...but I think this is the most staggering.

New York City, my hometown, is said to have had murders "double overnight" - but, as indicated by their own crime stats page, this is absolutely not the case: there has been a 40% increase over the past two years, and said increase was in fact from a historical low. Murders in NYC are actually down this year; at the current pace shown by the crime stats page, this would be the 10th lowest yearly murder rate in NYC.

While this has not surprised me given the string of shoddy reporting I've seen from NYT this year (even beyond the op-eds which are by definition more likely to attract fearmongering and generally poorly-written crap), I still find it necessary to ask:

What the shit, New York Times?

New strike force came in with the patch today. Dr Aeon. Comes with new challenge settings you can select at start and these replace the old challenge settings but now you get additional rewards for finishing the tf with the new challenge settings in place.

New Powersets!
Seismic blast: Primary for Blaster/Corrupters and Secondary for Defenders.
Earth Manipulation: Secondary for blasters.

Powerset proliferation:
Scrapper: Stone melee and modified Stone armor.
Stalker: Stone melee and modified stone armor.

Powerset Changes:
Stone Armor has been revamped.

Power Customization
Stone Armor powers now have a set of Minimal themes. These themes still display geometry on the character while the powers are running, but are significantly less obtrusive.
Rock Armor
Endurance cost has been reduced from 0.26 end per second to 0.208 end per second
Stone Skin
The following stats were moved to Stone Skin from Granite:
Added Resistance against Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative and Toxic damage. +10%/7.5% for Tankers and Brutes respectively.
Added Defense to all but toxic. +5%/3.75% for Tankers and Brutes respectively.
This power should now accept Defense enhancements and sets.
Earth's Embrace
Recharge lowered from 360 seconds to 120 seconds
Cast time reduced from 2.1 seconds to 1.0 seconds
Duration reduced from 120 seconds to 60 seconds
The Max HP buff can no longer be stacked with itself
Heal scale reduced from scale 4 to scale 1.35
Mud Pots
Endurance cost for this power has been reduced from 0.78 end per second to 0.52 end per second
Crystal Armor
This power now grants a 20% recovery buff while it's active
Power can now be enhanced for end modification sets and enhancements
Cast time reduced from 2.01s to 1.0s
Endurance cost has been reduced from 0.26 end per second to 0.208 end per second
Minerals
This power now grants a 15% recharge buff while it's active
Endurance cost has been reduced from 0.26 end per second to 0.208 end per second
Brimstone Armor
This power now grants the caster a fire damage proc
This proc is based on attacks cast time, instead of their recharge
This proc uses AT modifiers: Ranged_Damage for attacks with base ranges > 20 ft and Melee_Damage otherwise.
(Brutes Only) This proc scales with Fury (up to x2 damage at 100% Fury)
(Scrappers Only) This proc has a chance to critical hit
Increased Fire/Cold resistance from scale 2.5 to scale 3.0
Added scale 2.0 Toxic resistance
Endurance cost has been reduced from 0.26 end per second to 0.208 end per second
Granite
Players should now be able to do small 1.5ft high jumps while in granite form. This is high enough to jump some small bench-sized ledges, but not enough to jump over enemies or fences.
The following stats were moved to Stone Skin from Granite:
Resistance against Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative and Toxic damage was reduced by 10%/7.5% for Tankers and Brutes respectively.
Defense lowered by 5%/3.75 for Tankers and Brutes respectively.

Electrical Blast has been reworked:
Electrical Blast attacks now have a chance to Shock enemies for 20% bonus damage depending on their current Endurance! This damage scales with buffs and enhancement. In addition, Shocking enemies will return a portion of Endurance back to you and inflict -40% Recovery Debuff on your target for 5 seconds each application, replacing the prior % chance to do so on many powers (with some exception). Starting at 80% endurance, your chance to Shock will scale from 10% up towards 100% when an enemy is fully drained.



Notes:

Returned endurance is non-enhanceable.
Single Target Attacks return 1/2 of the base cost, AoEs return 1/4.
AoEs will only restore endurance once, not per target.
Short Circuit, Tesla Cage, and Thunderous Blast will always inflict -100% Recovery debuff. In addition, they all have a chance to do additional -Recovery with Shock.
Voltaic Sentinel will not return endurance.
Shocking is separate from Scourge/Other such bonus procs and will not double-dip.

This change not only shores up Elec's single target damage conditionally, but also allows players to more easily keep targets drained as their basic attacks will proc Shock and inflict -Recovery the more endurance they drain.



AT Specific Endurance Drain Scales

Electrical Blast powers now follow the EndMod scales for each AT, much like Electrical Affinity. This is applicable strictly for Corruptors (1.1 scale) and Defenders (1.25 scale) where they will have bonuses to End Drain, -Recovery, and +End Return compared to Blasters and Sentinels who have a 1.0 scale.



In addition, the following powers had their base End Drain values changed for each AT:

Tesla Cage - 7% -> 20% (22% / 25%)

Slow Zapp - 15% -> 30% (33% / 37.5%)



These changes will help the Support AT's fulfill their roles with Electrical Blast with better Endurance Modification prowess, and easier usage of Shock compared to the higher damage AT's.



Power Changes

Ball Lightning
DoT duration lowered from 3.1s to 2.2s, retains the same number of ticks
Short Circuit
DoT duration lowered from 2.1s to 1.5s, retains the same number of ticks
Animation lowered from 3.0s to 2.5s. Now hits sooner.
Charge Up (Aim)
Aim has been renamed Charge Up
Lowered ToHit /Dam from scale 5 to scale 4
Added a scale 2.5 End Mod Str Boost that boosts your endurance drain
(Blaster/Sent = 25% , Corruptor =27.5%, Defender = 31.25%)
Tesla Cage

Tesla Cage has been revamped to emit Chain Lightning! Taking this power allows you to build Static Charges with each activation of other electrical blast attacks. As Static builds, you can unleash it with Tesla Cage where electricity will jump off your main target to shock others nearby!

Charged Bolts, Lightning Bolt, and Zapp/Zapping Bolt will build Static charges as long as you own Tesla Cage or any Electrical Affinity power.
This Static is shared with Electrical Affinity
In addition, Electrical Manipulation for Blasters can gain static with Electric Fence, Charged Brawl, Havok Punch, and Shocking Grasp if you own Tesla Cage.
Each Static charge will allow Tesla Cage to chain jump to one additional nearby target within 10 feet of the main target.
For each jump, you will spend 1 Static. If you jump to 3 extra targets, you will spend 3 Static and keep the rest. You do not spend Static on purely single target hits.
Chain Jump Damage for Blaster, Corruptors and Defender will grow on each subsequent jump, but only the primary target will be held.
Chain Jump Damage for Sentinels will be 15% of the damage inflicted against the main target.
The main target of Tesla Cage will be hit for 20% endurance drain, while additional targets suffer a smaller portion.
While you can gain well over 10 stacks, the target cap for Tesla Cage is 10 additional targets (6 for Sentinels)
The power will gain a Blue ring indicating you have reached your Chain Cap

BlueRing.png.f7131ae3519bd50e6147f55b6169ba5a.png

Only the Main Target of Tesla Cage can trigger Procs.

Voltaic Sentinel
This power is now a toggle (0.52 end/s)
Recharge reduced to 10s
This toggle is still susceptible to drop if mezzed
Changes to Voltaic Sentinel's powers:
Powers now properly scale per summoning AT (Including Dominator's Electrical Assault version, though it has no other changes at this time)
Bolt recharge reduced from 2.5s to 1.25s
Bolt activation normalized to 1s (some randomly were at 1.17s)
These changes allow the Sentinel to rapidly fire electricity within a crowd, or on one target continuously.
End Drain normalized to -4% from -5%, but now scales properly for Corruptors and Defenders on top of being rapid-fire.
Damage normalized to scale 0.56, below are the base damage values at lvl 50:
Blaster: 35.03
Sentinel: 29.58
Corruptor: 23.36
Defender: 20.24
Voltaic Sentinel's bolt can also proc Shocked!
Thunderous Blast
Added a -30% bonus Endurance Drain vs Elite Targets (Main Target Only).
This bonus is NOT boostable or resistible, and scales down as the target's endurance depletes.
There is no special -Recovery bonus associated with this aside from the base stats / shock.

beyond that you'll have to hit up the thread where the update is listed here

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/top...27-page-3/

...to all forum members residing in the US.

And now, the top three new candidates for "Worst way to wake up not on fire:"

3. There's a spider web across your face

2. It leads to your nose

1. You sneeze and find the spider

 

Our little miss cardcaptor has a card that causes people to swap bodies, which in the anime was done with Kero and Shaoran.  So, who wants to trade bodies?  First on my list is Tomo and Koyomi, because ... well, there are a lot of reasons.  But I'll get into those in the story.

What I want to ask about here is a little bit of brainstorming for a proper deconstruction: what is actually different about people's bodies?  You know, besides the things that are covered in every body swap doujinshi? We have a bit of first-hand knowledge about this, because we all remember being shorter.  But a lot of how we imagine others observe the world is based on how we see the world, because we only have first-hand knowledge of one person.

So what are some of the sort of things I could use in this story?  So far I have:

Vision: Yomi's eyes will seem blurry to Tomo, and wearing the glasses will seem awkward at first.  It's also possible one of them is colorblind or, conversely, a tetrachromat.
Taste: I've already mentioned the cilantro mutation in my stories, but about the undines.
Height: Always a classic.  Big was a good movie.
Hair: Having long hair feels different.  Takes longer to wash. Twintails feel bouncy.
Audio: Is Yomi's bad singing a product of her body, or a product of her brain?

Any other ideas I could work in here?

P.S. Also in my own experience, I have the soprano parts of Handel's Messiah memorized, but my body will no longer produce those notes.  It's surprisingly frustrating.  The tenor lines are nice, just not what I learned when I was a kid.

I was updating the character pages for the Mau on the My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character wiki, and realized something that applies equally well to canon - and thus to DWS.

Quote:(A bit of Fridge Logic indicates that the myths about the goddess Artemis arose after the fall of the Moon Kingdom, and thus our Artemis can make a decent argument that the goddess was named after him.)

"You'll never guess who'se dead."

If there's one thing few people realise about Ireland, it's that you're never too far from death. Death lives in the national consciousness in a way it does in few other parts of the world - and it's not even something most Irish people notice.

And while you might have the Obituaries page for the rich and famous in other parts of the world, the Death notices here are as much a part of life as any other notice. From a page for the deaths in the back of the  newspaper, to the announcements of the recently deceased on the local radio, or website like RIP.ie that broadcast the deaths worldwide. A short memorial line, a remembrance from the family, and the details of the funeral for those who want to go.

I don't know if anything like that exists anywhere else. Maybe it does. It's a wonderful thing.

Me Granny passed Sunday evening at about 9pm. She was 91. In truth she might've been gone for years - dementia had already gotten her and she didn't even know herself anymore. But she stopped taking her food last week and that was that. She passed surrounded by everyone who could make it -- I'd been asked to wait to see if someone needed a pickup but by the time I got word they didn't it was too late.

By chance I drove past her nursing home for work twice, just about 2 weeks ago. I had the thought to sneak in for a quick visit - but I wasn't sure how to explain that and, well, Covid and dementia and all that - she wouldn't have recognised me on my own. Can't do that now anyway.

I'm doing alright, so long as I don't see people's response to the photos I put up on facebook - and so long as I keep going to work for the next few days. We'll all do it soon enough anyway.

Behold, mothafuckas!

Oh. Wait. He ain’t serving prison time for this shit, just having to pay a hundred thousand at most, he already’s a multimillionaire profiting off of the destruction of this nation. And he lost the case by default, refusing to turn over relevant documents, Bannon-style.

Well, uh, hopefully Bannon goes to prison for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena? Hopefully one or the other can be removed from the field. And hopefully that doesn’t make them a martyr to the RevoQtion.

Previous thread is previous

Biden's administration is being just as protectionist and just as dismissive of the concerns of the neighbour to the north as Trump was.

No tl;dr - read it all, please.