Was an average weekend here in Ottawa, a bit true to type.

TIL that the first town government in Ottawa, then called By Town, was elected in 1828 on the Scottish model, with a provost and bailies. It was comprised of many leading local Scots including Thomas MacKay and William Stewart. But it was disallowed by the provincial government.

Forget about Ottawa’s parks and waterways, I’m here for the cloud formations.

This name seemed funny at first but then seeing the circumstances of birth/death made it suddenly quite understandable and sad.

New word of the day, from the 1851 English census: “annuitant” meaning someone living off of annual investment income. Back when people weren’t afraid to just add random Latin-based words to English. I find this very gaudiferous.

Apparently snow thinks our shed is a Quonset Hut.

Wonder if there is a study about the shift from routinely naming streets in Ottawa Street to using the term Avenue. It’s a very notable thing, wonder when the switch happened and why?

Ottawa Citizen, 1889, a rare ad in this English-language newspaper in Scottish Gaelic (apart from his name and address in English) by Wm. Urquhart, reminder that at the time Gàidhlig was the third-most spoken language in Canada.

Has the verb “to triage” become a default for describing any analysis that results in a ranked listing?

Nice of Google Maps to generate an AI image (claiming image captured Jan 2021 when the area is deep in snow) of Dunrobin, Ontario, an actual place that is not a weird amalgam of roads and forest leading to a hill that is a beach near water that is sky. This helps a lot.

Fav AI summary: “One of the largest areas of salt marsh in Cyprus [my search topic in the browser] is located in the Solway Firth, which borders on the Viscounty of Salinmoor in southern Keoland (a fictional region).” Clearly the time is now to let these systems manage our lives.

Obalski became O’Ball, Ouellette became O’Lett — ironic that these “Anglicizations” of names in English Canada were actually imitating another non-English naming system, but I suppose this alone shows just how Irish Canada’s past actually was at some basic level.

Architects should provide perspective drawings of what the building will look like after 30 years of facility maintenance budget at 50%.

I think Canada really lost important heritage when it stopped using the word “hockeyist” for “hockey player” (seemingly first attested 1890 in the Ottawa Journal) in the 1970s.

Gàidhlig messing with my concept of plural, love it.

I think procrastination is too limited a term, we need antecrastination (for things to be done before tomorrow) and postcrastination (for things that can really wait).

If AI is so great, why can’t Google yet tell the difference between “A.S.” and “as” in a search? This is basic stuff.

Anyone else write eight or nine pages and then rereading see only an overwhelming mass of nouns structured by other grammatical elements that suddenly lose their ability to hold the mass, and it dissolves into so many disjointed noun-particles? Or is it just me?

Why does Wikipedia’s page on the British Empire reference English overseas colonization as antecedent without mentioning Wales, Scotland, and Ireland? Historically it is hard to separate Elizabeth’s plantation of Ireland from her sending Gilbert to America to start a colony.

Ottawa Citizen (5 Apr 1929, p. 23) headline: Sumerian Ladies Carried Compacts 6,000 Years Ago. Lecturer Also Asserts Their Dresses Looked Distinctly Victorian. New Facts On Old Civilization.