Bjorn

The lady posted publicly on Facebook about being bi this week, the first time she's ever done that. She's been out to friends for years, and came out to some family over the summer (which did not go well, and is still weird). But, within an hour of making that post, another family member privately messaged her and thanked her for coming out, because they've been to afraid to. That made her feel better about the bullshit that she's dealt with, knowing that hopefully she's laying the groundwork for other people in the family to come out over time since they won't be the only ones now.

I think you mean best post.

Academia would be a lot more entertaining if all editing quarrels had to be solved by a vs match of Crusader Kings II.

The unions are also used to negotiating with Hollywood, which has done as much as it can to try and obfuscate just how profitable their movies are. The unions have to negotiate based on things like gross sales numbers (tickets/discs/downloads/etc) with movies, because any other metric is too easily manipulable by accountants.

Meanwhile, in Kansas...

Hello! Maybe, well, hello no matter what, but maybe on hellooooooo. I've actually been thinking about having some sexy fun times with another guy lately. I've never thought of myself as bi, mostly because I have no romantic attraction/interest in other men, but have been curious what being with a guy would be like Of course, I'm also of the opinion that it's worth trying most anything at least twice (because you can't always trust first impressions). I think I've got a dude who's into me (but knows that I'm straight identified in a committed, but open, hetero relationship, so wouldn't be leading him on to hit on him). So maybe, one of these days. Kinda scares me though, which is weird, given all the shit that I've done in my life.

I used this site to download it: http://savevideo.me/ No clue on it's safety, so I ran it sandboxed to be on the safe side, checked the file once it was downloaded, the removed the file from the sandbox.

I'll just download this so I've got a chance to watch it once it's been inevitably scrubbed from the Interwebs. Sounds intriguing though.

Interesting article on the historic and modern elements of being trans in Native American culture.

Yah! I'm glad it was a success all the way around. Our kitties all react differently when we get home from a trip. One of them just wants out, one of them wants love, and the old man pretends we don't exist and gives us the cold shoulder for a couple of hours to teach us a lesson before giving us giant loves.

Cordeos, out of curiosity, are you an engineer of some sort? Because I've encountered this exact line of reasoning a couple of times before, but only from engineers.

There's increasing evidence that people's acceptance of "others" (gays, cultures they are unfamiliar with, religions they are unfamiliar with, etc) can be heavily influenced by fiction, and television can be particularly powerful (both in positive and negative ways). If giving people an understanding of someone else's reality, creating empathy and getting people to redefine their worldview don't encompass "understanding the human condition" then I'm not really sure what you mean by that phrase.

Not a baby, but is a gif.

The next patch list changes have been posted, and a lot of these are very significant changes. To the point that they really change combat particularly from what it was just a week ago at release. I'm wondering how much of this is just in a reaction to so many negative reviews on Steam and panicking trying to make people happy to improve the customer reviews. Bug fixes include end game show stopper, performance related issues and reduced overall map memory to fix never-ending battle loading screens Increased the size of many battle maps and spread out the enemy and player spawns to prevent ambushes at the beginning of combat in every map Powercell pickup awarded immediately in battle Weapons now use 1 action point Balance of equalizers vs. powercell cost Rookies will reach Veteran status after 3 kills with the first level up at 2 more kills and each level up after that requiring 5 more kills Now the heal time is proportional to the unit’s class and health Lowered the overall number of enemies Threat level ramp up tightened The Away Team now has a 4 crew member maximum Away Team sizes of 3 or less will net twice the crude and meat rewards after battle Instead of missing, cover now provides a 50% damage reduction with the exception of directly adjacent attacks Elite battles are more like mini-boss fights against an entire team of one weapon class The encounter spread for Elites is better balanced Rogue A.I. now teleport/shield but do not attack Faction dozers now have starting faction crew Updated Double Down Map now has boundary lines Balanced the powercell reward based on threat level The entire board and all of the valid movement tiles are now displayed Movement flood tiles are now much more prominent Removed the forced encounter outside the gates of Bysantine Changed S.O.L to 3 outcomes and more resources rewarded in good outcome Passengers die off quicker when the Dozer is out of meat

GOTY!

I really dislike it when games kill off a character in a cutscene in a way that would never work within the actual gameplay. It makes the death feel incredibly artificial and forced when you've had a dozen characters or more already escape the jaws of death in similar situations, but suddenly, magically, this one time, no one thought of using any of the tools at their disposal that they had used to save the lives of each other over the last several months of being companions. With practice, you can figure out most/all of the main items (passive or activate). But some of the trinket (the items that show up in the bottom left) effects are either a low enough percentage or low enough proc rate that it's hard to tell what some of them do. I'd say a lot of the trinkets are worth saving yourself the worry and looking up, but the rest of the items keep playing for awhile yet and see what you can figure out. I also always kept a cheat sheet of the playing cards, because there were a few I always struggled to remember off the top of my head.

Y'all have totally convinced me to play it, it sounds amazing. I'm just trying not to buy any new games right now. There's easily a half dozen games that have come out in the last couple of months that I've skipped because I'm on a buying moratorium.

Fashion souls is the best souls. I loved going through Bloodborne once, but the lack of diversity in items (particularly clothing/armor) is one of the things that stopped me from doing a dozen playthroughs like I have on DS1 and 2.

Ah, that may be it. I only use the desktop version.

Hey guys, this games really good. Like, holy shit really good. I feel dumb for not having played it years ago when a bajillion people recommended it to me.

No, not as far as I know. That's what I used to listen to the new Maiden album with yesterday.

Tips: Use your starting energy to upgrade your Crude usage twice and your Food usage once before moving a single node Enemies do not have any kind of overwatch (though Gunslingers do have the ability to counterfire under certain circumstances, yours have the same ability) Use Frontliners to bumrush snipers, they can one shot them and have the longest move range Try to let your frontliners soak up the damage, so just they end up in the hospital and the rest of your people are okay Once you've got combat figured out, only take 3 soldiers into the first five or six combat encounters. It doesn't matter if you lose a solder each fight, the extra energy is worth the sacrifice. Pump all your energy into Crude and Fuel until they are maxed. And yeah, encounters can be that way until you start picking up some of the items and characters necessary to do more with them. This game has some pretty gnarly bugs in it, and I seemed to have found most of them while finishing my normal run last night. Units can stop gaining levels sometimes if you initially level them up using kills from Dozer weapons. Solution is to try and level them to Veteran on their own initially Do NOT using the Dozer ability Doppleganger until its patched. It is currently bugged so that the unit that is cloned automatically dies at the end of combat (I fucking lost a monstrous Frontliner to this, a guy who could do something like 12 damage a shot). Taking too many Elite units (the 4-square units) into some maps (seems like it is the smaller ones) can break the map and stack a bunch of your units out of bounds. The upside is that it also break the enemy script, and enemies do not try to move or attack. And the fucking kicker, it's possible (though unlikely?) to have a game crash in the final few seconds of a run that prevents you from getting credit for the run or from seeing your score screen. The game locks up on the final loading screen. It's not a random crash, it appears to be reproducible according to some posts on the forums. The autosave point to retry and see if you can avoid the bug requires you to go back through three really hard fights. I'm not going to play it again until this gets patched. I was not happy when I finished that run last night. I'm increasingly convinced they really needed another few months of work on this. There's a good game here, but it could have really benefited from a few more months of polish and bug fixing.

Buffet does have his own Satellite channel devoted to him, so I think that qualifies as a genre now. Also, totally the same on music. I had no idea there was a new Iron Maiden album out! I have to listen to this. Maiden was my favorite band for years, mostly because as a goofy 10-year-old I thought the cover art to Somewhere in Time was the MOST AMAZING SHIT EVER! I find them sometimes cringeworthy now, but will always have a real soft spot for them.

Alright, I got through a complete run on Easy last night, and fairly deep into a run on Normal. There was a patch yesterday, I'm not sure if it made the game easier, or if I just figured a fair number of things out (or both). I'm maybe not as enthusiastic about it a few more hours in as I was in the first couple of hours, but I still think it's a fine game. I think it probably would have been helped if it has been delayed a couple of more months for additional content and balance. I think my biggest issue right now is that it's almost too big, but doesn't have enough content. FTL managed this by restricting how long you could stay in each sector. Bedlam's only impetus to move forward is the steadily increasing difficulty, which may ultimately kill me, but I'm on the next to last tier on my normal game and managing, though the numbers of enemies it is throwing at me is getting pretty tough. I'm just wandering back and forth across the wasteland at this point instead of moving towards Aztec City because I want to unlock one of the other dozers, or find one of the questlines for some of the items I've picked up. You can always backtrack, or pick paths that will move you away from Aztec City rather than towards it. But you end up seeing the same events over and over. FTL never had you have the exact same encounter twice in a run, but Bedlam has no problem throwing the same encounters at you again and again. It takes some of the fun out of exploration. And there are a lot of places to explore, which is why I think it's this way. About three-quarters of your travel points feature 4 points of interest that can be explored before moving on. You don't have to explore them, but it's obviously potentially valuable to do so, particularly if you're trying to unlock stuff. I've probably traveled through about 20 nodes in my normal game, so I'm up to something like 70-80 total encounters. But, I'm still really digging combat. Each one is like a puzzle, and once you can focus on using your energy just for combat because all the upgrades on your dozer are done, then it gives you a lot more options. Double damage, stealth and a shield have all saved a bunch of my soldiers lives. Some criticisms I saw in the Steam reviews that are just wrong: No choices to make during encounters - Just not true. Depending on what named characters you've picked up from which factions can influence what actions you can take during some encounters. I don't think it feels as robust as FTL, but it's like there are no choices to make. Run out of resources too much - These people are bad at the game. If you make sure on easy fights early in the game to take in 3 or fewer people, you get double the energy, which lets you get your dozer leveled much faster, which should take care of all resource issues by the fourth or fifth node. Melee units are worthless! - These people are dumb and bad at the game. Rookie melee units are basically only useful against snipers. But once you get them to Veteran, holy shit are they awesome. Tons of movement, high health, decent damage, your best chance to pick up resources during combat, can get inside most units firing ranges and completely lock them down. There's no cap on increasing the damage of units, so if you get a badass melee guy going, he can end up one of the most damage units. ProTip! Dozer weapons that kill enemies will grant those kills as experience to whatever unit is currently selected. It makes getting some rookies leveled up super easy if you have the energy to spare, or need to use a weapon anyways. Overall I'd still recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed FTL or Banner Saga, with the caveat to not expect it to be either of those games. Even with some of my criticisms of it, it's doing some interesting things with that genre that are worth checking out.

Yeah, most of them seem to be, "I wanted FTL, and that's not what this is" or "I wanted XCOM and that's not what this is". There are some legitimate criticisms in there, but even the criticisms there are are not the type that lead me to think that it is worth a negative review.