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Just got back from a week in Cancun. Now I need a vacation from my vacation.

"I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy, he's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life." - Donald Trump Look, it's obvious to anyone who doesn't have **** for brains that Trump is an awful guy who believes awful **** and has done awful ****. Why bother trying to engage in good faith with those who have none? Just call Trump a pedo and spam the above quote with one of the many pics of him and his good buddy Jeff. Will save much time and frustration.

https://theconversation.com/mali-is-still-unsafe-under-the-military-why-it-hasnt-made-progress-against-rebels-and-terrorists-236252 This is good read from African analysts about the insurgencies in the Sahel and specifically Mali He clarifies the different groups involved and raises how the primary "justification" for the military coups was about security and somehow kicking Frances military out and bringing in Russia\Wagner was going to change this security reality and they raise the various military shortfalls in the current Mali strategy . But also as I mentioned in a previous post it has had no real difference because if you dont improve the social and economic conditions you wont end the insurgencies @Malcador @Mamoulian War @Zoraptor you should find this analysis interesting

How many Croats did you guys drown ?

As an update, I now own a Ukrainian flag.

I believe, somewhere in our hearts, we are what we play. We don’t become angry half orcs slaughtering villagers or bold knights fighting for justice, but those ideas become part of our person. They swirl around in our heads like swarms of butterflies. I have been formed as much by games as I have by the events in my life. I played games as a child. Recess had tag, dodge ball, and kickball. At home, we would play the occasional board game. It wasn’t until my mom received the original grey Dungeons and Dragons boxed set as a gift in 1978 that games became a peculiar focus in my life. I was only nine years old at the time. I didn’t understand every word, but I understood enough to know I wanted to play. Wanting and doing are two different things and my nine-year-old self could not grasp every concept. That didn’t stop me from valiantly trying to construct modules. No one else had much interest and so I would fashion what, to my mind, were elaborate maps and imagined encounters for players who did not exist. Sometimes the idea of the game is as entertaining as the game itself. Sometimes, I think, the idea of the game *is* the game. In 1981, after I returned from Guam, my eldest brother brought over an Atari 800. Magic! Two-word text adventures were simply brilliant! Unlike my experiences living on a tropical island, there were plenty of kids in California who wanted to play games like Dungeons and Dragons and some of my friends would also come over to my house to play computer games. If solitary play fueled my imagination, including other players forced me to put that imagination to practical use in a game setting. Sharing a computer meant one person could be at the keyboard while the other one or two would be forced to stand in back yelling comments or barking orders. As I grew into my teens, Dungeons and Dragons became central to my life. I would hunt out modules to play with friends or, more often, simply read and imagine playing. There wasn’t enough time to play everything. One of my best friends liked to play, but his mother, a staunch evangelical Christian, was convinced that Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic, so we played Gamma World. However, soon after, her pastor proclaimed all RPGs were Satanic and it was difficult for him to play. I loved his mom, and she was very kind to me, but she gently explained that I should enjoy my life on earth because, as a Catholic, I was bound for hell. …And she was certain RPGs corrupted young minds! Lol Alas, I’d started drinking and smoking at 12 years old and much of my time was spent in callow and self-destructive behavior. If only the pull of games had been stronger, it may be that I would have been a much more useful member of society earlier in my life, but I was not. Turns out games hadn’t corrupted me, but I was still corrupted. The fault, as always, was my own. I was 17 when I graduated from high school and immediately joined the United States Navy. Far from being rare, it turned out a lot of my fellow sailors were gamers. I often wonder if I would have had even more chance to game if I’d been stationed on a ship. Not a lot of chance for other things shipboard. I was always land based, however, and mostly overseas. We did have some great computer games. One of my fellows overseas, an army grunt if I remember correctly, would use such creative names as Prelf for his elven priest and Dwight for his dwarven fighter. : Eldar’s shaking his head with a bemused smile icon : As it seems, some of us didn’t have our imaginations enriched by gaming, but what some lacked in imagination they returned back with practicality. Same manual, different lesson. When I returned home, basically bummed out and aimless, I wandered around a lot. I’ve had a variety of jobs ranging, in no particular order, from cashier to human resources for Longs Drugs, meter reader for the gas company, teacher at a parochial school, wedding photography salesman on the Las Vegas Strip, quality assurance for a video game, security guard, and registered nurse with a couple of others I’m probably forgetting. I’m currently a nurse practitioner. I’m done floating around in the ether, so this one is going to be my last. As you can tell, gaming has been more consistent than employment for me. Like a lot of gamers my age, there are particular computer games that were fundamental in my developing tastes. Zork would probably be the first and foremost. Fallout and Baldur’s Gate, of course. It’s now that I invoke Planescape Torment. What words exist that have not been said of PST, good, bad, or somewhere between? I won’t add to them here. It is for me what it is. I love the game. As an aside, my wife loved this T.V. show during the 1990s called The Pretender. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but just this year my wife found it again on some streaming service and we discovered the main character did the voice work for The Nameless One. During all this time, talking about games has been as important as playing them. I’ve spent considerably more time discussing PST than playing it. Same for all of my favorite games. I became part of the online community at Black Isle Studios and eventually, a bit before the place folded, I was a moderator. Sadly, I can’t remember the names of all the people there. One of the moderators at that time left a message on my answering machine, playing his guitar and singing a song. I don’t remember who it was, but I remember the song. That was some point after I’d dropped off the face of the earth for months. Being someone with a number of character flaws, I’m a bit of a wanderer by nature. As they say, I’m constantly pushing people away with one hand and pulling them closer with the other. Eventually, since everything was quickly going to a fire sale at Interplay, I signed up as a community member at Obsidian. I want to address particular Obsidian games since this is the Obsidian board and I’ve loved a number of Obsidian titles. I’m currently hundreds of hours into Grounded, for instance. I’ve spent thousands of hours enjoying Obsidian games, but I can’t go on without owning to a past of which I am ashamed. I don’t know who all is at Obsidian at this time. I sent word asking someone there to help me find work and he arranged to have me do quality assurance on Mask of the Betrayer. I tried my best to do a good job, but I was an utter failure. My personality defects were simply too great to put in quality work. I refuse to submit anything here without giving a nakedly truthful account. Ironically, Mask of the Betrayer was an excellent title. The story, the unfolding of every element, was so well done I always believed it should have been a stand-alone title outside of NWN2. After I worked on Mask of the Betrayer, I was bereft of hope. Not because of my work on MotB, but because it threw into stark relief how lacking in distinction I was as a human. I realized, with my degrees in history and classical studies, with my wife and varied job experiences, that I had done nothing to justify my existence, let alone distinguish it. I fell into abject despair and rarely left my house. I gained weight and eventually weighed over 400lbs. Even so, in all this, I gamed. Games were the last frayed strand of a rope to which I clung, and my grasp was starting to fail. The point of this isn’t my sad state. I have a private blog that serves perfectly well in order to flog myself. My point is that, in a pinch, I had games. Maybe you’ve all heard the story of the man who is falling from a cliff, clenching the roots of a tree. Looming on the cliff above, there is a ferocious tiger. Below him lie jagged rocks in the distance. The man, desperate and despairing, sees a berry on a bush growing from the side of the cliff. He takes the berry and eats it. Savoring the flavor, he thinks to himself, “I have tasted no berry sweeter than this.” Games. I’m clearly in a much better place now. I’m a professional and I help people in my practice. …But games. New Vegas. Pillars of Eternity 2. Mask of the Betrayer. Masterpieces. I have tasted no berries sweeter than these.

Turn on subtitles for English translation.

I got to experience a little bit of Hurricane Debbie last week. That was fun.

Well Zelensky mentioned it, but didn't really seem to catch much notice. Ukraine released some PR that they control 1000 square kilometers, looks all of Sudzha as well based off video of them cruising through the town center.

He was saying and doing racist things long before he went into politics.

This is a direct quote from one of your posts, and the part of it to which I was responding: "I base my views on politics around the policies of parties and outcomes, I dont subscribe to identity politics or personality politics." Because you claimed that you base your views on politics around policies and outcomes, I shared a number of outcomes. You appeared reluctant to discuss those outcomes. Since you would prefer to talk about whether or not Trump is racist, a thing you seemed to be claiming was not your priority, let's do that I guess. Donald Trump was super big on the 'birther' conspiracy theories. A thing that has coincidentally only been targeted at Barack and Kamala, but interestingly not Donald Trump, whose mother was born in Scotland and whose father was born to German immigrants. He continued arguing for these conspiracy theories years after the release of Obama's long form birth certificate. He called Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. After two of his supporters beat a homeless Latino man with a metal pipe, he said '...the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again." He said that the federal judge who presided over the Trump Uni fraud case couldn't do his job because he was "of Mexican heritage." After four black men and one Latino were cleared of rape by way of DNA evidence, he took out a full page ad calling for New York to being back the death penalty to punish them. Trump signed a travel ban from seven Muslin-majority countries. He later claimed that this would protect the USA from terrorists. When he said that, in the fifteen years since the 11 September attacks, not one of the terrorists who killed people in American were from any of the countries he enacted a travel ban against. Also, for some reason he didn't ban travelers from Muslim-majority countries where he held large business interests, like Saudi Arabia or Turkiye. He referred to Elizabeth Warren as 'Pocahantas,' (on a few occasions including during a speech to Native American veterans of WWII) and said that the only reason she claimed Native American heritage was she had 'high cheekbones'. (WTF?) He reportedly said that Haitians "all have AIDS" and Nigerian immigrants would never "go back to their huts." His campaign chose a white nationalist to serve among California's delegates. After a bunch of white supremacists marched and shouted slogans like "The Jews will not replace us," a white nationalist drove his car into some counter protesters and killed one. Trump said that there was both blame and 'very fine people' on both sides. He complained about the removal of Confederate monuments. He pardoned a mayor who was convicted of criminal contempt for racially profiling Latinos. He called NFL players who protested police brutality against black people by kneeling during the anthem 'sons of bitches' and said they should be fired. He retweeted anti-Muslim videos from the deputy leader of a British ultranationalist hate group. He is reported to have referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as '****hole countries', questioned why the USA would want to allow immigrants from those countries, and suggested the US try to get more immigrants from places like Norway. He presided over a policy of separating immigrant children from their parents. He suggested that four congresswomen of colour, all of whom were American citizens and three of whom were born in the USA, go back to their countries. He kept referring to COVID-19 as the 'Chinese virus' even after the World Health Organisation advised him not to because it could give rise to racial profiling. He tweeted a video of his supporter shouting 'white power' at anti-Trump supporters. He called the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' a 'symbol of hate'. He promised to veto a Defence bill, over a provision for removing the names of Confederate generals from military bases. He declined to condemn the Proud Boys, white supremacists who endorse violence. If it's not clear to you that Trump is racist, that does not reflect well on you.

Few units (no clue how many soldiers) have been moved from Kharkiv and Doneck regions already. And IIRC the soldiers from Kharkiv direction have been hunted down while travelling in a column. There are more and more videos of RU soldiers surrendering, allegedly slowly getting towards first thousand. So the most probable situation is, that some commanders in Kursk are again lying through their teeth, that they can still manage it, and the higher command does not move enough soldiers up north yet. UA maintains absolute “radio silence” so we can only guess what news from RU side is truth and what is made more shiny than in reality

I think a neutral Jumping Spider mount would be an amazing addition to the game. I honestly created an account just to suggest it, I'm obsessed with the idea so much

Just for y'all's info I did a few test shootings with some of the weapons for a quick in-game comparison. I shot at a cre_dummy in fast combat with auto-attacks (disadvantage for the Blaster bc of lacking PL bonuses?). For some weapons that rely on on-hit/crit effects and/or AoE I added some more dummies right behind the actual target. SC Ranger at lvl 20 with Marked Prey, Marksman, Gunner, Driving Flight, Prestige and Evasive Roll (for +5 DEX which increases recovery/reload) + Harley and Ring of the Marksman. All weapons legendary and with the supposedly best dps enchantments. The seconds are the time it took to take the initial target down. I averaged three tries each, so it's not very accurate but will still give some hints. The Red Hand: ~10 sec Eccea's Arcane Blaster (One Handed Style + modal + Imbued Ammunition): ~15 secs St. Omaku's Mercy: ~20 secs St. Omaku's Mercy (second dummy behind the target): ~11 secs Essence Interrupter (modal, Metaphysics 20): ~8 secs Aamiina's Legacy (): ~8 secs Scordeo's Trophy (modal) : ~14 secs Scordeo's Trophy (modal, second dummy behind the target) : ~12 secs Thundercrack (modal): ~13 secs Frostseeker: ~9 secs Frostseeker (second dummy behind the target): ~7 secs Frostseeker (third dummy behind the target): ~6 secs Frostseeker (four dummies behind the target): ~6 secs Dragon's Dowry: ~13 secs Watershaper's Focus: ~30 secs Watershaper's Focus (second dummy behind the target): ~22 secs Waterhaper's Focus (third dummy behind the target): ~20 secs Watershaper's Focus (four dummies behind the target, Blast modal) : ~6 secs Current's Rush: ~20 secs Current's Rush (second dummy behind the target): ~10 secs Current's Rush (third dummy behind the target): ~8 secs Current's Rush (four dummies behind the target): ~6 secs Spearcaster (Arcana 20): ~13 secs Fire in the Hole (modal): ~16 secs Fire in the Hole (modal, second dummy behind the target) : ~8 secs Fire in the Hole (modal, third dummy behind the target): ~6 secs Fire in the Hole (modal, four dummies behind the target): ~6 secs Xefa's Empirical Explication (modal): ~13 secs Kitchen Stove (modal, Frantic Relaod): ~9 secs Kitchen Stove (modal, Everything and Anything) : ~11 secs I guess I could push the reloading weapons a little bit more with something like Acina's Tricorn and Sure-Handed Ila and stuff but I wanted to keep it simple.

They always said they'd be back

I had a room in Novac where I had one of each cooking ingredient in the fridge. Meat like skewers etc and a pilot light in the oven. One of each clothing/armour in the wardrobe. One of each weapon in a box. Crafting material in a different container. Books, and household junk in the dresser... I do not see a problem. Then again, I sneak skill books into the chest in my children's bedroom in skyrim, to get them reading.

So far the worst "day" in DS2 23 wipes at Dragon Shrine and Giant Memories I have forgotten about the difficulty spike between Dragon Aerie and Dragon Shrine, so I have changed my covenant to Company of Champions, and the got repeatedly obliterated by the second Dragonkeeper Guard with mace. I was simply not able to avoid his attacks, and he hit like a truck on steroids for my current level. So I had to shamelessly change the covenant back to something, which I can survive, and moved slowly up the stairs. Noticing, that if I summon phantom/shade, all mobs in the next room will run towards you and attack you. Which pulled like 12 or so mobs at once on the final stairs. I never run so fast towards the bonfire After that "incident" I run back to the Ancient Dragon, and talked to him for the Ashen Mist Heart, skipping the fight for now. Probably until I clear all DLCs. After that, I went into the Giant Memories, and man-o-man... I did sucked a lot at the first one. I missed few jumps, then I was pierced by archers, which I have not noticed, and then I got destroyed by mob firing the ballista, which cost me around 60k Souls Ok. I tried to refocus a little bit on what am I doing, and then with just a few more hickups, I arrived at the Giant Lord fight and won on the first attempt with the help of Bernhart of Jugo, for his questline. I have also picked up the Drangleic Helm, and finalized the armour set. Now, I am just thinking about where to go. Either moving to the first DLC, or Darklurker, or grind a little bit for the covenants. Deathcounter: 145

far right violence just trying to massacre a few thousand people environmentalist want to reduce megacorp profitability a far more terrifying crime

Pretty much. 2 things to add - the prisons are at 99% capacity as is and the far right violent protesters at the moment received at most 3 years in prison (I might be wrong here and there have been longer sentences which I have missed). Non-violent environmental protesters received 5 years for trying to sit on a road (this particular group being rather not effective is another matter). I cannot say how much the previous government affected the current situation, with blaming immigrants, people with disabilities, and transgender people for the economic situation in the UK. Musk has been doing irrational things (or inciting violence against vulnerable social groups, if I am being less polite) for quite some time now. I am curious if he is going to face any consequences beyond the advertisers leaving Xitter*. He seems to be trying to sue them, though. *Unfortunately, GARM is hurting not only Musk, but it is another topic.