Durckad

Gotta say, Jace becoming the human embodiment of Team America: World Police was not on my bingo card for 2024. Albeit one with even less consideration for collateral damage apparently.

Sidestepping the whole covers discussion... New Chelsea Wolfe album is really fucking good.

Yeah, I think I spent about 20 hours in Act 2, though, to be fair, it felt like 60. Please, for the love of all that is holy in this miserable world, I beg of you not to call her "Shart." That word has... unbecoming implications to put it lightly.

There is a steakhouse somewhat near where I live (about an hour or so away) that is pretty famous amongst locals and, the gimmick there is that you pick out your steak and cook it yourself on the big communal grill in the center of the dining room. I was, frankly, unimpressed the one time I went there. The meat was good, to be honest, but if I'm dropping $30 or $40 for a steak, they can cook it for me.

It was a joke.

I think that's a bug (yeah, I know, shocking). I had the same thing happen but then I realized that the protection the fairy granted had somehow worn off so I just had her reapply it and I was good. Was utterly baffled by how I was supposed to complete the area until I figured that out, I thought it was supposed to be some sort of puzzle at first. Showoff.

"Short" ie only 60 hours long.

"Thinking?" Sounds like some lib-commie bullshit to me! tbf, housing was largely unaffordable BEFORE the interest rates went up. That just exacerbated an already bad situation. Honestly, the Biden Admin seems to be perpetually assaulted by the ol' chickens coming home to roost. Over a decade of hollowing out the middle-class and obsequious subservience to capitalism resulting in rotten to the core housing and banking systems? Hey, housing prices are going up and no one can afford them! Trump was a feckless dipshit on COVID? Hey, COVID dragged on far longer than it should have and destroyed the supply chains leading to rising inflation. Afghanistan was a shit show? Hey look back on the 3 previous administrations that "managed" the occupation. Countless refugees and asylum seekers coming to our borders resulting in endless racism and culture war clutching of skirts? Hey, let's look at good ol' climate change and decades of the war on drugs destroying South American countries. Gun crimes endlessly killing American citizens? When the fuck haven't they? Wealth inequality? Thanks Reagan and more capitalist bootlicking. College costs? Fucking capitalism. Even the response to Israel, which I am very willing to lay at Biden's feet, is still laden with decades of subservience to Israel both as a concept and as an extension of US military power in the region, so it's very hard to imagine someone else doing much better in this regard. It sucks, it's infuriating, but it's still so much decades of bad decisions leading to rot eating away at the limbs. But yes, tldr, context.

Oh well, I guess it's good to see that in our cyberpunk-present dystopia, AI is not currently in any danger of going Skynet on us, but is, in fact, just as dumb as humanity while also struggling to comprehend the concept of hands and how do they look and/or work.

Since it's still soup season, I made this on Sunday for the whole week. It's pretty good. I did add fresh spinach, a can of green beans, and a can of fire roasted tomatoes, but I would also recommend doubling the garlic (if you're a garlic fiend like me) and being liberal with the pepper. Also maybe next time I might add some rice or orzo to round it out a bit. I didn't this time but a couple of slices of sourdough bread on the side is a pretty good substitute. As it is it's a pretty good recipe and very quick and easy to both cook and prepare.

Speaking honestly here, the whole "underdark or mountain pass" non-choice is completely dumb. Either make the decision matter (ie you can only go to one and that has stakes and complications) or just cut the arbitrary non-choice out of the game and make it a more linear progression (mountain pass to underdark to act 2 areas or something). It's not like a more linear progression would be a big change in the game, you can't go to Baldur's Gate right at the start, you have to progress from one story area to the next first. So I'm not sure what the point of the "choice" is? The game seems to make a big deal about which choice you make but then you can do both so... it doesn't really matter and, in fact, you SHOULD do both as there's some lore and story bits in both areas that are not entirely essential but feel pretty important. As it is, doing both, with the way it's structured is just... weird and it absolutely fucks the pacing up. Maybe at some point, the choice was more permanent but a change was made because no one wanted to make such a huge area completely missable, but the dumb non-choice was kept in. That's the only way my brain can figure out why this weird section of the game was made the way it was.

Regarding Biden's low polling, is it entirely possible that this is due simply to the coalition of voters that elected him? Looking back to the primary, seemingly no one (by no one, I mean voters) really wanted Biden to be the nominee, but after several others dropped out and support started to coalesce around Biden, those same people that didn't want him begrudgingly ended up voting for him in the general. Those voters included: Progressives and Never Trumpers who hated and feared Trump enough to reluctantly vote for Biden, Center Right Conservatives who would normally vote Republican but couldn't stand voting for Trump (possibly again), and disaffected liberals who wanted someone else in the Primary to win but really wanted Trump out. All of this leaves Biden with an incredibly low ceiling of approval amongst his coalition and that results in the coalition being more willing to criticize the candidate they voted for. Partisan politics kinda leads to selective blinders being put on when it comes to the candidate the voters actually voted for. See, for example, Trump voters and everything they criticize other candidates of doing is something Trump has openly done. It's either a lie or fake news or okay when HE does not, but not anyone else. Whereas the coalition of reluctant Biden voters is more willing to say "Biden was never my first choice, I only voted for him to get Trump out, so he sucks on issues A, B, and C." Combine that with his (relative) lack of charisma and his age and you have very soft positive support for Biden. No idea if it's true, but it's just a thought.

Anecdotally, Russia worship has been 'a thing' amongst Republicans since the Tea Party days. It wasn't as loud and blatant and,well, widespread as it is now, but there was a tacit belief that Russia was 'how things should be' amongst SOME Republicans. What was the root of it? Evangelicalism. Russia was buddy-buddying up with the Russian Orthodox Church and using that to 'punish' people Evangelicals have long had it out for (namely 'the gays' at the time, but the whole spectrum of LGBTQ+ now). There were other aspects as well, Putin being seen as the strong, powerful, alpha male leader compared to the 'weak' and 'effete' Obama. I think there are other aspects that build into this, but more of them are just Republicans throwing their personal wish lists into Russia and just... pretending that it's actually true. Like the idea that Russians have a better standard of living and are better off economically than people in the US, which is... just baffling. I actually had a Conservative I used to work with back in the 2012/2013 days say this to me and I do remember hearing some twinklings of this shit amongst Conservative commentators at the time. So, yeah, bigotry + fanatical Evangelicalism + strong man worship + weirdo Economic beliefs based on rainbows and unicorns = Russia worship. You can see the same in the right's worship of Bolsanaro and Orban now. All perceived strong men with ties (or at least professed ties) to Christianity.

I can't wait to see the shaky cam fight scene where a Balrog beats Feanor to death with a book.

Feanor is a great character, a true testament to Tolkien's ability to craft "complicated" characters, but he is a total piece of shit. Fascinating, but still a piece of shit.

Nah, Veep isn't a documentary. The characters on Veep aren't dumb enough to be stand-ins for Republicans.

Ah fuck, sorry about that. I lost my original post and forgot to spoiler tag some stuff when I recreated it. Mea culpa.

tbf "used car salesman" is an incredibly apt description for a scheming minor devil. "Oh you want the extended warranty? Well, sign here, here, here, and here. Oh, the pen is empty, you'll have to use your blood and... don't mind the smoke as you write. Yes, this all standard, I can assure you of that. Oh you'll want to sign there for bumper realignment and there for extra hubcap fluid as well."

Personally, he's one of my favorite antagonists in the game, but I'm a fan of charming, scheming devils, especially the kinds that play the friend but you just know they'll stab you in the back for something in the end. I did find Act 2 incredibly tedious up until that point. I will admit I audibly groaned when that happened but everything after was great, IMO. Yeah the engine sucks. There're constant LOS issues due to how weird the geography works as well, alone with the misclicks due to pieces of the terrain popping in at the most inopportune of times. Most of the times it's just annoying but sometimes it can happen during combat which can be very bad. The LOS issues are incredibly annoying. You know, I never thought of it like that, but that's a good point. I do think there is enough content in Act 3 that the level cap could go up to 13 and you could still have this effect, but honestly, hitting level cap so early wasn't that big of an issue for me. I do understand how others could be more annoyed by it as it does make the pacing kinda off.

I'm at the very, very end of the game (should finish it this weekend) and Act 3 has been fine. As @Whiskeyjack noted, Lady Jannath's estate is a buggy mess that hard locked my game twice before I randomly got through it, but Act 3 doesn't seem all that buggier than the others. The same constant minor bugs that have been there since the start are still present but not in any greater quantities, but 1) I haven't finished the game yet so maybe the very ending is replete with bugs? and 2) I didn't get to Act 3 until well after the first round of fixes were released and those seem to have fixed the most egregious issues. So, IMO, it's perfectly playable now. I'm also going to agree with others that Act 3 is not bad. In fact, it's my favorite part of the game. I think the wide open nature of it is why I like it. The game just hands you the reins and says "Go ahead. Do as you will." Rivington (and the circus) does kind of suck and it can grind the game to a halt if you let it, but both are over pretty quickly. Neither area has THAT much going on despite their appearances. You get a couple of quests at the very start and those funnel you deeper into Baldur's Gate and, from there, they quickly blossom out into more sprawling stories and events. Act 3 also has way more varied quest design and, much more importantly, more focused areas, which is kind of odd considering the sprawling nature of the city itself. For example, something like Cazador's palace would be twice as large if it was in Act 1 or 2. Instead, you get a couple of encounters, some lore dumps, and some decisions to make and then you're done. Nothing as needlessly and endlessly sprawling as, say, the mausoleum in Act 2. So yeah, Act 3 > Act 1 >>>>> Act 2 for me. And it seemed to work fine which goes to show how the open-ended nature of Act 3 works so well. You can literally just finish the game as soon as you feel you've tied up enough loose ends. I would agree it's structurally kind of messy, especially in how early on in the act you'll likely hit level cap and your only progression afterwards is in how much ludicrously overpowered gear you'll acquire. Honestly, the more structured nature of Act 2 is why it stands out so negatively in my mind. That and it's just really fucking dull until the very end, at least. I very much had to force myself to play during Act 2 just to finish it. I'm not really having that problem in Act 3.

Also it can generally all be cooked in one pot. Fewer dishes to do afterwards!

Fair enough. The second movie certainly doesn't have Jeremy Irons hucking all of the scenery into his Bag of Devouring, but the first is not a very good D&D movie at all. It's fun if you view it as a schlocky bit of generic fantasy, but D&D? There's really not all that much in it that's D&D. I do love me some terrible, 80's fantasy movie schlock but there's a lot of that out there and very little actual D&D-flavored fantasy schlock. Was I supposed to cheer when he died? I feel like the movie was trying to tell me that was the wrong reaction.

Aw, the second movie is enjoyable schlock. It's far more D&D than anything in the first or third movies, but now that there's an actual decent D&D movie out I guess there's really no reason to defend it much anymore. But.... ehhhh I guess?

Nope, nope, pretty sure the last episode is Terra Prime. No idea what you're talking about here.

Oh no... the Hobbit Hole goes deeper than I thought! So are Tom and Goldberry the Deep State in such a scenario? I always knew they were important!