Actually Barry most military historians assume the early days of 41' would've been a disaster even without the purges because the Russian Army had grown to absolutely gigantic proportions, so even had there been no purge, there still weren't enough officers to go around, the purges just made it worse, and because the older generals who weren't purged performed so poorly (being mostly hold-overs from WW1). They certainly didn't help, but given the rapid expansion of Soviet reserve forces and men under arms in general, there is no scenario for which the army would've been ready to fight at peak performance in 1941, or even 1942.

A counter-point here is the performance of the Soviet Navy in 1941. The Soviet Navy was very heavily purged in 1937 and continually purged throughout the whole period. But its performance in the early days of WW2 was exceptional. Why? Because the navy had not been expanded all that much, and the existing naval institutions could absorb and accommodate the reserves that flowed in to bring the navy up to fighting shape. The Navy was even asked to perform many tasks for which it had *never* been trained to do, and still performed in those scenarios fairly well (for example most of the Soviet Naval Air arm ended up bombing troops on land, something that wasn't really discussed in the pre-war years or the evacuation of Talinn - which was a disaster - but considering the obsolescence of the Soviet Navy and their complete lack of air coverage, it's amazing they didn't suffer even heavier losses).

I should also point out that when somebody talks about mobilization that means automatic war in these scenarios. Poland's leadership (Second Republic) is often criticized for not mobilizing earlier, but they were restricted from doing so by the French and British because Poland mobilizing its armed forces would've been a defacto declaration of war on Germany (in which Germany could argue it was not the aggressor). Germany had a distinct advantage over the USSR in having already been at war with, and conquered, Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, and Yugoslavia, in that their armed forces were already mobilized and battle tested. Stalin was very clear to *avoid* provoking the Germans if at all possible - even allowing German planes to violate Soviet air space periodically without making too much protest (by international law you could, and still can, shoot down any air craft violating your air space - the Swiss (neutral) actually shot down quite a number of German fighters and bombers during the Battle of France for violating their air space). The Red Army was on high alert throughout April and May of 1941, but after May with no real sign of invasion coming (because Operation Barbarossa had been delayed by the Italian debacle in the Balkans) they actually tamped down their readiness and alert status. It was assumed that an invader wouldn't want to contest with the rain and inclement weather that set in every year around October. They were wrong, and Germany claimed that the Soviets were secretly mobilizing and intended to attack Germany and as such their preemptive war was justified (precisely the scenario Stalin et al had sought to avoid).

Of course, Molotov in his memoirs points out that they had gotten into a kind of group think regarding war readiness with Germany in regards to May being the month - when they should've remembered that Napoleon invaded in June as well - and took Moscow. For the Red Army's part it fully disclosed (though not publicly - publicly they claimed they were invincible) that based on the German Wehrmacht's size and capabilities, and its performance against France (France was roughly equivalent to Germany in terms of men under arms, tanks, planes, etc) the USSR would need until 1943 to successfully perpetrate a war against Germany. The course of the war nearly bears that out, as the German army's victories were few and far between from 1943 on.

"60 million" is far too high - most serious scholars suggest it's closer to 2 (as in probably directly responsible for - tertiary deaths aren't counted as there wasn't an official order). Folks who like to count other stuff put it at 20 - which is probably still far too high given the Soviet population at the time and the fact that 20+ million were killed in WW2. I mean any million of your own people being killed off is too many I would suggest lol. But the old Cold War propaganda of Robert Conquest and the CIA's guesstimates live on and will probably do so for some time.

Note I do not espouse the following views myself, but if you really wanted to troll and go all in, you could. My degree is in Russian History after all.

As an example of easy counter arguments lol.

Leon Trotsky was a traitor to the Soviet Union who deserved death and actively sought to destroy the central government which was lawful. The Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites was *real* though much derided as the subject of show trials - Trotsky *did* actively seek to form a political group within the Soviet Union made up of members of the Bolshevik party which would actively share information so as to do damaged to the Soviet Goverment. Stalin accused them of terrorism and their confessions to as much are questionable at best. As such he was a mortal threat to the government at a time when it was under great threat from abroad. (Justify every misdeed by claiming the USSR was under great pressure and threat from abroad and so was compelled to do strange things).

- Execution of Polish Officials: This certainly happened and the objective was to secretly eliminate people who would be threats to Soviet Governance in former Eastern Poland. Eastern Poland was mostly Ukrainian and Belorussian, but it had been Polish policy in the inter-war years to settle Polish people in these regions to try to ensure they didn't just spontaneously rejoin the USSR. Part of the reason treaty negotiations between the French, British, and Soviets didn't result in a tri-partite military alliance is because Poland outright refused to allow Red Army soldiers into Poland for fear that the Ukrainian and Belorussians living in their Eastern portions would leave Poland in the aftermath. For example Nikita Khrushchev's parents were Polish citizens during the inter-war period. (Again, great foreign pressure, dangerous international situation, extraordinary action).

Order No. 227 is *grossly* misrepresented in the Western press. It was more bombast and propaganda than anything else. Furthermore it was primarily only utilized against persons who actually were failing in their duty - which happened in every army in the war (people who sought to desert or refused to fight). The policy was applied *very* unevenly and in an army that would eventually grow to encompass 34 million people over the course of 5 years, the fact that there were only ~1 million sentences by military court for any actions detrimental to the army, shows that only 2% of the Red Army experienced any sort of legal penalty for their actions - which is more or less on par with the rate of desertion and other various military crimes in the other Allied armies. Even the USA executed a soldier who deserted the night before D-Day (and sentenced 48 others to death as well, though those sentences were eventually commuted). Again threat and international pressure, mortal threat especially etc.

If your intention is to go into the gathering and argue that indeed, Stalin was the greatest Russian leader - I could give you quite a bit of reading material because it does exist. I don't necessarily agree with or even like some of it, but it's there and it's published so you could use it.

- As far as who I think the greatest Russian leader was: You could make *very* strong arguments for the usual suspects: Aleksander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Czarina Catherine the Great, or even Lenin (though he only ruled for a short very chaotic time). Part of the reason one could argue for Stalin is that he virtually defined, in international politics, a very large portion of the 20th century. Some historians even call the 20th century "stalin's century" because he really was inordinately important and involved in international politics on a global scale.

I don't really see anything in that video - the reflection of the conformal coating... the solder from the machine?

Randomly shutting off could mean a few different things. Here are some suggestions to get you started that *aren't* specifically related to part failure.

A. You've plugged something in incorrectly and something is shorting out and automatically turning off the power or there simply isn't enough juice to start with - check that all of your connections are in the proper place and that everything is facing the correct direction and in the proper orientation - and that *all* requisite connections from the PSU to the MOBO are in place. This may require looking at the MOBOs directions and checking connections with your hand, and making sure you didn't plug anything in backwards.

B. The outlet, power strip, or even the power cable going to your PSU that you're plugged into is fucked up (try other outlets and cords) and can't handle passing the requisite number of volts, so the computer shuts off when it doesn't get enough juice. Just try a different outlet or a different room and/or a different cable if you have one.

C. The CPU or GPU's cooling set up is FUBAR and causes the whole thing to automatically shut down to not burst into flames. This is harder to check, as long as you didn't pour tons of thermal paste on when you mounted the CPU or didn't put any on at all, you should be OK.

D. You're grounding out the MOBO as the fans and etc shake the mobo/case, the motherboard is grounding itself to something metallic and cutting the power. Make sure you've used the standoffs correctly and that you didn't put one in and forget about it (that would now touch the mobo sometimes and cause it to shut off). I would save this one for next to last or last as it would require dismounting the MOBO to check for metal bits - unless you didn't use the standoffs at all... then that's your answer pry.

E. Make sure the GPU is plugged into the right PCIe slot. This is easy to check.

If I had to guess it's that some cable from the PSU to the MOBO isn't seated correctly or at all, or you put in a stand off and forgot about it and now it's touching the MOBO and shutting down the works.

Start with the easiest stuff first :D

Oh shit welcome to swamp tier internet. http://www.speedtest.net/result/6997447132

Is .2 upload typical for you? Have you done a thorough virus/malware scan recently? It's possible something is periodically uploading data somewhere and tanking your relatively tiny available upload bandwidth causing the spikes.

I mean, med mains could just make an agreement not to be lame and preserve uber (as was the rule in the past - you would have to report it to ESEA if you had evidence that somebody back spawned and preserved uber) which wouldn't be hard at all to figure out in most cases where it would actually affect the outcome of a round - and the STV is publicly available.

These sorts of things can be established with generalized sporting rules.

Does spawn binding make the game worse? If so, then we ought to just all agree not to do it and to punish those who do for being lame. This would be easy to implement so long as the ESEA admins were willing to award a round to the wronged team - as was the rule in the past for uber preservation when backspawning and force spawning multiple heavies and so on. I mean they get paid to do this kinda stuff so may as well use it if it's that bothersome lol.

I don't see spawn binding in itself as a problem - the uber preservation is more irksome, but I hardly ever see it happen outside of pugs lol.

Well that and there aren't really enough A/D maps to fill a season.

I would be fine with fiddling with round timers down to something like 7-8 - the problem with going shorter is that the shorter the round timer is: you would indeed disincentivize parking the bus, you would also incentivize just not pushing at all when your team is in a disadvantageous situation (on your own last). What's harder? Pushing off of your own last and fighting your way back to the opposition's last, or absorbing 1-2 more uber pushes/sack cycles and letting the 2-3 minute round timer go to 0:00 and having another mid. So, you'd have to seek to create a balance between hurting bus parking while not also creating a timer so short that it would be better not to push at all whenever you're not clearly winning (just on feel I'd think 5-6 minutes would be OK and would be interested in seeing how it played out in testing).

I'm not really sure bus parkery is that much of a concern in NA though.

Unification of the rule sets isn't really necessary. Both leagues are structured so differently, and the players are used to playing in much different ways; you're going to end up just upsetting your player base more than is necessary to do for the extremely marginal (if any) benefit you would gain when it came to our very occasional cross-continental competitions (and even then the players from abroad are an extremely small subset of the over all comp community on their home continent, so hardly anyone is being effected by having to acclimate to a different rule set).

My assumption is that if you can get a data point with the thing at 87 you're going to be going higher at least some of the time.

I'm not *that* familiar with newer Intel stuff, I mostly only buy AMD and as a rule they like to be colder. But even still if the 87 is indeed a C and not an F and it was just a random data point after playing tf2 for a bit, that's not good for the device regardless, especially if you do it every day for multiple hours lol.

If it's in fact 87 C and not Freedom units, then you're running pretty damn hot (hot enough to kick your CPU into throttling itself) and that's the cause of the stutter. You want your temps at 60 C or below under heavy load or you'll see performance drops.

raysfire was extremely nice to everybody. Even to his own detriment sometimes lol.

I've always had pretty good success with used book dealers unless you're looking for highly technical or very rare books (even then you can get them they're just not cheap). I just happen to prefer reading actual books, something about it helps me retain the information better.

If you're looking for things of the rarer or highly technical nature I'd deal directly with a library and see if they couldn't help you out with ebook rentals as suggested above or inter-library loan services.

There do appear to be e-book services like netflix, but most of the related articles are about how they're kind of a flop so I don't know if it's worth it or what sort of inventory they retain or what their stipulations are.

Mumble all the way

Discord and I don't get along for some reason. It *always* times out whenever it tries to update, and it seems to update pretty frequently, so every single time they roll out an update I have to go to their website and redownload the whole thing over again and reinstall.

I'm gonna avoid writing a full blown nerd essay here, but I have a few inklings of things I think need to be addressed.

1. This game has always been *ours* it is made up by a select group of people who enjoy the format. Trying to cater to imaginary people doesn't get us anywhere. If we were actively having conversations with large groups of non-6s playing people (such as a pub community or a lot of exclusively HL players were suddenly very interested), or Valve about what they'd like to see, with a clear path towards more support - it would be different, but none of that exists so trying to interject any of these things into a debate about what sort of whitelist we ought to have is a red herring.

Personally I'm in favor of a very strict whitelist simply to remove as many extraneous mechanics from the game as possible because I don't feel that they add anything particularly exciting. What does a soldier spamming a choke so as to be able to toot a horn that gives a temporary boost really add to the experience of playing competitive TF2 besides the momentary joy of doing something silly? But I realize most people don't see it that way.

2. Part of the reason off-classes have become so limited in their usage relative to say 5-6 years ago is actually less a function of how players think and more a function of our shrinking community. It used to be entirely possible to play nearly full-time pyro/heavy in lobbies and not be completely hated by the entire community, because there were so many lobbies going on, if people really had trouble dealing with it they could just move into another lobby, but the lobby with your offclassing fan would still fill. That doesn't happen anymore, we're in much tighter pug groups with a much more limited player set, so if you main heavy the whole game and upset too many people, they'll never play with you again, and then the person who gleefully plays the fat man never gets to play again and the player base has less and less experience in dealing with say, a heavy standing on spire.

It's also a function of the community's penchant for pre-arranging scrims. When you set up scrims in advance with the same small selection of teams over and over again there is a major incentive to not piss off that team such that they'll refuse to scrim you because you run x off-class more than they'd like; ultimately ending up as a team that can't find scrims. Since you're playing nice with your scrim partners, there is a clear incentive to not practice doing things like dragging a sentry out to second, so when it comes time for a match, having never practiced it, people don't do it. Particularly because again, that team they're playing may be a scrim partner on every other week of the season and you don't want to make them hate you. Whereas, in the past, one could find scrims very readily even if you had a reputation for, say, dragging your sentry from last all the way to gullywash mid, because ultimately if the other team refused to play from that point on, you could just go find another scrim in 5-10 minutes, and eventually that team would forget what you'd done to them because they would be playing bunches of other teams every day.

Obviously those 2 points don't necessarily apply to prem/invite teams of the past, but those players of that time, would've come up through that system and thus gained similar experience in playing and dealing with off classes too, and they still ran offclasses of different varieties far more often due to that experience they gained when they were still relatively green.

There is a lot that could be going on besides the thermal paste.

You could have wonky fan set up (sometimes more air isn't better) look at a few guides on case air flow and see if you've got something similar, it could be that a pocket of hot air is forming over your CPU and then is getting sucked into the cooler, and not cooling as much as it should.

It could be that the case fans can't suck in enough air (if you have the PC inside of a cabinet or shoved into the corner or tons of crap piled all around it)

It could just be excessively dirty.

It could be that the fan is failing to spin enough or that the heatsink is still clogged with dirt.

The thermal paste could also be an issue (a little dab will do ya' a big gob will screw ya').

On the bright side, CPU coolers are cheap for the most part; and if you do reseat it you'll have a good opportunity to clean the whole thing, but it would still be a good idea to take a look at it while it runs or especially look into replacing it or oiling it if the fan is excessively noisy.

Alright story time.

So when I was 18, this was beyond the statute of limitations btw so I feel fully secure in telling this, I was in a school program pretty similar to Jeopardy! essentially trivia teams. So anyhow, these things would go on til' pretty late at night (prizes were scholarship money so you had a reason to want to win), and you would have to wait until your subject was called, so we started playing poker to pass the time . It lead to us playing poker for lunch money during school. Eventually I got pretty good at it. So, we go to one of these trivia meets, and I hear from a friend, who was particularly taken with the aforementioned game, that there was an illicit (gambling is mostly illegal in my state) poker game being played at this old chuck e. cheese type establishment (since torn down and gone), and wanted to know if I'd go with him.

So, I did. Stopped at the ATM, took out some of my land-fill money, and determined that I would play pretty aggressively as I was given to understand that most of the people there would also be young and likely not of the money having pursuasion. We played until 1:30 A.M. on a school night, and I walked out of there with 354 more dollars than I started with. So, what is a young fella' to do with a cool 350? Well, of course, you skip on down to wal-mart, buy an x-box (they had just come out around 2 years prior or so so it wasn't top price) and a few games, and then declare yourself too sick to go to school for a few days and invite your friends over to play hooky too.

It was a solid few days, but then I virtually never touched the thing again :( I still regretfully look at it from time to time when I clean, never had the heart to get rid of it.