There's definitely something to be said for letting players dissect and figure out the game before it gets patched. Something a lot of e-sports could do with a little more of.

As for Ken, he just recently returned to the scene.

He went inactive for about 5 years, but came back in 2012. Hasn't been doing nearly as well as he used to though. After 5 years the metagame kind of left him behind. He made it onto the 2013 power rankings, though only barely at spot 100. Recently he was given a sponsorship by Team Liquid so he's been getting a lot more high-level practice, and he even finished 21st at MLG this year, outstripping a lot of people who outranked him on the 2013 list. It'll be interesting to see how far he goes. Everybody loves a good comeback story.

Jigglypuff is a viable character now, but she's not as dominant as she used to be. The guy who mained her switched to Fox and Falco after he started being usurped as the best jiggs player. These days he's the definitive number one player, while the usurper is a tentative number five. People are learning how to avoid rest better, so jigglypuff's competitive potential is waning a bit.

I find it fascinating how much the rankings depend on individual innovators. Some characters that have amazing depth never get developed because on the surface they're crap. The best example of this is the Ice Climbers. The tech skill for those characters is so different from all the other characters that they were underrated for a long time, until one or two players figured them out. And they still haven't been perfected. The top ranking IC player today got to that rank without using their best technique: an infinite grab that's inescapable. They still have untapped potential

Maybe a better example of this is Yoshi. The Yoshi meta basically didn't exist until this year when some japanese guy comes out of nowhere and starts taking games off the top 5 players using this character that used to be F tier. Some of that was probably lack of experience against a strange character, but it's still crazy that Yoshi can be viable in that way.

Each group is very isolated, in particular there is only one person out of my college peeps who knows a single one of my high school peeps. It's kind of startling to think about, but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Everybody in my high school goes to the states for uni, not Canada.

You and your daughter were alone, and your first priority is to her. Even if the guy was genuine I don't think you did anything unreasonable.

This is the second story here about people being stopped for help with "car trouble." Is this a common thing? I don't live in the US and I don't drive so I don't really know what it's like, but is this what you do when you have car trouble? Just ask random strangers for help?

These are great. Here's a pretty good website with some more. It's always good to be wary of these while constructing your argument.

I find a lot of people (in my hs debate club, mind you) misuse logical fallacies while examining their opponent by simply stating that their opponent's argument contains fallacy x and then moving on like the point's been made for them. Need's more 'splainin.

I don't use them intentionally myself, but according to my rhetoric professor, op-ed writers sometimes use them to get their audience even more on their side. I've never seen an example of this though. The only other people I can imagine using them are trolls, and I'm sure they do it all the time.

We have some family friends who've been living in Guangzhou for the last 5 years or so. When they first moved in they had heard from other expats that some internet providers will set you up with a vpn if you go in and ask. They asked, and the guy at the counter just asked if they'd be willing to pay some extra RMB. It worked immediately once they got the modem set up.

That's all I've heard of anything like that though. I don't imagine it would be widespread, even in cities with high expat populations.

I'd love to hear if anyone knows anything more about this. Also if anyone knows whether international schools in China use vpns.

It's not the greatest article, but it gives some historical context and is especially relevant with CY Leung's latest comments. The desire for democracy in Hong Kong comes from its vast inequality. Property prices have risen, income has not.

To add some anecdotal evidence, I'm taking five courses this semester at uni and within the first three weeks each of my professors had referenced both Plato and Aristotle. The philosophy course and polisci course excused, for the nonfiction writing course, the late 20th century literature course, and the intro to film course, it felt a tiny bit out of place.