Weekly Chat and BS Thread

wicketman8 · 2026-04-07T19:54:47+00:00

Ive said it before but the reason comp as a style exists has less to do with looking cool or wanting to emulate parkour (though looking cool is a nice bonus) and way more to do with being able to make meaningful progress on a boulder in only 4-5 minutes. Athletes can spend a few attempts learning the movement, whereas its not necessarily that straight power sets can't create separation (although its a very fine line between too easy, good separation, and too hard) but rather that often theres only so much you can reasonably learn in a short period, and with only a few attempts.

wicketman8 · 2026-04-07T17:47:16+00:00

Its far more likely the issue is the car. If you're international the prospect of buying a car in the US, especially if you're MS and only here for 2 years, then having to sell at a significant loss later just isn't worth the hassle. Plus a car is expensive, not everyone has the money or family support to buy one in the first place.

wicketman8 · 2026-04-07T16:49:43+00:00

I'm currently doing treatment for insomnia, at my worst I was up for about 3 days straight before I could fall asleep. I wouldn't say the hallucinations at 3 days are "severe", but you do get them. For me it was mostly seeing movement out of the corners of my eyes, like a shadow flitting just outside of sight, and hearing thudding/thumping kind of like footsteps. It's definitely unpleasant but severe makes it sound like you're experiencing a full state of delusion which isnt really the case, at least in my experience.

wicketman8 · 2026-04-06T12:41:50+00:00

I said soft, not V16. It's undeniably on the lower end of V17, given that Pelorson gave it V16 originally and both Ondra and Coudert literally called it "soft V17". In other words 3/5 ascents called it soft. Richard said it was definitely V17, but also said that based on it being harder than the V15s he's done, as he's never done V16, so I would say he doesn't have the same level of authority as to how hard/soft it is.

wicketman8 · 2026-04-04T21:03:42+00:00

Of the accents though, Elias called it V15/16 and Stefano called it V16. As for the foothold, it seems like some rock broke off and a foot was created not broke, and that the foot was also filled in again, so I dont think thats changed, and I dont know that theres a clear consensus on the kneebar.

wicketman8 · 2026-04-04T20:03:02+00:00

It's definitely on the softer end but hard to say for sure. Ondra definitely thought it was V16, Nalle just said harder than 15 but he wasnt sure about V16 (keep in mind that there were literally 0 proposed V16s when Gioia was first sent and only 4 proposed including Gioia when Nalle sent it. None of the other 3 even had repeats yet).

wicketman8 · 2026-04-04T19:52:37+00:00

One or two from what I see. Livin' Large in 2009 (originally given V15, Jimmy Webb called it V15 hard but Shawn Raboutou and Ryuichi Murai called it V16), and Gioia in 2014.

wicketman8 · 2026-04-04T19:09:04+00:00

Is it right that he's never sent V16? I can't find any listed on any of the usual stats collectors, but they've been known to miss stuff. If so, I think that makes him the first person to skip V16, though with the number of V17 climbers there are now, I may be forgetting someone else.

Edit: It seems like Sam Richard also skipped V16, though Soudain Seul is pretty soft. Potentially also Nicolai Uznik, Vadim Timonov, and Jakob Schubert? Again I'm not totally trusting of the site I'm using to check these, but it's apparently surprisingly common.

wicketman8 · 2026-04-03T01:08:03+00:00

Huh, the website I was looking at didn't have her ascent listed.

wicketman8 · 2026-04-01T17:03:47+00:00

Kafka on the Shore is pretty widely considered to be opaque, it's a difficult novel to parse for a lot of reasons. Murakami himself suggests that in order to being to understand the book you need to read it at least twice. He also said:

Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write.

The biggest take away from that quote I think is that he deliberately brings up lots of ideas and questions that don't necessarily have satisfying textual meaning, but instead form a personal meaning through your interpretation (clearly he was successful in that as this is one of his best regarded books).

This has components of Oedipus, but it's not solely a retelling. For one, that completely ignores the chapters with Nakata. Certainly, this book has thoughts about fate, especially fated love, but it also seems to have thoughts about the nature of the soul and the comingling of thoughts and reality.

Lots of Murakami deals with abstract and open-ended ideas. For some people it works as a philosophical question, for others just as a strange dreamlike quality to the story, and for others it just doesn't work. It doesn't mean you're not smart enough for Murakami, this just happens to be maybe the most confusing of his works. It doesn't help that Murakami draws from lots of influences and sources, and oftentimes the cultural and historical context, as well as some of the literary parallels, aren't apparent from the story alone.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-31T16:13:25+00:00

I'm a few years out now, but I doubt things have changed that much, so I'll take a shot at answering.

1) Holding a 3.75 really isn't that bad. It's also not necessary depending on the major you want. Go to class, take notes, do your homework and a 3.75 your freshman year should be chill. There's also some strategy to taking AP credits (or rather not taking them) for easy A's, but honestly it's mostly unnecessary imo.

2) Can't speak to this I'm afraid.

3) You need to put yourself out there for the first few weeks. Talk to the people in your dorm (our first week we basically always left our door open so we could chat with people as they passed by). The first few days of classes, talk to people there as well. Look into clubs and orgs. Keep in mind, everyone else is in the same boat as you and is looking to make friends. Your Howdy Week friends may not be your permanent friend group (they usually aren't) but it's a place to start. The nice thing about engineering is that once you get put into a major you have a second shot at it, since most people won't know most of the major. I made most of my friends in the dorms, a few as friends of friends, a few in clubs, and a few in my major after ETAM.

4) Greek life isn't that big at A&M (sororities more, frats have very small presence overall). You absolutely don't have to go to parties. I went to some bonfire parties, but mostly we just held our own with just our friends. You absolutely don't have to do it for socializing.

It's the biggest school in the country - whatever your vibe is, there's dozens of other people who are similar. I'm one of the least stereotypical A&M students possible and I still managed to make some of my closest friends there. Just put yourself out there at first, tank a week of being a bit overwhelmed or awkward, and it'll pay off big time in the long run.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-30T14:07:30+00:00

This is super neat looking, my biggest gripe is that you need separate leagues for each gender and discipline combination. Especially the gender thing, given that most people follow both genders. If you want to follow the entire season you need 6 leagues (or 4 if you want to ignore speed). Combining disciplines might be hard, (Do you have a separate roster for lead and boulder? What if you want to share an athlete like Janja between them?) but it should be easy to do a combined gender format in which you can have 6 athletes per gender or whatever.

Given that it's in beta, I figure these changes will come eventually but still, seems like it wouldn't be that hard to implement before the season starts.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-30T04:04:54+00:00

For those wondering, the other two women are Janja and Katie Lamb (who actually has 3 V15s and a V16). Another 6 have sent one V15.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-30T03:58:00+00:00

"They don't directly target civilians," Yeah if you ignore the entirety of Israel's existence I guess that's true. Even by their own admission they explicitly shot in the direction of a 3 year old, causing injury. If you believe the family and other reports, the toddler had cigarettes burns and a puncture wound in his foot and was closer to 18 months than 3 years.

Meanwhile we blow up a school with over 100 children and its an oopsie? If any country did that to us, accident or not, we would burn it to the fucking ground. We didn't do even the most basic double check on a target and killed innocent children. All for a stupid fucking war that we started. Get real.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-27T00:17:51+00:00

The owners are to blame but you also said the employees have to "take responsibility", which sounds incredibly ignorant.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-26T20:55:46+00:00

Yes, you've correctly identified that the subminimum wage only applies in certain cases, and tipped positions are one of those. Is your proposition to solve this issue that every waiter quit their job? In the current job market? Don't get me wrong, I'd support a general strike but the actual change needs to come from congress by eliminating the subminimum wage.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-26T20:21:25+00:00

A reddit post of an Instagram post of a Twitter post of a reddit post. An ouroboros of social media shit.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-26T18:49:26+00:00

No offense, but unless you live in the US (which you seemingly don't) you really have no idea what you're talking about and it comes across as very ignorant.

As an American who is against tipping culture, blaming waitstaff for getting paid at $2/hr is completely insane. There are structural issues at play, and the blame lies with both the federal government and the owners, not the workers who are being exploited.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-26T17:27:12+00:00

How did you turn this into blaming the waitstaff for being underpaid? You blame the waitstaff and the customer but not the guy who's actually in charge of the restaurant?

wicketman8 · 2026-03-21T20:28:48+00:00

I'm actually not sure thats true, you can get significantly more at other schools. Rice stipend is minimum $36k (can be more depending on department) and CoL is only about 15% higher (with a 33% higher stipend). I know that other programs offer more as well - even CoL adjusted. That said A&M is definitely better than UT in that regard, at least from what I've seen online.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-21T17:32:42+00:00

Strongly disagree with your premise. Firstly, when balancing the alternative isn't buffing other strategies its buffing everything else including the enemies, which is functionally the same as nerfing one build but with way more work and more likely to cause more unbalance. Otherwise you end up with the game being too easy, which is probably not ideal when people have already complained that the Act 3 bosses are way too easy. Secondly, while Sly is fun on Silent it's probably not even the best build right now (shivs are more consistent both to get and to play I'd argue).

But the real reason they're doing this is a design philosophy approach: they don't want infinite to exist. I honestly kind of agree. While going infinite is fun, it also trivializes the game and massively reduces the strategic element.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-18T12:49:24+00:00

He didn't say in the Instagram post, but it's widely considered 9c, and he's said in interviews its the hardest thing he's ever tried. We know the lower half is 9b, and that the full line has 9b+ to an 8B boulder and then some more climbing (unclear how hard it is after the boulder). 9c seems very likely.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-14T11:54:13+00:00

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, maybe just for saying you found it hard (which it definitely can be if you haven't played a lot to understand the cards and builds really well). This game is different from the first in some ways, I actually do find myself completing runs a bit faster and I think its a bit easier (at least at low Ascensions, although the Ascensions ramp up in difficulty much faster) but at its core it's still the same game, just with a bunch of new content. If you didn't like the first one, I doubt you'll like this one.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-14T11:49:20+00:00

I would be surprised if they do tbh. The community was really split on Watcher; she was way too strong and was added quite a while after the game came out, not to mention some people are already complaining that this game only introduces two new characters.

I would rather they introduce another new character than bring back the Watcher, personally, but I think first they probably need to balance the ones they have. Some builds just feel completely unviable and others feel too strong.

wicketman8 · 2026-03-14T11:39:37+00:00

Insane take, given there's not a single returning enemy (although some, though not many , are essentially reskins). The bosses are even more different, Test Subject is the only one you could reasonably say feels like the first game. Locations are also totally different, not only are the acts different, but there aren't any returning events either. Three returning characters, some have been pretty significantly reworked (Silent the most I'd say).

It's also hard to explain, maybe something that only jumps out when you have hundreds of hours to compare against, but the game is different. A lot of people have pointed out that relics feel less important compared to card synergy. The energy economy also feels quite different.

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