oh look. it’s the brave little cis boy

What do you think is in the beans??

Fingers crossed!

The sheer pleasure in watching an arrogant tit get humbled was chef’s kiss. Once by someone who couldn’t give a shit about him, and was good enough to simply crush him the first few games and then dick about, and once by someone who really wanted a statement victory

It funny because yesterday the chess did not, in fact, speak for itself

Northampton resident detected. Your opinion is invalid.

Always glad to see a fellow beef head out in the wild. Beef out!

History podcasts I like:

Revolutions. Well known; Mike Duncan goes through various revolutions through history in an excellent, detailed narrative.

American History Too!: two academics from the university of Glasgow have various guests on to discuss different topics from American history. They know their stuff and are really charismatic.

In Our Time: BBC podcast that’s been going since the early 2000s. A panel of academics are interviewed and discuss a topic on which they are all experts. Incredibly well researched and interesting, though not especially humorous.

It’s such a neat line, and it was great to watch the players’ and commentators’ reactions

Lichess :P

What was the original post?

You can use a spoiler tag instead of nsfw for the same effect :)

FUCKING DOING OUR JOB AS TRANSPORT MODELLERS AND DOING A FUCKING COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS THAT SHOWS YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO GET FUCKING MODE SHIFT FROM RURAL USERS UNLESS YOU RUN A FUCKING METRO STYLE 10 MINUTELY SERVICE WHICH IS FUCKING UNFEASIBLE WITH THE FUCKING RESOURCES WE HAVE AVAILABLE.

IN THE FUCKING UK WE HAVE A LARGE NUMBER OF FUCKING ABANDONED RAILWAYS FROM THE PERIOD OF FUCKING COAL MINING THAT WOULDN’T HAVE ANYWHERE NEAR THE FUCKING DEMAND NECESSARY TO JUSTIFY SETTING UP AN EXPENSIVE AS FUCK SIGNALLING SYSTEM TO BRING THEM UP TO MODERN FUCKING SAFETY STANDARDS, ALONGSIDE REPLACING THE FUCKING RAILS, SLEEPERS AND BEDS.

IF INSTEAD YOU CAN HAVE A FUCKING PUBLICALLY OWNED FLEET OF FUCKING ELECTRIC ‘MINI TRAINS’ THAT PEOPLE COULD USE FOR INFREQUENT BUT NECESSARY TRIPS, THAT COULD REMOVE A FUCKING SIGNIFICANT BARRIER TO MODE SHIFT, WHICH WOULD BE PRETTY FUCKING RAD

I’m gonna go for about 1600-1800 lichess, just because Nh5 from black feels a bit of a nothing move, and while 15. Rad1 for white gives a discovered attack with the pawn recapture, it gives an isolated pawn and the queen can just move.

What time control was this? Important factor in decision making. Also, don’t suppose you could post the PGN – I hate not being able to flick back and forward

Holy shit. That seems so helpful

I use it to scrape up all the stuff once I’ve chopped it. Chop onion, use spine of blade to scrape onto this, dump in pot. Saves lifting heavy chopping board, or scraping onto thin knife.

Just move to the UK. This is the norm.

Inability to take a compliment is tied to the general cultural dislike of ‘people who get above themselves’. Arrogance is the cardinal sin, and so in receiving a compliment you either a) accept it (meaning you agree with them that you’re great, which is a sign of arrogance!) or b) deny it (false modesty! A sign of even greater arrogance!). The only acceptable response is to sputter and turn red with embarrassment.

Ulcerative colitis

For sure: there are some pretty good rules of thumb for when to attack.

Generally you want to develop your pieces first. What does that mean? It means you want to get your pieces on squares that aren’t the row closest to you.

Often players will start attacking without having moved some of their pieces. This is often a mistake. Think of it this way: your opponent has all their pieces near their king to begin with, so automatically has more defenders than you have attackers. You need to get yours out to have a decent chance of delivering a checkmate.

There’s also a good rule of thumb in terms of the order you get them out in. Major pieces (queen and rook) are worth more than minor pieces (knight and bishop). So if you get your queen out early on a square it can be attacked, that leaves it vulnerable to being chased round the board, letting your opponent develop their pieces while attacking your queen. All of a sudden your opponent has all their minor pieces out, while all you’ve done is shuffle your queen.

Another key piece of advice is to control the centre of the board. A piece in the centre is much more powerful and controls more squares. Think of it like the high ground on a battlefield. In general in the opening you want to control this centre with your pawns, and minor pieces (knights and bishops) one way or another

So: in terms of the order you want to do things, most often you want to play a central pawn forward, develop your knights, then your bishops, then castle (keeping your king safe and bringing a rook towards the centre), then start looking for where you can develop your queen to start generating pressure.

The final piece of advice I’ll give is that tactics (checkmate or being able to take your opponent’s pieces) stems from having a good position: that is, having your pieces on squares where they are eyeing up the enemy position. You want to put your opponent under pressure, at which point tactics will start to appear to you.

If you want further resources, there’s a wealth of chess on YouTube. I’d highly recommend Daniel Naroditsky’s speedruns (starting at the beginning, in your case). He plays opponents of increasing skill levels over the course of many videos, so the early videos explain the basics of how to play chess according to sensible principles. Good luck, and have fun!