majestic

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.

if (anime.productionDate > 2003) return true;

Well, that's even dumber...er then.

I fail to see how that can be. This sounds nothing like the production of St. Anger, which was an incredibly lame sounding attempt at making a 'garage' album. As if being from Metallica wasn't bad enough.

Hey, some of us haven't seen that movie yet, thanks for nothing, you asshat!

Telling image from yesterday's special session of parliament: Captions from right to left: "I need a bigger jacket, I can barely suck in my stomach and talk at the same time." - Chancellor "I should not have had that bottle of wine for breakfast, it is too difficult to sit here without falling off my chair." - Vice chancellor "How did I get here? What is that strange, black contraption the old man is speaking into?" - Minister of Defense *snore* - Minister of Health "I cannot believe that dolt is my superior." - Undersecretary to the Chancellor's Office If democracy makes sure that we're no better governed than we deserve, how much negative Karma have my previous incarnations accrued that I am stuck with these people (I did not vote for them, for the record )?

How about a German Eurodance cover of a beloved rock classic? (This is borderline heresy!)

If unclear from the preview image: disturbing content warning.

I do not know if any Obsidian officials ever stated it directly, but it is standard procedure in the entertainment industry, not just for game developers. Here is Neil Gaiman's explanation on why he does not read unsolicited pitches (public pitches make the situation worse) and blocks people who repeatedly send him any. It includes an anecdote from the Babylon 5 production too, and with intellectual property rights being what they are, this is no different for game pitches. Pitching games to studios is barely possible (in general) without being part of the industry yourself. The only way to get your game idea made is to either do it yourself, or start working in the industry to a point where you can pitch your ideas to either studios or game designers directly on a trusted basis. Royalty lawsuits happen all the time, and even if the sued party can believable demonstrate to not have copied ideas from (unsolicited) pitches, it usually is not pretty.

Well, not a Nordic country here, but a similar concept to what we employ here I'd wager. Owning non-controlling minority shares (sometimes known as blocking minorty) in companies that serve public interests (education, energy supply, healthcare, infrastructure, etc.) allows the state to block any actions taken by the majority of shareholders that it perceives as against public interest. One of the reasons, amongst others (dividends), why Austria is holding more than 30% shares of the OMV concern.

My customers are always very impressed by showing them the hackers with netstat. I mean... uhm... nothing to see here!