That's really cool (and involved)! Thanks for writing that up. I hope you get a chance to actually try it.

Good to know, thanks!

I use a lot of off-meta melee (if there is such a thing, since most melee can be made powerful). I guess the ones on my list that count as "mediocre" are Mios, Ninkondi, Prisma Dual Cleavers, Guandao Prime, and Twin Basolk. If we're counting hidden gems, I'd also add Caustacyst, which I liked even before I had a riven for it, and now use on my Kullervo loadout as well.

Currently breezing through Auberon by James S.A. Corey, the story between books 7 and 8 of the Expanse. Not sure what I'll read next.

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Finished Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. The world-building around the Zone was as cool as I'd hoped, and I appreciated that expeditions into it were realistically strenuous, grimy, and dangerous. The overall tone is a bit bleak, though, and I didn't find the characters particularly relatable. There's a cool afterward from one of the authors, describing how difficult it was to get the book published (and when it was, how censored it had to be).

Bingo squares: Older Than You Are (1972), It Takes Two, Now a Major Motion Picture, (alt) Translated (hard).

Just want to add: forma are for when you've run out of capacity after you've installed a reactor/catalyst. You can install them before, but it's really inefficient.

Also, if you put all the basic mods on a weapon, and it still feels weak, take a look at its base (unmodded) crit and status chance stats. If, say, base crit chance is significantly lower than base status chance, then replace crit mods with more status/status chance, and see if that feels better. Same principle for frames: some frames have really low base shield, or their abilities don't need range, or they don't need to worry about energy management, so you're better off swapping out some mods for others.

MR30 here. Apart from the prime and lich stuff, there's definitely a few easy things you've missed, and some clusters of stuff you can work on simultaneously or while doing other things (like cracking relics or grinding aya):

• Have you done all the zaws, kitguns, k-drives, and amps? Wasn't sure if what you're using tracks them. If not, that's potentially a big chunk.
• BPs from the market: pandero, carrier, dethcube, shade, wyrm, various archgun/archmelees (parts require syndicates)
• BPs from the dojo: catabolyst, mios, helios, djinn, itzal, dorrclave, hema
• Nightwave: heat dagger, dark sword, wolf beacons for wolf sledge
• Deimos iso vaults: aurum spinosa, sporothrix, cortege, and necramech parts; rep for cortege and bonewidow BPs. Note that arcana iso vaults have better drop rates for aurum spinosa and sporothrix parts, but you'll probably be stuck doing them solo.
• Stuff from syndicates, all of which are tradable if you don't want to swap syndicates: various archmelee and archgun parts, sancti/secura/telos weapons, abyssal beacons for dorrclave mats
• BPs, parts, and relics from corpus railjack derelict caches: carmine penta and nautilus, plus relics for valkyr prime, nyx prime, cernos prime, scindo prime, hikou prime, and venka prime
• Baro: prisma weapons, vericres, halikar wraith, vulkar wraith, prova vandal, supra vandal, vastilok, ax-52 (probably)

As a side note for sibear, I found getting cryotic passively while grinding circuit much less tedious than trying to grind it directly, but that might just be me.

Will it give me arachnophobia, if I don't like spiders, but am not at the level of full blown phobia?

Mmm if they give you the ick, then maybe avoid it. I don't think it's too bad, but YMMV, and I'd rather not mislead you accidentally.

Ring Shout sounds interesting, but am not a fan of racism and slavery in the (fiction) books, specially the ones that go to dark places. Does it end well? 😀

The author actually uses a much lighter touch on the racism and mentions of slavery than I was expecting. It's there, and it ties into the story, but the focus is really more on fighting literal demonic creatures. Like I said the other week, it's really more of an action-adventure than disturbing horror. It ends mostly well, with room for a sequel.

Iirc from my time on kbin, posts are for the "microblog" part, i.e. the part that interacts with mastodon.

Just started Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. I read somewhere that they purposefully wrote Stalker (which I've seen) as very different to the book, so it'll be interesting to compare.

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Finished Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark. In the afterward, the author asked why a sword-wielding fantasy hero couldn't exist in the US, which I think sums up the tone pretty well. Some fun body horror, while also touching on the real horrors of slavery and racism.

Bingo squares: Award Winner (hard), Mashup, Minority Author

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Also read Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud, which was great. Sort of a mashup of lots of things (1920s in a mental asylum, on a version of the moon that has forests, with some gothic, medical, body, and cosmic horror thrown in). Sadly too short to explore the world, though I'm hopeful the planned sequels will rectify this. Avoid if you have arachnophobia.

Bingo squares: New Release, Mashup (maybe hard?), Among the Stars (technically), (alt) A Change in Perspective. Not sure about Institutional (hard) since it's a for-profit asylum.

True, but I think maybe you missed this being about additive and subtractive color mixing.

Oh, really? Thanks for the heads-up.

100% agree; I was so bummed Riddick was just inferior Pitch Black. The animated one, Dark Fury, was fun, though, iirc.

So, I feel like 2, maybe with 3 in certain high-traffic areas, would be a good idea, for a couple reasons:

1. increased visibility for vehicles, particularly in places with a lot of pedestrians, who might not all have their own lights or be too inebriated to use them.
2. nighttime socializing outdoors, such as markets, streets with lots of nightlife, plazas, etc. Sure, small personal lights could become incorporated into fashion, but those also need to be powered, and would have to illuminate faces without blinding anyone. Public lighting just seems easier.
3. less isolating for night shift workers (if that's a thing in the world you're writing).

Could even have 2 shut off in quieter neighborhoods that have no open businesses during the wee hours.

Not Gamescom-related, but there was a Nintendo Direct that showed off some indie/partner games on the 27th, and a CoD thing today (the 28th), if either of those were what you were thinking of?

Only other thing that comes to mind is maybe the Future Games Show, but that was last week (list of trailers here).

I'm at 13/25 books for bingo, but that's all I've been reading since May.

Currently a third of the way through Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark. I was craving a horror read, and this worked for bingo, so I picked it up. It's good so far, but seems more like an action adventure than the grim spookiness I wanted.

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Finished Malice by Keigo Higashino. A surprising number of lies got revealed in the second half, though I did get part of it right. Not jumping to read more by this author, but not opposed to it, either. Sidenotes: this is listed as #4 in a series, but the first 3 aren't in English, and it reads fine as a standalone; also, you may want to check content warnings for this one.

Bingo squares: What's Yours Is Mine, Bookception (hard), There Is Another (hard, if you count untranslated entries), Now a Major Motion Picture (a J-drama from 2001), Minority Author, (alt) Translated (hard)

Oof, that sounds tricky, yeah. I spent some more time this morning poking around at references and testing ideas, but mostly it feels like going around in circles (no pun intended).

Do post how you end up going about it, or if you find a better solution; I'd love to know!

I mean, if you're willing to cheat and use the length of your straightedge (assuming it's long enough), or cordage anchored at one end, then you have a substitute compass, and the solution's trivial.

For a variation on this with fewer tangents (from A. S. Smogorzhevskii's The Ruler In Geometrical Constructions):

• Pick point 1 on the larger circle.
• Draw two tangents (2) on the smaller circle, such that they go through point 1 and intersect the larger circle on the other end (3).
• Draw one line segment from 2 to 3', and one from 3 to 2'. **
• Draw a line that goes through both the resulting intersection and the original point (1) you made on the larger circle. This line goes through the center of the circle.
• Repeat steps 1-4 from a different angle to get the center point.

The issue, of course, is that any tangent you draw (without other circles, lines, or tools) is going to be approximate, and so the center will also be approximate. Every solution for this that I found just assumes accurate tangents, or parallel lines, or whatever, but I don't see a way to get those (I say, having only browsed through the topic briefly) when these two circles and a straightedge are all you have to work with. If that's not a big deal in your practical application, cool.

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** I'm shortcutting, here. The long version is to first draw two line segments, one that uses the smaller circle's tangent points (2) as endpoints, and one that uses the intersections on the larger circle (3) as endpoints. Because the two circles are concentric, these segments are parallel and centered on one another, so you end up with an isosceles trapezoid. You then draw its diagonals to get its midpoint.

I'm about halfway through Malice by Keigo Higashino. It's unusual in that it's not a who dunnit, it's a why dunnit, and that half of the book (this is not a spoiler) is the murderer's unreliable written account, interspersed with chapters of the detective's report. The prose is a little dry (not sure if that's a translation issue, or if it's that way in the original Japanese), but it's short and engaging.

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Finished Weak Heart by Ban Gilmartin. Sort of an urban fantasy on a remote Scottish island, dealing with Scottish folklore and a missing friend/ex. There are some monsters and apparitions, but I wouldn't call it horror (although you might want to check content warnings, as there is some reliving of past traumas). Very much a peek into the two main characters' heads as they investigate, learn to tolerate each other, and grow over the course of the story. Kind of a YA vibe, but not. Recommended if that sounds like your jam.

Bingo squares: Independent Author, LGBTQIA+ Lead (hard). (Maybe also Family Drama, if you count unrelated-but-raised-together.)

It sounds like this was the receiving party: letters from Orwell to his publisher (and other papers related to publishing his work, like contracts and internal memos). if Orwell had kept copies for his records, I suspect they would already be properly archived, yes.