One of the things that tipped us into buying an EV was the disappearance of manual transmissions in North American cars.

When we last bought in 2013, you could still save money by choosing manual; now, in 2026, if it's available at all it's part of a $$$ "Sport" trim. Utterly bizarre. (Europeans: you have permission to laugh at our weird culture.)

Since the clutch and stick were the only thing we liked about driving ICE, buying an EV became a much easier choice (that, and the fact that a 2027 Chevy Bolt costs about the same as an ICE Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla when you include the Canadian $5K federal EV rebate, and we could drive it off the lot in the colour of our choice instead of waiting months for deliver).

#EVs #EV #cars

My harvest centrepiece for last night's family Thanksgiving dinner, all from the garden.

#gardening #ottawa #thanksgiving

1996: little awkward mistakes in online posts show that you're not fluent in a foreign language.

2026: little awkward mistakes in online posts show that you actually know a foreign language (rather than relying on machine translation).

#language #AI #bilingual

First ever butternut squash: many more to come. I've included my largest teapot (6 cups / 1.5 litres) for size comparison.

#squash #gardening #ottawa

On the day Canada finally walked away from so-called "trade talks" with our dysfunctional southern neighbour, I'm celebrating with a very local tomato sauce. Everything here (except 1 tsp of salt) grew within 20m of the pot.

#gardening #Ottawa #CanadaStrong #food

If you see an em-dash ("—") online, it means you're reading



a post from someone who cares deeply about typography and effective communication;


copy that went through an editorial-review process at a publisher; or


text generated by an AI-model that was instructed to recognise an em-dash in its training material as a sign of more dependable, authoritative writing.

It's a shame that no.3 has drowned out the others in ignorant "How to spot AI !!!" influencer posts—the em-dash is a useful bit of punctuation.

#punctuation #AI #emDash

FWIW, Mussolini didn't "make the trains run on time." He just ordered the Italian press to write that the trains were running on time.

That's how authoritarianism works. Fascist sympathisers in other countries fell for it.

#authoritarianism #hegemony #history #Italy

Reminder: if you're a secondary-school teacher, and want to give your students a hands-on activity for learning logarithms, my site

https://cardboard-computer.org/

is free (libre and gratuit) and has no ads, analytics, or tracking cookies. You can download templates to build your own sliderule, and there are instructions and interactive exercises for using it.

(Tell them it's a steampunk calculator.)

#slideRules #teaching #math

"This a quiet residential neighbourhood, we don't need sidewalks," said every non-disabled, non-elderly, non stroller-pushing, car-owning resident. 😕

(Ottawa's Manor Park neighbourhood at the moment, but it happens all over. And shame on Counsellor King for pandering to them )

#Ottawa #ableism #accessibility