solas

Warsaw (/ˈwɔːrsɔː/ WOR-saw; Polish: Warszawa [varˈʂava] (listen)) is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula River in east-central Poland and its population is officially estimated at 1.8 million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.1 million residents,[3] which makes Warsaw the 7th most-populous capital city in the European Union. The city area measures 517.24 square kilometres (199.71 sq mi), while the metropolitan area covers 6,100.43 square kilometres (2,355.39 sq mi).[4] Warsaw is an alpha-global city,[5] a major international tourist destination, and a significant cultural, political, and economic hub. Its historical Old Town was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Can't believe this league has been around for so long. It seemed like it'd been around for ages when I joined, then everything after that went so fast.

Ahhhhh I won the Shaw so happy, this was one of my main goals with JPC

Early YouTube is incredible nostalgia, as much as I had terrible taste back then but a lot of it is still fun to look back on. Unregistered Hypercam 2, etc. wtf was going on in McDonalds playplaces in Canada? You had video games??? We just had gross ball pits So many nostalgic kids shows. PBS Kids wasn't that great but I feel like Cyberspace deserves a mention. Gilbert Gottfried voiced a cyber-bird in a hat My only knowledge of Beyblades is that time we watched the Beyblade national championships in Discord This list should've had Miniclip. EASY S tier

Congrats Steezy!

Fantastic pick. Congrats @bigAL!!!

The Chicago Phoenix are nearing a crossroads. After building up through the draft from the start of the franchise, the team capitalized on their young, developing core by making more aggressive moves to supplement the team and capitalize on their window of competitiveness. It worked, as the team reached the pinnacle by winning the Continental Cup in Season 76. But after being on the wrong end of two playoff sweeps in the following seasons, it appears that the aforementioned window could be starting to close. The first sign of this was S76 free agent acquisition Kyl Oferson hanging up the skates. It was expected given he was at the eight-season mark, but could also be a challenge for Chicago as it was quite possibly the team’s first major retirement in its six-year history. It certainly won’t be the last, and that was truly hammered home with the recent announcement that forward Robin Winter, a trade deadline acquisition from Davos in S76, would be retiring and not playing his eighth season in S79. It makes things interesting for the Chicago front office now - the team now has only three forwards under contract going into next season (Mingle, Xin, and Marimoto). Meanwhile, the signs are still on the horizon that the end of an era is looming - the core players from the S73 and S74 draft classes are nearing retirement. What will the team do in this important offseason? How much time is really left for the Phoenix to compete? Only time will tell.

Now what does he have to do with this?! but for real sad to see you go

Congrats man @McWolf !

1. I haven’t been doing workouts too much lately but whenever I do I find push-ups to be the absolute worst. My upper body strength is horrible so push-ups are not ideal for me, as much as I would like to have actual muscles. I’m kinda bad at keeping up with workouts anyways. (also wanted to add that “judgment-free zone” made me think of this video) 2. There are a lot of things. Too many to count. Also I scrolled back in the Discord and couldn’t find anything that would work for this question so let’s just imagine I said something really interesting here. 3. French fries are undefeated for sure. Nuggets too. Also while it’s technically not fast food, I’ll also say a big bag of movie theater popcorn. I’m not really on a diet per se, so it’s technically not a cheat meal, but it’s something that is definitely not healthy and that I don’t have very often so I feel like it fits the theme. 4. Star Wars. I’ve been a fan of the movies since elementary school and I’ve been able to still enjoy it here and there through the games and extended universe stuff. Fanbase can be kinda weird sometimes but the universe itself is just really interesting to me. 5. I dunno. I think some of them could be alright. Two of them are even all-stars! That Finn Schultz guy’s pretty decent too. 6. I found this competition on YouTube where a bunch of parkour athletes play a version of tag on an obstacle course a while ago and I’ve been watching it it throughout the pandemic. It’s absolutely nuts. I’d love to see what an Olympic version of that would look like. Also I would like to see a version of the Olympics where people aren’t suspended for smoking weed but whatever.

Thanks I hate it

I only voted for Vasteras, because it's the only team that matters.

At the end of the season, Chicago was able to clinch the Victory Cup by the narrowest of margins: a tiebreaker over Warsaw who also had 98 points, as well as a one-point lead over Seattle, the second-place team in North America. There was a bit of chat in the Chicago LR about the Victory Cup (maybe) being cursed, so I wanted to take a look at some of the recent Victory Cup winners to see whether or not they could successfully follow up on their win in the playoffs. S77 - The Warsaw Predators won their first Victory Cup last season, but ended up falling in the conference finals to Helsinki. Unsuccessful. S76 - The Moscow Menace won the Victory Cup in dramatic fashion with a league-leading 112 points, the best since the Toronto Legion of S67. It didn’t help them in the playoffs, though, as they lost to Warsaw over seven games in the conference finals. Unsuccessful. S75 - Calgary made history in this season with their 11th Victory Cup, tying Toronto for the most by any VHL franchise. This was followed up, however, by a shocking loss to the underdog Chicago Phoenix in the conference semifinals. Unsuccessful. S74 - Another one for Moscow, and this time they lose in the conference semifinals to Helsinki in five games. Unsuccessful. S73 - Seattle wins the Victory Cup, and this time it matches up with playoff success as they go all the way, beating Helsinki in six games in the finals. Successful! Since this is just a VHL.com (albeit a long one), I figured it was best to just go back until I found a team that managed to win both the Victory Cup and the Continental Cup in one season. As you can tell, Seattle did that in S73. For other recent examples, Moscow also did it in S70, as did Helsinki in S66, Riga in S63, and Calgary in S62. So is the Victory Cup cursed? No, at least I don’t think so. It’s easy to think that because the best regular season team wins the Victory Cup, then they should be winning the Continental Cup almost every season. But I’d argue that the playoffs and the regular season are two different beasts - the regular season rewards success over a long, extended period of time, whereas the playoffs can be a bit more varying based on the whims of the sim engine. It’s not necessarily true that the Victory Cup winners “should” win the Continental Cup, although I can definitely understand that it’s frustrating when it doesn’t happen (trust me, it’s happened to me). Compare that to real life - not many teams have won the Presidents’ Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season. So it’s not a curse, but just two different measurements of success.

Paris Ennui tbhimo

Jean-Pierre Camus - RB

1. Trade deadline is upon us, do you think the team should make any moves? No way. Despite some recent results we're second in the league and doing really well. Let's not mess up this core, we've got a very good team and I'd at least like things to stay together until the end of the season. I think we're already one of the favorites for the cup. 2. Trade deadline also means retirements? Who are you most sad to see retire I mean definitely Kyl Oferson. I was hoping he'd be around for a while, although I guess since this is his eighth season it makes sense. I just didn't realize it'd be so soon. 3. That Kyl Oferson guy is pretty good, do you think he will make HOF? No he's a scrub, who told you he was good? He won't be anywhere near the Hall. That guy fucking sucks. 4. Will Lee Xin lead the league in points? Of course. Lee Xin is AWAKE now, and nobody can stop him. To be honest I'm just disappointed I didn't pick Xin for my fantasy team because for some reason I thought I did. Instead I got fuckin JIMBO who I should've realized wasn't going to be getting as many hits (and therefore fantasy points) this year. 5. What's your favourite Shakespeare play? Not a huge Shakespeare guy personally. I guess I'd say MacBeth though. I think the way the prophecy is told and ends up working out over the play is cool, and the theme of power and corruption is interesting. Also, since this is a Shakespeare question, I want to mention something else because it's a pet peeve of mine and probably the only chance I've gotten to talk about this: when Juliet is saying "wherefore art thou, Romeo?" in Romeo and Juliet, she's not wistfully asking where he is because she's so enamored with him. "Wherefore" means "why", so she's saying "Why are you here, Romeo?" She says that because she was kinda talking to herself about being in love with Romeo while standing on her balcony, then he just kinda shows up in her backyard because he wanted to see her so he snuck onto the property. So she's just surprised and confused as to why he's there. 6. This is @KitRas's question, but if you were sent back in time to the dinosaurs, could you eat a whole dinosaur in 2 weeks? I mean there are a lot of variables here. What kind of dinosaur is it? If it's, like, a T-Rex or a brontosaurus then probably not. Plus if I'm going back in time, I don't really have a kitchen with an oven to prepare and cook the dinosaur meat anyways, so I'd either be eating 1) raw dinosaur meat, which would undoubtedly make me sick or 2) unseasoned dinosaur meat that has been cooked hastily over a poorly-made fire (I don't have the survival instincts to make a good one, let's be honest) which would either still make me sick or just taste bad. Honestly, I'm probably screwed in any sort of situation where I don't have a reliable grocery store or a restaurant to get food from. So I would say no.

Please ignore this I posted a day early

There are already some good submissions for both Berlin and Paris logos, so I thought I'd try something a little more outside of the box. The logo features a rooster, which has been used a symbol of France since the Renaissance. The name, Club Galois de Paris, uses a more European naming structure (hence "outside the box"), while "Galois" refers to the historic region of Gaul that contained most of what is now France. I felt "Paris Roosters" didn't really have the right ring to it, plus "Les Coqs de Paris" was rife for jokes and misunderstandings. I considered trying a full-body rooster for the logo, and still may do so on my own time for fun, but I thought I'd prefer to just get this in as a PT rather than hem and haw over adjustments until the week is over, lol.

1. This week is theme week! What kind of content are you hoping to see this week about the VHLE? If you haven't done your PT yet, do you have ideas? If you have, is there anything, in retrospect, that you wish you would have done differently? I don't quite know yet, but I think I might take a stab at doing another VHLE team logo. Maybe one for Paris? Although I still have the Vasteras one in the bank, so I might just submit that as my PT for the theme week. 2. We are about halfway through the season, and as of today, Chicago is third overall and second in the NA. Any thoughts? Do you think we're performing as projected? Over or underperforming? I'd say we're performing fairly accurate to how I would've expected. We've got a good team so we should be a contender, but I don't know if I'd say we should be any higher than we are right now. 3. What's one of your pet peeves about the VHL? If you had enough power to (reasonably) change anything in the league for a day, what would you do? I don't know if I have one off the top of my head. I'm not really good at identifying problems (or coming up with solutions, for that matter) in sim leagues like this one. I'd be on board with either a separate awards committee, or at least more transparency about the award discussions in the BoG (i.e. an explanation of why people voted the way they did). Of course there's also a problem with the boringness of building a player here but that could also just be because I've been around for a while. 4. What's your favorite time of day? Mornings? Mid day? Evenings? Meal time? Mid day for me (like 1-2 PM). I don't like waking up early, but I prefer when it's light out because then it feels like there's more of the day left. Although I will say I enjoy the nighttime, it can be pretty relaxing sometimes when it's dark out and just a little bit chilly. Not when it's too late, but maybe around 8-10 o'clock. I remember taking a few walks out at that time of night when I was in college - I get that could seem a little weird but it was actually kinda relaxing. 5. If you could be anything - animate or inanimate, what would you be? A star? A leaf on a tree? A screwdriver? Why? I kinda like being human, honestly. For all the problems and anxieties it may cause, having human intelligence is really fucking cool when you think about it. Nothing else on Earth can experience stuff like art, culture, language, etc. in the same way that we do. There are a couple animals that would be cool to be as a second choice though. It'd be fun to be able to fly so being some kind of bird would be sick. Also there are a couple animals that have more capabilities in their eyes to see different wavelengths of color, and I'd like to know what that looks like 6. What was the last thing you did for yourself because you wanted to or because you knew you'd be better for it? If you haven't had water recently, this is your sign to go get some!! I've been trying to be more careful with my money and save up a decent amount, which should hopefully benefit me in the long run. I still buy things for myself, but I'm trying to be less impulsive. Also thanks for the reminder, my water glass is empty right now so I'll go refill it.

Cool idea for an article! Looking forward to seeing the other nations. Ferguson was German fwiw

my next recreate will be from the disputed territory of western sahara

1. Describe your ideal sandwich I'll go with a good chicken sandwich, with jalapenos and/or green peppers, on a brioche bun. I could go either way on condiments, don't know if I'd have a favorite (maybe mustard). To be honest I'm not a huge sandwich guy though. 2. We've been in the league for a while time now and I think it's time we do this. Which team would be the rivals of the Chicago Phoenix? Berocka wrote an article recently where he suggested LA would be our rivals, which I think is fairly fitting since we came in as North American expansion teams at the same time. I'd also say that Seattle would be a good rival because of our upset win in the S75 playoffs. Warsaw is a cool suggestion but I feel like I'd want our rival to be in the same conference. 3. Should the team host a game night or a movie night? What game/movie would you choose? Movie night is tough because I feel like it's hard to pick a movie that everyone would be interested in. Personally I'd go with a game night but with something like Mario Party or Jackbox since those are fairly simple games that I think pretty much everyone can enjoy. 4. If you were put in charge of something for a day, what would you like that to be and what would you change or do? I'll echo Sonnet and say I don't want to be in charge. Plus I don't think I have solutions that would fix things in a day. I guess for less important things that I'd be far less likely to mess up, I'd probably make myself in charge of some kind of branding/graphic design thing because there are a lot of small things that bother me about that stuff. 5. What are your thoughts on the league right now? Are there enough people joining or do we need more? Are there any improvements that could be made? I don't really have a good pulse on recruitment. I will agree that we could use more variety in recruitment channels, as well as a change where everyone isn't stuck doing the same build. But I don't have the answers so who knows. 6. We're gonna talk about some emotions here. How are you doing right now? Eh. I'm doing okay now, I wouldn't say I'm feeling great overall but today is a decent enough day. I don't want to spill all my guts but I wasn't exactly happy with things before the pandemic so I don't think COVID has helped. I guess at least I've kinda had the chance to sit back and think things over but then the rest of the world hasn't exactly been great either which doesn't make me feel any better.

Update. Thought I'd give some tries at a wordmark: Also here are some slightly different variations of the original logo just for some more options: