^ 82 minute long match... longest in the season so far?

People forget that dictators are usually fairly popular among their people. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were popular when they ruled, and modern dictators like Jinping and Kim have set new heights for dictator popularity.

Dictators often thrive off of popular support, and many are democratically elected in their first years. Plato said that "tyranny arises, as a rule, from democracy." Anyone who's interested in this sort of thing can look into the concept of the "legal (world) revolution."

If you think me addressing the role the US military-industrial complex has played in Eastern geopolitics over the last 70 years is a "bothsides centrist approach," then you didn't read my post. I shared no opinions in that post besides a few reasons why I believe NATO's response will be similar to its response to Crimea. NATO probably isn't going to do anything that changes anything, and we both know it.

Understanding the reasons nation-states do things is important, even if you don't agree with their reasons. If Ukraine had never given its nukes away in response to Western pressure, Russia would be far more cautious.

Ukranian MP Alexey Gocharenko shares this view: "Ukraine is the only nation in the human history which gave up the nuclear arsenal, the third biggest in the world in 1994, with guarantees of the US, UK and Russian Federation. Where are these guarantees?"
Ukraine’s former defense minister Anriy Zahorodniuk also shares this view: "We gave away the [nuclear] capability for nothing."

I said that the actions of Russia in this situation are consistent with geopolitical theory, and you somehow took that as a statement of support for the Russian government.

For anyone who'd like to read a longer post, here is the best I could do in a Timeline of Events:

1. NATO is created in 1949. Its stated purpose is to combat the Soviet threat.

2. NATO and American intelligence agencies consistently overestimate the strength of Soviet military forces from this point onward.

3. The same American and international bureaucrats, as well as defense contractors and other war manufactures that profit from full-on war also profit from increased NATO production in "response" to the overestimated Soviet military capabilities.

4. As the US emerges in primary military opposition to the Soviet Union, so too grow the contributions of the US to NATO when compared to other NATO members. (The proportion of total NATO spending by the US continues to rise past this point; as of 2021, the US spends 69% of all NATO spending at 811 billion dollars)

5. NATO becomes an extension of the US military bureaucracy.

6. The Soviet Union falls. (It was known to be falling since about 1988.)

7. Pressured by the US, now-Russia and Britain, Ukraine gives up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from these three countries. "In 1993, international relations theorist and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer published an article including his prediction that a Ukraine without any nuclear deterrent was likely to be subjected to aggression by Russia, but this was very much a minority view at the time." (Wikipedia)

8. Support among politicians for NATO and US military spending in Europe begins the wane without a Soviet threat. The US military-spending lobby turns its attention toward the Middle East for lucrative profits from the fall of the Soviet Union onward.

9. Support for NATO itself by American politicians begins to wane as conflicts shift toward the Middle East. NATO declares a new enemy, Russia, in order to justify its existence as the "North Atlantic" military organization.

10. American and NATO intelligence services highly estimate Russian military capabilities.

11. Tensions increase between NATO and Russia as NATO conducts drills near Russian borders; NATO's military presence in Eastern Europe (and American military-industrial production) increases to near-Cold War levels, and is maintained at these levels

12. Russia invades Crimea. NATO does very little to directly combat this, but soon reestablishes a larger Eastern presence and increases production via the success of US lobbying.

13. Russia invades Ukraine in 2022.

No more timeline: now for some predictions. As far as I can tell, this invasion is similar to the annexation of Crimea a few years back. Viewing geopolitics as a push-pull of complacency and aggression, I believe that the military response by the West will be similar to its response to Crimea in 2014.

It's important to keep in mind that a full takeover of Ukraine is not really the aim here; Ukraine has been an effective "buffer zone" between Russia and the West for years, and Russia's main concern geopolitically is large, direct borders with the West. Ukraine is in a similar position to North Korea; even though China could easily take over North Korea, it chooses not to because North Korea acts as an effective buffer between the extraordinary Western military presence in South Korea and mainland China.

In short, as long as smaller-scale conflict remains as lucrative as it has been to the military-industrial organizations of Russia and the US, we are unlikely to see some large escalation to full-blown war between the US and Russia, for example. An increase of conflict to that point would probably indicate diminishing returns for the military-industrial organizations, and the military-spending lobbies know this. Perhaps decreasing US spending in the Middle East indicates otherwise, but I don't have those numbers yet, and my best bet is that spending hasn't decreased enough there to change this analysis.

Thanks for reading! I spent way too much time on this post, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

spider has been missing in pugs/online in general for the past few days. Name changed to "killedmyself" on ESEA. I'm worried. If anyone is able, please reach out to spider/spider's family.

https://play.esea.net/users/1265395
https://rgl.gg/Public/PlayerProfile.aspx?p=76561198024201166&r=40

I think spider also went by n3 in the past

Scoreboard is some kind of rolling average of your ping. Network settings also might affect the scoreboard value, making it appear lower than it really is.

net_graph is generally the most accurate of the three

"ping" in console is usually higher than your real ping, possibly by a fixed amount (17ms?). This could be because of the amount of time it takes for the command to register in the console or something, I have no idea.

If you want to test this stuff for yourself, open up a private server and use the net_fakelag command. If you type "net_fakelag 50," your ping should be shown as 100, but will be represented in different ways by the scoreboard, net_graph, and ping command. Whichever is closest to 100 will be the most accurate for you.

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▓▓▓▓▓▓█░░░░ Valve, ░░░░░█
▓▓▓▓▓▓█░░░░Add This░░░░█
▓▓▓▓▓▓█░░░░Please!░░░░░█
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One thing I was thinking about is adding 10 seconds to the round timer whenever someone dies in the server.

This would allow teams on last who actually win the fight with 5 seconds left on the timer to push out, because time would be added for the players they killed and they could go cap second. It might also allow for one or so more sac rotations during stalemates, depending on how many people the attacking team sacs/how many kills they get. Basically, the team that wins the fight is rewarded with more time to work with their advantages.

Because some sac plays take more time, trading 2 for 2 and adding 40 seconds to the timer would give the attacking team more wiggle-room and increase the variety of their plays. I think this would buff attacking teams slighty, making it harder for the defending team to reset the round, as well as rewarding the attacking team for getting kills.

The thing I'm most worried about is teams not capping on purpose when they'd be able to. Imagine you win a fight, but their med gets out and you're now on large disad. Your incentive is just to not cap and reset the round so you can be on even ubers again. Maybe this is rarer than I think it would be, but adding 10s per player death would solve this anyways.

If you just increased the timer to 5min, attacking teams would get more rotations, but it would also increase the time spent "waiting around"/stalemating which the whole point of the 3min timer is meant to reduce. +10s per player death would not only force the attacking team to do something within 3min, but reward good sacs with more sac rotations, as well as reward good defenses with more time to push out. I also agree with Poptobob. Post over!!

new post in main thread
i scroll down to the bottom
im disappointed

Youngman, born in flight and fire,
You airshot yight, then he retired.

In main, 2-0, and many more,
You'll see the doubters out the door.

Your diff is large, growth exponential,
Perhaps you'll try now not to pencil.

"Disable chat, clear comms!" I say,
You'll listen, sure, but not today.

Young man, young man, your past is set.
The future holds... we don't know yet

One things for sure, you're bombing high,
With ash in tow, you'll pass us by.

When a server stays on one map for too long, the map starts to jitter. Try strafing in a circle the next time you're in UGC; that thing is restarted like once every 2 days or something LOL.

The kind of lag I've noticed on spaceship is different from the lag on UGC since spaceship servers are restarted on a timer. I don't know where that lag comes from, but it's not bad at all when it's empty.

nvm

full roster found!

combo scout: Jw.
flank scout: Medeev
pocket: Young Sanity
roamer: liaaammm
demo: mcats
med: lux

Message liam or jw on Discord (liaaammm#9780 or Jw.#4795) if you're interested.

This is wrong. The increase in average lifespan over the last hundred years or so has been because of a decrease in infant mortality. The average lifespan for people who lived past infancy in ancient times is comparable to modern lifespans. Mohammad himself lived past 60, after all.

Aisha and Mohammad "married" when she was 6, but according to Sahih al-Bukhari's hadith and the ancient historian Al-Tabari, the relationship was probably not "consummated" until Aisha was 9 years old. Mohammad would have been around 49 at the time of the "marriage" and 52 at the "consummation."

bump