he/him, 41 years. my photo/video tag is #shot by me, previously #badly shot by me. interested in cool ideas and interesting people. and gardening. mostly reblogs these days. unavailable. don't talk to me about straight white cis males being oppressed, we're really not.
The prokopetz brain worm is reading a source book and thinking "this needs more huge lookup tables"
Most sourcebooks do need more big stupid tables.
(I'll freely grant that my preoccupation is partly an aesthetic thing, but it's not just that. One of my biggest pet peeves with indie tabletop RPGs is how many of them will put the player or GM in a position where they need to Make Something Up in order to render the thing functional, then not provide any worked examples of what that might look like. Like, who exactly is the game designer here, you or me? I strive to always provide at least a dozen worked examples – and more is better – in any situation where one of my games asks the player or GM to Make Something Up, and you know what's an engaging and high-utility way to concisely present a large number of worked examples? A big stupid table.)
There's also something to be said about the size of a table in relation to its expected frequency of use and how that affects the players perception of of how long a game is meant to last
A table with only six options that's supposed to be consulted once per session caps your games total play time at less than a dozen sessions before things start getting repetitive
Quite so. I've touched on this before, but random lookup tables that are far too small for their stated purpose are a frequent vice of indie RPGs. A table of Weird Shit that's ostensibly meant to be rolled on at least once per scene but only has a dozen total entries is just making the hypothetical GM do your work for you in a more roundabout way.
This has been a recurring theme in my Arden Vul Homework series. I think the idea was that listing the individual contents of 352 burial niches would be unwieldy to navigate - but also if there's over 300 of the things you probably need more than 30 entries on the "what's in this niche?" table.
Or, you know, scrap the idea of searching niche by agonizing niche entirely. There's no decisions being made except whether you happened to roll poorly for the first few and then decided to give up (missing multiple magic items and thousands of gp worth of valuables)
The necessary corollary to "make sure your random lookup tables are large and varied enough to sustain interest across the expected number of rolls without kicking out lots of potentially annoying duplicate results" is, of course, "consider carefully why you are expecting so many rolls to be made on this particular table in the first place".
But I feel like an asteroid. I feel like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. I was very, very guilty for years. I had to go to extensive therapy because I was like, “oh my god, I, Lochlan O'Neil, single-handedly destroyed fandom culture?”
She didn't she didn't she didn't. That wasn't it. She wasn't an asteroid.
She was the first skater that fell through the ice of Web 2.0.
I was also a teenager who found an amazing world, and My People, and friends I'd still talk to every day, on the internet. I spent years getting my mother to let me go to conventions and meet friends in distant cities. I started ambitious internet communities I didn't have the experience or skills to bring to fruition. I don't think there was a lot of difference between us, in a lot of ways. It's not that I was somehow smart or skilled or suave and she wasn't. She didn't have some awful planet-killing stink or velocity that she brought to the show.
The difference was this:
In 1994, when the Endless September began and the Internet felt perpetually full of stupid newbies, there were 20 million people online.
In 2001, when I got my first LiveJournal account, there were 500 million.
In 2012, when she joined Tumblr, there were 2.43 billion.
When I started out, and you joined a new messageboard or chatroom or mailing list, you had to introduce yourself to the community. Except in the biggest of websites, people expected to log onto the internet, read through all the new things that had been posted to their local bit of it, and then log off again. Older members took it upon themselves to greet the newbies and answer any questions they might have, directing them to the relevant community FAQs. People would say things like, "Oh yes, I remember you. This is only your second Thursday with us, right? I hope you have fun!"
I joined an Internet full of adults who got online through their jobs or their universities, one of the first wave of kids allowed to roam free. And the proportion of adults to kids kept steadily changing, but until DashCon, I don't think people understood how much. I remember a discussion that happened in early 2000s slash fandom, where the very true observation was made that in particular artistic ways, we had all agreed to suspend shame, which created a unique kind of space. As a community we could all admit that we were there to be embarrassingly enthusiastic in unusual ways about absolute nerd shit, and we understood that it wasn't life or death, it wasn't rocket surgery, but it also wasn't going to get broadcast onto the clouds and our bosses didn't know who we were. Everyone was (willing to act like) an adult, and we could hold the circle and create safety there.
That felt like a lot of geek spaces, then. Anime conventions, science fiction conventions, furry conventions, videogame stores, D&D meetups. Images were bulky and pixelated, video incredibly hard to move. When you got to a con, it was like a brief oasis of Weird that sheltered you and screened you from view, and you ended up volunteering because the weary, cynical, intelligent, kind people in the con ops office looked like you were throwing yourself in front of a bullet just for offering to run a clipboard down to the other end of the hotel for them.
The ice was thick enough to skate on. The circle was strong enough to let you be brave and funny and silly and free, and you could buckle down with some friends and clean all the trash out of the ballroom by 11am on Sunday, and you'd see everyone next year.
The bubble was going to burst, but nobody seemed to worry about it.
Things were changing fast for fans, all kinds of fans, in the early 2010s. Conventions that used to get news coverage like "Local Freaks Weird Out Hotel Employees: This Weekend Only" to "#Cosplay: The Hottest New Trend" and from Geocities sites that shut down if you exceeded your page visits for the month to AO3 getting 10 million pageviews a week.
It was great. We could conquer the world together. We could stay safe and together and the circle would hold.
And then the ice broke open and Lochlan fell through. Right through the bottom of that goddamn ballpit into freezing arctic sea. Right into years of people sorting through the churned ice of the wreck, taking years to come to the realization that there really had not been ANY goddamn adults in the room making sure things were okay. The community had not actually failed so much as never been formed in the first place.
Because as it turns out, group-bonding techniques that work for 100 or 1000 people do not work for 10,000. Or 100,000. Or one million. Or one billion.
That line about agreement to suspend shame sticks with me all these years after because the defining feature of post-Dashcon Tumblr has been shame. And scorn, contempt, derision, and hatred. Cringe, in short, and kys. Exactly the kind of bullshit I saw every day in junior high school, and ran to the Internet and fan conventions to get away from.
I got the kind of community and mentorship and support that have made fandom a refuge and a resource my whole life. Lochlan O'Neill didn't. Not because there was anything worse or dumber or less experienced about her.
Because a system built in the 1990s was incapable of bearing the stress of a load fifty times bigger than what was already "way too full."
Just because I'm from one generation, and she's from another.
not me getting emotional looking at a picture of my grandfather because I realized for the first time that his left eye is higher and deeper set than his right eye in the exact same way mine is, and it's a weird asymmetry that's always bothered me when looking at myself in pictures, but now it means that I'm like him
ok so my great-grandparents moved to Hawaii before it became a state (so the Chinese Exclusion Act didn't apply) but it was still a territory and so my grandfather was born there as a U.S. citizen---when he was a teenager his dad took him to China as a kind of "get to know your roots" trip---but this coincided with Japan's invasion of mainland China during the Second Sino-Japanese War in which time they perpetrated a lot of war crimes---and my great-grandfather ended up "disappearing"---so my grandfather ended up orphaned and homeless in a foreign country---and he said "well, I probably should get a job" so he found his way to an American military base---the Americans were shocked that this ethnically Chinese, United States citizen, fluent in English, Mandarin, and some Cantonese just showed up on their doorstep---and instead of, you know, sending him safely back home to Hawaii where his 12 brothers and sisters still lived, they had this actual teenager start doing intelligence work for them---and he worked with a guy (unclear whether this man was also military) who promised, promised, promised that they would both find a way to Hawaii, but the second that their combined funds were enough for a ticket back, the guy stole all my grandfather's savings and vanished---so my grandfather ended up having to join the military permanently.
he was an incredibly funny guy, and for most of my childhood we'd meet up with him and my grandmother in Hawaii, and we'd visit the Starbucks that used to be the grocery store that his father owned, where he was actually born in one of the storage rooms, and we'd ask the baristas if they ever saw any ghosts there and they'd freak out and ask us how we knew about that.
every time we'd leave a restaurant this 70-year old, 5-foot-nothing Chinese man with probable dementia would turn out his pockets and show us the shit he stole from the restaurant we were literally just at while NONE of us noticed...and in retrospect, it was definitely the CIA training resurfacing after years of laying dormant. I miss him a lot.
I feel like this is even better when you know that the context is that they've just seem three spectral hags emerge from the fog to recite a prophecy of doom that mentions Captain Kirk by name.
a lot of people are very angry with me over this, but I'd just like you to sit down and imagine a banana. maybe a green one so it's extra firm. if you need it to be harder, you can toss it in the freezer.
and that brown end? the hard bit? pencil sharpener. or sharpened with a blade. are you following me? now, attach six of those to a harpy.
yeah. I think you're seeing the vision. you can apologize to me any time you're ready
He left all your teams so he could retire in Detroit, a northern city that’s deeply Democratic and proudly multiracial and also loves its baseball legends in ways no fucking Texan could ever understand.
People get mad @ me when I point out that one of the major hurdles to overcoming anti-vaccine conspiracies amongst the general populace is that the medical-industrial complex has repeatedly demonstrated itself to be unworthy of trust, but listen. Listen.
The overwhelming majority of antivaxxers I've met in real life have been nurses in hospitals. I make it a point not to associate with such people if I can possibly avoid it, so pretty much the only time I would have to hear about it directly is if I'm part of a trapped audience waiting for something else to happen. And so almost all the people I've met who felt moved to take me aside and "warn" me about the fictitious dangers of vaccines have been registered nurses despensing medical """advice""" inside of hospitals.
So if anything I'd say the problem has been grossly, critically underestimated.
Burn was made possible by my friends behind Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. They've got a kickstarter coming up and would greatly appreciate your support!
Investigation that trusts your intellect, gameplay focused on WHO your character is, and deadly realistic combat await in this TTRPG!
i don’t think i’m exaggerating when i say that the average height for women in the US would increase by at least an inch if teen girls were allowed to eat as much as teen boys are
and not to bring my own clocky bitch ass into this but if cis women weren’t so consistently starved their entire lives you’d see a lot more cis women with the kind of bodies that we currently associate closely with trans women. the amount that the standards of feminine presentation are culturally defined by malnutrition is crazy
A scathing report released on the Fourth of July says the National Museum of American History downplays the role of the founders while empha
In a broadside posted to its website just as fireworks celebrating America’s 250th birthday were lighting up skies on Saturday, the White House condemned the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for what it said was a failure to celebrate the nation’s heritage, arguing it had become a political tool intent on denigrating the American story.
The 162-page report, by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, represents a sweeping attack on the museum’s presentation of American history. It is the latest step in the Trump administration’s campaign to pressure the Smithsonian into conforming to what President Trump has described as “patriotic” history.
While the report concludes that the broader Smithsonian Institution — which oversees 21 museums and the National Zoo — “has not met its obligations to the American people,” it places particular blame on the National Museum of American History.
Titled “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage,” the report accuses the museum of anti-white bias and of minimizing and distorting the nation’s founding. Those actions, the report asserts, have shifted the museum’s mission “from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”
The museum, it says, “no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit and discourage our citizens.”
The report takes issue with specific exhibits, such as an 1840 statue of George Washington that includes a depiction of Hercules. The work’s accompanying text describes “the perceived courage of the American people.” That language, the report says, “refuses to affirm the exceptional courage of the American people.”
But the report’s “main concerns” involve what is not there.
Visitors today, it says, “will find no major exhibit dedicated to America’s founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other founding fathers, the Continental Congress, the pilgrims, the Puritans or major moments of the American Revolution.” Instead, it claims, many founders are presented chiefly in terms of their connection to slavery.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Smithsonian, Julissa Marenco, said, “For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The Domestic Policy Council, which wrote the report, is a White House group tasked with developing the president’s domestic agenda and advising him on issues like education and health care. Its leader, Vince Haley, has spearheaded the administration’s commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, including Mr. Trump’s plan to build a 250-foot arch in Washington. Mr. Haley has also been credited with the idea for a patriotic sculpture garden known as the National Garden of American Heroes.
The Smithsonian has long been regarded as independent of the executive branch. But in an effort to have much greater influence on cultural matters in Washington, Mr. Trump has focused on the Smithsonian since March 2025, when he issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
In that order, which calls on Vice President JD Vance to overhaul the Smithsonian with the help of Congress, the president described a “revisionist movement” across the country that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
Mr. Trump has since announced that he was dismissing the director of the institution’s National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, calling her “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.” (The Smithsonian did not follow through — publicly insisting it controlled personnel matters — but Ms. Sajet resigned, saying in a statement that her decision served the institution’s best interests.)
The White House also issued an ultimatum to turn over Smithsonian records or face potential budget cuts. In response, the Smithsonian’s secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch III, reasserted the institution’s independence but said materials had been submitted in an effort to be “transparent and open.”
Some 62 percent of the Smithsonian’s annual $1 billion budget is derived from federal sources, including funds directly appropriated by Congress. The Trump administration proposed cutting the Smithsonian’s budget by about 12 percent in the 2026 fiscal year, but Congress has maintained the institution’s federal funding.
Saturday’s report summons the specter of a funding withdrawal, citing how the president’s executive order directed Mr. Vance to work with the Office of Management and Budget to “prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.”
Without specifying the exact remedy, the report says that “the president has a duty and obligation to seek reforms of the Smithsonian.”
The report criticizes the museum for viewing “traditional patriotic narratives” with suspicion or contempt. It says the museum endorses illegal immigration and advocates transgender issues, while it focuses on Christianity as “an instrument of conquest, exclusion or cultural erasure,” rather than its “constructive role” in “shaping the nation and its freedoms.”
It takes particular aim at the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, saying she has advanced “an ideological agenda contradictory to the museum’s founding purpose of fostering patriotism.”
The story the museum tells, the report says, “is not one of ‘the victory of freedom and genius of our country’ but one of regret, tragedy and shame.”
Ms. Hartig did not respond to a request for comment.
The report immediately drew pushback from some in the historical profession, which has sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s efforts to enforce his view of history.
Sarah Weicksel, the executive director of the American Historical Association, the country’s largest group of history scholars, questioned the report’s claims that the museum neglects the nation’s founding and its founders.
“The museum has extraordinary objects that tell the history of the Revolution, including the newly restored Gunboat Philadelphia,” she said, referring to a Revolutionary-era warship. “Visitors also encounter George Washington, his leadership prowess and the American Revolution in ‘The Price of Freedom,’” another exhibition.
But some conservatives commended the report.
“The National Museum of American History is the tip of the iceberg,” said Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has called for Mr. Bunch’s dismissal. “It’s not the only museum that erases our history and our heritage — all the other museums do. We have to go back to celebrating our country and its great achievements.”
The report, which contains more than 30 pages of footnotes, also criticizes an exhibition called “Many Voices, One Nation” that it claims tries “to convince visitors that illegal aliens are entitled to citizenship, voting rights and ‘belonging’ in America.”
And it criticizes an exhibition that closed in November 2025, “The Electric Dr. Franklin,” for what it says was too heavy of an emphasis on Benjamin Franklin’s connection to slavery, including his ownership of slaves, and not enough on his work as an abolitionist.
The report comes as the Smithsonian faces potentially significant turnover in its governing Board of Regents, a 17-member panel that includes Democratic and Republican elected officials as well as nine citizens.
Mr. Bunch has led the Smithsonian since 2019, and his relationship with the White House is, at best, strained. He has enjoyed the support of the board in asserting that the Smithsonian is independent.
But the museum is working with a diminished board since the terms of two Smithsonian trustees ended in March. Their replacements have yet to be named as Mr. Trump’s efforts to gain control of the institution have slowed that process.
Over the past few months, the Smithsonian managed to avoid further confrontations with Trump officials, perhaps because it made tweaks like altering some wall text and because the president was focused on matters like the war in Iran.
But the new report makes clear that the White House is fed up with the Smithsonian.
“The serious concerns raised in this report are not about a few exhibits or a few controversial labels,” the report says. “As it stands today, it would benefit most Americans, especially parents bringing their children for a tour, if the Smithsonian’s flagship history museum had a label at every entrance that reads: ‘Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.’”
