Zoraptor

Ah yes, his name was Robert Paulsen. I would have staked pretty much anything that Anomen's VA was Raphael Sbarge same as Carth/ Skye*/ Kaiden. Oh well, Mandela Effect strikes again I guess. Or maybe Nelson Effect if it was just me. I rather like Ashley. Somewhere between KOTOR and JE I got really tired of Bioware's archetypes and she doesn't really fit any of their tired tropes or attempts at Whedon style quirkiness. She's also, for want of a better term, one of the more realistic companions in Bioware's games full stop both in terms of motivations and dialogue. *not played by Raphael Sbarge either, naturally.

Consumables? They're for counting up at the end so I can complain about how badly balanced the game is and how I never needed to use any (except potions of clarity etc vs illithids and antimagic scrolls to cheese optional fights). When it comes to Anomen I'm with Bartimaeus. There is no argument for him which can overcome the monumental negative of being Anomen. I would however take both Jaheira and Viconia. Plus Jan, Imoen and Edwin. Then again my main criterion is people whose chirps don't make me want to stick skewers through my ear drums. Apropos of nothing also got a bit further into Pathfinder: WotR. Interesting NPC selection there, can see why they strongly suggest going for a fighter since the only recruitable meatshield I've met is Seelah. Who's also the only one who is remotely normal. Does literally everyone else have to have a quirky backstory, strange mannerisms and weird class? That's one of the worst things that Bioware style games have brought us. Still, black woman paladin married to a female half orc manages not to be a hopeless cliché in execution, so thumbs up there. There aren't really any hybrid (front line, to exclude Lann) fighters either apart from Camellia- and yeah. Also 'nice' to see that the tradition of annoying characteristic draining enemies has been maintained. [yes, I am aware of the irony of having a Jaheira/ Viconia/ Jan (haha lol)/ Imoen/ Edwin party in BG2 and complaining about companions in another game being over quirky]

The really funny thing is that Anomen was actually really popular with his target audience. Hence his archetype w/ same voice actor appearing time after time, technically I guess up until ME3 (or ME1 if you correctly picked the religious xenophobe Ashley over Kaiden). People who don't take Viconia along probably rest after every combat.

That's at load on a Z series board with power limits turned off. Power limit on it's at ~250W so not much more than AMD's 7000 series' (though with their power limits turned off). Its 'TDP' is still 125W though.

First 13900k review has dropped- breaking NDA, and in Chinese so large grain of salt. +41% MT +12% ST (+7% gaming) and, uh, just shy of 350W power draw...

Iranian drones have been extremely effective against Saudi Arabia- and even if it weren't the Iranians that only means that the far less capable Houthis have been very effective. Saudi may be riddled with endemic incompetence when it comes to their military but they do have an enormous amount of advanced kit. Not surprising at all if the Ukrainians struggle. US media has been bipolar over Iran the past six months. They're simultaneously about to betray Russia, sign the nuJCPOA and crash oil prices; and splash out on Russian kit, train thousands of Syrian mercenaries for use in Ukraine plus sell hundreds of drones and missiles on an ongoing basis to Russia. As an actual factual it's been far more towards the latter so far.

If it was in this thread that was pretty much what my speculation was*, that EVGA had timed this deliberately to be released the (working) day before the announcement for 4000 series (though see below) so that every article about 4000 series mentions EVGA pulling out and Jensen potentially gets asked lots of questions about it too. nVidia's GTC Conference is 19-22 September, that is- allegedly- when 4000 series gets announced. *There was a slight mistake there, since Jensen's keynote is probably when an announcement would be made and that's Sept 20 rather than 19th. Doesn't materially effect things though, I'd say.

I'd never in a million years have guessed Giancarlo Esposito was in Miama Vice.

I was meaning more the way that Humanoid has it, how much EVGA 'really' 'hates' nVidia vs how much they're saying they do in the hope that that provides leverage for them. Funnily enough, while I may loathe nVidia with a burning passion that makes star WR102 look like a cool dip in the pool I apparently manage to consistently underestimate their malice compared to some... apparently Linus (of the TT variety, not of the 'f___ nVidia' variety) thinks EVGA won't make AMD/ Intel cards because they believe that Jensen will permanently blacklist not just EVGA the company, but everyone who works for them. Which is cartoon villain level.

RTE (and this time Cavasoglu too) get chairs, everyone else sits on a couch? Something must be done about those Turks, they never learn- and, please, no suggestions they exchange the sofa for ottomans. Though the thought of Putin, Lukashenko etc perched on a fancy footrest is kind of appealing.

ASUS support is rubbish, unfortunately*. They've also had some 'interesting' cost cutting on their cards, though mostly on the AMD side. Probably the best overall rep for a 3rd party now is Sapphire which isn't much use for the green side of things. *Though to be fair, EVGA's support was pretty rubbish too, outside of NA. I don't disagree with that analysis of course, and it probably wasn't just one thing, but a whole bunch of smaller things adding up to something unsustainable. (At least one of the problems is that I'm pretty equivocal on how to view this in terms of the level of, for want of a better term when applying it to companies, 'personal animosity')

nVidia, disrespecting a partner? Well I never. For any tl;dw'ers this isn't an XFX type situation and they aren't going to make AMD or (lol) Intel cards now, they're just gone from the market. Interesting- and very deliberate, one suspects- timing since nVidia has an announcement scheduled for Monday which presumably is for 4000/ Lovelace. Going to be some questions not only why their most prominent partner has pulled the plug, but there's apparently enough animosity for the news to be timed to do as much potential damage as possible to a flagship launch. Is anyone going to cover that news now without mentioning EVGA won't be there any more? Whatever the beef was it must have been pretty egregious considering nVidia already tried to tacitly appropriate all their 3rd party partners branding via their Partnership scheme a few years back. Hard to think of much worse than that.

AI just need to be trained on Terry Pratchett to get around that conundrum. Yes, though humane* kosher is limited in application, which is why you tend to get people bending either the rules on kosher or the rules on animal cruelty. All the meat sold here is halal (well, except pork for obvious reasons) but you have to go to a kosher butcher to get kosher meat. That's because halal can be applied to 'industrial slaughtering' while kosher cannot (easily). My sister had some interesting stories about doing meat inspections as part of her vet training. She was fundamentally not keen on the kosher process, at all. *good thing I noticed I left the e off there or I would have been saying something, uh, absolutely haram.

Uh hmm. Kind of difficult to be too specific without spoilers, though if plot armouresque contrivance is a put off... I would say that S2 is not in and of itself bad, just disappointing. The trouble is that the problems which make it bad only get worse, and it's very difficult to say 'well watch S2 but then stop'* as S2 isn't satisfying enough compared to just pretending S1 ended the way it should have. There are only two things about S2 I remember as really enjoying, and they both involved Villanelle shenanigans, so there is that though. *Kind of like... having a nice soup for an entrée. Followed by an adequate steak for dinner and rancid custard for desert. You can't really recommend anything after the soup, because the temptation will then be to see if the custard really is rancid.

Playing on Core rules so 3rd hardest setting. Which does have a warning, to be fair, but then I'm not exactly a novice and have completed Kingmaker on Core rules (without, iirc, a single party wipe either). I rather like having used almost all the consumables, that's the part which makes me wonder if it's actually the best start to a 'D&D' game. It's kind of silly finding you have 30 odd potions of barkskin/ bears endurance/ bulls strength you've never used and you certainly had to use them to realistically stand a chance in some fights. I also didn't run out but came close, so the balance is probably near perfect, objectively, it just feels really difficult*. I didn't even fight the elementals though I bet the water one is cheesable somehow, I just couldn't be bothered finding out how. *it's also early level D&D syndrome of course. You've only ever one crit or a failed save away from disaster when you have so few HP.

I've started Pathfinder: WotR. Not posting in the main thread because, well, just started and lots of spoilers there (no complaints about that, the game isn't exactly new). I'm not sure whether that is the best or worst start to a 'D&D' game ever. It's certainly the most stereotypical in pretty much every way. Stilted cutscenes, immediate great disaster, Chosen One Has Been Chosen etc. Then an hour later go fight 5 guys with your 4 member party where the lowest level of them is 2, the same as you, the highest is at level 5. And he's a raging barbarian immune to a bunch of statuses and with extra HP from the rage. OK, so core rules rather than wimpy 1st timer rules, but that's harsher than the Nashkel Mines. Prologue end fight was easier, since winning that only relied on making a single saving throw vs Bane. OTOH, after the prologue in most games I'd be hauling around loads and loads of potions, scrolls etc having used basically none. Not the case here, probably used almost all the useful ones I found (and I guess 20x inflict light wounds at least --> some cash to buy useful items).

I think you will find that Killing Eve only has one season. Just a single one, yes. The existence of other seasons were an April Fool's joke gone viral, and any memories of them is just audio visual, uh, Mandela Effect. Apropos of nothing I rewatched the series finale of Dexter recently. John Lithgow made a great villain in the final season...

It literally cannot go into a Chernobyl type situation. Even an old RBMK reactor can't any more. My old pal Dyatlov had to try pretty hard to get the- very poorly designed- Chernobyl reactor to do what it did by turning off literally every safeguard except the one that didn't work. The worst you could get would be a Fukushima type event and even that shouldn't happen since that was complete electrical failure from a 'hot' situation. Honestly, this hysteria is 'but HiMARS don't cause fires!' level deliberate misinformation. Yes, the Russians continue to bomb themselves. No, it wasn't. It was most definitely not an isolated incident, just the most serious. Talon Anvil was given authority at the highest level to do what it wanted, including strike targets on the no strike list. And it was established in 2014, so cannot just be blamed on Donald Trump either. (1) Don't ask for something you don't want the answer to then. (2) Is there any indication I think either is OK? No? Then why do you keep claiming there is? (3) The best way to get actual moral authority is, well, not to do bad stuff. If I can produce multiple examples of similar things being done by people you 'like' it isn't my fault they did it- unless I was a member of Talon Anvil which unsurprisingly I never was. If they hadn't done it there would be nothing to post, now would there.

Wouldn't be NATO which has done the equivalent in this case- it would be the US (Tabqa Dam, Syria). I'm not sure whether it makes it better or worse that it was on a 'do not target' list but still hit.

It's not even like all the pressures are external. Europe's economic system relies pretty much completely on a constantly expanding population* to service its constantly expanding old age population. Europe also has a lower than replacement birth rate. So you have an increasingly old, ill and non employed population with less taxpayers not just relatively but absolutely to pay for them. You can try and fix that by cutting the benefits to old people (good luck, since they vote unlike the young) or by bringing in more young people to pay taxes, or by increasing tax burden on the remaining taxpayers, or by constantly increasing debt. Practically, and in most places, it's a combination of all those options. If you're bringing people in they're not all going to be doctors and web designers, you need garbage men and sewer cleaners as well. *only one type of person believes in constant expansion in a finite system: idiots, economists and politicians.

Excellent news about Russia no longer having the ability to threaten NATO. The alliance can now be disbanded, since it's a purely defensive one and lacks a credible enemy! Certainly military spending can be greatly curtailed? Oh, it's still needed to defend against that well known North Atlantic superpower Klendathu*, uh, China? *kind of funny they're following the playbook of a movie as unsubtle as Starship Troopers, but then it's mostly unsubtle because it's always been obvious how easy it is to whip people up into a frenzy about 'bugs', 'orcs', '****', 'nips' etc. And it's not like you got much complaint at prior "they aggressively put their country near our military bases" types arguments. [heh, I guess at least the disparaging and racist term for Vietnamese is censored, feel free to replace it with some more modern epithet like towel head or hajji anyway]

Yeltsin semi permanently killed any chance of a 'western' 'liberal' leader in Russia since he had the west's unrestricted backing- including a truly massive intervention in the 1996 election in which Yeltsin outspent campaign rules by up to 1000 times (not +1000%, a thousand times) via western money- yet was an unmitigated disaster for Russia. Western support is kiss of death territory for the average Russian, the only people it counts for positively are middle class++ urbanites who actually did OK under Yeltsin. Even the human rights situation wasn't actually better, more opposition politicians and journalists died suspiciously or violently under Yeltsin than under Putin (to 2014 when I last checked the figures, but then that was 14 years of Putin vs 8 years of Yeltsin, so...). There's a single pro west candidate with more than 5% support, just by some polls, and as previous that's Navalny who is picked for that support mostly for being anti Putin rather than for his outstanding qualities and beliefs. The other most popular and supported leaders in Russia were Zhirinovsky- who made Putin look like Ghandi- and Zyuganov (Caligula was most definitely the victim of a concerted smear campaign by the Sun Journalist equivalent of the time, Suetonius, who is nearly our sole source on the subject. "Sheesh, my horse could do a better job as consul than you senators" <--> "Look what that LOONY TUNE Gaius has done NOW! He's going to make his HORSE Incatatus Consul! Do we need further evidence his BONKERS quotient is through the ROOF*?". Suetonius, of course, while not a member of the senatorial class was a member of the equestrian one, just below it. *Who am I kidding, the average Sun reader's head would explode at the word 'quotient') Yeah historically, September is the month prices start ramping up for winter, not start dropping. They'd be worried about windfall taxes though most likely, not intervention per se. If prices get capped the EU will almost certainly have to pay the difference as is the case with the announced £150bn scheme in the UK. The alternative may be not getting the gas at all. A windfall tax scheme is a great way to claim back a lot of those costs though, and would be politically highly popular.

I only had one problem with the Steeltown DLC, and that was its start. Which was pretty generic and 'boring' at a time when I wanted something different. Once you get into the facility and down the elevator it picks up a lot and is different, so of course I quit my first run through just before going down there... I was also a bit tired of 'haha silly corporates!' type stuff after The Outer Worlds. I prefer the 2nd DLC a bit overall, but they're both good and provide what good DLC should provide and what the old 'expansion' term implies- a broader experience. Animal Whisperer + non party counting companions were interestingly balanced, to say the least. I think my main character with the highest HP only had ~500 and the worst of the others had about 1500. Even the Brahmin you could pick up early had something like 2000HP when attached to someone with high AW and the perks from it.

Once again the question of where the most appropriate place to post rears its perpetual head... Even Her Majesty the Queen was a fan, apparently. Then again, personally I'd rather watch Wheel of Time Episode 8 on loop for two hours than listen to Paul McCartney.

... "Behind Russian actions, all you can see is completely destroyed towns and villages", yes? So, if the Russians captured Vysokopilla then it was already "completely destroyed, yes? Did the Ukrainians fire shells that rebuilt the town? Or was it not "completely destroyed"? That's why it's not really worth replying to, the whole rationale makes no sense. (Vysokopila and Popasna aren't a great comparison anyway, Popasna is 7 times larger if nothing else. And the topography of Popasna is significantly different too. Most damage is done by artillery, which Russia has a lot of, and Ukraine doesn't) That's because you haven't been paying attention. If I say that NATO or anyone else has done something wrong, and I think it's the same thing / directly relevant to what Russia is doing then --> --> Russia has also done something wrong. Yes? Pointing out that others have done the same without consequence is not the same as saying it's all good, is it? There isn't some finite pool of guilt that is in danger of being used up. I've used this example a lot, but I liken the application of International Law to a policeman. If a policeman only goes after criminals that have no power, or that a group of powerful politicians- who have done similar things- don't like then is he a good policeman, or a bad one? Sure Bruce, I unequivocally condemn the various war crimes and human rights abuses committed by the Russian military in Ukraine. In an odd twist of fate I also condemn all the various war crimes and human rights abuses committed by anyone else outside (or inside, for that matter) of Ukraine. Which, sadly, is not true of everyone.