{"id":38819,"date":"2024-02-08T11:27:45","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T17:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/?p=38819"},"modified":"2024-02-08T11:27:45","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T17:27:45","slug":"quiz-bowl-a-thinly-veiled-cult-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/2024\/02\/08\/quiz-bowl-a-thinly-veiled-cult-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Quiz Bowl-a Thinly-Veiled CULT! (Part II)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Blahaj crept forward with an expression of demonic hunger, swimming through the a<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">ir as I struggled to break free. The shark was out for blood\u2013the blood of knowledge\u2013and wanted everything I had. He began to peer into my soul.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cHmm. Hmm. Surprisingly robust current events knowledge\u2013wait, the Erdogan TikTok account controversy, not even I knew that existed! Most impressive. An excellent knowledge of CS as well &#8211; you actually know how to make tables in R studio! But what\u2019s this?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cHuh?\u201d I replied dumbfounded, not understanding what the shark wanted from me, let alone my current situation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cThe Acronym. THE ACRONYM?!\u201d he bellowed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cOh, uh, yeah, second best club on campus after ping pong clu\u2026 I mean Quizbowl, your holiness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cDo not flatter me with your saccharine worldly alms, o sycophant of sycophants. I know exactly who you are. You are an agent of our great enemy, the press\u2026 A SOLDIER OF BABYLON!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right now, the only soldier I wanted to be was the PVP warrior I became on the Minecraft server after a hard day\u2019s work. I had never even been to Babylon\u2013just how old did Blahaj think I was? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I needed a way out, and quickly, before this situation became nastier. When all hope seemed lost, I remembered one last trick up my sleeve with which I could destroy my enemy from within.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cWell, I\u2019ll join your cult and study up for the tournaments, but there\u2019s one thing I need to know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cAs long as it\u2019s not my phone password, which certainly isn\u2019t the amount of Carmichael numbers less than 10^16, you should be fine,\u201d Stephen replied.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cYes, well, anyway, I was wondering what the best category is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Blahaj rushed to answer before anyone else could, blurting out, \u201cWell, they\u2019re all great! You should study everything. Case closed. Now, let me continue devouring your soul!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was too late. War was on the horizon, and not even Blahaj could stop it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stephen went first. \u201cHistory. History\u2019s clearly the best! What other category lets you learn about stuff like general Zhang Zongchang or the Nottingham Cheese Riots? Not science, that\u2019s for damn sure!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cHmm, you claim to like history, and yet you\u2019re majoring in civil engineering so that you can actually make a living and do something meaningful with your life. Curious,\u201d Joshua Mu \u201825 replied. \u201cWhereas you are the cringe and humanities-pilled histoorian, I am the based and science-pilled chemistry chad (see meme inserted).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_38839\" style=\"width: 1341px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-38839\" class=\"size-full wp-image-38839\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/files\/2024\/01\/QBMeme130.png\" alt=\"A Quizbowl meme\" width=\"1331\" height=\"776\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/files\/2024\/01\/QBMeme130.png 1331w, https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/files\/2024\/01\/QBMeme130-300x175.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/files\/2024\/01\/QBMeme130-1024x597.png 1024w, https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/files\/2024\/01\/QBMeme130-768x448.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1331px) 100vw, 1331px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-38839\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A devastating hit to history players&#8217; egos worldwide<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cSays the man who went to ILMEA instead of watching Lunar!\u201d Nathaniel interjected. \u201cIf you didn&#8217;t know fine arts, how could you impress the pompous college professors for your required electives? Why put in all the work for a lab job with 300K yearly pay when you could get the same amount from taping a banana to a wall?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cNO! OBEY ME!\u201d Blahaj cried, to no avail. The Quizbowlers had broken out of his clutches and the hive mind could no longer be sustained. He fell to the floor, lifeless once again as his subjects continued arguing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I had broken the spell! \u201cAlright, guys, let\u2019s get back to practice!\u201d I demanded, but the arguing continued. I had ousted a tyrant, and chaos seeped in to fill the void.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">At that point, I left. There was no point staying in this club, cult or no cult\u2013either way, the mental pain it brought me wouldn\u2019t be worth getting a \u201cbenzene\u201d tossup every other game.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blahaj crept forward with an expression of demonic hunger, swimming through the air as I struggled to break free. The shark was out for blood\u2013the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":811,"featured_media":38961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2490,2621],"tags":[4322,2862,4355],"coauthors":[3970],"class_list":["post-38819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","category-humor-satire","tag-blahaj","tag-did-we-mention-this-is-satire","tag-quizbowl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/811"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38819"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38964,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38819\/revisions\/38964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38819"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=38819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}