The Department of Transportation is advising the public of a social media scam “promoting a three-month smart pass” for the bus and ferry. A Government spokesperson said, “The Department of Public Transportation advises that an advertisement promoting a three-month smart pass has been circulating on various social media platforms. “Please be aware that this is […]

Police responded to a reported armed robbery at Mr. Chicken Express in Devonshire, with the suspect brandishing a knife and stealing a “draw containing a quantity of cash from the cash register.” A police spokesperson said, “Around 10:00 p.m. on Friday, September 20, 2024, police responded to a reported armed robbery at Mr. Chicken Express on […]

Police are investigating an armed robbery that occurred at Robinson’s Marina in Somerset this morning [Oct 24], where a suspect “brandishing a machete, entered the service station and demanded money.” A police spokesperson said, “Shortly after 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, October 24, 2024, police received a report of a robbery at the service station located […]

Bermudian Shiona Turini has been named one of the Hollywood’s top 25 stylists by Hollywood Reporter. The story said, “It’s been a year — one in which Barbie pink dominated fashion, the box office and the Oscar red carpet, notably on America Ferrera, who glittered in a custom Atelier Versace sheath, courtesy of stylist Karla […]

Bermudian style expert Shiona Turini has been named Stylist of the Year for 2024 by Harlem’s Fashion Row. The title isn’t the first recognition the stylist to the stars has received this year, with Ms. Turini also receiving the Diamonds Do Good’s ‘Diamond Influence Award’ in June. A post on social media said, “We’re thrilled […]

Bermudian stylist Shiona Turini has been named one of the best dressed attendees at Paris Fashion Week by Essence. This is only the latest honour for Ms. Turini this year, after she was named Stylist of the Year for 2024 by Harlem’s Fashion Row in August, received the Diamonds Do Good’s ‘Diamond Influence Award’ in […]

James Acaster explores his love/hate relationship with standup by relinquishing control of his set and accepting a healthy dose of audience interference - aka heckling.

Easter means eggs and lots of color. Combine the two into a uniquely beautiful edible deviled egg dish that your guests will love to look at and enjoy eating. Dyed Deviled Eggs Ingredients List for Easter Dyed Deviled Eggs 6 eggs (will yield 12 deviled eggs) 1/4 teaspoon McCormick White Pepper Ground (won’t show black …

Now for the first time in our history, we're witnessing a broad and powerful attack on the principle of equality. Daily, we are told that all people are not in fact created equal. Some were born with moral stain, others were not. Some Americans are guilty, some are innocent. Nothing can change this because it was all determined at birth. All we can do is respond accordingly. Continue reading →

The problem is the corruption that is absolutely pervasive in the U.S. news media. There are newsrooms all throughout New York and Washington DC, where top editors are explicitly saying they do not want this story investigated. And they're being clear that the reason that they don't want to investigate it is because they think even if there's corruption that's exposed here, in their view Trump is worse. And therefore it would be malfeasance on the part of the media to report corruption on the part of Biden when Trump is so much more corrupt. What they're really saying is they see their role as journalists not as informing the public, to let the public decide which candidate is better and which is worse. They see journalism, the function of it is to defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden. Continue reading →

The CIA from the very first days of the Trump administration, even before he was inaugurated, devoted themselves to sabotaging the administration because Donald Trump questioned just a few of their pieties. And that can't be done in Washington. Whoever does that must be destroyed. And so the CIA and the Deep State operatives became heroes of the liberal left, the people who support the Democratic party. They're now in a full union with the neocons, the Bush Cheney operatives, the CIA, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. That is the union of power along with mainstream media outlets that are fully behind the Democratic party, which is likely to at least take over one branch of government, if not all of them, with the coming election, and that is a very alarming proposition because they're authoritarian, they believe in censorship, and they believe in suppression of information that exposes them in any kind of a critical light. Continue reading →

The real threat is collusion. When journalists strike secret alliances with the very people they're supposed to be holding accountable, we are in deep trouble. Lies go unchallenged.  Democracy cannot function. And that's what we're watching right now. Continue reading →

The government is instructing social media companies what should and shouldn't be allowed to be on the internet, these are the people least competent to judge what is misinformation. Continue reading →

Glenn Greenwald: "So you have huge number of journalists who believe that, they have the right to lie and even when they get caught, they don't care because they know their audience won't hold it against them." Continue reading →

My son Cole, pictured here as a goofy kid many years ago, is now six feet six inches tall and in college. Cole needed a letter of recommendation recently so he turned to an old family friend who, in turn, used ChatGPT to generate the letter, which he thought was remarkably good. As a guy who pretends to write for a living, I read it differently. ChatGPT’s letter was facile but empty, the type of letter you would write for someone you’d never met. It said almost nothing about Cole other than that he’s a good kid. Artificial Intelligence is good for certain things, but blind letters of reference aren’t among them. The key problem here has to do with Machine Learning. ChatGPT’s language model […]

#54-Enlightenment - Waking Up from Our Dreamed Life

The post #54-Enlightenment – Waking Up from Our Dreamed Life appeared first on Enlightenment Podcast.

Something a little more out there… this one is the most fun through headphones. ????

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During the early reign of King Charles III (Charles the Simple) in West Francia, the area was besieged by Viking invasions, while the memory of the previous and frequent Saracen incursions was still fresh in the minds of the general populace. The Saracens were Muslim - mostly Berbers from Africa – and had only let up on the Franks because they’d been pushed back by the Vikings. The local nobles were left largely to fend the Vikings off on their own.

In Paladins of the West Kingdom, players assume the role of these unnamed nobles (most likely Dukes), working to keep the region safe and spread their faith (historically: Christianity).  I really enjoy this theme, and in fact, playing the game nurtured my interest in the historical kingdom of West Francia.  That’s why I can tell you that while the rulebook notes that the King lends his Paladins to the nobles to aid them in their quest, I’m giving all the credit for the loan to the designers, Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald.  Paladins are a fictional group of knights in French lore (think of them as similar to the Knights of the Round Table in British lore),  or alternatively, a translation of the Frankish royal title of Palatine Count, which was a noble that focused mostly on judicial and governing matters and was not known as a knight.

I’ve won a few and lost a few games of Paladins. It’s a worker placement game that incorporates card drafting.  At the beginning of every round, players draw the next three Paladin cards in their deck and choose one to play for the round, one to put back on top of their Paladin deck to draw during the next round, and one to put at the bottom of their Paladin deck. Each Paladin boosts faith, influence, or strength (usually more than one of these), and also provides a special benefit. If you’ve got players prone to analysis paralysis, this is where they may get stalled, especially in the first few rounds. After Paladins are selected and put into play, workers for the round are selected by each player and put into their personal resource supply. You have many stations on your player board to place your workers during the round,  and when you do so, your moves are independent and walled off from your opponents (they cannot tamper with your player board or placement of your workers on it). However, there is one area on the general board (the King’s Favour card area) where you can also place your workers and those spots are competitive. Also contributing to player interaction – some of the stations on your player board where you place workers allow you to move resources (monks and outposts) from your player board to the main board, consuming a competitive spot that provides a placement reward. And all the resource cards on display around the main board – the townsfolk you can hire, the walls you can build, the outsiders you can attack or convert, the tavern cards you draw workers from, and the suspicion cards you gain $$$ from, are all lucrative items for which players must compete. So we’ve got a good mix of independent action and player interaction in Paladins.  There are not a lot of opportunities for  “take that” behavior in this game, other than perhaps timing your draw of suspicion cards to trigger an inquisition when you know your opponents will suffer a penalty and be forced to take on more debt.

Giving the game more intellectual weight, worker placement on your board and the actions workers trigger often have additional requirements beyond number and types (i.e., colors) of workers. The actions triggered by worker placement may be constrained by your strength, faith, or influence level. And some spots or actions triggered by placing workers in those spots require money or provisions. All of these prerequisites can be gained as rewards from prior actions triggered by various worker placement, so much of the game is finding the most efficient ways to obtain prerequisites associated with the series of actions you’d like to take as the game progresses. I worried this decision making would be a weak point for analysis paralysis (I’m a pretty good candidate for testing potential AP, as I’m prone to it) and while there can be a bit of that during the game, nothing excessive was logged during our plays.  

The artists (Shem Phillips on graphic design and Mihajlo Dimitrievski on illustrations) have printed helpful indicators next to each placement location on boards and cards to identify any prerequisites as well as rewards. It’s an example of how the designers have worked with the artists to layer meaningful game information into the layers of artwork. In fact, all of the symbols implemented across the game components are really quite helpful. Bonus: once you familiarize yourself with them in one of the West Kingdom games, you’ll have learned them for the entire series as the artists reuse the same symbols in all three titles.

Beyond the iconography, the illustrations and other artwork are lovely. As with the iconography, the same style of artwork is implemented across the entire series and it carries the theme well. There was a good mix of cisgender representation, but not a lot of racial diversity, especially as would be suggested by the historical setting of the game (for example, Berbers in the area had skin tones ranging from light to to dark brown).

The components for Paladins of the West Kingdom are well made.

There are wooden meeples, an assortment of foldable boards constructed from cardboard, and various plastic coated card decks. We found the rulebook to be clear and direct, and there weren’t any items we had to look up online. It would have been nice if the designers included a player aid in the components, but I was able to compensate for the oversight by downloading a detailed player aid another user uploaded to the forums on BoardGameGeek.com.

Paladins of the West Kingdom is my favorite game of the West Kingdom series. All of the worker types and available actions make sense within the context of the theme, the mechanisms (worker placement, card drafting) integrate tightly with the scoring system to provide opportunities for building a victory point engine, and the game is complex and interesting yet still accessible for new players. The game is also a great value at its price point (approx $50) given you’ll get dozens of multiplayer games in before even a hint of same-o same-o creeps in. Many games with comparable replayability and complexity are double the price of Paladins. There’s also a solo play mode, which provides an additional way to explore the game.

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Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Players: 1-4 (We played with 2)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 2 hours per game
Game type: card drafting, worker placement
Retail Price: $50

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.