a bunch of people are talking about entering the top schools for chem and stuff - I went to a top 3 university itw, and I'd probably say that chemistry is probably the "hardest" course in terms of workload, at least where I went. there are just a LOT of lab hours - I did engineering, so I could get by with a lot of self-learning and could kind of do the work when I wanted (though there still was a lot of work). my chemist friends had to spend hours and hours in labs and compiling lab reports.

as for chemeng specifically, though I didn't do it, just anecdotally, it seemed to be among the easier of the engineering options (according to the people who did).

if you're interested I can try dig up a reading list for those chemeng modules, they'll probably be way beyond your current academic stage but might give you an idea of whether it's something you're interested in learning.

it's an entirely wrong word.

"dystopian" suggests something was extremely wrong, oppressive and unfair (tejo lol).

it's an adjective describing governance mostly, or just an environment that is almost hilariously unfair.

just "different" is probably fine

s1mon 1v2 >>>>

survivorship bias

you remember the rounds they lose because of time, you don't remember the rounds they win because they played the clock well.

thing's like this tend to happen due to a combination of factors - it's hard to pin down any singular cause.

sure, people don't shoot up schools just because they're bullied. but if they're being bullied at school, live in a toxic household, live in poverty, are genetically predisposed to mental health issues, overconsume violent content etc. then it becomes a lot more likely. none of these factors individually is likely to cause someone to do this, but they each raise the probability of it happening.

point is, and this isn't to deflect responsibility, but it's kind of burying your head in the sand if you look at an event like this and say the school environment is completely innocent. just bullying alone probably wouldn't cause someone to do this, but it most certainly wouldn't help. and if we want to prevent things like this from happening again, then one of the first questions we should be asking is: hey, could the school/government/social services have done anything to get this guy the help he clearly needed.

no. any semi-deterministic system potentially allows competitors to abuse it. as a general rule of thumb, it should never be in a team's best interest to play worse (i.e, losing on purpose).

say, on day 1, theoretically, a strong team (team 1) is upset by the weakest team in swiss (team 4) by a large margin - not unreasonable, since valorant is a very high variance game. team 2 and team 3 play and have a close match with team 2 winning and team 3 going to losers.

on day 2, when team 5 and team 6 play, say team 5 get a huge map and round lead. it is now in team 5's best interests to intentionally throw rounds to make map 2 as close as possible, to ensure they get matched against team 4 rather than team 2. this is clearly uncompetitive. similarly, it is now in team 6's best interests to lose as hard as possible in order to not get matched against team 1 in losers. this is clearly extra uncompetitive.

draw systems that don't reward losing on purpose are extremely hard to design in an environment where better teams can and often lose to worse teams. in that sense, a purely random draw is the fairest system possible - you can't complain about a dice roll.

get s1mon back and we win everything

th and prx are the two biggest chokers

whoever wins map1 is guaranteed to lose the series

put all your money on th i swear

he's the goat

no other player redefined how the game is played like he did. idrc about trophies or performance, he's probably the player with the single biggest impact on how the game is played as a whole.

kinda must watch:
psycho-pass
steins gate

edgy shows:
madoka magica (but probably should watch anyways)
oshi no ko
another

decent:
oregairu
blue box

hot takes:
gamers! (need to not take it seriously)
grimgar

truth nuke
the gap is so insanely massive, getting humbled in my immo shitlo lobbies by some 12yr old radiant smurf is a different experience

iron - diamond: you have no clue what you're doing, at all
ascendant: low elo but no longer hellen keller
0-300rr: mediocre at best
300rr-500rr: decent
500rr+: actually good at the game

fell off
valid
generic
?
ehh

bit cringe

true peak: grimgar

chichoo was not the best senti - meteor was. chichoo was probably second. smoggy was the best fragging smokes, but it's not like there are many smokes players that focus on fragging (util hungry). nobody wasn't the best igl, i think mako and boo had better ideas throughout the tournament. kk was probably the best duelist, but it's a lot easier to be the "best duelist" if you have a util demon behind you.

again, these players are all still around. nothings changed, apart from s1mon leaving. they went from champs, 3rd to failing to qualify from the weakest region. fnc replaced leo with hiro and still did well, edg went from top 3 in the world to looking completely lost.

kk is an extremely selfish duelist. there's nothing wrong with it, it's a fine playstyle, creates space for your team yada yada. it works and it's really fun to watch. that said, he needs immense util cover from his supports for his style to work. aspas you can just plonk on jett and he'll find you entries even if his team is afk. kk relies on his supports far, far more than any other duelist player. again, nothing wrong with it - it's a really effective style if you assume you have the support behind you. that's a big if.

there's an intrinsic, fundamental tradeoff between how much you shoot and how much util you use. if you're shooting someone, it means you aren't piling util on them and letting your teammates shoot them. smoggy, chichoo, kk all love shooting people. they're good at it, it works. again, nothing wrong with it. they tailor their game plan and agents (clove, no senti comps) to revolve around them. nobody's util was also fine, he is a good pos4 player, but nothing specifically impressed me more than other top tier pos4 players. s1mon was a monstrous pos5, singlehandedly making up for the util deficiency that the other 3 shooters on his team inevitably creates.

like just look at fnc for instance. kaajak is a pretty selfish duelist, but not as much as kk i'd say. alfa is around the same as chichoo in terms of util demand. boaster provides waaaaaaay more util than smoggy, and chronicle provides a bit more util than nobody. that makes crashies's life a hell of a lot easier than s1mon's.

i also think people overstate him being "emotional" or whatnot. like, the lotus 1v2 clutch was the most ice-cold, perfect decisionmaking + positioning, optimal play in what was probably the most impactful round of the series (maybe minus the guardian 4k abyss). idk what comms videos you're watching but he's vocal with his flashes and play coordination.

he's a rookie, and it was his first ever international tournament, and he gets insane hate for having bad-looking stats, and consequently gets scapegoated everytime edg loses, despite him probably being the best player on the team. i ain't gonna claim i empathise with the guy, cause i have no clue what competing on a world stage would feel like, but i can say for sure that being in a spot like that ain't easy. i think he let the hate get to him, which is such a shame.

everyone whiffs on fully-flashed people from time to time. s1mon can shoot really well, his clutch rate was among the highest in the tournament. he just doesn't get a chance to take the good fights, you can't kill people while piling your util on them. unironically, i think he knew he was getting benched in that last game vs nova, and just said fuck it i'm playing for myself this game and ended up top fragging.

he wasn't just a "good" breach - he was the best breach. again, no other player lands as much consistent value with his stuns than he does.

chichoo, kk and smoggy are all very selfish players. that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that - they're all insane aimers. when I say selfish, i just mean they demand more util than they provide. chichoo is self explainatory as you said, similar to alfa or less type player - pick senti tap heads. kk is INCREDIBLY demanding when it comes to util - his entire playstyle is dive like a psycho and hope their entire team isn't in position to trade. that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that - he's very effective when he has the util backing, they wouldn't have won champs otherwise. that said, he demands much more util than he provides, unlike say aspas, who is extremely self-sufficient even without setup. same with smoggy - case in point, he was probably the only player at vct who played a lot of clove - reflective of his selfish playstyle. again, that's okay, he clicks heads, its just that he needs more util from his team than he provides.

like, just looking at their games - how many times has smoggy ever omen flashed for s1mon to run in and take space - never. again, that's fine - it's just important to realise that they demand more util from their team than they provide.

but when you have 3 very util hungry teammates, it puts immense burden on your supports to throw effective util - ESPECIALLY the flash initiator - every single time. no other team have players that are this util hungry. the whole team works BECAUSE s1mon was able to fill that role singlehandedly. and unfortunately, if you're in that role, you're never getting advantage gunfights - noone is going to throw util for you to secure an entry since you're the one that's expected to do it for everyone else. if that entry goes wrong - you're taking the gunfights raw. noone is flashing for you, noone is baiting for you etc. that's again, fine. but your stats will look much worse if you're in that spot.

jieni can shoot. he's a duelist player. but just coaching and setup isn't enough to fill the massive util hole s1mon filled single handedly. edg look insanely lost - their hits don't have meat behind them, despite having 3 world-class shooters on the team. i honestly don't blame jieni7 for his stat performance, since it's an incredibly demanding role which s1mon filled so well.

being energetic is important, yeah, but i don't know what the internals looked like behind the scenes, and neither do you. vaguely speaking from their comms vods, s1mon seems vocal enough to fill his role well - he asks and calls his flashes, cheers on his teammates etc. could be cherrypicked from management, idk, but that's besides the point - i'm evaluating server performance.

do what you want lol, game is harder without comms but nobody below asc knows what they're doing anyways so it doesn't matter that much

i mean, that's just a heuristic statement. i can say the same. if you cannot recognise how good s1mon's util was in their champs run, then it's pointless to argue about their champs run.

again, if nobody's igling was really the reason why they won champs, why have they failed to qualify for an international for the first time since vct cn started? he's still around, and the other cn teams don't look boaster-tier calling-wise. i mean the majority of xlg's playbook is just "rarga go kill".

the pattern is there - edg is a mediocre team at best, with a bunch of firepower but no support. s1mon joins, 1st place champs - 3rd place masters immediately. he leaves, they fail to qualify for the first time.

haodong was able to lead a team with very little international experience and outcall some of the most well established names in the international scene. his executes had good ideas, just not the util backing to bring everything together. plus he doesn't shoot as well as the rest of his team.

is it?

edg management clearly agreed enough with me to keep him as assistant coach, since his ideas were great. they correctly identified that they had a massive deficiency in util. if they thought nobody called better, why wasn't nobody igl when haodong was on the team? this is stuff they would have figured out during scrims - haodong calls better, that was the general consensus of the team, hence why he was the igl.

nobody's still around. s1mon isn't. they went from champs trophy - 3rd place masters to failing to qualify for internationals from arguably the easiest region. would boaster ever fail to qualify from china?

nobody's calling was decent, but EDG won because of well calculated aggression, world-class firepower underpinned by the best breach player in the world. honestly, i think haodong was better at calling than nobody, edg just didn't have the util to back up the ideas they were going for.

every team prepares antis, whether they work depends on the players ability to adapt mid-round. s1mon just hits his stuns, always. you can do whatever you want if you have that on your team. no other initiator player has made me think "damn, what a flash/stun" as consistently as he does.

he also shoots really well. the stats are just insanely biased against him - if the round goes well (i.e, when your team is expected to get a bunch of kills), it's cause he's at the back piling util. him needing to shoot is a sign that something went wrong, so he never gets advantage gunfights - so much of the util burden lies on him and him alone. and he's a world class pos5 player.

some guy did an analysis of every player's teamwide util/trading contribution throughout the year and i think s1mon ranked second in the world. first was TLN lenne but that's more cause of sample size.

he was beyond a great enabler. he was the best enabler. no player found consistent value nearly every single round with breach util better than he did in a breach-neon meta. like, just from edg's highlights throughout the tournament, nearly every single one was set up in some way by some improv breach stun from halfway across the map. just on a round to round basis, kk get's to just slide in like a psycho and isolate a fight cause the rest of enemy team is consistently stunned off sightlines. nobody's util is ok, but not anything to write home about. chichoo, smoggy, kk all play pretty selfish styles. s1mon pretty much made up for 3 people's util impact singlehandedly.

and that clutch on lotus is peak valorant. everything about it just says he has such an insane awareness for the game. it probably won them the grand finals.

So you're telling me there's a multiverse of me, you, and 900 alt accounts all flaming each other in match threads? Honestly, it checks out. As for that missing 2-3%, probably just admins pretending to be real people.

see: caedrel

and he did even better once he shifted to initiator
he was the best player on the team at champs, and i don't say that lightly

cause stats matter

his util is irreplacable

peeled grapes, apparently ducks can choke on the skin

s1mon

wait this guy kinda cooks

he also correctly identified s1mon as one of the best players of 2024, legend

historically + rn:
derke
aspas
kaajak
keznit
kangkang if he has good support
cryo

rn:
jemkin
rarga (but maybe china farmer idk)

historically:
cned
texture
buzz
sayf (skull emoji)

only good na player

he was the best util breach itw in a breach neon meta with psycho entry on team, he brought the whole playstyle of the team together
his entire team got so many free kills off him
the 1v2 clutch on lotus is the greatest single play oat
like sure there's a lot of set stuff but his improvised utility is probably the best i've seen. jieni on breach is night and day.

ty

unnecessary conversion from simple constants to confusing variables, bad practice

failure to mention constraints on a and b during the division step, which is ironic since a and b are constants that are unnecessarily encoded for the sole purpose of confusion

division by 0

criminal maths. i sentence you to life without parole.

am i wrong

he single handedly turned edg from a bomb out of every international team into winning champs + 3rd place back to back - no other team has ever made a single adjustment and had their performance change so much. as soon as he leaves, edg fail to qualify to an international for the first time since vct cn started. leo stopped playing and fnc still looked decent.

his 1v2 clutch on lotus is probably the greatest play oat (maybe minus the boi ace vs rise)

he is, for some reason all the players who join his team become world class players, at one point you gotta think what the common link is

nats
boaster
s1mon

he was being sarcastic

leo hasn't played in too long
yay fell off, boosted by chamber anyways, cryo been consistent throughout the years
forsaken was good yeah barely got snubbed
kk carried by s1mon (who would have thought neon is 10x better if u have the best breach itw on ur team)
alfa's been doing what meteor does for 3x longer

tenz not even in top 20

everyone was shit at reykjavik, you know quality of play was in the gutter if shazam could win a trophy. they were just the least shit.

he was decent in madrid but thats nowhere near enough to be in contention for all time goats

a lot of players fit into the "pick a sentinel and click heads" category, alfa+less have been around for longer than meteor/chichoo

recency bias, he's been good the past year but alfa/less have been doing the same thing for longer

least biased na list but s1mon's in there so i'll overlook it

1. nats
2. aspas
3. boaster
4. keznit
5. mako
6. cryo
7. chronicle
8. less
9. s1mon (fight me, i've been glazing this guy since before all the drama)
10. alfajer

it depends - is this belief formed by an objective evaluation of your current circumstance or an irrational reinforcement of previous grudges?

in regards to race, in most cases, it's probably the latter - the only case I can think of off the top of my head which justifiably falls into the former category is probably war - feel free to try to come up with more examples.

in regards to gender, the notion that "men are dangerous" isn't irrational. men are, in fact, dangerous. biologically, and maybe also due to some cultural factors, we tend to be stronger, more aggressive and violent. there's probably some evolutionary reason why, sexual-selection theory or something? but i'm not the person to ask about that - i'm pretty sure the studies are out there.

having a complex decision boundary for whether something is justified isn't cherry picking. quite the opposite, in fact - it provides a more nuanced objective metric in which to categorise your beliefs and understand why you hold these beliefs. simplicity does not equate to correctness - no ethical discussion worth having is simple.

not exclusively a women issue, but it's most definitely way scarier for a woman to be alone at night than a man. out of the 20 years i've lived in the U.K, i've had maybe 2 rude encounters at night in public. most women probably have something sexist or nasty said to them by strangers once every other week. talk to any women you know, and they'd probably agree.

misandrists frequently express the need to eradicate all men, "i would choose the bear", men are all trash", "we dont need men in the world" and the response they get is "you go girl!", "#independent"

ragebaiters and engagement farmers. nobody thinks like this. people post this shit cause it gets engagement.

but if you think the same about trans, people will say you are a problem, even so far as to send death threats.

because people actually do think like this, and this is incredibly damaging.

you keep mentioning "deeper-rooted problems in society regarding males" when in fact there is nothing to talk about in there anymore. more men are in jail, more laws are passed for the protection of women and children against men. so why is there still a need to this "movement" when men are already portrayed in society as the default demographic to commit crimes and violence?

you're pulling wool over your eyes if you don't think theres still a problem. it's definitely better than it was half a century ago, but its still a fact that women do not feel comfortable alone at night. every other week my girlfriend tells me a story about some dickhead catcalling on her way back from a night shift. women are massively underrepresented in leadership positions, and are often subconciously biased against and ignored for promotion opportunities.

"all trans are predators" is already widely known. you know why? because they keep pushing the agenda that gender studies should be taught in pre-schools. because of the crimes of the few in the trans community, they are already seen as predators because they keep pushing their agenda to make transitioning a thing that a child should decide upon.

i tend to have mixed feelings about this point specifically, so i'm not going to contest you too hard here. that said, i fail to see any correlation between pushing for "gender studies" and being a predator.

again, i believe your fundamental misunderstanding lies in the fact that nobody demonises men as an entire group other than social media engagement farmers and ragebaiters. nobody actually believes that all men are predators, and consequently, nobody will unfairly attack "all men" for being abusers.

when people say "not all men", it is not as a defence for "men" - since there's no "attack" in the first place. it's used as a deflection when people try to tackle the deeper-rooted problems in society stemming from historical male-favoured inequalities.

"not all men" isn't a defence against a generalisation, since there is no generalisation in the first place (outside of engagement farmers and ragebaiters) - hence why i questioned your sources of media consumption.

again, people WILL look at this incident and think that therefore "all trans people are predators". this is a tangible, visible threat, which means that "not all trans people" is a valid defence.

different contexts, different meanings.

we "judge" the demographic in the "not all men" case (to use your words) because its reflective of a deeper, historically recurring problem.

we don't "judge" the demographic in this instance because its a singular incident that WILL be used to unfairly attack a wider population.

IF argument here were: "hey, this incident is likely reflective of a deeper-seated issue where the LGBT community has higher exposure to SA and abuse", then sure, "not all trans people" would be a deflection. this is not the case here - people will use this incident to unfairly generalise and label trans people as predators.

"hey, this incident is likely reflective of a deeper-seated issue where women have higher exposure to SA and abuse". "not all men!!!" - ergo, deflection.

different contexts, different meanings.

no - because again, they're two different problems since they operate at two different scopes.

"not all men" - deflection of a fundamental, highly prevalent, frequently recurring and damaging problem in society. nobody (as a colloquialism) says nor believes that "all men are predators" - not in any reputable MSM (i'm talking the BBC and reuters) - only engagement farmers/ragebaiters on twitter.

"not all trans people" - reminder that a SINGLE incident does not generalise to an entire population of people. people WILL think and believe that "all trans people are predators" because of this incident.

the words are the same, but the meanings (derived from context) are very, very different.

brother idk what media ur consuming but u gotta get off that shit lol

these are two fundamentally different scopes. this is a single incident that people will use to unfairly generalise to an entire population. assault against women is a recurring theme that is still incredibly prevalent today. not the same.

very few people want to "kill all men" - these people tend to be disproportionately vocal. it is true, however, that saying "not all men" is a deflection of the fundamental problem - since again, they're tackling different scopes. it's clearly true that "not all men" are sexual abusers. nobody believes that "all men" are predators. the problem is when people say "not all men" as a way of deflecting their "responsibility" to making the world a safer place for everyone.

ancient vinland saga reference located