Ryerson University (the 3rd or 4th best university in Toronto) rebranded itself to get out from under being named for one of the architects of how Canada educated indigenous peoples. The chose Toronto Metropolitan University, TMU, months before 'Temu' became synonymous with 'lesser than' quality.

Before #Leafs fans get our collective knickers in a twist about Mitch Marner winning a Stanley Cup now that he plays for Vegas, let's all remember he's a Torontonian with family here. You guys? Mitch Marner is quite literally going to bring the Cup home to Toronto. That's how we should spin it.

As self-destructing hunter-killer drones come to dominate modern battlefields, I think it's important we get the nomenclature right. It has to be from the Kamikaze region of Japan. Otherwise it's a sparkling suicide attack.

A word that looks wrong even when spelled correctly? Humungous.

Ken Jennings and Brandon Sanderson were college roommates? Huh. I knew they were both Mormons; still, what are the odds two roommates would both become world-famous financially successful nerds in different ways? Is this the biggest 'they were roommates!?' pairing since Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones?

I have a lot of questions on how this Dairy Queen and MoneyMart ended up with the same street frontage. Who owns the building? Which business came in first? What did negotiations for putting those signs together look like?

I'd be curious how many animals are found on every continent except Antarctica that were not put there by humans. It must be a vanishingly small club.

I fixed a minor plumbing issue by myself, and it only took three trips to buy supplies and in one case exchange the wrong part purchased 'just in case' on a 50/50 shot that didn't pan out. I'm basically a handyman, is what I'm saying.

I've heard it said George Lucas's first several films --including Star Wars-- were saved in the editing room by his wife. She was an incredible editor, and she deserves to be remembered and honoured. May she rest in peace.

Well, it took a few years, but my wife and I finally needed two carts in a single shopping trip at Costco. (The Garden Centre inventory doesn't really stack well or play nice with the normal stuff we pick up on our regularly scheduled grocery trip.)

I know it's a well-worn comparison but I'm going the other way with it. The movie Idiocracy didn't have the budget to demolish the East Wing and put a UFC outdoor arena on the front lawn of their White House. Truth really is stranger than fiction. (Fiction dismissed at the time as being silly.)

Bluesky isn't a bubble or an echo chamber, it's a garden. You plant some seeds and pull some weeds, you tend to it with care, and you make it into a space that pleases you when you come to sit in it a while. Other people can plant and tend to their own gardens, if they like. This garden is yours.

The expression, "Going off half-cocked" is a reference to how muskets worked, right? Like, "Flash in the pan"? You can't half-cock firearms that have firing pins, right? The hammer is either in a position to hit the thing, or it's not. When did "half-cocked" become anachronistic?

I have a friend on Facebook (because I'm an elder Millennial, it is still one of the better tools for keeping in touch with people) who I haven't seen in person in 30 years. Today is his birthday. I once went to his birthday party while he had his arm in a plaster cast. When did we stop doing those?

Reading the preface of Robin Lane Fox's Pagans and Christians: "[...] although [my book] is long, I sympathize with the reader who felt it should have been longer in order to do justice to its subjects." Oh, I'm in for a history nerd feast with this one. I can feel it!

Can I say a thing as a Roman #historynerd in general who is researching the 4th-6th centuries CE specifically for the last few years? This mosaic portrait of Justinian from the basilica in Ravenna is on the cover of 80+% of all relevant books and 100% of those with colour plates. It's too much.

Four, which apparently ties the franchise record for most Blue Jays hit by pitch in a single game.

this 👏🏼 game 👏🏼 has 👏🏼 everything ernie home run piñango home run jésus grand slam a cy young pitcher hits half of our active roster

I've got to admit, it tickles me there's a novelty account this niche, and that it actually generates good content. It reminds me of the early/glory days of Reddit and Twitter where there were accounts 'just for fun' that played characters for their own and everyone else's amusement.

I have done a lot of posts about my #historicalfiction #audiodrama #podcast project. I should probably highlight the best place to explore all kinds of audio fiction —all of which have at least a completed season ready to enjoy, if not the completed series. This is, "The End." www.theend.fyi

I have that big damn book contract specifically because my publisher knows they can rely on me to turn in a pretty good book once a year and not be a pain in their ass while I do it.

My wife and I are on all the same Blue Jays and baseball subreddits. This is almost the only area where we have this kind of overlap. Any and all news or small talk, whoever brings it to the other first, we know where it came from and may have already seen it. It's a weird dynamic.

It's been three weeks since Season Two of the Tape Recorder Trilogy wrapped up. Season Three will kick off four weeks from now on June 22nd, with new episodes coming out every Monday after that from then until the series finale sometime in autumn. 1/3

Do you ever remember a movie and say to yourself, "Wait. I saw that in theatres?" I was just talking about 2007's The Bucket List. I paid for a ticket to see that? Two tickets, probably. I used to go to the movies several times a month. Now I wait for most things to come to a streaming service.

The trouble with hiring an idiot to play dumb is he can be genuine while being disingenuous. He's probably not bright enough or possessing enough empathy to put himself in Canada's place. He doesn't understand the problem while he represents the beating heart of that problem.

A hill I'm prepared to die on? Hockey games shouldn't be closed captioned. The puck goes behind the words too often, and black-box-backed white text over ice never fails to distract or pull focus. Rarely has a good idea run into such a brick wall of, "Except in these non-negotiable circumstances."

I've been watching the new Ken Burns documentary. The running naval battle on Lake Champlain? Holy Hell. If Benedict Arnold's name wasn't synonymous with being a traitor in the United States, he'd have cities, ships, and tanks named after him by now; Benedict would be a reoccurring Top 10 Baby Name.

Thanks very much for the shoutout for The Tape Recorder Trilogy. Happy Friday!

Part of me thinks gnaw should be spelt with a k. We have knife, so why not 'knaw'? Then another larger part of me says if we're going to change spellings, we should be moving away from the silent Ks not making more of them. Then I regret debating myself and explain my ambivalence on social media.

For more than a decade, Stephen Colbert has been one of the top voices of late night—making us laugh and, even more importantly, reminding us who we are and what America stands for. Michelle and I enjoyed being Stephen’s guests—even when the games were rigged—and we’re grateful to call him a friend.

Stephen Colbert closed out the final episode of The Late Show with an emotional performance of “Hello, Goodbye” alongside Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney symbolically switched off the studio lights one last time to the Ed Sullivan Theater. 🥹🥺

You know, it's funny. Twenty years later I still don't think jumping out of a plane was all that crazy, but more and more I question why I decided to do it in a Hawaiian shirt while wearing khaki pants...

I would 100% believe this of self-published books, but this is staggering to hear that it is true of the stuff curated and promoted by the Big Five publishing houses as well. (Screengrab from talezine.substack.com. I don't believe they have a Bluesky account yet.) #publishing #books #writing

A delicate Minoan gold ornament, in the form of a bee, to celebrate #WorldBeeDay The c. 3,600 year old bee is finely decorated with filigree-work and granulation. Length: 1.9 centimetres, weight: 17 grains 📷British Museum media.britishmuseum.org/media/Reposi...

I had a friend and coworker (he moved out West) who whenever he felt a cold coming on would take oil of oregano and honey in tea. He swore by it. "This cures EVERYTHING in three or four days. Just you watch!" I didn't have the heart to tell him how long it takes me to get over a cold doing nothing.

How nice is it out? I have swapped out my long sleeves for short sleeves, and my first impulse this morning was 'light sweater.' This spring has trained me not to trust a pleasant forecast. I thought long sleeves were cautious optimism. I had to dig way back in my close to find short sleeves...

It was a real pleasure contributing a guest essay to t.a.l.e.zine’s Substack on, "Independent Authors and the New Normal of the Book Business." substack.com/home/post/p-... #writing #publishing #books

Many middle-aged Millennial male friendships have evolved into a chat thread where we just send old, deep-cut, nostalgic memes to each other, then discuss their humour or relevance. It's gotten to the point where, in my internet wanderings, I mutter to myself, "Oh, Colin is going to love that..."

I want to hear how they justify this decision. Are they just coming out and saying, "Because we're racists," or are they still reaching for verbal fig leafs about protecting children from learning about what everyone's great-great grandparents were doing to each other in case it generates empathy?

If only everyone's obituary had a headline that made you want to read about their life's story.

The shark whisperer who attends to their discomfort. To date, Tina has removed >300 fish hooks from the sharks' sore mouths.. 🦈 We, sharks and appreciative humans alike, are rooting for you 👌 #sharks #kindness #sealife

I had a dream where I signed up for a cooking course at a local college, but instead of one of those fun adult after-school one-night-a-week things, I somehow ended up taking a proper semester-long class with a bunch of college kids who literally didn't know how to boil an egg. 1/12

Dispatch can mean both 'to get rid of,' even a polite euphemism for 'to kill,' but it can also mean 'correspondence,' even 'military postal service operating during an active campaign.' I wonder how we got such wildly different meanings for the same word? I suspect French is somehow to blame...

I just read, "A 'Clovis-First' anthropologist or archaeologist today is like a geologist in the 90s not believing in plate tectonics." I've lived from 'Clovis is the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas' to 'only crackpots challenge Clovis' to 'Clovis is wrong!' What a time to be alive.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then. I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." Walt Whitman, the sassiest 19th Century American poet.

I am the loader of the dishwasher. I am not complaining. I didn't have a dishwasher from 18 to 38, so having one now feels like the opposite of a chore. A thing that ruffles my feathers, though? When my wife runs a half-full load. What a slap in the face. I was tetris-ing an unfinished masterpiece.

I thought the expression, "The best laid plans of mice & men..." referred to something that needed a shorter placeholder to stand in for the full thing. I looked it up. The saying (translated from Scots) is, "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." We give up three words shy of the end?

My first 'having a cup of coffee on my balcony' of 2026. Could I have done this earlier? Yes, but I'm a wimp, especially about being cold in the morning when I don't need to be. It's a beautiful day after a long, chilly spring, and I'm sitting outside. Hopefully I do this from here to October.

Shooting fish in a barrel is such a specific, ridiculous analogy. Where and when was that a common thing to the point it entered everyday parlance? Was there water in the barrel, or were the fish already dead? Or was it never a real thing and always just an illustrative self-evident hypothetical?