Eldritch Mlems

Additional Murphy tax

So, if you're unaware, the basic math of PF2e's armour items assumes that for light and medium armour, (item bonus + dex cap) = 5, and for heavy armour, = 6. This means that as long as you can pick an armour that has a lower dex cap than your dex bonus, you are expected to be getting either 5 or 6 AC from your armour.

With all that said, there are a ton of armours out there that offer some kind of tradeoff, where that formula doesn't hold. For example, the Armoured Coat gives +4 AC between item bonus and dex cap, but it has the flexible trait which negates the check penalty to athletics and acrobatics checks. In my mind, that's a crazy tradeoff to make. The extra AC is so much more important.

At the end of the day though, I don't have the time to analyze the tradeoff offered by all of these "sub-optimal" armours. So yeah, I'd love to hear if anyone has experience with an armour item that yields less than 5 AC (or 6 for heavy armour) and yet the tradeoff was actually worth it for them.

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Archived link

Dmitri, a resident of Shebekino, Belgorod Region – a small town right next to the border with Ukraine that has been under constant shelling since the start of the war – gave an interview about life there.

Dmitri: I cannot say that people here have got used to the war. They are used to being afraid [...] Naturally, though, passions are heating up, because in every family there is already someone who has suffered or been killed [...]

There are fewer and fewer people in the town, clearly. I think about 30% of the population has left, the rest have nowhere to go and no reason to leave. The authorities are not promising us anything [...]

Of course, the attitude to the government is changing, and in a very negative way [...] It’s not even fatigue, but rather despair and hopelessness. Everyone says: make everything go back to how it was; you are playing with your toys there while we are losing lives [...]

Last year, the governor said in an interview with a federal television channel that shelling of Belgorod Region would stop when Kharkiv Region was incorporated into it. Right after this, people fled Shebekino en masse [...]

Most people in Russia, in my view, do not support the war and do not want to fight. The authorities say that many men throughout the country are voluntarily enlisting, but I do not believe it. I only believe it could be because of money.

I talk a lot with different people, including soldiers. Everyone is very tired and wants to go home, no one sees the goal, meaning or reason for the war [...]

In Vovchansk (a town in Ukraine’s Kharkiv Region, 15 kilometers from Shebekino and 4.5 kilometers from the border with Russia – Republic) it’s just awful, there is no longer a city. What is happening in Shebekino, of course, is not even close to the destruction in Vovchansk [...]

I have relatives in Kharkiv Region, in Ukraine. We have not quarreled. Both me and them, we all understand and support each other. We are not so close, but we always ask each other if we are OK [...]

Shebekino residents collected more than 4,000 signatures for Putin to stop the shelling. Because of that, local propagandists began to call us enemies and provocateurs. Of course, people are afraid to speak out against the war [...]

People will endure and complain from time to time. What else can you do? Petitions will not stop the war; it will end for completely different reasons. But what I know for sure: people here understand that we are trash to our government.

[Edit typo.]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/aug/06/beacon-usa-gymnastics-therapy-dog

original comic by Merrivius, edited by u/deleeuwic

Archived link

The struggles Ukranians face in European labor markets range from missing wages and illegally low pay to unlivable housing conditions, psychological violence and a complete disregard for the wellbeing of workers and standards set by employment law.

Eva Malá from the NGO People in Need summarizes the situation like this: “The war stirred up the business of poverty. Companies can make money at the expense of Ukrainians in three ways: charging rent, receiving subsidies for refugees and exploiting them through agency work.”

NGOs engaged in helping affected workers have been reporting rising numbers of Ukrainians seeking help in dealing with abusive labor practices. For example, Faire Integration in Germany, a consultant network that advises foreigners, reportedly received over 1,400 cases of Ukrainians seeking advice in 2023, with work related questions being the overwhelming focus. Similarly, the Czech NGO Foreigner is not a slave registers hundreds of requests for help per year.

The Czech Labor Inspectorate reports that common labor law violations against Ukrainian workers include unpaid or underpaid wages, illegal work, missing time records and incomplete agreements. On social media, Foreigner’s founder Jaroslav Čepa described these practices as the “wage mafia.”.

[...]

[...] A German consultant for exploited workers, Sergey Sabelnikov, [reported]: “At the beginning of the war, some Ukrainian women were picked up directly at the border with Poland and then exploited as cheap labor in hotels. There was great dependence because the women were housed directly by the employer in accommodations. Those who resigned also lost their roof over their heads.”

He adds that despite the problems, these cases have become less frequent. “Now the cases are different: this is probably also because many Ukrainians have become more independent and speak better German. They find other jobs or can defend themselves better,” Sabelnikov says.

[...]

In most EU countries, temp agency work is only legal with a permit from state authorities. To avoid the hassle and oversight of authorities, many temp agencies simply don’t acquire these permits and masquerade as construction or cleaning service providers, while in reality providing workers, not services.

This practice is known as covert labor brokering and allows companies to avoid complying with the laws around the leasing of workers, notably those that demand comparable wages or similar working conditions between regular and leased workers. Our investigators from the Czech Republic and Lithuania have found two striking examples of such scams ...

https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/queer-a-term-from-of-the-global-south

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18374872

https://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2023/01/caught-our-eyes-more-brnnhilde-the-cat/

https://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2023/01/caught-our-eyes-more-brnnhilde-the-cat/

A shocking photo depicting the dismembered body of a Ukrainian prisoner of war has appeared online. The photo shows separated body parts, including the head, arms and legs, which is a gross violation of the Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, urgently appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations (UN) to record this crime and launch an international investigation. According to international humanitarian law, prisoners of war must be protected from physical injury, violence and killing, and any violations of these norms must be held accountable.

“This is not just a violation of the Geneva Convention, it is horrific and inhumane behavior,” emphasized Lubinets. “Prisoners of war are in the hands of an enemy state, and this state is responsible for their treatment. In this case, the responsibility lies not only with Russian soldiers, but also with Russia itself.”

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/38978979