What are you reading, watching and listening to? - All languages

[foxcatdog]

I have spent a lot of hours in league of legends since late late 2018 since i started playing more than 100 days of my life (i've cut down in recent years simply due to exhaustion but i never fully get tired of the game). Below is a commentary on the 2 champions (heroes if you are from Dota 2 which i am from) i played the most. I suck at the game (currently the lowest rank) if you want to know this is just my perspective.

Fizz
Every champion in league has certain privileges. Fizz's priviliges are he has untargetability on a basic ability with probaby the shortest cooldown in league compared to its other main counterpart Vladimir (Viego can spam untargetability too but someone has to die first) (the other 2 examples of untargetability on basic abilities are from a tank and a healer not on champions which are meant to damage you so they matter less not that Yuumis ability hasn't drawn endless criticism since her classes main weakness is that you are supposed to target them first). His other privilege is that his ultimate is kinda long range and barely that he doesn't have to worry about unit collision due to being permanently ghosted.

Other than that he only has downsides in the sense he has to make a certain degree of commitment to damage someone (his longest ranged ability is his E which most of the time you wanna doublejump to get out of range of retaliation so you can't even use it for damage). His W is just a basic attack reset which even has part of its damage backloaded into multiple hits not that he can outduel anyone. His basic trade combo is Q + Auto + W to proc electrocute (and i have failed to proc electrocute multiple times due to being bad) and then possibly jump the fuck out of there with E to avoid retaliation. E is only worth being used to finish off enemies or avoid an enemy ability and even then you don't wanna be trading any longer with any other melee champion than you have too so you best save E to get away. Other than that using Q leaves you with about a moment where you can't use E so you have to use it carefully.

Probably my favourite match with Fizz is against Yone which is a fairly common champion. If he's better than you he exploits his E well as uses his slight range advantage to poke you with Q. He's also a fighter so i sometimes forget not to trade with him for too long. Yasuo his brother can just negate your ult for free if they aren't really bad or have recently used it against say your jungler when he/she comes but otherwise he is fine due to being a melee champion so they don't play a game of catch me (Fizz excels at catching enemy champions but i dislike the matchup). Other matchups i like include Veigar just because his sheer disadvantage against Fizz counters the fact he's one of those scaling champion (you can basically ignore his only form of CC (ability to stop enemies from doing stuff) if in it when its cast and his abilities are really hard to hit) and most melee champions.

Fizz is also probably the easiest assasin having no real combos to execute and a source of much ire for people due to his privileges.

Lux
Q (a long ranged root which can sometimes hit 2 people) + E (a long ranged nuke + slow) + Ult (a really long ranged nuke) done you should kill any squshy champion on lower health or when you have lots of items. She's the pinnacle of a burst mage and also comes with a Shield which can hits lots of allies and is decently strong when maxxed and you hit them with both hits. Her differences in playstyle from Fizz come down to class (Assasin vs Mage) in that shes a lot safer but can't get or guarantee kills as easily. Her privileges include her range and her CC. The fact that you can always choose to leave up her E as a slowing zone if needed and also that the same ability and her ult provides vision and that her ult is on a fairly short cooldown.

Matchups don't really exist for range champions but you have to maintain some degree of respect for melee champions or they will get on top of you and possibly kill you (she struggles against any Fizz who isn't hardwired to prefer melee matchups to ranged ones like me) and you have to make sure your abilities land on ranged champions without theirs landing on you. Other than that she is much easier to describe.

Other champs i like include Eevelyn (my pick for when jungle she is more about planning then sheer agility in terms of assasin playstyle since she has permanent invisibility if shes not in a certain range of enemy champions), Neeko (my back up mid in case these two get banned who also has similar privilges to lux but being a bit shorter range) and a lot of support champions like Yuumi and Nautilus .

[WarpedWartWars]

Various songs by Peter Hollens, The Wellerman, The Bass Gang, and Colm McGuinness. Also Diggy Diggy Hole by Yogscast.

[Travis B.]

I am reading Linus Torvalds' book, Just for Fun.

[Raphael]

I am reading Linus Torvalds' book, Just for Fun.

Shortly after there was a discussion here on what an abusive asshole he apparently is?

[Travis B.]

I am reading Linus Torvalds' book, Just for Fun.

Shortly after there was a discussion here on what an abusive asshole he apparently is?

I got the book because apparently it provides a very good picture of the early days of Linux development, as was recommended in comments on news.ycombinator.com in response to an article in LWN by Lars Wirzenius, who knew Linus early on, about the beginnings of Linux. By the logic that I should not read his book because he has a temper I shouldn't use his operating system either, should I?

[Raphael]

By the logic that I should not read his book because he has a temper I shouldn't use his operating system either, should I?

Well, I won't let the fact that there were many things wrong with Thomas Edison stop me from using electricity. I'd argue that a book is a more personal thing than a technological invention, though - more closely linked with the creator's personality.

[Travis B.]

By the logic that I should not read his book because he has a temper I shouldn't use his operating system either, should I?

Well, I won't let the fact that there were many things wrong with Thomas Edison stop me from using electricity. I'd argue that a book is a more personal thing than a technological invention, though - more closely linked with the creator's personality.

To me the big thing about Linus is that while he has a temper - which he has tried to tone down in recent years - he doesn't have anything else objectionable about him. He isn't sexist or racist, he lacks any odious political beliefs (to me he appears to be a basically a centrist), etc. Personally Eric S. Raymond and his like bother me much more than Linus does (not that that justifies Linus's temper).

[Ares Land]

I read Just For Fun when it came out, which was, I dunno, 20 years ago?

As I recall it was a pretty interesting account of the story of the Linux kernel. You don't really get more first hand than that. I don't recall anything really objectionable.

About Torvalds, he made a public apology a few years back, and took some time off to get help. I don't know, that sounds pretty positive? Better than a lot of people anyway. (No idea on how things on the Linux kernel are going these days now, though.)

[Raphael]

About Torvalds, he made a public apology a few years back, and took some time off to get help. I don't know, that sounds pretty positive? Better than a lot of people anyway. (No idea on how things on the Linux kernel are going these days now, though.)

Well, I don't really know much about the exact sequence of events there, so perhaps I should leave this particular topic to people who do know about that.

[Ares Land]

I Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence is delightful and helps explain that exotic and sometimes maddening people, the French.

I have this one at one -- it was quite the library success here in France. So I skimmed it a bit of the early chapters.

It gives some hints of Britsh culture, the other way around so to speak. It's amusing to see which bits Mayle finds baffling and confusing. Also the parts where he and fellow Brits -- though he seems oblivious, or at least pretend to be -- are clearly being cheated by the locals!

The British (and IME the Germans as well) are apparently quite surprised at the hours-long lunches. That's something, I should clarify, that only happens at family reunions and holidays. Also, it's a bit confusing -- what do they do on Christmas Day then?

What he finds noteworthy is in itself noteworthy and surprising. He goes on a bit on cash transactions to avoid taxes, which is definitely something that happens a lot. But I wonder if he's not exaggerating -- surely it also occurs to British plumbers and electricians that they can make a bit more money this way?
He goes on a bit about the paperwork, and again the struggle is real (I'm hunting for a home right now, so this part definitely hits home)... but I'm not sure I believe the implication that you can buy a house in Britain without some kind of documentation?

The book is about Provence, and a rural part of it. There is quite a bit of difference between regions in France; besides the city/countryside divide is pretty big, not to mention the Paris/rest of France gap, which is huge. I think the culture shock is a lot less severe for British expats in Paris.

I think a comparison between rural England, Scotland or Wales and rural France would be interesting.

[Raphael]

What he finds noteworthy is in itself noteworthy and surprising.

Now I want to re-post a post I did in this thread almost two years ago:

I've just finished Ze Germans - An expat's guide to living in Germany, by Fadi Gaziri, although I admittedly rushed a bit through the later chapters. Generally accurate. At times, I think he's a bit too harsh on Germany, but then again, I have a much lower opinion of German High Culture than he does, so on that particular matter, I'm harsher on Germany than he is. The only part that strikes me as just outright false is the section on saunas, where he claims that everyone in the country is a lot into visiting public saunas. Um, no, a lot of people, myself included, have never been to a public sauna, and many people still see them very much as a Scandinavian import. I also think he kind of overstates the role of religion in society, which is interesting, given that he seems to have lived mainly in Hamburg and Berlin, neither of which strikes me as a particularly religious city.

And there's one part of the section on dating that strikes me as downright weird:

"When you're on the date, make sure that you listen attentively to everything the other person says. Repeat and paraphrase their stories, but make sure you don't interrupt them at any point. Always wait until they have finished their sentence. Try to mimic their facial expressions with your own."

Err, that's supposed to be advice specifically on dating in Germany? As opposed to, you know, handy rules of thumb for going on dates in many places where dating is a thing? Do people in other countries enjoy it when they're on a date and their date interrupts them all the time and never listens to them?

[Ares Land]

It's a good thing you did -- I think I missed that post the first time around.

Maybe the author mostly stayed in Bavaria? People seem particularly religious there.
Germany feels a bit more religious than France does. Reporting your religion on tax forms is always a source of surprise and puzzlement.
My father-in-law loves to tell the story of how, going to Munich as a teenager, his hosts said grace at dinner. Being not terribly well-traveled and, you know, kids, he and his friends were so surprised they burst into laughter.

On interrupting... it's definitely a lot more acceptable to interrupt people here.

[Raphael]

Maybe the author mostly stayed in Bavaria? People seem particularly religious there.

He seems to have lived mainly in Berlin and Hamburg.

I think the only time I ever witnessed people saying grace before a meal was when I was a guest at the home of a friend from school who was from a family of, I think, US-style evangelicals. (As I said earlier, we have some of those here, though not many.)

It's true that most public holidays are Christian, that Sundays tend to be quiet, and that there are somewhat bewildering regional differences about what is or what isn't a public holiday between historically Catholic and historically Protestant parts of the country.

[Travis B.]

I think the only time I ever witnessed people saying grace before a meal was when I was a guest at the home of a friend from school who was from a family of, I think, US-style evangelicals. (As I said earlier, we have some of those here, though not many.)

My mother comes from a Catholic family (she was raised Catholic but later became an atheist, or as they like to call them, ex-Catholic), and when I would be over with family at my maternal grandma's house everyone else would say grace before meals even though in my immediate family we never did.

[Raphael]

(she was raised Catholic but later became an atheist, or as they like to call them, ex-Catholic)

Aren't there some atheists-who-were-raised-Catholic who claim that they'll never really stop being Catholic, no matter what they do or don't believe about the existence or non-existence of God?

[Travis B.]

(she was raised Catholic but later became an atheist, or as they like to call them, ex-Catholic)

Aren't there some atheists-who-were-raised-Catholic who claim that they'll never really stop being Catholic, no matter what they do or don't believe about the existence or non-existence of God?

Apparently being a Catholic is like being an alcoholic - even if you haven't gone to mass in years and have thoroughly disavowed belief in any diety, at some level you're always a Catholic. My mother, for instance, frames her atheism in reference to Christianity and Catholicism in particular, as a rejection of belief, whereas I, having never believed in any diety nor having had anyone ever really try to convert me to believe in any god (or gods), door-to-door Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses aside, do not feel like my atheism is in opposition to any particular belief. I honestly don't care what other people believe, as long as they don't impose their beliefs on others. (I must admit though that it is fun to start religious arguments with door-to-door Mormons and Jehovah's Witness though.)

[Raphael]

(I must admit though that it is fun to start religious arguments with door-to-door Mormons and Jehovah's Witness though.)

Now I wonder what happens when door-to-door Mormons arrive at the home of a family of Jehovah's Witnesses, or vice versa.

[Man in Space]

Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”

[Travis B.]

Now I'm wondering if there are 12 step programs for those recovering from Catholicism - how does the "higher power" thing even work then?

[Raphael]

Now I'm wondering if there are 12 step programs for those recovering from Catholicism - how does the "higher power" thing even work then?

Well, if what you've switched to is one of the more rabidly bigoted forms of Protestantism...