Wait... Are mandarin oranges not a Christmas-y thing in other countries??

🗓️ December 14, 1911 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team became the first people to reach the South Pole. #History

New blog post is up! It goes over my research on the mystery Dane aboard HMS Erebus. If you were at Terror Camp 2025 last week, you got a preview of this during my genealogy panel! www.alongblank.com/2025/12/the-...

Help us keep Terror Camp afloat! ❄️✨ We’re volunteer-run and funded entirely on donations. If you enjoyed this year’s conference, consider supporting us so we can keep coming back year after year! 🥰 ko-fi.com/terrorcamp

I've been answering a few interesting questions on my tumblr. Happy there's been so much interest! alongblank.tumblr.com/post/8024195... alongblank.tumblr.com/post/8025642... alongblank.tumblr.com/post/8025964...

Finally was able to watch it back and I only made a couple minor flubs hooray 🎉

What's fun is we can pinpoint the moment where I became insane lol I was pacing around my apartment for weeks like

I was hoping to watch my talk back but my internet is like "You're trying to load a 7 hour video, buddy? Good luck with that 🙄" so I guess I'll have to try again tomorrow 😅

Oh shit Charles Best *is* probably related to one of the guys who discovered insulin, like that one question brought up What can this guy's family not do???? They're inventing every chart that exists, building castles, making extraordinary medical advances, etc

Tune in to #TerrorCamp2025 at 1pm ET today to see me talk as fast as I possibly can about Franklin expedition genealogy!

Talking through the Terror Camp slides I have finished and it is becoming very clear that I vastly overestimated how quickly I could get through them. I wanted to talk more about my process and sources but I don't think I have time for any of that so source: just trust me bro lol

SO happy my #terrorcamp presentation isn't until Sunday because so far all of these slide decks have been too good lmao I need to up my game

Only 1 more day til Terror Camp V!! 🤩❄️ Let us know which presentation you're most excited for! ✨

My Broadway fixation and my ship-related disasters fixation came together in this album so I wasn’t surprised it made my top 5, but I didn’t expect to be the 19th biggest Swept Away listener on spotify lmao

Procrastinating on finishing my Terror Camp slides so much that I ended up in Italy ✈️

"Terror Camp Clear" by @tchotchke.bsky.social of @terrorcamp.bsky.social is the eleventh and final post in Part V of the Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North series edited by @issygapp.bsky.social and guest edited by @sarahmpicks.bsky.social niche-canada.org/2025/12/01/t... #envhist #envhum

This weekend is the next iteration of Terror Camp, a free online conference for polar exploration enthusiasts, which has the highest level of intellectual content and hilarity I have ever encountered: www.terror.camp @terrorcamp.bsky.social

ANNOUNCEMENT: Tune in Friday, December 5 during Terror Camp for an EXCLUSIVE TEASER of Alex Stone's film adaptation of The Worst Journey In The World ❄️

"The exact contents of the collection are not known to the public despite the fact that the collection likely forms one of the most comprehensive and historically significant collections of Canadiana in the entire world."

📣 SUNDAY KEYNOTE ANNOUNCED: In Conversation with Edward Berger and Florian Hoffmeister! Step behind the camera with Terror alumni Edward Berger (Conclave, All Quiet on the Western Front) and Florian Hoffmeister (Pachinko, True Detective Night Country, Tár).

It’s me!

📣 SATURDAY KEYNOTE ANNOUNCED: Inside Amundsen's House with Anders Bache! Step inside the historic home of Roald Amundsen, as curator Anders Bache invites us on an exclusive tour of his amazing recent discoveries. 🤩 ❄️ Register now: www.eventbrite.com/e/terror-cam...

Well it's a good thing I already had a trip to England on the agenda for 2026 because I am OBSESSED with this Paddington design! Literally the cutest little guy I've ever seen in my life

Pregaming the winter Olympics (my beloved) by going to the Skate Canada International this weekend! I've never been to a competitive figure skating event before so this will be interesting!

I was going through my NYC playbill collection again and decided that, out of the 40+ Broadway/Off-Broadway shows I've gone to, Joshua Henry as Coalhouse Walker in Ragtime is the best performance I've seen as of yet.

Meet a few of the amazing speakers joining us for Terror Camp V, December 5-7th! 👀💫

Aside from my newish polar exploration fixation, I am also obsessed with Broadway. I have no willpower and so Joshua Henry in Ragtime was enough to make me betray my America travel boycott and take a 2.5 day trip.

A very happy birthday to Francis Crozier, who still has more of them than the King (thanks to dates varying depending on the source), but today is the real one, according to his father - I wrote about the mystery in www.thethousandthpart.com/notes/the-ma... #NavalHistory #PolarExploration

Given that, according to my Switch, I've played Hades for 360 hours, perhaps downloading Hades II when I have so much to do isn't very wise. I have to start on my Terror Camp slides soon because I'm gone for a decent chunk of November! However, consider this: I want to

My presentation is on Sunday! So many interesting talks, I can't wait! I've been meaning to read more about Ada Blackjack so that'll be a good one for me. And the lightning talk about the Terror script bot on Saturday looks fun

📣 TERROR CAMP V PROGRAM ANNOUNCED! Register now: www.eventbrite.com/e/terror-cam... We’re thrilled to bring you a fantastic line-up of presentations for Terror Camp V, from deep dives into Inuit texts and polar history to queer naval fiction & scurvy. Find out what we've got in store! 🤩

Polar explorer Ernest Shackleton called his ship one of the strongest to ever visit Antarctica; he blamed its sinking on rudder damage from pack ice. In my latest for @cnn.com, new analysis of records and journals suggests that a structural flaw may have doomed the Endurance from the start 🧪

My abstract for Terror camp got accepted 🎉🎉🎉

New icon again! From the Great Lakes museum in Kingston, ON. Will stick with this one until at least the next time I’m near something nautical and on theme haha

Currently on a road trip through Ontario and Quebec with some family and look what I scored from a used book store in Kingston! They had a whole shelf on polar exploration but I only had about 15 minutes to look before we had to run, so I didn’t have that much time to browse!

Now that Ragtime is back on Broadway as of tonight, I was pondering the question: is it the only musical to mention polar exploration? Are there any others? (A minor character is away on Peary’s expedition to the North Pole, and Matthew Henson has one scene)

I am begging Canadians to understand that Canada Post, like public transit, should not be a business - it's a service. Canada Post is a lifeline for rural, remote and Northern communities and overall, we need to re-evaluate why people think they "need" random shit delivered ASAP.

"I have thought of Absent Friends – absent in The Happy Land – "not lost, but gone before" – let us hope." [John Barrow, 22 Dec 1875] Today last year news came that Fitzjames was finally found, craziest week of my life ensued but thankful for such an incredible historical breakthrough! #NavalHistory

I adore this owl cup at the ROM! The wonky little owl looks like something I could paint, I love her. I also enjoy the subtle shade of the plaque, noting that it's "much stylized"

Literally just found out it's "chromosomal" and not "chromosonal" and I've been spelling it/saying it wrong my entire life

Clear skies over Greenland! (Keflavik -> Calgary, August 6 2025)

Just as written records from the lost Franklin Expedition were within reach, Canada is having to pull the plug on archaeological excavation of HMS Erebus & Terror. loganzachary.substack.com/p/illuminato...

Parks Canada FINALLY posted some 2024 dive season artefacts on Facebook, but it was coupled with the announcement that they’re no longer doing archeological fieldwork on HMS Erebus or HMS Terror 😫

Experimenting by having my icon be my actual self and not my animal crossing self. I need to go to a maritime museum and take some photos near ships to have something on brand.

My genealogy findings for Thomas Jopson, Captain's Steward aboard HMS Terror, are now up on my blog and my tumblr! I found one qualifying living descendant in his maternal line. Luckily he agreed to do the DNA test, and it came back negative! No Jopson remains. www.alongblank.com/2025/09/thom...

My second blog post is up! The first is about William Sinclair, the second is about George J Cann, both ABs aboard HMS Terror. I'm getting through my 2024 genealogy backlog! www.alongblank.com

#OnThisDayInHistory, underwater archaeologists locate the wreck of the HMS Erebus, which disappeared in the Arctic in the 1840s, in 2014. They'll find its sister ship two years later, almost to the day.

I split the difference by going full lazy and using blogger, but I'm tweaking enough CSS that I should have just not been lazy and wrote the html myself by this point lol Anyway alongblank.com is now up 🎉 ... mostly. The desktop version's coming along but the mobile version needs work

What I ended up going with: A Long Blank. It comes from a letter from John Irving where he uses that phrase to describe the coming gap in his correspondence.

Quotes from Franklin expedition letters in "May We Be Spared To Meet On Earth" that I thought would make a good blog name but didn't use, a thread: - Certainties & Uncertainties (letter 1) - When We Meet Next (62) - No Common Voyage (62) - Like Mice In A Haystack (78) - Amongst The Ice (107)