I was a click + holder for a while, but around 2011 or so I switched to valve's single click because my hand was getting sore lol - it takes a little getting used to at first, but that only lasted a few days.

Basically what Marma said - you're going to basically cover a particular topic per week (usually starting with Plato or a broad survey of ancient thinkers) and just do a broad survey of Philosophy. You won't have to read or write anything overly complicated. Then the last few weeks you'll likely be subjected to whatever the pet project of the professor is (so whatever they wrote their Ph. D on lol).

If it were a 400 level course you'd want to actually prepare, but in general, you shouldn't need to do anything special before you get there for your intro course. But if you feel like you just don't know much about philosophy - this comic series is a pretty good intro to most of the ideas you'll be running into while also being funny at least some of the time: http://www.existentialcomics.com/

I played the ever loving SHIT out of the AoE II reskin - I mean I loved AoE2 anyways, but there's nothing like blasting hordes of Gungans with AT-ATs lol.

KOTOR 1-2 are excellent games - the LEGO star wars game is also apparently *very* good.

The old doom-style shooters are also really fun if you're into Doom style shooters.

Sad that they didn't include the Jedi-Knight Outcast games though - those are *very* much worth your time too.

Just a few more general pointery type things.

1. Most illegal immigrants *do* pay taxes - at least some taxes - and unless they're using a fake identity, have almost no access to the social safety net because of their lack of an official identity. If they *do* have a fake identity then they can access the social safety net as normal because they're for all intents and purposes an official citizen. Typically what is done is they secure the social security number of a dead person - and so they're able to function normally *until* they attempt to collect that social security - the SS people will notice that they've been dead for 50 years or something and refuse to pay them (despite the fact that they've actually been paying into SS for however long they've been using the identity).

2. The understanding of what a trade deficit described above is complete misunderstanding of how economics works. Yes, the US is sending more *money* to places like China, Mexico, and Vietnam but in exchange we receive *things* if we didn't send that money to those places we wouldn't be receiving the *things* and the cost of everything in the US would go up substantially - decreasing the quality of life substantially. It isn't a remittance payment to Mexico they can just spend on whatever they want - it mostly covers the cost of the *things*.

Also they *are* taxed - in the form of sales and excise taxes unless you go directly to Mexico to buy the stuff.

If you impose tariffs you benefit nobody except the owners of competing businesses in the US - who exist in an imaginary economic bubble until the tariff goes away, and in turn make goods more expensive in the US. There's also the question of scope, if you protect one particular industry, why not protect *all* of the industries?

See, in the economics of trade there's this concept called "comparative advantage" American workers certainly *could* make floor tiles, but are they not better suited for something else? That's *why* you trade (with the exception of raw materials markets). For example if you're a college educated person dealing in networking, is it really worth your time to make floor tiles or would it be better for you to maintain network infrastructure? So you do your networking thing and buy your floor tiles from Mexico.

Well the main net benefits from *any* immigration (be it legal or illegal) are:

Regardless of wages, you now have people making income who will want to buy things with that income - those things have to be made (or done in the case of services) or at the very least handled and sold by somebody somewhere.

In general, most illegal immigrants pay *some* taxes - in the form of at the very least sales and excise taxes, and in some cases a full regular tax load if they are using a fake identity/Social security number so the "tax drain" that's often peddled by anti-immigrant politicians is at least partially fantasy.

The net negative of course is that every added person to the labor market creates downward pressure on wages until their demand can correct the demand for goods/services.

But on the whole the US needs more working age people just in general because a huge portion of our population is about to retire so it's NBD lol.

Basically here is the comic book version of immigration policy and its problems for our European friends who may be confused or not understand why it's such a huge issue in the US in general.

There are approximately 11 million people living inside the US illegally - that is they never had formal permission to enter. Although the generalization is that most of these people come from South and Central America that is not always the case, for example it's thought that ~10% of illegal immigrants in the US actually come from Asia for example. But politically speaking when somebody suggests "just deport them all" as a solution to the immigration question it fails to take into account several US specific issues, and history itself in this case.

As a caveat before I go any further, I should point out that *much* of the border region's economy absolutely depends on immigrant labor in order to function.

Now, for a bit of history. After WW2 there was a labor crunch as predominately young male persons returned to the labor force (which had been supplemented by women and illegal immigrants in large numbers), the Mexican government itself also protested at the rate that Mexican workers were being allowed into the US. Thus so-called "Operation Wetback" was born, in cooperation with the Mexican government, which intended to deport illegal immigrants from the US en masse. The program was ultimately a failure after operating for around 10 years. The number of border patrol agents was doubled and the total number of persons deported in the first five years was around 1 million with an estimated additional 500,000 fleeing for fear of arrest (either to Mexico or other places where they weren't monitored as closely at that time). Now, of all of the persons deported it's thought that around 20% of them were repeat deportees (that is they'd already been caught and deported once or more in the past). The program itself was also rife with abuse with over 11,000 formal complaints being lodged, a mutiny aboard one of the deportation ships (which was stuffed well over capacity) and the deaths of 88 deportees from exposure.

Sadly, the President before Eisenhower (who carried out this policy) Truman had suggested something that would've actually "fixed" the problem - a complete amnesty for illegal immigration across the Southern Border - but strict enforcement of pay and working condition requirements on those who hire illegal immigrant labor. Because ultimately the reason so many people cross the border is because there is plenty of work for them - which pays far higher than work in their native countries - but legal citizens won't do the work as the working conditions and/or pay are criminally poor. If Illegal immigrants didn't find a ready supply of income (due to their jobs being taken by legal workers) it would follow that they would be far less likely to come - in fact you can prove that empirically by looking at nations with large unemployment issues and their relative rates of illegal immigration. Such a plan would also be significantly cheaper to enforce and enact than rounding up 11 million people and sending them back to where ever it is they claim to have come from - not to mention being beneficial for basically all parties involved except those business types who rely on paying illegal immigrants nothing for their work.

Well - Germans weren't exactly "forced" to Anglicize their names - it was mostly done to avoid any possible problems arising from one's name (avoiding undue suspicion, difficulty finding work, etc during and after the WWs) or sometimes simply because the spellings were odd and were changed later down the road (Braun ---) Brown for example) the practice in this instance is *very* common with immigrants of Slavic, Greek, Turkish, and Arabic origin since many of the transliterated spellings don't make much sense.

I think a lot of what people experience isn't necessarily the pain of lost affection - I've missed people I was quite irritated with for example. But, what is really upsetting is when another person up and exercises their free will on you out of the blue and you have to come to the realization that you'll never really be able to understand another person totally - regardless of how well you may know them beforehand.

It's perfectly normal to be sad over a break up or rejection, just deal with it as best you can - I won't share any particular anecdotes from my own life because they tend to be far too depressing given the topic at hand lol.

Laying around and pining won't get you anywhere - even though wallowing in self pity (at least for a short time) may feel good.

As a person who is mentoring one of the newbie mix teams I'm going to write a little bit about what I've seen.

1. If something like forming noobie mix teams is ever done again, the teams need to be formed *months* in advance - I would suggest at least 2. Most of the noobie mix teams died before they even got off the ground because it turned out 2-3+ players on the roster were incapable of keeping a schedule conducive to actually playing in ESEA, and since the teams were only made 2 weeks prior to the start of the season it was incredibly difficult to find replacements despite the general lack of stringent skill requirements.

2. Because of the short start, and ensuing roster shake ups, it was more difficult than necessary to get the teams that did survive to work out any sort of chemistry with each other; if any can really be said to exist now. This of course lead to pretty rapid demoralization, unnecessary team death, and a generalized lack of chemistry which in turn leads to more defeat, which becomes a low-open death spiral. This is perfectly normal behavior for a new team - you're going to have people who *think* they want to play 6s in ESEA, and who will discover shortly thereafter that they actually have no such desire to make such a thing a reality. This should be happening in an off-season enviornment, because now the issue becomes that any prospective new players have little desire to pay up to play on a losing team that only has 4 weeks left in the season. So even the 2 teams that did manage to survive have a really heavy, and arbitrary, obstacle placed in front of their continued existence.

3. The teams that were created had rather wide skill and experience disparities, but only had 2 weeks to try to catch up those that were significantly behind - and I worry that because of the general lack of success and the shortness of many of the games and scrims being played, that those who started out behind will take *significantly* longer to be brought up to speed than if they had been playing in a more relaxed pre-season setting where time could be taken to work on individual short-comings, instead of having to keep a stringent scrim schedule to even be able to have a decent hope of taking 1-2 rounds.

I remember when I made my first team we had 5 roster changes within the first few weeks and *after* that were able to throw together a reasonably successful team (we won UGC platinum and then snuck into ESEA playoffs and won the necessary one game to make IM lol). The noobie team I've been trying to guide through this process has gone through 3 roster shake ups so far, and I can only assume more are in store should they try to keep the team together - this all should have happened *well* before the season started if they were to be given any chance of even modest success.

I'm not criticizing the program as it were or its intent- far from it - I've greatly enjoyed working with my team, but if this is done again things need to be changed or it's highly unlikely we'll have a noobie team notch a second season in their belts.

Get out a match or butane lighter and go around your windows - if you see the flame bobbing around it means you've got a leak in your window - sometime you can ablate that by simply "locking" the window which will push it down a bit more and give you a better seal - if you've *still* got a draft of cold air - you've got some options.

1. Cover the window in newspaper - lots of newspaper. You can usually find abundant amounts of newspaper for free. Use some tape to hold it over the window (painter's tape or something with a gentle adhesive is pry best so you don't ultimately strip paint off the wall).
2. If you have an especially thick blanket, like a sleeping bag perhaps, you can also put that over the window instead of newspaper to give yourself a little extra insulation without the aesthetic of newspaper walls.

If you're living space is cold because of poor insulation in general the easiest way to tell if that's occurring is if you do not have snow on your roof when it snows or if you have especially large icicles relative to your neighbors - if the snow melts it's because the heat from your room is escaping through the roof. In that case you're doomed unless you have attic access and can insulate it yourself and will have to opt for wearing layers and so on lol.

I mean the basic difference is the speed of the game - invite teams just move/execute far faster or at least more efficiently than their counterparts. You can find open players who may be more technically skilled in certain aspects than their invite counter-parts but they simply don't play the game as competently or as consistently in general. The other issue is experience - it's a lot easier to present an open team with something they don't know how to get around than it is to present some never before seen thing to an invite team - generally.

How many FPS are you getting?

I mean basically the electoral coalition that's backing Bernie most strongly is the age group that most likely uses this forum the most - people under 38 in the US are more liberal than virtually any other generation in the US' history, they are also decidedly less white than any other generation in recent memory, and on top of all of that, they are also more poor than any currently active voting block (poor people tend to gravitate towards more extreme ideas).

The singular largest issue is that we've got 1.3 trillion dollars (and rising) of student debt - only 1/3rd of which is being paid off - the other 800 billion dollars give or take is either only having the interest paid down or not being paid on at all. When you've got a relatively small segment of the population (generally those under 45) saddled with that kind of debt - the economic repercussions are felt pretty clearly, you delay getting married, delay having kids, delay buying a home, and are less willing to leave lower-paying steady work in order to find higher paying work. It's also impacting their parents - and the wider economy generally - because older people are saving less for retirement, and using new money from the fall in prices of inelastic goods (oil) to pay down their children's debt rather than spending on actual commodities. Which is why Bernie is getting *even more* support than Obama ever did with his more radical demands. You've basically got a generation of people who've come to see that the prevailing order of things is an inescapable burden to them.

I'd obviously prefer Bernie at this point. I for one am *deeply* confused about what the hell they're doing over there at Hillary's campaign HQ. Why make the campaign about Hillary *the person*. Hillary the person has been subject to 15+ years of character assassination from the left and the right. They need to find her 2-3 *policies* for her to articulate so that the campaign isn't about Bernie's proposals and crazy grand-pa appeal, Vs. Hillary Clinton the person. Even in last night's debate, her primary tactic was to say Bernie was using his proposals as veiled attacks on her person - as opposed to articulating an alternative policy.

I'd still vote for Hillary over a Republican of course - but I won't be actively campaigning on behalf of either.

Despite the pauses at the start, this was some of the most fun TF2 I've seen in a while :D