It is the latest weirdness keeping the thread alive (like some weird drug cocktail) provided by WildColonialBoy.
Wrong, the randomness thread was created afterwards to out-random the stuff appearing here. Indeed the randomness thread has taken away a lot of this thread’s former custom.
Convenient, I haven't visited this thread in ages and I find it replete with gnomes! My New Years Resolution (and you know people always follow their News Years Resolution) is to finish my rough draft for my barely started novel whose protagonist is a gnome as opposed to gratuitous world building about people and regions far away from where my story takes place. I'm sure all the background information I came up with on merfolk will help my novel set in a landlocked nation... Let the gnome obsession continue.