The operative word is “mandatory”. Medical professionals should have a level of discretion available to them, since not all treatments work for all people, even if it wasn’t such an ineffective treatment being discussed.

100%. When one of the cons is no meaningful protection against injury, a helmet should be a huge pro. It absolutely saves lives.

peak Aussie humour

There it is!

I don’t know if you’re interpreting the situation the same as I am. From my perspective, the other commenter and I are having a pretty genuine discussion from two different points of view about the issue. Being ambivalent or apathetic about the inclusion of pronouns in the email signatures does not preclude someone from joining into the conversation, and it also doesn’t preclude someone from having a strong opinion about the surrounding context.

They aren’t debating whether or not people should be allowed to use any particular pronouns, just stating a pretty valid opinion that it shouldn’t be all that important and in their lived experience it hasn’t been. For what it’s worth, I actually agree with that stance in a certain sense. I don’t think we as a society should be placing any stock into gender or sex or sexuality as something that needs to be declared. However, while we do, and while we still have people ostracising and attacking others for being true to themselves, these are issues that need to be tackled. Maybe one day everyone will be on the same page and we can do away with the social construct of gender all together, and maybe we won’t.

I really don’t see anything in their comments that indicates they are secretly hateful. I especially don’t see enough to presume anything about them as an individual.

Very relevant anecdote! There are definitely a lot of different attitudes to names and pronouns outside the context of gender identity. I personally don’t really mind when people get my name wrong, I’ve got a common name spelt a little differently. On the flip side I’ve worked with “Matt”'s that are very serious about not being called “Mat”, and others still who will refuse to respond if you shorten their full name.

That’s a good point. Honestly, given other headlines I’ve seen and also things I’ve experienced in my own working life it wouldn’t surprise me if HR or legal wasn’t involved (or were steam rolled by a signature happy leader surrounded by too many yes-men). In saying that, I’d think it’s more likely that they were.

This comment will serve as my springboard to go and find my favourite, gender neutral word for “yes-man”.

What about people named Ashley. Or Courtney. Or Kelly. Or Sam. Etc.

Plenty of other commenters here who are similarly ambivalent to pronouns have provided reasons that they can understand their practicality if nothing else.

Sure, for a lot of people being misgendered is nothing but a minor inconvenience. For someone who is used to being intentionally misgendered out of spite, such a small change makes a big difference.

If being misgendered in emails was the only problem trans and non-binary people faced in the world, then maybe saying people should get over it is fine. That isn’t the case. This is just one of a million things someone in that situation might experience each day that acts as a barrier to participating in society and it is such an easy one to change. In fact, the situation in question was already working fine. Effort was put in, in response to some misguided outrage, to actively prevent the simple solution.

I understand your position of apathy, and maybe if the cost of addressing this particular issue was high, it would make sense to weigh up the solution, but the cost of this is nil so why not facilitate an easier world for all people.

Wow private servers aren’t uncommon, although I do think they violate the TOS as it stands. I imagine people would continue to use those in the event blizzard shuts the official servers down.

Pirate them

Is post LOTR just a 2 hour falling/melting montage

I think it deserved to do better at the box office but I disagree calling it that good, primarily by counterexample (which I’ll get to). It had an entertaining cast, an entertaining plot and some good twists but it wasn’t unpredictable and the audience it was best for was the audience who recognised the constant homages to the experience of playing DnD - my primary example is the scene of the main character breaking out of prison completely unnecessarily.

The movie was made by Hasbro to sell dungeons and dragons (which, to be fair, you do mention) and I think as a fan of the ttrpg it did a great job of capturing that experience as a movie. I can’t call it the film of the year though, let alone the decade.

What makes you say it’s better than, for example, Blade Runner 2049 or Avengers Endgame, both being movies similarly sprouting from established brands? I would argue Dune is significantly better (talking about movies with a brand) also.

Outside the established brand space, you see movies like JoJo Rabbit, Marriage Story and Power of the Dog. All of my examples have been off arbitrary top 10/top 50 lists of the last 5 or last 10 years and I’m honestly curious about why you think the DnD movie beats all of them?

Edit: in saying that, upvoting because this is almost certainly an unpopular opinion