majestic

I just love Albrecht's Aether Ray, warts and all. It's fun to play even when you know it's not ideal and that you'll have to work that much harder to progress. Caveat: Haven't played in a long while, so no idea how viable AAR builds are after the expansion.

Caught up on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 6. I thought that the show would suffer from continuing on after what was most likely meant as series finale last season. Looks like the showrunners thought that as well, so they're not even trying. I mean sure, the story picks up where it left off (with what little there was as a "sequel" hook) but it's pure balls to the walls whimsy by now. Oh yeah, and Enoch's back and still killing it. Imagine the difference in tone to the rest of the season - with the possible exception of the first episode of season 6 until the very end of it - like the difference between a regular and a Darin Morgan X-Files episode. Well, possibly not as extreme considering the inherent silliness of superhero shows.

My parents bought a new TV, I helped them set it up. Netflix, Prime Video, the works. When did setting up a new TV (and monitors, for that matter) become it's own science, and why in the everflazing buck do all companies do their damndest to make the default settings a terrible mess you have to sort through for half an eternity to get the best image quality out of your hardware? I mean, what's the point of being able to stream 4k content when its reduced to looking like a daytime soap opera due to motion smoothing(tm)? Honestly companies, I know we're being inclusive in this day and age and I fully support that, but maybe don't hire blind people to QA your screens? Please?

It's not humor, but Larian's brand of humor in particular I'd venture.

That looks... familiar. Thanks TN.

As luck would have it, Scientist Man explained the current Terminator canon a while back:

I have hit a bit of a snag in Druidstone. I'm at what could be considered the first real boss battle of the game. I've done only two attempts so far (on normal difficulty) and I almost downed the boss the second time around. I now know how to approach the mission to win: Reskill to add some piercing and daze (50% chance to miss for enemies) to my group's attacks, add dodge to my tank skills and grab some resistance gear to help with the environmental effect and the attacks. This is necessary because the boss has massive health, high armor and devastating single melee attack per round (and one ranged, but that can miss through daze, be outranged and resisted). Par for the course for a boss, obviously. Here's the rub: I don't want to. It's not even much effort. A few clicks to shuffle stuff around. What bothers me is that the game so far played by completely different rules. So far there's been two types of enemies, those that came in hordes that deal really low damage and a few large ones with a medium amount of hitpoints that were impossible to tank due to their insane damage output over several melee attacks per round or debilitating status effects. They had to be kited and whittled down, or burst down as quickly as possible. Two things that aren't viable for the boss fight. The present environmental hazard (not to mention unkillable but slow horde enemies) makes it impossible to kite him long enough to wear him down and the fact that he spends half the mission time invulnerable until you've traversed most of the map and the insane amount of hit points makes it impossible to burst him down. What he does have though, is only a single melee attack per round. Highly damaging, but the Warden conveniently has a skill that allows him to dodge a single melee attack per round, and you can skill him to have some extra charges. In normal play that skill so far was interesting to have, but by no means something to gear or skill for. TL;DR: Would have to shuffle around equipment and reskill my entire party for one fight, then turn everything else back for normale gameplay. Can't really be arsed to.

Thanks, but I watched The Recall trailer and I'm pretty sure I have never seen that film. Hmmm. Now that I think on it a little, it's not necessarily an alien invasion. Just people in the woods witnessing something strange, jets flying through the air and a catastrophe happening. Could also be one of them end of the world films. Bah, this will probably bother me a bit until I forget about it. Much like that film or TV show episode that begins with a scientist hanging himself (I think, at least, the scientist commits suicide. it also invovles a clock tower) after having invented somthing that literally eats the planet. Possibly bacteria, maybe nano-machines. From the 80ies or earlier (possibly early 90ies, but only very early). I also seem to recall a city collapsing.

Netflix keeps recommending The Rim of the World to me. Watched the trailer and I have a question. I'm pretty positive I saw a similar concept in a film already. A group of people missing an alien invasion by being in the woods or some other remote location. Also with fighter jets flying through the air. Did my brain make that up? I can't recall much else about the film to it didn't make a lasting impression. It's just a vague feeling of familiarty.

Well, maybe this election wasn't as terrible as it looked a couple of hours ago. Projections and trends show a major loss for the EPP and the ENF not ganing as much as initially believed, unless Fidesz is really going to change from the EPP to the ENF (in which case the loss of the EPP becomes exacerbated, which is always a win in my book). Hell, maybe we won't end up having to deal with that piece of manure Weber as president of the commission.

Just in case anyone ever wondered whether BruceVC is a cryptofascist or not. There's nothing crypto, really.

Went to vote, watched the news, feel like barfing. Sweet Jesus, deliver me. So where's that Illuminati plan to reduce mankind to half a billion people? Get on with it.

Coming soon to CBS All Ass:

It also has David S. Goyer als screenwriter, who has awesome material like Batman v Superman, Jumper, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and Man of Steel to his name. Not to mention Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I don't go to Wacken because I hate people.

And Amazon is a US op.

Out of curiosity, on which platform are you playing? I've been playing on the Switch and I noticed some highly annoying lags - both in terms of frame rate and input, especially during extended plays. On the other hand I might just be terribad, currently kind of stuck on the Chapter 5 C-Side.

Kurz is the leader of a different party (ÖVP), they formed a coalition government with the FPÖ. The video is about the party leader of the FPÖ, Strache and his floor leader. Kurz is just facing a vote of no confidence right now because he attempted a (failed) power grab which included continuing his cooperation with the FPÖ on the condition that he can install his own people in the Ministry of the Interior.

Interestingly enough I can come up with some TV shows that would have ended well - maybe even great - if they ended earlier. With existing episodes no less. Stargate SG1, Lost City or Moebius: Both would have worked as series ending, but Moebius' final shot of everyone going fishing with Jack was as perfect a final scene of a TV show as it can get. Instead we got more seaons and the show was cancelled before wrapping up the new storylines - which resulted in two distincly average direct to video films, whose poor performance is direclty at fault for us not geting a proper ending to SG Atlantis at all. X-Files, Two Fathers / One Son: The Syndicate wiped out, the Black Oil explained and the alien threat neutralized. It wouldn't have been ideal but move this from the middle of season 6 to the end and build the alien rebels up a bit longer and walla (*snicker*) we'd have a nice ending to a great show. But no, FOX needed to milk their top franchise some more. Understandable but unfortunate. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, The End: Aptly named I'm guessing even the show runners expected it to be over with this eipside before having two more seasons dumped in them. Perfect ending for a fun show with a somewhat uneven, sometimes outright bad, first season. Coulson standing at a beach in (CGI'ed) Tahiti saying "Gotta say, it's pretty magical" was just so full of win. An odd example considering the show is still running, but I'm pretty certain the actual ending - whatever it may be - isn't going to be nearly as poignant and bittersweet. Another show that ended really well was Braunschlag, but I'm not entirely certain that anyone else on this board watched it (not even other German natives like Lexx) but the level of absurdity in the series rivals that of the Coen brothers. It's about a small, rural village located just shy of the border to the Czech Republic where the mayor, under pressure from a crushing debt to the Russian mafia, fakes a Marian apparition using a local conspiracy and UFO nut which leads to an influx of pligrims and money, a streak of bad luck thought to be a curse from an angered God and the revelation of illegally dumped radioactive waste. All of which eventually culimantes in an actual UFO landing in the final shot. Was actually adapted into an unaired ABC sitcom pilot titled Hail Mary.

Do mini-series count? Because Jean Claude van Johnson was awesome. Voyager and The Next Generation had good final episodes (not liking time travel or Borg villain decay nonwithstanding).

Party financing here is only illegal when it comes from outside (i.e. foreign) sources and is above a certain amount of money (2500€ per year and person) - but that never happened. Parties can receive any amount of donations so as long as they report them to the Court of Auditors. Associations and non-profit constructs can be donated to, and these can, in turn, quite legally employ people and pay for certain services. It would only be illegal if money laundering happened. Failing to report donations to the Court of Auditors carries a fine, but to put that into perspective, not only were the fines in the past 7 years a total of 21.000€ the Court of Auditors is only allowed to select the auditors they send to check a party's finances from a party approved list of candidates. Or in other words, our parties get to choose their own auditors. It's ridiculous. Fun fact, there's an upper limit for the amount of money parties are allowed to spend on election campaigns. In theory that's 7 million per campaign. Last parliamentary election the ÖVP spent 13 millions and the FPÖ almost 11. That too carries a fine. Of, uhm, up to 20%. And yeah, it is up to. Blah. Oi. We're looking at a vote of no confidence against our corporate sock puppet of a chancellor. He insisted on the dismissal of our - now former - Minister of the Interior, the response to which was that all FPÖ members of our government resigned and announced that they would support a vote of no confidence (but not actively propose one). Assuming the entire opposition votes in favor Herr Kurz might get the dubious honor of being the first Austrian government member to be removed by a vote of no confidence. That would be hilarious, but possibly a bad move. Fun times.

It sure got to be the only episode of the series that had me checking news on my phone while it was running. The entire season felt like a recent Zack Snyder movie. Visually bleak and undersaturated while both far too long and missing too many important scenes and events to make sense. That was Batman v Superman level of impressive. In all the wrong ways. I'd give it half a Mass Effect.

213374U might chuckle a bit:

Stumbling into the Firewine Ruins too early was a much more fun experience than the Nashkell mines. Those were reasonable, at least the Kobolds didn't respawn upon resting.

I'm pretty sure his wife at home with his newborn son will be rather happy about him attempting to impress rich Russian women while on vacation. You're right though, the video most likely doesn't contain anything that could lead to him being charged, let alone convicted. Even if the discussed donations to his party actually happened they'll be dealt with outside the judiciary system. At the very worst the party is looking at a negligible fine, and it's technically not even illegal to funnel funds through a non-profit association. Morally contemptible? Sure. Revealing of a terrible character? You bet. Illegal? Nah... politicians have no interest in making it too difficult to collect donations. Regardless of party affiliation. There are some fun things though. Harald Vilimsky, the face of their EU parilament election campaign not that long ago stated that it should be illegal for billionaires to buy their way into politics. Strache himself opened his statement by saying that there have long been rumors about foreign interference in the upcoming elections and that this dirty smear campaign is a new low. It takes a certain warped view of reality and balls to state that after having been caught on video trying to gain Russian funds with the expressed goal of interfering with elections. And finally no, the timing isn't a coincidence*. It's a week to the elections and we're most likely going into parliamentary re-elections this year considering that there's an upcoming press conference by both our head of government and the president. Usually that means the former is going to ask the president to dissolve the national assembly and the latter agreeing to do so. There's only one downside to this. Strache's former friend, mentor and all around lovable nazi piece of trash Gottfried Küssel who has recently been released from jail already insinuated that he has some, well, dirt on his former protegé that he might release when and if appropriate. They had a bit of a falling out. I suppose we'll never see what he's got. It's not really worth anything any more. *I do doubt that it was the Russians who prepared the trap or released the video. Not because the Russian government is saying that the woman in question is from one of the Baltic states but because this very much hurts the FPÖ's plans of uniting the European far-right into a coherent force. A force with membrs that are, more often than not, actually well and truly backed by Russia(ns), like Le Pen. This has been a major project on the FPÖ's part and it very much stands to fall apart right before taking off. Which isn't a bad thing, mind, but it's the one thing that piece of filth was right about. It was a set up and it was deliberately released to derail them, and it not being used in out parliamentary elections really suggests foreign interests (if it was domestic that wold have come out immediately). But as with affairs, it takes two to tango. There wouldn't have been a video if he had any common sense, some decency or weren't a corrupt, fascist piece of horse droppings. It also might actually lead to the end of Nord Stream 2. Something I am a bit ambivalent about. It's not like we (the EU) have much of a choice. We can buy cheap gas from the Russians or we can buy overpriced LNG from the US. It's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.