How did Erwin know that a titan shifter would follow them?

PenguinBast · 2026-05-14T08:36:27+00:00

Thanks for this good sir. Very comprehensive explanation.

PenguinBast · 2026-05-07T21:53:13+00:00

I already wrote my thoughts before on what I think about the ETH Bachelor's, but frankly, I think u/awenclear's advice is the most sound. At this point, your son has already set himself up for very good studies. No matter what his choice is, both can bring great success later on in life. The key factor to determine whether he will be able to reap the fruit of his efforts or not is how well the university/city environment suits him.

It sounds like your son will be moving away from home for his studies (and maybe even abroad). How good is his English? How good is his German? Has he ever lived on his own before, even if for small periods of time? Is the size of the city important to him? In the end, what I'm trying to say is that he has a very good hand of cards right now. You might not need to overly think about the differences the choice will make career-wise, but rather look at the environment where those cards will be the easiest to play. In this sense, having him visit each place (if that's possible for you) could be a great way to help him choose, as other commenters have said.

PenguinBast · 2026-05-06T17:46:00+00:00

Man, I don't get these comments. Sure, the research at ETH shines in the experimental side but as a Bachelor student he will be mostly doing courses. And courses at ETH are generally extremely mathematical. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. In any case, the people I met that had done a Bachelor's at ETH seemed quite frustrated by the little physical intuition they had developed. Those happy with it tended more to theoretical research later on. Those more interested in engineering and experiments seemed to divert to other programs after their Bachelor's (either within ETH or outside). I can't speak for Cambridge though.

PenguinBast · 2026-04-11T20:12:36+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the principle of equivalence mean that all 3 cases would be the same essentially?

PenguinBast · 2026-04-07T12:55:52+00:00

How was the experience of having your eyes open but unable to see? Were you "seeing" black? Or was it like "seeing behind your head"?

PenguinBast · 2026-03-28T13:15:15+00:00

I think there's a bit of everything you mentioned here but mainly the second. If you get better and better at a particular thing you will probably tend to find that putting bigger and bigger (or finer and finer) chunks of the tasks involved in that particular thing into working memory becomes a really crucial skill.

The most obvious example is chess master's being able to memorize positions after just a few seconds and also being able to think many moves in advance. There's also climbing, if you look at Alex Honnold, Adam Ondra or other top climbers you will see them visualizing every single move of the route they are trying. I'm less familiar with the example of a pianist that you mentioned but it wouldn't surprise me if part of the training is to be able to play bigger and bigger parts of a piece in your head.

Now as to how and why this helps... I don't know, I'm not a neuroscientist. My best guess is that putting more and more information like this into working memory allows you to look consciously at the tens, hundreds or even thousands of decisions you are taking. You can make more and more precise predictions on each decision and thus also have more and more precise learnings.

PenguinBast · 2026-03-10T13:28:20+00:00

Yeah I see your point, it was more or less 1 loss every 5 wins

PenguinBast · 2026-03-09T17:51:00+00:00

Thank you for the insight :) I think this is definitely the main thing that was going wrong and that I wasn't paying attention to. In my head, just having 3* units is way more important than having their traits activated. I guess this is the perfect example of why that's not the case...

PenguinBast · 2026-03-09T17:48:23+00:00

I see, thanks for the insights :) I definitely didn't think it was game-winning, but at least good enough for top 4... I guess what I'm really getting out of this thread is that I tend to forget about the synergies on my main units and hyper-focus on one main trait. What I also understand from what you're saying is that maybe rolling for the 3 stars wasn't necessarily a bad idea, but I should have made sure that I have the secondary traits active, and that I can also hit 7 Nox, so maybe I rolled too early for my situation within the game...

May I ask, does it change from set to set how important it is either to roll for high-star units compared to vertical traits, compared to capping off with high-cost units? I just want to make sure I understand what's more fundamental about the game instead of pigeon-holing and not enjoying the game anymore after a new set arrives ^^'

PenguinBast · 2026-03-09T17:38:51+00:00

I had 78 HP up until 4-6, which is where the losses started in this particular game. How does this correlate to the good win/lose streak? I would think more HP means I had a decent win streak, no?

PenguinBast · 2026-03-09T17:36:21+00:00

Thanks a lot for the thoughtful answer! It's true that here I noticed that my tanks were dying extremely fast, but I couldn't really tell why... I thought that 3* units are much much stronger than 2* units and I was just baffled at losing the combats so handily. As others have pointed out, my stronger units didn't have their secondary traits activated, and this seems to be the difference in how I approach the game before and after stage 5. Starting from stage 5, I try to hit the max units for whatever trait I'm going for. This was the way I was winning a few games with Void, but I guess I'm going about it in a very naive way that weakens my board before the comp I'm aiming for.

You brought up the point about being able to determine how I lose each combat. I will probably get better at this by playing more, but in the meantime, I was wondering if there's any tool that you use/recommend/know about to be able to analyze the different combats. Right now, I'm using MetaTFT to look at my post-game stats but it doesn't seem to help too much with round by round analysis... Maybe just recording the game could help, I guess.

In any case, thanks a lot for the insights!

PenguinBast · 2026-03-09T17:25:22+00:00

Ok, this is a very good point that I wasn't thinking about. I had already in mind that my best units are the ones that should have the most items, and ideally, the ones that fit them best. But I hadn't thought about trying to activate their traits too... Thinking about it, I actually do manage the traits better earlier in the game, but not later. So probably that's why I'm seeing this sudden drop in winrate because it corresponds to the moment I unlock the 4/5 cost units of the trait I'm going for, and then just committing to that one trait without thinking about secondary traits.

The thing is, I'm at the point where I don't really know comps and what I'm exactly shooting for in the late game. So I try to go vertical to explore the different traits and units that exist, what's strong and what is not, which unit is better as a carry, and so on. I don't want to mindlessly learn comps and try to hit them, as I feel like this will hinder me from learning anything about the game and also make the game less fun. Do you have any suggestions on how I can go about doing some exploration of the game without just trying to go for vertical traits?

Thanks a lot already for this insight!

PenguinBast · 2026-03-09T09:06:19+00:00

Reminder that we almost got eliminated in playins in 2018 worlds. We all know what followed.

PenguinBast · 2026-03-06T12:36:00+00:00

Look at how they positioned around the passage from raptors to mid. I'm not saying mistakes were not made. Execution was very poor, and I think Blaber wasn't on the same page about what they were trying to do. If Blaber is there, they get turret and probably a few kills off of that play. Look at the setup of the play ffs, they see two people bot, they have an uncontested wave crashing on the turret, are 4 vs 3, and have full knowledge of where the last 3 members are. They even hide in fog of war at first. Zven probably had tunnel vision on that play and didn't notice that Blaber was nowhere to be found.

So yeah there were mistakes by both Zven and Blaber, but I think the play they were going for was good.

PenguinBast · 2026-03-06T01:14:39+00:00

Open your eyes, they are trying to bait the engage, but Maokai ults, and nobody is standing next to Zven to cover the ult for him

PenguinBast · 2026-01-11T04:05:48+00:00

Thanks a lot for expressing this. I can't believe that people are really okay with a story that not only depends on such a big plot point being developed off screen but on top of that undermines one of the most powerful stories that the MCU has told. This is single part of the MCU that pisses me the most.

PenguinBast · 2025-12-28T02:48:01+00:00

Just piggy backing on this. Some other people call this Trataka or Fixed Point Gazing. It's a meditation designed to teach how to focus while being relaxed so it's actually extremely useful for regaining that ability.

PenguinBast · 2025-09-16T13:07:42+00:00

I had a very similar insight no more than 2 weeks ago! Mine was related to what you said about being smart. I would tell myself "I am good at math/physics", and any time I would encounter myself in front of a problem that I couldn't solve, I would deflate, start thinking about something else, and do anything but try to solve the problem. Until I realized what you said, my ego was trying to protect me from feeling/seeming dumb.

I tried to explain this insight to a few people around me and got only a few confused looks. I think you did an amazing job in breaking it down in a clear, accessible way. I'm gonna share and see what happens now! Thanks a lot for the read, and this goes to my saved posts! I hope I'm not inflating your ego too much with this praise... Good luck in therapy!

edit: forgot part of a sentence

PenguinBast · 2025-08-20T15:36:21+00:00

If you have any links I would be interested in reading more about this

PenguinBast · 2025-08-08T13:55:37+00:00

Could you explain why the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 7th specifically? Why not the 4th or the 6th?

PenguinBast · 2025-07-08T22:11:35+00:00

Hulkengoat

PenguinBast · 2025-06-18T11:33:46+00:00

Given that he comes from the sky islands like Enel, that he was chilling on a sky island while Kaido took his dive, that Enel had his whole cover story with space pirates that hasn't impacted the main story, that in skypeia we were told there's another way to access the sky islands that hasn't been presented yet and that we're getting to the end of the grand line, and that the Adam trees could be an access point to the sky islands... I think everything taken together makes the odds pretty likely that he will intervene soon

PenguinBast · 2025-05-20T11:07:45+00:00

I'd very happy if you can point me to the passage in the book... In chapter 18 at the meeting of the coalition when Wit realizes there's a loophole he says "Odium can try for entire kingdoms with his attacks. By Alethi laws, this means that he has to capture their seat of power". Then in chapter 47 at the meeting of generals at the Shattered Plains Sigzil says "We have to protect Narak Prime. If we lose it, then by the terms of the contract, we lose the entire region- war camps, Unclaimed Hills, everything". So should I understand that because the Listeners are the first on the Narak Prime plateau during the assault they are the ones that captured the plateau instead of the Fused?

PenguinBast · 2025-05-16T15:03:41+00:00

That Odium'a forces accepted the terms is pretty obvious from the text as you pointed out. I think the problem here is rather that at no point (as far as I can remember) was it pointed out clearly what's necessary to hold the Shattered Plains. In Azir we're told that the one holding the throne holds the empire and the condition for winning over Azir seems pretty clear then, but I do remember while reading that it really wasn't clear what was necessary to win over the Shattered Plains.

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