There are 134 people online right now! I doubt all of your are from Europe or whatever country is currently experiencing day time hours.

So why are you up so late?!

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!anime !art !monke

https://old.reddit.com/r/PortlandOR/comments/1izn1pr/ohsu_investigates_antisemitic_comments_allegedly/

Musk, tech CEOs, insurance CEOs, crypto grifters, politicians, oligarchs

Who will it be next and when?

Your predictions 👇

Yes it's true, I get social anxiety when I try to order a coffee at Starbucks, and I spend almost all my time writing on social media about how I want to achieve brutal revenge against everyone who disagrees with my political views. But the truth is, women don't like me because I'm slightly unattractive. I don't know if this is actually true, since I don't talk to women, but I have an entire folder of infographics explaining that women only want to have s*x with jacked 6'7" billionaires.

Angry bride struggles through vows as guest lets baby cry during ‘adults-only’ ceremony https://t.co/krV5rYs4IS pic.twitter.com/XwHcQoRkeQ

— New York Post (@nypost) February 17, 2025

I can't clip it or timestamp youtube movies. Even had to use the console to make a snippet because of the DRM but it starts at 6:10

Yak yak yak... Get a job!

LMAO holy shit

How it started with furries throwing a fit

Complaining about violating the rules in the expected fashion and getting kicked out

The furcon vibes were off via blusky and telegram . So people are were reminded to follow the rules & the staff feedback panel was canceled

We have had reports of issues with the standard of behaviour displayed across the convention.

It has been the minority but we wish to take this opportunity to remind our attendees to abide by our Code of Conduct.

For any social gatherings in your accommodation, please can you keep these to sensible levels. As an example, 10 people in a 2 bedroom accommodation would be excessive. Please ensure to keep noise levels down after 10pm and enjoy drinks in moderation.

Please take the time to review the Code Of Conduct

https://furcation.org.uk/about/legal/

https://furcation.org.uk/docs/furcation-code-of-conduct-v2024.03.pdf

Good use of Good Morning! which should have been followed by "I hate con goers"

Good Morning!

Just to inform everyone, that due to staff unavailability we are cancelling the staff feedback session today.

We recognise the requirement for feedback, so we will be setting up forms via our os support ticket system post con.

We also want to apologise for unavailability of our systems currently. This is due to technical issues beyond our control!

Thanks!

what was the damage

So… Furcation 2024…

-2 drug parties shut down

-1 Hotbox party shut down

-1 s*x party shut down

-a complete washout with falling trees

-calling out the welfare team bc your tummy hurts or you're lonely

And y'all wonder why the fandom gets a bad rep? 💀 get a grip

Vibes check- people are persecuting furries!

Furcation has been a weird one this year. It's been good overall :3 - but I put that largely down to the friends I got to meet and chill with. (cont)

I know the furc staff work their balls off, so this is no criticism on the hard work they have put into making the convention happen. This year, however... the vibe just DIDN'T feel right. I doubt any official announcement will happen, after the mass purging cover up. But everything was just - off.

I feel like the park didnt want us there. Lot of little things, too many to list, all adding up to what I believe was a prejudice behaviour towards furries and the wider culture of the fandom. I have left feeling like the venue doesnt want us thete, and Furc has not been handling the fallout well.

The last couple of days, there was massive amounts of anxiety amoungst congoers, including myself. As we got fed outright faulse info, leaked internal details, exagerated butthurt memes, and observed an almost a militant approach towards curbing 'non family friendly' behaviour, even in private.

It might be a misguided understanding of what truely happened, but i feel like this all could have been handled and communicated significantly better, and never should have escalated to the blizzard rumour-mill outcome that it did. I do wonder how much Furc's hands were tied just to keep PD happy.

I do hope things recover for Furcation. Their reputation has taken a bit hit, and I would personally love to continue attending and supporting Furcation... ... Im just really unsure how much i'd be willing to go back to THAT venue, given how PD have behaved towards us, over the behaviour of a few.

Finally the Hotel strikes back.. Basically you're gross, you break shit, you collectively can't behave, we hate you, our guests hate you, we will never associate with you again.

Inshallah, they shall never find another venue

I need DC asap because the casino is fricking rigged, so you're getting a movie review! This movie is like two years old now and I still think about it to this day, not because of the pornographic scene, but because of the storyline.

The whole idea behind the movie is that a 30 year old dommie-mommie is broke asl and needs to pay property taxes to keep her mom's house. Instead of selling it off, she wants to keep it because of the NOSTALGIA o algo. To get the money, she finds a craigslist offer about a family who's giving away a car for a hot single in their area to "date" their son. The whole reason behind this is that their son is an incel (not a he-man woman hater incel) and they want to get him used to socializing before he's sent off to college. After this, the movie is mostly comedic filler that doesn't really expand on the story, but is still fun to watch. She goes to the place that the son is working at (as the parents don't want him to know it's all staged) and tries seducing him. I forgot how it happens but she ends up getting him in some van and he pepper-sprays her thinking she's going to r*pe him (friggin sweet!). The only other memorable part is the scene on the beach where they go skinny dipping for some reason, a group of teens steal their clothes and a NAKED JENNIFER LAWRENCE beats the shit out of them. After that she tries having s*x with the incel but he refuses, so she then steals HIS clothes and tries to drive off which results in him jumping on her (borrowed) car and fighting for some reason. The scene is both funny and arousing (to me at least). I also now permanently associate Maneater with this scene, which is somewhat nice.

Later in the movie, the incel finds true love and ALMOST has s*x with someone who wasn't trying to use him, but SHE ends up barging in and ending anything that was going on between them. The next day, the incel overhears his parents conversing with the MC about how she needs to convince him to go to college and not stay with the actual love of his life. In a fit of rage, he calls over his groomercord buddy to crash the reward car and tries to scam her into having s*x. He ends up prematurely ejaculating because WHO WOULDN'T? The movie then becomes boring as they retract from the main point about the incel and go back to the MC's useless self-inflicted issue about paying off the house. She decides to sell the house and move to California because her friends are moving away too and this makes her start to think if soying over nostalgia is actually productive to her life.

This movie did have it's own fair share of drama (albeit wasn't that big) where the film was accused of normalizing grooming.

Xhe almost has a point, the part where it falls flat though is that I would be happy to be in his position.

During the whole movie, I felt a huge connection with this dude. I suggest giving it a watch if you're ever in need of a laugh/feeling down/feeling romantical.

I was considering an effort post on DRC as it's a good example of what's happening with daddies foreign policy. Can't be bothered to do an effort post today but some potential mining sites in this as it develops.

Rwanda have had a slow burning war with DRC since the 90's but the France and the US have largely kept them in check. They can quietly support their little separatist group as long as they don't try and expand the conflict beyond the eastern province they are in and they mostly ignore the war crimes. Rwanda has been using DRC resources to fuel their growth and want more.

DRC is much larger than Rwanda but it's been a failed state since the 90's and while some form of government has existed since 2005 it's limited to the West and South of the country and is very weak. Rwanda have relatively modern, for Africa, armed forces, and all the gibs they got post-genocide mean they have good infrastructure for that part of the world. Rwanda have also had the same president for 25 years who keeps "winning" with 90%+ of the vote.

When the US eyes went away the guerillas in DRC suddenly had tanks and helicopters. A couple of weeks later when no one did anything there were suddenly a whole bunch of Rwandan troops in the country and they easily took the largest city in the east. They have stated they intend to keep moving West and "liberate" the entire country.

In terms of natural resource value DRC is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It's so profoundly undeveloped, has problematic geography and terrible security that no one has been willing to take it on.

Most of the time offers like this would be absurd but this is the type of "deal" Trump loves. Hopefully he restarts the Belgian mining practices and cuts childrens hands off.

Orange Site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42340959

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1h846ue/tiktok_divestment_law_upheld_by_federal_appeals/

https://old.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/1h8aatt/tiktok_divestment_law_upheld_by_federal_court/

https://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/103429342

The incoming Trump administration must be clear-eyed about the strategic and economic threat China is to our nation, and uphold the divestment of TikTok from the CCP for the security and privacy of the American people.

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) December 6, 2024

TikTok decision coming soon as Jan. 19 divestment deadline looms https://t.co/pW1g33gHyR pic.twitter.com/hWStfRbVSc

— Reuters (@Reuters) November 26, 2024

https://lemmy.world/post/22852825?scrollToComments=true

https://hexbear.net/post/4049519?scrollToComments=false

Bluesky:

A federal appeals court upholds law to ban TikTok in the U.S. by January 19 unless it is sold.

— Pop Base (@popbase.tv) 2024-12-06T16:16:06.295Z

— The Serfs (@theserfstv.bsky.social) 2024-12-06T17:18:10.395Z

a tiktok ban is a huge win for us, the uggos who prefer text based communication

— lauren (@lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com) 2024-12-06T15:59:06.403Z

If TikTok is banned, I'm here on Bluesky today and always

— Aaron Parnas (@aaronparnas.bsky.social) 2024-12-06T22:14:48.459Z

They also don't differentiate between people buying it, people playing it on their subscription service, or people playing the free trial lol.

Yup, I have played all the Dragon Age games multiple times, even enjoyed inquisition for what it was, and have absolutely zero desire to ever touch this game.

Edit: getting DM's calling me homophobic (very much not so), a Nazi (def not and no idea where this even comes in), and getting death threats over a video game is crazy lmao

Part 9 of our epic voyage through the classic 1992 RPG Darklands.

Darklands Series

1 - Darklands LP Part I

2 - Darklands LP Part II: Charles Bronson Edition

3 - Darklands LP III: Nuns and Coins

4 - Darklands LP Ep IV: Introduction to Equipment & Combat

5 - Darklands LP Part V: We finally briefly go out into the dark lands

6 - Darklands LP VI: We actually start a quest!

7 - Darklands LP VII: We reach our destination

8 - Darklands LP VIII: Raubritter confrontation & learning how combat works

Thanks for making this @Losercel.

We ended last episode in Paderborn, having just been rewarded for slaying a raubritter and now we've got 16 florins to spend. We had some concerns about our weapons not penetrating armor well enough during that battle, so that's our first priority. Let's see what they have for sale here.

Equipment

OMG look at this. See where it says 38q next to the name of each item for sale? That means it's 38 quality. Weapons, armor, shields, alchemical potions, and various things like lockpicks have a quality rating which has a subtle impact on how well they work. For every 10 points of quality your weapon is better than their armor you get one extra point of damage. That may not sound like much but you get that bonus point even if you failed to penetrate their armor. That may not sound like much, but with a fast high quality weapon it can really add up.

Average items have a quality of 25. There is a shop in the marketplace that always sells 25q items wherever you go. But each city can have a swordmith, armorer, bowyer, and tinkerer (these sell certain specialized weapons) each with its own level of quality. So if you happen to be in a town with really good swordsmiths like we are now, you want to jump on that opportunity. You never know when you'll find that opportunity again.

One rule that I only just learned now after all these years while going through the hint book is that all the equipment you loot off of dead bodies drops in quality by 10. That explains a lot, because that crap is hardly ever worth using by the time you get your hands on it.

• Sasha - I'd like to get her a better quality longsword but they don't have any in stock.

• Redactor & Yuna - I'm going to replace their maces with military hammers. It does one point less damage than the mace but it has 5 penetration so it even matches plate. The main job of our impact weapons people is to penetrate heavily armored enemies, so that's my highest priority here.

• Nathan - There's not much selection of polearms here. I get him a pike, which at least has pen 4, but it's very slow. I'll keep that around just for heavily armored enemies.

The armorer here is only 23q so I'm ignoring that. Same with the bowyer. Paderborn isn't that big of a city so they must specialize in weapons.

As long as I'm here, I pick up some camomile for Redactor's alchemical experiments. One of my formulas uses it, and I have no idea when I'll find a store stocking it again, so I better get it while I can. Alchemey can be very expensive because you've got to hoard ingredients like this until you've collected every one you need for a formula.

At this point I'm just going to play for a while because we need more money before I can show you some mid-game content. Higher tier quests are quite a bit more difficult than anything we've done yet, so we're going to need good armor for the whole party. Also we won't get far without alchemy. I go on a couple more raubritter quests. If you want to maximize your earnings on these, go around to nearby cities and ask everyone for a job. A lot of them will want you to kill the same guy and there's no reason why you can't accept all of their offers.

Education

I end up in Leipzig. I managed to get a meeting with the mayor and he offered me a raubritter quest. This is a big win for us as the mayor pays out more than the merchants (20 florins I think?) and you get a huge boost to local reputation if you complete a quest for him. An especially big win since Leipzig is such an important city in this era, the most important marketplace in eastern Germany. As you can see, it's at the junction of roads leading in all directions. It even has a university.

Speaking of education, we've got 55 florins so we can afford to study for a while. We'll have to find teachers willing to take us in as students. Let's start with the monastery. They can teach us Read/Write, Speak Latin, and Religion. Usually these guys are pretty cooperative. They'll only refuse if you have little Virtue or local reputation.

Redactor has 40 in Alchemy, which is quite respectable, but you can never have too much skill. The higher it is, the higher the chance that you'll succeed in making potions. Let's see if we can get the alchemist to teach him. Nice. The alchemists are what we would today call "on the spectrum" so they often refuse. (Notice how the text here hints at which skills, attributes, etc. were being checked. You'll see this often all over the game.)

As long as we're here, I'll try trading formulas with him. See, this is what I mean.

I go to the tinkers and ask them for a teacher as well. They teach Artifice.

Let's go to the inn and start studying. Sasha is going to work on her Artifice. This skill represents your technical abilities. It's used in lockpicking and many other situations. We'll have Yuna study Religion as that's her specialty. As for Nathan, none of these skills would really do him much good. When these skills are checked it's almost always against your best party member and we've already got people better than him. So we'll have him work. He earns 9 pfennings per day as a blacksmith. The occupation you work at depends on your abilities. In his case it's probably his strength that got him the job.

We study for a week and each of us picks up 2-3 points in our skill. That may not seem like much, but most non-combat skills are extremely difficult to increase through normal gameplay.

Random Encounters

I'm going to just play the game for a while now. I won't write everything I'm doing as it's is going to be pretty boring if you're not the playing. I want to show you guys how alchemy works, so I'm going to roam around to various cities buying new formulas and the ingredients we need for them. I'll just write about the random encounters I run into. There are many of these and they make up a big part of the game.

I'm going to try to sneak away. It's probably just some bandits that we could take care of easily but you never know. Besides, this is a rare chance to practice our Woodwise skill.

These guys have no idea who they're dealing with. I wipe them out without breaking a sweat.

Pagans. I hate these guys. Let's vandalize their stupid altar.

Uh oh. These are schrats, basically German bigfoot. It must have been their altar. Some schrats are good Christians, but just like humans many of them worship Satan. I may be in over my head.

Oh boy. That's a lot of them. They're so close, our missile weapons won't be much help. There's not much to do but just fight it out.

It's a very close fight, with both Redactor and Yuna getting knocked out. A prayer to St. Clare healed Sasha and kept her in the fight. Without that we would have lost.

Yuna gains some Virtue. Which makes sense since we all got beaten up really bad for doing that. We'll camp here and rest for a little while and then head over to Magdeburg to stay at the inn to get fully healed.

Frick this guy. I'll just pay him to avoid any trouble. I don't want the Dominicans on my butt.

Where should I wander around? It's nice to have a certain region that's your home base where you've got good local reputation. You can return there every once in a while to take advantage of the better prices and do your studying there. But you've also got to do a lot of wandering to find quests, alchemy ingredients, and new saints. Let's go into Bohemia.

I head down to Dresden, kill another raubritter, and achieve "local hero" reputation.

Notice that near Freiberg there's two mines. The Erzgebirge ("Ore Mountains") between Germany and Bohemia were extremely important at this time. Tin had been mined there since prehistoric times, but in 1168 silver was discovered near Freiberg and settlers flooded in. More discoveries were made in the late 1400s. During this period the mines of the Erzgebirge were on the cutting edge of technology, driving progress toward the Industrial Revolution.

The important thing for us is that we can buy alchemical components there. But first let's learn some more formulas so that I know what to buy. I keep striking out when I try to trade formulas with other alchemists, but we're rich enough now to just buy some.

Bad Alchemist

I'm not giving you my goddarn alchemical materials. This guy may be a tough opponent but I think we can take him if we really have to.

His guards are poorly equipped. Like many of the thugs we've run into they're using falchions (basically machetes) which ordinarily would bounce right off our armor. But notice the plus there. That means they've been enhanced through alchemy. Depending on which potion was used, that could mean they can slice right through our armor. The alchemist himself would be easy to kill if we could get to him, but his guards will block us. They're even blocking us from using missile weapons against him. But he can toss potions over their heads at us. My first priority is going to be dispersing my guys because he's no doubt got some area effect attacks and I don't want us bunched up.

This is probably Noxious Aroma. It decreases all skills for several seconds before it wears off. He hits Redactor with the same thing and Sasha with tear gas which temporarily incapacitates her. When these get clear of the bridge I'm going to have Nathan try to get around them and go after the alchemist.

Sasha got tear gassed again. He tossed Stonetar at Yuna, which greatly slows down anyone walking through it, so she won't be able to get into the fight soon. Redactor is holding off two enemies while Nathan slips past them. I bet Nathan Chen could be a really good running back IRL.

He tries to slow down Nathan with stonetar but it's too late. He's run out of potions. Nathan kills him instantly with one swing of his halberd and the guards are easily mopped up.

This is some nice loot. He ran out of combat potions but he has a lot that can temporarily enhance our characters or their equipment. We'll save these to use in an emergency.

Notice how this combat was way more complex than just killing street thugs. Combat in Darklands is never going to be as intricate as Troubleshooter but once you get into the mid-game it's not just mindlessly slashing at each other.

Maybe in the next episode we'll finally do some alchemy. (Spoiler: we do!)

When people follow me, I like to checkout their profiles. My jaw hit the floor when i went through Rizwan Khalil’s most recent posts… pic.twitter.com/5zU4J4Hr5s

— Unfiltered Truth (@UnfiltdTruth) January 22, 2025

@Patsy

45% of Democrats want their party to be less extreme, vs 27% of Republicans.

!anticommunists !trump2028

kill redditors

These deranged alcoholics were REEEEing at abstainers when daddy USA was backing them look at them now

if ur uesr ID is fricking odd, nothing chnages for u

if ur uesr ID is fricking eevn, u get the fricking new ping group tab

@J !nooticers !chuds !nonchuds !codecels !transphobes !g*mers !grillers !r-slurs !fellas !bookworms !downmarseyrs !schizomaxxxers !metashit !boozers !poll_voters !zoomers !schizos !animalposters !homeowners !anime !moidmoment !effortposters !edgelords !anticommunists !friendsofsnappy !fitness !lgbt !historychads !familyman !badgemaxxers !trekkies !foidmoment !noalcohol !jinxthinkers !personalarmy

Wow. This is an incredibly insular, and empathy devoid take. The author's binary assumption that introversion and introversion are choices are incredible. Go and do some research on neurodivergence, and then go and have a think about how harmful this advice is.

Remember, shyness, like fatness, is totally determined by your DNA, and your choices have nothing to do with it.

For me it isn't just a matter of "I'd rather be in front of a computer", going to a big social encounter is extremely stressful. And the idea of approaching and talking to someone I don't know fills me with terror.

Lots more computercel cope in the thread