Article where she speaks about Native American ancestral diets.

https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/02/12/gaming-standards-association-creates-gaming-blockchain-standards-committee/

very good to see!

News sites like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post are considered to have biases, and cost money to access. The Associated Press on the other hand is completely free and has a lot of the same news without any editorialization. There is also an app that you can use.

I’m the author of “A Critical Review of the Baseline Soldier Physical Readiness Requirements Study.” SMA-PAO (Public Affairs Officer for the Sergeant Major of the Army) recently made a post that contains significant disinformation about my report. SMA-PAO starts with “I will not be discussing the future of the ACFT, but I will not allow for false narratives to set the foundation for whatever that decision is” and then proceeds to construct a false narrative. I would like to correct that narrative.

In 2019, I was selected by the American Statistical Association to serve as a congressional fellow, a position supported by an independent grant to strengthen the use of evidence and data science in federal policymaking. I was placed in the legislative staff of the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In summer 2020, following social media reports of a failure rate as high as 83% among female soldiers on the roll-out of the ACFT, I was asked to investigate the data. What I initially thought would be a quick-turn analysis turned into a deep dive of how compounding errors undermined the predictive model behind the ACFT. I wrote my report as an internal document for Congress: a one-page executive summary for members of Congress, the main matter for congressional staffers, and footnotes with all of the gory mathematical details. I submitted my report to my Senate office in October 2020. Congress subsequently (in the 2021 NDAA) directed the Army to pause the ACFT until an external review of it could be conducted (now by RAND). After receiving external requests for my report, I cleared its release and eventually submitted it to arXiv.org in October 2021.

SMA-PAO states that my analysis “was neither peer reviewed nor scientifically validated.” The statement is false. I communicated with the authors of the University of Iowa's report, particularly because I discovered several things that they missed during their assessment. They subsequently provided their feedback on my draft report. Additionally, my report was reviewed by experts in both exercise physiology and statistics. It was also briefed separately to a panel from the Institute for Defense Analysis and several scientists across several fields of study.

SMA-PAO goes on to say that my analysi

What is one phenomenon that is not yet known to science but is presumed to be factual by those most closely associated with the phenomenon? As a specious example, the dead can be seen in the vicinity of graveyards in many parts of Werwerkshire; depending on light intensity and relative humidity. If you like, relay factual accounts of your own.

A redditor posts a photo titled Mark Bryan a robotic engineer is shattering gender norms by wearing what he likes. The top comments start out as supportive, but quickly degenerate as thousands more pour in. Some posters are uncomfortable, some don't think he's shattering anything at all, and others are outraged and think OP (and the photo's subject) are 'attention seeking' liars. The thread isn't locked yet, so saddle up and grad your popcorn as the drama takes off and we hear opinions from some of reddit's finest pundits:

About 10 comments down the floodgates of criticism open, fairly innocuously:

> Man or woman— That just looks uncomfortable to wear for 8 hours a day. (391 pts)

>> "Thank you"

>>>Is this supposed to be a work look? Skin tight mini skirts aren't really office appropriate for anyone, even if it does look banging.

Then they take a dive:

>sHaTtErInG gEnDeR nOrMs!1! (450 pts, gilded)

>>It has the same energy as news article saying "X SLAMS Y...by politely offering a factual correction." (93 pts)

>>he's so brave (64 pts)

>>>Let's not downplay how stunning he is though!

One commenter "doesn't care" how you dress or identify, but they're also very very angry at this attention seeking behavior. Others chime in to add that cross-dressing has been totally OK for centuries:

>He likes attention. That's what he likes. Lots and lots and lots of attention... Look at me mommy! Look! Look! Look! I look so different and unique! I don't care who you love or what you identify as. But this guy isn't shattering anything socially important. He is just an attention seeker. And like all screaming attention seeking brats. It gets tiresome frankly. (258 points, gilded)

>>There’s someone else out there who identifies as a man and scared to do this. Representation matters.

>>>True. But IMO, anyone should be scared to dress like that. BUT, lots of people do it, so why the fuck shouldn't this guy? I wouldn't say he's shattering norms though. People have been crossdressing for centuries.

Someone ki

#Watch video version on YouTube

Housekeeping:

• HOW TO SUPPORT: I know we are all facing unprecedented financial hardships right now. If you are in the position to support my work, I have a patreon, venmo, and a paypal set up. No pressure though, I will keep posting these pieces publicly no matter what - paywalls suck.

• NOTIFICATIONS: You can signup to receive a once-weekly email with links to my posts.

#Unconstitutional detention

A Sixth Circuit Trump appointee reversed a lower court and ruled that U.S. citizens do not have the right to sue U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) agents for violating their constitutional rights.

College student Anas Elhady was detained by CPB without explanation while returning to Michigan from Canada. He alleges that they took his jacket and shoes, leaving him in a cold cell for numerous hours.

>According to Elhady, the cell “got colder and colder,” and he began shivering uncontrollably. He says he yelled to the officers that he was freezing and needed to go to the hospital, but they told him not to worry, “you’ll be out soon.” Elhady thought the officers were intentionally ignoring his requests.

He was never interrogated and no charges were brought against him. Elhady sued, arguing that the conditions of his detention “violated his Fifth Amendment due-process rights” and seeking damages under Bivens (which provides that a federal officer can be sued for violating constitutionally protected rights).

The District Court held that Officer Blake Bradley violated Elhady’s right to be “free from exposure to severe weather and temperatures.” Trump judge Amul Thapar joined with George W. Bush judge Richard Griffin to reverse that ruling, despite the defendant not asking the Sixth Circuit to rule on Elhady’s Bivens claim.

Senior Circuit Judge John Rogers dissented (pdf):

>By choosing not to raise the issue on appeal, defendant Bradley, represented by the Department of Justice, forfeited his argument that Elhady does not have a cause of action under Bivens. As a general rule, we do not reach forfeited arguments. That rule should apply especially in cases such as this one, which involves a difficult questi

#Introduction

Hello everyone! This is primarily a post to bring everyone up to date on some rule changes. We updated the wiki and sidebar over the weekend, so some of you may have noticed it, but this is an announcement post to go over the changes.

#Evolution

I want to start this by explaining a little about the evolution of /r/WoT's rules and moderation policies. Before I became a moderator, this was a very small community, with little need for much moderation, but it was starting to grow. I became a moderator here and in my introduction post explained that one of the things I hoped to bring to the community was a more consistent enforcement of the rules and policies already in place.

I worked to update the sidebar and create a wiki to really outline and clarify the existing rules. Over time, we've added some new rules and expanded existing ones, but by and large they have just been expansions of three fundamental policies this subreddit has always had: Don't harass others, Don't spoil others, and Contribute to quality discussion about the series.

These expansions have all come about for clarity's sake. Usually because we received constant challenges to the previous wording, with people trying to get away with violating one of those three fundamental policies on a technicality.

Our Spoiler Policy has seen the most changes because it became more complex to manage, once the tv show arrived. Our Content Policy is being updated for clarity, which we'll outline towards the end of this post, but nothing fundamental is changing there. Today's post is largely about our Harassment Policy.

#Why We Ban People

The only reason we ever permanently ban people is for violation of our Harassment Policy. (The one exception to this is that someone didn't want to be tempted by show spoilers and asked us to ban them so they wouldn't see /r/WoT on their homepage. We thought this was a weird request, but granted it.) And here I'm going to stop using the word "we".

I am responsible for every ban issued since I became a moderator. Months before the show aired, there was a call for more moderators. When they were brought on, I did my best to articulate how I personally moderated the subreddi

Hi everyone, about two weeks ago, I posted this theory/discussion about King Feyda Calanthis.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KingkillerChronicle/comments/s1sw14/feyda_calanthis_first_king_of_tarvintas_spoilers/

Those of you who watched the video of Pat’s stream may recall that Pat says something about the plants Feyda is depicted as holding. Or rather, he doesn’t say something about the plants, Pat teases us: “The plant in his left hand? We-ell that’s an interesting point of speculation I would say.” And that’s it, Pat doesn’t say anything else about the plant. In the absence of any real information, I thought nothing more of it. Until...

Just a couple of days ago u/NightShiftArt shared their pictures of their late Christmas present https://www.reddit.com/r/KingkillerChronicle/comments/sacpyc/my_late_christmas_present_finally_arrived_i_got_a/ : an Iron Drab, and a Vintish Penny – the coin that inspired the discussion in my previous post. I was excited to see that in the Lore provided with the Feyda vintish penny, it does tell us what the plants are: Hemlock.

Hemlock is not mentioned in either NotW or WMF. However, in the Twitch stream, the way Pat teases about the plants, it seems to me that his choice of plant was both deliberate and somehow significant.

I would like to share with you all what I have been able to find out about Hemlock in the last day or two. Note that this is generic mythology/fantasy story lore, not specific to Kingkiller/Temerant – as I said, Hemlock itself is not actually mentioned in books 1 or 2 (I am not sure if it is in Lightning Tree of SRoST, I cannot search these easily). It is possible that the plant has a different name in Temerant and I just haven't been able to work it out. I did wonder if it might be Lacillium, which seems to be a Kingkiller made-up term (and bears some etymological similarity to "lackless"), but it isn't entirely clear whether the pharmaceutical action is a perfect match for what I've found described for Hemlock. Lacillium is poisonous - as is Hemlock - but is discussed by Kvothe

I'll start by saying, I'm no genius. I'm late forties, was expelled from high school and got a GED at 25. But this whole military/UFO narrative just doesn't add up in my mind. The military keeps putting foreward the position, "Yes, there is something real in the skies, but we don't know what it is or where it comes from."

I cannot reconcile this position as possibly being factual. UFOs are CONSTANTLY tracked by military radar systems (submarine acoustical sonar, or land based radar, or space based ballistic missile radar). In my mind, there are only three options:

1. The objects are tracked and head up into space.

2. The objects are tracked and head down into the ocean.

3. The objects are tracked and just wink in and out and disappear.

How can the worlds' militaries claim they don't know where it comes from? In my mind, it can only be one of these three scenarios (or maybe all), but at least this knowledge would immediately narrow down our pool of options.

I categorically do not believe when the military says 'we don't know where it comes from'. They have obviously been pumping money into this and doing black project research into this for SEVENTY PLUS YEARS now.

I can accept perhaps they do not know WHAT this is, but this continual mantra of 'we don't know where it comes from' is not only insulting to anyone with a modicum of intelligence, but it is ridiculous at this point.

We, the general public together with the scientific community need to stop being placated with breadcrumbs and DEMAND real answers to these basic questions.

Enough games. No more hiding behind 'we can't reveal our intelligence acquisition techniques'. They CAN get the data to the public and hide the technique through which it was acquired.

We are being played for fools. They already know where this is originating from. At least in the United States, the government IS the people, not separate from it. The military that the citizens of this country fund through taxes is OUR military, created to serve US.

We need to take back our ownership of our government and it's associated appendages and stop letting them act like they are separate from those they serve and represent. The answers to the UFO question are OURS, the PUBLICS, not something to be secreted away for personal/political gain.

Introduction Hi everyone. This post is going to be a long one. I will be going into detail about several different topics which may seem unrelated but a continued theme of this post that I hope you understand is “everything’s connected”. As somebody who has experienced autogynephilia myself, I will also be telling my own story throughout the post. I hope through my story you will be able to better identify and understand where your own AGP came from. However, it can’t be done in one night or even a week. It will take a long time before you fully understand your own psychology, as many of your own aspects will be hidden in your shadow. (More on this later). Okay, so without further ado, let’s get started.

(edit: I wanted to add that I have many sources that support my research. However this is taking a hell of a long time to write and I’m not at uni so I cba referencing them. I’ve written this from memory so if anything is unclear or if you have any questions I will respond in the comments with the source).

Biology.

Of course, the beginning of any life starts with inherited genetics. Many people believe that your genes will determine your future. If you have the genes to be tall or short, fat or skinny, then that’s what you’ll be. Although genetics is far more complicated than that. Biologists are only just beginning to scratch the surface of something known as Epigenetics. Imagine a tall family, the mum and dad are tall, and all their kids are tall. But then mum and dad have another child who ends up being short. How is this possible? But then the short child has a child who grows very tall. The short child clearly has the same basic genes as mum and dad and has managed to pass the tall genes onto their own child. Yet this child is short. Well genes can be turned on or off. This is done through methylation/demthylation of the gene.

(Side note: while much of what I’m saying is factual I will be filling in gaps with conjecture. So you know when I’m assuming/making stuff up I’ll put it within *)

the process by which these genes are turned on or off is likely to do with the chemicals in our bodies such as hormones. Testosterone and oestrogen are just 2 examples of hormones, there is also Adrenocorticotrophic hormone (adrenaline) and Thyroid-stimulating hormone which regulate stress in the body. I also believe neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin may be involved

Anyway. The point is genes can be turned on or off and this is an on

With all the COVID reporting and other stuff going on, I’ve lost track of the reporting on Xinjiang. Based on a cursory look, it seems like the “pro-Uyghur” organizations have ratcheted up their claims to absolute certainty that China (lead by the evil commie Xi Jinping) is committing Nazi-style genocide of the Uyghur ethnic minority for vague reasons of Han ethnonationalism.

As an example of this, the Wikipedia page about the matter has become a full-throated regurgitation of the most extreme claims with criticism relegated to a single paragraph labeled “Denial” (which cutely links to the Genocide Denial page).

Max Blumenthal’s The Grayzone, which has published criticism of the sources of Uyghur genocide claims and their association with US-regime change and anti-communist organizations (State Department, USAID, CIA, Neocon think tanks, etc.) has also achieved new heights of infamy in the world of Factual and Serious (TM) reporting. The website has its own Wikipedia page now, which is dedicated to claims that it’s left-wing apologia for “authoritarian regimes”.

I would say that I’m driven more by a general distrust of US-sponsored international organizations and journalism more than trust in China. More specifically, I have a lot of respect for some of China’s policies, such as the fact that they’ve taken the most people out of poverty in the last 40 years. But it’s still possible that they could commit genocide or severe repression. (Sorry Gucci).

When I was more well-read on this topic, I thought the most likely circumstance was that an overzealous crackdown on Xinjiang separatists (driven by a desire to establish an “East Turkistan” ethnostate) was being capitalized on by anti-China elements to bolster the new cold war with China. As far as narratives go, I still think that’s the most likely given that all parties have logical goals; however, I don’t want to forestall the possibility that there is genocide happening. Knowing that it’s very difficult to determine what’s really happening in foreign countries, especially official US enemies, I wanted to ask if there’s been any new, compelling evidence presented for either interpretation of events.

Okay so this is factual and not the true purpose of this sub but as a parent I can’t believe how many times I hear this from other parents and family members. So many people still believe this as fact. Stop having the wrong opinion!

Hyperactivity isn’t just being happy and having energy, it’s a state of being abnormally and almost uncontrollably active for long periods of time. Most kids will get hyperactive at times, they have found links to other food additives like certain dyes and there are probably likely ones that we haven’t linked yet through studies but sugar has been exhaustively researched and shown not to cause it. Yet it’s still “common knowledge” that sugar is the culprit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying go feed your kids sugar all day long. It isn’t exactly free of negative impacts but your causing your kids to be hyper isn’t one of them.

Some links to articles that reference studies

https://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/busting-sugar-hyperactivity-myth

https://www.eatright.org/food/nutrition/dietary-guidelines-and-myplate/sugar-does-it-really-cause-hyperactivity

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/medical-myths-does-sugar-make-children-hyperactive

https://www.livescience.com/amp/55754-does-sugar-make-kids-hyper.html

https://www.winchesterhospital.org/health-library/article?id=157003

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/04/18/health/sugar-hyper-myth-food-drayer/index.html

https://www.yalescientific.org/2010/09/mythbusters-does-sugar-really-make-children-hyper/

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002426.htm

Edit: added peer reviewed papers.

Here is a paper that was in the Journal of Affected Disorders in January of 2019. In it it has links to many more recent studies.

Conclusion

The results suggest that there is no association between sucrose consumption between 6 and 11 years of age and incidence of ADHD.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032718306670

Here is a meta-analysis done in 1995 of 16 previous studies. This was posted in the Journal of American Medicine in November of that year.

https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-0028824643&origin=inward&txGid=e7b50a2825f9a3622e5b933d947fa242

Another from 2011

https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-79958038928&origin=inward&txGid=5b2eebd7fffe535736256235231b3994

From 1994

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199402033300501

My Model 3 AWD lease is about to end. While I generally have positive things to say about my Tesla experience, my Tesla hasn’t exactly been scratching my itches as a car enthusiast. So I am currently at a bit of a crossroads, buy another Tesla and get an affordable-ish sports car. Or combine the funds into one nicer vehicle.

The problem with the one nicer vehicle is the fact that it does need to be EV. While I am sure a lot of great EV vehicles will burst onto the scene in the next three years, there’s really only one car on the market currently that feels like it might be an upgrade from my Tesla while also satiating my enthusiast desires and that is the Porsche Taycan.

Now I’ll be honest in saying that I am by no means a Porsche fan. I drove a 997 911 Turbo as well as a 718 Cayman base and I walked away from both cars feeling like they were sports cars on Xanax. They just weren’t exciting for me.

Likewise, I am by no means a Tesla fanboy. I think they have EV offerings that make a lot of sense, but as a car enthusiast I do long for something that feels a bit more special.

Unfortunately when reading comparisons between Tesla’s and Taycan’s they pretty quickly devolved into descriptions that felt too simple to me. “If you want a well built car with a great driving experience get the Taycan” “If you want a good charging network, like technology, and need lots of range get a Tesla” While I knew both of those general sentiments to be inherently true, I felt like they were leaving out a lot of details and that the folks righting these statements were inherently pro Tesla or pro Taycan making it hard to find what felt like an unbiased opinion.

Fortunately I found myself on vacation and in a position to rent a Porsche Taycan Turbo from Turo so I jumped on the opportunity to see whether it would be more compelling than another Tesla and a dedicated sports car. Here are my thoughts below:

While I will generally be comparing this car against my Model 3, I have driven the following vehicles and will be drawing from those experiences as well. C5 Corvette, C7 Grand Sport, C8 Z51, Lotus Elise, Lotus Evora N/A, Alfa Romeo 4C, Porsche 997 911 Turbo, Porsche 718 Cayman, Ford Focus RS, Audi TTRS, Audi R8 V8.

I also find the naming convention for various Porsche features to be a little confusing, so my apologies if I am not describing features using the official Porsche names.

Power

The power on the Porsche Taycan Turbo is actually really interesting to

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

This post is part of my USEFUL NOTES series (Old compilation here). This is a more complete version of the segment on the swordsmanship styles in my post on r/anime. I've always wanted to write this one, but the opportunity for that one came first. It should definitely be paired with my post about tōki and post about techniques. Read those before this one, as well asthe upcoming resmastered version of my old post about the magic system.

DISCLAIMER 1: I avoid spoiling the anime as much as possible, but I will discuss magic mechanics and list techniques that haven't yet appeared in the anime, the manga, or the light novel without giving away any plot points. Things that would actually spoil what happens in the main story or the extra stories (Redundancy, Jobless Oblige, and Old Dragon's Tale) are spoiler-tagged. The same applies to character names.

Disclaimer 2: One approached adopted by both the novels and the anime is a "show, don't tell" approach. The author avoids exposition that isn't really included in the story. The narrator is also unreliable, so one shouldn't take anything the characters say, hear, or read in a book or wherever at face value. I try to observe how trustworthy a source of information can be and if what they say is verifiable elsewhere in the story. I also supplement information gaps iwith my own speculations, whenever applicable.

A swordsmanship style (or school) is a collection of sword techniques based around a specific philosophical approach to combat. They are basically the martial arts of Mushoku Tensei. I personally find the way the author set them up absolutely brilliant. They are distinct enough from one a

When I first got into the fandom, there was a trend where certain readers assumed Lyanna had seduced Rhaegar and bore much of the responsibility for the events of Harrenhal and what followed. That's nonsense, but it seems like the pushback has resulted in a 180 turn, where Rhaegar is often dismissed wholesale in a way even Tywin Lannister isn’t. Depending on the context, it’s common to see the character analyzed through a narrow lens with little mind paid to context or potential motivations, paired with dismissive language (he’s a cuck, a fuckboy, ‘Rhaegar was the worst,' 'I have no sympathy for Rhaegar’) that tends to head off any room for deeper analysis.

Based on what's been published so far, Rhaegar could be a shallow lust-driven predator with a narcissistic worldview, who manipulated and ruined everyone near him while ignoring his father’s cruel rages. He could also have been a completely misunderstood character who was fully in the right and consulted Elia about everything beforehand. I don’t believe either is the case, but the point is we don’t know. Discussions of Rhaegar often try to make it seem as if readers have the final word on the character, his personality, and his objective morality, when the published books give us little enough that clinging to any interpretation involves a good deal of assuming.

I want to clarify that I’m not a Rhaegar stan. He’s not a particular favorite of mine, nor one of the characters I find most interesting. However, this is going to read as a defense. Not of his actions, but of the character as a potentially interesting human being who made human choices and who has human flaws.

RELATIVELY OBJECTIVE POINTS

• This is an unpopular argument, so I’m going to get it out of the way first. In the show, Rhaegar and Lyanna are portrayed as in love. Obviously D&D had some "interesting" interpretations, but they were given the broad strokes of what GRRM had in mind, and it’s highly doubtful even they’d try portraying a situation where Rhaegar is a rapist or actively took and held Lyanna against her will as an epic love story. That doesn’t mean it’s as clear cut as it was depicted, and ‘Robert’s Rebellion was built on a lie’ is a terrible, inaccurate sentiment, but the show’s take suggests they were told some degree of affection existed.
• Lyanna dies clutching a winter rose. If she hated Rhaegar, it seems odd that while she’s weak and dying, she’d be clinging to something so clearly associated

Short Version:

• Capitalist/anti-worker propaganda is a leviathan that infects every form of media, communication, and sphere of life and has shown to be willing to use whatever unethical means to win the propaganda battle.
• If antiwork ideas are to spread and win, we too must expand to the breadth that capitalist propaganda does and expand the depth of our methods to include ones we might disagree with.

Breadth:

• We need to expand to all social media platforms to the same extent on Reddit.
• We need to flood forums, article discussions, and antagonistic spaces to spread the message.
• We need to go outside of the social media sphere and use videos, podcasts, radio, tv, print media, posters, billboards, graffiti, and more to spread it to everyone and everywhere.
• If you have the power, money, and/or resources, use it to spread the message through harder-to-access media (like film & TV).
• If you don't have the power/capital but still work in media industries, try to insert subtle messages that fly under the radar.
• Word of mouth is very powerful; use it! Talk with your family, friends, coworkers, church members, etc.

Depth:

• The right is really good at controlling the narrative and using emotional arguments. We need to incorporate some of their methods into our propaganda too.
• Aggressively, actively control the narrative. Always be in control, and stay away from defensiveness.
• Emotional framing is practical and useful in tandem with factual/reasonable. Using fear, spite, and rage is effective and good.
• Click-bait is practical and effective when spreading ideas among less intelligent, older, and/or mentally exhausted audiences.
• Counterpropaganda bots that fight against capitalist disinformation bots are good, and we should make and use them.
• Cater the message to different demographics, but don't be stupid and sound out-of-touch when doing it.
• Deception can be good under certain circumstances.
• Posing as the opposition to subvert their cause is good because the weaker they are, the easier it is to win.
• It is good to infiltrate right-wing/capitalist groups to subvert their efforts, bring their members to our cause, and rise within their ranks.
• Creating official-sounding news sites/orgs or impersonating corporate media outlets to fight corporate/right-wing propaganda and promote the truth is a good thing. Just make sure you cover your tracks, so you aren't traced to the fake org/website.
• Despite its apparent solidarity and

While magic is omnipresent in fiction nowadays, I don't really get the feeling that people think much about it's presence in our world, mostly because it doesn't exist much anymore. Well, it never existed in a factual, physics-oriented sense, that's clear. What I mean is that people used to genuinely believe in it, in evil spirits and foretelling the future, that sort of thing. It wasn't even rare, it was universal. To provide a pretty generic example, tribes put lots of importance in their spiritual figures, but you can see much more striking ones, like Japan's government-affiliated magic department.

The reason why all of this existed is that firstly, we as humans are really good at making associations, and secondly, we have, until the last few centuries and the widespread popularisation of critical mindsets and scientific method, not really been very good at weeding out associations that are false. If someone tells you that they can divine your future from the stars and they give you a vague but important seeming message, you'll believe them if it does happen, because that just stands to reason, and if it doesn't, well, people don't like to think they've just been scammed, you'll probably try to come up with a justification or blame the specific mage, or even just ignore it. What makes this more complicated is that sometimes this sort of stuff actually works, even if it is BS. Not only have practitioners of magic likely acquired general life experience in the course of their profession that gives them some amount of credibility (as well as a bunch of stuff that does nothing but that they've found to be efficacious in fooling people, even if they themselves might not know that it doesn't actually do anything practical), but also what we believe, even though thoroughly overemphasised by some, does have a tangible effect on certain aspects of reality. This is called the Placebo effect. Maybe with that aforementioned prediction you'll subconsciously act differently as a result, or with a false medication the belief that you have been administered a cure results in a state of mind more suited to overcoming whatever that medication sought to treat. Anyways, on to how this actually applies to fantasy:

So, given that this has been a real thing in our history, imagine what that would look like in a world where there actually is magic. Granted, for the more flashy, large-scale sort of magic this might lead to a reduction in belief in those sorts of things,

Simon Parkes has been in my periphery for a while. A friend of mine (who is still into the Q stuff somehow) showed me a video of his talking about 'Med-Beds' a few months ago. I didn't believe it at all but it was interesting and he was a good speaker. A while later i was seeing him pop up more and more and decided to look into him more. And holy shit this guy is nuts.

Even disregarding his claims to have insider information that is obviously false, wrt personally knowing Q, lets dive into his history a bit.

Simon Parkes, on his own website, claims to come from a family of several intelligence assets. This includes his mother working for MI5 and the NSA, recording alien sightings and his Grandfather who worked for MI6 and the CIA, as well as various ambassador/high govt jobs. From my understanding, none of this is verified in any way and the stories seem to change, so it's probably made up. Oddly enough, I don't often see critics questioning these associations at a factual level, rather using them as ammo to claim that he's a govt asset of some kind. He was also at one point an elected councilor for the labor party

What I really want to get into here is his old stuff about aliens. It's something. He has publicly claimed that he's had contact with extraterrestrials since he was in the womb, gets abducted twice a month, that he has an 8 fingered, 9 foot tall, green alien as a mother figure, and that he regularly has sex with a cat-like alien and has produced children with this alien. This is not a joke. [Sorry about chopped up source, but I've had trouble finding this video in it's original form on sites I can actually link to] These aliens also have him help them with work, using teleporters and various other alien technology. He and his wife have had conversations about how it's 'not cheating' if it's with a 7th dimensional extraterrestrial being. He has no hard evidence of this, instead referring to the hundreds, if not thousands, of drawings he has made of these characters.

This stuff has largely been scrubbed from his website and the internet more broadly. What do you guys think of this? Do Q types just not know about this? Or do they not care? This guy was at one point raking in 5-10 million views a day and took significantly longer to get banned than most any other people spreading this kind of stuff.

INTRODUCTION

Hello and welcome to r/WoT's official (re)read-along of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.

This week we will be discussing Book Two: The Dragon Reborn, Chapters 6 through 9.

IMPORTANT: This thread is meant for new readers to the series. As such, there will be no spoiler tags allowed in this discussion. We would like this to be a safe space for new readers to discuss the series in a spoiler-free manner. Please visit the veteran thread to discuss the series as a whole.

Any veteran reader who comments in the newbie thread will be banned from r/WoT for 5 days.

New readers may not want to subscribe to /r/WoT because they want to be extra vigilant against spoilers. To support this, I've made a Collection which I will add all the newbie posts to. You can visit this link, which will open the announcement post in reddit's redesign. You can click the FOLLOW button at the top right and you should be alerted to new posts when I create them each Wednesday.

Do not comment on the tv show in the newbie threads.

BOOK THREE SCHEDULE

Next week we will be discussing Book Three: The Dragon Reborn, Chapters 10 through 14.

• January 5: Prologue and Chapters 1 through 5
• January 12: Chapters 6 through 9 <--- You are here.
• January 19: Chapters 10 through 14
• January 26: Chapters 15 through 20
• February 2: Chapters 21 through 26
• February 9: Chapters 26 through 32
• February 16: Chapters 33 through 36
• February 23: Chapters 37 through 40
• March 2: Chapters 41 through 44
• March 9: Chapters 45 through 50
• March 16: Chapters 51 through 56
• March 23: The Dragon Reborn - Final Thoughts & Trivia

MORE INFORMATION

For more information, or to see the full schedule for all previous entries, please see the wiki page for the read-along.

CHAPTER SUMMARIES

Note to new readers: I've provided summaries of each chapter below and hidden them behind spoiler tags. There are no spoilers wi

This is going to be a bit of a long one, but I recently wrapped up a lengthy fight with EA that ended happily and based on the number of posts I've seen here about banned accounts or purchased content disappearing I thought that my story might help a few people out.

The Incident

One day quite a while back I logged in to my Apex account and noticed that all my settings were weird. Keybindings were different, my mouse sensitivity was different, lots of strange changes. After my first game I noticed that my account in general was looking different -- I was a higher battlepass level than I should have been and some of my crafting materials were gone. At this point I realized that my account had been hacked and immediately changed my password and enabled two-factor authentication (which everyone should do right now!).

Looking through the changes on my account I noticed that some very specific crafting materials (that rhymed with Bearloom Bards) that I had recently purchased with real money had been spent on something I didn't want. I figured that I should contact EA support and tell them about the hack and ask them to remove the items that the hacker had purchased and either refund the materials or grant me the item that I had intended to purchase. Simple, right?

The Support (or lack thereof)

On my first attempt I tried live chat support because it's 2021, I don't want to talk on the phone. The guy I got was pretty useless -- he offered to change my password for me (no thanks, already did that) and enable two-factor (no thanks, already did that too), but when I asked him about changing the item he said "unfortunately we can't make any changes because it's a live game" whatever the hell that means.

Next step was phone support. The first person I talked to was actually kind of helpful. She informed me that yes, she could see a couple of suspicious logins on my account from halfway across the world, but she "was unable to confirm that the purchase was the result of the hack" despite there being a suspicious login and then the purchase with nothing else in between. I bashed my head against this wall for a while and then gave up, hoping to find a more reasonable support agent.

The next 3 support agents I talked to were somewhere between malicious and incompetent. They were profoundly uninterested in helping me with anything, and even lied to me several times. I particularly enjoyed this conversation:

Me: I talked with another support age