D&d also explicitly describes female trolls too. Female trolls are also described as larger and stronger than males. Here’s a happy troll family from a d&d source book, lol.

Again not saying you can’t enjoy something or use it in an rpg just because the person who wrote it may have problematic opinions or it might have some mixed history. Like I really enjoy Lovecraft, but holy crap is it a mess in terms of racist undertones because of the author.

They try to get you to submit articles to them (usually for a fee too). But they’re kind of sham journals with no peer review or standards who no one actually reads. They’ll publish pretty much anything without even looking. They have bots that just mass email every corresponding author in every paper published just begging for submissions to their journal. Whenever an article is published in a reputable journal, one author has to have contact information publicly listed so they can answer any questions about the paper, and these predatory journals just scrape that info. It’s bad, so many emails every day.

I’m not really aware of that. Not to say troll couldn’t be used in a sexist way (“men are brutish trolls”). Even from the earliest myths of trolls I believe they could be either sex. There’s also nothing I’m aware of to suggest in d&d that trolls would all be represented as male.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergsrå

Trolls also are not a myth that comes from a matriarchal society directly used to opress men, unlike how the idea of hags and witches was used in a patriarchal society to opress women.

Just some examples, male doctors trying to eliminate female competition:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358198427_Healer_or_Hag_Female_Medical_Practitioners_and_Witch_Accusations_in_17th-Century_New_England

Women were far more likely to be accused of witchcraft. It was often used to persecute those who chose not to settle down with men or become housewives, or those who were running their own businesses:

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/witchcraft-work-women

There’s lots of sources and writings out there on the history of witchcraft and its relationship to misogyny. Especially in the middle ages, renaissance, and colonial America.

And at least in d&d hags are described as being exclusively female. Some creatures that might be problematic in some contexts like the succubus have added a male equivalent like the incubus. Hag is also still used as a sexist insult for older women.

Not the person you’re replying to, but one example is something like the “hag.” I mean I know it’s drawing from established folklore, but the original folklore and the word hag itself has some obvious sexist undertones that are carried forward.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Hag

Not saying they can’t be used in a game, but could be fun to turn it on its head or something and do some subversion of the trope. In general, always good to feel out your players comfort levels with various things beforehand and establish good ground rules before a game starts. Also giving players the opportunity to let a dungeon master know privately if something in the game is overly uncomfortable or alienating or making the game not enjoyable for them.

I don’t think anyone’s bothered because of how obviously wrong what you’ve written is to anyone with a decent memory.

Inflation had already peaked when the inflation reduction act was passed in August 2022. It had already blown past 9%. Predicted means guessing something before it happens, not after. Inflation decreased steadily after the act passed. If you’re trying to argue that it stopped it from slowing down faster that would be pretty silly when America had a relatively better recovery from inflation than most countries. You’re also blaming more inflation on a mass student loan forgiveness that never even happened. Unless you’re blaming public service loan forgiveness and stuff.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi_08102022.pdf

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273418/unadjusted-monthly-inflation-rate-in-the-us/

But no, go on about how something Biden did magically created global inflation. /sigh

Such a misleading way the story is written. Also a failure to mention that inflation was a global phenomenon, that it was brought down faster in America than most other places, that it was able to be brought down without a recession as was widely predicted which would have been far more devastating, that wage growth has compensated for inflation and then some, that wage growth was highest for hourly and low income workers, and a failure to mention the responses made by congress and the president to help inflation. So much important context left out.

Barely a mention of the fact that all of Trump’s polices are the exact opposite of what you would do to help inflation. That his tarrifs alone will raise this person’s costs by $1700 a year. Why don’t they ask her what she thinks of Trump’s tarrifs costing her $1700 more a year if he takes office? They could mention how his first term policies including pressuring the federal reserve for unnecessarily low rates created a dangerous environment for inflation before the pandemic kicked it off.

But all they can say is, just, I dunno, inflation was fine when Biden took office. In March 2021 prices were already increasing by 0.6% a month from the month before, a 4.8% annualized rate. Comparing to the year before is an average of the past 12 months of change combined. The month to month rate is a much better way to see how it’s changing when it’s changing rapidly. They were begining to accelerate before Biden did much of anything, and not to mention this occurred simultaneously around most of the globe.

Anyways, journalists can’t be bothered I guess. Everyone always wonders why people think Republicans are better for the economy despite all the evidence to contrary. I think a lot of it is lazy journalism that just regurgitates opinions and polling instead of researching facts.

A lot of “rules” taught in high school writing classes are more stylistic choices. They’re not necessarily wrong. Some of them might help to improve clarity, or a rule might help encourage new word choices so writing doesn’t sound so repetitive. Lots of reasons. But many are more for style. Hey I did it! I even made a sentence with only an implied subject and verb, naughty.

I would also argue that sometimes a period followed by a conjunction can be the best stylistic choice. Maybe the sentence was already getting too long and a break was needed, but you still wanted to draw contrast. Maybe you could have put a comma but wanted an increased emphasis on what comes after but. A lot of these things are just preference or style though. Like “never ending a sentence with a preposition.” Of course you can end a sentence with a preposition, but you might want to make sure what the preposition is referring to is clear to the reader too.

For fatigue, I’m not sure. Multiple things are happening that give rise to migraines. But fatigue is commonly reported by people before a migraine starts.

https://americanmigrainefoundation.org/resource-library/timeline-migraine-attack/

Absolutely, and they don’t have to look the same for sure, or even involve visual parts of the brain at all for some people. I don’t get them, but I think the various illustrations of them are quite interesting.

Brain blackout is kind of a dramatic word. I’m pretty sure the article is trying to refer to cortical spreading depression.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrneurol.2013.192

This is a wave of decreased activity going across the brain. It’s not the whole brain though, just a portion, and it tends to happen more often in the posterior brain than anterior. That’s why visual and other sensory auras (posterior brain) auras are more common than motor/weakness auras (anterior brain). The visual aura itself is the spreading wave of decreased activity going across the brain. It happens in primary visual cortex, primarily dealing with lines and colors. Visual space is represented radially on the brain, so it can often be circular. The “fortifications” or lines on the edges some people see come from the fact that it’s neurons that deal with line detection. Pain usually follows shortly after, but we aren’t exactly sure how that works, and this article was posing a possible mechanism to help link these. The main bulk of the visual aura where it’s grey, blurry, and indistinct is the decreased activity itself in the visual cortex. The area can get larger as the wave spreads.

Deja vu or jamais vu have been reported with migraines, though that’s a very rare aura in comparison. It’s all depending on what parts of the brain are involved with the cortical spreading depression for that migraine aura for that person in terms of what symptom will happen. Deja vu would be more temporal lobe. Temporal lobe is the most common localization for focal epilepsies. So deja vu as a symptom of a neurologic disease would more commonly be seen with seizures (focal seizures are sometimes called auras too, which gets confusing but are inherently different from what is happening in a migraine). But don’t worry, most deja vu is nothing to worry about.

Oh absolutely, those numbers are extremely rough and not specific to any person. Nothing like being rich to help extend your life. And things can just be unfair sometimes too. Some people do seemingly everything wrong health wise and got very lucky, and some do everything right and get unlucky. I would be surprised if Biden didn’t live longer than Trump.

There’s somewhat of a myth in the medical field, that nice patients will have something terrible and are doomed, but cantankerous patients will somehow stay alive through pure channeled hate.

But yes with all the hamberders you would think. And he’s 78, only about 2.5 years younger than Biden. According to actuary tables, roughly 5.3% chance of dying in the next year (7.1% for Biden).

Look, Judge Cannon says you raise some good points too. We’ll need some time for written briefs from each side. Due three months from now. Then we’ll need time for written responses, at least another month. We’ll schedule a few days of hearings to really hash through those details. And then she promises to think about it real hard, imply she’ll dismiss the case immediately once the trial begins, but make no actual official ruling yet, that would be premature. Then we have this backlog of other issues to work through of course even though we never actually decided anything yet on this issue. What, you suggest we address these issues in parellel? How dare you speak to a judge in this way, you are being inappropriate!! These issues that have been ruled on many times in the past by other courts as a routine matter are totally novel and demand years of study before a trial can begin!

Etc etc etc

If he doesn’t win the election and just fire half the justice department next January, she may just push the trial date so far Trump dies of natural causes before it even happens.

I thought he was a little bit of a piece of shit. I was surprised to find out he’s a facist who doesn’t believe in the rule of law though. Not surprised at all about Alito and Thomas though. Or Thomas making a concurrence to explicitly try and help give Trump even more ammo. I guess both literally and figuratively if he gets back in office.

Exactly, that’s what’s so scary about this. The courts now explicitly can’t consider things like motive to determine any of this. Just the action in a general sense. And since of course restricting the ability of a president to speak publicly to supporters in the general sense could infringe on the power of the executive, immune.

And even if by some miracle some act was declared unofficial, he could either pardon the person or himself (automatically an official act), or fire the prosecutors bringing the case (automatically an official act). Or in the extreme case, order an assassination (automatically official act). Those core powers in article 2 mean even when the president uses some power not described in article 2, even when a court overcomes the extremely high hurdle placed to declare something not an official act and without immunity, it will still all be for naught. There’s effectively no limits.

Trump has already said he wants to pardon the January 6rh rioters/coup participants. Immune.

Weird cause I’ve got the FTC act right here. Says this:

(a) Declaration of unlawfulness; power to prohibit unfair practices; inapplicability to foreign trade (1) Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful.

And then later on it has this whole entire section where it lays out the process for how the FTC is supposed to make rules in regards to unfair or deceptive practices

Except as provided in subsection (h) of this section, the Commission may prescribe– (A) interpretive rules and general statements of policy with respect to unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce (within the meaning of section 45(a)(1) of this title), and (B) rules which define with specificity acts or practices which are unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce (within the meaning of section 45(a)(1) of this title)

And more sections about how they can enforce those rules on individual rule breakers.

Sure sounds like congress was trying to give the FTC the authority to make rules about unfair competition. Both general rules and with “specificity” apparently. Specifically here, non compete agreements have been declared an unfair practice and they followed all rule making procedures as laid out in the law.

https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/statutes/federal-trade-commission-act/ftc_act_incorporatingus_safe_web_act.pdf

Except the means of helping to get them homes of course.

If anything it seems like the media hasn’t grasped just how bad this is. Too focused on plastering the front page every day with more anonymous source opinions on if Biden is going to stay in the race or not. The whole official vs unofficial acts thing just has tricked people to believing there’s some discretion or something. There’s not. If it’s a power listed in the constitution, like the military or pardons, the president can legally do whatever they want with that power for any reason. And the unofficial vs official acts determination explicitly doesn’t allow consideration of motives or results. So talking to justice department employees is official? Alright, then talking with justice department employees to coordinate a bribe or a coup means immunity. As long as the president is using functions of government to commit crimes basically, they’re golden.

I ate the onion on this one for a second.

Okay I’m not saying she’s the best choice, wouldn’t be my preferred choice, but also this is a poll run by the Daily Mail. I can’t even find any pollster reputation ratings for them. I also can’t find any of their methodologies published online, which is also sketchy. And knowing what we all do about the Daily Mail anyways, this should all be taken with a massive truckload of salt.

Edit: Ah found it, it was run by J.L partners, ranked 145 on five thirty eight pollster rankings for reliability (1.6/3 stars for reliability with a transparency score of 4.2/10). And again, without the methodology being published who knows. The pollster themself, James Johnson, is also a former senior advisor to Theresa May and the UK conservative party.