MedicineDan

I've decided to create an all female party. It's going to include the main character, Amiri, Linzi, Valerie, Octavia and Tristan. Slow going so far. It's a sign of a good game that I'm thinking about it while I do other things.

Much as it pains me to voice support for the narcissistic voice of Demosthenes, I don't want social media treated like a public utility. For one thing, look at how well severe state regulation of electricity has worked in California. I know I know! Deregulation was a disaster! Not really. When you deregulate the retail but not the wholesale end, you're courting disaster. Even more immediate is this: Letting the state regulate the internet gives the state the power to decide what or what is not allowed. A prime example is this: Facebook currently censors (within its own purview) certain posts about Covid-19. However, there is almost no doubt that some of those posts will ultimately end up being supported by research. After all, saying statements about masks would have been alternatingly been pro or con at different times right? Facebook has the right to do what it wants, but if we suggest that the government has plenary power over content, that is to say, can kill unwanted content, then isn't there the prospect of the government mandating only the 'right' thing should be allowed? Only, we all have experienced where the consensus has been wrong. We must allow for dissent. It can be ugly, and it is often wrong, but the alternative is far worse. That's it for now, as I suspect the ETOH is starting to diminish my already limited capacities, but that's my take. No matter what, will fight to the death your right to say what I believe to manifestly wrong. For most people, that's a throw away statement. For me, I simply hope I don't want to have to prove myself right. EDIT: clarification.

So, for you grognards, I clearly got to the endgame in Kingmaker. I mean, considering that I've been playing between other obligations, I think I went pretty fast. Apparently, I was already there when I stopped playing in the first place, which is sad. Anyhow, a bunch of quests came up with a X saying that they were failed, which tells me that I could have finished them if I had done things differently. Should I finish now or, as tempts me, restart and finish later. I was an enchanter specialist mage, but I think I would be better off being a transmuter or conjurer. If it were role playing, I would definitely go enchanter. For a hack and slash like this game, I think a more direct damage specialty would be better. Then, I could ditch whatsherface and take KnockKnock. I have no love for the little bastard, and I think whatsherface is probably better. I dunno. Start over or just finish and then go on to WL3 when I get the chance?

I bought a bunch of peaches in anticipation of making peach mead tonight. I've got a gallon of pear and 3 gallons of blueberry. I haven't made a five gallon batch of anything for a while. The glass carboy is just damned heavy is all. I might make a batch of brown ale tonight. I've got the goods, but it's always such a pain. I'll have to see. I'd be forced to use tap water. Not a big deal. I've used tap water on occasion before for things I meant to drink myself. The water tastes good here. If you can't brew with regular tap water where you live, you need to move. Still, for brews I make for others, I typically get some sort of mountain spring water or some such with a taste I enjoy. EDIT: I was afeart that the must was too hot off the boil, but I put my yeasties in anyway and they're already going to town. The fact is, fermenting is better at room temperatures or lower, depending on what you're making, but a little heat to start the yeast isn't bad as long as it doesn't kill them.

To be clear, if I had to make a bet, I'd still bet on Biden for this election. A lot of crazy stuff going on, but I still tend to believe the problems in a nation tend to fall on the president although they are not normally his fault. That's any president. People blame the guy in charge for all sorts of stuff beyond his, and eventually her, control. Of course, even believing that, I can still come, speak my sincere opinion, and if I poke someone in the eye doing it, fair enough. :big beefy grin:

I'm curious to see how things pull out for this election. I mean, Biden would be disastrous, I'm sure. Let's see how long he can speak out against generic violence without citing Antifa and BLM. Yeah, it's right wing militias that are causing mayhem. At least they're moving away from the "mostly peaceful" rhetoric. Biden's kind of stuck in that he probably hates the violence but can't do much about it. I'd like to think he hates it on principle, and maybe he does. I *know* he hates politically because it's causing him grief. He can't afford to lose either group from his core constituency. You know, Trump sometimes does the same sort of thing, but the press does its job and goes after him for it. Biden...? He's a *hero!* :shaking my head with a bemused smile: This is really going to be a make or break for polling. To cite the 2018 polls, I think it was fair to say that Trump's rhetoric was and is offputting and, just like Obama, his impact is either limited or largely negative when he, himself, is not on the ballot. I said this at the time. I guess I could pull up an old post, but it could be doctored, right? I could have a friend search through my old posts and attest to it? lol Some people around here kill me, or maybe want to. If you don't understand the difference between presidential and midterm elections, you're a fool. I mean, not anyone here personally is a fool. I'd hate to be approached in a parking lot one night be the victim of a "Mostly peaceful" murder. A lot of conservatives point out things like ballot harvesting in California during the 2018 election, which is now part of the political landscape here, but that's silly. Yes, it's wrong and it helped the Dems, but the election was going to be a disaster no matter what. All harvesting did was turn a run of the mill disaster into a historic one. Anyhow, mid-term elections usually hurt a first term president, especially in these times when the supports of the candidate who lost are incensed. Trump magnified that, though. I'm voting for the guy, and I urge you to do so also. Maybe you can't help it if you're cowed into submission, but you can still vote. Anyhow, I'll check in to see what ol' Demosthenes has in store for me. Can't wait for the fire and brimstone. lol Maybe this time, Phillip really will go down!

So, I remembered someone mentioned Pathfinder: Kingmaker, so I fired it up for a bit today and I saw something that has put the breath of new life into the game. There's some sort of coin available that gives me huge bonuses and I have a pretty big stockpile of the things. Amazing! The kingbuilding stuff was always the biggest pain the arse. Now I don't have to micromanage quite so much. My kingdom is actually in pretty good shape, but I was getting tired of dealing with the crazy assed constant events. Good stuff!

I'm not one to give advice at all, but I will attest that little things can become big things. God willing, I'll be celebrating my 25th anniversary in February. Marriage can be a real blessing, but it is work to keep it running smoothly. The one thing I *would* give as advice is this, there should be no earthly loyalty above your wife. /sermon

What a ****.

I never concentrate on barter in these games. I know, by late game, money won't be a problem. It seems to me that this is a hamfisted way to make barter more useful. I think that's wrongminded, as I see things. I don't mind the 'getting the first shot' thing, though. I like the bad guys giving my guys an excuse to pound them into oblivion. The barter thin, though. I wish they'd take barter out of these games in the first place or at least make barter more useful in an 'organic' (Good God, I need a shower) sort of way.

Godspeed the day.

Yeah, my wife has just started her 33rd year. It's absolutely dismaying teaching under lockdown conditions, but take heart, brother. This too shall come to pass. Well, my friend, I'm a love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy, but I will gladly buy you a brew also. In fact, Gromnir, the rat bastard, can count on a brew also. If I'm feeling particularly generous, I'll even make it one of my homebrew, which leads me to my day. Working home health now, because of school, I charted on a patient I saw yesterday. So weird keeping pt info at home! The *real* fun of the day, however, was was doing the second step of my blueberry mead. It's a new technique. I'll keep you posted how it goes. I also did a non boil pear 'brew.' 2lbs raw honey and a full 3lbs pear. I cored them all, skinned half, and then processed everything. The real problem with pureeing fruit is that it doesn't always settle right, which means that it's hard to clarify, but I have my hopes.

Duh, I just scrolled up there and saw it. If I recall WL2, the dialogue skill checks were stiff in that game also. I'm tempted to buy it, even if it sits on my shelf for some time before I play it. Anyhow, thanks for pointing out my obliviousness, melkathi. Turns out I had skimmed that post except for the damned title of the game

Anyone playing Wasteland 3? I just now saw that it's available on Steam. I loved Wasteland 2, so this one is a no brainer. Too bad I didn't see it until the weekend before work and school wreak havoc on my gaming time again.

Same here. The places that look as if there should be harvestable ant eggs provide no interaction. I've slaughtered ants everywhere in and around the nest, leaving aunt bodies stacked on top of each other and, as suggested as a work around for the issue, didn't even loot them. The nest was completely cleared out as far as I could see and the two areas that *appear* to ant eggs certainly had no aunts around. If I kill off all the soldiers, nothing happens. If I kill off all the workers in and around the nest, tons of them, and then loot them, they respawn in the nest, but no eggs. If, as suggested, I kill off the same number of ants and then loot them, respawn but no eggs. I've never even found an ant egg in this game, but this is extremely frustrating as I'd like to make things that say they require ant eggs.

I'm playing on a PC with 0.2.0.2266 rel Cratereus. My experience is that, if I kill off all the soldiers, there's no egg respawn at all. It's pretty empty in the nest even after sleeping a couple of times. I tried your solution of killing off tons of worker ants and then leaving them unlooted. I've then gone into the nest only to hear them respawning and the eggs unchanged in any way. I've identified two different areas where I see broken ant eggs (at least I assume). In both, I see at least one egg that *appears* to be whole, but I can interact with the egg in any way. Those areas and the appearance of eggs has remained unchanged in every way other than the existence or absence of ants depending on whether I've killed them or not.

I tried this but it isn't working for me. I slaughtered all manner of ants. Worker ants. Soldier ants. Ants in the colony. Ants out exploring. I've come in and I hear ants hatching at the egg sites, but no ants. I've even slaughtered herds of ants outside and gone to the colony in good order I *still* can't get eggs. It truly sucks!

I never finished kingmaker. The endgame kingdom building stuff was kind of opaque so I stopped and never got back into it. I've been owning soldier ants in Grounded but the ant eggs still aren't there. I put in the channel turn undead effect on wife's cleric for the campaign I'm running in fantasy grounds. I was seriously iffy about it, but gave it a shot. I'm so glad I did.

2016 was a presidential election. This cycle is presidential also. I'm not obfuscating anything Grom. You can ridicule and disparage me all you want. Really, I won't hold a grudge. I won't. ...And I don't have time to get into a multi-post flame war. So, I'll leave it stand at this: you don't help your cause. Seriously, you don't. Harangue me on here and get some likes and be board royalty. All good. Your pugnacious manner, as Bruce likens it, is wonderful and undoubtedly gives you street cred here, but it's not an effective political tool. I mean, you need to have some people doing it, but it's overdone in the aggregate and the returns aren't merely diminishing, they're negative. That's an observation, not an argument. Folks here probably don't understand that very well or, if they do, they certainly don't act like it. HoonDing's posts are generally beneath my contempt and certainly beneath my response, but I don't mind crazy assed trawling posts. The more people talk like HoonDing, the more stock rises for my position with the only people who matter... voters. By and large, this is true for your statements also by now. Keep at it. Now, I don't want to be meanspirited to you, Grom. Heaven knows, you're a big guy and I don't want you to kick sand in my face. Console yourself getting some good licks on me, but pointed personal attacks like yours are really the only hope Trump has to win. Luckily, the left has been providing plenty of such arguments. Trump certainly isn't going to stay in office by the strength of his rhetoric. Anyhow, I promise to read your harangue when you post it. I won't reply, but I look over your Philippics with a smile. P.S. Comparing the chaos of Trump's policy decisions with the chaos and rioting of the "resistance movement" is either completely jaded or foolhardy. Either way, Trump hate has been built into the model already. Hate might win the day against Trump, but if it does, he's already lost. Piling on doesn't help your cause.

Hey @BruceVC, I wanted to answer you quickly because, heaven knows, I'll forget if I don't. lol I don't want to make this about me. I will say that it's ironic that people have accused, say, Captain Corcoran of being you. lol I don't know if you're an alt or not. You've always been friendly to me, Bruce. I even tried to sound more British once and you saw through that. What can I say? I'm a weird guy. :rueful grin: I find it interesting to discuss politics here, but it's also frustrating in that sometime people think I'm pushing a position when I'm making an argument. Don't get me wrong. I have convictions and I'll follow them. I'm voting for Trump. When it came time for Hillary, I didn't think she was any better of a human being, although with different foibles. So, why would I vote for someone with a different policy position? Because I doubt his character? I doubted hers! I never had personal animosity, I just thought she was crooked as a dog's hind leg. It's different now. I know people say that Biden is a Trojan horse for socialism. I think socialism would be disastrous, but that's a policy position and I would simply be against it. I wouldn't view it as existential. Biden won't usher in socialism. He will usher in chaos. I'm not saying that all people who will vote for Biden are lefty extremists who want to punish political foes, try to get them fired from their jobs, silence their voices, and take away their freedoms. Yeah, I know... "no one is saying that!" Well, at least some of Biden's supporters are explicitly saying that, and not just the tiny fringe. ...And it's not even as if the leftists who support this wave of destruction will benefit. As predicted and already happening, the movement will eat its own. Bezos, for crying out loud, has people protesting and bringing a mock guillotine to his house. How many business with "Black Lives Matter" posted have been pillaged and burned? So, yeah, I have a position. Never pretended otherwise. However, when I talk about polling and whatnot, folks treat that as if it's a larger argument for a position, but it's not. I think it was either Grom or Hurlshot who took me to task for making observations about the 2016 polls. Fair enough, but I'm not a poll denier. I think they've become a kind of tool to push voting blocks one way or another, but legitimate pollsters can't be blindly partisan in what they publish because people won't trust them at all if they're *always* wrong. It's just hard to get a good read much of the time and it becomes harder when folks are scared to answer honestly. Trump has the same problem Obama had in that they can't really influence a ticket much if they're not personally on it. Here is a statement of fact: people like me are an extremely small portion of the Trump coalition, but he simply cannot win without us. I'm not personally going to budge, but the left needs to push out their own crazy-assed base and then pick off as many people like me who hate the guy. I'm going to try to get as many fence sitters as I can to realize that this is the line now. If we can't get back to a semblance of normalcy, and Biden does *not* represent that, then we better have our people in office when we finally shed the last pretense. Trump's foibles are largely personal and unseemly, but, for all his bluster, he really follows more or less regular policy. Yeah, there are irregularities, but he's pretty much just a loud-mouth. His aids manage to stop him from acting out his worst inclinations. Biden, by all counts, is a nice enough guy, but the forces behind him... oh Lord, the forces behind him! Anyhow, I thought it would be rude not to respond to a heartfelt post, but I think I want to read this thread. I actually find it more entertaining to read a lot of them time than play in it. :wry grin:

Beerquakes for the win. If you've gotta die, a beerquake is how I wanna do it!

Screwball whiskey with coconut and chocolate milk. Kind of like an alcoholic Reese's peanut butter mixed with Mounds. a little sweet for my taste, but it's still damned good!

I've had a little extra time lately, which is always great. I did a blueberry batch of mead last night. I'm mightily sick of making blueberry all the time, but it's a popular flavor and so I've been accommodating people. I think I'll do a small plum batch or something also. My wife likes citrus, but that's really touchy. Sometimes it comes out great but other times not so much. I really should do a five gallon batch of ale, but it's a lot of work do to five gallons. I dunno. I need to find something I can do one gallon. I've more or less got my blueberry recipe down and I want to find something I can standardize and throw together relatively easily. EDIT: you guys in hurricane country be careful, for God's sake!

I missed the confusion. I prefer my ideas to be the point rather than my personality, but apparently the way I post is somehow *just* distinctive enough that various people recognize me, which is too bad. I want to have the give and take of ideas but kind of at the outside rather than in the middle. Anyhow, I was getting the impression that some people were mightily irritated with me, including someone for whom I have quite a bit of respect, and so here I am, stuck with the worst user name evar. I know my opinions are not always popular, but they are always sincere. I have no problem being associated with someone else. It would be wildly perverse if I did, considering my history. Enough about me except to say that I *am* indeed a real person and some folks around here have even met me. I'm in pretty regular contact with one of them. Mal asked for an example of something and I can't remember what. I *think* it was about Biden being fake. I'm actually not sure if he is being fake. Biden has made himself an irrelevancy by admitting he's merely a transitional figure. I actually doubt he makes it through a first term if he wins. His candidacy, however, while trying to appeal to a sense of normalcy, is a cover as it seems to me. I believe the left exemplifies something I believe Voltaire said. It goes something like this, I think...? "Some men employ words for the sole purpose to disguise their thoughts." Grom and Hurlshot had points I thought I might address, but I don't have time to go back and find them. Anyhow, the Blood War can continue without me providing one more victim for the moment. I'll come scrap with people later.

Clinton's primary claims to economic success were, policy wise, driven by the Republican Congress. Last time the Republicans had any real measure of fiscal responsibility. There isn't a place for a Republican like me anymore. There are never Trumpers who have thrown over all policy considerations because of personality considerations. Most are populist Republicans. The rest of us have to decide where we fall and we are woefully endangered as a species. Aw well, it was ever thus.