Yes in 'Studio 5, The Stars' they use a "VT set" to generate poems I really enjoyed reading Vermilion Sands

yes, they use different rating systems (Glicko 1 and 2), see https://lichess.org/page/rating-systems

I still use a sony ericsson elm daily, no problem so far. maybe you could still find one online

and here is the project used to generate Lichess puzzle database

https://github.com/ornicar/lichess-puzzler

I never switched to smartphones to not have internet in my pocket, and so I sticked to Sony Ericsson phones. Currently I use a 2010 Sony Ericsson Elm (J10i) which gives me SMS, phone, camera, and a few utilities : calendar, alarms, calculator, flashlight. Dimensions are 110.00 x 45.00 x 14.00 mm, I recharge once every ten days or so

Lichess uses Glicko-2 rating method, see https://lichess.org/faq#ratings

haha no he never worked for chess.com, wonder where you heard that one :D

lichess is not one guy either, there's a whole community of developers, moderators etc.

i have sources. lots of old employee posts who quit also talking shit about the ceo

this is how it works, there is a whole alternative lichess universe where shadow-banned users play each others.

Absolutely. Also, a point I found interesting is that we can classify desires in three categories:

- natural and necessary, e.g drink, eat

- natural but not necessary, e.g sex

- not natural and not necessary, e.g smartphones

Epicure advised to fulfill only the first type of desires, that is, drink water and eat bread, period.

As a sidenote, the goal of his philosophy was not to experience pleasures, but instead to avoid pain, which is quite different.

Well, in comparison with stoicism, epicureanism is more about experiencing pleasure than avoiding pain, given that the latter tries to avoid all feeling. But yeah, they're more fundamentally alike there.