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Congratulations. --- I am delighted to share that I have earned my MSc Data Science with Distinction degree and was granted permission to work. Currently looking for work (IT Support Technician with 4 years of experience or Junior Data Engineer with no experience).

Russia made another record yesterday. At Avdiivka Again, this is the only media, which I have found and could be posted here…

All the WoT talk in the TV thread reminded me that I have like 2 books in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series to read still.

I would say that Jordan's writing is pretty anti-feminist, and I'd be pretty shocked if any serious feminists thought much anything positive of the vast majority of Jordan's writing specifically through that lens. Like, okay, they are strong, and most of them reside in female-dominated or at least female-equal societies...which sounds good on its face, unless, you know, pretty much everything that they do is bad/irritating/misguided/wrong-headed/stereotypical and most of them are all annoying idiots constantly. It doesn't help if everyone seems to have this bizarre obsession with thinking about their bosoms, or that they're all constantly making sure that they're currently pretty/presentable, never mind how they demean and humiliate each other (sometimes literally institutionally or ritualistically!), or that they're always trying to 'control' men, or that men seem to always have to eventually 'force' the women to see sense for their own good...all that kind of bullcrap that Jordan wrote and the rather explicitly negative way that it's all framed makes it pretty damned obvious how Jordan feels about women. Just letting them be "strong" absolutely does not equate to 'feminism' - you're going to have to do a little more homework than that to convince me of any feminist leanings. Mind you, that doesn't mean a reader, female or male, couldn't be inspired by or love a given female character for any number of reasons...or that there aren't literally any pro-feminist ideas (obviously there are!), but on the whole, with the way Jordan framed his writing throughout the entirety of the series? No, I don't bloody well think so. Every woman I've talked to about Wheel of Time that has tried this series (or even read its entirety!) has mentioned how awful the vast majority of Jordan's female characters and societies are and we've had long discussions about how stupid and annoying all of it is, so I'm inclined to believe them and myself that there is indeed something very seriously wrong. Oh yeah, and I just did a cursory look-up of "Wheel of Time feminism", and there's all sorts of other discriminative nasties that Jordan baked into his writing that you might well ignore while just reading casually, but really don't stand up to scrutiny. Like, lmao, men must take control of and master the One Power, while women must...submit to the One Power? Or how women's appearances are always being described in terms of how beautiful (or not) they are (already bad!), and if there's anything less than ideal about them, there's explicit mention about whatever that is (double bad!)? It's pretty gnarly stuff through and through. Fantasy: No idea, don't ask me for recommendations on fantasy, I gave up on the genre like a decade ago because of how frustrated I was getting with it, so it's not really my wheelhouse in the first place. Most all I care about is characters and having stories being organically driven by them, and for that reason, I will repeat once again: Robert Jordan is a literature terrorist...whose books I happened to mostly enjoy upon the first read. I once tried to restart reading the series again and couldn't get past even the first book without having the draw of learning more about the story to power me through, which is a most curious phenomenon indeed - it's almost always once I am not so pre-occupied with the details of the story or what's literally happening that I truly start to enjoy something, which is why second reads/watches of something that I really liked is often when I know that I loved something, as I can focus on the little things and fun character stuff. Yeah, no dice for The Wheel of Time, it just got exponentially more annoying instead.

I went to the ren fair today: I'm not presumptuous enough to dress up as a noble so there I am in my gambeson and cloth coif. A good time was had. The Carolina Renaissance Festival always puts on a great show.

Eh, hard disagree. Historically 'our' Catholic Church 100% believed in 'magic' and still does- in the end God Did It/ miracle events are magic. It's a belief system, it doesn't have to be consistent because people's beliefs aren't consistent. The only difference with lots of obviously extant gods is that worship is the focus, not belief. And quite often the situation is the same as here even if there is magic- no direct Divine Intervention, you either believe because you believe, or you don't. Mostly though, if someone wrote our existence as a fantasy novel there would be loads of people saying the same thing, but in reverse. "Why are there so many religions in this world when Science exists? I can go outside and curse Zherem, lord of the sky, and he'll hit me with a lightning bolt; ea sum, quod erat demonstrandum. There nothing happens but people still believe in God/ Allah/ Thor/ Apep/ Toutatis/ Vishnu etc? Makes no sense." Human nature isn't logical.

Forgotten Anne Grime

After letting BG3 digest for a while I think it managed to hit a lot of the same notes of BG1+2 by having absolute maniacs being incredibly silly. Things like the talking chicken or strange oxes are memorable and add texture to a game. I don't think PoE did that as well and really could have benefitted from some dumb bull****.

As it relates to making painfully obtuse and unlikeable characters that are being framed in a terrible light and just don't seem to be the right fit for their setting, it should not surprise anyone in the slightest: it is the very same drum I have been beating for positively ages now. Of course not: usually, someone's appearance is the first thing you see, and there's typically no harm in drawing upon your knowledge of patterns and beginning to formulate thoughts and impressions about that person, though they should ideally be thoughts and impressions lightly held that can be easily overturned given evidence to the contrary of what you initially felt. When your first thoughts are always "ooga booga big booba", that's when we start to have problems: I did not know I was signing up for a series apparently aimed at cavemen. I have never in my entire life read any other series that was so keenly focused on the things that Robert Jordan seemed to be, and for all his ability to draw me into a world and for me to actually finish the series, I hope I never do so again, because it is unpleasant and unnecessary...among the many other issues with his writing. In a world where girls and women never had any reason to ever worry about their personal appearances, either because they have the power not to, or because societal pressures are drastically different, do I believe that at least some if not most of them would not care, or that at least their behaviors revolving around such would be different? Uh, yes, yes I do. Why are they obsessed with how they present themselves and their perceived flaws? I have and do know women who don't give a ****, possibly against their 'objective' best interests, but because the price of socially conforming doesn't outweigh the costs in their time, effort, and money to do so. For goodness sake, a huge percentage of recent generations in Western society consider body hair on girls/women to be gross and unnatural. Body hair. That which literally 99.99% of us all have...naturally. That which signifies going through puberty, physical and sexual development/maturity. It's so ingrained into their thinking that girls viciously bully other girls over it, literally to the point of girls killing themselves! Why? You think that's just...a natural behavior, even though it's very obviously not always been true throughout even recent history? No, man, I'd say that's a load of crap supported by a whole bunch of other loads of crap, just like most of what we're discussing here. The idea that this is just how girls/women are and always will be regardless of historical/sociopolitical/cultural/economic reasons, or power dynamics, or an other number of things, seems so obviously silly and farcical that I can't believe we're having a discussion about it. So yes, if you write a world with completely different social structures that seem in drastic opposition to our real world ones, I do expect the people in those social structures to behave at least somewhat differently than if you didn't. Perhaps it might even be an integral part of someone's fictional fantasy setting and world, I don't know.

Thanks for the post. It makes me very sad and unhappy that Sawyer would go with TB combat for a PoE3. I would hate that. I hope he would at least still keep both systems in the game.

Pillars of Eternity does not need to compete with whatever Larian is making - despite the cursory similarities, they are fundamentally different. Larian cannot write or design UI or combat encounters, while constantly disregarding the lore for no reason (from the Divinity 1 MC in D:OS2 to the Emperor in their latest title, and that lore was not even theirs to take a dump on). Obsidian, on the other hand, has excellent writing, relatable characters, meaningful and impactful choices, amazing graphics and UI, and engaging combat and stealth. Also, the pause function and system requirements. VA and mo-cap are a waste of resources for CRPGs, while the only paise-worthy aspect of Larian's games is the ability to skip all those mo-capped voice-acted scenes with a well-launched fireball (i.e. immersive sim elements). Which occasionally breaks the narrative (e.g. the boss thrown into the chasm teleports onto the platform to die in a cut-scene), because even this was poorly-implemented. While it is unlikely with Microsoft, I would definitely back another PoE game. --- Length-wise, I think, Deadfire was shorter, which was most welcome.

I read the first Rogue Trader novel. Different rogue trader, different part of the galaxy. Felt it may put me in the spirit of things though. It was very meh.

Jordan used limited viewpoint 3rd person 99% of the time- it's the limited part that is important rather than the 3rd person. IIRC some of the intros/ outros are written as omniscent in parts ('God view'/ absolute narration, ie this happened or that happened, not Rand or whoever thought that happened). But otherwise while the writing is in 3rd person we only see or hear what the viewpoint character sees or hears, and get their (unreliable) internal narrative on why they did whatever and what they thought of things. That's also why there are a lot of ample bosoms- Mat, Perrin and Rand are 18-20 years old and heterosexual, they are going to notice ladies' chests, and they are the protagonists so you get their viewpoint a lot. If it's, say, Egwene, she doesn't notice them anywhere near so much. Now there's a guy who could write an annoying character who was not intended to be annoying.

As far as I remember most of the negatives you mention have been from the POV of the opposite gender, ie. the male/female view on things. I don't remember exactly, but I don't think he ever used the third person to do that. A lot of the examples you mention are always diametrically opposite depending on who's POV you are reading. A good example would be Mat trying to save the girls in book 3 and his view on it as opposed to the girls view on it. Some things are not even due to gender but simply the age of the character, most of them are barely out of their teens and as such are inherently naive and dumb in their thinking. There is also the fact that the world has been destroyed by men and there is a lot of distrust there that is essentially inborn at that point. Women, girls especially, are obsessed with how they present themselves and their perceived flaws, the success of the cosmetic industry can attest to that (have you ever met a women who doesn't own makeup?). I have not met a women who is happy with every aspect of their body and who would, given a magic body morph wand, not change something about it. I do not see a big disconnect there between the WoT and real world women. Also, I would say the world today is fairly obsessed with bosom and behinds. On the topic of everything being described in terms of beauty, although I would define it more as outwards appearance, I don't see an issue there. When you see a person do you not first think about how they look and how they are dressed. I doubt your first impression is going to be about how smart they are or on their opinion on political situation in South Africa. This seems perfectly human to me. I googled with a fairly neutral query and the results I'm seeing is that there are just as much if not more women who were able to identify with the female character/s in the books. Don't take this the wrong way, but we tend to surround ourselves with like minded individuals, so I am not surprised that the women, who's opinion you value enough to ask, share and confirm your beliefs. I laugh thinking about how the readers would have reacted if he wrote the female characters through a lens of a male dominant society. That's what I heard too. Which makes it doubly funny.

Josh Sawyer would be up for making Pillars of Eternity3 if he got a lot of budget fot it. So... still no hope for PoE3? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/obsidians-josh-sawyer-wants-to-do-pillars-of-eternity-3-with-baldurs-gate-3s-budget

He's got a type, that's for sure. Part of it is the world design being fundamentally different from ours with women having a lot more intrinsic power and men with that power being Dangerous. Same thing said about the Ashaman later: it's hard to tell people they have the power to shake the world yet they should also walk and talk softly. And yeah, it's kind of telling that the women people tend to like in Jordan's writing are those that don't have/ don't want power- like Min. Or at least don't want the power for the sake of it, like Nynaeve. Or are willing to give it up for The Greater Good (the greater good) like a certain Brown, or Moiraine who is both the latter. The ones people tend to dislike are exactly those who'd be obnoxious in the real world too- Elaida, Cadsuane, Egwene, Elayne. The hyper ambitious prodigy upset someone's better than her generational talent and willing to squash anything for her ambition (Eg); the princess of the people who is 'down with the poors' and actually massively out of touch and spends books getting 'her people' killed utterly pointlessly because she thinks she's invulnerable, and worse, had a chapter spent on her bath (El); the plethora of Aes Sedai who are so impressed by their title that they expect reality to morph itself around them (would be quicker to list the exceptions); Faile, who's... Faile. I'd like to use the 'Justice' Red Dwarf line and say that's her crime but also her punishment but... she's Faile, so she's everyone else's punishment. Most of them are well written though, within the limits of Jordan's writing. Elayne is deeply annoying and one of the worst for overinflated plots (which is Jordan's main problem, imo), but the character annoyance at least is mostly because she's exactly what you'd expect from someone who is massively privileged and thinks she's progressive. The classic example is not her constantly swallowing her veil in Tanchico because she has her nose in the air or being chased because her 'perfect' poor person curtsy came across as sarcastic but her thinking her mother was universally loved as Queen and everything was Gaebril's fault. Well no, we see Caemlyn in book 1, and Morgase is not popular, even then, it's specifically said multiple times that white heavily outnumbered red. If she were real world she'd be doing things like going to 'Feed Africa' rallies in her designer clothes and jewelry and wondering why people were rolling their eyes, after all she'd posted dozens of time to #StopKony2012 what more could people expect?

I'm still playing my 2000+ mods Skyrim and pretend that it is Bloodborne. Damn, just imagine Elden Ring... but Bloodborne. I want it so hard.

got a very powerful 80 synth-pop influence, which is not a criticism. see what he thinks o' tainted love, don't go (yazoo)... and 'bout 1000 others. edit: am s'posing the downside is your son might really like take on me, or one o' the other 80s synth pop tunes. can't imagine the agony o' listening to those over and over and overandoverandoverandover... HA! Good Fun!

One of my old university friends was visiting the city, so she invited a group to get together at what had been her favourite ****tail bar for the night. Booked a table. Agreed and turned up, and then we found out it was a Magic Mike tribute night, bottomless ****tails, and the table she had booked was in the splash zone...

Not directly related, just my visa application, which includes the work permit, was approved at approximately the same time.

It seems to be he wants to design dual system, like what Deadfire ended up trying to be. I think he is right on the money - RTwP adds additional challenges on top of number crunching tactical game. Some players handle it very well, quite a few don't. And when doing turn-based playthrough I did thing that the game made a lot of enemy designs more understandable, and there was a more noticable distinction between quality and filler encounters. Way back I did suggest that PoE3 could really dial in difficulty and design for Turn-based combat - and those who need it (like myself) could use the clarity of turn-based combat, while players capable of analyzing combat as it happens in real time could go RTwP. You could dial in tactical difficulty of the game without making it inaccesable. And if one wants to make encounters quck and unchallenging RTwP + low difficulty setting should do a trick. But let's not get our hopes up. I am happy to see that when asked "what would you do with unlimited budget" JS answer is "PoE3". At the same time, he might not be willing to do it with anything less, so I will still treat PoE as an abandoned IP unless proven otherwise.

The Fall of the House of Usher. Mike Flanagan (loosely) does Edgar Allan Poe in a modern setting. It's a return to form for Flanagan, a tight miniseries that feels like a miniseries as opposed to an 8 hour movie. @Bartimaeus may like this, assuming his brain doesn't short circuit over some arcane rule unknown even to him and push him into a murderous rage. I say this with love....and in hopes I will be spared from the brutality of Bartimaeus. Everyone else who liked Midnight Mass will probably dig the show, which I think @majestic did.

they mimic human in environment that doesn't make sense the worst problem would be fantasy catholic syndrome pretty much 7 out of 10 fantasy book have their own version of catholic church just with a few lazy name change that doesn't make sense especially in high fantasy setting with so much actual magic and vast pantheon it doesn't make sense in dragon age it doesn't make sense in mistborn and so so so many other setting even setting like dnd have this problem manifest in different form the whole faith healing cleric spell list doesn't fit all the different deity with different personality and area of concern

Why would they not? They are still human. Been a while since I read the books last. I'm buying the localized special edition books and will probably give it a reread once they all come out.

that is another ancient problem with fantasy why do fantasy human still think or behave like historical human in high fantasy setting it is often too jarring and ridiculous when one start to notice it this could be another reason grimdark low fantasy became so common

I actually fired up PoE last week. On loading, I saw that four of my six party members (who I'd completely forgotten their names) had a level-up pending. I went through the level-up process for one of them after reading a bunch of spell and ability names, after which I couldn't be bothered doing the other three and quit. BG3 and Solasta co-op controlling two characters each feels right to me. I have a parallel BG3 single-player run which feels right at the edge of what my brain can track, which is helped by pre-existing knowledge of the D&D rules. Micro-managing six characters with completely alien classes and abilities to me is just overwhelming and I can't handle it.

Mike Oldfield is someone I remember playing a lot during the 80's. In particular his collaboration with Maggie Reilly stands out in my memory... he made several albums before that, but they were probably a bit, not sure, too "artsy" for young Gorth? I since learnt to appreciate them and bought them all on cd, even if it took a few decades to appreciate them. Anyway, small cavalcade from my youth And a slightly "newer" song, live from London (only 25 years ago )

Question is, why did Deadfire (apparently) fail so hard? Was it the pirate setting, or was it that PoE1 got overhyped hard and the majority of players actually didn't really like it? Personally I never finished PoE1. Game felt too long, middle was a slog, and I'm really not a fan of rtwp combat blobs. On the other hand, I played through Deadfire 2 times (new playthrough right after the first one!), despite the rtwp blob combat. Guess I managed better, because I think pirates are cool. Also the game is quite a bit shorter. My only issue with it is that the side-content islands felt like nothing but simple fillers, and that many of the quests felt very formulaic. Like, by now I can 100% predict which choices will show up for me, what exactly I can do, and how it very likely will turn out.

I think if BG3 does very well, and everything I've seen points toward it having doing very well, then there's going to be at least some interest in trying to recreate that. PoE 3 seems like an obvious contender for Microsoft to try that and I'd think Sawyer would be a natural choice to helm it. So maybe a bit more optimistic than no hope.

I don't remember her writing alot, but she supposedly had alot of input on the characters primarily female. She was his editor though.

Israel-Hamas War Day 14 | Red Cross Says It Has Two American Hostages Released by Hamas

I agree, the utter and consistent hypocrisy of Russia pretending to care about "civilians " goes to new levels of cringe

. . . Well, actually, okay, if you start at the absolute bottom like you do with Book!Elayne, it does make sense that there's practically infinite room for improvement and you can really only improve the character - heck, even a small improvement can honestly go a long ways. Like, just don't have her be a total dip**** literally one hundred percent of the time, and you've already massively improved her character from the book version. I went back and forth with Egwene as the series went on, but yes, Faile is the worst, Berelain is the worst, Aviendha is the worst...however, Elayne is the worst of the worst. There is something about her that makes my brain short circuit to the point where I eventually just started skipping her chapters wholesale. Even Nynaeve with Jordan writing about her braid tugging approximately every nanosecond didn't make me that mad. Robert Jordan was a literature terrorist for a number of reasons, but especially because of his female characters: never before and never again will there ever be such a sorry lot of 'strong' female characters so worthy of summary executions. It's a marvel that I made it all the way through the series and even mostly enjoyed it with his atrocious writing and characters: sometimes, you still enjoy something in spite of just about everything being wrong with it.

I just remembered that The Dragon Thrashed doesn't profit from Ring of Focused Flame. Eh... sorry. But if it's about more ACC for the chants in order to interrupt more you can use the Helm of the White Void and use the chant "The Long Night's Drink" istead. It doesn't deal damage but it does work with "Rymrgand's Influence", giving it +10 ACC.

Faile, Berelain, Elayne, Egwene, Aviendha, well basically 90% of Jordan females are all equally insufferable. Nynaeve isn't that bad. Min is the only female who's likable. And maybe... Verin too? lmao

I've actually started to take the train with my bike, which cuts it down to 10 miles each way, so that's been great. I am moving further down the tracks, but it won't change my commute time by much.

This is my son's favorite song.. this week Don't worry, he's never seen the video

We bought a house. Well, a townhome, but it's pretty nice. We have been renting for about 15 years, so it is a big deal. We just cleared to close, so sometime next week we will get the keys and start moving.

Fun day at work when a mission critical server is identified as compromised for some reason and blacklisted from network. Then everyone who logged in to check the issue is also blacklisted. Obviously our security team is led by Ripley

I think people buried the lede concerning the Microsoft acquisition of Activision. Call of Doody and Diablo are all fine and well, but Activision owns the Arcanum IP, which is to say that Microsoft now owns the Arcanum IP. Forget about everything else, Arcanum 2 is now possible. This needs to happen. WE HAVE TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

Asked a friend what they wanted for their birthday. They gave me a look and did a "You've been getting into leather-working lately haven't you?".. and then asked if I could make them a customised collar. Not what I was expecting.

I got a new Star Destroyer Freighter on my main save. Seemingly you must have space combat active (maybe also on Standard, not Minimal) so every 5 system warps or so you get a rescue-freighter when you drop out of warp, which is when these bigger ones may show up. I lucked out and got the biggest version of this Capital style after four reloads/retries, but once again it's only an A-class, not S, but since I suck at the ship combat, I'll take it. Mostly more starting cargo space so less work to max that out (33 vs. 19 starting, in my case) + looks, altho stats/combat abilities do go up a little too. I wish you weren't limited to only having one/your previous goes poof (can't collect them). I suppose you could try to get a different style in multiple saves. Anyhoo, I can now go back to ignoring space combat on this save.

visual reference in case anyone has forgotten don't forget, or I'll have to post these again hopefully egwene immediately falcon punched her right outta the show