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It is hard to do it proper justice in words, and it is only a short scene (also, the linked video is time coded to the relevant part): A perfect showcase for why it is generally accepted to not weaponize faster than light travel, or at least come up with some countermeasures, in soft science fiction. It renders everything meaningless, and you can tell from the look on Leia's face as it dawns on her just how many lives the Rebellion wasted in attacking two Death Stars conventionally. Or, to follow the train of thought, one has to wonder why the Empire built the Death Star in the first place, if all you need is to strap a hyperdrive to an asteroid to destroy planets. Rise of Skywalker features a scene where Merriadoc Brandybuck (okay, it just is a cameo by Dominic Monaghan, but it could be Merriadoc, and it would not be the silliest thing to happen in Rise of Skywalker) shows up to ask why they are even bothering to prepare an attack if they just could execute another Holdo maneuver (Holdo is Laura Dern's character in The Last Jedi). It is glossed over by stating that it was a one in a million chance to land the hit. It was worth a laugh at least. Disney's Star Wars is very big on breaking established rules in order to have "cool" scenes in their movies and series. This one is just the most egregious one, followed right up by making Vader's change of heart at the end of Return of the Jedi meaningless because Palpatine is still alive and well, but it does not stop there - there is a scene in Rogue One, for instance, where a hyperspace jump is done directly through an oncoming blast wave, while still in the atmosphere of the planet. Made me immediately think back to our heroes' escape from Tatooine in the first Star Wars film, and what a loser Han Solo must be for first clearing the planet, and talking about how hyperspace jumps need to be precisely calculated lest something bad happens. The most damning thing about these? Basic writing 101 that should set professional writers apart from creators of fan fiction, and as far as these films go, we are not even talking about the terrible acting and the flat, boring characters yet, the cringeworthy dialogue or the lack of any proper setup and pay off in the trilogy, except for one scene at the end of The Rise of Skywalker where Rey and Kylo Ren teleport a lightsaber between them.

@xzar_monty looks like first step to hit army infrastructure in Russian territory by western weapons has been approved. UA will be free to hit whatever they deem necessary with F16s. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/22/7443032/ first pilots should finish the complete training around summer.

The Last Jedi, the middle part of the new trilogy, is an interesting comparison to The Empire Strikes back. They are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, one is easily the best Star Wars movie made to date, and a really good film too, while The Last Jedi makes a good case for being the worst Star Wars movie, and it is a terrible film: it has a collection of writing gaffes so jarring that they are breaking suspension of disbelief even in sci-fi as soft as Star Wars, and one scene in particular that was such a bad idea that it retroactively all but ruins the preceeding movies.

"I've never seen [Jaws 4], but by all accounts it's terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it's terrific"

A new build in the year of our lord 2024? Sure why not. Thought i'd post this build that i have for a merc in my current run, as an illustration of the fun you can have with a blackjacket, and charbuilds don't have to be OMNIPOWERFUL SOLO-CAPABLE BEASTS to be a lot of fun. This is a pure support character with lots of flexibility to slot into your party. Warden - blackjacket, animist (cat form) hearth orlan, stats: 9might, 10con, 15dex, 20perception +1 from bg, 17int, 6resolve skills: alchemy : stealth in a 2:1 ratio, prefer investing in stealth at first abilities: Disciplined Barrage, Winter Wind [get Sunbeam for free] Tanglefoot Fast Runner Fighter Stances (use Adventurer stance), Conjure Lesser Blight* [get The Moon's Light for free] Into the Fray Determination** Tactical Barrage, Spreading Plague [get Returning Storm for free] Snake Reflexes Arms Bearer Out of the Fire, Boiling Spray [get Conjure Blight for free] Quick Switch Unstoppable OR Secret of Rime if you have a source of dex resistance from gear Conquerer Stance, Cleansing Wind [get Plague of Insects for free] Rapid Casting Armored Grace Clear Out, Conjure Greater Blight [get Sunlance for free] Quick Summoning Reaping the Whirlwind Uncanny Luck, Weather the Storm [get Lashing Vine for free] Accurate Empower *: respec out of Conjure Lesser Blight once you have two castings of Conjure Blight (so level 13). Choose Determination or Woodskin, whichever one you still need considering the below point. **: respec out of Determination to Woodskin once you get Lance of the Midwood Stag enchanted with Lord of the Forest Weapon slots: I: The Red Hand, enchanted to push II: Lance of the Midwood Stag early to mid to mid-late game (enchanted with Lord of the Forest), Street Sweeper late game or for special fights, or a Morningstar III: Fire in the Hole main hand, Sungrazer or Keeper of the Flame or Sun and Moon IV: Flail or Club mainhand (depends on party), Lethandria's Devotion offhand shield Suggested gear: Helm of the White Void Swift Hunter's Garb enchanted with dex resistance, or Spider Silk Robe Playstyle: basically you fill all sorts of roles, and you are costantly switching weapon slots as the party needs it. basically impossible to AI script effectively, so you better love micromanaging . i highly recomend that you have an easy-to-remember hotkey for switching weapon sets. - You do some disruption and damage by either using Spreading Plague or Tanglefoot in combination with your various push effects (early on it's a handful of spells). Gives you some a minor amount of survivability assist by disrupting melee enemies, extremely effective if you can pair with a party member who can also hobble or immobilize (frees up your spell casts for more push). Use your Red Hand similarly so when you run out of spells. Clear Out also fills this push job in very well late game. - Use Woodskin and Lance for +2 PL uptime whenever you're casting. Make sure you have uptime on Tactical Barrage as well. With blackjacket it's extremely painless to switch out of Lance if you need to shoot someone or if you need to provide some sustain with Lethandria's Devotion or need to debuff enemies with modals, and switch back to Lance for more spellcasts. - use Out of the Fire to save party members from danger, you can also target yourself to escape enemy engagement. Generally not worth the 2 resources to try it on an enemy until your accuracy is really high vs enemy reflex (missing on this feels real bad, very expensive and you probably needed this to save someone's skin) - switch to your shield weapon slot if you need to stop an enemy from engaging a squishier party member. after you lock an enemy down you can generally switch away and they'll stay on you, i like switching to the Red Hand (when the enemy isn't about to make an attack) so I can then push them repeatedly. - The Moon's Light and Cleansing Wind are good heal spells. Make sure you have +PL (tactical barrage, probably lance). Cleansing Wind is a little ornery around altitude changes and obstacles, so be warned. Supplement by switching to your shield slot if you need more sustain. - Higher level, switch to your blunderbuss weapon slot to do Clear Out, yet another push source (make sure blunderbuss modal is on). Sometimes you'll just wreck enemies if enemy density is high enough. Easy to spam if needed. Switch away to a different eapon slot once enemy density is low. I pair with either Sungrazer or Keeper of the Falme for extra aoe impact, but an alternate is Sun and Moon for bonus PL when you get rid of Lance (see below). - Late game, I give the Lance to another caster (they can still get PL from Woodskin) and I switch to Street Sweeper because of increasing need to clear enemy buffs. Also provides nice deflection bonus you can switch in and out of easily (again, Blackjacket is fun here). Depending on party need, you can instead use a morningstar here for switching into fortitude debuffs. - With your shield prefer a flail or club depending on party need. My party makes great use of a flail because i have a cipher who loves beams, so I use a flail. - conjure blight is a bit underrated (community patch makes them more generally usable if you're up for modding). early game the lesser and normal blights are a good way to waste enemy resources and time (toss the blights next to casters or rogue archers to soak up their spells or blinding/finishing blow attacks) and can also help run interference for squishy foes. greater blight later game actually comes with some handy abilities (most of the time) - e.g. sand blights can blind, ice blights can debuff enemy action speed by -40% in a huge part-friendly area, storm blights can swift your entire party while sickening enemies. greater blights are useful enough that even when you get lashing vine, i don't recommend respeccing out of greater blights. - free druid spells work great when other stuff doesn't work, and is why i pick an animist despite lack of other bonuses. against sickness-immune, replace spreading plague w/ returning storm casts. if you don't need the healing, you can drop a plague of insects. if you already have a summon up, drop some sunlances. against frost/push-immunes or dense enemy packs drop a sunbeam. - early game cat form is a nice way to assist with dps. mid-late game i just use cat form for when i need the action speed boost, your normal weapon capability will be a lot stronger for when you need it (most of the time). - i choose stealth as an early skill because stayin stealthed while you buff up and summon blights and then open with a spell cast works real well. significant diminishing returns, hence why i don't go all the way with stealth (and you can't be stealthed for scripted or other fights). - i choose alchemy because this character doesn't need more demands on action economy and with alchemy you can shift some of the action economy needs to outside of combat. Coral drugs for bonus action speed, or Taru Taru Chew for some bonus action speed (+3 dex) but also better healing/offense (+3 might). Early on I use some other potions at the start of a fight (being stealthed makes it easier to do this), later on once alchemy score gets higher and you have conqueror stance i instead supplement drug use with poison. Poison is easier to use when you get two shots/reload from Red Hand, have +20 acc to the weapon attack from arquebus, Conqueror Stance gives you +10 acc to the poison, and Tactical Barrage gives you +1 PL to poison (ordinarily very hard to scale up). Spider Silk Robe suggested as a possible gear choice as a late game way to boost poisons. I always stock a poison that targets will and another that targets fortitude and pay attention to the defenses of whatever target i'm attacking, which is generally either a caster that no one else can effectively dps down yet, or a really bullet-spongey guy in front that will actually be around long enough to suffer the effects of poison or needs to be hit with a powerful poison effect (like stone poison, or storm toxin). having a morningstar or a club can help with poison use, just make sure you don't apply the poison to your morningstar or club. interestingly, i used to stock heal potions on this character, but it turned out i never used them. even with the blackjacket's weaker fighter recovery, by not being a melee tank or not even a full-time off tank (just an occasional one), that drip of healing tends to be wildly sufficient for most purposes, and you can always switch to your shield slot for more defense and sustain. (even without weapon and shield style, lethandria's devotion being a medium shield gives you quite a bit of resilience against especially weapon-based enemies) anyway, this build isn't going to go solo any fights, but has turned out to be a real effective glue for a party. blackjackets are an extremely fun class to try to squeeze into a party or multiclass. having no cost to switch weapon sets enables a lot of neat tricks (not mentioned here: an incredible cheese opportunity with lethandria's devotion, which i'm deliberately not using)

Tax records reveal the lucrative world of covid misinformation Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., received $23.5 million in contributions, grants and other revenue in 2022 alone — eight times what it collected the year before the pandemic began — allowing it to expand its state-based lobbying operations to cover half the country. Another influential anti-vaccine group, Informed Consent Action Network, nearly quadrupled its revenue during that time to about $13.4 million in 2022, giving it the resources to finance lawsuits seeking to roll back vaccine requirements as Americans’ faith in vaccines drops. edit(for paywall material we keep the copy/paste minimal, but the following provides necessary context): As the groups’ coffers grew, so did the salaries of some top executives. Children’s Health Defense paid Kennedy, then chairman and chief legal counsel and now an independent candidate for president, more than $510,000 in 2022, double his 2019 salary, tax records show. Informed Consent Action Network paid Executive Director Del Bigtree $284,000 in 2022, a 22 percent increase from 2019. Bigtree now works as communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Some of the individuals behind the family foundations or trusts that fund the four groups also contributed the legal maximum in personal donations to Kennedy’s presidential bid, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations. not unrelated Six cases of measles confirmed in outbreak at a Florida elementary school Florida surgeon general doesn't urge vaccinations amid measles outbreak for those unaware, measles ain't a childhood disease deserving a shrug and a reflexive qq response. measles is one o' the most readily communicable disease and there is a relative high rate o' hospitalization which accompanies infections. conspiracy theories have real human costs and people getting rich off o' the human cost makes it all the more contemptable. HA! Good Fun!

I think F-16s have enough long range ammunition type, to be able to hit military structures around Rostov, without leaving the Ukrainian airspace. Although I bet, that the first targets would be in Bilhorod People’s Republic. in other news, German Bundestag has voted in favour of providing long range weaponry, to be able to hit targets deep behind the front line. Some people say, that the wording of the bill can be interpreted that even Taurus could be provided to Ukraine. But I bet SPD will find few more reasons, why not to https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/22/7443158/

I ran a quick test of both of your ideas. It looks like Modwyr's Eager Lover enchantment doesn't work, unfortunately. I suspect it is because the Eager Lover action speed buff is a persistent effect that is applied directly to the character (you see the Eager Lover stacks showing up next to the character portrait which stay on the user even after switching off Modwyr). If instead Modwyr's action speed bonus was tied to the weapon itself, I think it would let you infinitely reapply it with Black Jacket weapon swapping like the case with Squid's Grasp. However, Sasha's Singing Scimitar does work like this. Not only that, but the Companion's Prelude upgrade works on the whole party like you speculated! So a Black Jacket / Chanter with this weapon can infinitely reduce recovery for your entire team by pausing and repeatedly weapon swapping. That's a pretty insane feature for that particular multiclass!

Respectfully, I'm not really interested in a debate here either. i was just curious if you'd caught up to reality yet. The media you consume lies to you. As I stated, Russia already effectively won the war, in the summer of 2022, and that's not going to change. How you or I feel about Ukraine or Russia is somewhat irrelevant. I am curious though, if you reject Russian nationalism, why do you embrace Ukrainian nationalism? What is your criteria for accepting one nation's nationalism but rejecting another's? I'm especially curious about this in the context of one nation having been around for the better part of 1000 years (a great many generations) in one form or another, and the other only having a history of about 30 years (only one generation). Aside from Russia, are there any other nations' nationalism that you reject?

Click on this link and add to your Steam library.* *Non-compliance will be punished by the Ur-Quan Hegemony

Effectively it is pretty crazy ! About Outworn Burckler, fast-switching weapon slots with this shield decrease your hotile effects pretty quickly, with a -5 /-10 % on them each time the shield "proc". So if you make an IA behavior with a "permanent" weapon slots switch, as caster I guess you can nearly avoid your recovery time (with spells). Useful with cipher (beguiler especially). Edit : maybe it is also possble to get a similar effect without the Grasp conditions (between enemies) with the same method but with Modwyr (with some stacks of Eager Lover) or the two Preludes from Sasha's Scimitar (for the party in aura with Companion's prelude).

I don't know why this didn't occur to me originally but I just re-tested it and it works exactly the way @Constentin Lévine speculated. You can pause after an action and then keep switching back and forth to Squid's Grasp and it will progressively decrease your recovery bar every time you swap back. You can keep doing it until recovery becomes close to 0s (the bar moves less and less each time but it is technically possible to reduce it down to like 0.0001 millisecond). Honestly, I only figured to swap to Squid's Grasp once when I first tested this and was pretty happy when it worked the one time. The fact that it can recursively reduce recovery is pretty crazy! Sorry, maybe "refreshes" is the wrong word when talking about Magistrate's Cudgel and Black Jacket quick swapping. To be more precise, when the Deliberations buff wears off, you can just swap back to Magistrate's Cudgel and endlessly reactivate the buff by re-engaging an enemy. Like I said previously, the Deliberations buff will persist even after you switch to a different weapon set. One noteworthy thing is that the +1 Penetration from the Deliberations buff is a universal bonus, meaning it can also apply to spells! This and a couple of other spellcasting supplementing weapons like @thelee's choice of Lance of the Midwood Stag in the OP makes Black Jacket a pretty interesting subclass choice for spellcasting multiclasses aside from the more obvious choice of Tactician.

@BruceVC Hi Bruce... it's been awhile. Hope you've been well. The above is from October 2022. First, Wow.. time flies... doesn't seem that long ago that I was last here. I didn't mean to disappear, and I've been thinking about popping back in for awhile, but life has been quite busy. Second, and more importantly. I'm curious... have you realized that Russia has effectively won in Ukraine yet? And that the media that told you that Ukraine ever had a snowball's chance in hell of winning was lying to you? I'm genuinely curious.

One possibility is that one of the files in the export folder of your installation has been corrupted. The previous bug was caused by a single .stringtable file in the german localization (\exported\localized\de\text\conversations\05_neketaka_artisans_district\05_bs_construct.stringtable) being messed up across all installations by default. That specific file is now being skipped, but if another file has gotten corrupted Apotheosis will still stall when exporting. I'm working on fixing the stalling and showing an error message to the player instead (as well as showing the update-available prompt earlier), but meanwhile you could try backing up your override folder and reinstalling deadfire. Really sorry for all this

Do you mean, when you recover to a spell and pause the game, if you click on the weapon set (to switch quickly between them), are you able to reduce nearby 0s your recovery time ? Yes it is cheese but it is just a question to think about an reovery alternative to Outworn Burckler trick. I didnt know that, for the refreshing thing!

thought the same thing when we first saw the galadriel temptation scene from lord of the rings. after thor: ragnarok and pinocchio, am accepting ms. blanchett takes herself less serious than does most o' her fans. ms. blanchett does the vo for spazzatura. HA! Good Fun!

mean while other politician are bringing back child labor and make killing embryo murder

Biden Administration Cancels $1.2 Billion in Student Loan Debt for 150,000 Borrowers | Education News | U.S. News (usnews.com) Aww, yeah! Now lets get that UHC, UBI and UFH rolling! w00tw00t!

camaraderie is busted. as we noted in a previous post, you always got credit for being next to at least one ally, and according to patch notes it seems the talent holder was counting themselves as an ally. now? am not sure how to explain the numbers post patch, but we sure ain't getting the described bonuses. edit: *eye roll* the error for camaraderie looks rather straightforward-- 'stead o' adding +1 for self as was the case pre patch, now the camaraderie math is shorting you by one. four adjacent allies counts as three. one adjacent ally counts as zero. HA! Good Fun!

That isn't quite the problem, since opposition is allowed to exist, it's not North Korea. The opposition is a lot more restricted than in most liberal democracies though, certainly. That problem is more, at least from the western perspective, that there's very little pro western sentiment at any level and the practical Putin alternatives are: Medvedev or similar from United Russia, Zyuganov's ossified non corpse from the commies, Mironov who's basically a CCP style State Capitalist, or Zhiro's ossified actual corpse from the Liberals. The only one of those who isn't stridently revanchist is Mironov, who is a bit more moderately revanchist. The liberal, pro west party that Gorth mentioned (Yabloko) cannot even pass the 5% threshold- less than 2% vote in 2021- and doesn't on western polling data either. While the commies and LDPR are seen as controlled opposition they supported the 2012 protests extensively, hence all the soviet and Russian Imperial flags being waved at them. Navalny wasn't tolerated since he was seen as a western stooge. Certainly his coverage in the west was disproportionate to his highest poll rating from western agencies of around 5% which might, barely have scraped his party into the duma. Both the commies and LDPR regularly get 3-4x that vote each, but are stridently anti west so don't count as opposition. Ultimately, the problem for any western liberal politician in Russia is not Putin, but Yeltsin and, well, the west in general. You're not going to get a nice liberal pro free market pro europe pro west non revanchist out of the margin of error while peddling racial stereotypes, talking about breaking up their country and actively supplying arms and intelligence to kill their countrymen. Obviously I'd agree with that, personally. The disclaimer was more to avoid the- inevitable, as it turned out, ho hum- accusations of them being irrelevant since they aren't politicians while Navalny (/Trump/ Kennedy) are/ were.

What choice? They have all been largely the same term after term, continuing each others wars and starting new one, steering the country in the same general direction.

It is a MYSTARY for sure.

I think weaponized ftl would be pretty cool as a concept, ftl asteroids or drone "suicide" bombers seem very much like something that could be used to bigger effect in scifi. But there's a difference in doing that from the jump and having cool purple hair lady do it out of nowhere with no setup because it does break the internal logic of Star Wars in the same way as having Sailor Alderaan show up and blast the imperial fleet with Alderaan Honeymoon Therapy Kiss. When I think about it, having Laura Dern do a much more conventional suicide bombing would have been a much more cinematic and fulfilling experience, but Disney Star Wars is more about the kewl cgi scenes that look like dog**** strewn together until they've got 2 hours or so. On a side note, it's incredible that in less than a decade Disney has managed to make Star Wars go from being a massive movie behemoth to a much more niche (limited) series thing. I get that covid ****ed production and all that but it's wild to not see Disney even try to **** out a beeg movie every year after The Rise of Skywalker. I'm under no illusions that Star Wars is dead or even can die, but it certainly seems to have receded to the purgatory of Disney+.

Lethal Company. I walked through a doorway and a face-hugger dropped onto my head and killed me, then I came back and immediately got eaten by a forest god right after exiting my ship, then I came back and got zapped to death by electric bees after trying to steal their beehive, then I came back and apparently didn't make enough money for the Company so they they threw me off my own ship into the dark void of space. Recommended.

Thanks a lot for that. Disney has a long history of having excellent craftsmen and technicians, but as far as creativity is concerned, it's not a very good company. J. R. R. Tolkien, for example, was quite scathing in his assessment of the Disney style as early as 1937 (so it's doubly sad that Peter Jackson's take on The Hobbit was so poor, as it could have been made into a pretty good film).

With so much content constantly coming out and no real shared social consciousness on what's "important" to watch so that you can participate in the current zeitgeist, there's not really any pressure to immediately watch anything anyways. Really, the same issue applies to TV, video games, books, and music as well. The Teachers' Lounge (2023). Or, uh... Yeah, let's just stick with the first one. Premise as quoted from Wikipedia: "A teacher [is] tasked with finding out which of her students is responsible for a series of thefts." Normally, I'm all about backhand 'complimenting' both French and German cinema even when I kind of like something, but this was an honest to god great movie from beginning to end, certainly my film of the year for 2023 until/if ever proven elsewise. This film is like...kind of an anti-thriller, insofar that it doesn't really have much of the normal traits/tropes of a thriller (even up to and including the conclusion of the film!), but you will be stressed out watching this kindhearted teacher and her classroom of normal 12-year-olds trying to navigate difficult interpersonal conflict just as if it were a thriller.