUGHT it. Just sayin. Guys at the VFW used to give me grief about my indifference to burning American flags. They (flag burners) bought the flag. It's their flag. If they want to burn it that isn't my business. If you steal MY flag and light it up, then we'll have a problem.

The fourth of milestones in this year has been reached... It took some time, due to me being much more busy, and spending more time with Assetto Corsa Competizione, but the main story boss of Tales of Arise on my PS4 has been finally beaten today. I have been very positively surprised of the game, and I have enjoyed it much more, than the JRPGs I have played in last few years. It's probably only on par with Tales of Berseria. I have enjoyed the story full of plot twists and surprises, and had my fun with the decent gameplay as well. Although, it was simplified a lot compared to older Tales of games, it was still good enough, to not drag the enjoyment down. The only negative, which I have encountered, was around the time, when I have arrived at Niez to fight against the fourth Renan Lord. At that point, the story progression hit soft experience wall, probably to incentivize purchase of XP and money DLCs. So once in a while, in order to progress further, I had to start to go after all possible sidequests and needed to do little bit of extra grinding for money, as the consumables were hard to find and cost arm and leg at the shops. Still it was much more manageable than some Ubisoft games, and I have never felt that I was forced to do it. It just made the fights with bosses less stressful.

I finished IWD2 after 100 hours, its a great game and scores a 70/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system " I had one of the hardest battles I have ever had in any RPG with Iyachtu Xvim, I only defeated him on the 9-10th time and what made it so difficult is his natural resistances to certain magic, how only bludgeoning\crushing is effective and his AOE spells. So I adopted a strategy start the initial battle with my 2 x tanks and 1-2 summons then run away with any of my party members and let the summons do the fighting to get Xvim to use his AOE spells use more summons to get him to use spells use ranged weapons like sling and +5 bullets Engage him with my full party once the summons are dead And it was still very hard, I lost 1 party member and I had exhausted most of my offensive and healing spells but I had 3 x Lighting Bolts left and I used that to finally kill him And then the battle with the twins was fun but strategically easier because I just killed the wizards first and quickly and then focused on the twins Great game and definitely worth playing if you enjoy D&D ruleset and an overall action RPG design

Tried Warhammer Total War 3 - Immortal Empires. Was at war with the various Khorne factions, as one should be, minding my own business, and suddenly the Gorequeen Valkia the Bloody offered me gold, asking for a truce. I decided it was just the chaos wastes playing tricks on me and slaughtered her armies, spilling their blood for the Bloody Handed God. Then the Khorne worshiping Norse tribes also sued for peace. Khornite lip service and no true faith.

Pork rind "chips": Pre-diabetes - "It's like styrofoam, gross, where's the chocolate." Post-diabetes - "It's like styrofoam fried in lard, but at least it has no carbs - I'll eat the whole bag." ...nothing much going on here, the weather is really nice tho.

Immortal: Unchained. The second half of the game. An optional boss - I was safely out of range of the boss and the adds. In later areas the grenade launcher foes appeared in groups of 2. The Bed of Chaos, v.2. The boss was invincible in this field, but I could reload while she was regenerating. I tried shooting it. The definitely-an-innocent-child had a force field. Final boss and ending:

Immortal: Unchained. Completed the game. After the point of no-return the areas felt more linear and drawn out. The final boss went down on the second attempt with the fully upgraded Silver Spear sniper rifle, which scaled with the stat I originally had not planed to use, but levelled up to the same number as the Normal Weapon Scaling in the end. The ending of the story was somehow disappointing (I do detest monologues). Review: Completed Lost in Random. The ending was rather hilarious, though for wrong reasons. The general opinion for the game has not changed - it would have made a decent comic book or an animated movie, but not a game. Review:

Feeling pretty good today. Rode the stationary bike for 20 minutes. Been a while since I could do that!

Assetto Corsa Competizione will have new DLC released next week. Three new GT3 Cars (Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche) and a new track in Valencia. It’s track number 23

the past eight months o' Gromnir table-top role-play/wargaming has been... difficult. however, last summer we were running a coyote and crow campaign. am realizing how cliché it were for us to be doing coyote and crow, but in our defense, we were asked to do c&c and we expressed serious concerns before final acquiescing. the coyote and crow rulez is ez 'nuff to learn but not particular inspired or unique. even so, the campaign were going better than we had anticipated but it stagnated 'cause we had to take a break for personal reasons and nobody else wanted to gm. however, am having recent been asked if am willing to restart. "maybe," has been our answer but am trending towards a more optimistic, "hopefully." HA! Good Fun!