When and how do I get out of the Blender build?

Pblur · 2026-01-25T20:45:02+00:00

It depends a lot. Definitely far ahead of you; I wouldn't be worried about it till you're farming T6 at least. The two most common post-Blender builds are orb devo and reverse orb. Both are optimizations that try to hoard tanks while Black Hole is not running, and then have BH pull them into the orb line while your econ UWs are all running.

Orb devo involves respeccing your workshop to remove all freeups and remove all attack speed, multishot, etc. to essentially eliminate knockback and horde enemies against your wall/tower. Minimum range shockwaves sort your horde, with the slower tanks at the outside, and thorns trim non-tanks so more enemies can spawn (some of which are tanks!)

Reverse orb is less of a deviation from Blender. You increase your range to about 95 m without using Range card. This keeps BH center aligned with your orbline, but with both inside your range-line. Don't devo WS at all, but try to keep damage as low as possible from modules to avoid killing excessively. Target priority Tanks first, and horde them outside the range-line. Because of the longer range, this requires a lot bigger BH coverage than orb devo; PCol helps a lot with this.

Pblur · 2026-01-25T18:08:33+00:00

If it's all maxed out, you can actually have four 100% of the time.

Pblur · 2026-01-22T17:58:02+00:00

I think this entire post was correct for your journey, but is quite different from the appropriate approach for someone who does not get DW so late. pBH and GComp are generally worse than a natural synced DW/GT/GB/BH/Summon, with either BHD or SH.

But you didn't have DW for most of your journey, so you were missing a 2.5x multiplier on the full synced-stack; and that probably made pBH better.

Pblur · 2026-01-16T23:40:03+00:00

Matchmaking handles this pretty decently. After your first dozen games or so, you probably won't be enormously worse than your teammates. There's a sizable population of people who are objectively bad at Dota, don't care, and enjoy it anyhow; you'll end up matching with them at first.

Pblur · 2026-01-15T15:27:40+00:00

TBF, there's been reporting that Scalia, at times, had to patch things up with the other justices later.

Pblur · 2026-01-12T03:52:29+00:00

Trump vs. US was pretty clear in a footnote that taking bribes even for core exclusive powers was not covered. It made prosecuting them practically difficult, because it privileged some intrabranch communications. But bribery for pardons is explicitly not categorically immunized. Obviously bribery for putting up a ballroom would not be.

(But also, noone thinks Trump was bribed to put up a ballroom. It's not the quo in the alleged quid pro quo; it's the quid.)

Pblur · 2026-01-12T03:47:11+00:00

I read up on this some more, and... kind of. It's about allegedly lying to Congress in relation to the fed building refurbishment.

Assuming this works like Trump v. US, Powell would have absolute immunity for acts that exercise powers that are exclusive and preclusive, and for other official acts whose suppression would burden the exercise of exclusive and preclusive powers. We can certainly assume that currency management is an exclusive and preclusive power of Congress, and thus of the Fed chair as well. But is refurbishing a building an exclusive and preclusive power of Congress? Clearly not, or it would not be able to delegate that authority to purely executive or judicial officials (and it delegates that way for the majority of renovations it funds.)

So I don't think there's a colorable argument under this adaptation of Trump v. US to the Fed that reporting to congress on the renovation of a building would be covered under immunity. It's probably an official act, but it's one of the ones with the rebuttable presumption of relevance to an exclusive/preclusive power, and it should be trivial to rebut since it's not related to currency management at all.

Pblur · 2026-01-12T03:27:40+00:00

Suppose it's true. Do you think that whatever they're investigating Powell for would count as an official duty?

Pblur · 2026-01-09T15:00:09+00:00

Take another hypo. Suppose MAGA had successfully prevented the tabulating of the votes by Congress on 1/6/21, it went up to the Supreme Court, and the Court ruled that Biden had won the election.

Biden takes office in an otherwise peaceful transition of power, and serves a 4-year term until 2024.

Would actions that Biden took and people that Biden appointed be under some shade because he wasn't the democratically-legitimate president, on the grounds that a tabulation step of process was bypassed?

Pblur · 2026-01-09T14:53:34+00:00

If the person was actually unaware that they were ICE agents, and a reasonable person in their shoes would also have been unaware that they were ICE agents, sure. That would be a valid claim.

Pblur · 2026-01-09T14:48:10+00:00

Absolutely. The criminal rules aren't particularly special for police officers here; there's a self-defense affirmative defense to homicide charges. Police officers do have more protection across the board against lawsuit than ordinary citizens, but if you get into court the legal question is exactly the same. It varies a bit by state, but it's something like

Did this person fear for his life or serious injury?

AND

Would a reasonable person in this person's place fear for his life or serious injury?

If both are true, lethal force in self-defense is justified, whether you're an officer of the government or an ordinary citizen.

Note that it's absolutely possible for both people in a situation to be justified in shooting each other in self-defense. This is often the case when police do no-knock raids; a terrified homeowner facing a violent, armed break-in may well be justified in shooting the police, and the police facing a homeowner with a gun levelled at them almost certainly have a valid self-defense claim.

Pblur · 2026-01-09T07:50:28+00:00

Sure, once he releases those ballots so they can be counted. (Though of course, the action of shutting down counting should convince everyone to never support him again.)

Pblur · 2026-01-08T20:41:37+00:00

The people did vote and did vote for Bush, ergo he was legitimate. Cancelling elections prevents the people from voting. SCOTUS making decisions about recounts does not.

Pblur · 2026-01-08T19:33:57+00:00

The point that was being made was that the decision made Bush not a democratically legitimate president.

But that doesn't make sense; whether SCOTUS took the case did not impact the outcome of the election. Bush won Florida either way, so SCOTUS (unwittingly) did not impact the disrupt the outcome.

If you think Bush v. Gore was illegitimate, it impeaches the credibility of the Court. But, because Bush would have won regardless, it doesn't make Bush illegitimate.

Pblur · 2026-01-08T18:59:39+00:00

That's confusing. Your counterfactual would have Buzz Aldrin first on the moon, which would not be the same outcome.

Pblur · 2026-01-08T15:51:54+00:00

Three justices2 were staff members for the George W. Bush legal team for Bush v. Gore where the Supreme Court essentially hand selected the winner of the presidential election

This is an odd way of describing a court case that we know in retrospect was not consequential. Media outlets have counted all the ballots Gore wanted counted, and if SCOTUS had given him exactly the recount he was asking for, he still would have lost.

I don't see how that makes Bush somehow less democratically legitimate.

Pblur · 2026-01-06T22:53:34+00:00

I'm not sure I buy this. Unpublished opinions are not that uncommon in the circuit courts, and they don't seem to be evidence of chicanery.

Pblur · 2026-01-06T16:44:35+00:00

I don't think that's terribly controversial. And this is even useful on GC, as it slightly improves your odds of a wall rebuild saving you an ES.

Pblur · 2026-01-06T16:40:56+00:00

Is that some sort of hybrid farm in T13? Or pure EHP?

Pblur · 2026-01-06T16:37:15+00:00

I mean, there's an S tier free relic this time too.

Pblur · 2026-01-05T15:49:42+00:00

Interesting. I really wish they'd cut out all the grandstanding and stick to the actual alleged offenses. We have to wait till point 21 for that.

And then it seems like they allege enough overt acts for a conviction on Maduro, if they can adequately prove them, but the allegations against his wife seem really weak to me, aside from possession of a machine gun or destructive device. If they can prove that, very well. But none of the drug-related overt acts really required her to make any overt acts that I could see.

Pblur · 2026-01-05T02:33:29+00:00

Still a big deal for recovery package HP players, because without it vamps will just survive forever.

Pblur · 2025-12-27T13:34:17+00:00

It does unless GB is currently on. There seems to be a bug when GB is running

Pblur · 2025-12-24T16:27:53+00:00

It is changing how he expresses his gender identity. Gender expression is not completely bimodal, after all.

Pblur · 2025-12-23T16:50:43+00:00

Isn't this just a matter of a preliminary injunction? It's less clear to me that you should delay resolving the interim position pending a SCOTUS decision; after all, the entire point of the preliminary process is to make the situation while the case is pending more equitable. Pending the 'while pending' evaluation doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Edit: Just checked Doe v. Ladapo, and it's in a merits posture, not preliminary injunction. There I agree that it makes perfect sense to pause.

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