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.

Him is the guy in the post – Tim Walz

I would guess they were using this as a rhetorical device to emphasise how much they dislike Trump. I don’t think they’re actually planning on voting for the guy

No, I think it’s because you took a dismissive tone towards media that other people enjoy, which is bound to rub people up the wrong way.

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

Lichess :P

What’s interesting is that this precise scenario happened in the 1910s in the UK (given that at the time the house of lords was the highest court in the country as well as the upper legislative chamber). Lloyd George called an election on the subject, and negotiated with the king that if the lords didn’t vote for a reduction in their powers, he would create a massive influx of Liberal peers.

Interesting episode in history.

I was ready to throw some hands (virtually)

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!

It happens. Best advice is to play some blitz with friends otb; get used to having to recognise positions quickly. Good luck!

Edit: on the off chance this was Bristol, hi!

No worries; I saw it once and it stuck with me. For an ms paint drawing it’s pretty powerful. I do have one small issue with it, which is that it doesn’t explicitly state that it is not a bad thing to have that trait. Calling someone disabled as an insult implies that being disabled is bad, which I fundamentally disagree with. It’s not because I ‘don’t want to upset anyone’ – it’s because I completely disagree with the implication, and I think the implication is directly damaging to us as a society.

I’d much rather insult someone because they’re a neo-fascist who deserves to find Lego on their bathroom floor with their foot at 1am when they only went for a piss and now the pain and adrenaline has jolted them awake and they won’t sleep until at least 4am… for the rest of their life.

Sort of – it’s more middlegame than opening. That is, more understanding the pawn structure and what it’s aiming for. Daniel Naroditsky is a good youtuber to watch to get a flavour of these kinds of ideas.