majestic

Finished a lengthy-ish risk analysis. I really need a henchman to do all these fetch and carry quests for me. What a dreadfully boring experience.

'k, thanks for the reminder why I usually stay out of this thread. Okay, you got me. I was just kidding. I thought of another reasonable cop out: The subjunctive was meant for expressing whether or not the change in the handling of the Ukrainian situation can be considered significant depends on where in the world one is. See, for someone from Serbia, it makes no difference, hence it is not significant. That is clearly what I meant, I was just expressing it poorly! Yes, I'm going with that. No, I took that sentence out of the post in editing before you replied simply because it looks like a cop out and I did not want to give that impression, you can perhaps still check the timestamps (before they start reading "one hour ago"). Alas, that is not at all what I originally meant, of course, because you're right about the pre-invasion handling, which was not really on my mind and I did not take into acocunt Trump's buffoonish handling of intelligence offered to him, simply about his potential reaction to being ignored by Putin. I am uncertain what that has to do with me being paralysed with pre-invasion opines other than the fact that I already admitted to being wrong about the situation that I commented on a handful of times (there are two that I can recall off-handedly, the first that I did not think Russia would weaponize energy exports and that there would be no invasion, as both moves make no sense when thinking about Russia's well-being, or at least the well-being of the people, which Putin does not care about - okay, that one is not much of a surprise, but at least I thought he'd not stand in the way of the profit of his oligarch mafiaesque buddies - and no, I did not count, feel free to take this as another attack vector if you like), but that is fine. Am still right about the intraweb though.

I was not kidding, merely pointing out one area where Biden's current foreing policy could potentially deviate significantly from the Tangerine's. Trump is on record saying that the war would never have happened on his watch, and I am not as convinced as you are that he would not have felt betrayed by is 'good friend' Putin going ahead with the invasion anyway. Trump is nothing if not petty and throws friends and former allies under the bus on perceived slights, much less real ones. It is not that unreasonable to assume that he'd throw tantrum and suggest bombing Russia with Chinese decals. Like he did before. But who knows, I also thought Putin would not be anserous enough to go ahead with the invasion because it clearly was not in Russia's best interest, and lo, he clearly was, so clearly I suck at gauging other people's intentions. Clearly not much of a surprise there, I guess, that's clear.

Ride like the wind, Shadowfax!

Just someone who believes that the future will be better, tomorrow.

The problem is, the very vocal American 'wokerati' on Twatter make it all too easy for them to point to and yell: "That is what you get from the left." In particular because our media (edit: that include Euro-Peon wokerati on Twatter) and some political parties don't seem to have anything better to do than to pick up on these issues and present them. In the real life, I'm sorry, nobody gives a flying rat's ass about whether or not white people should be forbidden from wearing dreadlocks or if languages that have grammatical gender should be changed so that the generic masculine is more gender neutral or if people should be able to pick their own pronouns. The height of stupidity was our government prior to the election that changed our center-right party into a right-wing populist one and brought us a right-right-extremist government for a while. Changing the lyrics of our national hymn to read sons "and daugthers" because that certainy was a pressing issue that very much increased the quality of life, and the best part? Nobody's using the new hymn text, and the minister who came up with the change patted herself on the back for a feminist's job well done. I don't even... don't get me wrong, these are things we should be aware of in some capacity, but it is not something politicians should spent time and energy on when the world's burning to a cinder, there's still a large educational gap, much less women in STEM fields, non-equal rights for people with different sexual orientations, the educational system still in need of reforms, spending goes overboard and rich people can dodge taxes in any which way they feel like. At the moment our conservatives are falling apart at the seams with one massive corruption scandal chasing the next one, and what do our left leaning centrists do to capitalize on it? They want to reduce the hurdles on the way to citizenship right after a hundred people with migratory backgrounds and asylum seekers rioted during All Hallows Eve celebrations. Not only is that the worst possible timing you can have because it's just more wind in the sails of the extreme right, it is also terrible because the idea is a good one and (in my opinion) a just cause, because the hurdles on the way to Austrian citizenship are so high that even law abiding, hard working people from other nations who are well integrated can scarcely afford to apply for citizenship (never mind natural citizens not being able to pass the test, oh boy). We're basically marginalizing even those who are willing to integrate and play by our rules by telling them that no matter what they do, they're not going to be allowed to participate in our democratic process, but at the same time we expect everyone to respect our democratic process. Find the issue there yet? I do. The problem is, many others do not, so you can talk about that at some point later. Win the election first, then change the process. You're not going to win elections by championing easier citizenship after bored asylum seekers threw explosives at the police. Perhaps it should not be that way - but it is what it is. Where's the common sense here? I feel like I'm parroting Dave Chapelle, because he made a similar point about the Democrats before/shortly after Drumpf became president. Name one significant difference in foreign policy since Biden became president. Oh, right, he took the trade wars started by Trump and put on the thumb screws and antagonized China over Taiwan (for better or worse). Yeah, Trump might not want to support the Ukraine in the same way. Does not mean it would not have happened, but that could be a difference. Compared to the Tangerine in Chief, Bush was a reasonable, well spoken and articulated person, and let's not forget that it was Bush who once said he believes that man and fish can coexist peacefully.

Like a horde of comments from foreigners (both US and otherwise) on our 2016 presidential elections, an otherwise mostly meaningless election that suddenly became of world wide interest (in right wing circles) because Breitbart decided it was going to push the issue, because the winning candidate was from the Greens - which again is another misinterpretation based on not knowing anything, because our Greens are fiscal/economic conservatives with a socio-liberal worldview and a focus on environmental protection, i.e. they're mostly well off, highly educated people - libertarians, basically, who want to pay taxes for environmental protection but nothing else, the sort of people who expect that everyone can commute to work back and forth on a bicycle because they can work comfortably from home. They're left in name only, or can be considered left if you simply take the definition and assume it comes merely with not being against gay marriage or polluting the youthful mind with transgender ideas, something that - oh wonder - is being pushed by conservatives and right-wing extremists everywhere in the West at the moment. They wondered how and why the presidential race was called while it was really narrow (like 50.6% to 49.4% or something) based on exit polls. Indeed, calling a race based on exit polls would be stupid. Except, nope, we're not calling races based on exit polls at all, but using statistical sampling to extrapolate the most likely results, and when there's a .6% lead with an uncertainty of only .1%, it is more than fine to call the race. The outstanding mail-in ballots will not magically feature a totally different voting distribution, in particular not when historically, they've been overwhelmingly cast for the Green party. https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2016/05/24/feared-austria-gets-extremist-president/ Jesus H. Christ, I forgot how much of a sh*trag Breitbart is. Sigh. Indeed, mail-in ballots cannot be added to the voting district they come from because they do not contain sender addresses on the envelope, so they're all collected and simply added to the count in the nearest voting district (this happens in the areas where one post office is responsible for several small villages, for instance - it is very common, especially in more rural areas). As such, it is entirely possible for the vote count to surpass the amount of registered voters in a voting district. That does not mean the voter turnout is above 100% or that any manipulation happened. Makes for less interesting headlines, of course. Huh, no idea why I wrote that post, but now that it is there I don't want to delete it. What a long winded way to agree. This red wave seems to be as much of a dud as the 'purple' wave was in 2020. Well, even more so, probably. So sad. No need to go back that far, Mario Draghi's failed government was like that just recently. Except one cannot claim Mario Draghi to be an independent technocrat, but the concept is the same.

I got the impression that @Malcador post was supposed to be a joke, what with the truncated quote and all. Take this as proof that someone reads your posts, but this is wrong, please use intarweb. Intrawebs are for internal use within an organisation only, unless they come with an option for externals to connect, in which case they're called extrawebs. Don't worry, we're as ignorant about our own election/political systems as we are about the US political system. I see that almost every day, and especially again in recent times as we went through three chancellors in a rather short time span. People now complain that nobody elected the current chancellor, even though the established government (and thus, whichever party holds an absolute majority of representatives or establishes a coalition with 50% + 1 representatives) nominates someone for the office of chancellor, not the people directly. If one steps down, the party in question is free to select anyone else as replacement. There is no law that states that when a chancellor resigns there must be general elections. The entire government is established that way, and there's nothing that states that any government official must belong to any political party. In theory (much less in practice, obviously), they don't even need to be members of a party. Three years ago, after the fist vote of no confidence against the entire govnerment ever to succeed in parliament, we had a period where a government of experts was established to propose legislation that was then voted on in parliament, while parties also brought legislation that was voted on. The chancellor during this period was a former member of the constitutional court, which is just about as much free of political influences as it can possibly get (again, ideally entirely, but of course not quite, as usual with any official functions). In elections, we do vote for parties, not people. There are only two exceptions here, the president, who is voted for directly - and is nominally at least independent of parties (nominees sent with party backing are expected to leave their party attachments behind, which does work as well as you might expect it to, but that is a wholly different matter) - and some towns that allow for the mayor to be voted for directly, but those are a stark minority of townships, as most municipal elections result in the selection of the municipal council which in turn elects the mayor. That does not stop the right wing populists from telling their voters that nobody voted for the current chancellor, and that the government should be dissolved and general elections held, and people from parroting misinformation spread by a party who should and does know better, because they were the first ones to break with the tradition that their selected public running candidate ("Spitzenkandidat"), who got 'voted' for, according to their own logic, did in fact not accept the office of chancellor or vice chancellor after the election when they formed part of the goverment, and in fact, they made the running candidate of the third strongest party chancellor. Bet you that in two years time, when the EU parliamentary elections are held, people will once again complain about how undemocratic the European Union is, after not going to vote for the parliament, which will most likely once again result in the conservatives being the strongest party in parliament, which in turn will confirm the new President of the European Commission from within their ranks, and nothing will change, and people will once again grumble about how nothing ever changes with that undemocratic heap of bureaucracy. Of course, the EU also has the issue of being the dumpster for political trash that cannot otherwise be conveniently disposed of, as such it is a veritable cornucopia of toxic waste and people whose intellectual capacities could be benevolently described as limited. Like this here guy, who at various times was responsible for the EU's policy on energy, digital economy and society as well as budget and human resources: Just ignore the subtitles, as they're as terrible as the speech given by Günther Öttinger, and before anyone complains that it is petty to, well, complain about someone's accent and command of English - that does not prevent him from preparing for the speech, because it is quite clear that he's reading it for the very first time (even though it is supposed to represent his views as much as that of the party he belongs to), and it does stand to reason that whoever nominated the person (that would be the German government) should pick someone with a decent command of the language they need to make use of in their everyday work life. *sigh*

By the way, ever since the maintenance, the forum feels rather unresponsive. It is the same with two different ISPs, and it is not the transfer of the content that is slow as pages with loads of embedded videos or images load with no significant delay once there's a response from the server. Opening a page of the video game screenshot thread takes as long as loading any forum thread index. It's not a bandwidth issue. It also doesn't look like analytics or AWS slowing access down, which has been an issue in the past at times where the status bar in the browser would read "loading data from analytics.google.com or aws.something.or.another (i.e. user attachments )" and then hang for a bit. I wonder if that is the same for anyone else?

From the described behaviour I still would not rule out a language issue - both affected accounts most likely ran Swedish versions of Windows and Android with potentially Swedish browser translations, even if switching the keyboard layout did not work. A "browser window inside a browser window" changed the behaviour of the line breaks, and submitting without hitting the submit button through CTRL + enter seems to have avoided the issue altogether (although that perhaps simply was coincidence and it is hardly testable now that it appears to be fixed). Maybe 'Submit' runs some sort of pre-check or does otherwise something that simply removed everything past the line break from the input field or the string respectively, like interpreting a line break as the end of the string (I don't see how that should be the case with any modern programming language, but I have seen stranger things happening). It would also fit the impossible to reproduce and randomly occuring dreaded post eating where submitting a post does absolutely nothing when there's some bug that cuts or otherwise drops input based on something that is a combination of post length, thread activity and whatever else (certain post elements in a thread seem to make it worse), as some threads are more affected than others. It could also be a validation issue that, but that seems unlikely - at least with the mangled post (now this isn't entirely applicable because Inivsion IP is based on PHP IIRC, but for backends written in C# data models can have automated validations that are then returned to the view with error messages if they fall through, but they still need to be shown - the behaviour would be similar to the eaten posts if the input fields would also be cleared). The posts missing entirely might fall through some server side validation without giving out errors. Does the forum software come with some form of input sanitization routines or validation that might cause this? Seems strange, because the missing posts usually go through if simply copy/pasted again, but it is impossible to rule out some form of issue that simply does not get copy/pasted in some manner.

Switch your keyboard layout/input language to English/US and try again. It would be strange for the issue to occur on both Windows and Android, but it's one of the only things left that most likely is the same on your phone and your computer. Also... try Edge for a moment. It's just Chrome without Google stealing your data these days, so it's worth a shot.

That was my point, the Roman legions had centurios and tribunes drafted from the more experienced rank and file. Showing initiative in battle was encouraged and properly rewarded, like at the Battle of Cynoscephalae where the Macedonians suffered a crushing defeat because the legions in pursuit of routed enemy groups saw an opportunity, split off half a legion and attacked the rear of the Macedonian phalanx without being ordered to do so by their commanding general.

Putting the best troops in the third line is a tried and true approach, but luckily the Russians did not seem to learn the 2500 year old lesson that a more flexible command strategy often stops things from going to the proverbial triarii. Res ad triarios rediit and all that.

What's the difference between a fiscally responsible Republican and orcs? One's a fantasy character, and the others are the bad guys in Lord of the Rings.

Then there is how Expanded Arsenal works - by summing up the highest available bonuses (so two greater spell foci and one regular spell focus will not be a +2 as one would reasonably expect, but a +5 boost to the Expanded Arsenal school). This is perhaps the most ridiculous thing in the game rules, if you want to make sure that your enchantment spells have the highest caster levels and DCs possible, take every single focus and mastery you come across, except for enchantment, and take Expanded Arsenal: Enchantment. You're going to take the feats anyway, might as well make the most use of them, and if you have any left over, pick up a Spell Focus or two (admittedly easier when you can dilute your regular class levels with Loremaster without losing too much in terms of class progression, or by picking caster classes which do come with bonus additional feats). That way it is possible to get a decent enough boost to Conjuration and its great spells and have an enormous bonus to enchantment. Arguably makes for the easier start too, as Spell Focus on Conjuration makes the early game probably easier than going with Enchantment right away. Unless you're playing a Thassilonian Specialist, but that does not apply to Nenio.

It only affects ending slides for your companions but it is required for the full secret ending unless you're playing Trickster or Demon. If you want to do that, then keep that in mind, or suffer through Enigma. Again. For most regular party setups, Nenio is hard to drop, there aren't many arcane casters in the companion lineup. Sure, Ember is a staple for virtually every party, no matter if you make her a Hellfire Raylgun (I am so not sorry for that pun), or an enchanter/summoner Ember. Some manner of arcane control and blasting is too good to pass up, so unless you're playing an arcane caster MC (so, in essence, a Lich making use of the merged spellbook) you might want to keep her around - or hire a merc.

Random Narutaru image of the day: Your guess is as good as mine, really.

It's a little exaggerated for effect, but it is not wrong.

Well, your mileage may vary, but I find it rather unnerving.

I had no idea Tarantino makes animated films too.

Rewatched a couple of the early season one Cardcaptor Sakura episodes due to a colleague now watching the series. Episode seven remains a fantastic piece that showed how great the resolutions of the magical 'fights' can be and just how well everything is set up. Such an impeccable, low stakes show - at least, until the point where they tried their hand at being more epic near the end of the series and failed a little, even if the second arc / third 'season' contain the two strongest episodes of the series. Sailor Mercury is a hoot as Kero too. In the end, aside from having a unique approach to the fighting in magical girl shows, the series stays close to genre convetions and standard tropes, including an incredibly obvious future boyfriend setup, but it does trod off the beaten path every now and then, and it does everything so incredibly well it is barely believable at times, and it will only get better from this episode on, until the end of the first arc.

Particularily that part in the negative universe that looked worse than ReBoot did in 1994.