xzar_monty

You can't say that it isn't entirely in line with a host of other decisions Russia's made this year, though.

I hate this, btw. I think Owlcat just blatantly cheats. There is no way you can prepare for this kind of stuff unless you metagame.

Someone who emphasizes words by using the unholy trinity of all caps, italics and bold is neither cool-headed nor, almost certainly, worth reading. Honestly, I couldn't get past that.

Hmm. This tallies with my experience. I am fairly good but certainly not great. I would never laugh at 115 ac, for instance. Anyway, I was playing on Core. There were difficulties, sure. But I managed. Until I ran into Playful Darkness. I mean, sheesh. That one encounter taught me that I should have learned an awful lot of exploits I'd had no idea about before. (I turned the difficulty way down, in the end, and then up again, after that encounter.)

@Gorth: Btw, when it comes to the atrocities, I'm almost certain that it is also hormonal, purely animalistic biology. We can never test this, though, but I am honestly quite convinced that the combination of extreme fear and extreme adrenaline rushes wreaks havoc on the human bodymind. This leads to terrible things -- all armies are terrible, but some armies are more terrible than others, so discipline does matter, too, no question. And perhaps an organism facing imminent death for extended periods of time becomes overwhelmed with an urge to procreate, hence all the raping? Something like that. Conditions of war cannot really be experienced anywhere else. As has been noted, there is no such thing as getting used to combat. Physical and mental well-being starts to deteriorate fairly quickly, and after about 4 months, a person is toast, in terms of effectiveness. I recall that fighter pilots are really quite done after coming home from 90 minutes in the air, if they properly engage (but I may remember this somewhat wrong) and need serious rest. Now, this hormonal / evolutionary / biological perspective is an explanation, and a partial one at that. Please don't anyone regard it as a justification. There is none.

I am not going to comment on the matter after this, because it's not worth it, but it's good for you to know that you cannot call her a "harlot" unless you specifically mean that she gives sex in exchange for money (or is otherwise promiscuous in a very sexual sense). So you are the one in the wrong here unless you have some very private information that others don't have. The word harlot does not have the more general and moral meanings that the word prostitute has. If you call someone a harlot, you refer to sex.

A friend of mine is a professor of linguistics but as it is specifically Slavic linguistics, he's fairly well aware of what's happening in Russia. He has just pointed out that unlike all other former colonial powers, Russia is still one and still going strong. Look at this: Yakutia (1 million inhabitants) has been ordered to mobilise 15 000 more people, as has Dagestan (3 mil). People from the Komi republic (just under 1 mil) report that nearly all men from rural villages have been ordered to mobilise, only children and the elderly are exempt. Conversely, Nizni Novgorod (4 million) and Sverdlovski (4.3 mil) need to mobilise less than 10 000 more people -- but these are Russian areas, and not even poor Russian areas. Think of "Siberia" as "Africa", a relatively sparsely populated area from which people other than Russians are mobilised in numbers that are out of proportion to how Russians themselves are mobilised. It is the job of the ethnic minorities to die for the Slavs.

Yes, precisely, these are rather bitter points. It doesn't feel good to realize that the endemic Russian corruption, ineptitude, inefficiency, poor training, abysmal morale, terrible leadership and all the rest of it are good things. Ukraine would be long gone if it wasn't for all that.

To a considerable extent this is quite true, as sad as it is. However, despite the hypocrisy it is much better that "The West" does respond to Putin with the vehemence that it has responded with; the alternative would be much worse. It doesn't invalidate your point, of course, but I would argue that it adds a dimension to it. Supposing that the conflict goes "well" for "The West" (Putin's loss without a nuclear disaster, say), it will be interesting to see whether there'll be wholesale political changes in relation to China. The discussion about that has started in some Nordic countries, at least -- which, of course, in global terms, is not much. Two interesting video clips this morning, neither of which I'll post because of their violent nature. In the first one, a Russian draft commissioner is shot from very close distance in the Irkutsk Oblast, so individual opposition to the mobilisation can be quite decisive. The second one is yet another example of the brutality of the Russian army towards its members: a drone drops an explosive on four walking soldiers. It ends very badly for at least one of them, but my point is related to the fact that none of them appear to give a toss about any of the others, it's every man for himself. This goes against everything I have ever learned and seen about every other army in the world. And this has been demonstrated in video after video, when it comes to the Russian army, and that's why it appears more like an armed mob than a proper army. Frankly, I find it absolutely astonishing: how is it possible that there is apparently no camaraderie and no regard for the life of your fellow soldiers?

I don't know, I made no claim either way, and simply pointed out that I don't know if the information was reliable. I regard your comment as confirmation that the info is true, which is good, so thanks for that.

Not sure if this is reliable. But if indeed not even Serbia will recognize Russia's sham referendums, it is good news.

I wonder if it's possible that @Gorthhas found the tower without doing some necessary part of the quest beforehand, hence the dragon is not there. Just an idea. Otherwise it definitely looks like a bug, and not a minor one, either.

Sounds like a bug to me! Approaching that tower should trigger a series of scripted events (involving skill checks), and you only enter the tower after them. Looks very weird. I wonder if someone else can shed light on this.

Another one has fallen from a height. https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-717751

Must be great for morale, that! Also, Putin is making a whole lot of sense with this: “After the Kiev regime actually publicly refused a peaceful solution to the Donbas problem today and, moreover, announced its claim to nuclear weapons, it became absolutely clear that a new next large-scale offensive in the Donbas, as it had already happened twice before, was inevitable.”

Interesting commentary on the speech from a former Nordic military intelligence boss: No declaration of war because of the risks: a special operation can always be discontinued, whereas a war must be won or lost, and the failure would be on Putin. Putin is essentially threatening the west with nuclear weapons, hoping it will weaken the resolve to aid Ukraine (unlikely to work, according to this former boss). The Russian leadership appears to be in a state of panic, fearing it will lose the Luhansk oblast next. The newly-imposed punishments on refusal to serve etc. will not improve Russian morale; the contrary is more likely. Russia is not even capable of full mobilization, because neither the system nor the equipment is there -- not even enough trainers for the new recruits. Russia is not capable of increasing arms productions in a big way because it lacks materials, components and capable workers. The partial mobilization will not affect the situation on the front in the next months. The new reserves will likely be sent to Donbas to try to stop the Ukrainian offensive.

So it's partial mobilization, then.

Good! What about the memory, then? Eidetic?

I can't remember the level where it happened, but as I'm playing an Azata, my skill points are extraordinary and it has been a really long while since I failed any checks (unless there were some hidden ones that I didn't even get to see).

In one sense, the delay is obviously meaningless (or can be; depends on the cause). But in another, it's yet another example of poor planning and poor execution. Or just maybe making it up as he goes along. Ahem. Just realized that "poor execution" up there. Sorry.

This can get quite interesting. Contrary to most other fascist states, Russia has made a concentrated effort to DEmobilize its citizens, not mobilize them, and it has been relatively successful in this: "the rulers" and "the people" exist in two different realms altogether, and these realms almost never meet (everyone knows there have been no real elections for quite some time, for instance, so "the people" don't even affect "the rulers" via that mechanism). Thus, a significant proportion of the population has been able to live thinking that the war in Ukraine has nothing to do with them. A mobilization will change this dynamic immediately.

I haven't been to Enigma (heck, I don't even know where it is and how to get there) but I've heard it's not fun. As for the puzzles in general, clearly they're not well planned.

Yeah, at that point I was also all into it! Lemme know how it goes after the blood trails, I'm really quite interested -- especially if you're playing on Core or higher.

Heck. I just came back from Iz where I apparently went too soon for one particular goal which resulted in two deaths I wasn't looking forward to, but I'm all right with that. Anyway, I thought I'd be in the endgame at this point, but apparently not. This game drags on far, far longer than it has any right to. It took me months to gather the energy to try to further my game from where it was, and now the energy's gone again. Anyone else experienced this? It was good fun in Acts 1, 2 and 3. ACt 4 was a bit of a bore at times, because the architecture kept changing in unpleasant ways and some of the encounters were just ridiculous, but now it's getting seriously unfun. Which is not good for a game, if you ask me.

I am not a fan of Navalny, but here's his (literal) insider's look on the question of recruiting people from Russian jails. Interesting.