Eerongal

There's usually a new thread every year (usually, but not always, posted by myself) as a courtesy to help people unfamiliar with the tradition.

Hello, there, little ones! You might be running around confused at the sudden appearance of many strange claiming to be an "ookla the X", while wearing the guise and skin of your former friends. You may be saying to yourself "What sort of macabre post-halloween but not quite non-demoninational-winter-solstice-holiday magical trickery is this?!" Well, fear not my child, for I, grand pappy ookla himself, shall explain to you this tradition. This tradition, which you find so strange, is non other than a celebration! A celebration of Life! For, you see, a long loooooong time ago, an utterly, devastatingly, unimaginably long time ago, about 30 to 40-ish years ago, the person you know as brandon's assistant, @PeterAhlstrom was born! This, in and of itself, is not the origination of this tradition. No. This tradition comes much later. Fast forward to the existance of the 17th shard, and you'll find a number of young forumites, who decided it should be a grand festival! Unfortunately, due to the spread out nature of people on the internet, there was no way to show our love and support as a community. "But wait!" Exclaimed one young, eager forum go-er. "We could change our names!" "That's dumb" responded nearly everybody, "What good does that do?" "It would just be confusing," said still others. "Well, do you have a better idea?" retorted the snippy young upstart. And they did not. And so it was decided, every year on his grand celebration of his birth, people would change their names! The decision was made to name change to be similar to peter's original forum handle, Ookla The Mok, which he abandoned to live and work in a more professional capacity. And so now you know the tale of this ancient tradition as old as maybe 6 or 7 years, give or take. The festivities usually last about a week, or until we get tired of it, enjoy everyone!

i know, right? Next thing you know, i'll be a dreaded "productive member of society" again. I can't stand by and allow such atrocities, which is why instead of standing by and doing nothing, i'm instead sitting by and doing nothing.

Up to you, my man. Feel free to change your name to follow the herd. Or don't. I'm an ookla, not a cop.

A newer, shinier official ookla thread has been created

Hello all! Once again it is time for the yearly festivities of the ookla the mokovial©! You may have noticed other, stinkier threads that have been necro'd about it, but i figured that info is all completely outdated and unreliable and besides, you can't trust that shifty Kaymyth, can you! Not when you have ol' grand pappy Eero here to tell you the real truth! So....Ookla you say? You want to know the real reason for the holidays my boy? Well just sit right there and let me lay about some truth upon you! You see, a long, long time ago, when earth was in a more primordial state, Fierce God Fire and Willowy God Water were up in arms. "Water, you always douse my passions!" Claimed Fierce God Fire. "Well you, Fire, you always burn away my securities!" retorted Willowy God Water. Both were at an impasse. So, they turned to the wisdom of wise mother earth. "Mother earth," they said in unison, "Why must we always be so at odds? Can you not help us find a common ground?" "Well, children," Started wise mother earth in her slow drawl, "Let me think on it." And so she thought. Long and hard she thought. For eons and ages. Fast forward a few hundred millennia, and not that long ago (on a cosmic perspective), a man you may know by the name of Peter Ahlstrom, who happens to be brandon's assistant, was born! And that's why we rename ourselves to "Ookla the <something>" every year, children! Right up until koloss head munching day, i.e. brandon's birthday (or until we get bored of it)

Moved to Cosmere Q&A section

Here

Actually, Europe in general is currently reported to be "above the baseline" for flu activity, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. It's not as bad as the US currently, but it's currently worse than expected (i.e. the baseline), with a number of countries reporting a "medium" impact. Poland appears to be one of the "medium" impacts.

They aren't that i've found, from the few times i've been there (both sides, occasionally for trips over the years). But people are always quick to be like "I'm from kansas city. West side." or some such, and talk trash (in a more-or-less playful way) about the other side

As far as immunizations go, I've heard that the vaccine is, at best, about 30% effective this year. Note that this DOES NOT MEAN you shouldn't get it, but i point it out because you should STILL take precautions as if you didn't get it even if you had your flu shot! Stay well everyone! And as far as the kansas/missouri divide goes, everyone i know from the KC area always argues and/or has pride for their east/west side! KC is very competitive with itself this way!

Moved from the general discussion board. Also, merged with the existing EP8 discussion. PLEASE POST SPOILERS ONLY IN HERE! NO WHERE ELSE!

That entire series is fantastic. I highly recommend it.

Hello! Welcome to the shard! I have merged your posts into one. I highly recommend your review our rules, as we generally discourage double posting (i.e. posting a new reply when you were the last one to reply previously). If you have something to add, you can edit your previous reply. It's not a huge deal, you aren't going to be banned for it or anything, but wanted to make you aware.

There is that as well. That said, i personally am not sure which he took the name from, though on TWG he did use an avatar that was a picture of the thundarr character.

1) "ookla the mok" was a character from a TV show called "thundarr the barbarian" from the 80's. 'ookla' was his name, 'mok' was his....race or something. 2) Maybe. It might be for all we know, since i dont believe all rep ranks are currently know.

Yep. Me, and probably others, have now thrown our copies of oathbringer in the garbage at this point. Literally zero reason to read it anymore.

*user was perma-banned for spoiling all of oathbringer for everyone*

As above, this is prefaced with "I am not a lawyer", and as such, you should not take this as legal advice. That said, you need to make a distinction of what you're referring to, trademark or copyright. In general, copyright is more focused on the copying and distribution of some particular work. That is, you're disallowed from distributing copies of someones work without their permission. Copyright generally doesn't extend to "ideas". Trademark, however, protects specific implementations of ideas and thoughts. That is, it will protect names of characters, places, etc. so long as they represent your "brand" As a general thing, you cannot copyright or trademark the vague notion of a story. Ideas such as "one main god being splintered into other gods" can't be protected. "Adonalsium", the "Cosmere", etc. probably can't be directly used within your story, but the same concepts they embody totally can. Note that this doesn't protect you from people claiming your ripped off the idea from anyone else. All that being said, the most important thing to do, if you plan on publishing your story, would be to check with your local laws, and probably confer with a copyright lawyer.

I, too, am very well acquainted with BS.....wait...hold on....do you mean Brandon Sanderson....Ohhhh! Well, i know about him as well! Welcome to the forums!

Congrats to the new fresh meat team members to the mod team, where we totally don't sacrifice the new blood in hemalurgical experiments!

Worth noting that we also have a writing group you can join. It's the reading excuses subforum. http://www.17thshard.com/forum/forum/38-reading-excuses/ You can join the writing group, and sign up to put out work that's reviewed by the group, and gives feedback. Creator's corner is fine for just dropping off a 1-time thing, though

I personally generally tend towards audio books these days. I actually prefer regular ol' reading, but i almost never have time for it, where as an audio book is much easier for me to "slot in" here and there, whether it's listening during a drive, or multi-tasking with cleaning the house, it's just more convenient to do it, rather than blocking time to sit without interruption reading.

I agree with @Argent, polls for the sake of "more polls" isn't really a good idea....

Just off hand, it sounds like maybe there was a DNS lookup error? Not sure, that's just conjecture based on the OP, but I didn't really see a specific error message. That said, if it WAS a DNS lookup problem, the issue was either at your ISP's end, or your DNS cache. If it's your DNS cache, you can run a command prompt (on windows - Start -> run/search for 'cmd' -> right click -> run as administrator -> in the black box type " ipconfig /flushdns" without the quotes). If it's on your ISP's end, you're screwed until they fix it. Yup