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Not much I guess. I might consider it if I have time to spare. If the way, if there are some veteran from PoE1, I'm starting to discuss a (much less ambitious) small Balance Mod for PoE1. I'm starting on this thread about Rogues : Melee Rogue is too weak on PotD Upscale - Page 2 - Pillars of Eternity: Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!) - Obsidian Forum Community

You mean the heinous stuff the Iranians have been doing in Yemen, and the coup in Ukraine that brought Zelenskyy's predecessor to power.

Watched the D&D movie, which I liked more than I expected to. Fun adventure film with lots of heart. More similar to something like Princess Bride or Stardust than Lord of the Rings.

In terms of pure power efficiency something RISC-V based might be the way to go. Obviously, OS and application compatibility is an issue when you step outside the x86 and ARM ecosystems, but in that regard, as a Linux weirdo, I have a leg up, given that when a piece of hardware comes out, no matter how niche, someone out there with enough interest and skill will port Linux and it's many applications to said hardware and then it's out there in the aether because open source (try to beat that run-on sentence). Indeed, in a few years, when the battery on my current phone starts to die, I will consider a phone running RISC-V with probably a custom version of Linux. I'm not a power user with phones, I use it to make calls, send text messages, and watch an occasional video, that's pretty much it. I'm growing increasingly frustrated with Android and wouldn't mind distancing myself from "Do No Evil" Google, but I have no desire to have anything to do with Apple's walled garden either. Speaking of efficient, and getting back to AMD, 7040U Phoenix ultrathin laptops and handhelds should be hitting the market any day. I've seen some dubious benchmarks out there that look really promising, but nothing reliable yet. Being able to run pretty much anything at 1080p at ~20W is the dream. 🤞

RPG roundtable podcast: Josh Sawyer, Mike Laidlaw, Strix Beltran, Paweł Sasko, and Lis Moberly go deep on writing and playing RPGs | PC Gamer

Because there's always time to remember and be amazed at such magnificent characters in history... https://headstuff.org/culture/history/julie-la-maupin-daubigny-swashbuckling-opera-singer/

To this day I do not understand how they were so misinformed as to think that it would just be a repeat of Crimea. Either their intelligence was lacking, or they were fed false information.

Ooh this works flawlessely! Here's a file with ClearOnDeath set to true for all summon weapon status effects -> statuseffects.gamedatabundle

Would setting summoned weapons effects to end when a character is knock out make for a negative impact on balance? The main reason I ask is that it seems setting status effects that grant summoned weapons to "ClearOnDeath" seems to be a potential fix for NPC casters (such as Katrenn) failing to drop their equipped weapons.

This is difficult for me to answer because I didn't start paying much attention to politics until roughly a decade ago, when I (sort of) got my **** together. Before that, I was too busy being a **** up to give it much thought. My answer may be surprising as he wasn't a terribly effective president in terms of enacting his policies, but Jimmy Carter seems to be the most genuinely good human being of the former presidents still alive. He's been vocally anti-war and pro diplomacy his entire career and not just lip service, he really tried to de-escalate conflicts, wasn't effective sometimes, but he did try. He's dedicated much of his life to humanitarian work and he seems to live a relatively modest life for a person of his prominence. Jimmy Carter is the last president I can think of that I would call a genuinely good man. To be clear, I love America. I criticize our government precisely because I love America and I want us to be better. For all our atrocities, we've never done anything even remotely as horrific as, for example, Stalin. I think it's really difficult for anyone to be a good president right now because the corruption in the District of Columbia runs so deep. Special interest groups are so ingrained in the system and the military industrial complex wields so much power that when someone with real ideals tries to become president their own party will cut them off at the knees (e.g. Bernie Sanders, twice). We'll probably see that repeated with RFK Jr. this time around if he manages to gain any traction.

Russia had plenty of everything before the start of the war. Imo, what we are witnessing is literally a failure of every other conceivable metric: planning, predeployment, equipment readiness, leadership capability, troop training and morale, equipment that doesnt perform to expectations, execution of objectives, etc... Now theyve suffered brain drain and crushing technological sanctions, so I dont see any way theyre a conventional force threat again in the next decade or longer.

Slightly off topic, for which apologies, but who do you think was the most recent genuinely good American president? (And why, perhaps.) The reason I ask is that some kind of loathing for the government tends to be so common among Americans, and I often wonder whether they regard their system of government as inherently effed or whether they just think they've had particularly bad rulers in the recent past. Either way it is, I think it's extremely unfortunate, particularly because so many Americans seem to be totally uninterested in the whole political process or regard it as not worth participating in. In my view, this is in sharp contrast with the fact that so many Americans also think that it's the greatest country in the world and it generally has nothing whatsoever to learn from any other country anywhere. And these two things fit together rather badly, in my view. I tend to be both sceptical and critical towards my own government, but as a rule, I think the system actually works quite well: I am extremely pleased with everything that I have received with the taxes that I've paid (everything from superb education to excellent health care and so on), and while "the system" certainly isn't perfect, I honestly think it's at least OK and definitely a lot better than in most countries in the world. Size, of course, is a factor, which I certainly am aware of. Anyway, I would love it if Americans were more interested in their system, cared more about refining it and didn't constantly comment so disparagingly upon it. But it is also possible that they are right in thinking that it's all beyond saving now -- and if that is the case, it's a sorry state indeed.

Fair point about mythical discovery. I usually just find I don't have a pressing need for THAT many mythical weapons by the end game, as I'd normally have a caster or two with a stat stick anyway. For me I prefer the convenience of a faster early game. The mod is great, I couldn't live without it. If you enjoy running FF Monks you'll love the new Forbidden Curses Less Than X condition. Can set it to use FF every time Curses are less than 1 which is a lot less fiddly then messing around with cooldown times. Only issue is the AI only checks the condition at the time of queuing an action, so if it has queued a normal attack and the curse expires after the action has been queued the AI isn't smart enough to change the action to FF and will just follow through with a normal attack. More of an issue with the AI system in general though rather than the mod.

I am using it only for achievements and tracking time spent in games TBH. For downloading, I am using gogrepoc 3rd party app by Kalanyr. Works like a charm and saves much time when I want to DL all the updated versions of the games once in a blue moon.

Strictly on the subject of Snowden and whistleblowers: I find it curious that Obama[*] got and still gets such good press. Of all the US presidents, he is by far the most aggressive and punitive when it comes to whistleblowers. Also, he made a plea for Snowden to return to the US so that he could receive a "fair trial", even though he must have known that as a person suspected of treason, Snowden was not going to have any right for a "fair trial", i.e. Obama was lying. But this is how it goes with facts vs. general perception. It's endlessly fascinating. [*] How on earth he was awarded the Nobel Peace Price is beyond me.

The most valuable Berath Blessings to me are the ones that give bonuses that can't be obtained in the game otherwise (Bonus Attributes, Bonus Skills, Can I Pet Him Anyway?, Unique Item Vendor (in terms of getting extra uniques)) or that are a real pain to obtain normally (e.g Infamous Past). The exceptions to this rule where I tend to skip the blessing are Legendary Crew (not that hard to level up regular sailors to rank 4 and prefer to just keep each sailor on a single role) and Mythical Discovery (I find it too expensive point wise). A lot of the other blessings like bonus gold, fine equipment, upgraded ship, start at level 4, are mostly for convenience in the early game. I tend to pick these up if I have spare points left or if I just want to blitz through the early game as fast as possible. On the topic of mods, one mod I recommend if you like AI scripting is the enhanced AI conditions mod, which adds a lot more AI conditions for things that would otherwise be hard to script (e.g. for buffs that don't provide an inspiration).

Erdogans price may end up being steep though. It would require at least a few billion dollars on his Gibraltar and New Jersey bank accounts to buy Ukrainian membership 😝

the way he's constantly looking back at it to make sure it hasn't moved an inch is pretty hilarious not gonna like, seems like a terrible pet, even as far as snakes go; stays still and does absolutely nothing for weeks at a time, and then when it moves it's probably to murder you maybe you have to be a snake person to "get" it?

Ocean Cleanup removes 200,000th kilogram plastic the Pacific Ocean (interestingengineering.com)

PotD, ToI. Level 13 right now. In any serious battle, they honorably unleash figurines and wait until they have enough phrases to summon monsters, at which point they honorably drown the enemies in monsters while honorably pelting them from range. So, ranged weapons, and very preferably long range. They are for taking down bosses. Helwax Mold, Durgan Steel, burning down an orphanage because it'll give me a gun, anything goes. P.S. 6x chanter is working out much better than 6x fighter for these one class PotD ToI shenanigans...

If you have to kite, **** ain't working right. Kiting is what you do to deal with enemies to big and nasty to take on directly, or to deal with ****ty tanking systems where the tanks don't actually tank.