Amentep

The biggest problem (IMO) wasn't that the recommendations changed, but that why they changed was not communicated well (and to be honest, ignored, even when it was). That combined with a general lack of understanding about how scientific research works and... While they haven't been rolled out in human trials (to my knowledge), mRNA vaccines have been studied since the late 1980s, with animal trials being successful for several viruses a few years before COVID hit. I dunno, there was skepticism at the start, and it had nothing to do with authoritative directives, but people saying "Its just a flu" and trying to show morbidity graphs hadn't increased. Indeed my memory is that people were saying the government was inflating numbers of infected before there were directives to do diddly, even shut-down. It only got worse as the directives came, from what I saw, as each new directive had people spinning conspiracy theories. Like the 'no one has actually died of COVID, its all been deaths due to other reasons, but the government wants you in a panic so they can tell you what to do' kind of things. I don't disagree there; its only 90% effective, statistically speaking, which makes the "it will protect you statements" falter when the news talks about 'break through' cases (not really break through, in the sense that I'd think of it, but certainly that term would be applicable with the language being "it will protect you". Evergreen advice! I'm not sure why its origins mattered at the time, but as I recall scientists looked at it and said it didn't show signs of being genetically manipulated, and that the theory about it coming from an animal was more likely. But honestly, the people worrying about where it came from, in my experience, were the same one spinning conspiracy theories about it (like the one that China/Russia/Democrats had intentionally started/manufactured/faked a pandemic to make Trump look bad) and scientists had to say something to counter the speculation (not that it would matter as conspiracy theories don't work that way. Silence = ITS TRUE, denial = ITS TRUE, admission of truth = there's a bigger conspiracy they're hiding if they're admitting to this one!).

TNG - Tapestry Picard gets killed and Q gives him a mulligan. Instead of using his years of wisdom to resolve his youngerself's problems, he instead acts like an idiot and his problem solving solutions amount to rejecting anything like his past choices as if he's a two-year old who just learned the word 'no'. His Q-reward is to become Lt. Barclay. This episide is only entertaining because of Q-Picard. Otherwise it's mega-dumb, with Picard acting clueless, the Enterprise crew shown to be condescending jerks and an implication that if your not captain of the ship, you're a loser. If it wasn't for the fact that we can dismiss the alternate timeline Enterprise stuff as a Q-creation (Qreation?) It'd be more annoying than it is.

Gromnir's link is this article

Yeah, I gather that's typical for a lot of people, but I was never on any social media platform so never connected that way with anyone.

Sonny Chiba, of COVID complications. Warning for some language and violence:

Yeah, he may have never told me. Would be nice if someone had an update on some of the old forum-goers. I hear from GM and Ace (aka ApocalypseCow) from time to time, they're doing okay. But I don't think I have contacts for a lot of the old BIS boardies. I think about Sargy and when he just stopped posting the last time right after talking about getting his computer up and running and how no one had his contact information to follow up. The Coconut Clan site seems to finally be gone as well. With more bird feeders, you get more opportunities to yell at neighborhood kids who are scaring your boards away by being to close to your yard, so that seems about right. "GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU'RE SCARING THE BIRDS!" said really loudly so if any birds had been around they'd be properly startled.

Wow! How time has flown! Doesn't seem like it should be that long until I start adding... Fair enough!

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I dunno, I haven't heard from Rachel since she left. I don't think I knew about Extremist's car crash, either (or if I did it'd long slipped my memory). Hopefully nothing terrible happened with either of them after leaving. Nothing like being mentally in your twenties and physically...not. Wouldn't being vampirerized just freeze you as you are now?

Mods are volunteers. Also I was a mod in those days, so...

I'd actually forgotten about the moderators quitting. I think that it must have been after that that the moderator teams started talking about full forum moderation rather than each moderator having their own area so that there were more hands to help if something like that happened again. I remember disagreeing with Rachel about that approach*, but in the end she was right and I was wrong. *In my defense, I'd only become a moderator to sticky some threads in the BIS PST forums and answer questions, so my approach to moderation was to read every post made in my forums and I couldn't get my mindset to change gears from that at the time.

Its not really a good story. More of an "internet being the internet" story. The die hard Fallout fans didn't like the announcement of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, and flooded the forum with real people and alts complaining about the game. As is typical of many forums, volunteer mods couldn't ban users, only one of the admins could, who were Interplay employees. My memory is the announcement was made on a Friday. So as these new posters/sock puppets began hitting the forums Friday evening (and Saturday and Sunday) there was no one around to ban the users, so all the mods could do is try to remove offending posts. And there were loads of forum rule breaking content (text posts, links, images, etc.) sent in protest of the game announcement and its trailer. However, there was no one around to ban the users who were continually posting abusively and worse we didn't have anyone who could do anything about the users who decided to make their avatars into disturbing anti-Fallout images (like the guy whose avatar was F:BoS producer Chuck Cuevas' head disappearing into Goatse (if you don't know, do not look up) man's anus. So it was just a weekend doing nothing but removing 100s of posts. I'm not sure there is anything you can do at this point but bear with it! Congratulations, though, and hope maybe it gets better for you as you head into the second half!

Edit: So...what's up?

Ugh. I just remembered what it was like to be a moderator on the Interplay forums when Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (the console game) was announced. That was a rough weekend.

There's a few other oldies around (albeit I think there are some posters who predate the BIS forum ). Some don't post but still PM. Sargy hasn't been around since his last post in this thread AFAIK.

Comedian Sean Lock Possible language:

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Well, maybe it'll happen in Season 2 (which Neil Gaiman is working on, derived from ideas he and Pratchett had discussed once upon a time).

I get what you're saying; that said in the old days we pruned out the 'me toos' since they were considered spam, so they wouldn't necessarily keep a thread on top. That said, having likes bump a topic might be interesting (provided someone can't keep unliking/liking the thread to keep bumping it).