Basically what's going on here is the author is working with the Hegelian concept of the Absolute - which is normally capitalized, but isn't here for some reason? Along with the Kantian and Heiddegerian conceptions of objects hence why they keep saying "itself" all the time. I'd have to actually read the book to understand much beyond that.

The point of the above tract is that traditional conceptions of the Absolute are, by some hand-waivey thought-magic, not actually all that absolute, and that the *real* Absolute is existence (material existence) itself or, dare I say, Dasein.

So, basically, you'd need to have taken a few collegiate level philosophy courses to really get at what he's talking about. His word choice is, I would assume, also influenced by having read Wittgenstein and some of the other "analytical philosophers".

I can at least respect this - when I was a freshman in college there was a course I had to take called "FYC" First Year Colloquium - basically a class on how to take college courses and to make sure we could all write papers properly and understood how to cite things. We had to read this shitty god-awful self help book called "the identity code" - which at the time the only amazon review for it was written by the author's wife. I do understand now what they were trying to get at - since much of the angst felt by 15+ year olds is actually a classical identity crisis, but captain corporate self-help didn't really get that point across in a meaningful way. So I read the book as the course required, and then took it out back and shot it several times with my Mosin Nagant and brought it to class in that ruined state for the rest of the semester.

It's a time management question. Instead of cutting yourself off entirely you need to actually learn how to manage your time effectively. Simply doing away with video games won't actually solve your problem because you'll still find other ways to fuck around that are equally unproductive.

The first best bet is to actually create a schedule and try to work yourself into it. For example, you set strict time limits on what you do at a given time and build in breaks and rewards for keeping with the schedule.

When I was in college (wildly different from HS where I did virtually nothing but had no trouble passing anything lol) I just set a hard limit that I did *all* school work before 5 PM. I would cut in a lunch date here and there or take a nice walk or something similar here and there, but for the most part any and all school work was done by 5 PM and then the fucking around could begin without a guilty conscience. If I had an especially large assignment that would go beyond that I would just work on it until I finished and then reward myself by doing something especially vice related lol.

I even do the same thing with my son who is in 3rd grade. When he gets home he gets 30 minutes to fiddle around and do whatever he likes and then he has to sit at the "work table" and do any/all of his school work and then read a book for 30 minutes. Once all that's done he's free to go about doing whatever he wants. I support him by doing the same since I'm taking graduate courses so I've got my dumpy lap-top set up right there doing my reading/writing stuff until 5 pm (I've kept that same schedule) - and it's easy access if he has questions since I'm doing homework too lol. I also sneak school work in while I'm at work because that's simply something that has to be done in my case lol.

I wouldn't worry about Chapman he was still blasting 102 mph pitches 40 pitches deep. Even closers typically throw 100 pitches a day when they don't have a game or it's not a recovery/off day, so he's likely not that much worse for wear lol.

The Baez bunt was great - especially considering the Baez is normally a very solid hitter who has been struggling against the Indians pitching staff (not that anybody wouldn't lol).

welp Lester was looking really good.... and then... sadness.

Miller is a God of sliders.

I mean the very most basic idea is:

1. If you're being attacked by a scout get inside the hit-boxes of friendly players - since scout ammo doesn't pierce hit boxes you will have your very own meat shield. This often makes your movement somewhat wonky as well since most scout players will expect you to move side to side as opposed to just going inside of whomever is closest to you. It takes a bit of practice - especially if your meat shield is trying to dodge the scout as well lol.

2. If it's a soldier move forward and backwards unless forwards puts you right in their face, or backwards takes you too far from your team - then revert to trying to keep bodies between you.

3. If it's a demo spread as far away as you can from your teammates so you don't risk taking extra splash since demo projectiles *do* penetrate hitboxes.

Other than that it's just a matter of getting comfortable with the various maps. consciously attempting to avoid fire (as opposed to randomly spamming inputs which is most peoples' knee-jerk reaction) and getting used to recognizing situations where you will be attacked. Also don't turn your back on chokes - 9/10 when a medic has a really embarrassing drop it's because some dummy came up behind them and asked for a buff and the medic turned around and nobody said anything when players flooded through choke lol.

As far as surfing goes, it's a nice skill to have, but it's massively overrated. In the first case because surfing away 100% of the time can be detrimental to your team in many situations, and ultimately result in your death if you get *too* far away. Secondly, any decent soldier won't shoot you in the feet to give you the opportunity to surf in the first place - if they do it's because they're panicing or they're careless. A good soldier will *slightly* miss their first shot so that if you do attempt to surf you'll just go straight up in the air, and a truly exceptional soldier will just shoot you in your brain case and you may end up cratering :(

National banks, such as they are, are the *primary* economic tool for most "capitalist" nations - particularly the US - since the later 70's and early 80's - although the 1920's also saw pretty heavy use of national banks for monetary policy manipulation - because they've become squeamish about direct investment - although almost every modern state does *some* direct investment or at least pays wages to employees.

It doesn't really matter *who* it is that owns the money (bonds) coming in and out of the national bank - the whole point is that the people who own the bonds just expect some kind of repayment once the term comes up and the bank doesn't really have to care what they think - especially in the case of the US - because *somebody* will always buy the bonds. It would be different for countries with very poor credit ratings, because nobody may want those bonds *and then* I could buy that moneyed interests have direct control over national banks - since nobody wants stinker bonds.

They only have 3 things they can do:

1. Increase or decrease cash-flow by raising or lowering interest rates. Lower interest rates = more people taking out loans so more money in the economy - in fact a lot more because of the money multiplier effect. That is to say, I take out of a loan for 20k to buy a car, I give that 20k to the car guy, who then sticks it in a bank, the bank then loans some portion of that 20k out again, and so we've spontaneously created money because the 20k I'm liable for has already been given to somebody else. If you raise interest rates you dry out the economy because fewer people will want loans at higher interest rates.

2. Direct currency manipulation. Buy up government bonds to increase the amount of liquid currency in the economy (thus causing inflation, but there's more liquid money floating around so hopefully it'll be spent) or sell bonds to tie up excess money (used for fighting inflationary pressure).

3. Raise or lower the retention rate - that is how much money banks have to have in the actual bank at any given time - as a percentage of all the money they hold. This is the least used option - it's almost *never* modified because it's somewhat risky to fiddle with this.

So being that those are the only 3 things a national bank can do - or typically does anyways - what vested, moneyed interests want, is ultimately what *tends* to be the best for typical notions of economic growth. Economy sluggish? Put more money into it. Inflation too high? Suck money out of the economy. The only problem is when your interest rates hit 0% - like Japan has been for 10 years, and the US did for quite a while - because then you have to rely on the other 2 tools - which have less predictable effects than simply raising and lowering interest rates (the preferred option in most cases) so-called quantitative easing and so on.

The falsehood that national banks are owned by a few powerful families, who are primarily Jewish mind you, was started by Joseph Goebells, and along with the myth that the Poles tried to fight German tanks on horseback, it's one of his lies that continues to live on despite being totally false :/

I will break with tradition and actually watch some non-pacers games this season - and that comes in the form of the Bucks. Mainly because I want to see what a team that pays Matthew Dellavedova 38 million looks like + they've got some interesting players lol.

Honestly, running the same mid over and over again. over a long period of time, much longer than most teams tend to scrim a particular map (longer than 1 week) is a great idea - especially during the off-season. The reason being that you *should* be developing a system for dealing with any/all counters and reactions of your opponent.

For example I'll take mustard's example of running super-aggro double solly bomb strats on a particular map.

You *should* be attempting to learn how to direct the two soldiers - establish a system that relies on a minimum of communication to get your soldiers where they're going. The rest of the team needs to know what to do, generally, without communication, after that point.

So, you get countered. Figure out why/what caused your mid to fail, attempt to figure out a way to adjust it.

Ideally, you should eventually have a solid go-to mid strat, and a system for recognizing *most* or all possible counters and possible-strats that another team could present, and then it's all just a matter of hitting shots or not.

Then have 1-2 other mids that you don't work on as much to throw in as desperation moves if you end up meeting a team that does something that your system doesn't account for, while you use a strategic pause or between-rounds/stalemates to discuss a way to fix your mids.

I played the *shit* out of 2nd Ed and 3-3.5 D&D but mostly stopped after 4e came out and college ended :( Nobody around these days to sit down with and go ham - plus it seems most people have dropped pathfinder/3.5 in favor of 5 so I'd have to learn everything again :( I've also played a few sessions of Shadowrun and GURPS. Also played a lot of Settlers of Catan in college.

The original fear is really nice - also an excellent shooter alongside its horror aspect.

It's not strictly a horror game, but Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines has a great setting and some of the best horror segments in video game history imo, alongside being one of the all time best RPGs - if a bit difficult to get working properly.

I just play other games because I don't mesh well with most people who play currently and I still cast - but if a bunch of oldbies came back to set up a team I'd pry be down.

I tried out OW, but didn't really care too much for it - I've heard it's better in the comp setting, but I don't like the game enough to force myself to care enough to acquire competency. Mostly stick to RTS' and RPGs as was my habit prior to getting into tf2.

Scrims in the pre-crossbow buff era.

Napoleonic era warfare didn't feature grenades because, in the main, standard infantry tactics were to shoot 1-2 times at a reasonable distance and then initiate a bayonet charge to dislodge and disorganize your enemy - if you were attacking - if you were the defender you just attempted to hold whatever sort of fortified area you had - warfare was still *very* much based on positioning, so if you held important hills/features/towns/forts you had a definitive if not usually a decisive advantage (history records various battles - but not the huge amount of battles that never happened because the opposition was too entrenched to make an attack possible) advantage - and the way you went about dislodging people form those fortifications wasn't hand-held grenades but large artillery bombardment and sieges - although smaller bombs were used - but typically not by grenadiers - usually sappers is what they'd be termed as (untrained folks given some crappy job).

That's the real secret to Napoleon's success is they were very good at moving large artillery pieces quickly and having more of it than the opposition which more or less obviates the needs to have guys carry around large amounts of ordinance and chuck it at other people.

Specialized grenade troops however were pointless because they would be absolutely decimated by musket/rifle fire before they even got into chuckin' range :(

The reason the term "grenadier" lived on is because, in earlier periods, grenadiers were usually very physically fit - because they needed to be strong to chuck a bomb at somebody. In time, as this tactic became less useful, grenadiers were still typically bigger and more fit than regular soldiers and so they were considered "elite" - which in time morphed them into the precursors to modern light infantry or specialized troops. The elite status was also thought to have positive effects on recruitment and morale. Various "elite" formations were quite popular throughout the Napoleonic era - particularly as a propaganda tool, from the Polish Lancers, various Hussar units, Cossacks, The Grumblers, etc.

Bought the game sometime in the summer after a friend showed it to me at college sometime shortly after release.

Got into playing on the SourceOP community - mainly on goldrush. Met and played with lots of cool folks who eventually went on to other things - like TwitchJohn, Sizzling Calamari, and Zalfy. If you're more into highlander you'll also be familiar with some other regulars in the form of Wombraider, Hugh Laurie, cusideablelincoln, and Sdogg2m.

Sometime in 2008 or 9? My memory is foggy, they started running HL and 6s pugs out of SourceOP players, I was invited and attended a few, but ended up not playing video games for about a year.

Re-emerged for the first etf2l HL tournament that awarded medals, but didn't play because my graphics card literally melted in parts - had to build a new PC.

Sometime around 2010 CommFT was running its bracketed tournament, we wanted to get in on it, me and 5 other dudes from the ol' OP, and we missed registration slightly, and so ended up signing up for CEVO and UGC instead.

Made CEVO-O playoffs, but didn't play because the first game was literally the day after Christmas so I told ol' Dubel to shove his default date, and that season basically killed CEVO until it was shortly resurrected, also tried to screw Klicka out of a match on atrophy_b7 using the absolute most shit-lord scumbag tactics, because I so badly didn't want to play that map. Won UGC platinum.

Became UGC 6s admin - saw the league grow *tremendously* over my 2 season tenure. Played first season of open, managed to win a game in playoffs so got promoted to IM - beat Duwatna + Garbage (which apparently included Sezco). Also make my YT channel about then because too many UGC players found out I was playing in IM and were constantly after me for advice.

Got dumpstered in IM and the team finally died the following season.

Join the open champs Dheroes, who promptly die like 6 games in - something like that. Play with 4 UGC steel players + pharaoh that Mason set me up with to hold the roster.

Reform the team with Chriz tah fah, bring in Frio, Kermit, and begin the process of cutting my way to the top after Sezco's gambit to get me on his invite roster resulted in him getting cut.

Team dies for lack of a pocket, reform with BSC and play in main. Team dies due to excessive sadzoning, finish out the season with schnell, cosa, and remedy.

Play 1/2 season of pocket in open with fredwardo, pie hero, and Capn' get sadzone disorder and quit.

Also played some medic for monkeysuit + vortex + BSC somewhere in there to see if I still wanted to play the game - haven't played since. Also yes BSC did pay for the wrong wowzers, it turns out many people have that name.

Cast a lot of games. Including the last ESEA LAN to date with Gecks, and also the last ever GPIT game played in ESEA - by myself for a large portion of it because bl4nk got ddosed. I sometimes consider playing again, but usually come to my senses 2 days later or so.