MTG

I enjoyed this. And what an infectious laugh. ❤️

"Reporter left speechless after witnessing Japan's new $70 million Maglev train in action at 310 mph"

Ellisland, 1791 Dear Sir: Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus. R.B. Robert Burns | Letter to a critic, 1791 | The Works of Robert Burns, Volume 4

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution…

—Robert Burns, Letter to a critic (1791)
#WorldLetterWritingDay #C18th
news.lettersofnote.com/p/thou-pickl...

Re-upping this for the afternoon:

Until this moment had absolutely no memory of owning the Professionals set

An experience you’ll never forget. Gatsby and the Great Race was a standout event at this year’s GROGMEET. Get a copy now!

Exquisitely niche. Bravo.

One of the less known aspects about the Easter Rising is that Indian students at UCD also took part & were then deported by the British authorities for it. Among those students was V.V. Giri who became president of India and said “when I am not an Indian, I am an Irishman”

(RPG PDF Spotlight) Tales of the Old West Tales of the Old West  A Year Zero Engine RPG by Effekt “I love it. It is wild with adventure.”  Henry Starr*  Welcome to the Old West, where life is hard, life is short, and life don’t o…

(RPG PDF Spotlight)

Welcome to the Old West, where life is hard, life is short, and life don’t owe you a goddamn thing.

This comprehensive core book contains everything you need to create gritty and hard-hitting adventures in the American West .

angusabranson.com/2025/04/17/r...

Discworld QOTD, from Night Watch

On Monday our instagram account was hacked and then deleted. We received a ransom note to recover it; obviously we couldn't and wouldn't pay, and therefore lost thousands of followers. Meta support was useless. But we're BACK with a new account: @littletollerbooks. Can you follow us there and share?

🔮 Uncover dark secrets in Elizabethan England! 🏰 The Dee Sanction: Monad Edition includes enhanced content and SIX new adventures. ⚔️ Simple system, exciting challenges📜 Back it now on Kickstarter! 👉 kck.st/4iSpco6

All the emoji, all the time! 😱

Shopfront resembles the shopfront from Mr Benn. Red Knight, navy uniform etc

the shopfront from Mr Benn. Red Knight, navy uniform etc

Pulled up at a traffic light in some small Swiss town and...
..wait... what?

#MrBenn

Former Irish PM

The last surviving Battle of Britain Pilot, John 'Paddy' Hemingway DFC, passes away John "Paddy" Hemingway, the last surviving pilot of the iconic Battle of Britain, passed away peacefully on 17 March 2025 at the age of 105. Paddy Hemingway, one of a number known as ‘...

Very struck to read this. The Few become The None, as the last of a generation passes.

Rest in peace, John Hemingway, and thank you.

“If she wants to know something specific, but doesn’t want people to notice her asking questions, she should simply make incorrect statements while in the company of experts. Her companions will correct her, especially if they're men.”

- Advice for female agents in WW2, provided during SOE training

Cartoon by Stephen Collins for The Guardian. Script as follows: [scene is Winston Churchill in a bbc studio, giving his 'finest hour' speech] 1 CHURCHILL: The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. 2 CHURCHILL: Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. 3 CHURCHILL: If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sun- BBC PRESENTER: Thank you prime minister 4 BBC PRESENTER: Mr hitler, your response? 5 HITLER [in the studio]: Vell zis is hysterical woke nonsense as usual from mr Churchill 6 HITLER: What we are proposing - CHURCHILL: Hang on 7 HITLER: Let me finish - what we are proposing eez a simple power-sharing arrangement - 8 CHURCHILL: What's he doing here BBC PRESENTER: It's important we hear both sides of the debate 9 CHURCHILL: This isn't a debate You don't debate fascists 10 HITLER: Oh here we go with ze Godwins law! 11 HITLER: Why must you people always compare ze things you don't like to 'fascists, Nazis, Hitler'... CHURCHILL: Because you are a fascist Nazi Hit- 12 HITLER [standing up, saluting]: RAUSS! BBC PRESENTER: *Please* Mr Churchill let him speak [ends]

So Teslas are fossil-fueled after all.

Is American democracy doomed? How to understand the concept of "competitive authoritarianism" and why it's crucial to push back now to avoid it.

I wrote about how Trump is destroying American democracy, along with eight crucial lessons about how to counteract it, drawing on my 14 years of studying brave pro-democracy opposition movements in authoritarian regimes across the globe. We’re in serious trouble, but there’s still hope.

📌

None of Durin’s race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap – a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day – so we could work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock.

The other bit is Gimli’s description of the Glittering Caves, which I always trot out in interviews when asked about what it’s like working on the One Ring roleplaying game.

Major Security Breach Sees Two Russian Agents Gain Access To White House

🔵 This week’s Tom the Dancing Bug comic!
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1940: FDR DENOUNCES POLAND IN ITS WAR WITH GERMANY
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Brought to you by the mighty Inner Hive, including longtime members Airplane Moe and new member Michael J.
( bit.ly/theInnerHive )
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READ IT RIGHT HERE👇

One game that never gets anywhere enough love is Liminal (by @thetweedmeister.bsky.social). A while back I wrote a couple of Liminal scenarios for a Con that never happened, and while I've shared these elsewhere, I thought it was time they start going up on UBB!

unboundbook.org/for-whom-the...

Plus @thegrognardfiles.bsky.social playing bass? Grog Marillion tribute band?

Going with mad Marillion fan to the Glasgow gigs next month as a +1. Better start reminding myself…

Explanation Of Board Game Rules Peppered With Reassurances That It Will Be Fun SCHENECTADY, NY—Repeatedly seeking to ease his friends’ growing skepticism and disinterest, local man Joel Mayhew peppered his explanation of the rules of the board game Pandemic with reassurances tha...

theonion.com/explanation-...

GM submissions are now open for virtual GROGMEET - follow this link: thegrognardfiles.com/grogmeet-2025/

The 13 Demons of Akuma Saizo by ottomancer A downloadable adventure for the RONIN RPG

I promised myself I’d work on some of my own projects while freelancing this time around, so with that in mind, here’s THE 13 DEMONS OF AKUMA SAIZO.

A 28 page adventure for RONIN. By me. For you.
Hope you like it. :-)

ottomancer.itch.io/the-13-demon...