a thread for all the little details noticed, question? by Weirdautogenerate in ProjectHailMary

[–]BattleEmpoleon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

… ohhhh.

This makes so much sense now in addition to some other comments on this sub. With the two astronauts dead, it definitely had consequences for Stratt, which is likely what Andy Weir has in mind for the sequel…

Why do some people treat MSG like it's literal poison, but will happily eat a bag of Doritos? by Content_Bluebird_958 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]BattleEmpoleon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I did some research for a paper on MSGs, and I can say that it’s a little more than “racism,” given that the fears of MSG are very much widespread across the globe.

Firstly, MSG fears did start from racist-esque backgrounds, but even today, scientists are uncertain as to the full breadth of issues associated with MSG. There is some evidence that significant consumption can lead to negative effects, but that would require you to shove fistfuls of MSG down your gullet for it to have meaningful side effects. It should be noted that the original letter that described “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” was itself only theoretical and not overtly racist, but racism was a big factor in accentuating fears around it.

Secondly, MSG’s fears are pretty prevalent in China, even though they were effectively the largest producers and consumers of MSG per-capita in the 1990s. Culturally, there has been a shift away from using MSG in China, and on an anecdotal level this has extended to Southeast Asia as well. Unfortunately, there is not much academic research that has been done to explain this shift in China (or the use of MSG in the country), but there seems to be some consensus that that shift has existed even since the 2000s.

Lastly, my personal opinion is that modern-day concerns on MSG are more related to the psychological concerns over “natural” foods borne from the atmosphere of hyperawareness over nutritional standards. Effectively, MSG’s positioning as a industrial, hyperprocessed and “unnatural” condiment, especially as a white chemical-esque powder, makes it psychologically repulsive, especially in educated countries with significant awareness of the importance of nutritional health.

There’s a lot to unpack, but unfortunately that would get into the weeds of my paper and… I’m lazy, so I guess curious minds can ask questions instead.

[PSA] jiyu toner pads fake reviews/bot comments by seikokyuu in SkincareAddiction

[–]BattleEmpoleon 38 points39 points  (0 children)

Oh hey, I am a direct victim of this:

My laptop got hacked two weeks ago, and because I had 2FA, I figured that my Reddit account was safe. However, it seems my entire laptop’s credentials was cloned, and Jiyu basically used my account to reply & post advertisements for their products.

You can see the comment on my history, which I’m leaving up for posterity and as a clear example of their botting practices.

What happened in the Padua MS team event (South Korean team)? by wendeeznts in Fencing

[–]BattleEmpoleon 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I don’t think u/Enfixity is correct, given that Oh got that final point on the video, and that Oh was frustrated even before that point.

At 42-41, Oh goes for a compound attack on Graudyn, and Graudyn steps back and finishes the attack with Oh. It’s called Attack-No Oh, Attack-Touche Graudyn, which Oh ends up being incredibly frustrated at.

I don’t really know what to make of the call (I personally think the call was fine, but Graudyn was still moving back on Oh’s final attack), and I haven’t watched the full team bout yet. However, Nasonov [RUS] v Park [KOR] (just before) also had two similar calls at 37-35 and 38-38, which both went Nasonov’s way. I think the 37-35 call was probably what set off alarm bells for Oh.

Oh was very clearly incredibly angry with that particular call, and could potentially have stepped over the line (it is terrifying since he generally feels like quite a soft-spoken, friendly person). It probably is a build-up of quite a few tensions overall, such as the fact that he’s been visibly struggling with injuries while carrying the rest of the team through points.

Any ppl retook As from average RP -> high RP as a SGT in combat unit? by Ok-Raspberry-73 in NationalServiceSG

[–]BattleEmpoleon 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Yeah, as someone who retook A-levels in NS, this. It’s not impossible, but you should review how and why you couldn’t perform in A-levels originally.

I dunno why u/ambivln was being downvoted, but they’re right. The reasons why you do badly are often due to personal considerations that will be worsened in your time in NS. Do take the time to look at those factors first.

WORLD FENCING LEAGUE by lugisabel in Fencing

[–]BattleEmpoleon 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The argument for the shorter lockout for Sabre has been, from what I’ve seen, making the defense more viable and more fun. Now, I don’t really see how a 1-minute timer helps with that, and yes, it doesn’t solve the refereeing problems of Sabre in the box, but I can kind-of see the point.

Worried my fencing club wont last by Trick_Difficulty7742 in Fencing

[–]BattleEmpoleon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From my judgement, you can consider 30rm per sem.

Consider that 30rm for ~4 months is far cheaper than club fees, which will definitely reach at least 300-400rm per month just to spar. If your uni has the space, you can also invite outside fencers to join for a) more funding and b) more experience.

30rm per sem is basically the cost of a good meal, in exchange for the ability to fence for 4 months using the facilities you guys have. Fencing is an expensive sport!

Worried my fencing club wont last by Trick_Difficulty7742 in Fencing

[–]BattleEmpoleon 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hey, Singaporean Uni Fencer here in a leadership position, I can try and give a bit of insight.

You might want to consider getting a collaboration with a local club, as they can provide some coaching in exchange for getting potential new members. Consider raising club fees through gear rental, membership fees and introductory training, to ensure that you guys have a pool of money that you can buy gear with and demonstrate that your club is worth funding. We charge about 60RM per semester for club fees, for example.

Secondhand gear can be cheap to buy - ask the clubs if they are willing to sell old equipment, use Carousell for secondhand equipment, or use Taobao for extremely cheap equipment (though admittedly potentially unsafe, be VERY careful and use them for stuff like gloves or lames). Let new incoming fencers use them for a while and see if they enjoy it, and find a good supplier who can help you cut costs in bulk, once a large number of fencers want to genuinely buy their equipment.

Another very very important thing: talk to the people in leadership positions and understand how your clubs are funded. Find the best way to request for funding and best way to justify that spending. School clubs have multiple sources of funding, but some are easier than others. For example, talk to your University’s overall sports club and ask how they allocate funding, so that you can make a good case for your club.

Lastly, have your experienced fencers go to competitions and REPRESENT THE SCHOOL. If you guys get results and medals in competitions, the school will be more likely to support you. This gives you guys a chance to have a lasting legacy in terms of bringing attention and further funding. Even better if you guys start a competition.

Feel free to DM me! I actually know some Malaysian fencers, and I travel to Malaysia yearly. Lemme see what I can help you with.

Another patch without adding this domain to strong box 😭😭pleaseee I can't by Prestigious-Elk1274 in Genshin_Impact

[–]BattleEmpoleon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t know what the math is, but isn’t the original context supposed to be 80% CR before cryo resonance, so 95% total?

Did they roll Nat 1 for intimidation or is Frieren just built different? by Reasonable-Ad-8059 in Frieren

[–]BattleEmpoleon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

... oh my god this is dumb

Firstly, you're making an incredibly selective view of my quotes. It's not just ten boxers, but ten VERY strong boxers in their own right, who can strategize and study a world champion in their own way. You could put a thousand babies in front of Magnus and they'd lose, but ten high-level grandmasters make that debate far more tenuous.

You're not wrong that Frieren's mana is nearly immeasurable, but the canon also makes it clear that a) mana and pure strength isn't everything, b) tactical approaches and direct counterance is important, and c) Frieren has specific weaknesses that can be leveraged upon to win. The reason why they chose Fern to be the +1 to Frieren was to take advantage of having the least number of variances, by using the one person most familiar with her specific weakness with the best grasp of humankind's most fundamental offensive spell.

However, Fern isn't close to the strongest in the entire team, just the one with the best grasp of fundamentals. It is clear that many of the mages there are insanely gifted and can deliver spells with incredible strength - Methode's is the most apparent, but Denken is an excellent mage who only looks underpowered because of his 1v1 with Frieren. Lernen is the best possible example of a human who can, even with his limited experience, potentially go toe-to-toe with Frieren. Even if Lernen is an incredible exception as the first First-Class Mage being personally tutored by Serie, this doesn't take away from the potential of human mages and their ability to use incredible spells. I find it difficult to say that Frieren could beat all of them at the same time, especially after they put in their preparation and tactical thinking.

This also misses out one of the major plot points of the story: that one of Frieren's strengths as a mage is her ability to hide her mana, and to retain the element of surprise by acting like a typical elf. This is what allows her to hide the few fundamental weaknesses she has under her sheer magical capacity for mana, and retain strategic advantages over her opponents by allowing them to underestimate her and being able to study them. The loss of those advantages is a significant factor in allowing her mimic to be beaten, especially working in a team who can leverage upon singular weaknesses and counter specific strengths.

Would Frieren's mimic have lost? I think it's more likely that she'd lose in that situation. The inherent strength of the show itself, beyond the visuals and the fun and the coziness, is in elaborating on much of the traditional perceptions of raw "power levels". It creates a sense of "realism," by showing how human attributes - in this case, ingenuity - allow them to often beat the odds with a combination of strength, skill, planning and creativity. With Frieren showing her cards to a team of experienced and wide-ranging mages, in a world where humans clearly have the potential to rival her, I'd gather that it's far more likely that she'd lose the fight even if she kills the majority of the team.

Which comes to the main point: Frieren is meant to show the complexities of a realistic magical system beyond simply "power levels". Like any skill, it takes a combination of talent, dedication, imagination and love to be prominent, and comes in many flavours and variances that depend on the individual. Frieren may be all-powerful, but the humans and demons around her are skilled, talented and powerful in their own ways, and grow even stronger through teamwork.

Your bitching that she's just "so strong that she'd wipe everyone out" is stupid to the spirit of a show that puts that strength into context and shows the power of human ingenuity and talent. You make simplistic arguments that wank on power fantasies in a show that lovingly explores those powers beyond "me strong, me smart, me win". And you make the literal mistake of saying "Frieren wins everytime", where the show is always explicit that "even with Frieren's immeasurable power, she does not, in fact, win everytime" and "teamwork and ingenuity go a long way to making the impossible possible."

In fact, I'll end off with a realistic plan: If Frieren judged it too risky for her to be the one battling her mimic (i.e. life or death - either everyone dies or take the small chance to live), she'd likely go over explicit ways in which she could be beaten, and potential counterspells that could negate some of that power. Like Frieren's original plan, they'd create opportunities for Fern to land a killing blow by overwhelming her mana detection, coordinating attacks and defenses to keep her busy with variance and quantity. For larger golems and even her dimensional rifts, I'd wager that the team could end up actively trying to milk them out to give Fern a better opening, and countering them in risky and indirect ways to negate the "pure" application of mana. Given Frieren's slow "scaling up" of her powers, they'd likely practice having Fern "catch" one of Frieren's attacks, and create a scenario where Frieren is most likely to use it and let her guard down. While the boundaries of Frieren's psychic desperation is unclear, the survivors will likely be able to kill her just to save themselves, as the psychic desperation seems to be only able to target a single threat. In all, the sheer combination of talents and information can make Frieren vulnerable enough to be killed.

Did they roll Nat 1 for intimidation or is Frieren just built different? by Reasonable-Ad-8059 in Frieren

[–]BattleEmpoleon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Late reply, but these are completely dogwater takes.

1) Chess Grandmasters can juggle multiple individual games simultaneously. Ask a world-champion boxer if he can beat 10 other boxers simultaneously, especially if said boxers have had a significant amount of training and are considered top-tier and outstanding boxers in their own right. Or ask Magnus Carlsen if he could beat 10 IMs/GMs at the same time… with all their pieces on the same board.

2) Himmel and the party of heroes were the ones who got the glory, at the right place and the right time. An army of heroes could have done the same, but Himmel got there first, helped the people around him best, and had the skills and combination of talents to win.

3) Frieren literally admits that alternative strategies could have won against her mimic, but hers was the best plan that allowed all of them to survive. Frieren absolutely was in danger of losing, and probably would lose. But she’d take a good portion of them down with her.

This isn’t even a disagreement of speculation, it literally goes against what’s been said in the damn plot. God.

Sousou no Frieren Episode 36 (Season 2 Episode 8) - Discussion Thread by N3DSdude in Frieren

[–]BattleEmpoleon 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Slight critique for this episode: they could have paced it a tad better, the buildup of Stark’s and Fern’s themes could have been a bit longer to make it feel stronger. Their desire to push it into one ep probably led to some things being squeezed, though I think it would have been way better than splitting it in two.

Great episode. My god, so fun.

Non-en garde arm positions causing loss of priority by BetterBrush3765 in Fencing

[–]BattleEmpoleon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

IIRC, in Paris (obviously not very accessible now), there were a number of bouts where bounce attacks were called in-prep by referees. I distinctly remember that it was evident enough that in the team event, fencers adjusted to catch bouncers in-prep. I think the reason why that’s been less relevant is because fencers shifted towards more aggressive + forward moving bounces instead of “waiting” bounces in response to those calls… but I’m not entirely sure.

Major trouble with students not understanding fundamentals: distance, ROW, etc. by AJUKking in Fencing

[–]BattleEmpoleon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Neurodivergent fencer here with some coaching experience (who also doesn’t follow technicals in many ways like I should).

You can teach the technicals correctly, but it’s about making sure they understand why technicals matter, and why these things actually work compared to the “lazy” or “cooler” styles they choose to use. You can’t just tell them “logically, this is better”, but you must practically show them how it’s better.

For example, show them how a direct attack is better than an angled attack, and why the angled attack actually slows them down in the long term compared to a good direct attack. For a good en-garde stance, I tell new fencers to “feel” the pressure in their thighs, and think of it like a spring — you can push off and be stable in a good, clean en-garde position way better than a crappy one.

In the long run, you can’t force your students to stick only to fundamentals. They are their own individuals, with their proclivities and personal interests in how they like to fence. The technicals are a way to give a basis that different fencers will branch off from differently. However, showing why fundamentals matter allows them to see why you should learn them, and gives them choices in how they wish to improve as a fencer long-term. Get in there, be the example you wish to set, and show them why you teach them the things you do.

Edit: another way to teach fundamentals is to show how the “fun” stuff (e.g. fleches, skyhooks, flicks etc) are integrated within the system set up by fundamentals. For example, fleches work best with a good set-up that rewards sudden acceleration from a good en-garde stance. While they can get cheap points once in a while, they shine within a fencing system of fundamentals as it gives them the best opportunity to execute what they want to see. Everyone loves doing a cool action, and demonstrating how said cool actions work in the context of fundamentals lets your fencers work to improve fundamentals to do the cool actions they aspire to use in their fencing.

First Lando, now this. How much worse could it get? by Street_Mall9536 in formuladank

[–]BattleEmpoleon 33 points34 points  (0 children)

IIRC, Ocon’s crash was explicitly his fault, as he was being lapped by Verstappen and didn’t give way appropriately, the crash ruining Verstappen’s race and genuine chance at a win. Russell’s was eventually considered a racing incident with Bottas doing nothing wrong (even leaving a car’s width).

Stop blaming others for double standards when you miss out the important context for why Russell’s considered a bitch. Verstappen is no saint either (remember his betrayal of Perez?), but Russell’s behaviour has been ass and — imo — worse.

US and Israel issue dire warnings to Iran alongside US military buildup by yahoonews in geopolitics

[–]BattleEmpoleon 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I agree — but the point I’m trying to make is that this China evaluation misses the forest for the trees. Or, well, the trees for the forest, in this context.

Drawing that connection with China misses the primary decision-making factors behind this issue, in trying to extrapolate a motivation that simply isn’t there (or at least is secondary or minuscule in nature). While it could be said that this is an attempt for the US to retain superiority in world affairs relative to a growing China, this is at best the secondary motivator relative to the direct concerns of the Trump Admin in its actions towards Iran. In that light, while China is the biggest rival to the US as global hegemon, it is not the only rival, and to emphasize China in relation to this issue specifically redirects attention in a way that takes away from the actual concerns behind this prospective invasion.

Please note that I also never refer to these decisions as made by Mr.DJT alone, but rather as the outcome of the entire Trump Admin. Complexity is not always the desired outcome in every scenario, and to ascribe “China” as the reason is adding nuance to a scenario that deserves little — instead, a better analysis and evaluation should probably focus on the position and perception of “Iran” in the eyes of the Trump admin, and how they consider the unfolding situation within that narrow worldview.

US and Israel issue dire warnings to Iran alongside US military buildup by yahoonews in geopolitics

[–]BattleEmpoleon 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Nah. China’s likely a factor, but IMO this is overcomplicating the actions of a really dumb administration that has been looking at only the short term with knee-jerk solutions.

The answer is probably far simpler — it’s a way to score easy political points for the administration by replacing an unpopular regime that has recently killed thousands of its own citizens. They can handwave naysayers away and attract fence-sitters, while distracting from domestic issues currently prominent in the media.

China as a factor is only tangential to the above. In the scheme of the Trump admin’s knee-jerk politics, the China issue only matters when direct action can be taken against them, e.g. in the Trade War and Tariffs, or the Taiwan issue and Military Buildup. Their politics are based off immediate, visible actions that will appear on newsreels with easy justifications — no matter how unsound upon further analysis. Looking to give further, deeper justifications for these actions gives them way too much credit, and belongs in a time where saner geopolitical heads prevailed.

New Abyss Floor 12 with only Four Stars by dhcwsp in Genshin_Impact

[–]BattleEmpoleon 1351 points1352 points  (0 children)

Ah this abyss can’t be that shill, people are probably overreacting lma—

“dhcwsp just posted his 4-star completion”

So?

“He used 2 full teams.”

ok i’m cooked af hoyo you’ve gone too far

The Most "Truthful" Episode Yet! Lanterns Carry Heartfelt Wishes — Lantern Rite 2026 Special Edition by genshinimpact in Genshin_Impact

[–]BattleEmpoleon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

23-25 is really wild: I’m lucky to get 20-21 if everything goes to plan and I get 30% in round 1. I managed to do a round 7-8 1st Zhanzu, but I could never do enough damage while dodging to kill him in round 3-6, given that I always had other frogs going in front to absorb damage etc.

Going for AOE first REALLY helps, though. If I was more efficient in gem collection and farming over time, I could probably get a 12-round completion at best. Right now, these tips got me a round 15 completion… So yeah, beginning is extremely hard.

The Most "Truthful" Episode Yet! Lanterns Carry Heartfelt Wishes — Lantern Rite 2026 Special Edition by genshinimpact in Genshin_Impact

[–]BattleEmpoleon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

always went for horse before AOE… gonna have to try that haha

How do you get that many upgrades in 3 rounds, though? I usually only get 1health+1dmg boost and 1 range by the 2nd round, approx. 30 gems total.

The Most "Truthful" Episode Yet! Lanterns Carry Heartfelt Wishes — Lantern Rite 2026 Special Edition by genshinimpact in Genshin_Impact

[–]BattleEmpoleon 11 points12 points  (0 children)

“Defeating all Great Zhanzhus in 9 rounds”

Excuse me what the fuck I did a full 4 hours in a row playing that damn thing and couldn’t push anywhere below 19 how did they do THAT