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Russia signed a pact with North Korea, about defending each other and supplying each other with weapons. South Korea has responded, that they will be reconsidering arming Ukraine, which again lead Russia to spew empty threats. Oh and Russia has raised taxes by few hundred percent, in a historically unprecedented move.

The Summer Sale has started.

well i don't know anyone arguing that, everyone hating on EVs is complaining about batteries...

Should just link to Tim directly.

And a first Giveaway of the Summer Sale: https://www.gog.com/en/game/shadows_awakening

Exactly

According to satellite footage, DPRK have available 5 millions artillery shells for Russia. And Kin Jong-Un is IMHO the only person insane enough to really go all in for the ability to build their own nukes. We’ll see how serious pickle it is, as soon as South Korea decides to give their response to the situation escalating on the Korean Peninsula. We might be currently in a world tension similar to the Cuban Crisis. Depending on what has Putin promised to Kim.

I've tried it a few times, but to be honest, as nice as crispy duck skin is, I prefer it with a bit more duck meat on it edit: in years past, I usually had Chinese food together with a Tawanese friend of mine when either living in or visiting Melbourne. He knew the decent places and often recommended what he thought looked nice. Not so much duck as beef and noodle combos with various sauces and seasonings. edit2: ...and dumplings, lots of dumplings!

Nope. Ancestor's Memory isn't self target. (Anyway, I was speaking about Anscestor's Memory helping recast Unbending, so the real answer is Psyblade doesn't work. Chanter class needs no help to get infinite ressource.)

https://en.thebell.io/the-hidden-reasons-behind-russias-mega-tax-rises/ Yes I see that, another consequence of Western sanctions on the Russian economy and the cost of the war The tax changes reflect a wholesale change in Russia’s philosophy when it comes to fiscal policy, said Buklemishev. For the last 20 years, the financial orthodoxy and core ideology was that Russia saved in the good years and then spent what it accumulated during rainy days or on grand investment projects. But this approach no longer holds up, because it is impossible to rely on being able to quickly raise funds to cover shortfalls without access to the Western financial market and convertible currencies. That means Russia can only fund planned new expenses by raising taxes. Buklemishev is skeptical of whether the Chinese yuan, which has become a vital part of the Russian financial system since the invasion of Ukraine, can fill the gap. “First, this is not a convertible currency. Second, it's hard work placing yuan in liquid instruments that generate normal returns. Third, we don’t know what will happen with the yuan as a currency over any longer-term perspective, because it is managed slightly differently from any other currency in which we have invested,” he said.

What? You have never eaten famous duck dishes like Peking Duck? Please do me a favour, take your wife out this weekend to a local Chinese restaurant and order Peking Duck to share. Its a great experience with pancakes and hoisin sauce and you make your own little pancake meals. Its a fantastic social meal like a Cheese Fondue Here are 5 restaurants in Chicago that serve Peking Duck (hopefully they still open ) https://stevedolinsky.com/top-5-peking-ducks-in-chicago

My parents are huge fans of Fleetwood Mac, and I don't doubt I've heard all of their songs atleast a hundred times.

first time i notice this dialogue option

Not playing Guild Wars 2 so much these days, but I think I might have taken some screenshots from when the previous expansion came out (the "Cantha" continent). Being no expert in Asian aesthetics, I suspect it's very much Korean inspired (the parent company of ArenaNet being South Korean)... it's not competing with state of the art FPS single player games, but I think for an MMO, the visuals are actually pretty decent

Ghost Song The game is gorgeous. An early boss. Well, this I did not expect at that point. I realised only by late-game that these were the escape pods. The secret merchant probably was not wrong. The return runs were rather fun. Persuasion failed, I suppose. The first attempt did not go well - the boss' hitbox was ridiculously large (included the flail while just standing still and not attacking), while my melee weapon had a very limited range. Some lore spoilers. Happens. Tree stumps are good listeners, though. At least, she is not attacking anymore. The purple balls were not hostile and did not cause contact damage. One of the tankiest bosses. Took quite some time. Would high-five the murder bot at that point. End-game.

There is no Light The game was insulting me. Ironically, the difficulty does not seem to affect the bosses. An escort side quest. Just as planned. The second boss. It took me several tries to notice that he was killing me by counter-attacking. The MC continues being unlucky in the cut-scenes. I guess, domestic violence is not unrealistic, but kind of dark for a passing line. Then again, the setting seems to be grimdark. Not a clue what it was or why it was there already dead. Reminds of WH40K. The Messiah. The butterfly lied - the children were in a no-combat zone. Speaking of, Samedi feels less irritating than Issun was, which might be mostly because he appears less frequently. Still would have preferred him being quiet, but there are worse chatty sidekicks.

There is no Light I suppose, the sexism is to indicate that they are safe to kill. I think, the setting is post-apocalyptic. The protagonist has a rather interesting manner of holding swords. It is nice that the story and the gameplay fit well together. The first boss. Aspire: Ina's Tale Islets The final island: Did the timed challenge. Sheepo (The screenshots cover the full game). Kidnapping the eggs of local population on the behalf of an intergalactic organisation. Most locals don't care, the relatives of the eggs, do, though. Late-game bosses and ending. Fallout 4 Far Harbor, ending: Xanadu Next

What.. what year is it?

Not sure, if anyone here likes racing much, but this week, I got one of the most intense races in a long time. Very balanced field, where between 7th and my 21st position in qualification was less than 1 second difference Start was pretty solid, gained a little bit, but made a big mistake at the end of the first lap and dropped down to 26th place. After that I have started my slow progress to get up to 11th position, where I have experienced few "near-miss" situations, where the car right in front of me or right behind me was taken out. At the end, I got to position 10, as the guy right in front of me, has been penalized after the race by stewards I watched it today again and could not believe how lucky I got few times, but still crazy good race that was

At least, it happens within the refund window and you pretty often stab your family members in AC, if I remember correctly. --- Fallout 4 Probably should have checked what would happen if I just went to the statue's location, without drinking from the suspicious spring. The puzzle was not exactly difficult, but moving the floating camera/PC around was. The blocks could stand on the thin air if at least one side was touching another block, which led to some "creative" ideas on my part, such as using only 2 blocks to cross gaps instead of building actual bridges. Which backfired when I miscalculated a jump. The wolves having packs means that they are still social beings and humans labelling them "ferocious" and "bloodthirsty" is not exactly new. Well, investing in Charisma occasionally pays off. I sympathise with his priorities. --- A Short Hike The game is really pretty, but I have not taken many screenshots.

Fallout 4 Sometimes, the visual style looks very nice. Should not have kept clicking on the skill check. Thought it was a bugged out bush. A Short Hike The game is beautiful. I think, I got on Itch.io a couple of years back?

I have utterly no clue what I'm doing, but apparently it'll still look kinda pretty. Also, this is just the loading screen, but I rather liked it.

The game may not be pretty, but it allowed me to paint my ship poison green to make my opponents' eyes bleed. Aesthetic warfare.

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Postponed the new playthrough indefinitely and went to kill the offline Ur-Dragon with my max level PC and without any preparation or memory how to play. Posting under the spoiler tag, because the game is being played, and seeing and fighting the Ur-Dragon for the first time is quite exciting. Less so for the 16th, but still fun.

Patron - "My CPU might tank at 2000 total population." I was wrong. It's getting close to 3k now with close to half of the map covered and if fully zoomed out it's at 28-30fps (still very playable, a little sluggish if scrolling quickly), at middleish zoom it's 45-50fps. So maybe at ... 4.5-5K then? I can't get any good pictures of whole thing tho because even with photomode, the draw distance is so limited that if you fly upward to try to include more than 1/4 of current spread, everything undraws/disappears. Should be noted that I use a small Steam workshop mod that massively increases warehouse storage. Otherwise you'd end up covering half the map just with stupid warehouses. Pfft. The gold mines/mints are broken if you make tons of them - at this point I could delete all the farms for more houses and just buy all food and stuff.

The new Momodora looks gorgeous. I really like the colour design. (If there are no posts made here in the next few hours, I will add my Stray Blade screenshots to this post). Lore entries: Bosses: The 2D art looks very nice. Not quite "Ring two bells, gather four Lord Souls", but close. That's exactly what we have been doing. Got the full assassin-like armour and dual daggers. The daggers did not quite work with the combat system. The halberd, though, was a marvel. Found one Green faction mini-boss in the Blue faction area. Ironically, these regular foes felt more challenging than the bosses. Too few too short openings. Here my FPS dropped to 20. Which is odd, considering the number of polygons I was seeing. This can be said about pretty much any old ruins.

Seriously, you people could have warned me that this was THAT kind of game

I've been working my charms on Wilhelmina and, judging by how she's blushing, it certainly seems to be paying off: She's perhaps the only character you can romance in the game, the only one I know of for sure. You can befriend just about anybody and get them to really like you and they will act differently toward you, greet you differently, instead of a neutral generic greeting they may say something like "Hey, great seeing you again, I hope you're doing well." It's not a huge deal but I love that kind of reactivity in games. They'll even sometimes give you gifts and if they're shopkeepers they'll give you a discount. You can also go to the brothel and hook up with one of the ladies or gentlemen of the night there and get a really short sexy time cutscene. It will cost you 20K gold, though, so that better be some incredible sex for that kind of money. With Wilhelmina you can have a full-fledged romance, though. There's an entire quest chain for it. I don't know what the quest chain involves I only read up on it as far as knowing when to start the quest chain because there is a narrow window of "time" (in between a couple of specific main story missions) in the game when you can initiate the romance, so once I got that information I stopped reading to avoid spoilers. I haven't quite reached that point yet because I've been doing a lot of side content, but I'm close and in the meantime I worked my charms on her to get her affinity up to maximum. The blushing is this game's indicator of maximum affinity. At the end of the quest chain is presumably some hot steamy sex, eat your heart out @BruceVC

sorry Hulrun, I'm chaotic now xD

Patron was never a graphic showcase, especially if you do the photomode zoom in close up views/textures, ew. But it has improved visually a bit, I think animations and some added details. Although, straight-down to try and show a whole huge area just looks like every other grid-based Banished clone. Tons of houses. >.> Apparently it takes a lot to "feed, clothe, and luxuriate" ... 300 adults/youth/children - with some excess to sell. There's more farms not in pic. When I zoomed into a town one winter, I noticed someone built a snowman. Some Xmas trees around here and there too, heh.

Itorah The MC's facial expressions are excellent. Ending spoilers.