majestic

Veto power over new federal laws is quite significant power, although Germany's presidents usually use it only to prevent laws that they think are in violation of constitution and it has been only used eight times total by all the presidents I think. Good to know. Is the president usually of the same party/extremely cooperative with the Prime Minister, or is not too infrequent that they're from a different party? The German president is elected by the Federal Convention which includes members of the Bundestag and the federal parliaments. I think that's supposed to actively reflect the current political climate in Germany but the whole system is just confusing. Anyway more often than not the government candidate wins the presidential election and even if not the president is supposed to act in an unbiased fashion. The underhanded deals and backstabbing that precede the elections are kind of fun though. From an outside perspective it does appear as if finding a suitable candidate that wants the job is, uhm, actually hard.

If you ever find yourself stuck in a swamp dying of boredom amongst respawning hordes of annoying but ultimately harmless enemies keep in mind... it ends. Eventually. Don't let the swamp bog you down. Haw haw. How exceedingly clever.

Of course it always comes back to the vocalists. Anyway, something different this time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I84bgJmtmhs

I've been playing Everspace, now that it's out. I have serious issues motivating myself after 70+ hours spent on the alpha and early beta versions. Managed to finish the game after a reset on my third run, uhm, and the first two only failed because I had no idea that the ancient defender thingy spawns a singularity on death and on the second run I died after thinking I could reach a credit transport even though the game told me to turn around for a while. Still, great game. Interesting take on storytelling in a roguelike-ish game.

Evanescence is carried by Amy Lee. It's one of those cases where I wish a band's vocalist would just join up with some other talented musicians (another example woul be Elize Ryd from Amaranthe). Speaking of Gothic*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c4MhVz4_Yo I enjoy a bt of In Extremo every now and then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCM-3Qg_mXU

Sorry Tale.

I want muh scannin' probes back, dammit. Mimimimimi.

That's disturbing enough to warrant a backing and I'm not really going to miss those 20$...

Thanks Gorth.

Looks like SonicMage117 is the BruceVC of the gaming forum.

Finished Season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., in the end it was better than I expected. It's just a bit of a letdown after Season 3, but... what wouldn't have been. S3 was pretty much perfect except for some pacing issues near the end.

Not surprising given that MCA stated he's read through much (if not all) of the EU novels to prepare for writing a Star Wars game. The New Jedi Order series also has a scene early on where Anakin Solo travels with Mara Jade Skywalker to a planet for some R&R and she chews him out after using the force to set up camp because Jedi often forget to train other skills in favor of the force - and has him do everything withot aid from the force. Kreia's skills rant is pretty much the same. Except it was always misplaced because every time I play Kotor 2 I end up with an INT 16 Sentinel and loads and loads of skill points. *shrug*

What a disappointment. I mean, the title alone, Operation Reinhard. Hosted by Red Ice. Narrated by Reinhard Wolf. I didn't really expect a five minute diatribe on how Bill Nye corrupts the moral values of our youth with animated ice cream cones. That could have come straight outta the 80ies, just substitute Bill Nye randomly with video games or Dungeons & Dragons.

That's not weird, that's the way class abilities and gear synergizes with critical strike/heal chance (or other stats). WoW and a lot of other game systems (not necessarily only in MMORPGs) activate special abilities, buffs or debuffs on critical hits. When you have a case of increased critical strike chance being demonstrably superior to pure increased critical effect on the same scale then you're going to notice it much more. Especially if the game in question gives you interesting feedback about it. If you have a cool ability that can only be used every third critical strike you'd probably notice more crits rather than larger ones in a much more satisfying manner. If you don't and all crits really are is bigger numbers on the screen a few of them being much bigger will be much more memorable than a few more being smaller.

*Hides all Hammerfall T-shirts* Heh. Without Hammerfall as gateway to power metal I would never have found gems like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kymf6m4sVWM

Thanks everyone.

Nah, don't worry. I'd argue that most music is pretty pedestrian, just because it's from a niche genre doesn't automatically make it more sophisticated. I generally don't mind if it's simple. I mean... I do have a full set of Hammerfall albums here that I enjoy(d) a lot, and they're the Katy Perry of power metal.

A couple months ago the wife of one of my uncles was hospitalized after coughing up blood. Turned out that she had esophageal variceal bleeding and she barely survived. The docs told her in no uncertain terms that she can either sober up fast or the next time'll be the last time. She didn't, and now it's that next... and well, last time. The liver's too badly damaged, her renal system all but shut down - dialysis can't keep up and complete organ failure is imminent. I feel bad - for my uncle. He's going to lose his wife and it's going to be hard for him. Honestly I just hope he doesn't end up blaming himself for what happened.

Might get flamed for this a bit but I don't think Babylon 5 aged that gracefully and I find myself disagreeing with a few points - those "realistic" space physics were dropped soon in favor of more traditional space battles and calling the cast a set of good actors when said cast includes (and features prominently, even) Bruce Boxleitner and Mira Furlan is stretching it. Actually... I'd argue that with the exception of Andreas Katsulas most of the supporting cast easily outshines the main cast and he was stuck in a rather limiting rubber head all the time. Don't get me wrong I love B5 for its character development, storyline and the general mystery that instills a sense of not being able to wait for the next episode and these elements are more than enough to carry the show - except maybe in season 5. But once the mystery is over it's noticable that there are some rusty spots below the shiny coat of paint.

I like how everyone who isn't a Trump zealot is a libtard in your universe. And any- and everything that isn't Breitbart is fake news.

You could poke around the data collected by the OECD. http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/waiting-times.htm It's comparing waiting times for three specific elective surgical procedures. It's by no means perfect but much better than simply gathering a couple of anecdotes here and there. Doesn't say anything about the quality of emergency procedures though.

So question for the moderators, seeing how ****tails is filtered because the filter is dumb, does that mean the picture violates the rule of showing words that are censored? And yeah, ****tails are for women and girly men Arnie

Aaaand to contribute something to the thread that isn't depressing, here's a piece of my secret love affair with Eurodance/Europop trash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuJPviMC43o

Well that's perfectly fine. I don't like Mark Shelton either, as I said, and to be honest I don't expect people to like Sirenia when I link it. Extremely distorted guitars, black metal rasps, death metal growls and a french choir against a gothic metal backdrop is not very compatible in my experience - and certainly not for anyone that isn't a fan of the genre to begin with. If anyone's interested Leaves' Eyes would serve as a much better introduction. Many of the typical gothic metal elements are present but they're arranged in a way that is much easier to get into. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbfnrxM3svs Captain Beefheart is aural torture for me. But that's not only beause of his vocals, some instruments featured in his music (and alas, much of Jazz in general) have the nails on chalkboard effect on me. Yeah, talking about that brass here. One of the more interesting female vocalists I happened across was Carmen Elise Espenæs - younger sister of Liv Kristine Espenæs, vocalist in the above linked Leaves' Eyes piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sBglB6vQRw

I have to admit that I sometimes wish my musical preference was this varied. Alas, it's not, and in addition to that I have this somewhat annoying fixation on vocals. I can live with the worst hacks on the guitar or drums if the vocalist is good enough, but vice versa... for me a vocalist can carry a band but there's no way a band can carry a vocalist. Point in case would be Manilla Road. The only track of theirs where I like Mark Shelton is Cage of Mirros: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKog5u9dX-8 Which I consider pretty sad. Cage of Mirrors is if course awesome but they made a lot of tracks that I can objectively recognize as musically excellent but subjectively can't stand at all. Anyway, time for some Morten Veland goodness to chase away the Eurovision Song Contest that I just watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWq27WOSzVE