The Honesty Sledgehammer

This was originally part of a bigger blog post but I deleted the first part. This is about the whole "I'm bluntly honest" thing. It's good to be honest with friends, but it's also good to be considerate. Telling a sensitive, soft friend who is in an emotional funk to snap the hell out of it will probably not help them very much, especially if you know they internalize all their emotions. That's like punching a snail in the face. If you have a friend that you know will appreciate your honesty and just can't get out of their emotional funk, then you probably could just straight up say, "hey hey, snap out of it" and they could totally just do that.

Pretty much... there is no one-size-fits-all approach (is that the phrase?) to being honest. That's like using the same hammer for every job. Or, in this case, sledgehammer. You'd probably wreck some delicate things by hammering in a point with a sledgehammer if it's not meant to be hammered in with a sledgehammer.

Little Bits of Sunshine

Sometimes I get bogged down thinking about how cruel, cold, sadistic, horrible and scary people can be. Then when I'm on the train I see people offer their seats up to old people, big scary looking dudes grinning and making silly faces and playing with other people's kids... reminds me not everyone is all that bad.

Also, this is beautiful.

Parallel Universe

I came across this idea on the internet: what if, when we die in this universe, we just instantaneously take over the consciousness of myself of another universe? Like... if there are infinite parallel universes, if we die in one, then our consciousness ceases to exist here and we just become aware of our consciousness in another. Because I am alive in every parallel universe. If I die in this one, then I will still be alive in the next, but I can only be in one consciousness at the same time.

Then inevitably would I be immortal, because at least one of these parallel universes would have found a way  to achieve immortality? Or, homo sapiens somehow evolved immortality?


Immortality would mean I would witness the death of the universe, when all the stars burn out and everything flatlines into absolute zero.

And I still wouldn't be able to die.

What happens after?

That's if there are infinite parallel universes. If not, then after moving through all the mes that could exist, then I would finally die.

What if's.

Bokeh: The World Without Glasses

One night, while walking through Boston with a friend, we took off our glasses and then noticed that the world is in bokeh!

This is what it's like to be near-sighted.

Imagine, all this time I've been looking up out-of-focus pictures on the internet so I can look at pretty warm lights and all I had to do was take off my glasses.

These are all pictures from the internet, by the way. Isn't it nice?

I have Christmas lights in my room. It's so nice and cozy.

Anyway... it was just a new way of looking at things.

OHOHO DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE

Ranked Games

I played my first two solo-queue ranked games today and both of them had at least one classic rager. Like, people who blame everyone for everything except themselves. I've heard that ranked games are higher pressure so people get mad easier, but part of me didn't believe that. SURPRISE! But due to my awesome skills of course we won both. Just kidding. But there are some basic rules I follow that I've noticed greatly increase my chances of winning.

1 - Take at least 1-2 wards with you on every back (especially past laning phase), if you have room in your inventory. If your entire team does this, you'll have lots of vision! Don't rely on just the support to ward everything.

2 - If you face check unwarded territory, prepare to die. If you don't, you're lucky, but don't count on it. When in doubt, ward it.

3 - THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT: if you're behind, do NOT play like you're on par or ahead. I used to make this mistake, hoping I can kill my opponent before they kill me just by sheer outplay. At 1-3-1 vs. 3-0-0. Yeah right. Be smart about it. If you're going in for the kill, make sure you can get it, and don't chase further than you need to. Especially if you don't have vision. Otherwise, just farm safe, stay alive, and hope your team mates come to help you out. If they don't, then just try not to die until laning phase, then you can try to catch up then.

4 - During laning phase, wounding your opponent and forcing them to go back is just as good as killing them, as that prevents them from gaining CS which puts them behind. Don't tower dive without proper vision and preparation. 3v1 tower dives can turn into a triple kill if you get too greedy.

5 - STOP CHASING THE ENEMIES AROUND THE ENTIRE MAP. It doesn't matter if they're hobbling away with only 10 HP. If they're not a threat and you could easily kill him if he sticks around, then go grab a tower, grab their buffs, dragon or baron before their team mates come to back them up.

6 - If you ace the enemy team, DO SOMETHING, don't just go farm wolves and wraiths if you can take a tower.

7 - Check enemy respawn timers after you ace them. If you're taking down their base towers and you notice they're all back out after you've aced them, get the hell out. Your team is still wounded with low mana from the previous team fight and the enemy is all charging out of their base with full HP and brand new items. Many times my team has been aced this way because we stick around for way too long.

8 - If you're running through the enemy jungle, drop some wards in the bushes. That way you can keep an eye on where they are. That means you know where they aren't, so can grab dragon/baron/more towers/buffs/farm, or SURPRISE GANK!

9 - Know whether or not the game is hopelessly lost. Sometimes the game is still fairly equal, but morale is so low that the team surrenders. I've had games where we've come back by acing the enemy and just smashing through mid lane all the way to nexus even though we were behind in everything. But not behind enough not to be able to destroy their towers in a short amount of time!

10 - WHEN IN DOUBT, WARD. ALWAYS WARD BARON AND DRAGON.

11 - If bot lane just got 4-man ganked and you had just killed top lane, GET THE TOWER. Don't try to save your doomed team mates if it's not worth it. Don't worry, they're respawn.

12 - Know when to push lane and when to have the enemy come to you.

... can't think of anything else right now, but those things have really helped me win games even if the team is behind. Can't wait til I get my rank!

Okay, sleepy time!