IndiraLightfoot

Oh, the Obsidian making a new Fallout hype is real! Dishonored is my favourite game series of all time as well, so they'd better take good care of that fantastic IP! And I'm just relieved that it wasn't Epic and their Epic exclusives. I'm for one is perfectly fine with Microsoft acquiring Bethesda. I like what they did with Minecraft and Mojang for the most part.

Minsc was meh, but the NPC i really disliked, and I went to great lengths avoiding her at all cost in both BG1 and BG2, is *drumroll* Imoen. I didn't like the VO and I didn't like her plastic, clingy, but still "cool" persona they're trying to sell.

A slightly different streaming tip here, but this South African documentary below, released in August on Netflix, is IMHO a masterpiece and one of the best nature documentaries I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot, as part of my daily work - the astonishing photography, the surprising knowledge it conveys and the emotional personal man-animal-storyline shown are all outstanding achievements in their own right. Phenomenal stuff: My Octopus Teacher https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12888462/

Perhaps not related to anything more than Trump sending federal troops to Chicago among several other US cities (Operation Legend is certainly legendary... *Oof* ), but how cool and brilliant isn't this mayor? Lori Lightfoot. I can see why so many people voted for her. And yeah, her surname has a comforting ring to it, for sure.

Hans Blix is a well-known Swedish lawyer, and he's been writing extensively on this subject - books as well as a plethora of articles in both English and Swedish. This article, an opinion piece, in the Guardian is but one tiny example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/mar/20/iraq.usa Gromnir is in fact indirectly quoting it, by him saying "brits and US were reading intelligence and where question marks were implied, the folks were acting as if were exclamation points". In the same article, link above you, Blix claims: "The contract that George Bush held up before Congress to show that Iraq was purchasing uranium oxide was proved to be a forgery." If this is true; Who made the forgery and why?

Our flat PS3 is still running hot here, and still cool. It's holding up very nicely indeed for something used extensively over a decade (doubling as a Blu-ray player and a device charger). But the best item, no comparison, 3 of them in our household, is the Nintendo Switch - fantastic - and several games have cross-platform compatibility. I have no intention buying anything newer at this point in time. PC for the win!

Do I sense a bit of defaitism here? How about a superprism to cheer you up? A superprism has a light dispersion strength that is 500 times stronger than a normal prism, which already is a fab gadget.

Bolsonaro got covid-19. The irony runs deep in this case. I'm not saying anybody deserves an illness, 'cause that would be absurd, but at least it seems fitting without any schadenfreude on my behalf: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/07/americas/brazil-bolsonaro-positive-coronavirus-intl/index.html

Also late to the party: As somebody who hadn't played any Assassin's Creed - the Odyssey, it's latest incarnation, felt to me, like a 3D CRPG of the type you seem to be listing here. I had hundreds of housrs of fun with it - I'm still not done. Pretty great game for the most part.

^What Gromnir wrote above: I just watched Trump's tirade about China and Covid-19, and his popularity just baffles me. He's like one of them primary school bullies talking smack with the few brain cells he can muster to deliver a limited number of short and still barely intelligible sentences. And his entire body language, his tone - disgusting - is the word I'm looking for.

Given the state of things in the US atm, I'd expect that anybody approached by police will be even more nervous and on edge. If you were intoxicated and part of an exposed minority group, there is a clear possibility of you making panicky moves and simply put yourself at risk of the officers violent responses they've been taught and told to perform according to US law. In short, this situ must be a powder keg. Avoiding the police altogether is your safest bet, that's for sure.

Thx for filling me in on some info the article I read didn't account for. Yeah, then it makes a bit more sense, given him attacking them etc., but yeah, the pursuit was where it all went south fast. Was he really that big of a danger to society when he ran away in that instance? Why not just call for backup and catch him, using more manpower and safer tools for that kind of job (catching him - rather than stuff that might kill him)?

One would think that police forces all over the US would be extra careful exercising any force involving hand guns and resorting to such violent solutions to their policing duties, but sadly this doesn't seem to be the case everywhere. I just read about the Rayshard Brooks case in Atlanta. How could a sleeping intoxicated fellow blocking entry with his car and a few officers escalate into such excessive force and even risk a lethal incident? It bogs my mind in so many ways...

Trudeau, 22 seconds...

I'd like to add a few other factors: The kind of work you do would heavily affect your energy depletion. For a deep sea oil rig diver or an Alaskan crab fisherman, 40 hours is back breaking, sometimes even deadly or impossible. But my work as a script writer, 40 hours is pretty much nothing to me, and I'm far from young, and I have a bad back. And I recall when I was much younger, I had a couple of years, where I needed to juggle three part-time jobs a day 5 days a week to make ends meet (on paper, like 50 hours a week), and still today, this is probably one of my worst work-related ordeals, especially in a big city and hours of commuting (which I didn't get paid for) using various kind of transport: buses, the tube, rail cars, you name it.

I had no idea that y'all think of it as a big time turkey! I'm older etc, so I do identify with Picard and Troi and Riker, but I also like the old grumpy old fool tone of it all! On top of that, it had all I like: Romulans, ancient myths, secrets, bloated egos, evil siblings, synths, a bit of Borg, some weird Romulan Ninja of Lost Causes (Does it get better?). I found myself siding with that Romulan cult and the synths and even the Borg (minus Seven). If only those gargantuan tentacles had slipped out of the portal and carnage ensued... Liked the photo, music and some of the effects as well.

Picard, on Prime: Perhaps the best Star Trek series for me to date, and I am something of a Trekkie. It's prolly me just being a sentimental nostalgic Borg-fan sap, but it's really good.

Alright, sorry for being lazy, and you have prolly already touched upon this question several times, but I'm curious: This being the US election year and all, and with Covid-19 spreading like wild fire beyond the hot spots, and nobody is really allowed to join public gatherings, and partake in any rallies - then how will they elect their presidential candidates? Are they converting the entire process into a digital system - and then somehow have debates on the telly? Problem is; They wouldn't be allowed to work on such shows to begin with, as such airing broadcasts would count as a gathering, no? All this sounds like a huge dilemma. Will the elections be postponed or something?

You go ahead and do that, and please don't forget to stream it live on Twitch, just for that sweet swatting twist, which is perhaps the most insidious practical joke theme I've ever come across, but it's all the rage these days, among the non-boomers. Kappa ...See, I'm losing my language just picturing it.

This is limbo in chat forum form. Time is always a relative concept, and here you get to care even less about it. Nice to see you again!

In Europe now, we get the same kind of bereavement of civil liberties as Gromnir mentions in all of the countries that were liberal to begin with. In the already far too numerous motley crew of semi-dictatorships, we see how they transform into dictatorships before our very eyes, openly, day by day, by highly questionable legislation. It will take a very long time and it will be very hard to turn the clock back on these changes to civil rights. More and more countries use full-on cell phone tracking of individuals, where these data include all of their other personal data, which get sent into the hands of central information banks - and this information can then be used to control dissidents and disliked groups with impunity - I get Orwellian 1984-vibes from all of this.

Then, let's roll! (I have a masochistic streak, meaning that I may just as well accept the character that I roll right off the bat.)

One thing to take away from Azdeus's informative posts here seems to be that turning 5th Ed D&D into a computer game is both heaven and hell, and Larian seems to be pretty creative. I suspect that Larian's CRPG version of it might be more fun rule-wise than the cryptic and contradictory PnP rule books.

You have already taught me a lot about D&D 5th Ed, but can you perhaps list your worst disappointments, like a few condensed points, if you feel like it and have the time. Thx for your posts!

For me, it was the structure of the world almost entirely - the travelling by ship, all the scattered islands, the tagging along those giant foot steps and getting interrupted by pantheon meetings. I couldn't bear more than one full run, and believe me I tried replaying it at least 5 times.