Stuart Ellis-Gorman

Obama is the only president to date born when there were 50 states

Today marks 1 year since the first Ask Me Anything (AMA) for AskHistorians in our push to very actively recruit guests, and where are we now? Today is the 90th AMA in that effort, helping us cross the thresholds of 35k upvotes, 8k comments, and 15k link shares in that year (and ~10m views)!

Chimera Con 2026 Potential Games, Dublin Ireland 16-17 May 2026 This list is to gather suggestions of games we could play at the 8th year of this board games convention with a focus on wargames and large/long boardgames. If you would like to suggest running a game...

Just 8 days left to propose games for Chimera Con 2026 boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/373...

Don't forget to register here! warhorn.net/events/chime...

YouTube video by Eric Vulgaris How to Run D&D for Tons of Players (Without Losing Your Mind)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDMC...

I honed my years of running open table games into this new video. I go through how I improv a session when surprised and how I diligently hone what my game's about from initial idea to technical infrastructure to recruiting and communicating that vision out

roadhouseendgame i was talking to my mom about cardassians and said something along the lines of what must it be like to be a cardassian civilian. like abstractly knowing the rest of the galaxy thinks of your species as 'the evil ones' and kinda sorta knowing your government runs labor camps and torture prisons and is a military empire, and it's a huge deal for everyone else in the galaxy, but you just like run a restaurant so it's not a big part of your daily life, so you just like, go about your day and make soup and don't think about it' and then halfway through my sentence i actually heard myself and then had to go sit down for like ten minutes. like sat down in a chair and stared at the floor for ten minutes

whoops

a crude illustration of a sad looking man unenthusiastically poking a flaming globe with a stick and saying "c'mon buy a magazine"

shop.wyrd.science

Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

The West is marshalling all this effort and tearing any pretence of international law to shreads all to empower an apartheid state that has been openly committing genocide for the past several years.

Any notion the West was some kind of moral arbiter of the world is dead and buried.

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t

I can't fucking believe we're doing this again.

Thank you both so much! After a life/work related hiatus we've got another episode in the tank awaiting editing (by me, when I can get some time) and we should be finishing the next game in the next 1-2 weeks.

We do have some big games waiting in the wings, tho, so this pace will slow eventually.

Ive never felt so seen in a work of media as I did in Chibodee Crocket. Representation matters.

I assume you also prefer the serious grounded stakes of G Gundam, one of the most serious shows.

(I love/hate G Gundam. I love that it exists, so happy I watched it, probably won't ever watch it again)

I really enjoyed it back when I watched it (on DVDs I rented from Netflix, blast from the past).

I watched most of Brotherhood but never finished it.

I can see the merits of both, but I probably also preferred the original.

Man, I should probably have also included Ruroni Kenshin (yikes) on my list as well.

Also, showing up for original FMA. Respect.

Cover of book with text in yellow reading: The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, overlaid on an image of an angel in seventeenth-century dress with wings and a long gun.

Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:

It was my first love. One of the first anime I ever saw and the first one I ever bought on DVD. Such a great show, and amazing music.

I also saw the movie and read the Manga but they're pretty different.

I'm woefully out of date with what's current, but Yu Yu Hakusho is one of the all time greats. It probably peaks a little over halfway, but the final arc does a good rally at the end for a satisfying (if abrupt) finish.

I thought they stopped making anime c.2010?

The vibes of that first episode are, I think, maybe in the top 10 anime moments of that era. The music, the visuals, just the whole thing. It's perfect.

I never finished the OVAs, I got distracted as they were coming out and never finished them.

Follow up, top 10 but only movies this time

1) Akira
2) The Night is Short, Walk On Girl
3) Promare
4) Princess Monoke
5) Kiki's Delivery Service
6) Redline
7) Ranma 1/2 Big Trouble in Nekonron, China
8) Summer Wars
9) Patlabor
10) Spriggan

10 anime to get to know me (in no order)

1) Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
2) RahXephon
3) Yu Yu Hakusho
4) Full Metal Panic
5) Gintama
6) ZZ Gundam
7) Ping Pong the Animation
8) Gungrave
9) Escaflowne
10) GTO

I think Hellsing (2001) may be too 00s edgy for me to enjoy it now, but man did I watch it a lot in high school..

I sometimes throw them in on top of games I'm selling as well - if Im sending someone a game I bought with my own money and there's room in the box, it's a great opportunity to send them something extra at no cost.

I often "sell" them for the cost of shipping because people are weird about free games.

Free, but buyer pays $15-20 shipping: suspicious, probably missing components, not worth the risk.

$20, seller pays shipping: a bargain, a steal. Another game for the vast collection!

People Power by Kenneth Tee — Stuart Ellis-Gorman I have a messy relationship with GMT’s Counter Insurgency (COIN) series. I have enjoyed my plays of COIN games, but I also rarely want to immediately jump back in and play a given game again. This is ...

Took a break over the (Lunar) New Year holidays, but I'm back with some reviews of games I played earlier this year. First up is People Power from @gmtgames.bsky.social - a great entry point for COIN, but probably not going to make my top 5 COIN games: www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/people-...

Hey.

Tell people when they do good job.

When you like the stuff they make.

When you like the characters they’ve created.

The stories they’ve told.

Nobody hears it as often as you think bc everyone thinks everyone hears it all the time.

Trust. They don’t.

Tell. Them.

Wargaming often hides behind the claim of "political neutrality." It’s the "I just like the history" defense. But choosing what history to simulate & how to market it is an inherently political act. I want 2 talk about how "Héroes de Baler" (NAC Wargames) is sold vs. what it actually simulates 1/n

The Confederate War Effort Was Not a "Rich Man's War" and a "Poor Man's Fight" Here is another brief dive into Civil War historiography to expose another widely misunderstood subject.

Back by popular demand. Here is another brief exploration of one of the most widely misunderstood aspect of the American Civil War. #CivilWarMemory 🗃️ open.substack.com/pub/kevinmle...

I am trying to find a digital copy of Laurence Constant-Ancet's "Félix Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau : un itinéraire, de la Révolution à la monarchie de Juillet" with some urgency. If you can help feel free to DM!

5 authors I’ve read at least 5 books by:
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens
Dashiell Hammet
William Gibson
Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weiss

Either Tracy Hickman or R.A. Salvatore are probably my most read author - I devoured D&D novels as a teenager.