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by Vuy. . 496 reads.

The Rejected Times Issue LXXI - Not A Holiday Edition

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Issue LXXI | December 2021

Editor-in-Chief: Vuy

Index

  • Epilepsy Awareness Month 2021 - The church of satan

  • The Rejected Realms elect new Delegate and Officers - Vuy

  • BRAINZ! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Plague - Ereh

  • TSP MoD Election Makes Waves - Minskiev

  • How Long Should You Wait to be Commended? - Nakari

  • BONUS: TRR Crossword - Nakari

Epilepsy Awareness Month 2021

FEATURE | WRITTEN BY The church of satan

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was written in November. Although it's not November any more, we thought it is still important to publish this article to bring awareness to this issue.

It's November again. Every November over the last few years, I’ve written about multiple aspects of epilepsy; how it affects those diagnosed, how it affects family & friends, first aid procedure, as well as the impact that COVID-19 could have on people with epilepsy. This year, however, I’m writing about something more concerning than living with epilepsy; sudden unexpected death from epilepsy, or SUDEP as it is more commonly called. SUDEP refers to deaths in people with epilepsy that are not caused by injury, drowning, or other known causes. For decades, it has been unknown how SUDEP causes death. Studies suggest that 1.16 in 1000 deaths in people with epilepsy are attributed to SUDEP every year. It’s terrible living with the thought that your next seizure might be the last thing you experience, and you won’t even know it. We all live with the risk of death, from one source or another, natural or not. However, the constant thought that you will simply lose consciousness and never wake up, although some might think of it as peaceful, is somehow more frightful for people with epilepsy because we live with it. We don’t have a choice in the matter. We either live with it or we die from it. We do or we don’t.

SUDEP has been studied for decades, and yet no progress has been made. Just as progress towards a cure for epilepsy has been slow, so to has progress towards understanding how SUDEP occurs. Children with uncontrolled epilepsy or frequent seizures are at the highest risk for SUDEP. The main risk factors for SUDEP are:

∙Uncontrolled or frequent seizures
∙Generalized convulsive (also called tonic-clonic or grand mal) seizures

Other possible risk factors may include:

∙Seizures that begin at a young age.
∙Many years of living with epilepsy.
∙Missed doses of medicine.
∙Drinking alcohol

For many people with epilepsy most of these factors are unavoidable. Circumstances have been decided for them long ago. Only two of these risk factors can be consciously avoided. The rest are up to some degree of genetics, accidents, and statistics. Anyone concerned with the risk of SUDEP should consult their doctor of course. The first and most important step to reduce your risk of SUDEP is to take your seizure medicine as prescribed. If you are taking seizure medicine and are still having seizures, discuss options for adjusting the medicine with your doctor. If seizures continue, consider seeing an epilepsy specialist. Other possible steps to reduce the risk of SUDEP may include:

∙Avoid seizure triggers, if they are known.
∙Avoid drinking too much alcohol.
∙Learn how to better control your seizures with epilepsy self-management programs.
∙Get enough sleep.
∙Train adults in the house in seizure first aid.


important steps in seizure first aid

Major progress has been made in determining how seizures result in death, as indicated in the neurology journal, Brain, Volume 142, Issue 2, on February 1st, 2019, Pages 412–425. The article can be read here: https://academic.oup.com/brain/article-pdf/142/2/412/27635439/awy325.pdf. The brief explanation is that during a seizure, the depolarization of neurons (part of the process by which signals in the brain are normally transmitted between nerve cells) is intensified and spread after a seizure, which instead silences brain activity, and if it reaches the brainstem it becomes fatal, resulting in death. This is because the brainstem plays an important role in regulating breathing. In non-fatal seizures, the depolarization doesn't reach the brainstem. This discovery of how SUDEP occurs brings scientists one step closer to finding a means to prevent it from occurring! Someday there may be hope. For now, we'll have to buckle down and wait.

The Rejected Realms elect new Delegate and Officers

NEWS | WRITTEN BY Vuy

On November 11, Delegate Agalaesia resigned from office, less than a month before scheduled elections were to take place for the position, having given indications of his intentions to do so over the preceding weeks. This triggered an immediate election for a new Delegate. The incumbent Officer of World Assembly Affairs, Walrus/Minskiev, was the first to declare candidacy and post a platform, having previously signaled his intention to do so.

For much of the campaign period, this was the only serious platform posted, and thus attracted most of the attention and questions, including some controversy. Several commenters noted the large number of tasks outlined in the platform and raised concerns on how they would be achieved within a single term, and the lack of detail in some of the proposals.

One section of the platform in particular attracted controversy, in which Walrus suggested to “get some TRR foreign citizens voting in other regions” as part of the Foreign Affairs agenda. This attracted criticism as it seems to suggest implementing a government-directed program to interfere in foreign elections, forcing the candidate to drop this from the platform. However, he later returned to the topic by adding

[quote]I meant that TRRers (primarily the diplomatic corps, as it was under the FA section) should get citizenship in regions they're assigned to/in and vote more. I never said voting for TRR's interests.[/quote]

This was again viewed as problematic and having much of the same issues as the original suggestion.

Likely in part due to this campaign, Speaker and former Delegate Guy posted a thread titled “Make TRR TRR Again: (Not) A platform”, in which he contended that TRR has a problem with “trying too hard to emulate what other regions are doing...to the detriment of our region” and suggested that officeholders should have “clear and measurable goals, and undertake tasks that will contribute towards these goals”, instead of “a laundry list of things we could (maybe) do”. In particular, Guy rejects two long standing priorities of the Foreign and WA Offices - the sending of foreign updates and issuing of voting recommendations for WA resolutions - as tasks that don’t particularly achieve anything.

Nakari, a former Officer of Culture and former Prime Minister of The South Pacific, and The Church of Satan, a former Delegate, both entered the race in its closing stages. The Church of Satan’s platform was relatively short, with the candidate summing it up as “Party! Party! Party!” The platform focuses on two agendas - participating in cultural activities with TRR’s current allies, and seeking relations with roleplay regions to help further roleplay in TRR - while being very light on other fronts.

Perhaps inspired in part by Guy’s manifesto, Nakari’s platform contained much fewer priorities and further elaboration on how these priorities contributed to the goals of each office, but did generally contain similar ideas to those in Walrus’ platform. Notable differences include in the WA Office, where Nakari professes herself to be generally uninterested and satisfied to simply see more discussion in this area, while Walrus had significant plans including consistently issuing voting recommendations, creating guides for potential authors, and designing awards for WA voters. Other differences include in Outreach/Gameside, where Nakari advocated for small, repeatable events to engage gameside nations, while Walrus’ plans largely consisted of more telegrams (both personal and regional), dispatches, scripts and awards. In Culture, Nakari believes that scheduled events are overdone and believe theme weeks with corresponding events would help keep Culture special, while Walrus believes a loose events schedule should be brought back. On foreign affairs, although both candidates believe in reviving the diplomatic corps and completing a World Factbook dataset to collect useful information, Walrus advocated for building new relations with a large number of regions even if there is little contact with them, while Nakari only focused on regions TRR already shares common values with, and potential future Frontiers which TRR’s defender stance and past security struggles would be a good fit for.

In the end, Nakari handily won the election with 22 votes out of a total of 33, with The Church of Satan receiving 7 votes and Walrus receiving 4.

Less than a month later, scheduled elections began at the start of December for all four Officer positions. Incumbent Officers BowShot118 and Walrus ran to retain their respective portfolios, Gameside and World Assembly, while Frattastan ran for the Foreign Affairs portfolio and recently-returned former Officer Manson/Ereh proposed the creation of a new portfolio that combines Culture and Gameside in his campaign. Walrus' campaign very much overlapped with his Delegate campaign, with the additional promise of holding a second Security Council Symposium after the first one held during the Delegate election period. BowShot’s campaign promised to continue his current initiatives, including topics of the week on the RMB, telegramming active newcomers on the RMB, weekly cultural events on the RMB, and also planned to tackle the “information disconnect between offsite and gameside” through AMAs with government officials and weekly telegram updates.

Frattastan indicated in his campaign that his priorities are to strengthen the Partnership for Sovereignty as a foreign policy tool in terms of TRR’s global image and contact with smaller regions, and preparing for the Frontiers/Strongholds update. Regarding operation of the office, he planned to add more FA advisors and make use of the private FA discussion forum, and continue to ensure important ambassador positions are staffed and updates are produced at least two-monthly.

Manson’s proposal to combine two portfolios was not taken positively, and as such he essentially campaigned for the remaining Culture portfolio. His plans include holding an event with Lazarus, a treatied ally, creating an Encyclopaedia Rejectia on everything about TRR, and events for every legislated holiday in TRR. He also pledged to continue popular games such as Popmaster and Werewolf, and redecorate the region’s gameside presence, including allowing residents to change the Delegate’s flag or motto.

As there were only four candidates, they were each subject to a confirmation vote, which they all passed near-unanimously. The Officers were assigned to their preferred portfolios and will serve for four months.

BRAINZ! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Plague

CREATIVE | WRITTEN BY Ereh

This Z-Day The Rejected Realms was met with the same moral conundrum it is met with every year: whether to kill the undead, cure them, or to simply embrace their cold grasp. With the spirit of Rejects everywhere in mind, TRR’s government said their prayers to Zyonn and welcomed the region’s recently-arrived pus-cloaked worm-filled shuffling denizens.

Early on, the infection was met with a mild resistance. Settlers wearing DIY Walking Dead cosplays from Equilism led by Commander Naivetry reburied our recently undeceased compatriots in piles of their own ashes and administered the “cure” to our more weak of heart residents. Unfortunately due to this it was difficult to maintain our zombified state as more and more harems of dorky do-gooders flooded the region as the infection surged.

Numerous confused zombies bit their tongues in confusion, effectively ending their reigns of terror. Pods of survivors camped out in the region’s lush gardens took this as an opportunity to continue to cure our beautiful monsters and return them to that boring state we call personhood.

I would like to say we won Z-Day yet again this year, but TRR ended up occupying a measly fourth place for most zombified residents in this year’s blood sport. But, all that matters is that we had fun and that we were yet again able to quench our annual thirst for blood and craving for brains.

TSP MoD Election Makes Waves

NEWS | WRITTEN BY Minskiev

On November 24th, the Election Commission of the South Pacific opened their election for Minister of Defense following the resignation of Witchcraft and Sorcery. Two individuals stepped forward - Emodea or Moon, and Balea, better known as Domais.

Moon entered with a strong Linkcampaign, highlighting their plans to expand TSP's civilian conscription, piling force, and military culture. Domais, on the other hand, gave a heartfelt and deeply touching campaign consisting of just one word: "Yes". We here at TRT were moved by this, but many South Pacificans weren't, criticizing Domais for their campaign's brevity. These include Sandaoguo, Kringalia, and Belschaft, all old community members with sizable influence inside the region.

This showed as the election results were 28-1 Moon, with the one coming from Domais themselves. However, the Election Commission discounted a few ballots due to their listing of non-candidates. South Pacificans contested this decision, as one of these listings was the result of a typo of Domais, instead stating "Domain", others using substitutes of "Re-Open Nominations", namely "Ron Weasley" and "Reagan"; and the last discounted ballot had been edited, which is illegal.

The following is taken from TSP's legislator-only Discord channel, with permission from Tepertopia for its use. We highly appreciate them agreeing to let us use this.

HumanSanity, Roavin, and Penguin backed the EC's decision, claiming that typos and unprofessional ballot fillings are rightly unacceptable in TSP. They also stressed that it is easy to fill out and check for mistakes in a ballot. Others, like Nakari, Quebecshire, and Apatosaurus, said that having both post edits and typos be illegal is silly and makes it harder to exercise your vote in the South Pacific. Moreover, many candidates' names are hard to spell, and while that may not hold up for Domais, it would hold up for some. Nakari used Libetarian republics as an example, a typoed name. If they were to run, with the no edits and no typos rules in place, we would see many ballot discounts, as several would read Libetarian as Libertarian and make a typo. It also is not common knowledge that typos and edits are unacceptable, causing further trouble.

Roavin countered by saying that if you smudged your ballot in real life, it wouldn't be undemocratic if the ballot didn't count, to which Quebec responded by saying that 3% of the vote is far more important than what your vote is worth in real life. Nakari cited a Scottish election result where one voter wrote something vulgar next to every candidate except for one, who had "not -expletive-" written next to them. Scotland counted it as it indicated a clear preference.

Apatosaurus argued that the discounts of the RON substitute ballots were wrong, but others disagreed as computers wouldn't autocorrect "RON" to "Ron Weasley" or "Reagan". Roavin then claimed that RON might autocorrect to Ron, and autosuggest would place Weasley after the word, undermining others' arguments. Quebec replied that this discretion should be up to the EC, however. The Election Commissioner stated that: "The Election Commissioner will not exercise discretion to interpret the intent of votes that do not name a candidate exactly as they are listed on the official ballot."

We may see some changes as to how TSP runs its elections soon, but we congratulate Moon for their victory and believe that they will shine in their position.

How Long Should You Wait to be Commended?

FEARTURE | WRITTEN BY Nakari

Being commended or condemned is typically considered the capstone on an illustrious NS career. But how long does that usually take, and what can earn one? I looked at stats and went briefly insane to try and answer some questions.

I looked at all nation commends and condemns and noted their mentions of different types of achievement. If multiple were mentioned, all were noted. I also calculated the age of each nation at the time of the resolution. This may have caused slight discrepancies between a player's NS age and the age of the relevant puppet but there wasn't really a practical way to check that. For nations born in Antiquity, I recorded the date 1 April 2003 - roughly in the middle of the antiquity period.

So the bad news is, it typically takes 7.33 years to get commended or condemned. The good news, if you're evil, is that getting condemned takes 5.93 years on average while commends take 7.79. In general, the time to get commended has risen over time; partly because nations keep getting older, but also because fewer young nations are getting commended or condemned. In this graph, the diagonal boundary marks the age of antiquity nations, so it’s always going to rise - but you can see the lower bound also rise significantly.

(You can also see that people just LOVED writing resolutions in 2011 and 2020-2021, and that there was a significant lull around 2015 and 2016.)

There are only 8 nations who have been commended or condemned within a year of founding - the shortest was the NationStates Community, at only 13 days, but since that was a puppet and got repealed pretty quick, I’m more impressed by Great Nepal, who was condemned after only 116 days. Those 8 were all from before 2014. The youngest commended or condemned nations each year were:

2010 - Great Nepal, condemned at 116 days
2011 - Thatcherton, condemned at 229 days (repealed); Milograd, condemned at 319 days
2012 - The NationStates Community, commended at 13 days (repealed); Anthony Delasanta, condemned at 197 days (repealed)
2013 - Skydip, commended at 598 days
2014 - Hobbesistan, commended at 312 days (repealed); Abacathea, commended at 413 days
2015 - Sciongrad, commended at 1147 days (3.14 years)
2016 - Separatist Peoples, commended at 1864 days (5.10 years)
2017 - Reventus Koth, commended at 501 days (puppet); Candlewhisper Archive, commended at 801 days (2.19 years)
2018 - Helaw, commended at 690 days
2019 - Koem Kab, condemned at 999 days (2.73 years)
2020 - Morover, commended at 794 days (2.17 years)
2021 - 1 Very Fast Endotarter, commended at 760 days (2.08 years) (puppet); Maowi, commended at 913 days (2.51 years)

It might look like there's a spike in 2015-2016, with several nations after that being recognised under three years - but several of these were puppets of older players. Reventus Koth is a younger puppet of a player who had been playing for at least seven years. 1 Very Fast Endotarter had in fact been previously commended as the nation Renaissancistic People - that first commendation took place after 11 years, and at the 2021 commendation, they had been playing for at least 15 years.

Several of the earlier resolutions have now been repealed - 5 of the 8 within a year of founding have now been repealed, with only Great Nepal, Milograd and Imagey Nation surviving - however, they were considered commendable/condemnable at the time and so are relevant for looking at who and what was considered noteworthy at different times.

But what exactly should you try and get commended or condemned for?

The fastest way to get a resolution about you is to write issues, with an average age at resolution of 2209 days (6.05 years). This one became much more popular recently, probably because issue writing has drastically increased. Almost half of all issue-writing resolutions were passed in 2020, and the oldest was Sanctaria in 2014.

Second fastest is to write World Assembly resolutions, with an average age of 2319 days (6.35 years). I don’t really have interesting stats here - I guess the WA is just grateful to its contributors :P

It takes 2467 days, or 6.75 years, to get a resolution by playing cards - obviously this is a newer type, all having been after 2019 when the card game really became solidified as a part of NS.

As said before, evil gets faster resolutions - so why not try raiding? (To be fair, not all evil, I included antifa raids in this too.) Raiding can get you commended or condemned in 2524 days (6.91 years).

Roleplay can get you commended or condemned in 2640 days (7.23 years), mentoring people takes 2692 days (7.37 years), creating things like tools and media takes 2789 (7.64 days), and region-building takes 2878 (7.88 years).

Defenders are, on average, 2988 days old (8.18 years) at time of commend or condemn. (Mostly commend - only 1 condemn mentioned defending).

Then there’s what I’ve called NSGP politics - idk go do a coup or save people from a coup or something. That takes 3110 days (8.52 years).

If you don't mind being a bit slower, try being an issues player, impressing with your stats alone. This takes 3253 days (8.91 years).

Finally, there's plain devotion to doing one thing and doing it well. This one's pretty rare and I only used it for things that wouldn't be considered that impressive if not for sheer time (Kindjal, Mikeswill, NewTexas, The Quote of the Day). So, understandably, it takes nearly 10 years to achieve - 3594 days, or 9.81 years.

So you’ve put the effort in, but how likely are you to get a resolution about you? It really depends on the category:

Your best bet is to try regionbuilding and creating stuff - but cards and issue writing have only recently started popping up in resolutions, so maybe they’ll start popping up more often! But it seems a lot harder to get commended for a long time achievement.

And for each category - are you more likely to get commended or condemned?

You’re most likely to get condemned if you raid, roleplay or do NSGP political things - and if you commit to something long term, defend, or create stuff, you’re far more likely to get commended.

And finally, does your nation’s star sign have any effect?

YES.

BONUS: TRR Crossword

PUZZLE | BY Nakari

You can take it Linkon Sporcle

ACROSS
1 TRR's treaty with Spiritus is called the ____ Pact.
7 TRR's treaty with TSP is called the Treaty of Peace and ____.
9 Who designed the first TRR flag to be legislated?
11 In 2007, Emperor Matthuis ejected their nation from this Pacific to coup TRR.
13 The founder of the RRA.
15 The only feeder government with no TRR embassy.
19 The company that made NationStates 2.
20 The creator of The Rejected Times
21 NS creator Max Barry, former Delegate Guy, EiC Gorundu, and CitCo member The Grim Reaper are all _____.
23 TRR's first established embassy is with a defender region - what's its army abbreviated to?
24 In 2003 the _____ Alliance attempted to invade TRR.
25 I hope this crossword was ____ :P

DOWN
2 The delegate of TRR before Budgie Snugglers.
3 TRR's partner in the Lost and Found Accords.
4 This TRR member maintains the Hall of Delegates.
5 Lazarus was historically known as TRR's ____ Sinker.
6 The _____ Treaty is between TRR, Mordor, and the Renegade Islands Alliance.
8 The _____ were one of the first historical raider groups.
10 Which Greek mythological figure operates the #ferry to the Underworld?
12 An early delegate of the Rejected Realms in May 2003; a member of clue 24.
14 This person has been delegate in the Rejected Realms, The Moon, and the South Pacific.
16 A popular social deduction game in TRR.
17 The operator of TRR's bar and grill.
18 Often goes ">_>"
22 Couped Lazarus in 2018.

NOTE: The Rejected Times does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rejected Realms.

Discuss this Issue over on the NationStates forum here.

Find The Rejected Times Index here.

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Vuy

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