Bartimaeus

I found it to be a totally mediocre third person shooter with some really lame and hamfisted writing and railroading. It was clearly meant to parody and mock other games of its type, but because I basically have never played other games of its type (other bad modern shooters like Call of Duty, or so I presume), I thought it was quite boring and ridiculous. You may enjoy it more if you play a lot of games in the genre to begin with, though, and want something that mocks it and points out how ridiculous and insane it can be. So I would not recommend it to anybody who does not typically enjoy these types of games - it's not different enough from them in terms of gameplay to be enjoyable, and you probably won't care too much for the gimmick.

Hi, Sauron.

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All hits with the crown of the helmet are now illegal at all times (15 yard penalty)...both for the defense and offense (although it obviously will apply more to the defense...though RBs trucking guys using their helmet is not a completely uncommon sight). We'll see how it's enforced (the previous rules were already pretty harsh, but not consistently enforced), but I'm relatively happy the change was made. Some will say some rather pejorative remarks about the matter and where the league is going, but hits with the helmet are something that should've never been in football to begin with. Hockey players are taught to always keep their head up to protect their head and spine, even if their instinct is to duck (creating stiffness in their neck and spine that leads to much worse injuries) - players will hopefully adjust their techniques...and maybe learn to freaking tackle properly (I'm looking at you, lameduck Packers secondary! Learn to wrap up instead of going for the decapitation and either missing entirely or injuring your bloody self).

You'd either have to not know what Nazi/Roman salute looked like or assume the person in question didn't to draw that comparison. It has a greater resemblance to your generic superhero fist-pump than anything else...just missing the "look up to camera/the sky" action shot.

if it's anything like the games, she should've just brutally murdered them all

Might have had something to do with why it and the quests related to it were mostly cut (although time constraints were said to have been the problem). Seemed like there was meant to be some greater conspiracy involving the various evil groups in the game, including all the different slaver movements (they're freaking everywhere!), the Twisted Rune (who were allied with the Shadow Thieves to some extent...who had slavery connections themselves), the skinners (who make some kind of reference to the Twisted Rune, IIRC), the de'Arnise Keep invasion (who Tor'Gal mentions as having been directed by someone else, someone stronger that he feared - not someone who simply paid him off like the Roenalls might've...although now that I think of it, the Roenalls were involved with the slavers, too! Further, Tor'Gal was working with Umber Hulks, who are...unusual monsters that seemed to always be in mindflayers' company...and also Glacias, who was apparently permanently dominated and helped betray de'Arnise, who was ardently anti-slaver, IIRC), and possibly the mindflayer infestation in the sewers (along with the Hidden and the Jysstev nobles...and there's a note that mentions them soon taking control of the entire..., but doesn't specify what)...who were also possibly connected to Firkraag but at the very least Tazok. Whatever it was supposed to be never fully apparated, though. (e): I'm reading elsewhere that it even goes back to Durlag's Tower, where it was said that the doppelgangers were directed by the mindflayers as well. And with that connection, suddenly you have to wonder about the Iron Throne and Sarevok who also had doppelgangers in their employ...and Tazok, who held the key to the mindflayers' secret layer. FURTHER furthermore, if Sarevok was involved with the mindflayers, suddenly we have a connection back to Firkraag again - Firkraag was seeking revenge against Gorion for unspecified actions during his Harper days, and what do you know, the first thing that happens in BG1 is that Sarevok tears Gorion to shreds. Egads, the connections are everywhere! There are even connections to Irenicus and the Githyanki (Irenicus had part of the Silver Sword...and also, the Githyanki were in the Drow City at the time you and Irenicus go into the Underdark, while the Matron Mother's daughter is also kidnapped by the mindflayers? So many connections...): https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/4030/the-great-shadows-of-amn-conspiracy/p1 Out of curiosity, I started reading about the origin of the mindflayers in the D&D cosmology. It seems like there's no concrete explanation for their origin. One explanation is that they're from the "Far Realm", an incomprehensible alien realm that's considered to be outside the normal cosmological boundaries that's home to hyperintelligent cosmological alien horrors. Another explanation is that they're a group of space and time travelers that were facing annihilation at the end of time, and so traveled back to try to make their home in the past. Whichever way you look at it, it seems as though they're essentially an alien race...and they're...secretly trying to seize control? So it's basically an X-Files-esque alien invasion, I guess. Huh. Goes well with the slavery elements.

Let's see if I can remember them all...one behind the painting in the inn at the Gates district, the Twisted Rune encounter in the random door in the Bridge district that I think has a Lich (or something equivalent to one), the Docks house with Kangaxx in it, the Bridge house with a Kangaxx guardian in it, the Sewers Kangaxx guardian...I think there's also a couple of spots that a Lich can spawn if you're high level enough, like the Temple of Amaunator (where you fight the Shade Lord) and the undead section of the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, too.

didn't Wolfowitz say he was voting for Hillary

If he's like most other Republicans, I imagine he's somewhere between quietly and loudly for it.

The opposite, actually. He has been pro-Russia over at least the last few years.

A few weeks ago: "Trump calls report of looming McMaster exit 'fake news,' aide says": https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/01/white-house-hr-mcmaster-exit-432698

...Doesn't really seem like something a bank should be involved with. Well...sort of. Primaries are where we're supposed to select our candidates that are supposed to better represent our interests, but we're notoriously bad at bothering with them. With people never bothering to actually vote in the primaries, it's not a surprise that the candidates are often terrible.

In related news, the CLOUD Act recently became part of Congress' omnibus spending bill. It allows law enforcement to demand data from sites like Google and Facebook without needing a warrant. Sounds terribly unconstitutionally, but they're sticking it in there anyways.

Would not recommend Nier: Automata on PC. It has never been patched since release, and there are many who literally cannot play it (although it seems rather random as to what exactly causes that to be). Square-Enix are a bunch of scumbags for pulling that crap.

Thanks for the info. Why nvidia and Intel always gotta be pulling underhanded crap like this on poor little AMD? :|

Yikes at the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica connection. Those revelations just aired today, and the British police are raiding their offices right now.

That's weird. I had to make sure that wasn't the same picture that I took that I have saved on my dropbox when I played through it a few months ago. Nope, mine's higher quality, but close, though!

Trump doubles down, calling McCabe's contemporary memos that detailed his interactions with Trump "fake", along with Comey's: https://theweek.com/speedreads/761644/trump-accuses-mccabe-fabricating-memos-gave-mueller-call-fake-memos

Constitutional crisis indeed. I don't want a constitutional crisis of this magnitude occurring under a seemingly complicit Republican Congress with a president that has gone on the record to say that we should try having a "president-for-life" like China. I don't think it'll go the way we'd like. Our institutions only hold up as much as the separate parts want them to hold up.

Sure. The problem, as I understand it, is what do you do when the president utterly refuses to submit to or even acknowledge subpoena or any other court proceedings? Note that even your article mentions that other presidents voluntarily submitted in order to prevent a constitutional crisis - I seriously doubt that Trump will be concerned with such, given that he hasn't been concerned with...well, anything related to due process or any semblance of justice. Does the court have the power to physically compel the president to submit? I was under the impression that only Congress has the ability to do something like that...and given that our Republican Congress has refused to protect/appoint Mueller as their special prosecutor to make Trump unable to fire him, I'm not exactly too confident that they'll try to punish him for anything short of starting a nuclear holocaust.

No, Mueller giving them the questions at all to begin with so that they could prepare without Trump resorting to dementia-induced word salad is the negotiation tactic. If he refuses to give a deposition, there's not much Mueller can do about it except report it to Congress...so it's part of the negotiation to try to get him to actually submit to one at all.

Showing them the questions he wants to ask doesn't seem like a good idea because then they'll try to coach Trump on the answers. Then again, they don't know what he does know, or doesn't know for that matter. They probably have a good idea, sure, but still. IIRC, his lawyer previously implied that Trump would not submit to being deposed (...in the sense of coming in to answer questions - I still have hope that the other sense of the word is possible, ), so I think it's a sort of negotiation tactic to let him prepare his answers. The fact that he and his lawyer had a meltdown after seeing them probably suggests that their level of preparedness won't help him avoid incriminating himself in some manner - given the vast amounts of obstruction of justice that he's posted on Twitter for all to see (and now witness tampering), it wouldn't exactly be a surprise. I would assume the questions gave them an idea of where Mueller plans to go with the probe, whether it's collusion or simply the obstruction of justice-related charges.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/378980-mueller-gives-trumps-legal-team-questions-for-potential-interview Ah. Now we know why Trump and his lawyer (as Trump said the probe should've never been started today, so it's no longer just the words of his lawyer) are freaking out.