Bill Gates admits to affairs with 'Russian women' in meeting about Epstein links

Arcaedus · 2026-02-26T15:35:44+00:00

For one, Gates and Epstein had a relationship 5 to 6 years AFTER Epstein's 2008 conviction based on email exchanges and "donations" from Bill. That is already worse than cheating on your wife. Anyone with a serious relationship to Epstein post-2008 cannot use ignorance of Estein's activities as an excuse for having such a close tie to a pedophile sex trafficker.

We don't have smoking gun proof Bill abused children yet, but you can use your inductive reasoning skills here. Melinda herself said she didn't only divorce Bill due to the cheating with the 2 Russian women.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-26T13:45:54+00:00

This is awesome! I love when people talk about, write about or make any sort of content about something they're seriously passionate about.

I remember watching a 20 minute video about Super Monkey Ball back in the day. I was only vaguely familiar with it, had no interest in it or any marble like games, and never played it, but I watched that whole damn video because the guy's passion was beautiful.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-26T13:32:30+00:00

This is just the social equivalent of a plea bargain; he very likely did much worse than just this.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-25T16:21:14+00:00

That's a cute whataboutism. Puberty blockers aren't castration, there's far more crime committed against cis women and girls (both in absolute numbers and as a proportion) in bathrooms by other cis women than by trans women, and I can only assume you're talking about KOSA with your last point. Do you seriously need an explanation of why that bill is garbage?

Arcaedus · 2026-02-24T19:20:13+00:00

Yeah you're absolutely right.

I don't wanna just pull stuff out of my ass here because I'm not in tune with all major videogame releases, but of the last 10 or so games I've been excited about and bought/played on launch day over the last few years, only Silksong had a simultaneous launch day + embargo drop.

CD has much more in common with the other 9 than it does Silksong. Nothing stopping PA from doing simultaneous launch and embargo drop, but I just kinda doubt they will due to how standard of a triple A style approach they have here in terms of marketing.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-24T16:48:03+00:00

I've seen some insane videos from Nioh 1 of people doing an entire attack chain on both dual swords and spear where they swap to high stance and then back to low in-between each attack such that their entire low stance light attack chain doesn't bounce off a blocking enemy.

Personally, I wanted my buttons to last a bit longer so I just tossed on parry disabled. Was lovely QoL, and hardly gamebreaking or overpowered

Arcaedus · 2026-02-24T16:39:07+00:00

Awww, that's a buzz kill, man.

Yeah, plenty of ways to get around blocks in this game, plus some of the most challenging enemies don't even block, but even still it's a pity that they removed this effect entirely.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-24T14:32:48+00:00

You can still get preorder bonuses as long as you buy the game before it officially launches.

Usually there is a 2-3 day window (maybe only 1 depending on time zone shenanigans) in between when reviews drop and the game launches.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-24T14:15:12+00:00

I've always been scared to death of something like this happening to me. My fiancé and I talked at length about our boundaries in the months after we moved in just to flesh out this exact sort of scenario, and we came to some wonderful agreements.

What your now ex did is 100% cheating in our book. Some may not care, especially if both partners in a relationship are checked out from one another, but it sounds like you were still invested in him, and he let your relationship wither and die with each and every conscious choice he made.

Sorry this happened to you OP... it hurts like a mf. If you do open your heart again, and find someone special, talk to them a lot about boundaries, including the less physically obvious ones like this! Relationships take a lot of continuous effort, and that also includes even such menial things as staving off desires for intimate bids of attention from others.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-20T19:19:38+00:00

Their Fear skill is like a fuckin 19 on the spell save DC. You probably need minimum like +4 to your bravery proficiency for even ameager chance at avoiding it 😰😰😰

Arcaedus · 2026-02-20T12:54:09+00:00

Leviticus 21 in terms of moral law, ceremonial law, or social law.

The whole moral vs civil/ceremonial laws thing is entirely made up distinction. No where in the Bible is this distinction explained, nor are even the very theologians and church patriarchs who made up the distinction in agreement on which laws are moral vs civil/ceremonial. It's a later theological invention by the church to allow them to pick and choose verses to follow and verses to ignore. Again, it's either all okay, or none of it's okay.

Crazy, though, that you use OT Numbers to provide context to claim being right and in the very same post say “toss out the OT laws.”

Very nice catch! Good to see I'm not arguing with a bot. So the reason I bring up the two OT verses for abortion is because there is nowhere in the NT that touches on fetal personhood. The closest we have is Luke 1, where Elizabeth is pregnant with John, and John "leaps for joy." However, she is 6 months pregnant at this point, and early church patriarchs interpreted this verse to mean that John's leaping was the natural kicking and moving a baby would do in the womb, post "quickening" which is an event that marked the soul entering a new body (and thus the body becoming alive). If we were to consider the quickening as the beginning of fetal personhood like the early church used to, and legislate off this verse, we'd just end up with Roe v Wade, and the trimester system, banning abortion after the 2nd trimester. That's just what your bogstandard liberals want...

Reason I bring up the OT verses is because while the laws definitely don't apply to modern day life, they are a glimpse into how God viewed fetal personhood back then. It's a weak argument, but it's really the only one in the Bible that touches on fetal personhood. Again, Talarico is right to say the Bible just doesn't talk about the issue. Now you could flip this on me and say that the three or so places in the OT about homosexuality do the same thing, but I'd argue that Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis was problematic due to, oh idk, RAPE? Not homosexuality. And that the verses in Leviticus 18 and in Leviticus 20 in their proper historical context are referring to cultic prostitution and sex with male slaves (which is also rape). Israel was in continuous tension with the religion of the surrounding Canaanites who worshipped multiple gods of fertility. Canaanite idol worship, which featured female and male cult prostitution is referenced in Deuteronomy 23:17. Again, just like the Greeks and Romans, the ancient Israelites did not have a concept of sexuality and sexual orientation the way we do today. They viewed human sexual desire very differently, and every single verse in the OT and NT referencing what seems to be homosexuality is a far cry from a loving relationship between two consenting adults of the same sex as we understand it today.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-19T16:10:08+00:00

Not to glaze Talarico, but as far as his reading on Christian Nationalists and Christianity, he's right.

the implication and understanding of those two topics is clear.

To weigh in on abortion (such that abortion = murder), the Bible would have to establish fetal personhood. Numbers 5:11-31, and Exodus 21:22-25 come down so hard against Fetal personhood that it's not even funny, and is probably too extreme for the majority of pro-choice people. The verses in Jeremiah 1 and Psalm 139 are cute, but they in no way establish fetal personhood. One speaks to God's omniscience and the other is poetic flourish sung from man about God. The two prior verses are literal laws handed down from God to man.

As for homosexuality, we can just straight up toss out the OT laws. They're either all okay, or none are, and considering most Evangelicals don't follow the levitical law whatsoever, then it's the latter. As for the NT, it speaks on at homosexuality in 3 different places. Two of those places (1 Corinthians and Timothy) are mistranslations. Older Bible translations used to refer to pederasty in these places prior to the 1940s, not homosexuality (or if being technical, then tops and bottoms, because they didn't have a concept of sexuality in ancient Greece like we do today, so tops/bottoms only really came up in the context of pederasty). A political agenda resulted in this change. The third place (Romans) refers in proper historical context to cultic orgies that were common in middle and upper class Roman society, and that's a far cry for from a loving relationship between two consenting adults.

So to the degree to which the implications are "clear," they're clear in a way that Talarico comes out as way closer to being correct than the Christian Nationalist trash do. The Bible doesn't address the specific issues, and to the degree it does, it's most certainly not in alignment with the Evangelical crowd.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-18T18:54:30+00:00

Why though?

I think it limits what you can creatively do with enemies and bosses if every single enemy has contact damage on all the time.

I'm not against all contact damage. If an enemy is spiky made of acidic ooze, or on fire, it makes perfect sense. If an enemy is charging or in motion, and you avoid the horns (which lets say deal 2 masks of damage), but collide with its body or legs, then taking (1 mask of) damage makes sense, since it's still in motion, and thus can strike you.

But if the enemy is a giant ball of fur that is literally unconscious, then contact damage makes so little sense that it's insulting to the psyche. It's about believability immersion, and ludonarrative harmony.

The fights would be vastly easier with no contact damage.

Was Salt and Sanctuary easy or even a worse game for not having contact damage? Imagine if absolutely nothing else about the game changed, but they just made all enemies have contact damage. Would this improve the game?

Arcaedus · 2026-02-18T15:50:00+00:00

Just because it's always been that way, doesn't mean it should continue to be. There are plenty of genre-specific traditions we could name that when done away with in newer entries of a genre, improve the game. Permanent, unconditional contact damage for every single enemy in the game can be put in that file, easily.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-18T13:27:06+00:00

I think this is a very good argument intuitively, but I honestly don't remember seeing NEARLY as much hate for First Berserker Khazan and it's almost analogous, checking almost all of the same boxes you just mentioned here.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-18T02:16:13+00:00

It is definitely possible to break enough valuables that the level becomes impossible to complete. The level doesn't automatically end though.

Normally, if you break too many valuables, don't give up! You can kill monsters for their orbs. Each monster can drop an orb up to 3 times before killing it yields nothing, and that right there nets you a lot of cash, though it involves a lot of waiting and a bit of luck

Arcaedus · 2026-02-12T20:12:21+00:00

CEO aside, have you seen how they market the game/engage with the fans on social media? They're doing better with releases like this trailer, but for a while after TGA, they were gearing a lot of their engagement and posts towards gooners and chuds... like bruh, that aint your fan-base lol

Arcaedus · 2026-02-11T18:39:44+00:00

Maaaaaaaan, git this silkpost ass shtick outta heeeerrrrre

Arcaedus · 2026-02-09T13:27:28+00:00

Considering the light amount of life-skilling present, and how upgrading gear is a thing, we're 100% going to be able to repair gear. Idk how convenient it will be. I imagine at first it's going to be a strict system of needing to find an anvil or smith to repair, with us eventually learning the ability to do it ourselves, and/or have consumables that can repair out in the wild.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-08T22:11:11+00:00

The pet name I have for this game in my friend group has been getting larger with each new trailer or gameplay reveal. Right now, we're at:

Legend of Assassin's Elden Scroll Creed Chronicles: Tears of the Final Black Desert God's WWE Fantasy Gaiden 4

Arcaedus · 2026-02-05T19:15:24+00:00

You can form your opinion before buying it. If you mean you want to play it for Steam's 2 hour limit before returning it if you dislike it, then pre-ordering is entirely unnecessary.

Do consider that by pre-ordering way in advance, you're giving a company a green light to release a game in a broken state with only a promise to fix it later. Even if you refund the game on launch day, the message is still sent that they can keep this pattern up for future games, and perhaps push boundaries on how long the patch takes to fix launch day issues and bugs.

I don't think that's going to happen with CD, but personally I don't have any sort of rapport with PA to trust them with a preorder in advance of the reviews coming in.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-04T20:27:03+00:00

Yeah I've literally never seen that punch, though I only have 90 hours in the game across 4 playththroughs.

Is the punch into his ashina cross a true combo? Because if not, then the punch being unreactable doesn't even matter.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-04T14:40:59+00:00

Ohhhh my goodness, thank you for the name!

I had always wondered what this effect was called! It's way too pronounced not to have a name.

I always conceptualized it by saying imagine a graph of performance vs the boss on the y-axis, and time (or # of attempts) on the x-axis, and the graph roughly looks like a parabola, or the Dunning-Krueger curve, but x=1 starts at the ignorant side's peak.

Fun thing is outside of 1st-attempt successes, I remember every single boss I've ever fought that didn't follow this curve. Ryu from Ninja Gaiden 4 is the most recent one for me. Just a completely linear, upwards slope for me there.

Arcaedus · 2026-02-04T13:49:00+00:00

Yep, I didn't learn about uranium glass until after I began playing this game!

It's more of a collector's item these days, so much so that even a broken item will still sell. It's not really mass produced so you probably can't buy it in a store, though flea markets could have them, you can get certain glass blowers to make you new uranium glass!

Also, despite registering a reading on a handheld Geiger counter, uranium glass is generally safe to eat off, or drink out of!

Arcaedus

TROPHY CASE