I knew that Elizabeth Peters' last Amelia Peabody Emerson book, The Painted Queen, was being completed by another author after Peters' Author Existence Failure in 2013.  Until last week or so, however, I somehow missed learning that it was published in '17.  Yesterday, I finally had the opportunity to buy it.  I've barely begun reading it, so there are no spoilers here, except that everyone who's alive in the six books set after this one will survive.  (That's a joke, son; why aintcha laughin'?)  But....

I did want to mention that the pinch-author, Joan Hess, in her preface, talks about her long friendship with Barbara Mertz alias Elizabeth Peters including "a lengthy exchange of weird presents involving sheep...."  Wisely, perhaps, she left unspecified why the weird presents involved sheep.  Let the trees begin their grand mal seizures!

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Considering that one dictionary definition of "carry on" is to "behave or speak in a foolish, excited, or improper manner," the designers of that famous poster, "Keep Calm and Carry On," need to make up their flippin' minds!

Some of you may have seen Rob Kelk's sig and thought, who is that dude?  Well, for a time, Michael Ignatieff was the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada.  But mainly, he's been an academic.  Which leads us to his latest job, President of the Central European University.

Viktor Orbán’s War on Intellect

So the end result here is that the most prestigious university in Hungary is getting evicted from the entire country so that Orbán's self-proclaimed vision of illiberal democracy can be fulfilled.  Reminder: this is the same country that made it a felony for attorneys to represent illegal immigrants in court.

May as well start this in Politics...

I call this sort of thing "blue-sky thinking" because it's pretty close to having my head in the clouds, except that I've actually given some thought to it.

Why not split the USA? It isn't as if you've been "United" since the Clinton Presidency.

Yes, I know - you had a war about this over a century and a half ago. But that was when the Whigs were still a viable political party. Things change.

There's this recent suggestion, and this de facto one from when Obama was elected President. It's remarkable how similar they are.

In both cases, the "left coast" goes its own way (maybe keeping Hawaii) with a left-leaning government; New England, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and all states that border the Great Lakes (and maybe Iowa and Minnesota) become another country living under the old "Yankee" stereotype which quickly adapts to modern reality; and there's a big stretch of conservatism between them in the middle of the continent.

If this is going to happen, I can't see Texas not becoming its own country. (They already have a flag.) Maybe Utah, too. And Alaska would have reason to become its own country as well. Heck, Minnesota might decide to go it alone. If Hawaii doesn't join the "left coast", they they'd probably be independent, too.

There's an outside chance that Maine might possibly maybe decide to join Canada... but even I think that's unlikely.

I'm not sure what would happen in New Mexico and Arizona. (Or, for that matter, in Alberta; they might decide to join that mid-continent conservative country.)

Sure, there'd be pockets of people in each new country who would have preferred to live in one of the other countries. There's historical precedent for that, and a matching historical solution.

So... am I coming up with an alternate history setting here, or a reasonable political suggestion?

I had a level 50+ Mastermind on red side before sunset and managed to set up keybinds to keep them all in check.  Now with Homecoming a thing I naturally rerolled a MM and had to go digging to find bind files but there is a how to guide on them here! Skip down to the text files section, yes, those few in a txt doc will do the trick.


I can answer a few questions about it (mainly because I had to bash at it with a hammer to get mine working) once in game type "/bindloadfile c:\coxmmbnd\covbindsRobot.txt" (c:\coxmmbnd being the path to where I put my txt files, covbindsrobot.txt being where the "load XYZ" portion comes in.)  To test whether you need to tweak the files just summon your bots hit numbpad 0 then 9, if you get the place here reticle then it's ready to go.

I'll be on for a bit this morning and probably later on this evening showing my Pop the ropes since he's coming up for three weeks and loves him some MMOs.  

I can be a bit cranky at times but ya'll are my peeps so don't hesitate to ask for anything.

Running a standard Posi 1 the other night with Uni, MD, and Spud.

We had a fairly balanced group. Spud was on a Rad Armor/Dark Melee Tank, MD on a Titan Weapons/WP Brute, Uni on an Cold/Ice Defender, and me on my new Beam Rifle/Pain Corruptor.

We did pretty well... until we got to Doc Buzzsaw

The rest of the TF had thus far been scaled to level 9 (presumably due to the adjusted minimum level? We outleveled that pretty quickly), until we got to her

We beat everyone else. She ate us alive. We came back with full inspiration bars of nothing but yellows because we could barely hit her like she was some Vahzilok freakshow Matrix escapee, and when we did, we did SINGLE DIGIT damage.

She ate us alive a second time, though we got her to 50%

The straw that got us to dump the TF was when we looked at her info.

We were exemped down to 9 by the TF (on default settings, mind. I enabled no challenges) for some reason.

Doc Buzzsaw was Level 16.

After that, we broke down and gave up, but I dunno WHAT bug caused that, given she was the only enemy in the entire TF that had that happen, even in the mission that spawned her.

May 8 was the 74th anniversary of VE Day.

That's a perfect day for the Department of Veterans Affairs to post a memorial video, even if it's only 40 seconds long.

There's just one little problem...

Spoiler

As far as I know, there were no Canadians serving in the Wehrmacht during World War II.

https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,1561.0.html

Patch Notes - Last Updated May 10, 2019

This post will be regularly updated as a quick reference for client/server changes and gameplay balances and fixes. Dates link to the relevant forum post.


05/09/19

• Arenas Enabled
  
• Salvage Market seeded to keep costs down: 10K for common salvage, 100K for uncommon salvage, 1M for rare salvage, and 50K for a Brainstorm Idea
  

• All servers now set to +50% XP Boost
  
• There was an issue with Respecs granted from leveling badges; they were following the old limit of holding a maximum of 3 respecs at a time, which means you got the respec for levels 10, 20 and 30 but not 40 and 50. This should be fixed now
  
• Added free respec for all due to the cooldown issue and the level 40 badge not awarding a respec (may take a day or two to arrive)
  
• Fixed the infinite cooldown bug affecting some powers
  

• Arcs marked Developer's Choice in Architect Entertainment will no longer be affected by the Architect XP reduction (This is an experimental change, and may not work as expected - in the event of bugs, we’ll work on fixes)
  
• The minimum level for Positron TF Part 1 has been lowered to 8
  

• As the #badge-hoarders have noted, Echo: Faultline did not have any exploration badges. This patch fixes that oversight, returning three badges that were in the original Faultline zone before Issue 8 to Echo: Faultline, and adding 8 new exploration badges and a zone accolade
  
• Moved "Newsman", "Faultless Mystic" and "Apex" from Faultline to Echo: Faultline
  
• Added "Riveting", "Upcycled" and "Rock Bottom" to Faultline
  
• Added "Forsaken", "Pristine", "Claim Denied", "Spare Parts" and "Dug Too Deep" to Echo: Faultline
  
• Added "Epicenter", Echo: Faultline zone accolade.
  
• Added "Fashion Victim" for spending 50,000,000 inf on the tailor. Rewards a Free tailor token for your trouble
  

• Super Packs Added
  
• XP Boosts adjusted for servers, on permanently until otherwise noted.
  
• Character Shard Transfers enabled
  

• Architect Entertainment -50% XP Nerf added to discourage farming missions from flooding the system.
  
• Weekday +50% XP Boost added on all servers to encourage players to spread out playtime away from weekends.
  
• Weekends on Everlasting and Indomitable will be set to +250% XP Boost
  
• Leveling Pacts disabled due to instability.
  
• Fixed scenario that allowed players to create Architect missions with enemies that actually healed you instead of damaging you.
  
• Fixed bug that caused players to receive multiple copies of the 15th Anniversary Badge reward
  

• City Zones set to unload if empty, may cause slightly increased loading times when entering an empty zone.
  
• Players can now skip the login queue if reconnecting within 10 minutes of a previous disconnect.
  
• All logging for player information has been disabled
  

• Indomitable and Everlasting shards added to the pool with +100% XP Boost
  
• Login Queue System enabled - Shards limited to 1,500 players
  
• 15th Anniversary badge added
  

• Excelsior Shard added to the pool
  

Y'all gettin' your headcannons loaded in the other one, which is fine. 

But here's the recent news and changes -

 - Torchy, Evie, Indy, and the others that we've been playing on through Tequila launched are ran by a group calling themselves the "Homecoming" team.
 - They're the ones operating out of Score.savecoh.com
 - They've got an LLC together and the ability to accept donations, which is currently shut off because they don't need.
 - Per https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,1551.0.html they are moving a shard to the EU, and moving the rest to canadian soil
 

And in-game, there's some other good stuff -
 - The Legendary is now semi-officially moved in to Everlasting / Evie server
 - Evie is the unofficial RP server, just like Virtue was
 - Riot Force 6 is also established on Evie
 - Until our sudden but inevitable betrayal and consumption of them, The Legendary is coalitioned with RF6 to provide more punches to enemy faces
 - The Legendary base is a usable facility, with teleporters, medbay, inspiration and salvage storage, crafting, couches.  All sorts of good stuff, and a flamethrower
 - Terrence is not allowed to use the flamethrower.

Life is good.  Go, Hunt.  Kill Skuls!

https://score.savecoh.com/status/

Looks like it updates every five minutes or so, and it has NUMBERS!

From the FFML overnight:

Quote:Wanderer D wrote:
Some of you might remember the Eternal Lost Lurker, aka MithrilMoth. It pains me to inform those of us that remain in the list, that he passed away this last Sunday in his sleep. I've lost track of a lot of people here, and seen some of you in fimfic. If you're ever there, drop a line, I'd love to hear from you, even as we lose one of our own.
-WD