Badfinger

I learned to type with two spaces after a sentence in my word processing course. I think today may actually have indicted my education more than anything.

Bravo, bravissimo! I am constantly annoyed by my own shortcomings with language. I also realize that I didn't specify that it annoys me when it's spoken. I almost never see "where we're at" in print.

I will refine my statement (and double down on my stubborn assholish pedantry) then to say my annoyance is in ending with the redundant "at", because even after reading that link I'm still convinced it's wrong and it bugs me.

It bothers me how many people who are ostensibly professional wordspersons end their sentences with "at". Ending a sentence with a preposition in general doesn't bother me nearly as much as this one specific instance.

I can confidently state that I make a hell of a latke.

I'm going to a Bat Mitzvah and having Rosh Hashanah dinner with my girlfriend's family this weekend. I've been asked to help cook for it. Holy smokes, all this Judaism in my life all of a sudden!

The point of recommending isn't to try to decide what other people like. It's to say what you like! I've had that shandy. It's quite decent. I think, like hops, people go way overboard with the pumpkin stuff. I do genuinely like Post Road Pumpkin Ale, and I'll drink a Dogfish Punkin. Southern Tier Pumpking is very interesting. I stay away from most of the rest. I lean much more towards Octoberfest-style offerings because in general people try to make a really good version of a traditional beer instead of wacky trendy shit (which is sometimes great! but tiresome!)

I definitely did this when I was watching the International. I also looked up items when I only had a vague idea. Re: Do you know all the lords' abilities? Yeah, pretty much. I've been playing for a long-ass time. I own over 100 lords. There are some from time to time I need to look up to see granular interactions, but I have a pretty basic idea of how all the kits work and the signature abilities. At the same time, I looked at the North America LCS pick and ban statistics. There are only 33 that got picked more than 10 times this split. I used 10 as my arbitrary cutoff because that'd average once a week. So there are only 33 lords across 90+ games that were seen more than once a week. Occasionally, there are picks so rare that even the casters have to refresh themselves on what the whole kit is, but if you have general knowledge on the 35-45 across every region you're pretty much set. There are just some lords that don't work or are never picked in professional play.

It's not as if SK hasn't had its ups and downs in the last 3 years. They were a solid bottom dweller and in the Up-and-Down matches a couple seasons ago. This time they just actually collapsed and lost. There is one Auto-Relegation spot, which is perfectly fine to me. I can't think of an LCS team that was in last place where I thought "They really got unlucky!" The other two spots are relegation matches. If you can't beat a Challenger squad in a best of 5... probably shouldn't be in the LCS.

I bought this Origami Desk and I've really liked it. Easily holds two 24" monitors with room to spare. Could probably do 2 27"s? Also incredibly simple to put together. I can't complain about Ikea, though.

Worlds teams set! Here is a link that will explain all the things about Worlds. http://worlds.lolesports.com/en_US/worlds/about

Do you enjoy following other things that are competitive? If so, what do you like about doing it? What keeps your interest? I don't generally subscribe to the idea that there's a "correct" way to enjoy something. If you explain what you like, maybe we can give you some info that would spark some interest? Have you ever seen the Riot-culled highlight reels? Does the excitement seep through?

My professional breakfast advice is don't eat it, then.

Following up, I played about an hour of Ground Zeroes. The gameplay seems really good. The cutscene was HOT garbage. Like, incredibly offputting. Wanted to quit the game before I had even a second of control. It also took 10 minutes to gain control, which compounded that feeling.

That was an interesting interview! I appreciate you asking about the tenor of the fights and kill counts relative to the other regions. Your comments on a previous episode sounded like you had some insight, but it still feel like part of that was generated from conversation. It was a nice feeling. I honestly had some trouble following it as well. I think it has something to do with the fact that the names are all so similar. LGD, QG, EDG, VG. The words run together. I also thought some of the answers were broad but in specific contexts. (eg - what defines an "early game" or "mid game", what are rotations, why does one team excel in a certain area, rather than just that they are noted to do so.) That compounds with coaching drama that's hard to grasp even if you are following the scene. Ewoks, I'd say there's a bit of Column 3 in that I didn't think this conversation was particularly more esoteric in its generalities than CS:GO or Dota conversation, but at the same time that you're probably working with a glossary of terms that's just different enough from other LoMas that it's not understood vocab, while not being hyperspecific enough that someone would think to define it on a general podcast. You also don't have familiar player or team names to grab on to as your rock to follow the topic. She mentioned Acorn and Flame, and I'm not sure it was completely clear that they are both players who share the same position on LGD (The team that won the China auto-bid). I feel the same in DOTA. I read the DOTA Silly Season thread and see people gasp when team rosters are released and I go "Huh, this is an interesting bunch of grouped letters that have no context to me. But someone is enthused! Perhaps one day they will tell me why." Maybe we should collaborate and do our own primer or glossary or something? I love that Tempo Storm was a Heroes of the Storm competitor. It is hilarious to me that we're getting crossover between games and team names. In the same vein I am amused that Team Solo Mid has CS:GO and Hearthstone teams but doesn't have a DOTA team. I would love, at some point, to see a study on the actual organizations that have teams. IE TSM the esports group, EG the group, MVP the group. How they really work, where their resources go, how the teams coexist, etc.

Rich Uncle, Cool Uncle... Strange Uncle?! MGS V looks intriguing to me in a way that no other Metal Gears Solid have ever done. I'm excited kind of in the way Jake was excited upon hearing about it. I was just gifted Ground Zeroes, going to try that out. If I like it... is MGS V for me even though I don't care at all about Metal Gear or Plasma Snake or Gundam Hippo or whatever the hell the characters are named? This thread has also taught me that it's in fact Neon Genesis and not Neo.

It's good for a year. So next... July? July.

It's 2015, and it's time for PAX! Talk about this year's 2015 PAX in this thread! Seattle is far away.

Uhhhh. UHHHHHHH Loitering (in front of various breweries, demanding Belgians) Graffiti (BADFINGER 4 BELGIUMS (misspelled, of course)) I would POST BILLS where you are supposed to post no bills. I'm committed dangit!

I would commit various small crimes to get American breweries to dive in hard on Belgians. There are a number of places that carry a nice selection of bottles, but they're rarely on tap.

This is a good and useful comment.

Because I want people to do new and interesting things with beers that I like. We went to a nice taproom on Saturday. They have 18 non-macro beers on draft right now, and 11 of them are Ales or IPAs. While I'll grant you that it's summer and many of the flavors are in season, it's really tiresome. I live in Delaware, home of Dogfish Head, aka home of THE ubiquitous micro brew 60 minute IPA. it's not like it's Denver or anything, but the Philadelphia area has some really interesting breweries. Back in the early 2000s, the "in" thing for micro brewers was how high you could push the ABV. It was like it was a competition. That fell out of favor a bit, and has been replaced with how many fucking hops you can throw in and still call it a beer. That article mentions Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I really like Sierra Nevada! It is not super hoppy! But so, so many beers are just ramming hops down my throat. I just want interesting stuff that I can actually taste. I don't hate IPAs. I hate that they're made to the exclusion of other interesting styles. I have friends that love hops. Love, love, love hops. There's a brewery 30 minutes from me that makes a beer called Hop Devil. It's too fucking much. I'm the weird one in the group and I can't stand it.

Yes. They were 3rd in Championship Points to Fnatic (who auto-qualified based on split win) and H2K (who qualified on highest points; not auto-qualifier). As the highest seed not already guaranteed worlds, they got placed directly into the Win-And-In final of the gauntlet. However, Cloud 9 qualifies for Worlds coming from the lowest seed in the gauntlet! If they had gone 0-2 against Team 8 instead of splitting 1-1 they would have been playing to stave off relegation rather than fighting for Worlds. They pulled out a really protracted, well called game to pull ahead in the series and then game 4 was a slow suffocation punctuated by IWillDominate trying to hard carry from the jungle and not being able to do so. Liquid can't reverse the Curse, finish in 4th as always.

Origen drop the hammer on UOL with a 3-0 stomp to lock in their ticket to Worlds, even with only one split worth of qualification points. NA Finals kick off in an hour (3 EST, 12 PST)

Korea has two teams now qualified for Worlds, as KOO wins the auto-bid on points after SKT dismantled KT in the Summer Champions Final. SKT has won Spring and Summer in convincing fashion, and even with China's tight competition has to be the leading favorite at Worlds at this point. Their only stumble is a narrow loss to EDG at the Mid-Season Invitational. NA and EU Gauntlets have been playing this weekend. The finals for both regions are today to determine the third seed at worlds. In EU it's the totally expected matchup of Unicorns of Love vs Origen, and in NA the pretty surprising Liquid vs C9. C9 looked lost for a lot of Summer, but here they are three wins away from getting back to Worlds. Haven't watched any of the games, can't tell you how they won. The Regional Gauntlet and China Crazytown Finals kick off Wednesday and Thursday for Korea and China respectively. We'll know the entire Worlds lineup by the end of the week! I think Liquid will beat C9. I think Origen is a better team than UoL, but UoL gameplans extremely well for long series. I think KT has the inside track from Korea (duh, they're the top seed), but the only team that would surprise me winning is Jin Air. I would be shocked to not see EDG win one of the seeds, but China has been a crazy battle all summer long. That's a big toss up and because of the bracket structure anyone could go. LEAGUE OF LEGENDS - CATCH IT.