Quotulatiousness

June 28, 2025

Punctuation microaggression

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

We appear to have an entire generation — Gen Z — suffering undue trauma from, checks notes, aggressive and distressing punctuation marks:

“American typewriter keyboard layout” by Любослов Езыкин is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 .

What is more delicious than casting sweeping judgements over entire generations? Contrary to prevailing wisdom, studying and mocking the mores and manners of Generation Z is not only morally just but entirely natural. Not to mention good fun.

At the end of this paragraph, re-read this string of sentences. Study the punctuation. You’ll notice that each sentence ends with a satisfying symbol. What Americans call a period and what Britishers call a full stop signifies the end of the sentence — that the sentence contains a complete thought. How lovely.


That unassuming little dot was good enough for Shakespeare, Hemingway, Ibsen, Miller — every writer who mastered the well-mannered violence of the English Language. They understood, too, the writerly compulsion to kneel before that impossible mistress. Submission sets the writer free.

Submission, however, is not in vogue. Submission implies hierarchy, which implies standards — forbidden notions to anyone under 45.

Generation Z. The Zoomers. Those with the misfortune to have spawned here on Earth between 1997 and 2012. This swarm of digital natives has never known a world without the internet. Or, it appears, one with grammatical standards.

According to linguists, Zoomers view the full stop as Bill Clinton views a well-adjusted woman: with intrinsic horror. For Zoomers, the full stop is the mark of unbridled aggression. Zoomers refuse full stops — period.

In The Telegraph, one-linguist-cum-exorcist said that Zoomers find the full stop deeply troubling. That little dot before these seven words provokes a generational panic attack: “Full stops signify an angry or abrupt tone of voice”.

Another expert chimed in. Dr Lauren Fonteyn tweeted, “If you send a text message without a full stop, it’s already obvious that you’ve concluded the message. So, if you add that additional marker for completion, they will read something into it, and it tends to be a falling intonation or negative tone.”

To renew my sense of horror, I probed further. In a 2015 study at New York’s Binghamton University, undergraduates perceived text messages ending with a full stop as “less sincere” than the same message without one.

Language, like the fish, rots from the head. Researchers also found that exclamation marks, those hyperactive symbols of faux cheer, achieved the opposite of full stops. Those employing an exclamation mark appeared “more sincere and engaged”.

Breathtaking hypocrisy in the BC Ferries deal to buy ships from China

Filed under: Cancon, China, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

As you’d imagine, with the coastal geography of British Columbia, there’s a lot of demand for ferry service between the mainland and Vancouver Island (and other less-accessible-by-land locations). BC Ferries runs a fleet of ships to handle this traffic and needed some new ferries to replace older vessels. They decided, in the middle of a trade war, to source the ships from China rather than a Canadian shipyard. And the federal government financially backed the purchase:

So just to recap — because this one’s almost too absurd to believe: BC Ferries cuts a billion-dollar deal with a Chinese state-owned shipyard to build four new ferries. Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland — always quick to perform outrage when the cameras are on — writes a stern letter saying how “dismayed” she is. She scolds British Columbia for daring to do business with a hostile foreign regime that’s literally attacking our critical infrastructure in real time.

And then — wait for it — it turns out her own federal government quietly financed the whole thing.

Yes, really.

According to an explosive report from The Globe and Mail, the Canada Infrastructure Bank — a federal Crown corporation — provided $1 billion in low-interest financing for the very same China shipbuilding deal Freeland claimed to oppose. The contract was signed in March 2025. The outrage? That only came later, when the public found out about it in June.

Freeland’s letter to BC’s Transportation Minister was loaded with warnings. She talked about China’s “unjustified tariffs” and “cybersecurity threats”. She demanded assurances that “no federal funding” would support the purchase. But what she didn’t mention — what she conveniently left out — was that Ottawa had already cut the cheque. The financing was already in place. The loan had been approved. Freeland just didn’t say a word.

And when reporters asked for clarification, what did her office say? Nothing. They passed the buck to another minister. The new Infrastructure Minister, Gregor Robertson, now claims the government had “no influence” in the procurement decision. No influence? You loan a billion dollars to a company and have no opinion on where it goes?

Let’s be clear: This wasn’t some harmless miscommunication. If it wasn’t a cover-up, then it was sheer incompetence — the same brand of incompetence that’s driven our shipyards into obsolescence, our economy into dependence, and our country into managed decline. An entire federal cabinet stood by, watched this unfold, signed the cheque — and then pretended they had nothing to do with it.

And British Columbia’s government? Just as bad. Premier David Eby, the man who pretends to champion “BC First”, claims he was “not happy” with the China deal but says it’s “too late” to change course. Too late? This isn’t an asteroid heading for Earth. It’s a contract. And contracts can be rewritten, canceled, renegotiated — if anyone in charge had the political will to stand up and say, “No, we don’t hand billion-dollar infrastructure projects to hostile regimes”.

But instead, we get excuse after excuse. They say BC Ferries is independent. They say there was no capacity in Canada. They say we had no choice. All the while, Canadian shipyards sit idle, unionized workers are frozen out, and the Canadian taxpayer is stuck subsidizing Chinese shipbuilding — and Chinese espionage.

The Original Beef Stroganoff of Imperial Russia

Filed under: Food, History, Russia — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 28 Jan 2025

Tender cubes of beef seasoned with allspice and served with a delicious sour cream and mustard sauce

City/Region: Russia
Time Period: 1871

Beef stroganoff has certainly gone through a lot of changes since this recipe was printed in 1871. Nowadays mushrooms are often added, and the allspice has pretty much disappeared, but I think it’s a delicious and unusual flavor for modern palates. The mustard flavor is present in the sauce without being super mustardy, and the beef is tender and flavorful.

This tasty dish comes together fairly quickly after the meat has rested with the seasonings, so I definitely recommend giving this a try.

    Two hours prior to cooking take two funts of tender beef, cut in small cubes, and sprinkle with salt and allspice; take 30 grams butter and 1 tablespoon of flour and mix, lightly fry in a skillet, then mix with 2 glasses of stock, add 1 teaspoon of Sarepska mustard, a little bit of pepper, mix well, bring to a boil, then strain and add 2 tablespoons of the best fresh sour cream. Then fry the beef in butter, then add it to the sauce, boil again, and serve.
    Podarok molodym khozyaykam (A Gift to Young Housewives) by Elena Molokhovets, 1871

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QotD: Shakespeare – game designer

Filed under: Gaming, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

If Shakespeare were alive today, he would create video games. You can see the “player” mentality in his plays — where role-playing and playacting are everywhere.

Consider the case of Hamlet. The title character wanders from scene to scene in a dark castle, encountering ghosts, villains, etc. But nothing gets resolved as he tries to level up — although eleven people are killed along the way. The play starts again the next night, with similar results.

Ted Gioia, “More Entries from My Private Journal”, The Honest Broker, 2025-03-25.

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