MKM was less bomb-heavy than OTJ, so at least drafts seemed better. I missed the prerelease, so I don’t know how swingy it was in limited. I suspect quite a lot anyway - prereleases have always been swingy, and as long as rares are more powerful than commons, more rares in a pack will always make it swingier.
The good:
The bad:
Sometimes there just isn’t a pick 1 in your colors in packs 2 and 3 (on Arena). This is especially obvious in MH3 with the colorless theme, but it’s also possible in normal sets. I don’t know if this is different in arena vs. in paper.
Everything costs more. I’m in Canada, so draft prices were going up well before the switch, but this made it even more expensive.
Sealed is swingier. With a chance at opening up to 4 rares in a pack, those that do will have more bombs and more powerful cards in general. OTJ was very bomb heavy, so sealed was even more lopsided. This also affects drafts somewhat, but I think that can be fixed with design balancing once they get used to the changes. I don’t think sealed can be fixed with card design.
Ultimately, I think this is worse for players and better for businesses and way better for WotC. They can fix most of the problems, but price isn’t something they’re interested in fixing (and, to be fair, the price of a booster has stayed well below inflation). Unfortunately, this means that some people just can’t draft anymore or as often.
It’s also in the same carcinogen group as electromagnetic fields, aloe vera, nickel, and kimchi. Most of those things you listed are quite dangerous for other reasons, but cancer is not the primary concern with any of them.
IARC group 2B is where substances end up if a study manages to produce cancer at any dose. If you drink 50 cans of diet coke per day (which is the equivalent of the rat study that demonstrated that it’s possible for aspartame to cause cancer), then you might get cancer caused by the aspartame you just consumed.
Aspartame is not carcinogenic.
I feel like there need to be multiple CS pathways. For example, people who want to go into hardware development might take a set of courses more closely aligned with electrical engineering.
There are.
My university (and many others) offered Computer Science, Software Engineering, and Computer Engineering. Computer Engineering is sort of a middle ground between EE and SE, where you learn hardware concepts like circuits and semiconductors (for hardware development), but there are also algorithm-based courses.
Each of the programs has many options for elective courses, and you can focus on databases, algorithms, security, web development, or whatever you want. The core concepts are the same, and it’s more about learning broad concepts and skills, rather than focused skills. Things like Redis and Elasticsearch didn’t exist when I took my database course - the practical portion was mostly just SQL. Things like Docker came even later. But the broad concepts I learned allow me to jump in and use “new” technologies as they mature and stabilize.
None of the programs were just “coding bootcamp”. Coding was almost inconsequential to my degree (CompEng), though I understand it’s used more heavily in Computer Science degrees. I had a single first-year course that was supposed to teach us programming - all the other courses just assumed a basic knowledge. The focus was more on the design, the logic, and the algorithms. Anyone can code - the bootcamps have that right. But not everyone can design and implement a distributed system efficiently and securely.
I have a friend on ozempic (for diabetes). It really seems like it’s impossible for him to just use it to continue his excessive eating habits, because it suppresses his appetite and he just doesn’t eat much anymore. He still eats garbage, but much less.
According to the article, 25% lead to convictions. I don’t know if there’s an appropriate quantity of strip searches greater than zero, but if it’s going to happen, this actually seems like a pretty good result.
I guess the questions to ask here are: could these arrests be made without a strip search (e.g. would a frisk have been sufficient)? If not, could the strip searches be done by an adult of the same gender and also in the presence of their parent or guardian?
There’s definitely a lot that is bad about this, but if 25% of strip searches result in conviction, there’s clearly another problem here that needs to be addressed.
Greta is just the new David Suzuki. I hope she does better.
Sorry for the double post, but I thought you might be interested to see this.
MaRo has posted the odds. So looks like 8.88 packs per draft will have 2 rares, 0.96 packs per draft will have 3 rares, and <0.24 packs per draft will have 4 rares, for resulting in roughly (8.88 + 0.96*2 + 0.24*3 =) 11.52 extra rares per draft.
I think it’s more reasonable to assume chances are equal to the percentage of rares in a given set, which can vary dramatically, but I believe it’s usually about 33%.
Why would they not adjust for rarity in this slot? They do it in all the other slots - it seems like a big leap to think that any specific common that can appear in this slot is equally as likely as any specific mythic.
I think it’s just 8 extra rares/mythics per pod.
Assuming all the special guests are r/m, The List slot has 3.12% chance of being a rare.
About 1/7 (14.3%) foils is r/m.
We don’t know the distribution of rarity in the wildcard slot, but I’ll use the same distribution as the foils for a reasonable estimate.
That makes (3.12+14.3+14.3 ~=) 32 extra rares per 100 packs, or just under 8 per 24 packs.
It’s actually not a huge change. Four common slots from the current draft booster are turning into three slots:
So for draft, not much is changing in the average pack.
There’s also a big link between lack of sleep and both obesity and cancer (and dozens of other health problems).
Western society has glorified not getting enough sleep as though it makes you manlier or better in some way. It doesn’t. It just makes you die sooner.
We’ve moved to an “always on” society with the proliferation of the internet. With this comes disrupted circadian rhythms and even more reasons/excuses to not follow a regular or beneficial sleep schedule.
bananada🇨🇦
My goal there was always Bananada. Someone else wrote the “for scale”, but I figured that was cool.
I do wish that whoever edited it near the end while I was sleeping had followed through and removed the “a” as well. I agree that this is the worst of both worlds.
Edit: I just noticed that the same guy who removed the bottom half of the d also added a pixel to one of the "n"s, so now they don’t even match. Ugh.
Yes. I think this is less a tantrum, and more of a “fuck you” from Smirnova to Kharlan, but your interpretation is fine.
The rules state that the competitors must shake hands at the end of a bout, and that the penalty for refusing to shake hands is a black card. At the beginning of the pandemic, this rule was suspended, and was replaced with saluting and tapping blades. It is not clear whether the handshake rule is back in effect at the international level (which in itself is a huge problem - if athletes can’t look up the rules, it’s hard to follow them).
As an online observer, these are the facts I was able to gather. At the end of this bout, Kharlan offered her blade for the blade tap, and instead of reciprocating, Smirnova offered her hand for a handshake. Kharlan then left the piste without tapping blades or shaking hands, and Smirnova launched her complaint which (per the rules) required her to remain on piste until the issue was resolved. The officials decided the complaint was legitimate, and black carded Kharlan.
All that follows is my own speculation. Kharlan offered the blade tap but was refused. Depending on whether the handshake rule is officially reinstated (and it seems that many athletes at this particular competition were just tapping blades without a handshake) she may have been able to lodge her own complaint that Smirnova was unwilling to tap blades. They could have just had an old fashioned stand-off, with one fencer extending their blade for the tap and the other extending their hand for the handshake, neither willing to compromise, and it would (probably) have resulted in the referee clarifying the rules without penalty to either fencer. But because Kharlan left the piste without tapping blades and without shaking hands, it left an opening for Smirnova to exploit.
I do wish that the FIE would go on record saying whether the handshake rule is fully back in effect. I’m actually a fan of tapping blades, because too many fencers show up to tournaments sick, and shaking hands with everyone is a good way to spread disease. Even beyond that, people often have very sweaty hands, and it’s just kinda gross.
To be clear, if she is contesting a ruling by the referee, she is not allowed to leave the piste (strip) until the situation is resolved by the head official(s). As soon as she leaves the piste, she gives up all rights to contest a ruling.
This happened publicly before with Shin A-lam at the 2012 Olympics, where she had to stay on piste for an hour while the officials discussed the ruling.
If you’re talking about the “Value” booster, your LGS probably won’t (and shouldn’t) stock those. That’s for grandmas to buy at dollar stores and Walmart checkout aisles. It’s an absolutely scummy product, but it shouldn’t cause SKU issues at your LGS.