majestic

Yeah, if your Elrond could just move to Stranger Things and reasonably replace Steve Harrison, there's something very wrong.

Nothing a couple of Pillars of Life and Creeping Doom does not fix, now that it is easier than ever to have characters capable of casting it by that point, just let Ember pick it through Loremaster, or give Daeran Second Mystery: Nature, which is his go-to pick for Mythic 1 anyway. Having enough levels at that point should not be that big of an issue any more after the new DLC areas. Getting better summons on Ember is the road less travelled, but it works well enough if you do not need her as a ray railgun blaster. Give her all the summoning bonus feats and mythic abilities. Loremaster can add Creeping Doom and Elemental Swarm, but you'd have to fit Skill Focus into her feat list early enough. Ember does not get a whole lot of feats to play with, and you lose at least one hex too, more if you go for three levels of Loremaster. See, everything in this game is made easier by playing an Angel Oracle MC. Edit: To make things even more ridiculous, Seekers get bonus feats at almost no cost (not like you really need those revelations).

They were also supposed to do something related to Star Wars, funny how nothing of that materialized after that final Game of Thrones season.

There are a couple of main issues with Rings of Power, and Sauron and whatever 'canonical' story they think they have for season two not being in season one was not one of them. The series is, by far and large, boring. This is the largest issue, because it gives the viewer plenty of time to appreciate the other failings in more detail. The acting is serviceable at best, atrocious (hello Galadriel) at worst. Plot points feel like they're making me dumberer just for look at them. Me will smash you. Smash you to goo! The dialogue writing is, well, terrible, and its delivery is stilted and unnatural. So many flat shots. Costume design looks like cosplayers can do a better job of it, even when it is decent they went with the Hobbit look, not the Lord of the Rings look. The combination of 2 and 4 means poor casting and direction. Much of that is to be expected when you have a largely inexperience showrunning crew. Everyone has to start at some point, but a project of this size and budget could have done with some veterans to help out. Then there are some minor problems: The lore is not consistent even with what preciously little of it they licensed, the show directly contradicts Lord of the Ring's appendices. The ultimate prequel issue of trying to fashion drama from foregone conclusions. The elves are so unelven that I feel like apologizing to Liv Tyler for calling her a terrible choice for Arwen. Overall it just translated into something that is simply not enjoyable. The cinematography is boring, the cast was chosen for their ability to make vapid faces or gaze wistfully just beyond the camera while speaking their dialogue in a terribly stilted, unnatural and often monotone way. There are way too many plot lines in way too many locations, all at once, something that worked in Game of Thrones for a while but even there eventually became problematic.

I should have not turned that episode off so soon, because it gets even 'better' from there. Vanity projects of rich people have a way of getting the axe whenever they feel like it, and Rings of Power is most certainly not the Game of Thrones of Amazon Prime that Bezos for some reason so desperately wants to happen. Point in case, although entirely unrelated to filmmaking, we once had a billionaire invest in a local football club here. They hired a couple of good players and a new coach, everything was going well. Played good football, were leading the league with more than a decent margin, finances were fine, the works. Billionaire investor went ahead and fired the coach and installed one of his own choosing because the old one was too 'provincial' for his more sophisticated taste, and he wanted someone with an international reputation, so the club in question ended up with a known cocaine addict. They still won the championship this year, but not with the same comfortable lead they enjoyed he sacked the old coach, and while not playing nearly as entertaining football. Of course, the equivalent here would be to fire the showrunners while they enjoy high praise from both professional critics and the audience alike, but as we say here, not everything that has a limp is a comparison (it makes more sense in German ).

No more Kwasi/quasi puns for me any more. To use the new king's words: "Dear, oh dear..."

Are there really going to be five seasons of Rings of Power, or is there a chance - any chance, really - that we somehow magically get spared a second one because Bezos is unhappy and cancels everything? edit:

Delegates sent from the national parliaments of the members of the Council of Europe who gather to, ah, counsel the Council of Europe. The European Court of Human Rights is also a part of the Council of Europe (and a much better known one, I would wager). Not to be confused with the European Council, the European Union or the Court of Justice of the European Union. No. PACE has 318 members and 318 deputies, out of which 100 were present for the vote, 99 voted in favor, one representative of Turkey abstained and, it only has advisory, not any binding character. It is basically a suggestion to the member states of the Council of Europe. News presentation worked though, people on Twatter already believe this is something official from the European Union. Quote from the relevant section: Emphasis added by me. Taking bets on how many member nations will follow the call and publicly and officially declare the Russian regime a terrorist one. Heh, they do not even bother to follow the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights even though they all techincally agreed to observe its judgments. Those are meant to be binding.

Eh, I have (had) many consoles myself, though none of the new generation - newest one is a Switch, and before that it was a GameCube and an original XBox. I like my Switch.

Bethesda games were shallow as a puddle long before any of them made it to consoles. The peasantry of the world has much to answer for, of course, but Bethesda's crimes against the master race were not committed solely on their behest.

Question for anyone else who watches House of the Dragon, which probably is just @InsaneCommander at this point. Both Daemon and Rhaenyra are dragonriders. Why are they constantly using carriages and other means of transport? Show ran out of budget already, or what? Did the day for night shooting of last week's episode eat too much money?

Still looks like sci-fi Chucky.

Indeed. Obligatory Gamers Nexus post: Huh, dunno, maybe an upgrade later to a smaller version is back on the table, if the gains are similar. Edit: had a bit of a chuckle about the temperature being stable and pretty good on the FE's cooling setup, and that's without DARK POWER SHARK FIN fans.

Our previous minister of finance is a politial science major, and when asked what he felt made him qualified for the job, he said that he thinks he is qualified because he never failed to pay a bill, so in that, you're not quite alone. He also sent his wife for a walk with his laptop in the baby carriage a couple of minutes before the police arrived at his home with a search warrant. I am convinced this was simply a coincidence, I mean, who of us does not send their spouses out to walk the laptops, huh? One of his biggest achievements was forgetting a couple of zeroes on an official budget proposal, because who cares if we are talking about millions or billions of euros, right?

Yep, that was Quincy, M. E.

The silly little cat is one of the two cannibals. The other one barely counts, but it does trigger the achievements, so yeah, I forgot her, although outside of Elves and Dwarves, she'll have a hard time consorting with anyone her actual age...

The game has great choices for romance in general. Not one, but two nutjob cannibal women. One male character posessed by an eldritch horror from beyond the veil of reality, a pushy half-goat, half-reptile, a succubus on a road to redemption and a... well, actually, I guess a cleric worshipping the Goddess of Beauty and looking for his brother is the oddly normal one out of the bunch. Huh, how did that happen? Bruce and romance spoilers:

Yeah, it's basically "Hey, I caught you in the act of killing someone and consuming their flesh in some creepy sacrificial ritual, how about we do it atop the still warm corpse?", which, wow, is so much more involved than Viconia or Morrigan, which I assume you're referencing here.

Blasters would go Devil Azata for the combiation of Favorable/Zippy Magic and the Decrees, so the free infite Hellfire Rays don't really factor into it, no. Not much trash left after Mythic 9 after all, and otherwise you'd just bolster/empower real Hellfire Rays. There's just not enough game left after getting it, I agree, even with Inevitable Excess.

Just do everything Early Sunset wants, I hear he can give you the ability to cast Hellfire Ray at-will at some point.

The VA for Shiina has a rather annoying tendency to yell in an ear-piercing manner (might be a slight exaggeration, though) and the second episode features one of your favorite character archetypes, s-s-shy, slightly st-t-t-uttering Akira who talks somewhat silently and who... Aside from that, the main impression I have from the first three episodes is like watching a slowly unfolding eldritch horror show set in a rather colorful and otherwise fairly normal school setting. Shiina goes to school, there's a Kendo class where she meets Akira, she cooks, goes to a restaurant and talks to her Patrick, who does very little else than just creepily stare at her. Everything just feels wrong, in the same way authors describe their eldritch horrors. Unknowable, reality bending. Although the soft piano music underlying some scenes is an inversion of the trope just as well. It is slow piano music all right, but it's not soft. Generally, this series is hell on the ears. Is it terrible? Yes, most definitely. Just probably not in the way you asked. I have no idea where it is going with whathever it is, but it's probably going to continue being first team all American creepy, like D1ck Cheney: Heh. Here's the opening: It's cute and fuzzy until Shiina and Patrick turn into Godzilla like monstrosities and attack each other in the city. Uhm, yeah. Magic eight ball says: Unclear. I have no idea what is going on yet, no idea where it will go and no idea if I like it - let alone anyone else.

First two episodes of 骸なる星 珠たる子. If you put that title into your favorite translater of choice, it'll come out as corpse star; pearl child, or something vaguely similar. Wikipedia states a rough translation as Corpse of a Star; A Precious Child. It is not all too far off, 骸なる means to become a corpse, 星 is star, 珠たる means 'pearl grade' (equals precious, more or less) and 子 is child. 骸なる is missing a grammatical marker, but titles and lyrics often don't do grammatically fully correct, that's not too surprising. It follows Shiina, a 12 year old girl, who finds Patrick at the bottom of the sea after swimming out a little too far and almost* (footnote in the spoiler) drowning. She bonds with the little bugger while using it as a flying surfing board and sees a dragon rising from the sea. Does that make sense? Yeah, thought so. The animation in this series is somewhat limited, mostly static backgrounds with only a few movements of the characters involved. It adds to the atmosphere of the anime, which is drawn rather colorfully and looks fun, yet is absolutely unnerving, eerie and oppressive. Something is just wrong, and the way the show handles sound and music just adds to this. Sound effects are terribly loud in the mix, as is the music, and I'm fairly certain it is intentional. Shiina keeps Patrick, and names it Hoshimaru, a combination of star and circle, because stars are round. Things it does inclue, when it is not a flying surfboard, consuming insects by absorbing them with its skin, biting a chunk out of Shiina's breakfast while nobody was paying attention, and its primary function, creepily staring into the void: Leedlee leedlee leedlee lee. Well, not exactly, the design is older than Sponge Bob. The anime adaptation is newer though. The shot above also shows that there isn't much in any decent quality source to be found, or at least, not very readily, if there are any. Look, I'm sure there's nothing absolutely wrong with this thing, right? Anyway, the writer of the anime adaptation is Chiaki J. Konaka, who is an active contributer to the Cthulhu Mythos and worked on great series like Princess Tutu, Futari Ecchi and Magic User's Club. Interested yet? Well, he also wrote and worked on Devil Lady, Hellsing, Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze and an episode of Vampire Princess Miyu, which now that I looked it up makes perfect sense in explaining why the series, so far, is the way it is.

Mostly interesting for @Mamoulian War and @Lexx, I suppose: For everyone else, Germany's current chief of the Federal Office for Information Security founded a registered cybersecurity lobbying association with wonderfully close ties to the FSB and Russian cybersecurity company Infotecs, which this year, curiously enough, renamed itself to Protelion, and was founded some 30 odd years ago by former KGB mathematician Andrey Chapchaev, holder of the Russian Order For Merit to the Fatherland. Protelion sells security software and hardened mobile devices, which according to their own advertisments is installed and used by millions of devices in Germany and incudes specialized equipment designed for high profile politicians and government officials. The Federal Office for Information Security more or less declined to comment about the usage of their software and hardware solutions in Germany's government, only saying that none of their products is in use at the the Federal Office for Information Security. Their head aside, who most likely is a product of Protelion, and a nepotism hire, being the son of a prominent CDU politician and so incompetent that he's been called a Cyber-Clown by actual information security experts. Good job Germany, and here I thought it was embarrassing that our former minister of foreign affairs curtsied before Putin (who came to visit her marriage ceremony and gifted her earrings worth northwards of 50k €).

The episode made me groan several times. Episode had an X-Wing at the end for some 'fun' fanservice.

I know a cook who makes his steaks like that (the same one that keeps giving everyone ketchup as a condiment to his steaks). He has been doing that for a while and has ever since larger steaks on offer. Prior to that he usually only had tenderloin or similar that was cut a lot less thick than regular steaks and got a really quick high heat sear on both sides, then straight to letting it rest and serving. It is not what one would expect when ordering a steak in the traditional sense, but it keeps the meat juicy and infuses it with a good deal of flavor, although one really needs to like their beef bleu. Downsides are of course the cuts are terribly expensive, and... it is tenderloin, at the end of the day, and not everyone likes them bleu (I do, so sue me ). A decent tomahawk/rib eye will come with a more beefy flavor and a vastly different dining experience, although admittedly I am not one to dismiss decent fillets as a matter of course like plenty of other purists. Right, where was I going with this, yeah, works fine, and produces good steaks quickly, which is the biggest downside of the traditional method of high heat searing and putting it in the oven (time constraints easily being the biggest hurdle for small restaurants). Not sure how well that works for salmon or pork chops, but it really does make for a great rib eye steak.