Bay 12 Games Forum

It is not. Also I'm not sure most people have ever seen that word, and barely know what mandrake actually is besides. _{Alllsooo don't think most people remember what a compound is, either, if they ever learned to begin with. If the question is "Do most people know <thing that requires more than absolutely basic scientific and/or medical study or exposure>" the answer is almost always, "No."}

And re: the eating thing, yeah, it works. The big trick at least vis a vis humans, is that it's pretty easy for us to identify what other animals (including other humans, of course) can eat the things we do without getting sick. So we gravitate fairly trivially towards using other people as a metric of "will this cause me to violently expel my bowels and die". Other animals'll do it, too -- see if something else (usually their own species, sometimes others) will eat something before being willing to try it under normal circumstances themselves.

... though for humans, that mostly applies to somewhat older ones. The very young'll pretty much just mimic everything they see trying to figure out what gives positive and negative reinforcement, at least once they're (somewhat) out of the blind grasping and sucking on whatever they get in their mouth phase.

Please don't do that to barney. He has more dignity than that.

And yet he got a lot of flak for being a poorly spoken president.

That's 'cause he was, really. More to presidential speaking than intermittent speeches.

Too bad that there is no mental/psychological examination test for President.

And, to be fair, I did have a similar concern with Clinton, but for different reasons, that she might have a chance to develop Alzheimers. However, there are treatments out now and being developed that didn't exist in Reagans day which would help treat or even reverse it.

Eh. Health wise, I'm pretty sure most anything short of ovarian cancer trump's at more of a risk for than clinton is. Dude's older (only by something like a year, but a year's a year), and ladies tend to live longer besides.

Mental/psych exam... no. I mean, it's a nice idea, but it's ridiculously abusable. Theoretically the primaries and election are supposed to keep anyone that's significantly troubled on that front out of office. EC buggered us again on that particular side of things, but *shrugs*

Russia? Sure, we could respect them on some level, and they are trying to seek respect as a global power, but at the same time, they're being rather belligerent.

Less a matter of trying to seek respect and more a matter of trying to seek submission, tbh. S'kinda' like the general difference vis a vis foreign policy between conservatives/reps and liberals/dems in the US, really. Dems'll at least try to offer a modicum of respect most of the time, work out diplomatic solutions, economic ties, stuff like that. Respect for sovereignty, capability, etc. Reps... not so much, at the absolute least for a while now. More direct intervention, unilateral action, belligerency and dismissive/demeaning language, and so on. You have to cherry pick like a mofo to miss the difference, heh, for all that's been half a hobby for a lot of the country over the last few decades :V

And here we see an example of the moral degeneracy of the working class, to remind us all of why nobility has maintained its rightful place in the social hierarchy for all these generations.

Looks like you're gonna' be moving to China, then. Good luck. Hopefully the immigration process won't take as long this time.

He doesn't have to fulfill a blatantly idiotic campaign promise without losing any points on his popularity.

Mind you, I could be wildly misinterpreting, and I don't have... Like, any facts to support this. Just supposition. But shit man, if this is what he is doing, he's one crafty old fucker.

He's not a crafty old fucker, he's a barely competent con man (vis a vis scamming methodology specifically; most other things he's by all appearances and history pretty shit at) that happened to luck into a demographic that seriously wanted to be conned and was entangled with a lot of folks that were willing to push it along so they can take various sorts of advantages of the mess, and had been working to prime the demographic in question for someone like him for literal decades. Making impossible or unlikely promises and then blaming something else (particularly while saying you need more funding/support/whatever to overcome said something) when they fall through is confidence scam 101.* It's the basics of basics of how to con someone that wants to believe you.

*I've been around and listening to a scammer trying to defraud one of my grandparents for, like... a half decade now, probably more. "Oh, I tried, but taxes/bank/government/etc./fucking etc. is delaying what I was trying to send! We need a small down payment to clear this up/process the paperwork/etc./fucking etc." There's nothing crafty about this stuff, you just need someone that isn't going to call you on your bullshit. The tricky part is that latter bit, and trump himself had little to nothing to do with it.

E: Just... just, seriously. Don't play this shit up, please. What trump did was not some kind of coup, it was the same crap you see out of jackasses sitting in bumfuck nowhere behind a caller ID spoofer, spending their days ripping off the elderly. Anyone willing to throw out any resemblance of ethical fiber can do the same thing, the only unusual bit in this case was the circumstances, not the actor involved.