Posted in Holidays, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, history, inspiration, Remembrance Day, storytelling, Thoughts, Veterans Day on November 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Today is Remembrance Day in Canada and Veterans Day in the US. I have to work but Mr Man has the day off and he’s using it to revisit Band of Brothers. At 11:00, we watched the ceremonies on Parliament Hill.
It’s a day to remember those we lost and why. To share who they were, what they accomplished, what they stood for. And how we loved them.
We tell stories to understand, to entertain, to build community, to shape our pasts and our futures.
We tell stories to remember.
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, history, innovation, pencils, technology, writing on October 28, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Today, an interesting bit of writing-related history from Moss & Fog!
Why Are Pencils Yellow? The Surprising History of the No. 2 Pencil
Here’s how a lump of English sheep-marking rock, a French inventor, an Austrian pencil maker and a famous diamond added up to the most familiar object on your desk.
True, pencils aren’t all yellow, but many are. The why can be traced back to a luxury pencil maker who named their version after the Koh-i-Noor diamond and exhibited the fancy yellow writing tool at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, which also showcased the Eiffel Tower.
Just a few of the other interesting facts I did not know before reading this article: Henry David Thoreau’s father ran a pencil business, and young Henry was an innovator in the graphite grinding space. Pencils started as boring, unpainted, round shadows of their current glory. And reassuringly, calling it “lead” is rooted in a centuries-old case of mistaken identity. There has never been any lead in pencils.
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Posted in Food and..., Holidays, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, agriculture, Canada, food, history, innovation, Thanksgiving on October 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!
That’s right, Canada has its own Thanksgiving Day, and it now falls before the US holiday. It also began earlier than the US holiday.
The history of Thanksgiving in Canada
As the story goes, in 1578, English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew gave thanks and communion was observed, either on land at Frobisher Bay, in present day Nunavut, or onboard a ship anchored there. The explorers dined on salt beef, biscuits, and mushy peas and gave thanks through Communion for their safe arrival in then Newfoundland. This is now accepted as the first “Canadian” Thanksgiving, forty-three years before the first “American” Thanksgiving.
Thankfully, we’ve come a long way from salt beef and mushy peas. While we’re on the topic, why do we eat what we do on Thanksgiving? Thousands of years of agricultural innovation by Native peoples, mostly! Here’s a quick explainer.
Happy Day!
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, data, history, humanity, storytelling, Thoughts on October 4, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Some days you come across something on the web that helps you remember why people thought it was a good idea in the first place. For today’s entry into that ledger, I present Any Human Ever.
Any Human Ever: one life from over 100 billion
So: what would happen if stories were drawn from actual data, randomized to give a valid representation of the human story? That’s the question that was stuck in my head, and that drove this project forward. If you could draw a life at random from all of human history, what would it look like? Roll the dice, and see a genuinely random life, depicted as well as the data allow. Do it again and again, and what kind of pointillist painting emerges from all those colorful drops of humanity?
I love this idea. Do statistics have their place? Absolutely. Is this perfect? Maybe not, but I spent some time in grad school arguing for the humanization of data, and that debate solidified my belief that one of the best ways to connect people to ideas is through stories.
Have fun exploring 100 billion of them.
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Posted in Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, Doggerland, fun, history, maps, oceans on October 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Drain the oceans and flood the land with this sea level simulator
You’ve surely seen interactive maps showing the effects of the sea level rising, but Sliding Shores makes a game of it: you get a beautifully-rendered globe and a slider to raise or lower the oceans. There’s a load of presets, from “oceans drained” to “drown Everest,” a feat not even Waterworld managed.
Here’s the actual tool: Sliding Shores — Interactive Sea Level Rise Simulator by Richard Franklin.
(It had me at “Boil off 100 feet and we get Doggerland back!” Want to more about why that’s cool? It’s a real-life Atlantis, kinda sorta! Check out this backgrounder.)
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Posted in Holidays, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, anniversary, Canada, history, ottawa on September 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Ottawa 200 Day: here’s what you need to know | Ottawa Tourism
On September 26, 2026, Ottawa will mark a major milestone: the 200th anniversary of the city’s founding. What began as Bytown along the Ottawa River has grown into a vibrant capital shaped by generations of residents, diverse communities and cultural traditions.
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Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, clues, discovery, history, science, Thoughts, treasure hunt, writing on September 19, 2026| 3 Comments »
I think this application of language to science is really cool, and speaks to the layered memories that are built by each successive generation, if only we know where to look.
Lost oyster beds rediscovered thanks to Gaelic and Scots language
“We thought that as native oysters are now really rare throughout Europe, is there a way to look where they used to be, using people’s memory and understanding – that can come through place names.”
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, art, Bayeux, embroidery, history, modern updates, museums, traditional craft on September 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Books are just one of the many ways to interpret and record history. The 11th-century Bayeux tapestry is going on display to the public today in the UK. The tapestry has more than 220 feet of embroidery detailing the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. And the public is loving it.
British Museum Opens Bayeux Tapestry Exhibition
Inside the exhibition on Thursday morning, the first visitors made their way along the tapestry, snapping photos as they went. They were all quiet until one — Cheryl Prax, 71, a retired property manager — spotted some of the nude figures in the tapestry’s borders and laughed loudly. “I love quirky historical things like that,” Prax said afterward.
(And what would this type of storytelling look like with more modern topics? Artist Edith Pritchett drew a modern-day version depicting “today’s battles with online trolls, social media addiction, the manosphere, AI agents” and more: The trollers v the scrollers: Edith Pritchett’s Bayeux tapestry for the modern age)
Want to see the tapestry in person but can’t get tickets to see the original? You still have options!
Where to See the World’s Bayeux Tapestry Replicas
Here are links to just some of the animals, people, and other items depicted (an astronomical object as well as some less safe for work items) in the tapestry. And if you can’t make it in person, check out this high-res digital version from the Bayeux Museum: Explore the Bayeux Tapestry online.
Fair warning, though, many of the main websites linked to the tapestry are slooooow today. Because history is cool, and Bayeux Mania is real!
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Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, history, inspiration, nature, science, Thoughts, Writers, writing on September 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »
It’s a beautiful day here, all blue fall skies and fluffy white clouds, and birds singing in the back yard. What, one might wonder, did the landscape sound like in eons past? Before technology? Even before humans?
There are still a lot of questions to answer, particularly about dinosaurs and other creatures with soft tissue that has not traveled to us through time, but insects? That, we now have a better handle on.
What Did Jurassic Forests Sound Like? Like This.
Scientists spent over a decade reconstructing the calls of nine species of ancient insects to create the first accurate Jurassic soundscape.
Something to think about if you are a writer building a soundscape for your world. And having spent much of the weekend with mosquitoes buzzing in my ears, I can only say that insects certainly can make an impression!
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2026, English, history, inspiration, language, Thoughts, time travel, what to pack when going back, Writers, writing on February 28, 2026| 4 Comments »
This is fascinating, educational and fun. One of the things they may not tell you when they give you the keys to the time travel machine is that language is a living thing, and English is now very old.
Linguist and teacher Colin Gorrie decided to illustrate how the English language has changed over the last 1000 years by writing a post that slowly transitions from the modern day, in hundred year increments. How far back can you understand?
How far back in time can you understand English?
He arrives, he checks in. He walks to the cute B&B he’d picked out online. And he writes it all up like any good travel blogger would: in that breezy LiveJournal style from 25 years ago, perhaps, in his case, trying a little too hard.
But as his post goes on, his language gets older. A hundred years older with each jump. The spelling changes. The grammar changes. Words you know are replaced by unfamiliar words, and his attitude gets older too, as the blogger’s voice is replaced by that of a Georgian diarist, an Elizabethan pamphleteer, a medieval chronicler.
By the middle of his post, he’s writing in what might as well be a foreign language.
The last 300 years aren’t so bad, but then things start to get squiffy enough that I hope you’re planning to pack a fairly comprehensive dictionary. The success of your time travel adventures may depend on it!
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