majestic

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.

I'm actually of a mixed opinion here to be honest. Komi Can't Communicate's faults are deeply entwined with it being an anime. Almost all of the things the anime does that I absolutely hate simply has to work differently in a live action TV show because it's a very different medium. The constant yelling of the characters, the over the top crazy animated stuff. Then there's some stuff that can't work, like Najimi, unless they managed to find an actor that can pass as both high school boy and a high school girl. The one thing that's not going to be in the live action series is the best part of the anime, and that's Komi's face when she's scared. That's a major downside. Fun fun I just looked at a character presentation because there's apparently no trailer for this on youtube, or at least not a trailer I can find. Najimi is a walking flaming homo stereotype. Good choice there, show. Very good choice. The actors are all terrible, and one of them is sitting around with face paint. So, scratch the above paragraph, this is a terrible idea all around. I shouldn't be surprised, because live action adaptations tend to suck (unless they suck in the good way, like Masters of the Universe). Yeah. Uhm. Time coded to Najimi. My brain's melting. Thank you Japan for this experience, and @Bartimaeus for finding it.

Even if you do nothing else with her, the Fortune/Protective Luck Hex/Cackle, uhm, synergy (call it an exploit if you must) alone is worth having Ember in the party, but if you don't want her to spam Red Salamander based Hellfire Rays with triple enhanced dice rolls just cause she won't Trickster about (your loss ) you can just slap every Conjuration focus on her and all the summoning feats and mythic abilities and call it a day. Expanded Arsenal: Enchantment rounds it out. Ember becomes a mobile front-line and a crowd control expert. Not that you need either as Angel Oracle, but since you don't want her to pew pew fire and brimstone, that'll work. However, it's technically not impossible to make her an Arcane Trickster. Core would be 8 levels of Witch, one level of Vivisectionist to get the sneak attack with Accomplished Sneak Attacker, one Cross-Blooded Sorcerer level with Brass and Gold dragon bloodlines, then Second Bloodline: Red plus Ascendet Element: Fire. Get Red Salamander, Ring of the Pyromaniac and eventually Deadly Rays. Turn everything into cinders. Works decently enough if you know where to find gear for her and don't mind shelling out the big bucks relatively early. Not worth it unless you have another source of hexes, but she'll deal enough damage even against enemies with sneak attack immunity.

Loses a bit in the translation, huh?

Totally off-topic, @ShadySands are you on moderated status for some reason, or have I turned blind in addition to stupid? Didn't see your post in between there. edit: This forum software being how and what it is, I wouldn't rule out a bug either. Hmmm.

4chan & Telegram.

https://osf.io/5gu8a/ Enjoy. Christof Kuhbandner is a professor of educational psychology, and of course a veritable luminary in the fields of epidemiology, virology, immunology and statistics. Or maybe not, maybe he's just an educational psychologist who based a problematic study on data not suitable for analysis and produced a hilarious example of spurious correlations. Or rather, it would be hilarious, if it weren't dangerous. Did you know that there's an almost perfect correlation between eating cheese and death by entanglement in bed sheets? I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions based on this data, I'm just going to say this one should be of much concern to you, I mean, you do eat a lot of cheese, don't you? Careful, I don't think companies making cheese are "legally responsible" for the deaths by entanglement they cause.

お陰様で。

You haven't lived until you walk about the map on Unfair difficulty, something spawns next to your backline and does back to back 120 damage crits to your casters. Can't say the game doesn't keep me on the edge of my seat though. Any encounter on Unfair is over when it is over, not before.

It's kind of interesting to note that I have, to date, not played a single Pokemon game or watched an episode of the Pokemon anime(s). I'm vaguely aware of there being a Team Rock which was westernized as Team Rocket, and it's really weird because of all the rock imagery used which makes no sense with rockets. That's because someone at school told me about that, so that must have been like 22 to 25 years or so ago. I also have no idea if Digimon is something similar, or a rip-off, or something else. I think I dodged a bullet there. I've been called every name in the book, but I can't recall any actual death threats, so I got lucky, huh?

I take it you don't like Bronies? I never interacted with one, however, I know of only one of them, and that's Unicorn of War, and if he's any indication then thanks, but no thanks. I can imagine the fandumb for Whedon outings to be particularily bad. I think I'll quietly push this down the watch priority after it wormed its way up a fair bit. Not because that sounds bad, but I've had my fill of exploring the futility of war for the time being after In This Corner Of The World.

There are a lot of things that are wrong. Half the tutorials are just lies, the little floating texts that show you the d20 rolls are mostly fine for attacks, but utterly bonkers for saving throws, the game tells you your sneak dice can't exceed half your level while it's possible to stack them to 15d6, and a whole lot of other things. Then there are the really fun bugs, for instance the Mounted Shield feat that allows you to add your shield bonus to your mount's armor class. You'd think that would only work when you're actually wearing said shield, right? Well, no. The game calculates the armor class bonus when you mount up, you can just switch to a two hander afterwards and the AC of your mount doesn't change back. It does pay off to get Tower Shield proficiency on characters that ride mounts into combat, especially if you can dip into some class with bonus feats that's not too far off your planned progression.

Acronym is "Sensitive Joss Whedon" - SJW. That's from a while back. Not too late to repent and make up for mistakes, you know? Or, never too late to start. Pick one. Heh. Fandumb's gonna fandumb... and I bet the Firefly fandumb is particularily dumb. Most shows with a cult following tend to have... dumb cultists as followers. You're wrong about Firefly, but you're not wrong about this... Carry on, gym god.

Working as intended. The game doesn't calculate (1d6 + 12) * 2 but rather 2d6 + 24 (or 1d6 + 12 + 1d6 + 12, if you want), as per Pathfinder rules. That was a pretty bad set of damage rolls.

You seem to watch an awful lot of dreck at the theater. I mean, sure, I also watched many an Uwe Boll film, saw Annihilation and Wing Commander, but out of those the only one I went to the theater for was Alien: Resurrection, which happened to be one of the more miserable nights of my life. Dunno, spending 10 hours at the theater for a back to back showing of all the Alien films (with a midnight premiere for Alien: Resurrection) turned my brain and my ass into mush. Of course, I didn't actually learn anything from the experience and went to the same ordeal for Lord of the Rings' Return of the King, which was even worse... better films to be sure, but even longer. By the time Return of the King ended, the film having ten scenes I thought were the end was just torture, all I wanted to do was stand up and walk about for a bit. edit: Alien³ also has the distinction of being the only movie I fell asleep at while in the theater. I can barely fall alseep next to a running TV (flickering lights and irregular sounds, yeah, no), so being able to sleep through half of a film at a theater should explain how great that experience really was. Also kinda ended up wishing I slept through the fourth, not the third. Damndest thing.

I agree that Cowboy Bebop is really, really good (and some moments are damn near perfect, like the shootout in the cathedral early on). Not getting the Firefly thing to be honest, but that's fine. Ok that one's a little obscure, maybe.

The character models took some time getting used to, but they were still better than in most modern film, at least stylistically. Reminded me a bit of older ones, like an early 80ies TV anime throwback, except more modern. Some uncanny camera zooms though.

That's both fair and fine - it's not like anyone needs an actual reason for disliking certain character types or genres. It perhaps being an allegorical choice doesn't change that, of course, and I mean, assuming the interpretation is a valid one (although, in some ways, all interpretations are valid as long as they're consistent) it is at the end a personal reason to accept Suzu the way she is, not a universal one (and certainly not one where anyone could claim it is the one correct version and you're wrong if you don't see it that way). Like my experience of the film was certainly enhanced by the ending in a similar way as the Utena movie improved my disposition towards the series, while it did the exact opposite for you. Also, yes, something I wanted to add to the last post and forgot, for a 2016 war drama with a main character type you hate, that's pretty high praise. What did you think of the technical aspects, character models and animation?

I'm going to borrow one of your favorites: And by that I mean I do not disagree on a literal level, but an allegorical one. I don't think Suzu is slow in the literal sense, that is shown at points in the films where she's quite capable of thinking and reacting like any regular adult. Oh, right, spoilers from here on out in case someone else wants to watch. If taken purely at face value, Suzu's antics, her way of speaking and quite frankly everything about her demeanor can be frustrating for at least the first half of the film, or potentially all of it. You'd facepalm at her idea of regularily visiting Rin at the brothel, wonder how silly you could be for wandering directly into a bulletstorm trying to save a bird, or any other of these scenes. I know, because so did I. I was wondering about that too for a while, and frequently paused the film in between, sometimes being nothing but frustrated. It's probably not the best setup, especially since it takes most of its runtime to become clear, and then it really depends on how much you're willing to accept this sort of thing in films - or any other works of art, i.e. how much leeway you're willing or able to give a work and its interpretations. Where does allegory begin and suspension of disbelief end? It sure walked a very fine line regarding verisimilitude, but I think it (barely, but still) stayed on the acceptable side of such works. It doesn't quite dip into inellectual wankery territory, unlike some other series and it's final movie that we've watched here. Or like this post. Help me, I'm becoming one of "those" critics. Yikes.

Yesterday I was idly browsing Netflix for funny recommendations for the post in the streaming thread, but there was one that actually looked somewhat promising. A quick googling also told me this won virtually every animation award in Japan and landed the director, Sunao Katabuchi (who was originally selected to direct Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service), film prizes usually not even given out to directors of animated films. この世界の片隅に, Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni (2016) Clocking in at an impressive two hour and nine minutes runtime, there's apparently also an extended cut running almost 2 hours and fity minutes that I actually planned on watching afterwards if it turned out to be a good film - well maybe not necessarily directly afterwards. Now I'm not entirely sure I want to. No, not because it's bad. It was crowdfunded, with over three thousand backers chipping in 39 million yen (impressive for a crowd funding campaign, but not a whole lot for a film). Anyway, regardless of the money involved, this is from 2016 and looks like this: Say hello to Suzu, protagonist of the film. So, anyway, Suzu is a nice, young girl who loves to paint and has an overactive imagination. She's a bit of a klutz, has her head in the clouds and sometimes gets lost walking around. When she turns 18, her family marries her off to a young suitor, and after moving from Hiroshima to Kure, Suzu does her best just living her life in an ever increasingly problematic time for her, her family and well, everyone else. She has a rocky start with her in-laws, is patently useless at household chores at first, and her sister-in-law doesn't like her too much. All that will change in time though. Life isn't so bad, all in all... The film's structure and use of artistic elements in certain scenes gave it a reputation of being somewhat hard to follow, which I don't really agree with, but I can see where the criticism is coming from. If you watched Grave of the Fireflies and wondered if it would be a good idea to spend the entire runtime of the film on depicting the everyday life of a normal family before dropping the (literal) bombs on them, wonder no more, and give this a spin. Well, or watch. It's a movie, not a record, after all.

Ah, hell, what am I doing, never mind.

*snort* Great, now I have Coke Zero all over my keyboard... Here, let me change the quote a little, just to make sure: