Bartimaeus

Donald J. Trump has been federally indicted seven times for criminal mishandling of classified documents.

Hey, not all of us are corporate scum-suckers.

It's officially spring here where I live. It took a little longer than you'd expect, but my official "how do I know it's spring" test is when I start to notice all the creepy crawlies start to come out of the woodworks...followed very shortly by my loyal army of spiders working night and day to keep them eternally at bay. We're at war, babies and gentlemen - there'll be board and food aplenty for every spider that faithfully fights for our glorious Bartislandia! The problem usually stops in like a week, presumably because the spiders are able to settle in and hold the front lines for the rest of spring and summer. I have a friend that installed a bird house a few years ago, and she showed me pictures of her bird house already having an entire freaking family with babies and everything in it. Frankly, I really don't know much about the mating and birth cycles of birds, but it seems a bit early in the season to me - I suppose it leaves plenty of time for other families to use it over the summer, though.

Does anyone know of any decent PCIE NVME M.2 adapters with preferably 2 Gen 4 slots? I guess being Gen 4 isn't that big of a deal, though. I know these things exist, but most I'm seeing are brandless...or a brand I've never even vaguely heard of. The computer it's for doesn't have a GPU, so it's okay if it's x16-sized.

2D animation was very difficult and expensive to make and it meant studios necessarily had to limit animation motion and camera movement for both sanity and budgetary reasons, which perhaps had the unintended effect of slowing down and simplifying everything in comparison to what you can do with 3D animation. You can't have a million things on screen all moving at once, pans will tend to be picturesque, and any kind of active rotation you want to do will be very limited and reserved for only very special visual moments. I mention all of this because Pixar's Turning Red (and many other 3D animated films of especially the last ten years) feels aggressive with its visuals, and it often hurts my brain to watch. I like the premise, the themes should theoretically be right up my alley, but actually watching it makes me just want to cover my eyes and ask the characters to just slow down and stop yelling/screaming/spazzing out so much. In other words, I think I am old. Maybe not of body, but definitely of mind.

Okay, good, because that sewer dude wasn't that tough. I wasn't sure if he was a werewolf or just a really ugly nosferatu. The other guy, the guy I met in the diner that you're not supposed to attack but I did, killed me in like two hits. I suspect he's the one you're talking about, and if I have to fight that guy, even much later, it's prooobably gonna be pretty trough.

Perfection. Ignore that I stripped the quote of the image, it means nothing. If VtMB is any indication, nightclubs in real life would probably look very silly if they didn't have A. the insane lights that half-blind everybody, and B. enough people to make it look like stuff is actually going on. As it is, 5-10 people flailing around in static lighting is just...not quite my idea of a lively nightlife, . On the other hand, if other games are any indication, trying to move around in locations that are way too crowded is really annoying, so it's probably for the best even if it's completely unimpressive visually. This game came out in two thousand freaking four, I really can't complain too much about that - nearly 20 years ago! As for the general vibe of the game...yeah, I mean, I'd accept just having more options at this point. When the literal prostitutes in the game are dressed less outrageously than you are and you can't really do anything about it, I think there's a problem. They have this corset, miniskirt, and nylon stockings that look rather modest (and certainly more stylish) in comparison to what I have - exactly who's prostituting who here, anyways? At least their clothes cover their butts! In other news, I found the werewolf. It was extremely anticlimactic: after having done a couple of Bad Things(TM) recently, my humanity is down to 8/10, and the moment the fight started, my character went into a frenzy for the very first time and literally just about instantly melted the werewolf. I couldn't do anything before he died, and I wasn't even sure what was happening before it was over. It was pretty weird, especially since you only start out with 7/10 in the beginning of the game and I hadn't experienced a frenzy up until now. I ended up reloading to give it a more honest try and found out that the Mac-10 is the worst gun in the history of guns, maybe ever, because the recoil is...well, possibly fairly realistic for a tiny untrained woman trying to shoot it at a werewolf a few feet away from her while backpedalling. Meanwhile, somehow every bullet from Fat Larry's was somehow able to hit me... Ended up going back to my katana and doing some hit-and-run stuff, which took care of it after a couple of tries. Good enough. And this werewolf was not the guy from the diner whom I mentioned earlier, and whom I presume I will meet somewhere else down the line.

it took longer than expected, but stumpy wins the race go nuggets but i wouldn't be that upset if miami lost either

Luckily, I just checked Gamer's Nexus earlier this morning, otherwise I wouldn't have the foggiest clue what you're talking about. Don't think most people should basically ever watch keynotes, we aren't usually the target audience anyways, so of course it's going to come across as total nonsense. It doesn't seem like this one was hardly gaming-focused at all.

Yeah, I saw the Nosferatus...boy, that is some rough stuff. As for the Ventrues, I would say classy goth office drones, which I think is great. But I generally like severe/muted colors and understated design, and I usually think the less skin, the better. To each their own. I definitely did not pick the right clan for that, .

Look, I get that Malkavians are insane, but what the hell? Go be insane in some other style, please. Ventrues definitely got the best options, both male and female IMO.

Yeah, that was what I was talking about when I said "the next armor upgrade somehow manages to look even worse". If you're going to do skimpy, at least have a little class or try to make it cute. Not even the most beautiful woman in the world could possibly pull off this flaming hot garbage. Wretched stuff. Well, cheerleader it is!

From "Light Clothing"... ...to "Heavy Clothing"... Oh, of course, because I didn't already look like a streetwalker in the cheerleader outfit, now I'm straight up tasteless too! I'm gonna ice that Fat Larry (note: that is his actual name) bastard that sold me this garbage. And I just checked, the next armor upgrade somehow manages to look even worse...I knew I should've been a Ventrue: all her clothing options are dope (especially the "Light Leather" armor), while it looks like I'm going to have to stick with this skimpy cheerleader outfit the entire stinking game. Why did being insane have to mean not being able to wear any decent clothing - maybe she has sensory issues and can't handle it...or maybe she just straight up doesn't care what she wears or even mind being scammed? Well, I do, so I guess I wasn't cut out to be a Malkavian after all. Bah humbug!

Those tend to be love or hate games for me. Mostly hate, if Gris/Inside/Limbo are any indication. If your gameplay is going to be totally brainless, you better hit on just about everything else. VtMB: I've now made it to Downtown, and I now know who Nines is. I'm currently helping a cannibal vampire lady eat a very obnoxious reporter. There weren't many opportunities to meaningfully lose Humanity in the first hub of the game (indeed, I had left Santa Monica literally maxed out on Humanity), but I see we're starting out strong here.

I didn't! The whole idea did not really appeal to or strike me at all, which is why I didn't mention it in my post when I talked about this film a couple of years ago. Perhaps because I've been related several near-death and out-of-body experiences - including one from somebody younger who did 'die' but was successfully resuscitated - and have long accepted that the sputtering gasps of a chemically unbalanced and/or dying brain are simply not a reliable source for being able to tell what lies beyond. So for Martyrs, that really just left the murder, mental illness, and torture as a way of appealing to me, and I have to say, I was not really the biggest fan, . I also did not read what the creator of the film thought it was about, .

In this particular case, it's actually a fairly wholesome and cute film made by talented and creative people with good ideas and something to say - it just happens to be filled to the brim with some of the weirdest depictions of war, murder, and genocide that I've seen. And also, the picture quality is horrible...which is kind of sad for something so neat like this film.

Twilight of the Cockroaches (1987). Naomi was nineteen in cockroach years, just coming into the prime of her life. RIP. Okay, real talk, this is an hour and 45 minute-long live-action/anime hybrid made by Madhouse of all people. The quality of the film is like...someone made a recording from a LaserDisc onto a VHS and then made a recording from that onto a DVD, and I'm watching straight from the full DVD (hence the small pillarboxes in the .gif). Half of the time, I can't really make out what I'm looking at too well. Don't upset the rabbit. The film is kind of like...umm, actually, not quite like anything I've really ever seen before. Basically, Naomi lives in a cockroach colony inside a guy's apartment who is cool with them living there. Previously, they had been in a constant state of war with the previous occupant of the apartment who the cockroaches had successfully driven out, so it has been a grand three years of peace and prosperity. When a cockroach from a different 'war zone' arrives, he is a welcome reminder to the colony of what life at war is like, and they celebrate their good fortune and promise to always be neat and friendly neighbors - love begets love and all that. After a brief respite, the outsider must return home...and Naomi suddenly feels compelled to follow him into the outside world. What she sees out there...is not pretty. Technically, I started this a couple of years ago...and maybe three other times between then and now, and I kept getting like a minute in and going "what the hell is this and why do I have it...man, I can't deal with this right now, maybe some other time". Anyways, it's basically A Bug's Life, except not really even a tiny bit at all like A Bug's Life. Highly recommended to everyone - this is clearly a film that will have general and universal appeal, as the above images demonstrate. Actually, I kind of feel like I didn't take enough images/gifs: I ain't never seen anything quite like this before, and I suspect I never will again...and I'm thinking nobody here ever will either, .

well, that's awkward for people with zen 2/3 boards with only pcie 3.0 who just want a "mid-end" GPU upgrade i use this specific example because it's literally me

what happened is that i clearly made an out loud assumption that miami would win after game 3 here, and now the universe is personally punishing me for it

Nothing you just said made any sense to me (except that yes, I am a Malkavian), so I'm going to go with "that's later", . I don't even know whom Nines is yet.

the fact that they have 'them' argue in front of you the second time you meet her and it's literally just the same voice back to back arguing against itself and then jeanette 'disappears' in a room without any other entrances/exits besides the one you're already standing in surely does not help conceal the mystery a lot of the voiced dialogue is...I mean, quite clumsy and ungood (that introductory cutscene was a real "holy crap, just what am I playing here" moment), but in such a way that is now largely amusing and charming to me, so I think I've come to terms with it and it's fine

Double posting here, but I got absolutely clobbered by the werewolf in the diner like five times before I realized yeah, okay, I just don't think I can fight this guy right now. Not that I really wanted to, because there's (currently) no reason to fight him in the first place, but he just straight up Wolverines me. Doesn't help that my combat stats are absolute trash, since I keep putting all my points into...well, non-combat stuff. It's a 'final death' speedrun trying to kill that guy, though.

Vampire: the Masquerade. So I started over as a Ventrue...and I made it a half hour before I realized that the insane Malkavian dialogue was actually way more interesting and certainly fun to read, so it just didn't really make sense to me not to go back to my schizophrenic cheerleader oracle. This game is unbelievably jank and silly, but...it's also somehow really fun, probably the most fun I've had playing something in a long time. Maybe modern games should try to be more janked, I don't know. I now have a sweet katana that I got from some Japanese(?) vampire that initially beat the crap outta me until I figured out that I needed to use Bloodbuff, and it's pretty dope. Also, most everyone that wasn't manic goth girl Jeanette says my lady sounds like a total whackjob, but for some reason, they suddenly don't seem to have much of an issue with it when I seduce them. Funny, that.

I couldn't decide between a Ventrue and a Malkavian, the two of which seemed to have the best non-combat stats/skills, ended up flipping a coin and it landed Malkavian. My character looks like an insane cheerleader of very questionable moral fiber, but she does have nice hair, so...was that bad? I see now that it might have had some effect on the player dialogue, which might explain why it seems all my options were all written by a madman?

vampire: the masquerade (/ bloodlines?) holy crap, this is one jank game anyone got any general tips for someone who's never played this game before