#I was actually debating if I should say something after it went somewhat viral and this was a great excuse to do just that

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

You: *writes two small essays clearly, cleanly, and thoroughly going through issues you have with the writing in Miraculous, and how they affect what the show is actually saying vs what the writers are going for vs what the audience is taking away from the show, without treating the characters as autonomous people who actually exist a single time*

Someone who pisses on the poor: 'oh so you think this abused child, who was magically created from a feather, deserves to be maliciously lied to by his lifelong romantic partner and fellow 14 year old? After everything he's already been through?'

Media literacy classes should be a requirement everywhere

Thank you for your kind comments about that post. Comments like yours have been very validating after what was initially a really disheartening series of events.

I was quite pleased with what I wrote and thought that I had done a good job focusing on the writing and emphasizing that I was talking about the big picture of the narrative, not chastising or praising specific characters for what the writers had them do. But after I had multiple people go off on rants defending Alya and Adrien, I started seriously questioning my own sanity and communication skills. I even looked up the definition of betrayal to make sure that I wasn't somehow misusing it since that word really seemed to upset people. In case anyone was wondering:

Betrayal is the breaking or violation of a presumptive contract, trust, or confidence that produces moral and psychological conflict

After verifying that I hadn't been using "betrayal" wrong for well over a decade, I got a little annoyed and did my angry rant in the hope that it would save me from further backlash.

While it has been super validating to see that my two initial essays did in fact make sense to a good number of people, that last post did go a little viral, which I didn't see coming, so I want to take a moment to make it clear that I DO NOT want anyone go after the people who did the rants that spawned my rant. Nothing they did or said was worthy of any sort of pile on. They were just expressing opinions and that's fine. I even get it to some extent because a lot of people have unfairly salted on Alya, acting as if she's the problem and not the writing. And that can be really upsetting when you like her because she doesn't deserve those pile ons any more than Marinette does. They are both victims of bad writing!

I get the desire to treat fictional characters like real people, I really do, but Miraculous is frankly not a good enough show for you to do that. The hand of the author is far too blatant, making characters do whatever the writers want instead of what makes sense for what has been established. One of my favorite quick examples is that the writers gave us a full episode where Gabriel "proved" that Adrien wasn't Chat Noir only to have him figure out Adrien's secret identity because he heard his son use the words My Lady as if that's a super unique pet name that would make Adrien's secret undeniable.

It's all nonsense, which is why I focus on the writing issues, treating the characters like the tools they very clearly are. I simply can't do the kind of character analysis you can do in well written shows where the characters feel real and their actions make sense in the established narrative.

I'll close with this statement to explain how I try to run this blog: the characters in the show are fictional, the people you're talking to on here are not. In the grand scheme of things, nothing about Miraculous is bad enough to be worth fighting over. That's why I enjoy talking about it. With all the truly important fights going on in the world, it's nice to come on here and relax by talking about writing - a topic I adore - without having to care if people agree. It's also why I have this as a side blog. I want people to be able to avoid my content if it upsets them as my goal is first and foremost to have fun dunking on a show that is bad in interesting ways. If I only ever got upset replies to my posts, then I would not run this blog because Miraculous is not worth being miserable over. No piece of fiction is.

[ramialkarmi]

A mysterious supplement has a viral following of people who take it for addiction — and researchers say it's too compelling to ignore

The Food and Drug Administration calls kratom a dangerous opioid, but advocates say the drug is a life-saving supplement.

What's missing from the debate about kratom, however, is hard science on how it works.

For the first time, a researcher has isolated kratom's ingredients to see how they affect behavior in rats. The results are preliminary, but suggest the drug could hold promise for people dealing with addiction.

The Food and Drug Administration calls kratom a dangerous opioid with no medical use, but advocates say it's a life-saving supplement.

What's missing from the debate over whether kratom is miracle or menace, however, is hard science on how it works.

Frequently ground into a fine powder and taken as pills or tea, kratom is a psychoactive drug derived from the leaves of an Asian plant in the coffee family called Mitragyna speciosa. Kratom advocates swear by the stuff, saying it's helped them kick devastating addictions to opioid painkillers.

But the federal regulatory bodies like the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration have cracked down on kratom and even tried to ban it. In February, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said "there is no evidence to indicate that kratom is safe or effective for any medical use."

A growing cluster of physicians and researchers are beginning to question the idea that kratom is useless or universally harmful, however. Some say they understand why people looking to get off opioids might find the drug helpful; others say new research suggests the plant's compounds could have untapped potential.

"We're at the precipice of something promising here," Scott Hemby, a professor of pharmaceutical science at High Point University in North Carolina, told Business Insider.

Hemby is the author of a new study on kratom published in the journal Addiction Biology, and his results suggest that the chief compound in the plant could offer therapeutic benefits.

'The yin and yang of kratom'

The kratom plant contains multiple drug compounds, but two main ingredients seem to have the largest psychoactive effects: mitragynine (MG) and 7‐hydroxymitragynine (7‐HMG). (This is somewhat similar to the way marijuana plants have THC and CBD.)

Mitragynine, or MG, is thought to be the compound with the most therapeutic potential. It is also present in kratom in much higher concentrations than HMG. MG makes up roughly 60% of this type of compound in the plant, while HMG only makes up about 2%.

Hemby's study is the first to use rats to investigate how each of these two compounds affects the brain. 

He and his colleagues gave the animals the chance to self-administer each component of kratom by pushing a dial — first HMG, and then MG. They found that the rats quickly took advantage of the opportunity to give themselves the compound HMG, but they were completely uninterested in MG.

"We stood on our heads to get them to self-administer," Hemby said, adding that his team tried upping the doses of MG several times. "It just wasn’t working. It was almost like it was innocuous."

In other words, while one of kratom's main compounds appeared to be addictive, the other wasn't at all — in fact, it appeared to have the opposite effect. 

That could be promising for people who are turning to kratom for relief from opioid addiction. The drug is known to tap into some of the same brain receptors as opioids — which spurred the FDA to officially call it an opioid in February. But some people believe those characteristics mean kratom could help treat opioid addiction by staunching cravings and reducing withdrawal and relapse. 

Hemby's findings also suggest there might be a way to process kratom to capitalize on this therapeutic potential by heightening the effects of one compound while minimizing the effects of the other. Strains of the plant, for example, can be bred to have differing concentrations of MG and HMG.

"It's kind of the yin and yang of kratom," Hemby said. 

The results of the study are still preliminary, since the observations were in rats and not people. But this kind of research is considered the gold standard for drug studies at this early phase.

"This is just the very first step," Hemby said.

'I can see how someone who's suffering could derive meaningful benefit from something like this'

Thousands of people say kratom has helped them bounce back from devastating addictions to painkillers. Some individuals have reported that they turned to the formula after trying and failing to get science-backed yet stigmatized treatments like buprenorphine and naltrexone.

Bryce Avey, a 26-year-old California native, told Business Insider that he took kratom daily as a tea to help kick the opioids he became addicted to after wrist surgery.

"It's like a cruel joke that I finally found something that works and the FDA and DEA want it banned," Avey said.

Opioids claimed roughly 42,000 lives in the US in 2016, and 40% of all opioid-overdose deaths involved prescription painkillers like Oxycontin and Vicodin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One of the most painful parts of addiction to opioids is the set of flu-like symptoms they induce in some people who stop taking them. Patients who've experienced these symptoms, collectively known as withdrawal, say the experience is hellish. There's shakiness, dizziness, headaches, mood swings, and constant diarrhea — not to mention powerful cravings for opioids.

To calm those feelings, people who've run out of their prescriptions often turn to illegal sources of the drug, like painkillers sold on the street or even heroin.

Avey said this is what happened to him. After his surgery, he took his painkillers for a few months until his prescription ran out. Then, he said, "I started buying them illegally."

That turned into a fast downward spiral.

"I quit going to school and working and almost became homeless," Avey said.

When he heard about kratom from a friend, he tried it and found that it eased his symptoms.

Some physicians and pharmaceutical scientists like Hemby say they aren't surprised by those kinds of stories, since kratom acts on some of the same brain receptors as opioids.

"It makes sense that this product would mitigate the symptoms of opioid withdrawal or allow someone to transition from a higher dose to lower dose, or help get off them off of opioids altogether," David Juurlink, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, told Business Insider.

That seems to be what happened for Avey, who said he now drinks a cup of kratom tea every morning, has enrolled at a nearby community college, and is working again.

"It had enough of an effect to stop the craving for opiates but not strong enough to prevent me from living my life," Avey said.

Hemby said his study of rats could be a step toward a better understanding this effect.

"People are saying anecdotally that this is helping them get off of opiates and if we look at rats, this may have some connection with what’s being reported in humans," he said.

The problem with an unregulated supplement

Currently, there's little to no quality oversight of kratom, which means people like Avey can't verify what pills labeled "kratom" actually contain. 

FDA commissioner Gottlieb has said this lack of oversight is what allowed bacterial contaminants like salmonella to slip into kratom batches. An outbreak sickened more than 130 people across the US earlier this year.

In April, FDA intensified its crackdown on kratom, ordering its first mandatory recall of contaminated kratom products made by a company called Triangle Pharmanatural. This summer, the agency went after three more kratom manufacturers that Gottlieb said were engaged in "health fraud scams" that "pose serious health risks." One of those companies went so far as to claim its pills helped fight cancer — an assertion with zero scientific backing.

These examples make Juurlink wary, since any potential benefit kratom offers has to be weighed against risks due to the way the drug is processed and sold.

"Personally, I would never take this stuff," Juurlink said. "When you go to a pharmacy, you know there’s quality control, you know precisely how much you're getting, and you know exactly what you're getting. With this, it's impossible to know."

That's why Hemby's new research could be so significant.

"This idea that there may be evidence of kratom's therapeutic potential — to me, that should be enough for the government to say, 'Hey let’s look at that more,'" Hemby said.

SEE ALSO: There's a science-backed treatment for drug addiction that works — but it's nearly impossible to get

DON'T MISS: The CEO behind the first prescription marijuana drug explains what the move means for the future of cannabis-based medicine

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: After losing his son to addiction, a father decided to change the world for the better

[eludiumofficial]

Rant #1: The brutal self-slaughter of my former favorite company and why I think comparing Electronic Arts to Bethesda Softworks is ignorant and irrational

Before I get started I’d like to make clear that my opinions presented here are subject to change, dependent on current events and my future beliefs. This post does in no way intend to manipulate the reader’s view on the situation or try and showcase my conviction as being the factual one regarding the topic, it only presents my personal reaction towards the statement featured in the title and should be treated as such.

I dislike rants. I dislike rambling in general, I find it to be a huge time-waster with little to no sense of rewarding. This is probably the first such post that I ever write, and I can’t say I’m quite pleased with my decision, but the subject at hand really provoked me. I feel that writing down my view on it, saving it someplace where I can see it later on in life (and remind myself of my past ways of thinking, as well as the reasoning behind them) is the best course of action. Regarding the second half of the title: I completely understand this is not a big deal, but making Electronic Arts look like the bad guy is something that I’ve seen mentioned for over a decade now in the gaming field, very few times being also backed up by solid arguments. I’m here to present it from my perspective.

Electronic Arts... a name as big in the industry as it is infamous. At least by common standards. Standards that (presumably) mostly come from reading the dumb, uninformed YouTube comment. Hell, I wouldn’t even be surprised if the vast majority of “experts” that comment defamatory remarks at EA's address have never touched any of the company's games. But how could they, right?! You need to pay, what, one hundred dollars for the Deluxe/Premium/Ultimate edition, which is in truth the actual content that assembles the main game... right?

Maybe.

This old company that the average customer loves to bash in ignorance is the same one who grants you complete access to full editions of over 75 of their titles, for €4 a month. It’s the same company who puts their game on sale for €10 one year after its release.. be lucky if you manage to score a €30 deal with other companies’ games in such a short time after launch (and in a sale). Not to mention, they actually have a working DRM *cough* Ubisoft *cough* and customer support.. *cough* Valve *cough*.

But enough about that. I'm not here to lick EA's boots, just pointing out how pathetic it looks to me when people keep complaining about this company 24/7 when there are much bigger culprits in the industry.

Culprits.. like Bethesda. Yeah. Something the old me would never believe he'd write. I wasn't just a fan of Bethesda Softworks. I loved Bethesda. I would read all the lore of their universes for hours on end, at school, at home, even before going to sleep. Hell, I didn't think The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vanilla was a bad game at all to begin with, but when I discovered modding and found out that the Creation Kit, the godly tool that unlocked such a vast world (inside an already huge world), was brought to us by the developers, I went crazy for this team.

The introduction of paid mods.

Not only was it a global letdown when Valve + Bethesda announced paid mods on Steam back in 2015, it was unfortunately only the beginning of something much darker for BethSoft. Now, to be fair with you, I was willing to give them a second chance as customer after that absolute mess, more or less because I saw the partnership with Valve (a company that I stopped respecting since at least 4 years ago, for reasons that are now obvious worldwide) and I couldn't help but assume that they had the upper hand on here. It was downright difficult for a die-hard fan of Bethesda Studios to just drop all respect for them and accuse them at the fullest (or at least mostly) for the wrongdoing. Nonetheless they lost a big sense of meaning at that time, to me and many other fans as well.

When the "Special Edition" of Skyrim rolled out last fall I genuinely thought that was a bad joke. I went and read its system requirements, up to this day I cannot fathom how some improved shaders and lighting system along with some small improvements to textures require a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 as graphic processor. It's beyond insulting the way this company neglects any kind of optimization processes for their products.

One year later, here we are: Creation Club. What the actual hell, Bethesda? What the actual hell? Here’s the trailer, it should speak more than mere words can:

The best course of action here is to fight for what we stand for. Don't let Bethesda win this fight. They've lost it once already, but it seems they're coming back with a much, much greedier and more disgusting ploy.

Some more detailed information about this Creation Club mess, as I really do not have the mood to write more about it and ultimately ruin my state of mind:

Creation Club on Fallout Wikia

A very succinct description in video format, by Gopher:

It’sAGundam goes much less family-friendly into the topic, but his points are very valid:

An extremely flawed system explained by YongYea:

I don’t see how it could get worse than this... but I actually have a feeling it still will. At this point, Bethesda Softworks is not just an anti-consumer company, they're inarguably becoming a threat to the industry. They have the power to manipulate other companies' directions, they have the power to manipulate renowned modders into falling for their trap (as proved in the 2015 scandal). But I believe they don't have the power to treat us, customers, like some absolute fools, and to succeed in doing so. I believe we can take the fight to them. For a greedy company like this, where fan service means absolutely nothing today, money speak in totality. Bethesda does not deserve to be given further financial support. Not until they wake up and realize the damage they're creating.

If Bethesda really doesn't want to give up their unethical practices (and so far, it does indeed look like they're going to keep living in a dream), they have to be put down. The company that once held the crown for creating the best sandbox role-playing games, with unlimited modding possibilities, is now digging its own grave. But it won’t lay itself inside.

Nexus mods

Let's face it, Bethesda: you would never be where you are now — up there at the top, laughing in your customers' faces —  if it wasn't for your community. So many people still keep playing games that go as far back as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, because of modding. As great as your games might initially be, in a vanilla state very few people would still play a 15 years old game on a regular basis. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is still up in the players' charts today thanks to the dedicated modders that spare hundreds of hours from their lives to expand the base game’s content. Not to mention the insane amount of bugs that every of your games has: you never fixed that, Bethesda. It was the community who did it for you. Free of charge.

I began this article by writing about Electronic Arts and never got around talking about its relevance to the topic. That’s simply because I wanted to make clear my thoughts about Bethesda Softworks first. You see, while searching up the community’s reaction to this whole scandal I couldn’t help but notice a couple dozen comments comparing the “new” Bethesda Studios to Electronic Arts. Mostly saying they've become just as bad.

I know, I know.. why do some meaningless comments matter to me? This post should be about Bethesda's fall from glory, not about this. And to be fair I did debate whether to write this in a separate post or not to write it at all. I understand it might not be a big deal, but it does really drive me nuts. I consider the society's uninformed opinions to be just as damaging as Bethesda's recent actions.

Because these uninformed opinions carry on. They influence people. They influence companies' rate of success. Paid mods were taken down in 2015, a few days after their launch, for the fact that the community made its voice heard. All the comments raging at Valve and Bethesda's poor attempt could be translated into a substantial financiar loss for the companies.

With the Electronic Arts case, things are slightly different: we aren't talking about a mass of hateful comments bashing at the team in just a few days' time, we are talking about the worldwide consensus that EA is a "bad" company. This consensus has been spread out in a wide variety of ways, mainly through chats, comments, forums talks etc. and in a very high amount of time (basically since at least ten years ago). It was initially based on the fact (among other things) that you often had to pay for the game's "Premium" edition in order to receive content that was classified by the standard gamer as mandatory for the base game. Later on the consensus was adopted by.. just about a lot of people on the Internet. And that's how it went viral, it basically became a "meme", so to say. Bad things happen in the gaming world, the community instantly associates it with EA. This is not only morally wrong, but it does affect the company as well, for reasons that should be obvious.

"So what? Let them suffer, it's not fair having to pay €100 for a game in order to get the full edition." While I agree that most of the DLCs for EA's games are somewhat mandatory (especially if you're planning to play online), one should not forget the points that I made in the initial paragraphs of this post. If money is indeed such a big issue, wait for a sale. Their games' prices drop by a lot even during the first year. At least you have the assurance of quality control. You pay for a game that... you know, actually works, it's not riddled with bugs.

"How does that still relate to Bethesda?" When people compare these two studios they do it just because they're trying to put Bethesda to shame, really. Most of the time they don't even think twice before hitting the "Send" button: "Just stick EA's name in the comment so everyone can understand I'm only trying to make Bethesda look bad. I might have actually never played an Electronic Arts game, I sure as hell have never read any documentation on them, but hey, they're a meme, everyone refers to them as the bad guy so it has to be true." Their comment/message might literally not try and say anything disparaging about EA, they probably just want to put the focus on Bethesda, but the fact that they're using the brand name as a means to make something else look bad is absolutely ignorant. You are comparing every single damaging event in the industry to one company's marketing unpopular opinion, how crazy is that?

Electronic Arts has made its fair share of mistakes in its time (I agree, buying smaller, good companies and later firing their staff is not cool at all; releasing a new edition of Most Wanted is still supposed to be a Most Wanted game, not a Burnout game), but comparing it to a company that tries and monetize a feature that has been globally free since 1980 (Castle Smurfenstein) is downright insulting. If according to the society EA  is “bad”, then Bethesda must be the devil itself. Unfortunately people will continue to bash at Electronic Arts without backing up any of the criticism with straight facts and/or proof.

The point of this section is not to make EA seem like the victim and Bethesda like the villain. It merely summarizes that if you’re trying to show your feeling of antipathy towards Bethesda Studios through a comparison with another company, then you should pick a suitable candidate. Don’t just rush at placing Electronic Arts' name in your post because you know that will draw attention and favoritism from fellow poor-informed members. It’s a shame that out of all the gaming companies out there, some with much higher rates of greediness, the community has crowned EA as the “greater evil”.

Times have changed, people. Maybe a few years ago the main problem in the gaming industry was indeed the high pricing and the necessity of purchasing a Premium pack in order to enjoy what the whole game has to offer, but if you think that’s still the main issue nowadays then I am afraid you are living in the past. Welcome to 2017, where we are greeted with microtransactions in singleplayer-exclusive titles, card games over card games with little to no difference between each other (except the company your money for in-game items will go to) and an actual increase in the game’s price during the sale, just so it can be “discounted” to very, very little below the normal price (yeah, I know that happened in 2015, but I trust you catch my drift as to what’s happening in the “new world”). While these things are happening and the industry is falling apart, people are still busy complaining about a company that gives you a full-fledged product for a higher sum of money than the “standard” one. And then offers it to you on sale during the next 12 months.

Bethesda has reached an all-time new low and no other company comes to mind that is as brain-dead, heartless and greedy as them, but if you really have to use a comparison to prove your point, for the love of God step up your game and stop mentioning Electronic Arts. There is Valve out there who keeps milking the same damn three games for years now instead of producing anything original, they have a barely functional DRM, their customer support is safe to be assumed AWOL at this point in time and now they’re releasing a card game to further milk money away from players. Take-Two Interactive literally tried to definitively shut down modding for Grand Theft Auto V. There you have Activision shooting themselves in the foot with the Call of Duty franchise, releasing pretty much the same game year after year, also charging the same amount of money for the Deluxe version as EA would for a game that is actually original.

But Electronic Arts is still “the worst company”. Ok.

To sum this up (because it’s getting late, I want a cup of hot chocolate and to play some good old Dragon Age):

Maybe EA is bad. Maybe it isn’t. But it’s certainly not the culprit of the industry anymore, considering all the petty/greedy attempts of other companies in recent years. To compare it to Bethesda, however, is a whole other story. It’s insulting. Bethesda Softworks is not just greedy, they have become a threat.

Bethesda Studios is the kind of wounded owner who kicks his own faithful dog with a club after it comes and licks its master’s wounds. That kick is painful and performed with a Creation Club.

I ran out of hot chocolate sachets.