great taste. some of my favorite SF shorts I read this year

learning to be me - greg egan (an implant in your brain observes your every thought and learns how "be you")
the gentle seduction - marc stiegler (one of the best pieces of "post singularity" fiction ive seen)
it looks like you're trying to take over the world - gwern (the classic ai risk parable)

I also read and really liked the Three Body Problem (first contact made by cultural revolution china) books by cixin liu, and blindsight (first contact with very strange aliens) by peter watts.

for non-fiction im currently reading the vital question (research into the first multicellular life on earth) by nick lane and its really good and accessible (i have nothing after highschool biology)

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/130542696312864768/1025098462355796059/dontcometogully.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/uRwawTq_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

ive never really cared about prizes but also never really cared about paying the fee lol. if it goes to stuff like making lan happen then its worth it IMO, though I think EU already runs more lans than NA? so I guess they don't need it.

(btw "ill never see the money because it will just go to sandbaggers" is such a bad mentality lol, do you have no faith in your own improvement? just get good lol)

considering that they did 5 min round resets multiple times in a row seems pretty obvious that they could do it with a 10 min timer. like if u can hold last for 5 min, reset to mid, lose mid, then hold last for another 5 that is basically the same as just holding last for 10

no hate on wg they were playing to win obviously, i think that grands is more of an indictment of the current ruleset/map pool than anything else

this grands is proof that we need to play more koth

https://clips.twitch.tv/AbstruseSaltyLEDCoolStoryBro

no if you're not instantly dropping 400 every game you should probably just quit

the last time pugs were good was 2017-18 pug champ imo at least in terms of public pugs. after that the only way pugs have been good has been private inhouses which will inherently not have many people (and have other downsides like randoming medics)

map aweek is interesting but its dumb because it can change the outcome of a match just because of what week it was played on. if the people wnat to play snakewater every week let them play snakewater. if you want dont want to play pug maps just use all your bans on them

whta if instead of seasons we just did double elim brackets on the weekends

im not playing this season so i have no horse in the race but its worth knowing that drp was active in league play back in ESEA and was cracked as fuck back then as well in that s26-s29 period of esea i definitely remember playing with/against him relatively often, so id say hes probably more ""proven"" than a lot of people who are currently in advanced...

ive been entering my smash locals, mostly going 1-2 and playing lucina/wolf. if any west coasters want to play wifi hmu

altho it is some serious copium that "invite strats dont work because the other team is too bad" lmao. optimal play doesnt suddenly become non-optimal when the other team is feeding or something, that just means your execution of the strat was bad. central mids especially are so important in the meta because they punish non-optimal plays like a poorly positioned combo incredibly hard.