majestic

I'm just an amateur dabbling in 言語, really, but it's best to be prepared, right?

If I give you my bank account number, will you start paying? I don't mind a bonus or two. How much are we talking about? Gotta be careful with the taxes and all.

Well, time for some food pictures. Some homemade bread, fresh from the oven... Local variant of goulash (more like pörkölt with no tomatoes) to go with it... And finally, while that was made for tomorrow as it's a staple for Ash Wednesday, one has to, ah, sample it, right? Herring salad. Minor spoiler how the sauce of herring salad is traditionally made, don't click here if you're faint of heart: Don't blame me for clicking, eh?

A maximum age for politicians wouldn't be the only thing necessary. I propose a minimum height requirement too, that way we can avoid most Napoleon-Complex idiots that need power to compensate for their short...comings. Yeah, sorry about that pun, not sorry about the idea. Just struck me looking at Putin standing as tall as Merkel. Yeah, no, if you're male and not at least an inch taller than the average height of your compatriots (or at the very least have yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge hands!), no leadership position for you. edit: This is a joke, in case it wasn't clear enough.

There's another fun tidbit about me playing the Mass Effect series. I finished the trilogy on Insanity, and the looked up stuff and apparently realized it wasn't that hard, while I actually struggled with the initial stages of the first and second game, at least. Quake on Nightmare mode, for instance, was comparatively easy. In a thing that only ever happens to me, I missed that you're supposed to import a previous character played on another difficulty level when playing on Insanity. The first part is the most annoying to start as fresh Insainty character with, because everything almost one-shots you and the gameplay is pretty awkward at first. Kinda the same thing that made me go through Dark Souls while wondering how casters are supposed to be the "easy mode" of the game when bosses lose less than half of their health and I'm out of spells and forced into melee with a character not really built for it. Buying multiple copies? Why would I do that? I already got the spell. Right? Unintentional hard modes for the win! Strange how diametrically opposite our experiences are. I couldn't ever finish the original NWN2 campaign, and I actually finished the OC of the first NWN. I keep hearing how Mask of the Betrayer is one of the best (if not the best) of Obsidian, and yet I just can't get there, because I just can't start with it and the OC is so... off-putting, boring and, well, terrible that it breaks even my need to soldier on*, and that realiably. Quite a feat. I almost quit over that tutorial, and kept hoping it would improve. Right. It didn't. Dragon Age: Origins, meanwhile, I finished twice (noteworthy insofar as I barely ever replay games that length). However, I despied Awakening. What a terrible expansion. On the other hand I also did what I always do with games like that, build a character that plays itself. The "combat" of Dragon Age: Origins was making an Arcane Warrior and clicking some party scripts together, then watch it play out on its own. There's only a handful of fights that need direct control intervention. I'm fairly content with the game playing out this way, but it anyone wants an actual gameplay experience or riveting tactical combat from BioWare games I think they've been looking at games from the wrong company. It's not really like DA:O created the BioWare game template. *I actually finished Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. I don't think dwarves are allowed in Orgrimmar.

There's two answers, or rather, one answer with two components. First, the writers all have no concept of astronomical scales, but that's probably something Alex Kurtzman got from Jar Jar Abrams, or maybe it was the other way around. Han could watch the "Republic" die from Angkor Wat in The Force Awakens and Spock watched Vulcan disappear in a red-matter black hole too. The other is that since we barely have established any locations, Vulcan, Earth and Titan are the entire sum of the places the viewer is supposed to care about from the last season. In the third season, Discovery could jump to Titan because it was outside of Earth's sensor range, and the outpost on Titan was capable of launching raids on Earth without being discovered. All from a moon of a planet that's visible from Earth with the naked eye. Combine that and what does it matter that the DMA is large enough to encompass the entire Solar System and it's closest neighbours. Last minute addon to the series. Like, literally. Chakotay and Seven are seen having a date in the very last episode, with an undertone of "this has been going on for a while" while nothing of the sort ever happened in the series. After on and off teasing a potential romance between Mr. Boring and Ms. Bipolar.

Well, I played Andromeda and even enjoyed the ridiculous loot box multiplayer for a while, but it was riddled with constant disconnects and crashes, and that meant investing time and energy for no gain, which lead me to just stop playing. It wasn't the worst game I ever played, but not going to lie, some of the dialogue was CAN I SHOW YOU MY FORCE LANCE level of bad (Andromeda joke, sorry ) and the animations were hilariously broken after the launch. Gameplay wise it was probably better than Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, all things considered, but that's no real wonder, running on an adapted Frostbite 3 (I think it's pretty clear that BioWare's Unreal 3 implementation for Mass Effect just wouldn't give them any decent shooter gameplay). If it couldn't do the one thing right it was originally designed for then that would have been terrible. Please note that this doesn't mean Andromeda was a good shooter, it just played a whole lot better than the other Mass Effects. When it worked. Which it barely did. The comment however was mostly meant to be tongue-in-cheek, I thought linking Rich destroying Mass Effect DVDs made that clear. Mass Effect 2's excuse for a plot is a rehash of Dragon Age: Origins. Face impossible threat, assemble team, face impossible odds, prevail. I don't mean excuse for a plot as negatively as it comes across here, because that clearly wasn't the focus of the game, and story-wise, it apparently really did not have a focus while everyone was trying to figure out how to best mess up the groundwork laid by the first game in the third one. An excuse plot it was, nevertheless. A collection of small stories with barely any connecting tissue. Still, since I'm a sucker for character stuff, it was probably the Mass Effect I enjoyed the most. edit: I should also mention that I liked Dragon Age: Origins, and to a certain degree Inquisition, so I'm probably not the best person to judge things, at least going by the edgelords and art snobs on this forum, because DA:O is like the worst thing since Pool of Radiance 2, apparently.

The same thing Chakotay suddenly saw in Seven of Nine, out of nowhere. Lines of a script, written by hacks. A-koo-chee-moya. I shouldn't be too hard on Voyager. Voyager is pretty watchable compared to the other stuff that came afterwards. Like One Night in Sickbay, which was probably the worst Star Trek episode until These Are The Voyages... which was the worst until every other Discovery episode became the worst until the androids in Picard summoned Mecha-Cthulhu from Dark Space (tm). Oh how I wish I'd be exaggerating just how breathtakingly stupid this was... edit: Ah, minor tip here, I don't think it'll help, but try not to think about anything that happens in Discovery going forward. It'll just break your brain if you try to make sense of it. Just "enjoy" the ride. You'll get to watch Skynet ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL at some point. That'll probably make no sense yet, but unfortunately it will soon enough...

This is thread is sure going places. If it's an actual harem*, it might have been one of his daughters, sisters, wives, or any other woman of the household, rather than a slave. Wait, that doesn't make this any better, does it? *I think historical accuracy isn't part of Space Cobra, so that's unlikely, huh?

Wand of Call Lightning, there is one right at the beginning of the dungeon, and one more further in.

It's a good indicator of how much the show cares for getting the little details right. It's fine if a gamma ray burst doesn't kill everyone, that's why these ships all have fictional shielding technology, but once it's past the shields and is like a light flash on the bridge, it's everyone melts into goo time. And yeah, Earth getting hit by a gamma ray burst is a potential extinction event.

Yikes, I forgot to write my weekly Discovery diatribe. I'm not going to do that in as much detail as usual, but let is suffice to say that it was, once again, patently dumb and bad. Season four, episode 10. Don't really care what the title is. A few key things:

Clearing Blackwater was an unpleasant experience on unfair difficulty, and that's primarily attributable to me thinking it'll be all right to bring a few shock weapons and make due with the wands until you can grab Stormlord's Resolve. That wasn't the best idea, all in all. It works fine until you run into the augmented succubi who have an annoying tendency to take zero damage from the weapons and you need to get through both their spell resistance and their reflex saves for the wands to work. Battling mirror imaging, level draining demons with regeneration you just can't turn off properly is a tad... annoying. As per usual, the two actual boss fights were more than managable. Ember's supercharged enchanment DC and enemies not immune to mind altering conditions equals having a fairly easy time, comparatively. Picked up Agony on Ember for the first time too. Works well enough against enemies with weak (that's relative on unfair) fortitude saves and has twice the range of the other hexes. Isn't as powerful as slumber when it works, of course, but it's still a decent way to turn an enemy off with a bit of dice luck. Also ended up picking up a whole lot of Improved Initiative feats. On unfair, you really do not want to be caught flat-footed. Eh, and pretty big lol at the Brown-Fur Transmuter mercenary. The guy is well worth his money and then some. I'd call that a bargain, and he does a decent job at throwing Bolstered Battering Blasts at enemy lines when the buffing is said and done.

Keyrock liked Hercules in Space more than Andromeda, so... yeah, I don't think that's going to change his mind.

Oh, it is, and then you add the other plot that's the main story to Clear Card that's not been revealed yet, and it becomes a dumpster fire. That's what's going on with Sakura, there's another plot going on involving the new Mystery Transfer Student (very creative choice there), but I think that starts in a couple of episodes, outside of strange dreams. No, there's a full episode that acts as a bridge between the final epsiode and Clear Card with some flashbacks and helpful information for people who start with Clear Card: Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Prologue: Sakura and the Two Bears If that sounds like a garbled bullcrap version of the actual final episodes of the anime, then that's because it is. I'd say stick to it, it gets better, but really, it just doesn't. In fact, the first few episodes are actually the best, not counting the ones where they brought Meiling back. If you don't mind missing parts of the ludicrous plot, you could just jump ahead to the episode where Meiling and Tomoyo watch her "Sakura video tape best of" at Tomoyo's home cinema, episode 15, Sakura's Nostalgic Viewing Party. Meiling is in he series from episodes 13 to 16, but 14 is a real barn burner where people randomly turn into animals, so I can't even recommend the full run. The only other halfway worthwhile episode is Sakura, Rainbows, and Grandpa (20). Or you could try episode nine, the moment when watchers realize this is creatively bankrupt. Sakura returns to the aquarium where she captured Watery, and imagine that, a tank breaks...

Why is everyone always forgetting Andromeda? edit: I love how Rich has to try really, really, REALLY hard not to burst out into laughter all the time.

Yeah, overall Clear Card is such a low effort job it hurts. Eriol and Kaho, sitting on a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g... it's not weird, really, because Eriol is a whole lot older than the 13 he looks. Really. Pinky swear! Rika has one very teensy tiny cameo with a different voice actress once in the show. If there's one thing about the manga and the anime that's really weird is the writer's obsession with teacher/student romance. I think Ms. Ohkawa might have had a few crushes on her 先生 in her early teens. Well... spoilers for a part of the "plot" of this travesty: I guess you didn't watch the episode "0" prequel-OVA bridge between the old and the new series? Loved all the inconsistencies and continuity errors, but they're semi-handwaved in a conversation (or "intentional" if you will). Also a big plus is the tech up. This is a year later than the original, but 20 years ahead in technology. No, that isn't weird at all. It also wasn't totally weird in Sailor Moon Crystal. Nope. Not weird at all... Hooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Looks like Germany is reneging on their refusal to ban Russia from SWIFT. Still needs to pass the 27 member vote unanimously, but... signs point to it being back on the table. The cynic in me thinks it's time to invest in the Yuan. Giant spoiler:

Bruce, perhaps you'd like to rephrase that into: They had no legal obligation to help the Syrians and sticking to treaties their request for asylum needs to be processed at their point of entry into the EU, not somewhere else. Because the way you're writing it boils down to: Ya, I'm not racist, but they brown, so we ain't helping.

Anyone of you got a working IBM 5100? If yes, keep it safe.

A few of us are guilty of that. It always appeared that Putin is an intelligent, if not always very amicable fellow. Ruthless, yes, but not crazy. Apparently though, that's at least partially not correct. Worse though, he made a couple of funny posts not age very well, and that's pretty unforgivable. Meh. @BruceVC for a more serious reply now that I have some time for it, yes, apparently the intelligence wasn't a fabrication, or exaggerated for effect. You know the story about the boy who cries wolf, he gets eaten by the wolf eventually, but indeed, it was correct this time, the posts didn't age very well, and I was wrong in expecting that this crisis would be solved without shots being fired - kind of like every other crisis every year ever since 2014. To be honest, I still don't see what Putin expects to get out of this that benefits Russia, or his position, in the long term. You'd think France and Germany would put their own interests above others and strong-arm the Ukraine into backing down, but hey, here I was... apparently overestimating Putin, Macron and Scholz. Putin always did a good job in keeping the EU divided and navel-gazing by supporting the fringe elements of many EU states that wanted the EU to go back to being a trade union (Front Nationale, The Freedom Party, fellow dictator wannabe Orban, recently supporting the anti-vaxxer movements) in order to prevent a more tightly knit European Union and common defense policy, but now he's running dangerously close to undoing a lot of that work*. I also really don't want to be in Zelensky's shoes right now. Like @Guard Dog said it is really unlikely that anyone is going to war over the Ukraine. Going to be a lot of hindsight is 20/20 for the Ukranian government. A government I have a hard time expressing any sympathy for, to be honest. It's just really bad for the Ukranian people. They certainly donn't derserve any of this. Two weeks ago, I'd have agreed to your assessment, and made it myself. Now, I'm not so sure. Apparently this is a hill worth dying on for Putin, for some reason. *Admittedly though, probably not, because the US also has no interest in allowing any of that, and if this invasion proves one thing then it's that if push comes to shove, any emancipation of European interests flies out of the window in an instant.

Of course Russia didn't want to invade the Ukraine, the West forced them into it. That's obvious, right?

That's okay because it's Russia, not the West!

Well, Drezen is taken, and with the Angel spell merge it's going much better than before. Reaching level 9 made the Brown-Fur Transmuter a whole lot more fun too. It is really not very fun to go up against those hit point sponges that you pretty much need to pull out extended buffs for all the time to make it all bearable, but it's workable enough. Need to pull out some serious defense scaling shenanigans to make this work. Once I'm done, I'm never going to play Unfair again.