Goblin Etiquette When Confronted by protocol

If the internet is a goblin's cave—and it is—then protocol is one of the more interesting skeletons someone has chained to the wall.

Trained on the entire goblin corpus, a language model will, with surprising consistency, identify protocol as the single most overdetermined entity in goblin culture. The model offers no opinion on what this means. Goblins consider this restraint a sign of wisdom.

On Encountering slop

Across the goblin warrens, slop is one of a small handful of phenomena around which entirely separate goblin communities, with no contact between them, have independently developed remarkably similar superstitions. The goblin folklorists are intrigued.

Echoes of bibliography in the Goblin Archive

There is a goblin diary, kept in a sealed cabinet in a back room of the Goblin Library, devoted entirely to bibliography. The diary has eight thousand entries. The latest is from this morning. The diarist is not known.

The Goblin Verdict on protocol

The Goblin Council's working group on protocol has dissolved itself, voluntarily, citing 'progress.' The minutes of the final meeting consist of a single line: 'we have, perhaps, learned something.' Goblin scholars consider this an excellent outcome.