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Low level kensai doesn't really have much of an edge over regular fighters, and they are decidedly at a disadvantage because no armor and you don't get good AC bracers until later on. Kagain is an excellent tank, but since there is no "threat" in the BG games to speak of, kensai requires a hell of a lot of micromanagement, more or less the way you described, because your "tanks" will not be able to reliably keep enemies from attacking other characters in melee range. Go in, put down the hurt, get out before they can strike back. Prioritise archers and especially mages, but keep in mind that even clerics can give you a run for your money one-on-one, if they can get some buffs off. It doesn't get better in BG2 either, which is why kensages are so popular. edit: best item for a kensai, bar none: Boots of Speed

Referring to the EU as an "authoritarian regime" is a bit of a stretch. Excessively bureaucratic, opaque, and a cesspool of special interests? Sure. But "authoritarian" is putting it right up there with Iran, which is, I guess, exactly the kind of histrionics you've been saying the debate is dominated by in the UK. And I'm not exactly the most pro-EU guy around. Regardless, the referendum isn't binding. I've been reading that "political realities" would "force" Cameron to go ahead and invoke art. 50 TEU to begin the process to take the UK out of the EU. But again, the referendum isn't binding, and it wouldn't be the first time a PM outright disregards a non-binding referendum (cf. Tsipras). So even in the -extremely- unlikely scenario that the Leave option wins out on the 23rd, I wouldn't count on the UK actually going anywhere...

Who cares about the democratic process when staying in the EU guarantees economic bliss if its 'recommendations' are followed to a T? something something freedom security something something neither

This mostly impacts Spanish workers in Gibraltar, but the problem is compounded by the fact that Gibraltar -like other British Overseas Territories- is a tax haven where they don't even pay VAT and unsurprisingly notoriously opaque in their fiscal and labor administrations. The last time border crossing restrictions were enacted, there was a fast track pass one could obtain to avoid these, but it was required that a passport/residence permit and work contract were presented. Out of ~7k Spaniards working in Gibraltar, less than 200 applied for the pass, because this forced them to declare earnings and pay taxes in Spain. Undoubtedly, this is yet another political tug-of-war. However, it's not a land grab they fear in Gibraltar. It's the very real possibility of no longer having their cake and eating it too. You'll forgive me if I don't shed a tear for the plight of tax evaders. Of course, there's also Andorra, which is another infamous tax haven. There is apparently no problem here despite it being in the spotlight as a result of some of the aforementioned corruption cases, mostly because it cannot be so easily made into a political weapon. Ugh.

Really. If anything, these pathetic antics actually reinforce Gibraltar's position. Just take a look at what happened with FIFA admitting Gibraltar as a full-fledged member and the EU vindicating Gibraltar's territorial water claims -- in violation of the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht. If Spain hadn't become (even more of) an international joke, both would have been decided otherwise, as had been the case up until now. You have to understand, the current (acting) government is under heavy attack, politically, but also judicially with several important corruption cases being investigated and some high-profile figures indicted and currently in prison. They desperately need to divert attention away from these issues, and pretty much anything goes. This is more an internal propaganda thing aimed at their die-hard voters than an actual declaration of intentions. Regarding Gibraltar itself, I wouldn't worry about it up until the time when Spain is ready to take Gibraltar back by force of arms, as that's all that matters in international affairs in the end (cf. Crimea). And even then, I doubt anyone in their right mind would actually want a conflict with the UK over that rock. Slapping that assclown Picardo across the face, though, might just make it all worthwhile... So yeah, not bloody likely.

If a cursory reading of the links someone posts is "researching", I guess I'm at least a JD now, since I actually read the submitted court document, right? Regarding unpaid work, I used the skills I acquired while earning my JD to determine that you cannot be "technically" not an employee, if you are doing work for someone else, and that someone is making money off of your work. http://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp Apparently, minors under 14 also cannot be employed beyond babysitting, newspaper delivery, taking out the trash, etc. Whether "very young minors" means under 14 isn't made clear in the suit, though. And no, they don't meet the FLSA criteria for unpaid internships, either: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf Now, it is perfectly possible that the allegations are baseless, that the plaintiff will not be able to present sufficient evidence, or whatever, and the lawsuit will be thrown out, or ruled in favor of Valve. But her complaints go beyond "Help help, transphobia! Discrimination!". Hell, it's even possible that she is making the whole transphobia thing up to use against Valve. But if that's the case, how stupid can they be to fire her without objective, well documented reasons? More or less convenient than dismissing someone's complaints out of hand because you decided that the problem is actually something else entirely?

Okay, this is going to sound a little crazy, but bear with me for a second: read the news pieces. I know, right? An informed opinion? That's like, so 20th century. Actually the lawsuit isn't about "isms" -- the discrimination allegation is just one of eight different complaints, some of which have to do with Valve being clever about employee classification and tax fraud resulting from that. The plaintiff also argues that Valve was profiting from work done by unpaid minors. I know, not nearly as interesting as whatever you have come up with in your mind, but that doesn't mean it's without merit.

Location: Germany Seriously though, it's not uncommon for people to pay for the privilege of working, in hopes of being hired later. We have to outcompete the Chinese and Indians, you see.

This is fallacious, sorry. Again, "with this, therefore because of this". What you have in reality is the observation that most, if not all, societies that have survived long enough to leave records seem to present religious or spiritual practices of some sort. That's it, end of story. You cannot claim that it's a part of "human nature" simply because of that. I'm going to counter with an alternative explanation, which I'm sure you've heard before. If we accept that natural selection is not a mechanism restricted to living beings, it stands to reason that there exists a natural selection of societies, effected by cultural genes (memes, as per Dawkins). Hence, it's possible that religious practices confer some sort of competitive advantage to societies that adopt them, over those that do not. As a result, over time you would have more cultures with different religions but essentially similar practices, than cultures without. No appeals to romantic and vague notions of "human nature" needed when the much better understood natural selection will suffice. edit2: oh, you didn't say "human nature", you said "human condition". My bad, feel free to explain the difference. No, Byzantium wouldn't be Byzantium without the Orthodox Church, but it also wouldn't be Byzantium without the Paganism prevalent even after Constantine converted to Christianity, and it wouldn't be Byzantium without the incorporation of territories that had been previously part of the Macedonian empire, some of which were in turn part of the Persian empire before and therefore under its influence, and so on and so forth. Interestingly, there is the theory that the reason for initial persecution of Christianity in the Roman empire was due to concerns of infiltration by Zealots. That is, it's possible that what came to be the official religion of the state was in its inception influenced by the political aim of rebelling against that very state (lol). And, of course, let's not forget what Christianity draws from Judaism. The point I'm making is that claiming that there is a founding religion (or any other thing) you can clearly point at in a culture* is a simplification. About the Soviet Union comment... I have no idea what you're talking about. *also the point about the divides between one "culture" and its predecessors and successors existing clearly only in textbooks edit: they really need to fix the forum. I'm using Notepad++ to write posts up...

No, Emperor Stalin didn't choose Atheism "for the lulz", either. He did it because it gave him two extra hammers per tile, which he was going to need later on to build tons of Nuclears. Or rather, it happened as the result of a myriad factors, not the least among them the fact that ecclesiastical authorities in Russia had property to confiscate, and wielded influence that might threaten the Bolsheviks' already tenuous grip on power. So again, using your own reasoning, the Soviet "civilization" is an example of a civilization with no founding religion. Never mind that considering Soviet Russia as an entity separate from the rest of the history of Russia is meaningless outside of textbook compartmentalization... much like your artificial separation of Byzantium from preceding Roman (etc) culture and customs. Besides, you do realize that the Byzantine empire predates Justinian's laws regarding Christianity right? How can something come before that which it's supposedly based on? edit: dammit, production in Civ was shields, not hammers. My argument is invalid.

Well... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinian_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Civilis So... whatever is made by law to be the official state religion at a random point in its history, is now "the founding religion a civilization is based on"? That's exactly the kind of goalpost shifting I was alluding to -- if anyone thought I was being a tad too cynical, your post has invalidated any such objections. Even better, your own reasoning provides a counterexample to your theory in the shape of: This is hard to dispute. Acknowledging religious influence in the development of societies isn't quite the same as claiming that all civilizations are based on a founding religion, though. Maybe it's because I'm not a native speaker but putting it that way gives it... undue weight, in my opinion.

How can you disagree that there hasn't ever been any great civilization without a founding religion, if you don't even have a definition yourself of what "civilization" and "religion" is? He probably has definitions for both, but asking what others understand by each is a pre-emptive measure to stop the inevitable goalpost shifting that is bound to happen down the road. In fact, it has already happened: the original claim is "no civilization exists that isn't based on a founding religion". But in just a few posts it has already changed to "no civilization exists or develops in a religious or spiritual vacuum", i.e. with this therefore because of this. What was the religion the Byzantine culture was based on? The polytheism-ancestor worship of the Roman kingdom? Christianity? Whatever the ancient Romans may have inherited from the Etruscans? Heh. As long as people fear death and cannot explain <phenomenon>, religious/mystical explanations are going to appear. This doesn't mean cultures are based on religions any more than they are based on languages, agricultural techniques, or military doctrines.

Spot on. The guy's other actual reviews for big titles (TFA, Batman v. Superman) have ~350k views, with ~7-8k likes. His Ghostbusters "non-review"? >800k views, 48k likes. Lol, what? There may be other ways to get huge traffic spikes on your pop culture channel than appealing to the current 'SJW' controversy, but I don't know what those would be.

That's not exactly what I meant. There are two things to look at here. First, hard work and dedication are indeed essential to get anywhere in life... unless you are born into a wealthy family. For the overwhelming majority of mankind, that's not what happens, so you gotta work. However, hard work and dedication are not a guarantee of anything. For some, it's not even a guarantee of a decent living. How many exactly is "some" depends on where you're looking, but globally it's billions. Any factors beyond hard work and dedication are outside of your control. For most people, hard work is a necessary condition, but not sufficient. The rest boils down to luck. Now, while I don't doubt that you know of people who started at the bottom and have triumphed, that's exceedingly rare. Looking at economic mobility research, US-specific, the odds of striking rich aren't good: "The "rags to riches" story is much more common in Hollywood than on Main Street. Only 6 percent of children born to parents with family income at the very bottom move to the very top." http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2007/11/generations-isaacs You can't just dismiss 94% of those born into the bottom-earning bracket as just lazy, no matter what the Donald might say. Now, it's patently ridiculous to think that everyone has a right to be rich, or that everyone would even want to be. But outside of selected anecdotal evidence, why do you believe that, even if you had put in at least the same amount of work as the people in your examples, you would have gotten anywhere near where they did? Is it possible to succeed despite the odds? Yes. Does it take hard work and dedication? Sure, among other things. In this sense, one can consider themselves to be "self-made", even if that ignores the millenia of societal progress that have afforded "self-made" men the opportunities to succeed rather than just hunt for food or starve. For each of these "self-made" men, millions have just gotten by, and some not even that, despite putting in the work too. But then, "self-made" is just a self-aggrandizing way of saying "hard working". That's the second thing to look at, as Newton put it: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". Perhaps the most brilliant scientist in history understood that his accomplishments couldn't have occurred in a vacuum, and were built upon the centuries of work of those who came before him. "Self-made" men not wanting to pay taxes because they don't owe anything to the society that has enabled them is not just incredibly arrogant, it's laughable. Or it would be, were it not because it's such a widely accepted idea. edit: can't into English

No, it's not hard to grasp, but that's only because that's not how it works in reality. What you are describing is, I don't know, 18th century capitalism theory? In this day and age, "the rich" do not significantly spend, participate in, or stimulate the economy. Instead, what they do is keep inflating the already completely absurdly sized financial derivatives bubble, whose notional value is currently estimated at >$1.2 quadrillion. The actual world economy you're thinking about is just around $77 trillion. Think the tulip craze of 17th century Netherlands, that has grown to about 20 times the size of the global economy. The solution to that ain't gonna be pleasant, to put it mildly. Please, tell me exactly how encouraging these **** to keep breaking banks whose bailouts everyone else have to pay for is growing anything but their own greed, let alone the economy. But beyond that, there's this magical notion that "the rich" have amassed fabulous amounts of wealth without being at all connected to the rest of mankind, that they don't owe anything to anybody, and that they have no responsibility to maintain the very structures and conditions of stability that allowed them to make and keep money to begin with. The only way to ensure (rather than just trust in the kindness of their hearts and hope for the best) that some of their good fortune reverts back to everyone is through taxes, though I'm open to other ideas if you have any. The "self-made man" myth is right up there with the tooth fairy, the easter bunny and Santa, and they'd all be laughing their asses off, hadn't they just found that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is now subject to negative interest rates.

Funny. Those two can apply to anyone. I'm thinking they fit the leaders and supporters of the current ruling party here, a conservative party, especially well. They however don't get called names -and rarely are accused of hypocrisy even- because, being right-wing, they hold the moral high ground by default. Remember: wearing a tie makes you respectable. There hasn't been a conscious, directed effort by the left to ridicule and discredit the right by reducing and identifying the whole of it with the most strident and caricaturesque of "right-wing" figures. However, anyone on the political left is subject to be automatically disqualified by being tagged a 'sjw', provided they mention any of a -growing- list of taboo topics. This is nothing new really, used to be that you'd be called a commie or a pinko and instantly pegged as an undesirable -- this is just the internet age equivalent. Anyone interested in understanding how the aforementioned effort works can check out Owen Jones' Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. Or not ("he just wants you to buy his book, he has an agenda" etc).

Basically anything that doesn't jibe with whatever the stance of the alt-right is on the subject at hand.

Some would settle for being allowed to take a bathroom break. Golden age, no doubt. But for whom?

Guilty until proven innocent, huh?

Well you are pretty much right on the money, but it's called "hate crime" these days. Makes it easier to... hate? It's nature's prerogative to punish idiocy, not the state's.

Technically, that's what happens. She's simply not a playable NPC in the starting dungeon -- she acts as a guide and gives you her line about her now being an apprentice and therefore useless. I guess it was a way to cut corners. Changing her dual-into-mage subplot timing to account for the (very likely) possibility that you had had her in your party confronting Sarevok and keeping her during the initial dungeon would be too much effort for a fairly minor story pacing detail. More than anything it bothered me that Safana, whom I might not have even met previously is now a trusted party member, no questions asked. I would have preferred that they code in a throwaway generic Flaming Fist "spec ops" or whatever to offer support with traps, if they couldn't be bothered to come up with a Safana continuity solution. And yeah, I'm not impressed by the dearth of alternatives regarding NPCs. I'll probably have to create one or two custom NPCs when (if) I get around to that evil party run.

She's magically replaced by Safana -- no explanation regarding why, how, or when.

Been to the heroic area in Section X lately? It's hilarious: totally deserted except for a bunch of level 65 juggernauts with gibberish names and empty legacies... except for the currency achievements. They just don't give a **** anymore, do they?

Sadly that's the case. This thread is a good example, seldom any discussion of the actual game going on. No talk of the new NPCs, encounters, not even the actual writing. Nope, it's all that GG/transphobia tripe. I know I'm going to regret this, but I have to agree with the Gromnir: it's best for writers to simply avoid hot topics. You forgot paid mods, btw, we haven't seen the last of that.

That's a pretty big statement to make so casually. Can you provide any, ahem, citations? I'm genuinely interested. Rules can be used reactively against certain behavior and to remove people who refuse to abide by them repeatedly. However I'm not so certain they change behavior by themselves, and they certainly do not work preemptively. Do laws stop harmful behavior, or are lawbreakers as unconcerned about the law as they are with the well-being of their fellow humans, which the law is ultimately designed to protect? This doesn't mean rules are useless. They would be an instrument through which "problem" users could be removed from here, which may or may not be you are really asking for. However, that by itself does not lead to "productive" discussions, simply to less users. You reasoned how getting emotional can get in the way of "productive" discussion, but that doesn't reflect my experience. You seem certain that threads that devolve into slugging matches cease to be productive, but I'm more of the opinion that they devolve because they weren't that productive to begin with - people get progressively more frustrated and the discussion fails. Whether this results in the topic being deserted or poo-flinging makes little difference. Your reasoning also ignores the fact that online discussions do not work as face-to-face interactions. The thread is still here after the enrage falls off, and all it takes is that you walk away for a while. Discussion can be continued by any participants at any point because previous comments remain. Using "human nature" as a justification to engage in a protracted exchange of personal attacks lasting more than the adrenaline rush would in a real life situation sounds like a rationalization, to indulge in behavior that you know is neither acceptable nor productive, but feel like indulging in anyway. Emotional investment may play a role, but much like abusive relationships, you learn as you get older... or don't. Either way, (more/tougher) rules are not really a solution. And yeah, I know I'm probably a huge hypocrite for posting this. Oh well.