Jamie Chambers's Blog, page 3

Puppies & Passageways

Just as every Dungeon Master has a personal style for running the game, so too do we often have a “signature”—a small element that runs common in many of our campaigns. Something that seems to crop up regardless of the other elements in the story.

Me? I love dogs. Without me specifically planning it, I’ve included dogs as a significant element in the last three campaigns I’ve run—including a streaming game from 2018 that’s still viewable online.

More recently I’ve put together a campaign that includes a few friends from my original game group going back to the 1980s, a heavily modified version of my published adventure A Delve In The Cave. As written, there is an NPC named Vaughn who is a ruthless vintner who incidentally raises and trains mastiffs, who guard his property fiercely and loyally.

In the second session of our campaign the party decided to track some goblin bandits back to a ruined keep they were using as their base of operations, and Vaughn offered his personal guard dog—a huge and well-trained brute named Caliban—to assist the party.

This was a one-time thing, meant to keep the party’s rough combat capabilities the same as six-person group, since another player was going to be joining the following session. But it turns out that the group liked having a big dog with them Very Much, so when negotiating a new contract with Vaughn, the party wizard insisted they get a puppy from the most recent litter.

Enter: Shovelface. It was never part of my original plan, but the group not only obtained a 9-week-old mastiff puppy, but they took it with them into a dark and scary forest.

For your enjoyment, the following are the decisions and rules I used when incorporating these dogs into the game. As with all the material presented here, none of this has been developed or playtested, and is just an example of what I threw together in my own game that might inspire yours. These are meant to be compatible with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (D&D5e) rules.

>> Click here to read the rest and get free rules on Backstab.fun <<

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The Banshee – Folklore & Fantasy | Backstab.fun

As we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with green beer, corned beef, or maybe even a movie marathon, let’s also dive into the rich world of Irish folklore and tabletop gaming. Today, we’re delving into the mysterious and haunting tale of the Bean Sidhe, better known as the Banshee. Known for their chilling wails and eerie presence, these otherworldly beings herald the impending death of certain Irish families. Join us on a journey through the mists of legend, a whimsical Disney film, and the realms of Dungeons & Dragons—as we unravel the myth of the wailing woman called the banshee and discover how she continues to inspire haunting tales of adventure.

>> Check out the article, video, and free monster on Backstab.fun <<

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Part Two: Matthew Hale’s Twisted Views on Women, Witchcraft, & Abortion | Chainsaw History Podcast

In Part Two we learn that Sir Matthew Hale had two women executed for witchcraft after a trial so famous it served as a model for Salem. And for our final surprise we learn that, despite Hale’s horrible legal opinions about the rights of women, he specifically writes that abortion is not a crime in English common law. Once we follow the footnotes anyone can see that Justice Alito lied about Hale’s position.CW: In this episode we discuss challenging topics including sexual violence and abortion.In this episode recommend people donate to RAINN to help victims of sexual violence or help out at a local domestic violence shelter. We also express support and solidarity with the Atlanta Forest Defenders and encourage you to learn more and help stop Cop City.Research & SourcesDobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (06/24/2022) The Forfeitures at Salem, 1692 . David C. Brown. Historia Placitorum Coronæ: The History of the Pleas of the Crown . Sir Matthew Hale (1736). Narratives of the witchcraft cases, 1648-1706 . Edited by Burr, George Lincoln, 1857-1938. Pleas of the Crown . Sir Matthew Hale (1716). A tryal of witches, at the Assizes held at Bury St. Edmonds for the County of Suffolk, on the tenth day of March, 1664, before Sir Matthew Hale Kt., then Lord Chief Baron of His Majesties Court of Exchequer .

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Part One: Matthew Hale, Dead British Judge v. Women’s Rights | Chainsaw History Podcast

In 2022 the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with their ruling on a case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, allowing states to pass severely restrictive anti-abortion laws. In the majority opinion Justice Alito referenced a 17th century jurist named Sir Matthew Hale no less than eight times.

Season Two of Chainsaw History begins as podcasting siblings Jamie and Bambi dissect the baffling and infuriating influence of Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century English jurist with outdated ideas (even for his time!). They talk about how Hale relates to modern American law, particularly concerning women’s rights and sexual assault. Get ready for a wild ride through history with Hale’s Puritan-flavored nonsense and the lingering consequences of his backward beliefs.

Here’s what you can expect from this hilarious and eye-opening episode:

The life and times of Judge Hale, Puritan extraordinaire (oh, joy!).How religion mixed with his legal opinions like a bad cocktail.Hale’s role in witch trials and other bizarre legal endeavors.Coverture, the ultimate marital buzzkill, suppressing women’s legal rights.Sir Matthew Hale’s cringeworthy views on rape, consent, and the credibility of women.How the “Hale rule” crawled into modern American law, casting doubt on rape victims’ testimonies.The California Supreme Court finally giving the Hale rule a much-deserved kick to the curb.

Jamie and Bambi can’t believe that Sir Matthew Hale’s ideas still manage to haunt women’s rights and legal proceedings in the United States, centuries after he kicked the bucket. It’s time to say goodbye to these ancient, harmful perspectives and let progress reign supreme.

CW: In this episode we discuss challenging topics including sexual violence and abortion.

In this episode recommend people donate to RAINN to help victims of sexual violence or help out at a local domestic violence shelter. We also express support and solidarity with the Atlanta Forest Defenders and encourage you to learn more and help stop Cop City.

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One D&D Playtest Notes: Character Origins

The following is a preview of an article supported by my Patreon community. Click here to read the full article for free now! If you find value in my content please consider becoming a member for as little as $1 per month, or toss me a one-time tip by clicking here for several options. Thank you!

It’s crazy that we’re coming up on a full decade since Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition hit our shelves and game tables. It’s been my favorite version of the game since AD&D 2nd Edition, both capturing the “feel” at the table I was looking for with mechanics I intuitively understand as a Dungeon Master and game designer.

Now a new edition of D&D is on the way in 2024, currently called “One D&D” the same way 5e was branded in playtest as “D&D Next.” Wizards of the Coast is following a similar model as before with a huge, open playtest and inviting feedback from the community. They are also making it clear that the products will be backward-compatible with D&D 5e and won’t be a huge break with the previous version of the game like we saw in 2008 with Fourth Edition.

(This edition of the game divided the fanbase.)

Note: The following is a “first impressions” set of notes I made as I was reading through the material. It’s not the result of any study, deep thought, or actual playtesting. My opinions will no doubt evolve over time as I do all of the above.

Today I’m looking at the Character Origins playtest document.

The very first question I’m asking is if this “One D&D” will be analogous to D&D 3.5 — a refinement of the original 3rd edition system, or more akin to the relationship between AD&D 2nd edition to 1st. (It was very clearly a new edition of the game that streamlined, consolidated, and made changes without fundamentally changing the assumptions of mechanics of the game.) The playtest document intro tells us that this document will cover character creation material for Races, Backgrounds, Starting Languages, Feats, and a Rules Glossary. It warns us that this is unrefined playtest material and that game balance (“power level”) will likely be tweaked before final publication.

Determining Your Origin

Origin comes after picking class, but I assume the classes are in upcoming playtest documents, and encompasses Race, Background, and a language. An overview table tells us that Race is broken down into some standard traits: Creature Type, Size, Speed, Life Span, and any Special Traits. Creature Type is our first asterisk! Creature type looks pretty similar to to the list in 5e and is essentially a tag that interacts with other rules.

Another table for Background Trait offers ability score bonuses, skill proficiencies, tool proficiencies, language, feat, and equipment. We’ll see when we get to the detailed section later but it appears the importance of Background in character creation has been boosted in the new edition…

My patrons got to see this a week early, and there’s plenty more in the full article. Click here if you want to read about …

Determining Your OriginCharacter RacesBackgroundsFeatsRules GlossarySpell Lists

… and please consider supporting me on Patreon or leaving a tip!

Don’t be mad, little guy. It’s only a playtest!

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The Shameless Happy Birthday Podcast Plug

On this day in history all the way back in the 1970s … my sister Bambi was born! Please join me in wishing her a happy one after a few rocky months.

And forgive me for my naked exploitation of her latest trip around the sun to remind you that we host a foul-mouthed podcast called Chainsaw History. It’s been on hiatus since last fall—but we’re back! If you’ve never listened, it’s like walking in on the middle of a weird conversation between siblings and I use the excuse of your arrival to pivot to a topic from history. I research and write a script about a notable figure in history to a offer a thorough but casually-told story. Many of our subjects are horrible people (George Wallace!), a few are awesome and praiseworthy (Frances Perkins!), and others are … complicated (George Washington!). Bambi comes in cold and offers honest (and usually hilarious) reactions to the day’s tale, along with a woman’s insight and perspective. We curse, we laugh, we make fun, and almost certainly will offend someone in every episode—especially if that person is a conservative.

Because we spent almost a year off the rotation our numbers are back down where they started. I’m hopeful we can recapture our original audience and that even more people will find us! This first “season” we’re still finding our sea legs and learning as we go. You can help! Subscribe on your favorite podcast app—you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and a bunch more. Click here for a link to easily do just that! Another big way to help? Rate the show and write a review on any of the podcast platforms you use, Apple Podcasts especially! And if you have friends who might enjoy our potty-mouth historical escapades I hope you’ll share and spread the word.

Our goals are modest. We’d like to build enough of an audience that it can become a part-time job that pays like one. We’re not dreaming of live shows or book deals or being showered with money by meal kit delivery companies. But hopefully we can make something enough of you like that we can keep doing it for years to come!

AND SINCE IT’S MY SISTER’S BIRTHDAY YOU ARE TOTALLY OBLIGATED TO HELP — START CLICKING THOSE LINKS BABY!  

There’s no obligation to listen in order, so I suggest picking a topic that sounds interesting and starting from there. Here are a couple suggestions:

My sister and I are most proud so far of our three-part series on Alabama Governor (and presidential hopeful) George Wallace. I became morbidly fascinated with “the fighting little judge” when I learned a close member of my family worked for his presidential campaign in the early 1970s.

My wife’s favorite topic was our two-part series on Frances Perkins — and not just because of her connection to the movie Dirty Dancing. Our country’s first woman to serve as Secretary of Labor was the brain behind much of the New Deal, the reason we have programs like Social Security, Medicare, and laws protecting workers.

And if you want to hear a real life Dances With Wolves story straight from our own family, check out the story of my 5th great grandfather David Boyd.

Thanks for checking out our ridiculous show. And happy birthday Bambi!

This house burned down.

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News, Stuff, and Things

Thanks for stopping by! This site is and always shall be a work-in-progress, but I’ve made a plan to better use this space going forward. (I mean any plan is likely better than “post something when the mood strikes you,” so there’s that.) My kids are back in school, summer is winding down, and I’m planning out the next few months in a way I haven’t been able to do in quite some time. It seems like a good opportunity to take stock and tell everyone what I’ve been up to lately and what else is planned.

It’s also a good reminder for me to both update the navigation on the site to active projects and write up a new “introduction” that tells people who I am and what that’s all about. Coming soon!

Note: This is all about the independent projects I have going on and a little personal news. There is contract writing in the mix I cannot talk about just yet, but when I am able to announce stuff you can bet I’ll be sharing it here and on social media.

So what’s going on? Let’s get into it!

ADHD

In what will likely seem the least surprising diagnosis in the history of medicine, a specialist recently made it official: I am neurodivergent—specifically with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It’s even less surprising if you knew that I was diagnosed with ADD (a term no longer in the DSM) when I was a child. Back in the 80s I was put on Ritalin for a while, and for reasons I can’t remember I was taken off it pretty quickly.

One thing that makes ADHD so difficult for some people to understand is that all of the symptoms are instantly relatable. Everyone sometimes forgets where they put their keys or glasses, everyone can be guilty of procrastination, everyone can have days where they just can’t seem to focus and every distraction is impossible to ignore. But with ADHD these things are constant and overwhelming. Here’s a nice explanation if, like me until recently, you don’t have a clear understanding of this condition and how it actually works.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhcn1_qsYmg

I didn’t realize that ADHD brains are both structurally and chemically different than neurotypical ones. Among other neurotransmitter chemicals (such as norepinephrine and serotonin) we seem to suffer from a serious lack of dopamine—a basic reward chemical that helps keep you going when working on a task. This leads to constantly seeking this brain-chemical stimulus and is possibly a key cause of many of the symptoms.

It’s hard to explain to people just how impossibly hard it’s been sometimes just sitting down and doing something I like and for which I have talent—a problem that’s gotten worse in recent years, whether that’s because of age or life-changing experiences in the past decade.

I’m incredibly grateful to my therapist and my primary doctor for helping me recognize the problem for what it truly is and working with me on therapies. I’ll never be “normal” (and who wants that anyway?) but I can certainly be more functional and productive.

As of this writing I’m one week on stimulant medication and it’s been going well. The side effects are noticeable but manageable, while the benefits have been obvious so far. By combining meds with some personal productivity strategies that I’ve used before I’ve had the most productive week in years without obsessive hyperfocus (another ADHD symptom) being involved. While there’s no such thing as “cured,” I think I’m on a good start managing my condition and making my weird brain work for me more than against me.

This is a part of my life I’ve mostly kept off social media, with the exception of my personal Discord server. There I’m journaling my journey and talking with anyone interested. And speaking of Discord …

Discord

Mark Zuckerberg recently taught me a painful lesson about over-reliance on any one platform for my livelihood—something YouTuber friends warned me against years ago. In this case I got twice-Zucked, put in Facebook jail temporarily and I’m still on “probation” for a few weeks, meaning my posts are downgraded by the algorithm so no one can see them. The analytics on recently-posted links are proof that my usual audience isn’t seeing my stuff, which would be less of a problem if I wasn’t relying heavily on Facebook groups to sell merchandise for my mail-order business. Not only did my clicks drop down the sub-basement, so did my sales.

Zuck You!

It was a reminder that I shouldn’t put all my eggs in one basket, and as one of several strategies I’m slowly building a community on my Discord server.

If you don’t know, Discord is one of the popular text-and-voice chatroom options out there. Free to use you can easily and simultaneously belong to as many servers as you want and there is a ton of control over how much it bugs you for attention. I’ve got my server broken down into a bunch of chat channels where we talk about anything and everything. So if you want to talk D&D and health advice but really don’t want to hear about politics, you can just hang out in the channels you wish and ignore the rest. I usually check in every few hours on an average “work” day.

Click here if you’d like to join my Discord community for free. (The link will die a week after posting so just reach out to me if you’d a fresh invite.) And I’m still a total n00b, so if you have fun ideas for the server please don’t be shy!

Patreon

Just visiting my website means you’re automatically bombarded with links to my Patreon page. It was the first subscription-style crowdfunding I started, and I have admittedly not done a good job figuring out its place in the Jamie Cinematic Universe. But now that I’ve turned a corner in terms of self-directed productivity (see ADHD, above) I feel confident that I can move forward with a real plan for the site.

What is Patreon? It’s a platform in which content creators of all stripes (podcasters! cosplay models! writers! artists!) can get monthly financial support from their fans. Likely it’s because of the many possibilities the site offers that I’ve been exceptionally bad at finding a focus, as I’ve been all over the place professionally for some time now. But I think I’ve found the areas I want to zoom in on for this particular platform.

Going forward my Patreon account will feature content related to tabletop game design and fiction. Some of the content will get a 10-day exclusive for my patrons before it goes wide—other stuff will immediately be available to everyone. Yesterday I published a “first reaction” article talking about the new public playtest material for One D&D (6th Edition), and for a little while will be doing a series exploring this upcoming revision of my lifelong favorite game as I get a chance to experiment with the new rules.

The goal is to have new content every week if I can keep up the pace. In addition to exploring future-D&D, I have some other ideas. Let me know which ones you’d most like to see! These include:

Writing an adventure, specifically the sequel to A Delve in the Cave , and showing my audience the steps and process as I go along.Fleshing out and designing the fantasy setting I’ve had in my head since I started working on Delve, which I also used in the streaming game I ran a few years ago.Going through older game products and finding ways to use/convert them for the new version of D&D.Codifying and developing the System 26 RPG rules I first used in Metamorphosis Alpha .Continuing the Folklore & Fantasy video essay series to explore how creatures of legend got translated into Dungeons & Dragons.

Even a single dollar a month could be life-changing if enough people find value in my content. If you’d like to support any of the above, please click here! (And if you’d rather leave a one-time tip, click here for some options.)

Kudzu Rants Newsletter

I became an independent journalist focused on local issues completely on accident. When the pandemic hit a few years ago I was disgusted with the response and plans from our school district here in Cherokee County, Georgia. I wrote an open letter that quickly went viral, and local teachers and others with inside knowledge began contacting me with their concerns. It was on this very blog that I wrote about overcrowded school buses and unsanitary conditions caused by outsourcing custodial services to the lowest bidder.

Early this year friends became extremely concerned by a coalition of school board candidates who called themselves “4 Can Do More”—a cluster of far-right chuckleheads funded by an out-of-state PAC who characterized our local teachers are “groomers,” advocated for banning books, railed against the evils of Critical Race Theory, and other nakedly fascist beliefs. 

I felt it would be smart to separate my locally-focused journalism from stories of dragons by moving the content to its own platform, so I created “Kudzu Rants” on Substack, a site designed for a newsletter format and offers community support tools. I decided to cover the 4 Can Do More candidates in a series of articles to help a larger movement to stop them from winning their primaries. (This is Cherokee County, Georgia. Sadly Democrats have roughly a snowball’s chance in hell of winning a general election around here, so the primary was the perhaps the only shot at stopping these people from holding office.) And it worked! Whether my articles helped or were completely irrelevant to the outcome, I’m happy to report that two candidates were defeated initially, the other two in a runoff election. I may not exactly be thrilled with our current school board, but we hopefully kept things from getting worse.

Cam Waters Is Mad, Y’all

As you might imagine, the defeated candidates (“losers,” you might call them) didn’t take my criticism lightly. The loudest of them all, Cam Waters, went on a series of ranting Facebook posts in which he insults me, my wife, and anyone who might agree with me. There was this:

And this:

And then there’s this:

Real shame this mature and stable individual won’t be able to influence my children’s education. And darn, it looks like he’s leaving town.

After the exhausting coverage during primary election season I took a break, before brainstorming ideas I wanted to cover outside of education. My current plan is to publish at least one in-depth piece each month covering an issue I feel is important to Cherokee County, Georgia—whether it’s politics, current events, history, or anything else that might be of interest to the community.

My most recent article covers our local sheriff’s office. A federal lawsuit alleges that our county jail is being used for “systemic sexual abuse” of women by deputies, using an inmate work program to recruit victims. I go over the allegations in the lawsuit and put them in context of how badly the sheriff’s office has handled sexual assault and rape cases.

You can imagine how much appreciation I receive for criticizing police in deep-red north Georgia.

As well as a monthly deep-dive I plan to share other news and content relevant to our community. If you’re interested you can subscribe for free! And if you’d like to financially contribute to the cause, the more money I earn from this source the more I’ll be able to justify the time it takes to research, write, format, publish, and share the articles. You can either offer support with a paid subscription through Substack or just throw a one-time tip in the jar.

I grew up here and I care about my community—even if a lot of the people around here aren’t my biggest fans. Thank you to everyone who’s encouraged and supported this work!

Chainsaw History Podcast

I spent most of college as a History major. In fact, my original career plan was to go straight into grad school and become a history professor—mixing up academic writing with fiction in my spare time. And my love of the subject hasn’t gone anywhere despite my wildly different career. I still read articles and books on the regular, following topics that interest me. I watch documentaries and listen to podcasts and in general am a sucker for any well-told story from history. But the only “teaching” I’ve done for a long time would be ranting lectures to my incredibly patient wife or some unlucky friend at a get-together.

During the summer of 2020, cut off from most of the world, we made a quarantine-island with my sister Bambi’s family and spent lots of time over at her place. We had lots of long conversations about all kinds of subjects as we engaged in our favorite forms of vice. And I noticed that Bambi and I had this great conversational chemistry, and sometimes it felt like we were performing for a tiny audience that said “oh wow” at a crazy obscure fact and laughed at our foul-mouthed jokes.

At the same time I was exploring our family lineage after our mother got us Ancestry.com DNA kits as Christmas gifts. I learned too many interesting family tidbits to get into here, but I was really amazed at the story of our 5th Great Grandfather, David Boyd—a guy who spent much of the French & Indian Wars first as a captive of a Native American tribe but was later adopted and “went native,” as so often happened back then. (Think Dances With Wolves.) Reading about my ancestor’s story led me to learn about a  young fellow named George Washington …

On a whim I wrote my first podcast script. There wasn’t even a name for the show. And the original concept was to explore our family tree, something quickly abandoned once we got behind our microphones. Creating is a strange business. It’s happened to me many times, when the creation itself seems to take over and assert its will. We weren’t doing a boring show no one would listen to about our family history that no one cares about. Rather we were creating a foul-mouthed history podcast where we explored our subjects with intentional disrespect, planting our flag by talking shit about George Washington in the first two standard episodes. And the name hit me: Chainsaw History, where we cut history down to size.

The format is simple. I write a script on a subject and my sister Bambi comes in cold—reacting to the story I’m telling her, making jokes, and providing a much-needed woman’s perspective. We laugh, we swear, and we’re guaranteed to offend someone every episode. I then edit and publish the show myself.

After a long hiatus the show is officially back, this time describing how the author of The Education of Little Tree was actually a KKK organizer who once sent goons to attack Nat King Cole on-stage.

We currently have no sponsors and make no money off the podcast. It’s still a new venture and we need to build up an audience, so the best way you can help is sharing the show with anyone who might be interested. Rate and review us on podcast apps—especially Apple Podcasts! And if you would like to throw a tip into the jar, we’ll gratefully accept it. The show is fun but it’s a lot of work to put together!

Fiction

Here’s the area I’m most tempted to say “All’s quiet on the western front.” I haven’t published any new fiction in a long time. I have two unfinished novellas that stalled out, along with a list of short story ideas that I haven’t yet explored. And I have the Big One — an idea for a novel that’s both extremely cool and potentially quite sellable. Taking such a big swing is a little scary, and I hope I’m good enough a writer to pull it off.

As I’m developing my personal work schedule I plan to start blocking time for fiction every day—starting with completing some of the older stuff and taking stock to see if I’m ready to write the book.

In other news, I was recently contacted about writing for a science fiction anthology for later this year. It’s not official and I don’t even know what it’s about yet (and will be covered by an NDA even when I do know more) but you can bet if something comes of it I will announce the news here and elsewhere! I’ll be giving sneak peeks of personal works in progress over on my Patreon page.

JamieChambers.net

What about this very site, you ask? It will become “hub” for anyone who’s interested in my work from fantasy roleplaying games to coverage of my local sheriff’s office. In the old days I used this site as more of a blog—promoting my other work while also writing random articles on topics that interested me. But with so many focused projects on my plate I suspect it will be a rare event.

So the plan from now on is to make a post here anytime anything significant hits for any of my projects—be it a game published by another company or the latest episode of my goofy podcast. You’ll also be able to find links to all of the above as well as to my active social media accounts. The new strategy goes into effect immediately and we’ll be under construction for a week or two while I fix the navigation and outgoing links.

If you care about me and my work enough to read this far … thank you. It’s humbling to know people enjoy and follow my work, and I’m trying to have fun while also using whatever voice I have responsibly. I’m incredibly grateful for your support.

Jamie Chambers
Canton, Georgia
August 24, 2022

“Typewriter in Hell,” created with Midjourney AI

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Cherokee High School Fans Scream Racial Slurs At Visiting Black Athletes

Looks like I’m officially back in the saddle in terms of reporting about the goings on here in Cherokee County, Georgia—particularly in regards to our school system. Last night there was an incident at the Varsity Lacrosse game at Cherokee High School, in which a CHS fan apparently yelled racial slurs at the black athletes of the opposing team.

> Click here to read the full article and consider subscribing if you’re interested in what’s next! <<

All content on the newsletter is free and will remain that way — though folks can subscribe to support my work or throw a few bucks in the tip jar as a one-time thing.

Brookwood Girls Lacrosse Players

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Dr. Ray Lynch Should Never Sit On A School Board

Hello to my local friends and anyone else stopping by! A few concerned parents and teachers here in Cherokee County suggested I look into a candidate for our local school board, one William Ray Lynch, Jr., MD. He’s part of a coalition all running together under the banner “4 Can Do More.”

Once I read through the flier Dr. Lynch’s campaign left on my door I had to speak out against him. So I wrote a heavily-researched, long(ish) article about the good doctor and why no one should vote for him. Ever. I started a Substack newsletter since this is a local issue, and it’s the venue where I plan to publish my acts of local citizen journalism in the future.

> Click here to read the full article and consider subscribing if you’re interested in what’s next! <<

Here’s the TL;DR version:

Lynch and his fellow 4 CAN Do MORE candidates are funded by out-of-state money from a right-wing group — the 1776 Project PAC — to push a national agenda that ignores our students, teachers, and community.Dr. Lynch never attended nor has never had a child in our school district—and in fact has spent most of his adult and professional life out of state. Just Google “William Ray Lynch MD” and everything points to Delaware—including listings of active medical practice.Dr. Lynch complained to the The Epoch Times that his medical license was at risk because he chose to publicly speak medical misinformation at a school board meeting. (Speaking out against vaccine and mask mandates late in the pandemic is hilarious in the Cherokee County school district because we’ve never had any. Ever. It was purely performative.)Dr. Lynch declares Transparency to be important to protect our children, which is why he advocates for an entirely anonymous system that parents (or, say, political groups) could use to bully the school system into changing curriculum or banning books. (A fully anonymous system has no way to even prove that the objections come from local parents. It’s designed to be a political tool, not an educational one.)The good doctor thinks Critical Race Theory is harming our children — something never taught in our schools and specifically banned in Cherokee schools almost a year ago. (Don’t even get me started on his jaw-dropping comparison about children learning the racist truth about our country’s history to the factors leading to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 that killed some 800,000 people.)Dr. Lynch implies that our children are getting graphic sexual instruction in our schools—when by state law our sex education classes emphasize abstinence and marriage, parents must give permission for students to attend, and the program is annually subject to community review.Dr. Lynch rails against Social Emotional Learning (SEL) as “harmful,” despite it being demonstrably effective for education and training—so much so that it’s been widely embraced by corporate America.Dr. Lynch and the “4 Can Do More” candidates do not think charter and homeschool options are enough, and are advocating “school choice” legislation that will pull students and funds from our public schools in favor of private.

Vote No To Lynch

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Joe Rogan Hot Take Goes Wide

Social media is a strange beast. You never know which post will go viral or what might get picked up by news aggregator websites. When Joe Rogan shared his latest piece of misinformation about Steven Seagal joining Russian special forces in support of their invasion of Ukraine, I had this to say:

Joe Rogan’s sharing fake information about Steven Seagal joining Russian special forces demonstrates his biggest problems—zero critical thinking skills and no understanding of when his jokes are appropriate.

— Jamie Chambers (@Jamie1km) February 28, 2022

Followed up by:

Seagal is nearly 70 years old, is too lazy to stand up in half of his VOD movie roles, and is far more danger to a Golden Corral buffet table than actual human beings. He may be pals with Putin, but he’s not getting out of his La-Z-Boy to fight in Ukraine.

— Jamie Chambers (@Jamie1km) February 28, 2022

Over the next few days people kept linking me in “news” articles they found where my tweet was used. Apparently when picked up by one aggregator, you get them all. A casual search found me quoted on Uproxx, Com!c Sands, Awesemo Sideaction, Toronto Sun, The Wrap, Queerty, Yahoo! Sport Australia, Healthing Canada, Sick Chirpse, Allstarts USA, and TMZ Nigeria—among others.

To quote my Dad: “That and a five dollar bill will buy you a cup of coffee.”

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